“I need an interview with the news tonight! Right now! What should I do?”
The Ranger asked what happened, dread spilling across her features.
“Never mind, help me, quick. Get everyone to look for the news van—have the van meet me in the clinic on Thirty Third and Killingsworth, near the grocery.”
“Yes, sir.” She used her LED to send a message. She repeated it several times and Jamal could see the answering flashes.
“And now—fuck, I’m sorry, can I have your bike?”
She looked down at her bike. “I—I’m just off shift. That’s my neighborhood, can I ride you?”
Jamal climbed onto her bike rack, custom-made to support a heavy load of water. “OK, but please god, please ride fast.”
The Ranger mounted her bike and he held onto her, finding himself in intimate contact with the second Sherwood employee in less than forty-eight hours. His hands burned on her hips. As they rode through the darkening streets—still lit partially by the lights of houses—each house flickered with blue light as everyone tuned in, as each house processed this new evil in Sherwood, the combative floating island of Woodlawn, as it drifted its allegiances. But as he stared into her back, he forgot everything. He couldn’t figure out her race. She was a mixed-up affair, black or Indian maybe, or some of both, and he fantasized about seeing her in a dress, rather than a green uniform, which for him had begun to epitomize the opposite of sexuality. A red dot painted on her third eye. Dancing over him in some faraway bedroom.
As the wind blew he caught brief flashes of her neck, where a small black beetle was tattooed. Her black hair whipped into his face and he closed his eyes and let it. As general, Gregor had forbidden him from having any relations with another Ranger. As general, he had also forbidden him to give an interview.
He desired to say to hell with it to the whole enterprise then, to embrace this girl, let his desires consume his job and his thinking and his everything, to go home with her and spend the night in her bed, forgetting and forgetting over again, until they were exhausted with forgetting, and then to sleep.
He thought: Sherwood is the only place I’ve ever wanted to be. He would tell the camera that and they would see it was true.
The ride was spine-jarringly bumpy on the back of the bike and he used it as an excuse to hold on to her more tightly. When a surge of dust kicked up in the wind he pressed his face into her back.
When they arrived he dismounted reluctantly. The news van was not there and she studied him. “You’re going to be OK?”
He saw in her look she’d been aware of how he’d held on to her, an expression of soft surprise, as if the stone she’d plucked from the ground was instead a seashell where no seashell should be. There was no malice or irritation there. He felt embarrassed and aroused and smiled and said thanks and jogged toward the clinic.
His watch said thirty-one minutes until blackout. He paced in front of the clinic, the jittery anxiety of impending calamity returning to him, and then sat on the curb. As time ticked toward blackout he despaired that all was lost. This new country was home now. He’d been built for it. Looking back at his life, his family, the drug wars and everything—it became clear that that his history was a product of living in the wrong nation. The city outside felt like a disconnected chaos, a war zone; inside they’d built a fabric. Inside he had a purpose. Inside he was right, his true self. Take that away and he was just a henchman for a drug lord.
Jamal took off his T-shirt and used the inside of it to clean his face and smooth his hair as best as he was able.
He saw the Ranger circling back around. She pulled up in front of him.
“Here,” she said, “let me help.” She took his T-shirt from him and wiped it along his neck, and being touched caused a chill to run through him with a sudden shiver, making his teeth clatter klak klak.
“I hope they come,” he said, looking up the street again.
She put her hand on his shoulder in a passing gesture and said she’d gotten a message back. They were hurrying.
“Oh fuck, great,” he said, the fear moving into stage fright. “Thank you,” he said. And then smiled at her a beat too long. He would be on live television shortly, defending their country, and in his brain hummed a bees’ nest. Mostly, he wanted her to talk, to keep talking. To give her some reason to stay a while and so he could keep watching her and not think. “You talk,” he said, “I’m going to sit here and not freak out.”
She smiled and sat with him and talked about her family and roommates and about being a Ranger and in his anxiety it all blended together into a compost heap of random details until at seven minutes of blackout the van screeched around a corner, followed by its security car.
She handed him his shirt back and he put it on. He stood up as the van pulled up. A news crew spilled out of the truck—the interviewer, a cameraman, and the driver.
“We’ve got to be quick,” the interviewer said. She looked from another world, with a clean, pressed business skirt and a layer of makeup. Her hair, frozen in place like dried pasta.
Jamal opened the door to the clinic—which at one time had been a box store pharmacy. Inside were ten beds and in one of them was Rick.
“Rick!” he said and clasped hands.
“Blood brother,” Rick said.
The news team picked a camera angle, with Jamal sitting on the foremost bed and Rick and several other patients in the background. The interviewer leaned against an adjoining bed.
“We film in five seconds,” the woman said and Jamal sat on the bed just as the floor dropped out from under him and an immense vertigo took him.
“I have with me Jamal Perkins, captain of the Green Rangers, is that right? Of Sherwood. Jamal, can you tell me quickly what your job is?”
