Sherwood Nation

by Parzybok, Benjamin;

  “Do it now,” Jamal yelled. When Josh hesitated Jamal yanked the wheel hard and steered them across their lanes and through a metal guardrail. They plunged down an embankment onto the old road, the truck rattling and bouncing violently.

  Josh floored it. The road climbed into the hills, quickly entering into treed, semi-rural plots on the outskirts of the city. He drove hard, looking for a suitable driveway to pull into.

  “You got to decide quick, man!”

  Big ranch houses nestled deep among stands of tall dead trees. Josh picked a lane and pulled in. A brick house stood in a clearing in the center of a skeletal forest and he gunned toward that, aiming to hide the truck behind it. It was a long driveway. As they got closer they saw barbed wire tangled into a low barrier around the house.

  “There’s someone here,” Jamal yelled. He saw a brief flicker in the curtain and then he heard a thump.

  “Oh,” Josh sighed. It was an exhale of disappointment and disgust.

  Jamal looked over and saw red blossoming across Josh’s shirt. Josh’s grip went weak on the steering wheel.

  Jamal ducked below the windshield and felt the sudden impact of a bullet embed into the seat where his body had been. He yanked the steering wheel to the right toward a standing garage and killed the engine, coasting into a bumper-kiss with the garage wall.

  “Goddamnit. Goddamnit, Josh,” he said. Jamal grabbed his arm and yanked him down and out of view.

  Josh emitted what sounded like a sigh of acknowledgement, and then slowly slouched onto the seat. The truck went into a backwards roll and Jamal struggled to engage the emergency brake on the floor. His shoulder smeared with Josh’s blood and he wanted to fire his gun into that house until it collapsed. With the brake finally on he opened the passenger door, shielded by the garage, and carefully stepped down from the truck.

  He swore and stood there a moment. Another shot hit the dirt close to him. “Wait!” he yelled toward the house. This is so not my territory, he thought, a shirtless black man in a white neighborhood, pursued by white ambushers. Behind him were trees, the remains of trees. He could make a run for it and live, but the distance home through hostile neighborhoods was great, and he’d lose everything they’d come for.

  “Wait!” he yelled again. “You killed the driver. We’re being chased!”

  “You got no reason here,” came a man’s voice from the house.

  “We’re being chased,” Jamal repeated.

  Jamal eyed the distance between the truck and the garage. About fifteen feet.

  “Get in your truck and get out.”

  He didn’t trust them not to shoot him, and did not want to be back on the road. “There’s no time.” He yelled back. He realized they hadn’t realized it was a water truck. He weighed his options. “This truck is full of water. Water thieves are coming.”

  There was silence from the house.

  Jamal sprinted for the cover of the garage. It was a large, two-car structure and in the window he saw a variety of standard garage trappings: dusty lawn mowers and bicycles and a car. He tried the door but it was locked.

  “You steal the truck?” the voice said from the house.

  “It’s for the Northeast neighborhood,” Jamal said. And then he yelled, “Maid Marian.”

  A second later the jeep roared up the driveway. As with Josh, the first bullet from the house killed the driver instantly. The other two men jumped from the jeep while it was still moving and scrambled for cover behind the water truck.

  “Motherfucker!” one of the men yelled.

  “You got no reason here,” came the voice from the house.

  Jamal hid on the far side of the garage, out of view of the house, and watched the men conference. They went to either end of the water truck and fired on the house with their stolen assault rifles, blowing the windows out and doing a tremendous amount of damage. They had not seen him.

  One of the attackers opened the passenger door and Jamal aimed, holding his gun hand steady with his other hand. He fired a round into the man’s back, not twenty feet away. The man fell against the truck and onto the ground. He rolled facing the garage and Jamal hit him again in the chest and he went still. There was a code of honor about shooting a man in the back. He could feel that burn in him briefly, as if the ghosts of old Westerns shook their heads sadly at him, but in the end all he could feel was an exultant joy that it was not him, and that there was only one left. There was nothing honorable about any of this.

  The other man paused firing and looked down the truck to see his partner fallen. He panicked and ran down the driveway. A shot from the house leveled him. He went from a dead run to dead and skidding face down in the dirt road.

  Fucking marksman, Jamal thought. He didn’t know what to do now, but he felt sure he didn’t want to surprise them. After a few moments Jamal said, “I’m still here! They’re both dead.” And then, “I’m not your enemy!”

  The house was silent.

  “Don’t shoot,” Jamal said. He sprinted the short distance back to the truck and waited, unsure of what would happen next. He studied the dead man at his feet. A fine dust covered the man’s face and clothes. The dried-out topsoil that lifted into the air, weightless, as if they were on the moon, the gravity gone weak. His cheeks were hollow and there was a translucence to him. His lips were cracked and dark circles rimmed his eyes—dehydration. He wore a torn black concert shirt with “Giant Tim and the Tiny Turds” emblazoned on it above a futuristic-looking spaceship. Jamal soft-prodded him with his foot. His clothes were ragged and excessive for this time of year. He probably wore everything he owned.

