One of the Knox County Militia guys reaches with a hand and covers the dark head of the girl and grins. “I saw a snake eat a hog once.”
Lots of laughs at the table but the tykes, in deep reckoning, frowningly study the goateed face that has spoken this marvel.
“Well, not a hog. It was a newborn pig,” say the lips in the stranger’s face. The hand on the girl’s head is kind but the eyes are hecklish.
Cory recalls.
Before breakfast the next day, the New Jersey guys got a tour of a few things, including the radio setup causing them to go ripe bananas, even though it was a long way from any use, the building itself just a flying squirrel and bat motel.
Our John Lungren listed all our languishing plans for starting a shortwave situation, for spreading our small scale solar and wind ideas and the CSAs . . . the community stuff. But Pastor Lon just waved that away, saying the only real thing for patriots would be to use radio for broadcasting “the movement,” the constitutional stuff, the militia stuff, the right-wing thing. “Radio needs to be in the right hands. Ours,” he said, his eyes all whirly with feeling.
Gordon said in a gravelly significant way, “The . . . people’s . . . airwaves.”
Eddie Martin had a smile as big as the blue sky. He added his two bits, “The FCC is the golden gateway to the real radio scene. It’s them and the big money between people’s ears and the people’s voice.”
John Lungren laughed. “All boils down to the fact that only a small percentage of Americans were ever legal persons.”
Eddie: “The more property you had, the more human you were . . . like, you know, gold, acreage, and slaves. Today it’s gotten more abstract . . . big organized capital . . . Wall Street . . . how many senators and reps you can own and—”
Gordon interrupted him. “The paper person was born. The paper person, the charter, the corporation, a system, no legs just wings, has a big grip on everything including the media, any media that matters. This little operation here . . . well, I won’t say they’d ignore us, but—”
“Whatever,” said the shaved skull guy, Bob, squinting like we Settlement guys had just gone off on comparing baby bootie knitting techniques.
Pastor Lon leaned into our group to more centralize himself. He sort of snarled, but gentlemanishly, “I don’t care about any of that. What we need to focus on is how in our hands, radio is firepower.”
All in a rush, I felt both warm and cold in the roots of my hair.
A letter received by the governor of Maine. Though Rex has not signed it and Gordon and other Settlement guys have not signed it, the revisions shown in handwriting discussed at the meeting in the St. Onge kitchen remain.
Greetings Governor,
A request by the leadership of eight Maine citizens’ militias submitted to you this spring was ignored. As you may not recall, we asked that we could meet with you to discuss the possibility of Martial Law being imposed on the US citizenry in a future time, particularly in the event of an emergency such as real or government-staged terrorism.
Another request, this one in early summer, was denied by one of your aides, stating that you were too busy.
Do not mistake these requests including this third as TREASON, INSURRECTION, or THREAT or as any other CRIMINAL ACT under the color of law. For the record, we have no CRIMINAL INTENT. We do, however, under the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, as expounded in the Federalist Papers, have the right and the duty to defend against OPPRESSIVE, TYRANNICAL, ARBITRARY, FASCIST (the merging of government with huge business organizations‡‡) or TREASONOUS GOVERNMENT.
‡‡ Italics are Settlement-created additions.
You, Governor, and members of the Maine Legislature, are hereby notified that any and all declarations of Martial Law, to include, but not limited to, the ROUNDUP OF PATRIOTS, MILITIA MEMBERS or ANY CIVILIAN POPULATION, in groups or individually, BANNING OF FIREARMS and WEAPONS or AMMUNITION for same, DEPLOYMENT of any FEDERAL or INTERNATIONAL TROOPS, AGENTS, or POLICE, the use of DYNAMIC ENTRY to remove leadership of Militia or any other Constitutionally-allowed group, assemblage of persons or family, and/or the use of Martial Law, YES, MARTIAL LAW IN ANY FORM WHATSOEVER, WILL BE MET WITH MILITIA RESISTANCE.
ASSASSINATION under the color of law, the SEIZURE OF PROPERTY, PAPERS or ASSETS whatsoever through the use of bogus instruments or executive orders, INJURY or LOSS OF LIFE due to CIVIL OR CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION or under the color of law, the ushering in of a NEW WORLD ORDER, will now and without question be met with any and all resistance necessary to regain the freedoms of all flesh and blood people under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Legal fictions (corporations) not being flesh and blood persons by natural law will not be recognized as worthy of protection by the following militia units signed on to this notice.
