Most Revolutionary - Chapter Fifteen
Sabia Grabs A Smoking Gun
Previously: Sabia Perez and President Silver create a second hostage video in the bunker in an attempt to create more pressure to meet the social and ransom demands of the day. Immediately afterward, Silver escapes and locks Sabia and Roca in the bunker. As the second hostage video rocks the nation, Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez and suspended Secret Service Director William Kingsley are both staggered by a clue in the video, one that only they might perceive and comprehend as implicating Sabia with a role in the kidnapping. After House Speaker Barry Bombarill is denied a private meeting with the Acting President, he retaliates against one of her supporters in a local deli near Chinatown. His rash act instigates an immediate cycle of violence, including an all-too-familiar police riot. Roca’s knowledge of the bunker allows him and Sabia to escape at any moment they choose. Sabia plots late-night revenge against President Silver to restart the revolution.
MOST REVOLUTIONARY — A SERIALIZED NOVEL
During a killer Iowa blizzard, fearless DAPL militant and radical plant nursery grower Sabia Perez first saves then kidnaps the stranded President of the USA to ransom a better world.
Ex-FBI Director Maximilian Castelan hands cash to a good Samaritan who lets him out into the icy slush of a motel parking lot in woodsy rural Maryland. Castelan enters the office in disguise of bushy beard, full eyebrows, and the unruly hair of a wig. He uses cash, with a fake ID, to register.
Once more into the ice and cold, Castelan takes a long hard look at the bar not far up the road. Then he walks the edge of the motel to his cramped, nowhere room, a perfect fit for his purposes. He sets his bag on the bed and goes to the bathroom where he strips his disguise, setting the eyebrows on the beard on the hair by sink. He avoids the mirror. This is Maximilian Castelan’s moment of great peril and there is no time for reflection.
Some people change. Castelan never did. He leaned into the early near-murderous deed of his life by using it to drive him toward invincibility. He made himself into an unimpeachable form of human law, an uncatchable attorney cop — hyper-professional, ultra-qualified, tactically social, ever opportunistic — with enough dirty, piety, and professionalism to allow him to rise through the ranks. A stellar resume: elite private undergrad and Army Reserve. Law School and prosecuting attorney with the Department of Justice. General counsel and Vice President for a defense contractor and an investment fund. Eventual appointment as top cop at the FBI. He carefully married another ambitious professional. Later when the formal charade was sapped of its novelty and the marriage stretched into a hall of mirrors of two trapped reflections, he carefully divorced — no children. Director Castelan, his own personal private one man security force. And then it all came crashing down in the wake of the militant insanity of his childhood pals.
And so now Castelan flees, though not to continue fleeing. He flees to fight for the remains of his life, such as they might be. In the motel bathroom, he refuses the mirror and instead pats his disguise on the cold porcelain of the motel sink.
Sometimes, you might do unusually bad things for people you dearly love or long for. For ideas, for truths, for misconceptions. Castelan dearly loves himself, loves the idea of who he feels he is and needs to be, misconceived or accurate to a T. Castelan longs to live as free as he wishes and can be. Truth be told. And truth be damned, damaged, and denied.
In the small bedroom, Castelan sets his laptop on the bed by his bag. He scrolls through many photos of O’Roura-Chavez shot seemingly everywhere she goes, typically surrounded by security or looking trim and polished in photo ops.
Castelan taps her face on the screen and talks to her image. “You can kick me out of the FBI, O’Roura-Chavez. But you can’t kick the FBI out of me.”
He opens an electronic folder, unlocks a video file, and plays it. The video shows Sabia kissing Jenna in the Ryzcek farmhouse.
“Got that the camera in the right spot. I’m everywhere, Alecta: off-the-books maverick surveillance. Against you and your pretty little friend.”
Castelan turns up the volume:
“Jenna, Roca’s alive.”
“What?”
“Wait for the big news, bigger news. It won’t be about him.”
“What news? He wasn’t killed? How? He went to the bus. Every report says so.”
“I might have told a fib.”
“Jesus, Sabia.”
“Some people don't deserve to hear the truth. You know, the Fuckheads who want to investigate me and do things that should not be done.”
“If Roca wasn’t killed— Wait. What would be bigger news?”
“Some lives are more equal than others. You know what I mean? In this sorry world.”
“Wait. Oh my … God. No! Someone else is alive too. The President is alive. The fucking President. Silver-Fucker. You gotta be shitting me. Sabia girl!”
“Think what you will.”
“Silver is alive and you know where she is.”
“Maybe somebody does.”
“Fucking Sabia. You need to be stopped.”
“Nobody stops me.”
Castelan slams the laptop shut.
“We’ll see about that, Sabia Perez.” Castelan pulls out a handgun from his bag, a Glock 19. He gauges its weight in his hand. “You’re my gold bargaining chip, Sabia.” Castelan checks the gun and clip, ensures it's functional and loaded. Then he puts the Glock back in the bag beside a pair of handcuffs and zip ties, cans of pepper spray, a stun gun, and black steel baton.
Castelan cannot help but reflect after all. He thinks back to the flicker of his highly social yet bookish days of law school and to the counterintuitive freedom in action he felt in the Army Reserve. He knows what damning memories lie beyond all that and does not go there. The worst parts of his past are always too close.
He takes out the baton and presses the end cap, extending it to full length — nearly two feet of biting steel. He strokes the black bar, smacks it against the palm of his left hand. Then he wallops the bed. It feels good. He hits the bed again. And again.
Maximilian Castelan, the man, the persona. A walking, talking, lurking trigger warning. Not infrequently over the years, Max knows, he is the vile thing itself.
Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez recalls suspended Secret Service Director William Kingsley to the Oval Office. Both feel they know more than they are willing to convey. They stand, facing each other, Kingsley's hands behind his back, Alecta's on her hips.
“I'll reiterate,” says the Acting President. “It's good that you told me about former FBI Director Castelan meeting you in the bar. My people have held long and repeated discussions about that by now. It's not enough. We need to detain Castelan. I'm hoping you can help.”
Kingsley is all too aware that Alecta O’Roura-Chavez does not trust him, cannot bring herself to trust him, and will not trust him. Not easily. Maybe not ever. He tries to deflect: “Any evidence the Tribes are involved, Ma’am?”
“You suspect them?”
“Castelan does.”
“So he says.” Alecta is far more interested in what Kingsley believes. “Apparently the Tribes have not descended to the White Man's level of moral depravity, Bill. Though I suppose some would not blame them for disappearing President Silver, given how many Native Chiefs were abducted and killed by the federal government over the centuries.”
Alecta stares through Kingsley. Undying suspicion and persecution against the people — there it is. The truth is, no one on payroll has been able to see into the blizzard of that horrible night. A faction in the NSA caught Castelan in reprobate action in DC, collaborating with the officials Alecta fired — the NSA head himself, Director Alspi, and Admiral Bentcan. So few officials can do so much damage in a toxic culture and debased system, in the warped structure and the idiotic line of succession from one party to its opposition party due to a fluke killing, or a carefully planned assassination.
The Supreme Court itself allows for supreme insanity and supreme bigotry given a mere few corrupt judges.
And the Presidency is both so rickety and almost all-powerful that it only takes one. One force for good, or one force for bad.
Alecta puts her fingers to her forehead.
“Ma’am?”
“The whole system is fucked,” says Alecta.
“How’s that?” says Kingsley.
“You know how.”