  “This is too much for you to keep,” Jamal yelled. “I’m bringing it to a whole neighborhood. Thousands.”

  There was no word from the house. Jamal checked his gun again and wondered if he should pick up one of the assault rifles, and then remembered the marksman’s aim. He crouched down beside the truck and peeked around a tire toward the house, where he could see no movement.

  “Well?” he yelled.

  “Throw your guns into the roundabout in front of the house. All of them.”

  Jamal tried to figure out which window the voice was coming from. “We are peaceful, we mean to help our neighborhood,” he said, thinking of Maid Marian, an edge of righteousness entering into his voice. He would bring the water back.

  “The guns!”

  Jamal thought he saw a curtain move in the house, now ragged with bullet holes. Unlike his father, Gregor, he’d always been mediocre with a gun and thought his chances of taking out even one person in the house minimal. He had no idea how many were holed up there.

  “I can drain this tank right here,” Jamal said. “Ten gallons a second. By the time you’ve killed me it’d be gone in a wash over your driveway.”

  There was quiet from the house and he realized there were several there, discussing the plan of action.

  Finally they said, “Give us some.”

  “A hundred gallons,” Jamal said, “in exchange for safe passage out of here, and the good will of the people of Northeast Portland.”

  “Two hundred, and we keep the jeep and the guns.”

  “For two hundred I keep the guns, you get the jeep.”

  “Give us one of the assault rifles.”

  He wondered if this were a means to lure him into the open.

  “Throw your guns into the roundabout and show yourself.”

  “It’s a deal. Is it a deal?” Jamal didn’t know if they had seen him, and he worried at the reception and instantaneous discarding of plans that the appearance of his skin might bring, a savage here among the righteous. Shirtless and brown. He sat back against the tire and breathed deeply, trying to calm his heart.

  Then he had an idea. He stood up and took a deep breath. “I will bring you water,” Jamal said. “I will bring you water.” His voice came out like a river of black tar, smooth and confident and unstoppable, and the rest of him tried to catch up.

  He tucked his gun vis
ibly into the front of his pants. He opened the passenger door to the truck and retrieved a couple of unregistered unit gallon containers. The trucks kept several dozen spare to replace those that had broken. His hands were shaking.

  He went to the back of the truck and filled them from the spigot—still out of view of the house. And then, taking a deep breath, he turned slowly, holding the full jugs of water before him, his body exposed. “I will bring you water to seal the deal,” he said.

  “Drop your gun!” the voice shouted, but he felt he heard an uncertainty in it now.

  “No one will drop their guns,” Jamal said, “I am bringing you water. I will leave two hundred gallons. We will trust each other.”

  When he’d made it to within twenty feet of the house he heard another voice say, “You’re black.” Had they only now figured it out, he wondered, or was it impossible not to make such an obvious statement in the face of things?

  “I am bringing water to share,” he said. “I will leave two hundred gallons. We will trust each other.” He wasn’t sure what he was doing any more, but he could feel his father’s tea ceremony rising in him like some mantra, felt he could understand how the ceremony took control, how the routine of it, of sharing water, could dominate an exchange.

  “Don’t come any closer!”

  “I am bringing water to share. Bring glasses out and we will drink to sharing water. We will trust each other.”

  From the house he heard someone’s voice say “don’t you dare” and understood that they were talking among themselves, arguing over the outcome. He got to within twenty feet of the front door, to the edge of the barbed wire, and sat down cross-legged on the walkway which had once been surrounded by a well-kept lawn but was now a scarred dust scrub. He put the gallons in front of him and waited.

  “I have brought you water to share,” he said. “We will trust each other. We will drink to trust.”

  They buried Josh in the backyard in a quick, quiet ceremony. Chris and Renee and Jamal dug the hole together and Renee wielded the shovel like a weapon, punishing the ground with it. After they filled the hole back up, over the top of his long, handsome body, she swayed in the heat as Julia said a few words. After she was done no one said anything, and no one moved.

  Renee was the first to break the circle they made around the grave. She gave Jamal a hug and told him she was glad he was safe, and then she walked in a straight line away from headquarters, away from the house on Going Street, down the block and into the next. At some point she became vaguely aware of Bea yelling at her, pleading with her to return, but she could not stop.

  She did not care. Were it to come by gunfire or knife or some other means, it was all the same to her. She willed it on herself, even, wanted the taste of her own blood in her mouth, wanted as much of hers spilled as Josh had lost, some retribution for her own ambition. She walked numbly down the middle of the road, past barrel fires and local conflicts, past kids playing, past people who taunted her. She walked as long as she could, blocks upon blocks, looking straight ahead, wishing to walk off the end of the earth. She walked until she reached the bluff’s edge of the defunct river and she sat down there, her legs dangling over the edge as the sun dropped below the far hill.

  She felt lonely for Josh, alone in his grave, and for the struggle she had in front of her with him gone. She was tired of being hunted. She stared up the river toward the city center.

  She didn’t know where to go next, but every time she turned back toward the house she felt deflected, the guilt a barrier that warded her away.

