Four years later, running on his union victories, Barry Marion won himself the mayor’s seat in his hometown of DC, making him the first Socialist Party member to hold the office. Barry Marion then went on to use his organizational muscle and win the District of Columbia its long sought representation in The House. The Washington Post recently called him ‘Unstoppable.’ There was talk of drafting him to chair the DNC and even running him for President in ’24.
William O’Neill didn’t begrudge the man his future prospects; he just didn’t want them compromising his own, which they were more than likely to if the Mayor went through with his threat to arrest anyone who performed a religious service in public tonight. O’Neill had no illusions about winning any votes from the religionists, but he didn’t want to appear weak and out of control to the country at large. While his administration was as plagued with terrorism as the last three, only one small riot had broken out during his term. It was not a minor thing for an anxiety-wracked public. The President meant to keep it that way even if he had to bring the full weight of his office down on an uppity mayor.
He glanced at the clock on his desk. It read 6:43. Two minutes before the scheduled call to his Honor, the Mayor.
William O’Neill catches the make-up lady’s eye and gives her a thumbs-up.
“Thank you, Mrs. Jefferson,” he says. “Give my best to your husband and kids. Penny has a little something for you and your family on the way out.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” she answers. “Merry Christmas to you and yours!”
She gathers her things and heads out of the Oval Office. His Chief of Staff, Burt Owens enters after her.
“It’s time, sir,” he says.
“I know,” says O’Neill. “Let’s get it over with.”
The President thumbs his desktop video phone and is, in a matter of moments, connected to the Mayor’s office. The eight inch screen lights to life with the dark, bony features of Barry Marion. His eyes are large, dark and bright under the shiny, bald pate of his head. The Mayor is seated at his desk, his blue, pin-striped shirt open at the collar and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows of his wiry arms.
O’Neill smiles warmly. “Merry Christmas, Mayor Marion.”
“Good evening, Mr. President.”
The President smiles even more broadly. “Did you get a chance to read the speech I’ll be delivering in a few minutes?”
O’Neill had Owens send over a copy of the text an hour ago. Not the complete text. It was missing one part.
The Mayor nods. “Pretty speech, but it ain’t going to make a lick of difference to the crowds.”
“Perhaps not,” the President concedes. “But you can certainly make a great deal of difference tonight, Mr. Mayor. Let the crowds hold their ceremonies. I would consider it a personal favor to me, if you did.”
“Sorry, Mr. President,” the Mayor says. “But these Jesus freaks need to know that their day is over and done with.”
“Come now Mr. Mayor, we both know the court injunction is just a temporary one.”
“As we both know the Supreme Court is likely to make it permanent in the spring, Mr. President.”
“We’re agreed on that as well, Mayor Marion,” O’Neill nods. “So why not wait, in the interest of public safety, until the law is made permanent?”
“Because by the spring,” Mayor Marion says. “There will likely be a million of these bible-thumpers in town. It’ll be easier to take care of them now.”
The President shakes his head. “Not without the National Guard it won’t.”
O’Neill watches the news sink in. The Mayor’s jawline tightens and his eyes narrow ever so slightly.
“What are you saying, Mr. President?”
“I’m saying that I’m having the Guard pulled out after my speech,” O’Neill answers. “The Governor has agreed to my request. If you’re going to insist on trying to arrest a quarter of a million people you’re going to have to attempt it with just the DC Police.”
“Why would you do that, Mr. President?”
“Because you’re being unreasonable, Mr. Mayor,” President O’Neill says. “There is no harm in allowing the demonstrators one, last, public celebration of Christmas. If there are to be riots because of your unreasonableness, I want you and your office to bear all the responsibility for it. I want none of the blame at my door.”
“You don’t really believe this is going to score you points with conservatives, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” O’Neill responds. “It won’t lose me any points with conservatives either. That is neither here nor there, however. My concern is public safety and the maintenance of order. It’s been years since the nation has suffered through a major riot. I would think that we would all want to keep it that way.”
“So I should just ignore the law?” Marion asks. “Is that what you’re advising me?”
“I’m advising you, Mr. Mayor, to weigh your new-found regard for the law against the interests of public safety.”
The two men stare stonily at each other for several moments.
“Very well, Mr. President,” Mayor Marion says at last. “You can consider your hands washed of the matter. For myself, I shall press on with my original intention and duty to enforce the law.”
President O’Neill watches as the Mayor reaches across his desk and unceremoniously severs their connection.
“That went over about as well as I expected,” Owens says from across the President’s desk.
The President nods. “Do we still have Whittaker on board?”
“Yes,” Owens says. “I got off the phone with him minutes ago. If the Mayor issues the order to arrest the demonstrators, Whittaker will defect on the eleven o’clock news. He assured me that we can count on one hundred and forty-three officers jumping ship with him.”
“Good,” says the President.
