A Lite Too Bright

by Samuel Miller

  Mara smiled. “I’m sure. He’s truthful. Sometimes, he wakes up screaming.”

  I burned red but Jack smiled. “Good.” And for the first time, he addressed me straight on, clasping my shoulder with a long, muscular arm, close enough for me to smell him. “Then you’re fucked in the head. Just like the rest of us.”

  “I don’t have any idea what any of you are talking about,” I confessed.

  Jack lit a cigarette and exhaled, the smoke lingering in front of his face. “So you know nothing about who we are?” He pointed to Mara. “Who she is? Who her sister is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who your grandfather is?”

  I hesitated, but shook my head again.

  “Wow. Well, then this is gonna require a little history lesson. You might wanna sit.”

  Jack was casual, effortlessly charming with a cigarette. I pulled out my American Spirits and tried to casually, effortlessly light my own to distract from the circus in my chest. I couldn’t get the flame on the lighter to stay on long enough to spark the paper.

  Jack cleared his throat. “Does the Freak Power Party mean anything to you?”

  I shook my head and tried not to notice his disappointment.

  Jack drew his own lighter and held it up to my cigarette for me. “Alright, well, then I guess we’ll start there.

  “In 1967, the world was ending. It was the height of the Vietnam War and political corruption was a fucking epidemic in the United States. So Hunter S. Thompson—one of the best social justice journalists of the time, I’m sure you’ve heard of him”—I nodded, pretending I had—“decided to start a political, social movement. He observed how colossally fucked America was by its government, and decided Americans needed not just a new political alternative, but a new kind of political alternative. Something totally grassroots, completely outside the establishment.”

  He began to walk back and forth, spinning to address the opposite wall every time he ran out of space. “He found Aspen, Colorado, a tiny city with a bunch of people who didn’t really give a shit about politics, and set up shop. The idea was to find all the disenfranchised people that the rest of the political world had forgotten about, and get them out to vote for his party—Freak Power. Two candidates on the ballot—Joe Edwards for mayor, Thompson himself running for sheriff. He united the addicts, the bikers, the criminals, the immigrants—the ‘Heads,’ as he called them—and he turned them into a voting bloc. It was all satire—I mean, the fucking name of it was Freak Power—but he wanted to prove that when you unite the people that nobody else cares about, there’s a hell of a lot more of us than them.”

  “So this is—”

  “Hold on. Still a lot left.” Jack was pacing faster. “After a few setbacks, as the election got closer, Hunter realized they were going to lose. He wrote a letter to Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, saying, The outlook here is grim . . . I trust you see my problem in timing and magnitude . . . but the sheriff’s gig is just a small part of the overall plot. He had realized that losing meant the whole movement wasn’t going to have the impact he wanted; it was actually going to have the opposite. People would think, well, if you can’t even win Aspen, what hope is there for everybody else? He realized that solutions couldn’t come from within the existing framework. So he started work on something much, much more important.

  “In 1967, under the guise of the Freak Power Party and in the room where we’re standing now, he formed a separate organization. A secret one. He personally sought out the best social justice writers at the time, and trained them into a small army of—well, honestly the best word to describe it is prophets. Then he sent them out, city to city, to speak to young people, get them fired up and pissed off, and then teach them to revolt. You gotta remember, protesting hadn’t really kicked off in America yet. Sure, some people had started, but it was all disconnected, so the papers could just write it off like some fringe movement. Everybody was too scared of Nixon.

  “The result was hysteria. Protest exploded across the country; Savio and the Summer of Love, Days of Rage in Chicago, Ohio riots—all of it coming from the same underground group of fifteen writers. Their photos are everywhere, their fingerprints are all over the newspaper stories, but nobody ever figured out a fucking thing. They had to keep it a secret, because they knew if Nixon got word of something like that, he’d stomp it out at its source. This was the sixties and seventies; people were getting killed for much less. And the magnitude of it, I mean—these were the protests that ended the Vietnam War, and it was all set into motion by fifteen guys. By one fucking brilliant idea. Hunter S. Thompson, Duke, he was the real leader of it all, but he knew he couldn’t stand too close to it. People knew him. So to run the operation on the ground, he brought in a kid, a seventeen-year-old he met at a protest in San Francisco. Fresh, excited, a little sheltered, but brilliant. You know who that was?”

