NOT AN AMERICAN

by Stanley W Rogouski

  Whether or not Downtown Poison Springs was worth saving was another question. Poison Springs did have a brief surge of prosperity during the Second World War when it manufactured small arms for the US and allied armies. But the steel industry, never very big to begin with, had mostly been relocated to the western part of the state in the 1930s and 1940s. More important was the decline in the use of anthracite coal in favor of oil, anthracite coal being as important to the economic life of the city as aircraft manufacturing was to Seattle or auto manufacturing to Detroit. By 1951, after a cave in along the Scahentoarrhonon River all but ended coal mining in the Winterborn County, Poison Springs had lost half of its population. The murder rate skyrocketed. Block after block of houses were, at first, abandoned, then allowed to deteriorate into a state of near collapse, then set on fire. The National Guard would, in an attempt to provide some illusion of stability, hold regular drills on Roosevelt Plaza. Travel guides warned that if your car broke down on any of the highways in or around Poison Springs you should stay on the road, and attempt to get it fixed without venturing into the city itself.

  In 1968, Philippe Gars, the owner of chain of hotels in Switzerland, decided to go on a "working vacation" to the Winterborn Country. While the mountains around Poison Springs had been vacation spots ever since the 1920s, it was only when Alpine skiing became popular in the United States after World War II that people began to notice that, while unimpressive compared to the Rockies or to the Alps, they contained some of the best ski trails east of the Mississippi. There was money to be made, not only in the exploitation of the pretty scenery, but in the reclamation of the land that had been damaged by years of heavy industry and mineral extraction, and Philippe Gars, who, in addition to being one of the richest hotel owners in Europe, also owned a vast stock portfolio in companies that did business with the United States government, intended to make it. Sadly, he got caught, quite literally, in the environmental catastrophe he also saw as an economic opportunity.

  Underground mine fires were common in the Winterborn County. A pile of fuel several hundred square miles just beneath the surface of the earth meant hundreds of firetraps just waiting for the right spark, and the right spark was rarely long in coming. Until the 1970s it had been a common practice to burn garbage at landfills, which were often located near abandoned mines. Lightning strikes were another problem as were grass and forest fires. Hikers would leave cigarettes, and deer hunters would leave the embers of a campfire burning on the ground after they left. Even fluctuations in the water level could raise the temperatures underground to the point where it set off a spontaneous combustions, but by far the most important cause of the coal seam fires in and around Poison Springs was simple neglect. When the mines were abandoned in the 1950s and 1960s, most of the owners gave up their mineral rights in order to avoid paying for cleanups. A small fire that could have easily been extinguished started to burn, more often than not just kept burning.

  On May 1, 1968, after an exceptionally rainy April, the Poison Springs Metro Police got reports of an abandoned car on a rarely traveled side road approximately five miles west of Route 1081. When they discovered that the car was a new Mercedes W108, it led them almost immediately to conclude that they had found Philippe and Michelle Gars, who had been reported missing by their hotel in New York City. Officers Kowalski and Aschenbach later testified that a hundred and fifty feet off the road, on a ridge overlooking the entire expanse of the valley, they discovered a column of steam rising from a very large sinkhole. Wisely concluding that to walk along the edge of the ridge would mean getting roasted alive, they secured the Mercedes and notified the state Bureau of Mine Control, who, after excavating the area, found the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Gars, charred almost beyond recognition, 20 feet below the earth's surface.

  "French Toast," read the now infamous headline in the Winterborn Daily Post.

  In 1972, the federal government allocated funds for a massive environmental reclamation. The landfills were cleaned up. The area north of the city was flushed, reinforced, and reforested. The culm (deposits of waste coal) dumps were carted away. The local roads were repaired. American and Canadian investors built three major ski resorts. A large state park was built in between the resorts and the city's western boundary. The Winterborn County Regional Airport was given an extra runway and fully renovated. Routes 1080 and 1081 were significantly widened.