Kingsley thinks he might. He gets what she means, one way or another. He cannot know exactly what she may be thinking but he can approximate her notion of “the whole system.” The tortured web of the past is tangled into the present, hopelessly convoluted, and they are all caught up in this thing not of their own creation. Responsible for it now. Things are bad. And he and she and every other official are all in deep shit — right along with the country and world. They should have seen it coming. Maybe they all saw it coming and did nothing.
Or not enough.
Or the wrong things.
And then the real thing hit. The blizzard. That fucking freezing white-out.
“So Castelan runs.” Kingsley tries to return his mind to the present. He remains shocked by the idea, the unsettled drama of a badge on the run, as if in some contemporary unhinged Wild West story of a man with a gun — a lone badge with dead-eye aim gone missing. One of their own. Or is he alone? “I didn’t think he would run, until he pulled that gun on me in the bar. I don’t really know the guy, I guess.”
“And you think he goes to Iowa.”
“He goes somewhere, Ma’am. Believe him, I say, when he talks of the cornfields. He’s running or stalking, or both,” says Kingsley. “He said something about white people’s heads being so empty that their skulls would implode, and he seemed to indicate that he could pass, he could get by there in Iowa, and it seemed like he meant that he could get away with anything. Crazy talk, like I told you, like I told the team. Iowa is a very sedate Midwestern place, is it not? Very normal-like. How can a lunatic not stand out? The guy is seriously addled. Did you put security back on the Perez farmhouse as I suggested?”
Kingsley senses that something he has said bothers Alecta. Maybe all of it.
“Director, do you understand that if the system is fucked then that means that a place like Iowa is really fucking fucked? I said the system is fucked, and you agreed. Did you not?”
“I guess. Yes.”
“Never mind.”
Castelan thinks he is going to his own people who he feels superior too, who he believes are too dumb to see the blatant, latent, and sneaky-ass Evil in himself. He may have a point. In a brainwashed culture, the brainwashed are not exactly the most perceptive people around. And Kingsley apparently does not reflect enough to muster a coherent thought on the very words that come out of his mouth. Alecta is sick of wasting her time on dense white males who should take a weekend off at some point and learn to know better. She’s fucking sick of it. Nevertheless, Alecta watches Kingsley closely. “Director, do you really know if Sabia Perez has any part in this whole disaster? The bombing? The kidnapping? Anything? Do you hold any evidence at all? I’m not asking what you think. I’m asking what you know.”
Kingsley acknowledges that he in fact has zero evidence to implicate Sabia in anything whatsoever: Sabia, the new good friend of the Acting President. A tennis ball? Can he truly insist on his theory of a tennis ball symbolizing an orange, to point blame at Sabia Perez? Not exactly a convincing line of connection. Unless, you come to know Sabia, spend time with her in her greenhouse, like he has. And surely the Acting President has too. The only thing that the suspended Director Kingsley knows for sure is that he needs to be extra tactful around his new boss, Alecta O’Roura-Chavez.
“If Castelan is in Iowa, Ma'am, more guards for the farm would be a good way to put extra boots on the ground. Quietly.”
“You want security to protect Sabia. Why, now?” Alecta watches Kingsley.
“Perpetrators sometimes return. Or stick around.”
“You mean Castelan.”
“Whomever.”
“I’ll continue to consider your request, Director.”
“Ma’am, I wouldn’t hesitate. Did Sabia ever show you the oranges she grows? Or the lemons? When you visited?”
Alecta knows for certain then: Kingsley is thinking what she's thinking. Or something close to it. Sabia is a player in this, in the disappearance of the President, the kidnapping. The ransom demands. Maybe more than a player. Maybe the player.
Alecta stalls. She tells a half truth: “Sabia seemed most proud of her figs. Wrong season to harvest, but she's the Fig Girl online, right?”
“The oranges though. That’s the fruit that’s ripe now. Navels are in season. Even in Iowa.”
“Impressive. I agree. So what?”
Kingsley thinks he remains alone in his suspicions. Alone can be all too lonely when your job and the conditions of your life are on the line.
“No reason. Ma’am. Speculation.”
“How so?”
Is she goading him? Why does it feel like she is? What more can she want from him? He’s not Castelan, and he is proud of that. He refuses to pretend to know more than he is willing to say.
And he remains unwilling to stick his neck out over a theory about a tennis ball and an orange. Or lemon. He tries to sidestep his own landmine. “Sabia is a very capable young woman, Ma’am. We both know that. She grows tropical trees and plants in winter Iowa. Who knows what else she's capable of?”
“What is she capable of, Bill? Tell me.” Alecta cannot help but push into the Director’s discomfort, even at the expense of her own. If Kingsley is going to say anything about Sabia to anyone, Alecta wants him to say it to her first.
Kingsley shakes his head. “I don’t know any more than you do, Ma’am. Sabia may be in danger. She won't be able to stop Castelan if push comes to shove there in Iowa. Castelan will go in locked and loaded, hunting prey. I know that.”
“If he goes at all.”
“I think he does.”
“You’re guessing. Aren’t you. Sabia would hate to see more guards, Bill. Castelan is a fugitive. Top of the Most Wanted. He will be caught.”
Sure, thinks Kingsley. With more guards, maybe.
The Acting President pantomimes a bit of work by sorting through papers on her desk before she is willing to address Kingsley again.
She does not want to alter the situation in Iowa, whatever it is. Not that she knows that there is a situation in Iowa. Hands off Sabia. Hands off Alecta herself. Hands off the the current state of power and control. Why not? Things are going better now for the people of the country than ever before. Does is matter how? Think of how few are being hurt — if anyone. Think of how many are being helped — basically everyone. Health care, rent control, wages, family leave, the climate, the environment, children, the elderly, the imprisoned, the impoverished, every minority, every household, every unhoused person. Alecta’s new hires, directives, orders, and programs — almost all spurred and made possible by the ransom demands — now is the time to keep the good things going. And make more.
The people and country and even the planet are better off under Alecta’s command and control — but what about the peoples of the world, case by case by case by case? International affairs, she needs to get to that too. She needs to climb through this nutty scramble of domestic concerns and begin to undo the deplorable history and ongoing devastation of US international attacks, insane interventions, and wrongful involvement. She needs to stand the country down. She needs to stand the fucking country down. The military, the weapons, they are everywhere across the planet, killing and chilling. And the ghoulish gun economy enforces, profiteers, perpetuates the depravity, the insanity, the Evil, the terrifying and sickening carnage of flesh, blood, bone, and the mainstreaming of violence, terror, trigger-happy Evil. There go the walking dead, and there go the gunning dead, and there go the profiteering dead, and the gunning and profiteering dead are more dead than those whom they kill. Except like a virus the gunning and profiteering dead don’t require sentience to keep at it, to keep killing their way through life. The gunning and profiteering dead are even worse than any murderous form of artificial intelligence, because they were once alive, fully, when young and sheerly biological, pre-murderous and pre-profiteering and pre-pathology.
Surely, they were once alive.
Alecta feels like the roof and then ceiling of the Oval Office could pancake down upon her at any moment. She forgets that she is shuffling papers to no real end. It begins to feel real and she tries to remember what she is looking for in the papers.
Then she remembers. Acts of great responsibility. It seems too much.
She needs to stay blameless — genuinely, if possible — in regard to Sabia and through whatever else this unprecedented situation is or may be. She needs to do the best she can do under seemingly FUBAR circumstances. She needs to do what needs to be done. What is to be done?
Every day, something new.
Something seemingly more impossible than the day before.