  In the end she found herself at the water tower. She stood at the edge of its grounds and thought about walking to his building, three or so miles away. She paced there in front of the tower considering it, knowing that to walk to his place meant a defeat, that she would not leave again once she got there. She was between things now, in a hellish limbo, the stakes of the game she played unbelievably higher. She dug in her pockets and was relieved to find the green laser.

  From atop the playground equipment she traced out his name, but realized it was far too late in the evening for him to expect her. Then she began to write, a sloppy cursive she wasn’t sure he’d be able to comprehend anyway, and in that she poured everything: Josh’s death, the incredible wealth that’d come under her power, the feeling that she was at the end of it all, on the verge of Josh’s fate herself.

  She wrote until she exhausted herself with the piteous outpouring. She hoped he hadn’t recorded it. Idly, and she supposed to punish herself, she wondered if Zach had found somebody else. She lay down on the top of the playground equipment and gave in to her exhaustion.

  Sometime in the night she woke to the green of Zach’s laser pointer criss-crossing across the water tower. When she crossed his green with hers he excitedly began to send Morse code and she had trouble keeping up.

  Watched vid. So sorry about Josh, he signed. After a long pause in which she could think of no response he said: What will you do now?

  She said she didn’t know.

  Wish I were there.

  Come, she said.

  40k gals. Secede.

  What? She signed back, sitting up and trying to blink the sleep out of her eyes.

  City not distribution. Bargain with feds. Make your own country.

  Don’t understand. She said.

  Human rights.

  Zach. I don’t understand.

  Your own country. Take NE. Be up soon as I can.

  How? She said.

  Riot.

  Renee sat with the laser pointer in her lap and let Zach’s last word echo through her. For a brief moment she imagined herself as a sort of prime minister, her people stretched out before her in old Portland bungalow houses as far as the eye could see, all of them her charge to protect and care for, and then the weight of such an enterprise leveled her again, so that she flattened out on the playground equipment and shivered in the virtual company of Zach. He was joking, surely.

  Ha ha, she blipped back.

  Riot. Borders. Negot. H2o dist. Security force. Only way to stay out of jail.

  Right, she said. She could tell he was on fire there on his roof across town, humming with ideas. Not me. No way it would work, she signed.

  You have the reputation to do it. So bold it would throw them.

  Crazy.

  Yes. Big crazy. Stay out of jail.

  She rested her eyes for a moment, exhausted, and continued to see the stark, ultra-bright light of the laser through her eyelids. In her dreams, the racing green line traced out an outline of neighborhoods, seven miles square. A map. When she woke it was still dark and she had no concept of what time it was. Her body was sore from lying across the wood playground equipment, and the water tower had gone dark. She eased herself up, traced out a quick bye love, and walked home.

  At HQ she stood outside the big garage and tried to make up her mind. Inside was her new truck. She nodded to the guard posted outside and went in. Standing with her hand on the truck’s great swollen belly, she felt like a dragon must, counting her pile of gold, the war spoils. The space felt cooler, the great mass of the tank changing the climate of the room.

  They had filled a number of unit gallons from it, and she drank deeply from one of these now. She drank recklessly, not counting gulps, not heeding the digital readout.

  She thought about the number of people who had died to bring it here. In her mind the water mass of them, the blood weight, was roughly equal to the contents of the tank. When Jamal had first pulled it into the garage, before she knew Josh had died, it was the most glorious of moments. Like life had just begun for them. There were many in her care now. They were at war: against the city’s neglect and scorn, against the drought, against their own nature.

  With the water they had an immense wealth. She could sustain innumerable lives. She could use it as an agent of change.

  “Sometimes people have to die,” she said to the empty room to try it out. A wave of nausea hit her so that s
he braced herself with the truck, let her head rest against its belly.

  It was a lie and it was not a lie.

  Tomorrow they would empty the contents of the truck into tanks they’d built in preparation in the backyard. Then they would disappear this unlucky truck, with its bullet holes and blasted-out windshield and the role it had played in their cause.

  She patted the side and felt the dampness below its plugged holes.

  She would recruit more, she thought. They would expand. They would go out on bikes, weighted down with a cargo of unit gallons, repaying with life the debt she owed.

  That night they hunkered close about the campfire in the backyard, quieter than usual. Jamal sat across from Renee, and she avoided his eyes, knowing now what she’d put him through. She had apologized until he’d asked her to stop.

  “You can’t do that again, dude,” Bea said, referring to how Renee had disappeared.

  Renee scanned the faces at the fire—beside Bea and Jamal, Leroy and a few others were there, their heads bowed toward the heat. “I went to the towers and talked to Zach.”

  Bea grunted.

  “He says we should secede. Went on and on about it. He used to be all cautious before. He’s worried I’ll go to jail.”

  Across from her, Jamal fixed her with a peculiar stare and she smiled nervously and stared at the fire again. She didn’t feel herself. She should go to bed, she knew, start again in the morning.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Jamal said.

  “Hm,” Bea said.

  “Can you imagine?” Renee said. “Might as well stand at the bottom of the mountain and holler the avalanche down.”