  In 1982, the Winterborn County was declared an "urban enterprise zone," and the sales tax was lowered to 3%. That, combined with the attractive downtown, turned Poison Springs into a boomtown. Name brand factory outlets sprang up along Route 1080. The region's first WillyMart was built just south of West Hill on Route 1081. The basement of Scahentoarrhonon Station was remodeled as a food court, and the neighborhood directly adjacent to Reagan Plaza South was re branded as "Old Poison Springs." Art galleries, bookstores, and upscale restaurants appeared almost overnight. Poison Springs even got in on the dotcom boom, its proximity to two major highways, and six major railway lines making it a perfect place to locate warehouses for on line retailers. The unemployment rate went down to 2.8 percent, and the city regularly made lists like the "10 best small cities in America," or "the 10 hippest downtowns you've never heard of."

  Disaster came in 2008 with the mortgage bomb and the recession. The economy of the Winterborn County, prosperous but never very robust, seemed to collapse almost overnight. The real estate and construction boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s proved to be a curse. Poison Springs now had thousands of vacant houses on land that was almost worthless. In 2009, the state revoked Poison Springs' status as an "urban enterprise zone," the sales tax rate went back up to the statewide rate of 6%, and the retail boom collapsed right along with the real estate boom. Unemployment went up to 15%. Poison Springs also got a monument to both the real estate and retail bust all rolled up into one.

  After the Winterborn II Corporation declared bankruptcy, the construction site at Winterborn Center II became a curiosity, a gigantic ruin along Route 1081, a suburban crusader castle that had long been abandoned by the conquerors who had founded it. Only a few hundred yards off Route 1081, and only a few miles east of what had once been the epicenter of anthracite coal mining in the Winterborn County, Winterborn Center II was to have consolidated the retail factory outlets clustered in patches east of the city along Route 1081 into one attractive central location. More accurately, it would have consolidated them into two central locations, what was to have been an upscale eastern wing, complete with valet parking and a first class hotel, and what was to have been a more popular western wing, the new and improved location of WillyMart, a small amusement park, and a multiplex, both wings separated by a parking lot designed to handle the biggest possible crowd on the busiest possible shopping day, a vast stretch of concrete twice the size of Reagan Plaza.

  Eight hundred and ninety feet above was the West Hill Coal Breaker. A symbol of the city's industrial heyday, it looked down on the aborted retail center as if to mock the new consumer economy that had failed to take its place. Worse yet were rumors that began to circulate at City Hall. A few years before, a project to transform the West Hill Coal Breaker, one of the last surviving processing centers for deep mined Anthracite coal in the United States, into a museum, had been halted abruptly, without explanation, and the allocated funds transferred into the general municipal budget for roadwork. Had the coal seam fires, like a cancer that had long been thought to have gone into remission, returned? The question was swept under the rug during the 2010 mayoral election and the uproar over illegal immigration, but the West Hill Mine Fire, as it became known, continued to hover in the background, its existence eventually becoming conventional, if unspoken wisdom.

  Then there was the uproar over illegal immigration. When Mexican immigrants began coming to The Winterborn County in the mid-1990s, largely to fill the city's labor shortage, then acute because of ongoing retail boom, they seemed like a pleasant change. They opened up restaurants. They paid re
nt. They spent money. They worked cheaply. They moved into long vacant housing. They gave Poison Springs --- one of the most melanin challenged places in the United States --- a multicultural air that helped to boost its image. Even with the Chamber of Commerce circulating handbills in Juarez and Monterrey promising an abundant supply of work and cheap housing, there was a shortage of domestic workers, landscapers, and dishwashers, and part time janitorial staff at the local hospitals and nursing homes. The retail sector still couldn't find enough employees.

  After the Great Recession of 2008 hit Poison Springs, the Mexicans, even the undocumented, assumed that, like the Irish, Poles and Italians before them, they would be allowed to stay to ride out the hard times. But never underestimate the ability of people to come together and look for a scapegoat when the economy falls apart. First elected mayor of Poison Springs two decades earlier, Michael Patrick Catalinelli had once been a moderate Democrat, and a strong supporter of Bill Clinton. But he had also been associated with the collapse of the retail sector and failure of Winterborn Center II. His reputation tarnished, his political career at risk, he needed to change his image, and he needed to change it fast.