Fucking revolution. When does it end? Never. When does it happen? Not overnight.
Sometimes overnight. She thinks of Sabia.
Fucking revolution.
“Sabia’s revolution.”
“Pardon, Ma’am?”
Oh, shit. She said that aloud.
“Nothing.”
Alecta organizes and straightens a few papers before returning attention to Kingsley. “It’s not personal, Director, but I think I may need to request your resignation within the week. I will, in fact. The same for your Deputy Director, Grace Lamont. It might be best to put my own people in. In the meantime, your service is appreciated.”
“I see.”
She was stalling, Kingsley thinks. She did not want to tell him. It gives him a slight bit of hope, warranted or not.
“I give you permission to track Castelan yourself, Bill, if you like. One week.”
“Thank you, Ma'am. That's not much time.”
“That's all you get.”
One week. Goddamn it. No point in any caution now. “Be wary, Ma’am. Sabia Perez may not be as innocent as she appears.”
Alecta turns away from Kingsley.
“Is that so? What’s your new information, Director? I was under the impression that no contradictions were found in her statements.”
“It’s a hunch, Ma’am.”
“Based on? What?”
The blank smart screen on the wall seems to remind Kingsley of what he knows that everyone saw there. What he saw. What Alecta saw. And maybe what only he himself might have truly seen for what it is. “Lemons,” he says.
He knows how it sounds. He knows he could be wrong.
Alecta spreads her hands. She faces him. “The fruit?” she says. “Or your sour grapes, Director?”
Kingsley felt that one on the chin.
Fuck.
“Yes and no, Ma’am,” he persists. “Look, Sabia grows Meyer lemons in her greenhouse, with the oranges. The way President Silver held up the tennis ball at the end of the video, it made me think of lemons. And Sabia. Her greenhouse. It's a reach, I suppose. I second guess the idea myself. This whole thing — it’s mortifying.”
Alecta tries to maintain a quintessence of composure. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Bill. Blizzard or no blizzard, those missiles were going to hit that bus. We’re all of us under enormous pressure. Okay? Seen and unseen.” Time to go on the attack. “The blizzard though — how could you not — I mean, even if the odds where low—”
“The odds are always low, I have to say, Ma’am. Except when they’re high.”
“And that’s how you look at it. Okay. I see.”
“Do you?” says Kingsley.
What a little snot, thinks Alecta.
Alecta freezes him, burns him with her glare.
Kingsley has gone too far.
He turns to the door. He’s on his way out anyway. He stops, looks down at the floor and not back at Alecta. “Guards,” he says. “We need guards. On Sabia.”
Alecta holds her ground without a word. She’s boss. Kingsley is not. He can walk.
Kingsley leaves the office in the angered silence.
Alecta considers. She stares at the super clean lines and the perfectly justified angles of the empty white doorway. Two high angles, two low angles. Perfect right angles. Perfectly parallel lines of wall and door. The whole thing purely aligned. Everything is so perfect.
Chief of Staff Shakeeta Glazier steps into the doorframe. “Madame President.”
She is blocking the perfection of the door to the Oval Office.
“Ah— Umm— Madame President?”
Alecta snaps out of it. “Shakeeta.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Right here, Ma’am.”
“No guards on Sabia.”
“Okay. Yes, Ma’am,” says Shakeeta. “You ordered the farmhouse guards pulled days ago. The crater remains under surveillance. Those are the only guards that I know about.”
“Good. Good.” Alecta nods. “Shakeeta. Director Kingsley has been put on notice. One week. Lamont too.”
“I see. Got it.”
“And, well, I’m not sure yet how deep to cut into that agency. I like Kingsley, almost. I almost trust him. But I can’t— I know what to do with the FBI. Let’s bring in Priama Steiner from the US Marshals Service. If I’m going to trust anyone, it’s going to be her.”
“A natural fit.”
“I need to see Priama immediately.”
“Will do.”
“The Senate will expedite her confirmation process, I would hope.”
“We’ll see. Anything else?”
“Not yet.” Alecta stares at documents on her desk.
That’s plenty for now, thinks Shakeeta. More than enough. The President has forgotten about their meeting to review a few good ideas about cutting taxes on working people rather than on wealth. Shakeeta steps out of the office when she realizes that Alecta appears to believe she has already left.
Alone.
Alects sits behind the Resolute Desk. She closes her eyes. She puts her forehead to the desktop.
Press Secretary Tisha Noori enters the Oval Office. She takes one step across the doorway and stops. “Madame President?”
Alecta does not lift her head. She answers to the surface of the desk. “What.”
“Bad time?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
Tisha leaves.
Tisha immediately returns. “You’re doing great!” she says.
Alecta stays face down on the desk. She interlaces her fingers on top of her head.
Eventually Alecta sits up, leans back in the sturdy wood chair behind the Resolute Desk.
“Sabia,” she says to the empty chamber. “Now what?”
Acting President Alecta O'Roura-Chavez can already imagine her own impeachment and Department of Justice subpoenas and depositions, and who knows how many Congressional investigations:
“At what point did you know about the involvement of Sabia Perez in the kidnapping and ransom of President Silver? Why did you refuse Director Kingsley's advice to guard the Perez farmhouse? When did Sabia tell you about her act of treason? Did you plot with Sabia in her greenhouse to keep President Silver captive? Did you fake food poisoning in Kansas City? Did you fire Admiral Bentcan and NSA Director Alspi to help cover your own crimes? Do you understand the actual gravity of the situation at hand, Ms. O'Roura-Chavez?”
Alecta looks to the ceiling of the Oval Office. She can hardly be blamed for rejecting the advice of her failed Secret Service Director. After all, he is probably overreacting out of an abundance of caution due to his recent massive misjudgment.
Besides, Sabia wants no guards. So no guards on Sabia.
The one person who needs guarded the most sits there alone in the Oval Office. Does she not?
Once again fully disguised in flowing hair, bushy eyebrows, full beard, jeans, work boots, and flannel, Director Maximilian Castelan drinks beer from a bottle at a bar in rural Maryland.
He asked for anything dark to drink. What he got does not taste dark. He is not surprised and is too disgusted to look at what it might be. What he wouldn’t give for a mere Negra Modelo right now. He looks after all. Shiner Bock. Like Rolling Rock and Yuengling Black & Tan, one of those regional beers gone national that is far from what it is made out to be. Advertising. What a crock.
Next to Castelan sits a young workman, half his age, clad in some sort of heavy duty protective gear — boots, pants, layered shirts, his thick coat on the stool between them. The workman has a head start on his own Shiner Bock.
The workman is Tucker Gere. He drinks deeply, weary and worn after a long day welding on an icy bridge in brutal wind. Everything he wears is insulated, rugged, fireproof. He sets his bottle on the bar next to his cap. On his cap an expensive pair of winter work gloves.
“Nice gloves,” says Castelan.
“I need to protect my hands at all times.”
“Boxer, pianist, or mover?”
“Welder.”
“That's closer to a pianist,” says Castelan.
“Bullshit.”
“Takes real skill, I’m sure. Looks like you could ski the Arctic in those gloves.”
“They keep me warm. And safe.”
“Show me your hands,” says Castelan. Tucker appraises Castelan, then extends one hand.
“Fingers twice as thick as an office worker,” observes Castelan. He offers his own hand. “I’m Jordan Case.”
“Tucker Gere.” They shake.
Castelan drinks. “Hey, barkeep, turn that up.”
