by Ray Rhamey
Noah’s eyes crinkled with an ironic grin. “Luckily, though, we can count on our government, can’t we?”
The Palestinian joined the crowd in a bitter chuckle.
“We can count on our ‘leaders’ to gridlock because of sheep-like partisanship—to pander to ignorance and to fearmonger—to grasp for money and reelection—to vote according to influence, not conscience—to rule by ideology, not govern by reason.
“Back in the nineties a Kentucky legislator introduced a bill to allow police officers to destroy confiscated guns, and the cops were all for it. But lobbyists claimed it was gun control that threatened Second Amendment rights, and the bill was changed to require the police to sell the guns and then use the money to buy bulletproof vests. Thousands of guns were put back on the street, and the cops had brand-new bulletproof vests to protect them from those weapons. Stupid is too nice a word for that kind of idiocy.
“Guns. Guns that kill. Lethal firearms.” He gazed at the floor of the stage for a moment, and there was a sad quality to his voice when he continued. “Now there’s cancer that robs us of our future, where murdered children and men and women cannot give us their energy, their lives, their creativity, their smiles, their songs, their laughter. Their love. For so long, it has been politically impossible to do anything to control unrestricted gun violence because of the cultural logjam nurtured by gun makers and the National Rifle Association.”
• • •
Jason Schaeffer, proud member of the Mackinac Militia, bristled at the insult to the NRA. Well, he had a message for Mister High-and-Mighty. He slipped his hand into the roomy pocket of his camo pants and caressed the cool steel of his pistol. It was time to get closer to the stage.
He stepped into the aisle, said, “Excuse me,” and slipped past the woman standing there.
• • •
Mitch clenched his fists. Here came another baseless attack on their rights. Oh, he sensed the lure of Stone’s appeal, all right, but he had no trouble remaining detached. He observed the rapt faces around him and saw the power Stone had. This man was dangerous.
But he was just a typical gun-control nut. There were plenty of laws on the books to make sure only honest people got guns. They just needed to be enforced better. And criminals ignored laws anyway. There was really nothing new laws could do.
On the stage, Noah said, “To be fair to the NRA, the root of the problem is America’s Wild West mentality—our Wild West mentality—that feeds the NRA’s growth and influence. You see it in the militias that thrive in our nation, nourished by anti-government paranoia. The problem is not ‘them,’ it’s us. There isn’t a way to fix that anytime soon.
“But maybe there is a way to use that cowboy attitude against the shooters who say we’ll be safer when there are more guns. Until now, that sounded like nonsense to me, but where I live, more guns are the answer.
“We’re putting defensive guns into the hands of the people who are the victims, the women and men who are unarmed targets. Now, armed with nonlethal guns, they can fight attackers such as rapists, robbers, shooters, and racists.” He smiled and lifted his gaze. “And they do, much to the sorrow of the bad guys.”
He chuckled, and then looked out at the audience. “The other day I was asked if I was for or against guns.” He grinned. “I said yes.”
• • •
Hank looked at Mitch, who scowled down at the stage. “You didn’t tell me about that.”
Mitch shrugged. “It didn’t seem important.”
“But it is. The whole point of having a gun is to defend yourself.” He focused on Stone again. How could the guy be against guns if he was arming people?
Mitch turned to him. “The defensive stuff he’s talking about won’t protect us from tyranny by our so-called ‘government.’”
Hank shook his head. “Come on, you know that’s nonsense. Isn’t going to happen, this is America. Our democracy is just too strong.”
“You never know.”
Stone’s voice surged with energy and enthusiasm. “What we’re doing about guns is just one example of how we, as a people, are strong and smart. We clean up after floods and earthquakes. We conquer disease. We fight famine. We defeat oppressors. Together, we work wonders. But these days we’re breaking into smaller and smaller bits—cults, religions, militias, jihadists, splinters that are angrily pro this and anti that.
“We don’t prosper.
