“Dolly…”
“Dolly what?”
“You’re just doing what they do.”
“You mean…just talking?”
“No. I’d never say that about you. But we both came from the same place, didn’t we?”
“Us? The jungle, you mean? When we first…I guess ‘met’ doesn’t exactly fit, but it is the jungle you are saying, yes?”
“Yes.”
“What does that prove?”
“We weren’t on opposite sides then.”
“Dell! You were there to…”
“Kill people for money?” I said, watching that special shade of rose blossom on her cheeks, then turn dark.
“I don’t care what you call it. I didn’t care then; I don’t care now. But whether you were a…soldier, or a mercenary, or…It doesn’t matter. We—our team, I mean—we were there to save lives. You were there to take lives. How could that make us on the same side?”
“Because, for both of us, there was no ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ You didn’t care what uniform a man was wearing when you patched him up. Or took off a leg to save his life. You didn’t judge. At least you—your people, I mean—you didn’t judge then.”
“We still don’t,” she said, in a tone that told me she wasn’t going to be moved off her square. A voice I’d heard before. Many times. Dolly could out-mule anyone.
“It’s not that way anymore, girl. Today, your comrades have to make certain deals just to be allowed to save lives. I don’t mean take sides, but the only way any medical team can work in some of those places is to negotiate free passage. And when they don’t, they’re gone. Didn’t Burma—or whatever it’s calling itself today—didn’t they just kick Médecins Sans Frontières out of the country because they didn’t want anyone who wasn’t Buddhist to have medical care?”
“That’s not—”
“Yes, it is,” I cut her off. “You want to drop fifty tons of food supplies into a starvation zone, you have to give the warlords their piece before they allow you the privilege of driving into the zone yourself.”
“So?”
“So what’s the difference between feeding an army and giving them weapons?”
“You’re saying it’s wrong to do that?”
“No. I’m saying what I’ve been trying to say. Just let me finish, okay?”
She didn’t say anything, letting the tapping of one fingernail on the tabletop tell me to get on with it.
“For me, there was no ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ If you’re a working merc, you assume whoever’s hiring you is some kind of liar. And once you hit the ground, it doesn’t matter—the only way you collect your pay is to get through the fighting alive. And the only way to do that is to make some other people dead.
“See what I’m saying here? Sure, you can lie to yourself. But even that doesn’t matter: the winners get to name the losers. We’re ‘liberators’ or ‘freedom fighters.’ Or we’re hired guns, with no loyalty to any cause…or, worse, a loyalty that’s for sale.
“You don’t have to hate a man wearing a certain uniform to shoot him, not if you know he’s going to shoot you. And you don’t have to care what a man’s uniform is to save his life, either.”
“Saving a life is always—”
“You don’t believe that, Dolly. Not anymore. Not for a long time.”
“I guess I don’t,” she said, the sorrow in her voice mourning the loss of True North in the compass she’d once carried inside herself. I still remember her telling me that everyone carried some kind of compass, but, until I atoned for the things I’d done, mine would just be a dial with no needle.
—
“You think it’s like that…like this, everywhere?” she asked me in bed, late that same night.
“I’m not a philosopher,” I told her, as if Olaf was speaking for me. “It’s been like that everywhere I’ve ever been, that’s all I could say.”
“Corrupt?”
“The place itself doesn’t have to be. I don’t even think it’s human nature to value…things. Yeah, ‘things,’ that fits. Everybody wants food and water, everyone wants to be safe. That’s in all of us. But some people want…not things, exactly. Maybe, I don’t know…power? Whatever you call it, some people want it. Want it bad enough to do anything to get it. Anything to keep it.
“And when they can actually see what they want, it’s like a sniper acquiring a target—if you’re in the way, your life means nothing. We, you and me, we could be the only two people on some tropical island, and we’d be fine. But if one of the people I’m talking about discovered that island held something they wanted, they’d do…anything.”
“Maybe that’s why I thought saving lives had a special value,” Dolly said, propping herself on her elbow, like that could make her see me better in the dark. “How could someone whose life was saved, saved by people who asked nothing in return, how could they be the same person after that?”
“Why not? They might bless you, call you their savior, thank whatever god they worshipped for your existence on this earth. But they’d be back doing whatever they’d been doing soon enough.”
What I didn’t say is how I knew this was pure truth. I’d been one of those killers. When my life was spared only because I stumbled into a coven of mercy-dealing angels, I didn’t bless anyone for that. Or even thank them. What I did was go back to work.
“What could be so damn valuable about this place, Dell? That stupid logging road, what difference is it going to make? Some people will make money; some people will lose money. It’s just money.”
“For a lot of people, there’s no ‘just’ in there, honey. If you think money can buy you what you want, what you need…if you think money can transform you into someone else, then—”
“Dell, remember—just a few weeks ago?—that old man was walking by himself near the jetty on the other side of the bridge? And that gang of…I don’t even know what to call them, but they beat him to death. Four of them, and what did they get? Seventy dollars and some change. How could that be worth a man’s life?”
“You’ve been reading those press releases again.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t that what it said in the papers? That the prosecutor said they killed an old man for a lousy seventy dollars?”