The female bartender bumps up the volume on the TV. News moderators are flush with information:
“The big open secret in Washington DC remains the alleged complicity of former FBI Director Maximilian Castelan in the attempted assassination and possible coup against President Silver and the government of the United States of America. The Department of Justice has secured a warrant for Director Castelan’s arrest. His whereabouts remain unknown.”
Castelan turns to Tucker Gere. “Think he’ll get away with it, this guy, Castelan?”
“I mean. He wasn’t stopped the first time.”
Castelan once again blocks himself from thinking back over his life. “I guess so.”
“Look, it's only luck that President Silver and the now Acting President are still alive,” says Tucker. “That conman right-wing Speaker of the House, Bombarill, he’s in line to be King. He would give Castelan a free pass, I bet. Those right-wingers, they stick together. Castelan could go up for promotion with Bombarill in power.”
“No shit. You’re a politico.” Promoted? I was already Top Dog. Castelan meditates and drinks. Top of the line. King of the hill. “Castelan got fired. How about that? Even if he was in on a coup and it worked, how could he get promoted? He was already the Director of the FBI.”
“Whatever he wanted. Vice President. Ambassador to Hawai'i. That would be my pick.”
Castelan shakes his head. “You think the Director of the FBI surfs? You know the US owns Hawai'i, right? There's no ambassador there.”
“The US stole Hawai'i. Conquered it. That’s what the big bad bully on the block does. I mean, it's just another place in paradise taken and turned into a military fortress.”
“So you're a lefty.”
“I'm a welder who thinks, if that's what you mean.”
Castelan stares at images of himself undisguised on TV. “Such bad luck,” he says.
“For Hawai’i,” says Tucker. “Not for Castelan. Boo Hoo for him. Dude’s a loose cannon.”
“Really? He’s a cop. He has a code, an ethos, a oath to the Constitution, to the law. How often does the head of the FBI get canned like that? On suspicion of treason. I mean what did he do? Not stop the bombing? How could he?”
“Maybe by not participating in it.”
“Where’s the evidence?”
“My heart bleeds for the FBI boss. Dude. Please.”
Castelan is sullen. “Maybe it should, in this case. He can’t stay underground forever, right? He needs to turn up somewhere. And when he does — who will listen to his side of the story?”
“Do you know this guy personally or what?” says Tucker. “What are you, a cop?”
“Security guard.”
“No offense — but I have no patience for the wingnuts of the world.”
“Offense taken. I’m nothing like that,” says Castelan. “I’m just a guy who does his job like he’s supposed to. And who are you? Bernie Sanders. In disguise? The great progressive dope, I mean, hope. Can I call you Bernie?”
“You call me Tucker. Tucker Gere. Let’s keep it at that.”
The TV moderators continue: “Our sources indicate that officials have found connections going back to childhood between a rogue officer on the Navy submarine and ex-FBI Director Castelan. Were they partners in the alleged attempt to assassinate President Silver?”
“Nail in the coffin,” says Tucker Gere. “See that? The FBI Director conspired with white supremacist wackos in the Navy to coup the government. Seriously, people have nothing better to do? This whole world is falling apart.”
Castelan points his Shiner Bock at the TV. “Where’s the proof? What if it’s not true?”
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first coup in Thug Nation.”
“Which Nation is that?”
“Dude. Don’t play dumb. Oh, wait — let me tell you a story that few people have heard and that everyone should know. Back in the day, President John F. Kennedy forced Allen Dulles to resign as head of the CIA for trying to Bay-of-Pigs Cuba, invade the country. Almost two years to the day that Dulles resigned, JFK was assassinated. Got it? Multiple members of the Kennedy family accused the CIA — meaning Allen Dulles. It was an assassination and a coup. That shit happens here. The elites squabble, and with guns too. Sometimes a lot of guns. The CIA coups overseas and it coups at home. I guess with President Silver, the FBI decided it was their turn for a change.”
“Seems a stretch.”
“Really. Ever heard of January 6th? Please. Where was the Secret Service, FBI, the military when all those white supremacists broke into the Capitol building to coup the election? Even the guards who were there, they weren’t there. Everyone saw that white bread mob shove right past the think-alike, do-alike national political police. A few stood and fought. Most let it happen. The rest didn’t show up. And for what. Democracy? The opposite.”
“I see why you sit alone at a bar on a weekday night.”
“Right back at you, Pal. The people who think they own the country, who do own the country, they want to run it the way they want to run it. Always have. Hopefully their days are numbered.”
“Come on — Thug Nation? Just because back in the day the Native Americans and the slaves were, you know, mistreated—”
“It’s called the History Channel, Pal. Ongoing. Might as well call it the Empire Channel. Or, you know, USA Today. US history, Man. First, all the religious freaks who were so crazy that even Europe kicked them out, they came over here gunning and clubbing the indigenous, and then burning their own women healers and free-thinkers who they called witches, and then they build up the US military to wipe out what's left of the native population. Meanwhile down South, they needed lots of labor for their plantations on all that fertile land, and you can’t enslave the indigenous, they just melt into the forest, so you kill them, or hound them West. Then you create a national police force to control the runaway slaves, tortured and hauled in chains on ships of death from Africa. Then you build a big enough military to conquer the world. Then you massively expand the police state and the prison system here at home. Then—”
“I get the point.”
“No lives matter now. Climate collapse will kill us all. Or nuclear war. Profiteering till the end — that’s the point. That’s all. And especially black and brown lives don’t matter. Not in Thug Nation. And Thug Nation has guns all over the world. It’s end times, for real. That’s our story, our history come to its final climax.”
“Jesus, you really are a Flat Earther.”
“Clever,” says Tucker. “That’s clever. It’s dumb, but in a clever way. I didn’t think you had it in you, Bud.” Tucker enjoys his beer — even though he knows it’s not good for him. He’s so young and strong that he feels he doesn’t need to give it up yet. “Ask Sabia Perez. She knows.” Tucker gestures to the TV where clips of the Iowa bomb site and the Perez farmhouse play across the screen.
“Sabia Perez is a little fucking terrorist,” says Castelan. “Big time.”
“What in Hell has she done? Open her mouth? Have a brain? She’s a witch all right, God love her. She's gutsy. She’s the People’s Witch. And we love her. That girl has more guts and brains already at her age than most people come close to in their entire lives.”
“Sabia Perez has a terrorist mouth.”
“A big part of the country thinks she's a hero, Mr. Security Guard. The rest — dumb as the day is long or hard as their rocks for brains. Blinded by the disinformation of the libs and the right. The libs and the right are the halfway conscious siblings of Daddy Status Quo and their Stepford and Karen mothers.”
“What are you even talking about? You are truly disturbed.”
The thing about chemically induced bar conversations is that the best ones exist entirely outside of time. And the worst ones know nothing but the suffocating walls of an ever too late hour, no matter how early in the day.
“Not Sabia and Alecta O'Roura-Chavez. No,” says Tucker. “Those two — they know shit and they do shit about it. Black and brown lives matter least of all, and they do shit about that too. Anyone who can’t see it doesn’t want to. That's what Sabia and Alecta know. And poor whites too are crushed. I mean, we’re all going down on this sick ship of the good old boys and their Holy Ruling Dollar. It’s disgusting and lethal. It's not the People who matter in Empire. Big Dollar does. To the almighty Empire, poor whites are almost like honorary blacks — maybe even the diehard racist poor whites who can’t see their own brothers and sisters even when they look directly at them. The Big Man's boot stomps them all, more and less. And do you even want to be a woman or child in this country or on most of this planet? Or elderly? Impoverished? It’s a miracle there’s ever even been a single woman President. Or a single President of Color. This country was founded on White Supremacy as an Empire — everyone should know that. They don’t. Some people say Defund the Police — beginning with the FBI. I say, Replace the Police, with community groups who actually know what the fuck they’re doing. And who give a shit. And who don’t kill or imprison.”