  The words caught in my throat. “My grandpa.”

  Mara nodded. “Arthur Louis Pullman. The United States’s glorious human protest history. It was the most significant political movement in American since 1776, and it’s all still a secret.”

  I looked back and forth between them. “So that makes you guys—”

  “We’re that movement, 2.0,” Jack took over. “After ALP—sorry, after your grandfather—after he . . . died”—he paused, waiting for me to react, but I didn’t—“a few of us in a forum online started talking about how the organization needed a resurgence. So me and this girl Leila—Mara’s sister—we built our own group of writers, and musicians, and journalists, and computer technicians, and lawyers, ten times the size of the original. We got the room back—they were trying to close this place, and we convinced them to stay open, just for us—we gathered everyone together in Denver; now this, that you’re standing right in the fucking middle of, is the reclaiming of that ideology.”

  My head spun. “But there’s no draft, or even war, really—”

  “Oh, yes, there fucking is.” I remembered our conversation from the train, his insistence that America was engaged in, or about to engage in, some kind of all-out class warfare. “There’s a corporate ruling class that controls everything that happens in this country,” he continued. “They control politics, they control the media, they control public resources, and if you don’t realize it, then they’re fucking controlling you, too. And they’re sitting in penthouses and private planes, drinking twenty-thousand-dollar bottles of champagne while they watch the world burn.”

  “You mean like . . . corporations?”

  “Don’t just say it like it’s some sophomore thesis paper!” Jack was pacing wilder than ever. I could feel why he was the leader. He was so intensely excited, so passionately hateful, that he couldn’t hold himself in one place while he spoke. “This isn’t abstract! These are real people, with real obsessions, with their hands around every ballsack in Washington, DC, muscling them into cutting welfare while one in five kids is going hungry, and ignoring emissions while half the species on Earth are dying out. Everyone knows it’s fucked up, everyone knows that politicians are puppets for corporations, everyone knows the Earth is being destroyed, and somebody needs to stand up and say, ‘Hey, fuck you, we’re not going to take this anymore. We’re the people, and we want our power back.’”

  “Okay. So you’re going to . . . protest?”

  Jack shook his head. “Nope, not us. I mean, we’ve been there, we’ve had a presence everywhere, but those are coming from people’s real, organic anger. We’re here to channel that. The original Great Purpose plan wouldn’t have the same effect today, so we’ve had to get more . . . pragmatic.”

  I started to notice the charts and graphs all around the room: maps of political districts, polling data for positions I didn’t recognize, and names that meant nothing to me. It was obsessive, printed documents with scribbling all over them, chalkboards so hastily rewritten that their old messages still snuck through.

  “This part was actually Mara’s sister’s idea
. Do you know what the second most politically powerful office in the country is, behind the president?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “A mayor. There are about two hundred American cities where mayors have functionally unchecked authority—they can legislate through local ordinance, build a government of their choosing through appointments, veto any proposal, even reassign federal government funds. After that, it’s a city manager. After that, city councillor. Local politics is where shit actually gets done. That’s what we need to take back.

  “So we’ve recruited some candidates—super-progressive, anticapitalist candidates—to run in local elections, in conservative cities across America. Thirty-three city managers, forty-five city councillors, and fifteen mayors.”

  He pointed to a table on the wall; cities in one column, political offices in another, names in the last. I recognized one name from the list. Next to CARSON CITY, NEVADA, the name MARA BHATT.