  When a group of right wing bikers who called themselves "America's Guard" started a well-publicized vigilante campaign to rid Poison Springs of "illegals," Michael Catalinelli saw his opportunity. He donned a leather biker's jacket with an "MIA" logo stitched into the back, an American flag on one arm, and a "9/11 Terrorist Hunting Permit" on the other, called the local media, and started going along on their raids. He started going to church. He went on local, and even national talk radio to bash the "liberal media." He got himself photographed at the gun range. He personally stopped a mugging.

  During the run up to the election in 2010, Michael Catalinelli launched his now famous campaign to rename Roosevelt Plaza Reagan Plaza. It succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. Every NRA member in the Winterborn County, every fundamentalist Christian clutching his Bible, every small business owner who had ever failed and blamed the government, every right wing politician who ever lost an election, every gay basher, every anti-feminist, every anti-immigrant bigot in the state seemed to find himself, at one time or another, at a rally on the grand plaza named after Franklin Roosevelt. Local chapters of America's Guard sprung up all over the United States. Where the image of Poison Springs in the 1970s was National Guard members drilling on Roosevelt Plaza, it was now that of a glowering biker with patches all over his leather jacket, and a not so mysterious bulge in his clothing that indicated he was probably packing a gun. Michael Catalinelli even preempted a move by his opponent to bring up his past as a Democrat, making an emotional mea culpa about how he too helped ruin America by voting for Jimmy Carter in 1980.

  "I'm not perfect," he shouted, spreading his arms wide in front of the cheering crowd, "but I am forgiven."

  Later, at the same rally, he proposed the "Comprehensive Citizens Identification Act" (CCIA). The CCIA not only deputized the Poison Springs Metro Police as immigration agents, it forbade the use of any language other than English on billboards, storefronts, and all public advertising controlled by the city. It imposed a stiff fine on health care providers giving medical services to people in the country illegally, required anybody within the city limits to carry on him or her at all times a birth certificate, green card, or valid proof of citizenship, and included a provision for random stop and frisks. Soon the abandoned hulk of Winterborn Center II and the rumors of the West Hill Mine Fire were replaced by the image of Michael Catalinelli at the head of a group of leather jacketed bikers making a "citizens immigration arrest," and leading some allegedly "illegal" immigrant down to the ICE center to be deported.

  Then Michael Catalinelli hit the jackpot.

  Oscar Hernandez, who had been a low-level drug dealer, sex offender, and contract killer in Ciudad Juarez, had been hiding out in Poison Springs since 2007. A year after he arrived in Poison Springs, he was arrested for armed robbery, and then, dismayingly, let out on bail before he disappeared again. Thirteen-year-old Bethany Peterson, pretty, blond, popular, and the daughter of a member of "America's Guard," had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  "She must have gotten bored and wandered off," he said through a translator at his arraignment for first-degree murder. "She must have gotten bored, wandered off and gotten lost. I swear to God. I didn't mean to kill her."

  The week after he confessed to Bethany Peterson's murder, Oscar Hernandez was murdered. Someone at the Winterborn County Jail, more commonly known as "The Dungeon," had left the door to his cell unlocked, and two other prisoners came inside while he was sleeping and bashed in his head with a fire extinguisher. The Winterborn Daily Post published a photo of his cracked skull the next day. One of their reporters also "broke" the story that Bethany Peterson had not even liked her father's politics.

  "My father's a good person," it had read on the wall of her Facebook page. "He's not a racist. He's just very scared and very confused. He honestly believes there's a black man or an illegal immigrant waiting around every street corner ready to rape and murder me."