Tucker Gere drinks.
Castelan drinks.
Castelan knows what he’s going to do now. He’s going to clean up the world a little bit more. He knows he won’t feel bad about it. He knows not to worry, even though most people would see it as a terrible thing. It’s what needs to be done. As far as he’s concerned.
“And then there's all the poor animals who maybe have it worst of all,” says Tucker. “Do you even know how many are tortured and slaughtered each year? People think they need to be flesh eaters and animal slavers. They don’t. They fucking don’t. It keeps getting worse. Sure there are more vegetarians and vegans now than ever before, but more flesh-eaters and animal slavers too and dead and dying animals—”
“Christ, son. You should be on Woke TV — all this radical nonsense.”
“Fucking truth. You can’t handle it. People are weak. And mean. Cruel. More are brainwashed.” Tucker points to the TV. “Look what’s on that spy cam. Corporate ads, corporate suits and ties, cops, and cop shows. And wacky shit. It’s like they want everyone to be regimented or thuggish, afraid or bonkers, callous or superficial. Take your pick. All the better to be ignorant and brainwashed, controlled and—”
“What about you? You think you're so different? So special? You’re not scared of your own shadow? You’re not bad ass? Not blinded by your own demons and delights like you say everyone else is?”
“Big Brother’s shadow, Man. Big Brother turned out to be a Capitalist not a Socialist. I don’t need to explain myself to you or to anyone else. It’s not about me. Who gives a shit. Maybe I was born extra cantankerous. Probably. Or maybe I’m conditioned like everyone else, except I’m not scared of the taboos. I’m not bothered by Jack Shat, because I’m too fucking bothered to be bothered. I figure when my time comes, fuck, it comes. The other thing — I have no death wish. Sometimes I think I’ve very officially unAmerican that way.”
“Here’s hoping the death of us all comes none too soon, Kid.” Castelan raises his bottle of beer. “To your health.”
Tucker hesitates, then mirrors the gesture. “Okay. Damn.”
Revenge.
Sabia and Roca lock the empty bunker behind them and do not look back.
Sabia powers on a dim lamp, and in the low light of the kitchen finds a pair of scissors in a ceramic container on the counter.
She sneaks into President Silver's bedroom where she carefully and quietly cuts off jagged chunks of Silver’s hair, until it's thoroughly butchered.
Not quite as good as blowing up dozers by the pipeline transfer station but not bad either.
Sabia cuts as much as she can and even more when the President murmurs and rolls over from one side to the other.
What’s a girl to do when shit starts to get ugly after Ground Force One explodes by her orchard? Sabia feels she’s in too deep to be a model citizen now. Or a model anything.
In the great room, Sabia holds big tufts and swaths of the President's hair and shows Roca who rests in a chair. He seems resigned.
“That’s right,” she says. “I scalped her. Silver thought she could throw me into the pit. She had it coming. Shit, I went easy on her.”
“If only your Mamá could see you now,” says Roca.
“Mamá would be proud,” says Sabia. Sabia throws the President's hair into the trash. “Silver's mangled look is exactly what we need for the next ransom video.”
Sabia rinses the scissors and carefully dries the handles and blades. She leaves them out in plain view on the counter.
In the Maryland bar, Tucker Gere finishes another beer beside disguised Director Castelan, who works his second bottle. It’s getting to be time. Castelan is patient, but he doesn’t necessarily have all night.
Tucker nods at the TV news where a chyron scrolls: EX-FBI DIRECTOR CASTELAN: OUTLAW ON THE RUN?
“FBI outlaw. You see,” says Tucker. “It’s Empire run crazed and wild. I'm not even wrong.”
Castelan drinks. “Depends on who's telling the story.”
“Okay, so what’s your version of history? America the Exceptional, right? Empire of liberty and justice for all? Please.”
“Keep it simple, Kid. Law and order. Obey the rules. Don’t cause trouble. Keep your nose clean. Be patriotic. Do the right thing. Be true to yourself. Live the good life.”
“So many clichés, Man.”
“Rock the boat and see where it gets you. You’ll get what you’ve got coming.”
“Says ever fascist ever. Every tyrant. Every thug in power.”
“Says every freeloader. Every softie. Every flaming peacenik.”
“Tell it to my job, Pal — how soft I am. I need this beer. You’re just relaxing after — what? — walking a fence, riding a chair? I burn things together for a living. I build shit. In the fucking elements. Hard shit. Fiery stuff.”
“Workers of the world! Unite! That how it goes? You have nothing to complain about, Tucker Gere. You have a job, one that pays. You should be happy. Smile, Tucker.” Castelan himself does not smile. “Be happy.”
“Back in the day they called it what it is: Wage Slavery. Obey The Man. Like a slave. A peon. I don't own my own workplace and I don't run my own workplace. Why not? I'm the worker! I should. Meanwhile, really bad jobs, or really dangerous jobs, they were called ‘slaves’ back in the day. Probably still are. Slave jobs — for crap money, crap food, crap health care, crap housing — all so the fat cats can grow fatter. Big Money Boys don’t slave. They enslave. They’re slavers. It’s Evil. People get that. Maybe not you. Or maybe you don't care.”
“Like I said, I can see why you drink alone.”
“No, Pal, you cannot.”
“Don’t stare into the pit, Son. You’ll wind up living in it. That’s good advice. Sit on the edge of the goddamned pit if you want — but look up into the sky. It’s blue and white. Most days.”
“The sky is literally fucking falling, you realize that, right?” says Tucker. “Has fallen.”
Castelan raises his beer. “To the sky,” he says.
Tucker grabs his empty bottle and bangs it twice on the bar by his cap and gloves. He bangs it in time with his words: “Fuck — that.”
Tucker and Castelan bundle against the cold and leave the bar for the dark parking lot. Tucker feels good now, though he’s still in work clothes — coat and cap and special gloves. They sidestep iced-over potholes in the gravel and frozen mud and cross to Tucker’s car.
“You sure you don’t mind giving me a lift?” says Castelan. “I can Uber home like I Ubered here.”
“No problem. A couple miles is nothing.”
“I appreciate it.”
At Tucker's car, Castelan steps behind Tucker and breaks his neck.
The body drops to the ground.
Castelan puts on a pair of thin white gloves.
He takes Tucker's phone and car keys. He throws the phone into the near woods.
“Nothing personal, Kid. Politics.”
Castelan opens the trunk and heaves Tucker’s body inside.
“Right place, right time, Kid. For me. For you, not so much.”
Castelan slams the trunk shut.
“Fucking Socialist.”
Castelan pulls off his wig. He scratches his head.
“This fucking thing.”
Castelan adjusts the wig and puts it back on.
He gets in the car, checks the time.
“Twelve hours to Iowa.”
Castelan starts the engine, secures his seat belt, resets the seat, fixes the mirrors, overviews the dashboard controls. Given the setting that Tucker used, the heater blasts on high.
“Ready or not, Sabia, here I come.”
Castelan pulls from the lot onto the road.
“Time to meet your Man, Sabia.”
Castelan accelerates away from any interstate toward a long line of secondary roads previously mapped out.