  I turned to her, seated on top of the only desk in the room, half her face hiding behind a shadow. “But they’re gonna lose—”

  “You’d think. But that’s where the real work of what we do comes in. America’s current political system infrastructure was built by the people who still maintain and control it—the old and wealthy. It’s discouraging, but it also means their voting systems are as archaic as their candidates. This is where youth has its advantages. Those people out there—” He motioned back toward the main room. “Half of them are computer engineers, and they’re really, really fucking good. They’ve built programs that live within directory computers and voting machines, then automatically register voters, contact those voters about their ballots, and submit them, without actual physical interaction. And in the process, maybe our candidate gets supported. Maybe that’s what all of these people would want anyway. Maybe the city accidentally does what it’s wanted to do since the start of this oligarchy shit show.”

  “You’re rigging elections?”

  “No,” Jack snapped. “We’re suggesting something people already want. The other side has been weaponizing voter suppression since the birth of America. It’s about time somebody weaponized voter turnout. You couldn’t do it on a presidential level, because there’s too much scrutiny, but who’s gonna give a shit about a local election? In most cases, we’re talking about a couple hundred votes making the difference. We’re gonna turn power in America’s cities over to the people who will actually protect them.”

  “But how— They don’t even live in these places. How could she even be the mayor if—”

  “Arthur.” He stopped me. “You’re coming in at, like, step nine of a ten-step resistance. Every one of those problems has been solved. We’re already on the moon. Enjoy it.”

  “Okay.” The engine in my head was still processing. “Okay. So this is the new Freak Power Party? Or . . .”

  “No, Freak Power was the diversion. We’re the more important part. We’re the ones spreading the ideas, inciting the riots, inspiring the masses.”

  “And what’s that called?”

  Jack smiled and pointed toward the far wall, directly opposite the door. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it: expertly painted across the wall, above a fireplace, was the symbol from Jack’s scarf, a fist holding a small, green branch, and two bold, enormous words:

  GREAT PURPOSE.

  3.

  april 30, the 2010.

  feet step on the concrete

  mecca & melbourne

  arthur

  following my feet

  through cold concrete step,

  but i keep faith in my feet

  buildings of an old man,

  melbourne & unfamiliar warmth

  my body outside itself

  looking in

  arthur.

  some days

  i feel our unwavering spirits

  in cold buildings, soft couch,

  color & more lite from the window, large

  17D our

  liquor perfume smoke & music

  if i could speak to tham naw;

  i would say give this up,

  this is not what you think it is

  you are not what you think you are,

  i doubted nathing than.

  but naw i am nathing but doubt.

  —arthur louis pullman

  4.

  I CROSSED THE room to where the words were etched across the wall, the dedication of my grandfather’s book hidden in plain sight. Reaching for it felt like reaching for him. But I couldn’t tell if he was reaching back.

  “How do you know all of this?” I spun on Jack. “How do you know that my grandfather . . .” I paused to gather the question. “I mean, I, I lived with him. My father was his son. And we didn’t know about any of this. What makes you so sure he was here?”

  The corners of his mouth curled in a smile. “Well, for starters, he told us himself.”

  He kicked the bottom of the wall. Far below the GREAT PURPOSE logo, there were twenty to thirty names, all in bold, capital letters. The wallpaper around them was chipped, making it clear that this part of the wall had been there the longest. The ink was fading, but on the top of the first column of names, I could still make out the first six that I recognized:

  ERNEST BANKS

  HUNTER S. THOMPSON

  ORLO KOPEK

  JONATHAN LEWIS

  JEFFERY KOPEK

  ARTHUR LOUIS PULLMAN

  I leaned down and traced them with my finger. My grandfather had written his name. I returned to Jack’s level. “Okay, how did you know, though?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did you know about this? This room, my grandpa . . . who told you?”