“So?”
“So they didn’t kill him for seventy dollars, honey. They killed him because they’ve got lizard brains. When they threatened him, maybe the old man still wouldn’t give them his money. So they figured he must have a lot of money to stand up to the four of them. Or maybe they just beat him to death for the fun of it, and the money was just a bonus.”
“To you, there’s no difference? I mean, whether they were just stupid robbers or blood-thirsty savages?”
“I wasn’t there, little girl. But it sure didn’t make any difference to the old man.”
—
The next few days were quiet.
Early summer. Hummingbirds fighting over a fuchsia bush, jays screaming at the chipmunks digging up acorns they’d stashed. Rascal patrolling, keeping the whole place a cat-free zone.
But that wasn’t his job; it was just something he wanted to do. When Dolly was outside, humming a Piaf tune to herself as she groomed one of the lily hybrids she was trying to develop, Rascal went into a different mode.
Guard.
No barking, no threatening. If you walked back there and surprised Dolly, you wouldn’t be walking out. Rascal was a self-launching torpedo in a tiny ocean he could navigate blind. And if you dove in, you were dead in the water.
Everything as it should be.
Peaceful. Precious. Protected.
—
Then a coalition of environmentalists showed up.
I don’t mean they were outsiders. This town is home to dozens of Green Groups, each of them aimed at a different target. Lumber mills, toxic waste, endangered species…
Some of them were always “calling for” something. Boyco
tts were a favorite: eggs had to come from free-range chickens, beef from cattle that hadn’t been dosed with antibiotics, salmon mustn’t have been “ranched.” Some also went international: whaling, dolphin capture, global warming…a long list.
“Green” had religious status, but some of its splinter groups were so small they only had one member. I know this because of a letter the newspaper printed. The writer proclaimed he’d “be well within my rights” if he were to go ahead with a lawsuit he was “contemplating.” His next-door neighbor actually smoked in his own backyard! So, every time the wind shifted, the letter writer was exposed to secondhand smoke against his will.
I don’t know if he expected some enviro-posse to form or what, but responders either took his letter as some kind of spoof or loudly distanced their group from him.
Me, I didn’t think this nasty little man cared about anything but his “rights.” Deep-rooted entitlement was like any other infection, except for one thing: whoever caught it didn’t want it cured, he wanted it spread.
Normally, for the actual groups to join forces on anything was unheard of, but now they’d united for the common cause of blocking this logging road the government wanted to build.
It wasn’t the road itself they had banded together to fight, it was the route that had been picked for it—a jagged Z-line through a few hundred acres of land nobody wanted. Nothing grew there except for some scrubby bush and stunted trees. No river, no lake, no access to the bayfront. Any road cut through there probably wouldn’t even displace a raccoon. But it was state-owned land, so it belonged to “the people.”
As at other places I’d been, everyone was claiming to speak for “the people.” Harder to do in Oregon, since the Indians were the “original” people. At least, that’s what those who had voted against building a casino on private land said…and they won. But when the local tribe wouldn’t even take the land as a gift, the gates opened up.
That was when this coalition emerged to protect “virgin green space” from “government rape.” Why chain yourself to a tree that was going to be cut down no matter what you did? Why not just buy the whole parcel outright, and legally bar any road? It couldn’t cost that much.
But that wouldn’t work, they said, shouting “Eminent domain!” like the threat of an approaching tsunami.
Then the “small government” crowd jumped in, forming common cause with the “enviros” for the first time. The state couldn’t just take property—private property was no different from the right to privacy itself. If the Second Amendment was to have any meaning, it would have to apply to more than just fighting any ban against a citizen’s right to own firearms, including those stupid background checks. The state wouldn’t even know who to take the property from, except that all deeds had to be filed, and “Registration Is the First Step to Confiscation!”
Those posters were plastered all over town. That put the “all power belongs to the people” crowd on autopilot.
So many referendums were slated for the next ballot that the Voters’ Pamphlet would be the size of a phone book. It’s easy to get damn near anything on a ballot out here. I don’t know how many signatures you need, but it’s not a lot. There’s no polling booths; you just mail your ballot in.
But even that was too much trouble for some.
One group had a Web site saying that they were united against paper voting. Dolly had insisted on showing it to me. “Can you believe it? It’s not about the hassle of standing in line, or even ‘hanging chads.’ They’re angry because they actually have to mail their ballots. They want to vote over the Internet, the same way they do their banking, pay their bills, and find their true love. They need to be ‘connected’ all the time. There’s enough of them to actually get a referendum going. But a ballot initiative requires a certain number of signatures, and you can’t gather those online…so they’re not going to be bothered even doing that much!”
Their Web site’s banner was “Passive Resistance.” I guess that meant, if they couldn’t vote online, they’d boycott every ballot.
I got the “passive” part easy enough, but I didn’t think even Gandhi could find a trace of the other half.
—
“Get it, Tontay!”
I looked out the back window. Half a dozen teenage girls in cheerleader outfits, bouncing up and down in their eagerness to encourage Dolly. For years, our “kitchen” had been swarming with teenage girls, turning it into some kind of…clubhouse, I guess. Not a hangout for outcasts, but a place where they’d be welcomed—one of Dolly’s rules.