“Sabia!” President Silver screams. Come morning, Silver clutches the remains of her hair, in front of the bathroom mirror. “You monster! Sabia! How in fuck did you escape?!”
In the kitchen, Roca cracks eggs into a hot pan on the stove. Then he drips butternut oil onto toast. He extends a small plate of toast to Sabia. “Better eat now.”
Sabia grabs her school backpack off the table. “Bye, Roca, gotta go!”
Roca follows Sabia to the mud room door with the toast.
Sabia grabs a colorful knit cap off a hook on the wall. “Here. Give this to Silver. She's going to need it.” Sabia hands the cap to Roca. She grabs a slice of toast. “Love you Roca.”
“See you soon, Mija.” Roca waves the cap.
Roca returns to the pan of eggs on the stove. He puts the cap on the counter.
President Silver storms from bathroom to great room in her makeshift nightwear consisting of a pair of Sabia’s sweat pants and one of Roca’s tee shirts. Her hair appears to have been half-devoured off her head, as if by a wild creature. Roca pretends to see nothing unusual. He diligently scrambles eggs. Silver points accusingly.
“How in fuck did you two get out!”
“Would you like some eggs?” says Roca.
“Why does she hate me!” says Silver.
“Plenty of eggs for everyone,” says Roca.
“I know why she hates. She’s a hater. She thinks she’s special.”
“You need to know what you're doing here, Madame President. In our home. But how could you, right? This is not your home. This is not your land. You don't know our ways. You failed to secure the bunker correctly. It's not the simple latch that it might look.”
“Fuck.” President Silver pulls out a chair from the kitchen table. Then she slams it against the table edge. “How!”
Roca adds sea salt and organic black pepper to the eggs. “No one's holding you here, Silver. Not anymore. Feel free to leave, anytime. Sabia thinks she'll be okay no matter what. We're the reason you're alive and well. Remember? Not vice versa. Not by a long shot.”
Silver runs her fingers into her patchy hair and along her scalp. “Sabia butchered me!” Then Silver sits at the table. She props her bare feet up on the edge and points her toes at Roca. “This is my home now, Roca.”
Roca scoop eggs out of the pan. “Sabia and I can trace our people all the way back to the Opata in northern Mexico. On our continent, Turtle Island. You white invaders think we brown folk surrendered long ago. We never did. Never will. Many of us were slaughtered. Many of us were forced off our own land. But now, we are back. Say, 'Hello,' sometime why don't you? Maybe even apologize. Reparations would be nice.”
“Sabia fucking slaughtered me. Look at this, Roca!” Silvers grabs at her shredded hair and oddly evident scalp.
“It's the other way around, President Silver. You tried to make Sabia captive in her own home. What a wrongful thing to do to anyone. A dangerous thing. Especially to someone like Sabia.”
“Who are you talking to, Kristen?”
Ellen Lin walks out from her bedroom. She gazes in disbelief at President Silver's wildly sheared head. And then at Roca.
“Oh, no.”
Lin is shocked to see Roca casually cooking. She is shocked by the ruined sprouts of hair sticking out between the protruding patches of Silver’s scalp. She is too shocked to know if she should feel some new great danger or not.
“What on Earth?” says Lin.
“He says we didn't latch it right. We should have double-checked.”
Lin thinks back. “We did.”
“We should have triple checked.”
“Your hair, Kristen—”
“Fucking Sabia. Butchered me while I slept. Like a thief in the night, a snake in the grass, a spy behind enemy lines. And then she sneaked off to school this morning like the coward that she is.”
“That's my girl,” says Roca. “She’s not who you think.”
“Fuck you, Roca.”
“Can't keep us on the reservation forever, Silver.”
“You're so full of shit, Roca. What reservation did you ever live on?”
“Life Rez. As a brown person under the guns of your white rule. No race and class oppression in Iowa, you think?”
Silver points at her own head, looks at Lin. “Can you fix this shit, Ellen? Can you make this respectable? Presentable? Electable?”
Lin considers. She approaches and reaches out with both hands, then pulls back without a touch.
“How would feel about a clean shave?”
Silver glowers.
“We'll be fine, Kristen. In the end.”
It’s Senior Class Day.
Sabia's high school gym is packed with students, parents, extended family. All the underclass students sit in bleachers on both sides. Families in folding chairs fill the middle floor. Teachers stand here and there. The senior class sits on lines of folding chairs on the stage at the end of the gym. The seating order happens to put Sabia at the left edge of her classmates, she cannot fail to note. She is bored and ready to go home.
As customary, the seniors have picked one another as “Mostly Likely” to be or do something in life. “Mostly Likely” to succeed. Most athletic. “Most likely” to be a dentist, a farmer, a drifter, a clown, etc. Some funny, some serious.
At a lectern onstage between the class and the crowd, Stiega Larsson, the senior class President, moderates and reads through the list of each “Most Likely” student one-by-one.
“Most likely to get a trillion views on Youtube!” Stiega shouts. “Billy 'The Moto Kid' Yonkin!”
Billy stands to be acknowledged. He holds his drone. He holds it high. People throughout the gym and onstage applaud and cheer. Sabia does not. She dead-eyes Billy when he smirks and looks over at her. Finally he sits down.
“A new category has been created this year,” Stiega announces. “Most Revolutionary! Sabia Perez!”
Sabia stands reluctantly. Along with perfunctory applause and cheers, a chant breaks out. At first it involves only a few classmates and other allies. “Meet the Demands! Meet the Demands!” And then the chant spreads.
It grows. It thunders — if as much in fun as serious. Not all join in, especially the older adults. Others roar as loud as at any ball game, shaking the gym.
“Meet the demands! Meet the demands! Meet the demands!”
Sabia is surprised. She begins to wordlessly pump her left fist in time with the chant. She scans the gym, meets the eyes of hundreds of people, takes it all in. Billy the Moto Kid live-streams the scene.
The chanting class president Stiega Larsson walks over and bumps fists with Sabia. And why not? Stiega is a longtime ally.
Sabia is the only student standing, apart from Stiega and Billy who goes to the corner of the stage to get the best wide angle. Sabia appears to lead the chant where she stands — all eyes on her — though she is not even speaking. She merely pumps her fist in time with the chant, following the crowd who follows her. So many fists in the air. So many voices. So much energy. So much life.
Sabia’s allies jump to their feet. And then most of her classmates, pumping their fists with the chant. Soon the entire school is on its feet, roaring. Why not? It's so boring to sit. Even some of the senior class parents rise and join in with the students and other family members.
Stiega Larsson returns to the lectern but faces Sabia and continues to shout and fist pump along with everyone else.
Billy the Moto Kid begins to move around the stage, getting close-ups for his live-stream. He keeps his distance from Sabia though, as if he knows what might happen.
“Meet the demands! Meet the demands! Meet the demands!”
Sabia is shocked to feel tears in her eyes. It's as though she has won a state championship in some highly valued sport. She knows this support may be a mile wide and only an inch deep, but she feels as moved as if the impulse and outpouring runs as deep as wide.
Sabia pumps her fist on the final word of each phrase. Finally, she begins to shout in the rhythm of one word only:
“...Demands! ...Demands! ...Demands!”
The chant goes on much longer than anyone might expect — a greater celebration than has been heard before in the gym. Sabia faces her classmates. She expects to never see most of them after graduation, but for now they are united in something far larger than any one might be individually, or “Most Likely” become.