  Light from the fire danced on his face as he smiled. “You’re not the only one here with royal blood,” he said, and from his pocket, he pulled a small, metallic object. He danced it between his fingers. “It’s a stamp. A Gonzo fist, for Gonzo himself, except instead of holding peyote, it’s holding an olive branch. This was their logo, their stamp. There’s only one in the world, saved only for Great Purpose documents. And it used to belong to my birth father.”

  He reached for my hand, raising it in front of his face and lightly stamping the back of it. He blew on it to dry the ink: dark, black, the symbol directly in the center.

  “Jack . . . Thompson.” I read the names on the wall. “You’re his grandson?”

  “His son.” He smiled at me. “Thompson and Pullman, reincarnate. The prodigal sons, together, right where it all started. Only the Purpose is stronger this time.” He motioned to the other room. “There’s some serious influence out there. And these people—they’re serious. This isn’t just something we do. This is who we are. This is our religion.”

  I nodded. And that makes our families the gods, I thought. Which would make us—

  “Jesus Christ!” a shout came from the other room, and a boy with dark hair entered. “Jack, if we’re gonna try to grab Greenberg at the DataFirst building itself, we’re gonna need someone in the building to follow him out, and Kade doesn’t—” He stopped when he saw me. He couldn’t have been much older than me, with a hairless chin and sunken eyes.

  “Kade’s afraid of a little camera time?”

  The boy nodded and I whipped my head back and forth between them. Grabbing Greenberg didn’t sound like something you would do to a voting machine.

  “Tell him I’ll do it myself,” Jack nearly shouted, speaking to someone outside the room as well. “And I’ll wear a shirt that says, ‘You loaned money to slave owners two hundred years ago, and the only difference now is you cut out the middleman’!”

  The boy shook his head and left. I tried to get Mara’s attention, but her eyes were fixed on the floor.

  When the boy was out of earshot, I mumbled, “I thought you guys were just—”

  “DataFirst holds forty-five percent of the information for America’s short-term, unsecured loans—the payday ones that fuck over poor people. Two weeks ago, they agreed to sell their col
lections information to law enforcement, as if these people’s lives weren’t fucked enough. So we’re gonna borrow their CEO for a day or two.” Jack was smirking proudly, but he could sense my uneasiness. “Look, we’re not here to hurt anybody. He’s gonna be fed, he’ll have a place to sleep—pretty fucking luxurious prison, when you consider the crimes.” He could tell I wasn’t sold, and Mara wasn’t backing him up. “We’re just trying to fight this thing with every weapon we have. Fear is a weapon. Your grandpa helped halt the march of imperialism in this country because he wasn’t afraid to put his own body in the way. It’s about time somebody did the same.”

  “But . . . you’re not going to kill anybody?”

  “No.” Jack smiled. “We’re just gonna show them that we could.”

  The boy reentered. “He’s pretty serious, he doesn’t—”

  “Shut up.” Jack lit a cigarette. “I’ll be right back.” The room outside parted like the Red Sea, and Jack disappeared into it.

  Some moments, I’m certain I can feel the rotation of the Earth twice as fast, like the horizontal axis of what’s normal and expected and intended is visibly shifting in front of me, and try as I may to reorient my brain to it, it stays inches ahead of me, ensuring that the whole world is off-kilter and impossible to grasp. As I stared out across the tops of the heads of the room full of Great Purpose revolutionaries, I felt the axis speeding up.

  I turned my confusion to Mara. “They’re gonna kidnap somebody?”

  “Yeah.” She looked over the graphs on the walls. “That part was Jack’s idea, not my sister’s. He says it’s totally nonviolent, but . . . I don’t know.”

  I stared at her but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “When did you decide to bring me here?”

  “I mean,” she said, smiling down at our feet, “I was coming here either way. But you were a nice addition.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “And ruin this surprise?”

  “This is your idea of a surprise?”

  “It’s not every day you get to tell someone they’re part of a royal bloodline.” She patted me on the back playfully. “Besides, if I told you what this was, we wouldn’t be here. And these people can really help.”