Jamal nodded and looked at her and then once toward the cameraman, where facing him like the eye of some great beast was the glossy dark lens of the camera. It had infinite depth to it and he stared into it and felt himself looking suddenly into thousands of eyes, looking at them in their living rooms, his image appearing dirty and frightened and half-cocked, and he could feel them staring back, several hundred thousand eyes, seeing deep into him, their collective power pulling his soul right out of him, holding it up for analysis and dissection, wispy and dark, the bruises of his history pockmarking its fabric. A million of them, each taking a piece of his insides out to chew on, the billion tiny bits of his being chewed thoughtfully in the mouths of the people, pondering, digesting him, obliterating him completely.
“You can answer toward me,” the interviewer said.
Jamal turned back, the wormhole thrusting him through its turny tunnel, warping him along and spitting him out again as a single human being, sitting on the edge of a bed, across from a smartly dressed and exceedingly clean white woman who was asking him questions in a businesslike manner, a look of concern on her face that their live interview was slipping out of her grasp.
When the interviewer of the “Woodlawn Rebel,” as they called him, came on, Bea and Zach monitored Renee for reaction. They sat tense on the end of the couch. Renee gawked at the television, frozen in a half-stand. Incredulity turned to anger. When the interview was over, Renee walked into the dining room, picked up a chair and against Zach’s cry of protest smashed it over the top of the dining room table until the chair had splintered into an unsatisfactory mallet and the table leaned, partially collapsed.
She picked up another and proceeded to do the same until Zach had hold of her middle and Bea had hold of the chair and still she fought them, cursing and kicking and clawing at them.
They sat her down on the couch where she grumbled and talked to herself, until she stood sharply and yelled, “Fuck!”
“We finish the news.” Bea pinned her shoulder against the couch and talked inches from her face. “We finish the news and then you make a plan.”
Zach nursed a bruised rib and complained about his table and chairs. They watched the weather report. They listen
ed to a city worker speak about water supply and the slow progress of a new desalinization plant. The news anchors discussed the Sherwood situation. Then an anchor said that Jamal Perkins of the Green Rangers would be interviewed at the end of the program, so stay tuned.
“Oh no,” Renee said. “Oh fuck. I’ve got to get back up there!” She got up and paced around the house. Bea tailed her to prevent any new violence.
At the end of the show, minutes before the power went off, they held their breath as Jamal came on, looking sleep-deprived and strung-out, a dirty-looking clinic set up as his background. He turned and stared into the camera. His eyes were wide and for a moment he looked like the most fragile human being Renee had ever seen. He seemed to be staring straight at her. She clutched her fists to her mouth. “Oh god,” she said, and Jamal stared for a fraction of a second more and then turned to look at the interviewer. He smiled and his voice came out strong and confident. He sounded measured and reasonable. He talked about the progress Sherwood had made, the clinics and schools and farms. He turned to let an injured man wave from a bed behind him.
“The secession has come as a sad surprise to us,” Jamal said. “Sherwood is an active citizen-participant government, and we solicit feedback constantly. With every daily water delivery we make, in fact. There has been no indication that Woodlawn residents were displeased, and we have thousands of recent comments from the citizens there. Several days ago several of our staff disappeared in the neighborhood and we became concerned. Rick and I”—he gestured behind him again—“were fired upon and Rick was injured when we went to investigate. And, more telling, we saw city trucks in the neighborhood. It’s my belief that the city is seeding a secession and arming the power-hungry in the neighborhood.”
“We’re running out of time here, Jamal. But quickly—what is Maid Marian’s response and why hasn’t she appeared for an interview? We had an interview request turned down earlier today.”
“Yes, good question. As always, Maid Marian is—”
At that moment the screen went dark and the lights went out and Renee exhaled and said oh my god.
“Go Jamal,” Bea said, “I think he’s my new hero.”
“He did really, really well,” Zach said. “Why is he on and not Gregor? He could have done more city versus Sherwood. Could have mentioned the schools, how Woodlawn’s children will return to lawlessness, et cetera, but all things considered, that was pretty exceptional. I mean, yeah.”
In her mind, Renee continued to see Jamal look at her, as the day darkened and with the power gone. “It felt like he was looking right at me,” she said. “What the fuck is going on up there? Can we go now? Zach,” she snapped, “shit. What can I do to get you ready?”
The mayor obsessively watched every weather report. Much as one troubles a zit beyond the point of bruise, the weather was a bane he wheedled over. Besides, both he and Christopher agreed, the weatherman was cute. And so they watched the weather like a soap opera, never missing an episode. The weatherman was a nice extra perk, the cherry on top of the mayor’s madness for the subject. The weather had ruined his term, and he studied it for any sign of change.
The man who did the weather was emotional, and for this he was adored. Several times he’d tentatively predicted a change, a condensation or a spring shower, and when it didn’t come to pass he wept during the broadcast. And the remorse, whether real or fabricated, was appreciated. People talked about him like a celebrity. He calmly explained why rain would not come this week, explaining fronts and systems, while tears made their way along the beautiful skin of his cheeks. He really cared, you thought, about us, about delivering to us what we wanted. He tried his best. But unlike the rest of the news, he had nothing under his control. The other reporters could spin an article, create a sensation, put an angle on something, but the weatherman had his reports backed up by hot, dry, incontrovertible facts.