If at this time you people see that you would like to talk and iron out the aforementioned issues that concern us as a Sovereign American People, feel free to contact any of the following:
Rob Carr, Knox County Militia
John Phinney, Militia of the Cumberland Interior
Don Garland, Great Gluskap Militia
Jackie Farrington, Pine Tree State Militia
Terrance T. Thibideault, Mars Hill P.M.
Chris Brace, Oxford Minutemen
PHONE/FAX/EMAIL on Label
Respectfully,
Rob Carr
Discovering America.
It is night. This room Cory shares with his thirteen-year-old brother Oz isn’t dark. Oz sleeps soundlessly as Cory reads soundlessly, the lamp shooting in all directions one hundred ardent watts. Oz’s thing is horses, those he takes care of but all horses are his passion, all of horsedom. Perhaps he is dreaming of them now, though he doesn’t even twitch. Besides, his head is under the pillow. Outside the pillow is one long rangy arm holding on, and a red T-shirt sleeve and his birthday wristwatch, wrist portending of thickness, wide hand, skin still toast-color from summer.
Meanwhile, Cory’s pages are lifted, swept along, and dropped with the lilty snowflaky silence. Ward Churchill’s Pacifism as Pathology, very old ideas made to newly rip across the sky, rip, tear, awaken. Such relentless logic, while Cory at age sixteen just becomes more and more and more astonished, riveted, mortified, and the lighted lamp and the book and the early a.m. hour occupy the small room with perfect radiance and surrender.
Nearby, through stubby white fences and the disembodied tree whirrings of October, in another rangy many-roomed cottage, lies Butch Martin.
This room has beds and brothers, too. Butch is not a book reader but he lies awake with scenes of possibility played out on the palpitant darkness. He sees them so vividly, not the Border Mountain Militia or the New Jersey Militia, but elves! Yes, hooded creatures, human-tall, vegan, light on toe and heel, able to float-sail-somersault when necessary (so much is necessary), dun and slate-swathed, drab as birds, no sparkling, no suspiring, just the tick-tock in the blood, the oily efficiency of their togetherness in their locking of arms, prone in the streets, the wealth of their reckoning, the genius of their thrift, the featherweight scurry and rush of those who are never never never cowards, setting their dynamite in a precision cranny, immune to high order and high rank commands. Like breezes. These elves hove into the cranny and split it.
He groans.
Back in the other cottage, Cory reads on. Is his education a sunrise? Or a sunset?
Done with the Churchill book, he reaches for another, one of the new three he got from Jaxon today. He just wants to see what the afterword says, no plunging into this big baby tonight. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Here now at the end where the author goes into the aftermath of an FBI lawsuit, that a publisher should be so un-American, so ballsy as to print a book such as this!!!, say they, the prosecution.
Well, yuh, it opened windows on the agency’s shit, their unbelievable SHIT against the people of the Pine Ridge Reservation out west, these being nowadays people!!! People you might know and love. T-shirts-and-sneakers people,
grammies in aprons, dads in Dickees. Cory’s dark, dark Passamaquoddy eyes blink with his own revelation about the person cleaving to his towering and still growing bones, inside his skin, behind these eyes, the revelation that each book he gets from Jaxon makes him, Cory St. Onge, more warlike.
No wonder truth must be swept under rugs, for only fibs are gentling. He wonders what is it about those who are not gentled, such as the hushy drawly Jaxon Cross.
What makes them soldiers of pointed questions while others are soldiers of official fibs? How does that work?
His eyes keep blinking. Cory, who is a soldier for neither. Cory. Coward. He stands fear-frozen before the cage.
He believes that for most young American men, joining Uncle Sam is not courage. Most of these guys cannot picture their own demise, or what will be asked of them, can’t imagine it because everything so far is sport and play. And bravado. Nothing more setaceous or burred than that registers with them yet.
And now, you, official hero boy, are transformed. No matter anything except that you were THERE. And now there is only to bow down under praises, kin, and public alike, even if on a mission somewhere you explode, to be lugged home legless, armless, you have the sweet warm-as-kittens cauldron of those praises to stew in, the nourishing, neon wholeness of God and country of which you are one beautiful legless armless decorated bee.