  There's really no need to go into detail about the media circus that followed, or how Bethany Peterson's photos became iconic images of the so called out of control problem of illegal immigration, but it is worth mentioning how skillfully Michael Catalinelli exploited it, demanding, among other things, that all of his "America's Guard" bikers be allowed to carry guns openly and to be deputized as ICE agents. He took to the airwaves.

  "My father's a good person," he would say, pausing for effect. "He's not a racist. He's just very scared and confused. He honestly believes there's a black man or an illegal immigrant waiting around every street corner ready to rape and murder me. Oh my little angel," he would intone in his deep baritone, his voice shaking with emotion, "the politically correct liberals have disarmed us. First they take away our guns. Then they cripple our fighting spirit. They pen us up like sheep. And then they release the wolves."

  That the girl's father had been a heavily armed member of a paramilitary biker's group was, of course, conveniently overlooked. Catalinelli's re-election, which he won by a crushing landslide, and the formal ceremony renaming Franklin Delano Roosevelt Plaza as Ronald Wilson Reagan Plaza, seemed almost anti-climactic. As he signed the "Comprehensive Citizens Identification Act" (CCIA) into law, it was clear that Michael Catalinelli had gone from being a damaged politician to a conservative superstar, and, for a brief period of time, almost a household name.

  Chapter 3 - Every time I see you, you're passed out on a bench

  John Avellanos, for that was the tall young man's legal name, walked quickly through the west gate into Reagan Plaza. He looked back to check if any of the picketers from the bus stop had followed him, slowing down to a stroll when he realized they had not. The clock tower over City Hall said it was only 1:30, plenty of time before he had to catch the next bus. He looked over at Scahentoarrhonon Station. There was a hint of a hint of color in the trees, but it was surprisingly warm, even for an early fall day. Then he continued on to the fountain circle near Reagan Plaza South.

  The Franklin B. Gowen Memorial Fountain was the most popular spot on Reagan Plaza. It had a clear, unobstructed view of both City Hall and the mountains to the west. If there was a breeze, it spread a cool mist over dozens of stone and wooden benches, which were always crowded. Avellanos sat down, pleasantly surprised that the city had not yet turned off the water for the Fall and Winter. He took two newspapers, the New York Times and the Winterborn Daily Post, out of his messenger bag, and put them down on the bench. He put a battered old paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet on his lap, and sat back.

  Almost in spite of himself, John Avellanos had begun to like the little city he had come to, almost by accident. Poison Springs was nothing like New York or Boston. There were no crowds. There was no oppressive heat. Late at night, you could even see the stars, especially if you went up into the mountains. Over the summer he had fallen into a
ritual. In the morning, he would take the early bus down from East Poison Springs to Reagan Plaza, where he would try to grab a seat at the fountain circle before the office workers at City Hall got off for lunch. Then he would spend an hour or two reading a newspaper before he could the next bus at 3 o'clock on Reagan Plaza West down Route 1081 to his job at WillyMart.

  Like everybody else in Poison Springs, he had been following the most recent election for mayor. Michael Catalinelli was running for his seventh term. Back in 2010, almost everybody thought he would run unopposed for the rest of his life. But in 2014, he faced a strong challenge. Elizabeth Felton, the daughter of the late Senator Nicholas Felton, and a descendant of one of the Winterborn County's original 16 families, had suddenly returned to Poison Springs the previous year. In June and July she seemed almost unstoppable, but at the beginning of June, she had made a serious misstep.

  "I'm not running for Mayor because I want a job," she had told a local TV reporter, "but because I want to accomplish something. Don't you think I'd rather be spending time with my friends in Paris than living in hate city running against a miserable demagogue like Michael Catalinelli? But I owe it to my father's memory. I owe it to my family. I'm sick of my hometown being a laughing stock, not only in the United States, but all over the world."

  Dubbed "Queen Elizabeth" by the local newspapers, her campaign had lost almost all of the momentum it had picked up during the spring. Michael Catalinelli had developed a dead on impression of her Ivy League mannerisms and her Mid-Atlantic accent. He began to introduce himself as "miserable demagogue," eliciting peals of laughter every time he went on about his "friends in Paris."