Sabia throws her left fist in time with the cry of her classmates and the people, young and old:
“...Demands! ...Demands! ...Demands!”
Long after dark, President Silver wakes. She feels restless. She gets up and goes to Sabia's bedroom. Empty. She moves to the great room. There sits Roca by a lamp flipping through a horticultural magazine.
“Where's Sabia?” says Silver.
“What are you doing up, Kristen?” Roca checks a clock. “It's two in the morning.”
“I can't fucking sleep. I had my head butchered in the middle of last night. Remember? Worse than any nightmare. That’s Sabia for you. Her class might call her “Most Revolutionary” — if only they knew — I call her “Most Nightmarish!” I checked her room. I thought I might throw a bucket of water on her head. Where is she? What is she plotting now?”
“To tell you the truth, President Silver, I don’t know and I can’t imagine. So don’t badger me. Sabia took the truck.”
President Silver wonders whether or not Roca is lying. “Christ,” she says. “What a nutty teen.”
Silver returns to her bedroom but is put off by the small empty space. It reminds her too much of the bunker. She goes back to the great room.
“This is the fucking craziest campaign I've ever been on,” Silver says to Roca.
Roca lowers the magazine. What can he possibly say in the middle of the night about political campaigns or anything at all to the President of the United States of America who is holding herself “hostage” in his living room?
“It's no joke,” says Silver.
“I guess not,” says Roca.
“Sabia really is crazy. Even for this crazy fucking world.”
Roca longs to be a good host. But this one guest of his, she’s a real trial.
Roca wonders if President Silver has digestion issues. He is hardly a Puritan of food himself as his abused heart can tell you. He does love bread even though he knows it’s not good for him. Sabia won’t let him forget. She tells him that the gut is linked directly to the mind, that the microbiota of your intestines affect your brain, and can make you either depressed or brain-fogged or clear eyed and happy, ideally. Sabia suggests fasting followed by a fresh salad, lettuce and cabbage mixed with sprouted seeds and nuts. Unfiltered extra virgin olive oil. Clean salt. “A Feast of the Divine,” Sabia tells him.
Maybe that would fix the President, Roca wonders. Tomorrow, he thinks, tomorrow he will see what he can do. Tonight it’s too late.
President Silver fails to find a place to put her energy. After wandering aimless around the great room, she gives up and returns to bed.
Roca worries anew about Sabia. He heard her moving in the great room before leaving an hour ago. What’s really no joke is going out late at night in the Iowa winter. By yourself. Unless you are meeting the demands of a job, you rarely need to do it, and you rarely should. Or never.
Roca expects President Silver to come back and harangue him further. Time passes though and Silver does not reappear. Roca is relieved to be alone in his concern. He continues to read and to wait up for Sabia.
Sabia slams the door of her truck against the night-hidden countryside and steps through a flurry of snow onto an old porch, inadvertently hauntingly lit. She opens the storm door, then knocks on the main door of the farmhouse. Jenna Ryzcek swings it wide open.
“Sabia!”
“Jenna!”
They wrap each other in a big hug. A couple peck kisses and they move inside.
Sabia flips open a large pocketknife and holds it first to Jenna's face, before pointing at Jenna's ankle monitor.
“Now’s the time, Girl.”
Jenna backs up. “I told you. I want go straight. I want to do my time. Sabia. Come clean and get through prison no troubles.”
“Now’s the time, Jenna.”
“Maybe then start a family, Sabia. Maybe adopt.”
“You’re coming with me now, Jenna.”
“We didn't get shit done blowing up pipelines, we didn't stop a thing. All we did was cost those fuckers tens of millions of dollars when they are worth billions. Trillions.”
“Let’s go.”
“We were a mere delay to those fuckers, Sabia. A speed bump. We got run over. Nothing more.”
“I don't believe that and neither do you. Jenna. Anyway, Alecta will stop it all now. She will take over where we left off.”
“If even she can.”
“Come with me, Jenna. You know you want to.”
“You're crazy, Sabia.”
“So what? We can do this. We’re more alive than most, Jenna. We need to be. Alive as can be — in a time of death and defeat. We need to win. When I cut this band, you’ll have no choice. They will come after you like the mad men that they are. And you will need to run. With me.”
“Sabia, my life is a mess already.”
Sabia reaches for Jenna, the base of her neck, pulls close. “Mess is life, Jenna. I need you with me.”
“Sabia. I'm twice as old as you are and I have nothing. I can’t be a burden on you.”
Sabia shakes Jenna by her neck.
“I'm not leaving you to their lack of mercy, Jenna. I’m not leaving you alone. Nope — not leaving without you. We go together. Again.”
“They would come looking for you and find you too, as accomplice. Where could I possibly hide?”
Sabia smiles. “You leave that to me. We won't go far. Don't need to. My family prepared for this. Long ago.”
“A tornado shelter? Some hole in the ground? How can anyone live like that?”
“It’s no storm cave, I promise. As a matter of fact, it’s home. A good home. More like any good home than maybe you can imagine.”
“No, Sabia.”
“Hundred percent, Jenna.”
“How does this end except badly? I want to know that.”
“It ends when I say it ends. Okay. With a pardon. Alecta will pardon me and everyone close to me. You watch.” Sabia holds up the knife. “Come on, Jenna.”
And then Jenna hugs Sabia, hugs her tight. Jenna was ready to go ever since she learned Roca was still alive. Hell, if Roca can survive in hiding, why not her? At least she would have company. Prison can fucking wait. Fuck prison.
Jenna goes to a closet and pulls out a huge backpack. She holds it up to show Sabia. “I'm already packed, Girl!”
Sabia laughs. “Damn straight! You got revolutionary blood in your veins!”
“Plus, I’m bored too. And prison would be worse.”
“That’s socialist blood, Jenna. You and me, we’re not all bled out and munched up by zombies and vampires like the mutilated hordes in this world who do so many terrible things. We’re no walking dead.”
“Hope not, Girl.” Jenna smiles. “I guess the brainwashing didn't take, did it? Not with me, not with you. Not eventually. I don’t know why. I almost wish it had. Could've been a lot easier life. Maybe even a good life. Of a kind.”
“Life is good if you’ve got it,” says Sabia. “But we need to make it good for all. Plus, I’m too pissy to sit on my ass and pretend otherwise. And so are you.”
Jenna extends her manacled foot. Sabia kneels. She slices through the strap.
They run out through snow to Sabia’s old pickup. They climb in. Sabia starts the truck, guns the gas.
“It’s a great day to be alive and on the run in Iowa!” she says.
“Let’s move, let’s move!” says Jenna.
It’s nighttime. They go fast and deep in rural Iowa, Sabia and Jenna. It’s like they are racing to attack the oil pipeline transfer station all over again. They go long and hard. They need to. Their new attack extends all the way through Washington DC, and beyond.
An alarm screeches at the Iowa Department of Corrections home confinement center. A worker checks the data onscreen: Ryzcek, Jenna.
He looks over the list of numbers for the FBI, Iowa State Police, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the US Marshals Service.
“Come one, come all,” he says to himself.
He makes the calls, leaves a few messages, and reaches an officer with the FBI and one with the State Police: “Jenna Ryzcek. Band broken. Just now. Yes, middle of the night, I know. Sorry for the inconvenience.” He gives out her address and leaves it at that, his job done.
The worker is glad not to be the one sent out to chase Jenna Ryzcek in the depths of winter this frigid night. Maybe the pursuit will wait till morning anyway. He looks to the windows at the dark and the cold. Might be for the best. He does not particularly care. He fucking doesn’t know Jenna Ryzcek. Shit, she may be one of the good guys. Whatever. He can only do the job that he is paid to do. True enough that.