How does that measure? And do note that the solider for the antiempire cause, anarchist or militia, whistleblower or hacker, is free and clear and purified of any of that mob praise. That choice, that sugar deal is off for you.
Cradles.
Promise Lake, late afternoon, the sky of the east as gray as ghouls in the cave of death, but pleasantly peach in the west. Hither and yon are swan boats, some single file, some abreast, a few in lonesome zig-zags. The lakey-smelling water bells and laps from time to time but it is mostly plain-out flat, a courtesy to swans.
Only three ordinary white swans. One cream. The rest bridal colors, nothing carnivalesque, nothing to shame a swan. It is this dreamy creamy sleepy fantasy of it all that has made swan boats one of the Settlement’s most popular co-op pine products. Scowlike and sedan-sized, they are not likely to turn over, even with the swan’s grand arched neck, even if passengers stand or lean out over the upraised paddle-shaped wing feathers. You get stability. You will know peace, the obtuse thrill of it, unless you are one of the peddlers. In that case, you will know exercise. Even though the gear works running along inside the hump are ingenious, they still require the enthusiasm of the whole range of calf and thigh, buttock and belly, heart and lung. Huff. Huff. Huff.
Here comes a little flotilla of the custard yellow, bobbing violet, and bachelor button pink and blue. Cantaloupe, a color almost juicy, lilac, and clover. Presently they are moving imperceptibly. The pilots and passengers all rising and settling in unison with the breathing of the lake. Some kids. Some adults. Nice time. End of a long day of Settlement bustle. This is the reward.
What’s up ahead there? Viking “ship.” The one and only. Totally experimental. Same size and shape in the body as the swans but far different spirit. For theatrics only is a short mast and striped red and yellow terry-cloth sail, the size of . . . well, yes . . . two towels.
Two ten-year-olds are pedaling this one. One pilots as he pedals. Behind are the ruffled watery Vs of the craftily made paddle wheel and rudders.
“Axle!” the copilot has memorized Viking words and they are called out from time to time.
The “ship’s” head and neck, the whole dragony thing, is the deepest best-ever green, with devil red eyes and what’s meant to be a snarl. Looks more like a bored yawn.
“Skull!” calls out the boy copilot.
The boy pilot steers around bleach-bottle buoys that mark a rock and sandbar. He has learned his way on Promise Lake with rowboats and swans, but this maiden voyage of the one and only Viking “ship” is his finest hour.
There are passengers. The back bench is loaded. Brianna. Claire. And old Dorothy wrapped in her blue and gray sashed wool coat. Claire has Dorothy in a one-armed lock. Dorothy is not in full appreciation of the moment.
“Bloom!” calls the copilot in Vikingese (which in this case is also English).
Old Dorothy’s eyes are blue, the way the lake ought to be but is not. Not now in these last daylight hours. Over Dorothy’s coat is a floppy oversized life vest.
The ship is headed for Turtle Cove.
Bree laughs. “Shall we raid and burn North Egypt? Steal all their jewels and piggies and virgin men? Make history?”
Silence.
“We could make up Viking songs since we don’t know any,” she adds. “You guys study about their musical instruments? Gotta make at least one of each.”
“That would be good,” one boy pants out this remark as he pedals into the curve. He’s not the pilot, but has an aspect of very big pride, he believes he’s not the pedaling slave he actually is. He is one of Gordon’s and Leona’s sons. The other is a Soucier progeny.
Bree looks into the water, which is getting grayer to match the creeping ghoul clouds, and getting sloshier, the air showing some emotion now. The good lake smell goes up Bree’s nose. The water itself bites her fingers. Her life vest fits perfectly. Ah, Bree.
Claire stretches her short legs. The craft is, yes, roomy. Her long wool jumper is patched with scarlet on the hem and near one knee. Also on the skirt, paint, grease, pitch, and ink in streaks, paws, and heart shapes. No ho ho, she did not dress up for this cruise. Her boots are worn out mightily along the toes. Her life vest fits tight. See her knitted cap of baking-soda-box yellow is new and bright, sort of blinding. Serenely, she says, “The swans got thirty-five orders this fall. They win hearts. Viking ships . . . hmmm . . . what is their future?”