“When religion separates us, when politics isolate us, when money divides us, how can we work together to change things? How do we step around our differences and understand our sameness?” Stone’s voice grew quieter. “I offer you two things that can help turn us around—a promise, and a compass.
“The promise is one every Ally makes: I promise to help, the best I can.” He paused, then whispered, “I promise to help, the best I can.
“That may not sound like much to you, but think about filtering everything you do through that and see what happens.
“It’s a simple promise. You don’t have to be a saint to keep it. Just try your best. We know there are times when our best isn’t very good. When I get mad, I’m sure not likely to be helpful.”
He smiled. “Kinda like you, I’ll bet.”
Hundreds whispered, “Yes.”
“But the promise can help stop me from being hurtful. And it has.”
• • •
Jason had made a promise, too, when he joined the militia—to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Well, Noah Stone, domestic traitor, was going to get a .38-caliber dose of promise tonight. Jason’s anger rose as he shoved his way through the people filling the aisle, but a sharp “Hey, be careful” from an old guy slowed him down. He didn’t want to attract attention, at least not until he had Stone in his sights. He wiped a sweaty palm on his jacket and said, “Please excuse me” as he slipped closer to the stage.
• • •
Hank could never make the kind of promise Stone was talking about—police work and war sometimes called for merciless violence, the polar opposite of help. Hell, he didn’t see how anybody in this world could make such a promise and keep it for more than ten minutes.
He wanted a sense of the man, not just the words and the image. He nudged Mitch with an elbow. “Going for a closer look. I’ll meet you at the exit.” He edged through the crowd that stood in the aisle.
Onstage, Noah Stone reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out something too small for Hank to make out.
Stone said, “The promise is our engine, but we need something to keep us on course.” He raised the minuscule thing high in the air. “We need a compass.”
Hank caught himself squinting hard to see. A huckster gimmick.
The view on the big screens zoomed in to show a fuzzy length of orange thread dangling from his fingers.
“Thread is our guide.” He spelled it out. “T-H-R-E-A-D. An operating system for people. Not religion. Or business. Or political parties. Just us.”
The picture changed to a close-up of Stone. He said, “Just you and me, one at a time.” He grinned and his eyes twinkled. “Bear with me on this, I worked hard to make the letters come out right.”
Hank braced for a heaping spoonful of happy horseshit. He glanced around; all faces were turned to the stage, looking eager to swallow the invisible hook at the end of that thread.
Stone said, “The T in THREAD is for tolerance.” He smiled. “Have you ever driven past a yard littered with little statues and fountains and other yard art and thought it was dumb?”
Hank had to smile; he’d done just that.
Noah Stone said, “I used to think that way. But then I realized that the people who lived there went to a lot of effort to create that scene. They spent hard-earned dollars and their time. Then they stood back and said, ‘Man, this looks great!’
“It didn’t hurt me. Let it be.
“What does it matter that someone has hair you don’t like, plays music you don’t get, has a p
ierced tongue that makes you cringe, follows a religion that’s alien to you, loves in ways you can’t stomach, or comes in a skin color that doesn’t match yours? If it doesn’t harm you, let it be. Tolerate.”
Just as Hank thought the next words would be love thy neighbor, Stone said, “Why not love instead of just tolerance? Aren’t we taught to love our neighbors? Hey, if my neighbor is a nasty slob with a dog that barks all night, I’m doing a helluva job just to tolerate the guy. Don’t ask me to love him—I’ll fail. Requiring unconditional love guarantees failure for anybody who isn’t a saint. Unearned love? I’m way too far from sainthood. Tolerance? That I can do. And so can you.”
He held up the thread again. “THREAD. The H stands for honor. Integrity. Every unkept promise undercuts all of us. Every sloppily done job shortchanges each of us. Every bribe, every embezzlement, every corrupt act cheats us all, including the cheater.”
Stone said, “THREAD. The R is responsibility. You do what you say you will, and you’re accountable for the consequences of what you do. You steal, you pay back; you destroy, you rebuild.