Whittaker is DC’s Chief of Police. He was installed by Marion but their relationship has been deteriorating over the last year. Everyone expected the Mayor to replace him soon. Whittaker himself expected it. Burt Owens wooed him on the President’s behalf. Whittaker agreed to publically defy his boss if the White House asked him. The Chief of Police will explain that it is the President’s regard for the wellbeing of the demonstrators that convinced him to disobey the Mayor’s callous command. In return, a place would be found for him and his people in the administration. The President hopes the removal of the National Guard and the police chief ’s surprise mutiny will be enough to derail the mayor’s plans and allow the night to pass uneventfully.
He knows he is only kicking the can down the road. The court’s decision in the spring could lead to confrontations as well, but he would deal with that later.
Burt Owens taps his watch. “Five minutes to seven, Mr. President.”
President William O’Neill spins lazily in his chair to look out at the crowds gathered beyond the Oval Office. He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly before spinning back around.
“Extremists to the left of me,” he says, nodding at the videophone. “Extremists to the right of me,” he adds with a nod to the window.
“It’s a real thin line you have to walk, Mr. President,” Owen says with a slight shake of his small, bald head.
“Thin as a razor,” says the President of the United States. “And it’s about as pleasant to walk on.”
23:04:20
Elmer Kidd accepts a cup of hot chocolate from the young nun.
“Thank you, sister.”
She smiles, nods and begins pouring another one for the young man in line behind him. Kidd moves on, carefully lifting the lid off the Styrofoam cup. He blows gently into the thick, brown liquid. His breath and the steam off the chocolate mix into a cloud-white wisp that flares up to fog his glasses. Elmer takes a sip and savors the drink’s heat against the night’s chilling temperature. After a second, larger sip there is enough room to doctor the beverage with a shot of whiskey from his flask. Kidd spikes the chocolate, reappl
ies the lid and takes a third sip. Much better, he thinks. He looks up to face West Potomac Park. It is already packed with people even as more make their way to it. A make-shift stage is set up in front the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. JumboTron screens are set up on either side of the stage and a third is raised in front of the World War Two Memorial on the opposite end of the park. The screens are set up to watch the President’s address and the response from the protest leaders. In the meantime, the local news is being broadcast live. Few people are paying it any mind. He glances up to watch for a moment. Somewhere in the mass of humanity, Charles Hughes, Kidd’s fellow ex-war correspondent turned local, slick-haired newsman is interviewing demonstrators. He holds his microphone up to a redheaded, twenty-something year old male waving the golden ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag that has long been the mainstay of anti-government crowds. Their images are beamed larger than life across the park.
“What do you expect to hear from the President tonight, young man?”
“The usual,” the redhead answers. “A whole lot of nothing.”
Four girls position themselves to be seen by the camera. They raise a large green and red, hand painted banner above their heads.
All we want for Christmas is our country back! The sign declares in large, block letters.
Nice one, Elmer thinks.
“Start recording, Ernie,” Kidd says out loud.
“Tape is rolling, Jefe.” The PalmPal in his breast pocket answers. The reply comes through the small, inconspicuous speakers ringing the diamond studs he wears in his ear lobes.
Like most people, Elmer Kidd has personalized his computer. His is named after his boyhood hero, Ernest Hemingway. The PalmPal uses samples of the writer’s voice to interact with its user. A tiny camera in the bridge of his glasses wirelessly feeds video of what Elmer looks at to the portable computer. The PalmPal, in turn, uploads it to his mini-Mainframe at home in Newark New Jersey. He will later edit the raw, life-streamed footage, add a voice over analysis and commentary and then post it to his blog, Kidding Around.
Elmer Kidd begins walking up Independence Avenue, scanning the crowds. There are two camps. The larger of the two, the Christians, are north of Independence, gathered in and around the park; the smaller, counter-demonstrators are south of Independence, stretched thinly across the far sidewalks.
He fixes his sight on a banner ahead of him.
“This country was not founded upon religion but on Christianity.”
The lettering is white over a grayscale portrait of Patrick Henry.
Elmer takes another sip of his spiked chocolate. Looking over the rim of the cup he spots another group of young people talking animatedly under a giant poster which caricatures DC’s Mayor as the Grinch, lynched from a Christmas tree. He focuses on the placard for a few moments and then turns his head south.
A cluster of counter-demonstrators are chanting, “God is dead… God is dead…” They are under a banner that reads:
Religion = War Crimes
The letters are in red, dripping in places like blood from open wounds.
Elmer captures the image and continues on, sipping at his drink, until he comes across several dozen children kneeling under a long, raised sign which declares:
The world aborted another 250,000 babies today.
“You didn’t make it, unborn child,
They wouldn’t let you be,”
The kids pray in one voice. He recognizes the prayer from many a pro-life demonstration.
“To your bud of life, they took a knife;
It’s the ‘new morality.’