Today’s episode was much like the previous hundreds. The weatherman smiled and spoke his trademark opening: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got some weather today.” It was, by now, a complex smile, one that belied what they’d all been through together, but which also said: We can still do this, we’ll never give up hope. Christopher sat down on the couch sideways with his back to the armrest and the mayor rubbed his feet idly as they watched.
The mayor had been exceedingly tender yesterday with the guilt of his violence still uncomfortable in the house. He’d fixed Christopher breakfast, invited his advice on issues, and in all things he’d been optimistic and kind and tried to act like a mayor ought to act. Dignified, decisive, tuned in, empathetic. Christopher had been gracious about the incident and they’d studiously not spoken of it since.
The weatherman showed satellite imagery of great clouds coming in off of the Pacific. A huge weather system like some foreign invading army on the march. They’d all seen this before. It meant dark days, but the invading army was meant for some other foe. The rain they bore would land east of the Rocky Mountains.
The weatherman got flustered by a computer glitch that showed him moving his hand over a blank green screen. He made a joke about how they’d all memorized this weather anyway, and to just close your eyes and imagine it. Christopher looked over at the mayor and smiled, and there was warmth there and the mayor felt relieved.
But when the mayor’s Woodlawn rebel came on, the evening fell apart. Christopher faced forward, leaned in toward the TV. He could not bring himself to look at the mayor. Before the interview finished, he got up and walked out of the room.
The mayor stayed. After the interview, there were a few how-I’m-surviving-the-drought stories, depressing shit with ridiculously sunny commentary by the newscaster. Next, a police officer talked about a downtown robbery that’d been prevented. There was news on a controversial housing-assistance program, and a teenager weighed in with some sort of home-school essay the mayor couldn’t make heads or tails of.
In the air the weight of an argument that hadn’t yet happened lay heavily upon him. He sat on the couch and clenched his teeth and felt sick about it, wishing he were ten thousand miles away, in some swampy, drenched country.
The one thing that eased his mind was the lack of a Maid Marian interview. He would have the last word for tonight, at least in the airwaves if not the bedroom. His Woodlawn rebel’s speech would sink into the minds of the populace. They would talk about it, the word Sherwood taking on a darker, crueler connotation. They would dream of the terrors that awaited them in that strange country. They would think well of the city for taking Woodlawn back in, for making the city stronger and bigger and slightly more whole.
But then, midway through, the news announced that Jamal Perkins would be interviewed on behalf of Sherwood.
“What?” The mayor stood up and wondered what new trick was this. “Who?” The mayor self-consciously glanced out his window. It was twilight and from his window at the far expanse of city he could make out Sherwood. He yelled for Christopher. The mayor pointed to the TV where they were showing some story about “a company that was making a difference.”
“Who the hell is Jamal Perkins?” the mayor said. “They’re going to interview him for Sherwood.”
Christopher and the mayor sat on the couch and waited through several more stories and the irritating chit-chat of the news anchors.
The news cut to a clinic hospital–type place where, the mayor couldn’t help but notice, there were several empty beds, very much unlike their hospitals.
“Bastards,” he said. “I bet they shoveled some people out of those beds for the camera shot.”
The journalist explained she would now interview the captain of the Green Rangers.
“But that’s Gregor Perk—” the mayor said.
“That’s Gregor Perkins’s kid,” Christopher said.
The journalist asked the first question and the cameraman focused on Jamal’s face. His hair was unkempt and wooly, and there was an obvious stain of dirt around his collar. But most stunning was the lo
ok he gave the camera. A full five seconds of emptiness, with no sound and no movement, as though they’d slapped a picture of him up on the screen. His subtle movements, and a single startling blink, made it particularly queer and jolting.
“Whoa,” Christopher said.
The mayor didn’t hear anything for the first minute as he recovered from the shock of that look. He had looked right at him, addressing the mayor specifically, looking straight into his morality, willing him to do right by the world, to steward the city by the highest standards. “Did you see that?” the mayor said stupidly.
“Shhh,” Christopher said.
The mayor tuned back in and saw that the man was an eloquent bastard, like his own Woodlawn rebel, the difference being that you believed what this one was saying.
“Where the hell is Maid Marian?” the mayor said, uncomfortable with this new enemy, another public face to the country. His Woodlawn rebel would stick in the people’s minds, he knew, but the message was vastly less powerful by this dude’s appearance.
The mayor wished only to go to bed now, a tiredness at the whole fight overwhelming him.
The newscaster asked for Maid Marian’s response. Jamal started to answer but the screen went dark, the lights turned off and the house was quiet. The mayor and Christopher sat in the dark staring at the TV, and then the hum of the generator sounded and the lights came back on and Christopher stood up and stretched.
“I think I’ll turn in early tonight,” he said, and the mayor could hear the false notes, the strained syllables, the eagerness to disappear into sleep as quickly as possible, and he knew that they must each stake out their own outposts tonight.
Sherwood Nation Page 39