“Better than swans,” advises the pilot, then snorts manfully.
Bree speaks in her smoky tall-girl voice, “Well, the people with the money to spend on such artsy pleasures are the professional class. They’d want swans. They would say swans are for peace, even though a swan raped Penelope or somebody . . . maybe it was Persephone . . . whatever . . . it was before the first Viking was even born.”
“Born to rape,” says the pilot.
“Hush up,” scolds Bree. “You can’t use the r word or discuss the . . . uh . . . problem . . . until you’re twenty-one or something.” (Bree is almost sixteen).
“Agreed,” Claire says, her tone matching her forbidding-as-ever black eyes and specs, the specs reflecting watery gray like two elfin puddles.
Both boys tee-hee and reposition their hats manfully, then whisper.
Bree’s lovely mouth smiles.
“People who would like pedal boats would pick swans,” considers the St. Onge boy. “People who would like Viking boats would want turbo engines on the sides, even the Vikings when they were Vikings if turbos were invented already cuz Vikings needed to smush and blonk everybody and take over. Pedals are wussie. And today’s Viking types would hate this toy. They’d want stealth bombers and lasers.”
Claire squares her shoulders, proud of her logical boy cousin, even if he’s treading a bit heavily on reverence for life.
Meanwhile, in old Dorothy’s eyes is the look of a captive abducted by Vikings, uncertain of north, south, east, or west.
Bree wants to smoke but of course that’s out. She taps the ends of her fingers together. “Kirky and Seth want to make the Tree of Diana but one of the metals is mercury, so the whole thing’s off.”
“Tree of Diana?” Claire squints.
“Like a silver tree that grows branches. Sort of. It’s alchemy. Medieval doin’s.”
Claire rolls her eyes almost playfully. “Our kids are wonderful. They’ll probably succeed.”
Our kids.
Bree says, “Kirky especially. He has a gift.” (Kirky who isn’t aboard. Kirky of the electronic table town and bow ties and no-hope philosophy. Yes, that Kirky.) She makes the sound of rockets going off and mewling popping fireworks and this
gives her a childly aspect. Bree the child, yes.
Claire glances at Dorothy, then says velvet-soft, “I told them back home that she shouldn’t come. You take her from her familiar surroundings, she’ll be mixed up for days. Her world lately has shrunk to the size of one of the kitchen rockers.”
Bree eyes old Dorothy. “Well, let’s hope she likes fresh air.”
Claire tightens her grip on the hunched old woman. “You like this fresh air, Dot?”
“Oh, yes,” Dorothy replies pleasantly but her eyes are still great bulges of bewilderment.
The boy pilot-pedalers are conversing in brawny forced voices about the beachy island owned by friends of the Settlement. They begin to languidly circle it. The bored and yawning Viking beast oozes in through the shadows and stripes of orange sunset leaving its sequined wake.
Claire asks, “You warm, Dot?”
“Oh, yes.”
One of the boys calls back. “You cold, Dot?”
“Oh, yes,” she replies.
Claire and Bree look into each other’s eyes. Then Claire is staring in her steely way at the backs of the two youngsters’ heads, her cousin Leona’s and Gordon’s son with that thick extravagance of Passamaquoddy hair and billed cap, the other, Austin Soucier, brown hair too short to be warm but no cap. So his ears are rosy. And while Claire studies those ears, she absently strokes Bree’s jacketed arm.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Claire says.
Bree’s wrongly spaced eyes of yellowy-green-brown regard Claire awfully, then the eyelids slide down, eyes closed loosely as one would enjoy a round hot sun overhead, if the sun were there.
Claire has a quick consideration of the science of red hair. What voice in one’s genes orders, “Red!” and then it shall be. How impossible red seems, its insatiableness.
Claire notes that now something stirs under Bree’s skin. A tiger under her skin? Or a bag of kittens left to die? Claire crosses, then uncrosses, her legs at the ankles.
As the impossibility of red hair, so is there this impossible thing of five people and a box with seats in suspension over the deep watery chambers of would-be suffocation and slimy rock. And there is sureness in these children’s hands. And those who have taught them. Teachers, tools, and the audacity of the unfledged all fused, making this day float.
Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 66