Dolly’s rules always had reasons. Her reasons. The school’s princesses mixed with the untouchables in her house or else it was la porte for them. None of them wanted to be excluded from a place where they could learn things they all wanted to know…and be loved at the same time.
She’d been “Aunt Dolly” to them until she suddenly decided that made her sound too old. The minute she said, “That’s Tante Dolly to you!” they all picked up on it. But my wife hadn’t made the jump from English to French quick enough, so “tante” came out “tontay,” and they’d converted that mess into their name for her.
Any kind of strict glance from Dolly when they used it just started them all giggling. I guess she finally gave up trying to stop them.
Those girls knew Dolly would rapid-fire French at me if she didn’t want them to understand, so I think they were playing dumb with this “Tontay” nonsense. I kept that thought to myself.
“If I break something, you’d all better start running,” Dolly mock-threatened, igniting another chorus of giggling. Then my wife—who had been a yoga practitioner since she was a child—jumped up, threw her hands toward the sky, and floated to the ground, landing in a perfect split.
“Wow!” one of the cheerleaders shouted. They all applauded, as happy as if it was raining beauty on them.
—
“Something else is going on, Dell,” she said to me.
It was after midnight. We were in bed, and Rascal had planted himself at the threshold to our bedroom, like he’d trained himself to do.
“With what?”
“With that whole logging-road fight.”
“Fight? It’s like some kind of hobby for them. They have to show how ‘green’ they are, like a damn religion. But it’s just talk. Like those anti-tax people. They always get stuck in their own glue.”
“I know you don’t think much of—”
“It’s not that, honey. It’s that circle thing. Uh…Okay, you remember when some of them started a campaign to ban the sale of cigarettes? Not to minors, to everyone. Statewide. But before they could even get it on the ballot, some of that same crowd said tobacco was sacred to Native Americans, and we couldn’t disrespect their culture. They kept going round and round, but they never got around. To doing anything, I mean.”
“I know,” my wife said, a sad tone in her voice that I’d heard before. Not often, which is probably why I picked up on it so quickly. “But there’s a different…intensity to this thing.”
“Because…?”
“I don’t know, Dell. But it’s not like usual. That piece of ground, it’s, I don’t know how to say this, but…vibrating. Like a big train is coming.”
—
I didn’t know what people in the village thought of me.
Most of them probably didn’t even know I existed. But those who did knew if anyone tried to hurt Dolly it would be the worst kind of mistake. Nothing to do with my pride, my self-respect, or my ego. And it wasn’t possessiveness, either. You don’t own a woman like Dolly. But protect her, that I could do.
For me, Dolly was that raison d’être future-promised to all new legionnaires. A promise none of us ever expected would be kept, so we felt no disappointment when it turned out to be still another lie, part of our daily diet. To be disappointed, you must first be surprised.
Olaf had never been a legionnaire. To us, “survivor” had a different meaning. Those who survived the training could
never lie about it. Who would we lie to? Our commanders watched the training. They could count the survivors easily enough—they knew exactly what those survivors would have proved.
The tests would get progressively more difficult. Not just physically—the assault on each man’s will never stopped. They said this tested the ability to “adapt.” To show fear, that was acceptable…so long as the fear did not alter your conduct. But to show despair, no. That was considered a sure sign of a man who would not succeed in the field.
Our ranks were culled as a breeder of dogs would destroy runts from each litter. Only the “best” got to prance around in shows, pampered like royalty throughout their lives. But such a life was reserved for dogs. For men like us, passing all the tests meant we would be awarded the privilege of war.
And those survivors could not lie, either. If you started out with eight men, you returned with eight men. Not necessarily alive, but all bodies had to be accounted for.
Never abandon your dead or your wounded. Never. But instead of some esprit de corps, our only code was that of the criminal: Whatever you see doesn’t matter, not if you keep that information to yourself.
I was there when a tall, ink-black Senegalese we knew only as “Idrissa” locked eyes with my friend Patrice, forming an invisible bridge over the body of another man—a soldier so badly wounded he would never survive being carried back to our camp. I watched as both men nodded their silent agreement. Patrice shot the dying man in the top of his head. Idrissa swung his heavy blade in a short arc, cutting through flesh and bone as easily as a knife through brie. I picked up the dead man’s rifle as Idrissa held the severed hand of the forearm he’d removed and slammed it against the brush to roughen the edges of his too-clean strike.
When we got back to base, Patrice explained that the enemy had launched an RPG round, and all that we could find of the dead man was what Idrissa was still holding. I handed over his rifle.
We were questioned, individually first, and then as a unit. Our accounts did not vary. Our commanders were not surprised at this.
Maybe that was why they reacted with such lavish praise years later, when I carried what was left of Patrice’s machine-gunned body all the way back on my own. None of our unit had offered to help me with that insane task. I would have refused if they had. I knew they would still stay close enough to cover me. Even if they regarded me as a demented fool, they couldn’t move much more quickly than I did. If they arrived ahead of me, they would have to explain why two bodies had not been returned.
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