They didn’t mean to hurt you, love!
You have to understand;
Forgive them for what they did,
Their lives are so well-planned.
They couldn’t take you with them
Up the ladder of success;
Money meant more to them,
Than a child, heaven-blessed.
Tell me, little unborn child,
What did the Creator say?
Did He wrap you in his love,
And wipe your tears away?
You hover on the edge of time.
I see your faceless form.
You laugh when children play.
Oh God, for you I mourn!
He sent us His only precious Son,
To teach us all The Way.
Still, we kill the unborn ones;
It happens every day!
You didn’t make it, unborn child,
They wouldn’t let you be.
They just expelled a blob of cells;
It’s the ‘new morality.’”
Elmer turns his head from the children to the throng on the south side of Independence. He scans a cluster of signs across the street.
Keep your God to yourself!
Christianity Sux!
Jesus freaks go home!
Kidd pauses before each one to get a clear picture and moves on, scanning north again. He spots another gray and white sign.
“The greatest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”
The white letters are over a grayscale portrait of John Quincy Adams. Like the first gray and white sign he spotted, this one stands out for its professional quality amidst a forest of the home-made and the hurriedly hand-drawn.
“Get a close up of that one, Ernie,” Kidd says to his PalmPal.
The computer zooms in on the image through the small camera in Kidd’s glasses. Elmer pans through a close-up of the image created in the lens over his left eye. He spots a logo, centered on the bottom of the sign:
Creation
That is curious, thinks Elmer. He noted a facebook status post from a Felix Culpa in his message stream a couple hours back; it was something about Christmas extremism. Elmer didn’t recognize the name. He scrolled through it quickly, figuring it was just a random posting of one of his fans.
“Bookmark the logo, Ernie,” Elmer instructs the computer.
The machine responds, “Got it, Jefe.”
The PalmPal has, in an instant, trolled through the web and crafted a crude report detailing everything known about the logo and the name. It is stored away in a nook of Ready Access Memory for Kidd to summon when he is ready.
“Keep rolling, Ernie.”
The close-up shot disappears.
Ahead, in the middle of the street, Elmer notices that someone has planted another Crucifix in a pile of horse manure dropped by the mounted police patrolling the line between protest camps. The New York Times placed the picture of such a cross on its front page three days ago over its lead story on the demonstrations. Since then, the desecrated crosses have been popping up all over the city like mushrooms out of the scattered clumps of feces. The one in front of him is planted upside down in the dung.
A sign to his right declares: Wake Up America! You Are On The Road To Hell.
A banner to his left insists: Christianity Is for Haters!
Only one thing, Kidd decides, can make his Christmas merrier among so many pissed off demonstrators. He pulls out a pack of Marley’s from his coat pocket and draws a cigarette from it with his lips. He inhales until it lights itself. After a few puffs, the THC begins to spread its nerve-soothing effects. He continues his stroll around the perimeter of the crowd-thronged park, sipping and smoking.
Elmer Kidd was in San Diego for the toppling of the cross atop Mount Soledad. The tension in Washington, he feels, is far worse than it was in California. Everyone recognizes it. All the elements are certainly here for a major confrontation. The protestors, cops, soldiers and counter-demonstrators who mixed with such riotous and bloody results out west are gathered in far greater numbers in Washington tonight. Crowds of this size make Kidd very nervous. There are too many psychopaths in the world who find them to be fat, juicy targets. He was nearly trampled to death by such a crowd when it was panicked into stampede by such a psychop
ath in an exploding vest. The physical injuries he sustained were long healed but the psychic trauma was forever. The nightmare of being dragged under a human tide of running feet, collapsing knees, falling elbows and of fighting desperately for every breath under a growing heap of sweat and blood-slicked bodies still visits him from time to time.
Elmer has a job to do however, and so he hangs close and walks the line between the hordes.
Kidd is a journalist. He knows that the stroke of midnight might unleash hell on the streets of the nation’s capital. If it does, Elmer wants to be at ground zero to capture it all. While he could cover the story from his hotel room like many of his fellows were doing, he cannot, in good conscience, join them. He had in fact received an invitation to a ‘rooftop riot party’ being hosted by a big wig, network anchor. The invitation was printed on the back of a comic drawing of robed Christians running, sweat, tears and sandals flying from them, as they fled lions in an arena full of cheering crowds. ‘Come watch the fun from the best view in town!’ it offered. The open bar it advertised was certainly tempting, but Elmer decided against it. He wants to be near the action. He will not cheat and give in to his fear. His early years as a war correspondent taught him how to suppress it when necessary.
The whiskey and the weed also help.
And besides, he thinks, maybe the President will talk sense into everyone. O’Neill can certainly be counted on not to repeat the mistakes of Pelosi’s administration. Maybe they will all get lucky and there will be no confrontation, no rioting.
The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE Page 8