“For many in our land of caveat emptor, the E in THREAD is the hardest. It stands for empathy, the opposite of ‘buyer beware.’ Without concern for what others are experiencing, tolerance is a plant without water, help is a sail without wind.”
• • •
Movement in the aisle caught Jewel’s eye. A guy eased his way through people, heading down toward the stage. She’d seen those broad shoulders moving away from her before—it was her rescuer. She still owed him her thanks. She stepped into the aisle and followed.
Stone waved the thread. “Tolerance. Honor. Responsibility. Empathy. The A is for accord. As we’ve seen in government, partisan politics means gridlock. As we’ve seen in the abortion wars, uncompromising disagreement leads to misery and death. In the Alliance, we are bound to stick with it and reach accord when we disagree. Accord creates unity. And that creates strength.
“The last letter is D. The last word in THREAD is do! Make the promise and keep it. Ideals are hot air if we don’t have the guts to do the hard things that need to be done. Being a good ally is hard, and to succeed, we must do!”
He raised the thread. “A tiny thing. Alone, it is weak.” He broke it in two. “Weave it together with many others, and you have”—Stone plucked at his shirt—“something powerful enough to keep out the bite of cold.
“THREAD is only a word. But words have power because they bring us ideas, and ideas change human societies.” His voice grew stronger. “This thread of principles weaves people into an alliance. An alliance that has power. Power to change the way things are to something better.” Stone paused and surveyed the crowd.
• • •
As Hank closed to within twenty feet of the stage, he understood why Mitch was worried. The crowd responded like a thirsty man looking at a glass of cold water. Well, hell, what was there to disagree with?
But how did Noah Stone use his appeal? Or, more likely, abuse it? Hank looked for guards but saw only fans and reporters with video cameras. He spotted a familiar face, the redhead from the hotel lobby. She looked adoringly up at her leader.
Or was it master?
A man behind him yelled, “You goddamn traitor, you can’t take away my rights!”
Hank spun, and a skinny man with a sweaty face pulled a pistol from his camo pants. Hank’s instincts kicked in and he charged the shooter, waving his arms to distract him.
• • •
A man ahead of Jewel aimed a gun at Noah Stone. The guy who’d helped her ran straight at the shooter, his hands high, and the gunman swung the pistol toward him.
She hooked a thumb under her purse strap on her shoulder and flung the purse at the gun.
• • •
Time slowed for Hank. As if he were a spectator, he watched the man’s finger tighten on the trigger. Saw the fierce, teeth-bared grin on his face. Hank planted a foot and started a shift to the right. He would never make it.
A purse whipped through the air and hit the gunman’s shooting arm. His trigger finger jerked.
Alone in the silence, the pistol’s report cracked.
The bullet nicked Hank’s left arm between shoulder and elbow before it sledgehammered into his side. He went down.
• • •
Noah Stone dropped to the stage floor.
A news cameraman whirled and centered his viewfinder on the man with a gun.
A woman yelled, “He shot Noah!” and threw herself at the gunman.
Jewel raced to the wounded man on the floor and shouted, “This man’s been shot. Help!”
Noah Stone got to his feet, jumped from the stage, and hurried to her side.
• • •
The other two times Hank had been shot, he’d known immediately that the wound wasn’t fatal. But not this time. He wondered how he ought to feel about death.
Close above him were Noah Stone on one side and a pretty woman on the other. The woman had a scar—the world faded away.
An Existential Threat to Law and Order
Marion Smith-Taylor turned from the view of cherry blossoms outside her office window and shook her head at the stacks of mail her assistant had added to the load on her desk that morning. Surely there must be a way for the attorney general of the United States to find a law making it illegal to send said AG a gazillion memos and reports. It would save her a lot of time and Suzanne’s back, too.
Her intercom buzzed, and Suzanne’s husky voice came. “Can you take a call from Alexander Atkins?”
Stifling an instant “No!,” Marion pushed back against the tightening in her stomach that always came with calls from the American Association for Justice’s lobbyist, said yes, and picked up her phone. She didn’t mean the cheery smile she hoped she projected when she said, “Alexander! How can I help you?”
“You can stop the lawlessness in Oregon, that’s what you can do!”
Now what? She had big issues with what was going on in that troublesome state, but what problem could a bunch of trial lawyers have there? “Is there any particular lawlessness you have in mind?”
“Damn right. I have a client there who allegedly brought a load of pink into Oregon. Their kangaroo court system forced him to admit he drove the damned truck into the state to sell the drug. Forced him! He couldn’t even plead not guilty!”
Marion aimed to stop Oregon’s abuse of the Fifth Amendment, but she had no desire to lighten this clown’s load. Her smile was genuine this time. “I can see the problem, drug dealers having to tell the truth.”
His voice pulled back to a milder, more reasonable tone. “Don’t get me wrong. If he was dealing pink, he deserves everything he gets. But his Fifth Amendment rights are being trampled.”
“Weren’t you there to defend him?”
“I could have been, but Noah Stone’s Alliance has some kind of legal support system where you don’t need to hire a defense lawyer, and the guy cheaped out on me.”
Aha, losing business, that’s what had him worried. Marion had lost far too many cases because of deft manipulation of the law—make that distortion of the law—by defense lawyers, and she couldn’t resist saying, “Gosh, that’s awful, too.”
Alexander sighed. He knew her opinion of him and his association. But his voice had an edge when he said, “It isn’t funny. You’ve got to stop this legal abomination. Now.”
She stiffened. In a tight voice that said, Don’t fucking tell me what to do, she said, “I’m investigating the possibilities. Have a nice day, Alexander.” She hung up on him.
He was right about one thing—Oregon’s legal system had turned into an abomination when they flipped the Constitution upside down with that goddamn “Truth for Justice” initiative—led by, who else, Noah Stone and his Alliance.
Now Oregon courts forced people to testify against themselves as if the Fifth Amendment didn’t exist. Hell, they were even citing the Fifth as the authority for violating it. A pal at the ACLU
had told her that even they hadn’t found a convincing way to challenge them.
Her anger bubbled up just thinking about it. Well, maybe Tiffany was closer to something to quash the statute. She reached for her phone, and her top legal researcher’s soft voice soon answered. “Tiffany Horowitz.”
“Marion here, Tiffany. How are you doing on that crazy Truth for Justice statute?”
“I don’t have anything that helps us yet. My research suggests that it’s actually possible to interpret the Fifth Amendment to mean that courts can require a person to testify against himself as long as there’s due process of law. That actually makes sense in terms of the language of the amendment. I mean, we use the same due-process language to put people in prison, take their property, and execute them.”
Marion scowled. “I don’t like what I’m hearing, Tiffany. These people are undermining precedents for due process that go back to the Magna Carta.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Regretting her irritation, she softened her voice. “I know, I know. What else?”
“It sounds crazy, but the Alliance says its initiative is derived from the Magna Carta’s mandate—you know, ‘fundamentally rational law applied in a fundamentally fair proceeding.’”
Marion shook her head. “I still can’t believe voters went for it.”
“The Alliance made it sound like it would stop criminals. People liked that.”
That was the trouble with initiatives—direct democracy led to rule by emotion. In this case, it was in a blue progressive state that had a tendency to steer to the left. Except, maybe, for the prison system they’d inaugurated; it sounded damn tough, and it had been a bipartisan effort. And it looked like they’d found a way to ban guns while they were pushing those new self-defense weapons—the state was like a hornet’s nest that somebody had whacked.
Tiffany said, “Ah, you should know that the Alliance has started Truth for Justice initiatives in California and Washington State.”
Oh, Lord. There were, what—twenty-four states that allowed initiatives? “Keep digging. We’ve got to find a way to stop it.”