He swivels in his chair and thinks it through.
Sabia drives fast into the frozen Iowa countryside. She follows back roads only. The truck skids around an icy corner and powers on. Jenna grabs the truck dash and holds tight.
“Whoa, Girl,” says Jenna.
“Drive fast and take chances — that's what they say,” says Sabia.
“A stupid thing to say.”
“And do. But sometimes—”
The truck skids around another corner.
“What would you do if we crashed out here?”
“Call Roca.”
“I can't believe he's alive, Sabia. How could you?”
“What? Lie?”
“Get away with it.”
“You know what I learned, Jenna? Roca is even more crafty, smart, and brave than I knew. Like you and me. He’s not mean though. Not mean enough. Like you and me.”
“No one is like you, Sabia.”
“You are.”
Maybe, thinks Jenna. Maybe not. Jenna watches Sabia, laser-focused behind the wheel.
We all use our illusions, Jenna thinks. Not knowing any better. We guess and go.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” says Sabia.
Jenna hangs on, as Sabia speeds through the night.
President Silver wakes early, pulls on thick wool socks, slips into one of Sabia’s flannel shirts, and pads into the kitchen. She picks up Sabia's colorful knit cap from the mudroom since she has been too mad to do a damn thing about her hair. She puts a kettle of water on the stove to heat for tea. From a jar on the counter, she prepares a clasp strainer of herbs, sets it in a coffee mug. She’s thirsty. She wants a big drink.
“Good morning, Ms. President.”
The voice is unfamiliar — Silver’s blood contracts and goes cold. Her stomach pulls up and back toward her spine. She slowly turns and sees a calm and relaxed young blonde woman lounging in a chair in the far dark corner of the great room. Watching her.
“Who in Hell are you?”
“We're very far from Hell,” says Jenna. “I haven't felt this safe and secure in a long time.”
“You found us? You're FBI?”
Jenna laughs. “That would be, ‘No,’ Madame President. Don't worry, I won't turn you in. The FBI is looking for me, too. I'm hiding, just like you.”
“I'm not a criminal,” says Silver. “I'm kidnapped, actually.”
“I know exactly what you are, President Silver. Sabia told me the whole story.”
Sabia. Goddamn it. Will the Evil surprises from Sabia never end? “What did Sabia tell you exactly? And when?”
“Whenever. Everything. A while back. She brought me here last night for safe keeping. I couldn't sleep. I'm glad to get away, you know. I escaped. I’m free.” Jenna holds up her bare ankle. “No more shackle.”
“You’re a violent criminal? Should I be afraid?”
“I don’t know,” says Jenna, with a smile. “Maybe.”
Silver’s head itches. She adjusts her cap. “Not even Roca knows where Sabia went last night. At least that’s what he said. But you must be one of Sabia's criminal friends.”
Jenna raises her hands in mock surrender. “You got me. Except that — even more dangerous — I’m one of Sabia’s revolutionary friends.”
“Revolutionary, criminal, same thing.”
“To a police state.”
“To a rational mind.”
“In the eyes of the police, I'm a criminal. In the eyes of the goddess Justice, I’m — something different. Either way, I’m due to prison soon. Sabia suggested I come stay with her here instead. And who can refuse Sabia?”
President Silver shakes her right fist at the ceiling. “I can. I do every day.”
“Yet here you are. Your choice. With your campaign manager Ellen Lin. And Roca. And whoever else Sabia might invite before this whole thing ends.”
“Fall,” says Silver. “By fall it will be all done. I’ll be re-elected and out of here.”
“So let’s make it a full-blown party until then,” says Jenna. “How about a party of Freedom, Justice, Peace, and Equality. How does that sound? Good to you? Like fun?”
“You realize you’re speaking to the President of the United States of America, right? I’ve got better things to do than play games and wear party hats with a bunch of lunatic idealists hiding out like scared mice underground.”
“I don’t think you do,” says Jenna.
“President Silver waits for the tea kettle to steam and then pours the water into her mug. “What kind of criminal are you, exactly? A bank robber?”
“I wish,” says Jenna. “Unfortunately banks and cash are not my specialty. The shit I do, it doesn’t pay. The opposite. I pay. I’m a Water Protector. An Earth Saver.”
“An Earth Savior?”
“Well — saver.”
“An eco-terrorist.”
“That’s what they call me. But the only thing I destroy are oil pipelines and heavy machinery — the killers’ frontline weapons. The Dakota Access Pipeline, ever heard of it? You approved it. You and every other President. Except Alecta.”
“How'd you get caught?”
“Do I look caught to you, Madame President?”
“Cut the bullshit.”
“We did it the old-fashioned way. Blowing shit up. Me and Jasmine Maldonado. She's fighting her conviction and sentencing still. We hoped we were making a statement that couldn't be ignored — shutting down the deadly fossil fuel industry. Instead the corporate media buried us alive. Then the FBI closed in and Jasmine and I went on the run. They learned all about us. Took awhile. I think they didn’t want to give us publicity by arresting us, so we decided to surrender in or own way to get the most media coverage, for the biggest impact. They completely missed Sabia though.”
“That little criminal. How did she get away?”
“Jasmine and I covered for her. I guess it's okay to say so now, considering the circumstances — pardon or bust. Me, Jasmine, Sabia. Sabia was never caught and was smart to say nothing.”
“So Sabia was bombing things all along. How many things? Did she bomb my bus? Oh my God—”
“That was your White Supremacist compatriots who bombed you, Silver. Sabia was fifteen at the time when she was with me and Jasmine running wild through Iowa.”
“Well Jesus fucking Christ. No wonder. She's been knocking over banks since she could crawl. A real red diaper baby. What's your name? Do I know you?”
“Jenna Ryzcek.”
“Would you like some tea, Jenna.”
“Why not?”
President Silver considers her big mug of tea. “Let’s do this.” She manages to split it into two smaller teacups. She brings tea to Jenna and sits in a chair beside her.
“Well, shit Jenna, call me, Kristen. Everyone else around here does, if they're feeling kind. I suppose you're right, I'll need to pardon you too. When the time comes.”
“I accept.”
“You already sound far more reasonable than Sabia.”
“I'm trying to get my life back together,” says Jenna. “Not that anyone is more reasonable than Sabia.”
Silver half chokes on her tea.
“Okay. Everyone I’ve ever known is more reasonable than Sabia. Even that fucker Barry Bombarill. Your girl Sabia is beyond the pale. Maybe you should help her with that. Then again, you’re a bomber yourself.”
Jenna nods. “I am that. Sabia says you'll never pardon anyone.”
“Sabia says a lot of things.”
“Basically all of which I believe.”
President Silver's mouth tightens.
“When push comes to shove, President Silver, I shove with Sabia.”
Silver gets up and reheats the kettle on the burner.
Jenna watches the President closely. And President Silver knows she is watched.
In the great room in front of the TV, they all gather and wait for Acting President Alecta O'Roura-Chavez to address the nation — Sabia, Roca, Silver, Lin, and Jenna, each with varying amounts of impatience. Roca is the least impatient. He luxuriates in the return to his home, to his health, and in the ample company underground. Never have there been more people than this at one time in his haven of a home.
Silver continues to hide her destroyed hair under Sabia’s colorful cap. Sabia walks past and taps Silver’s cap with one finger. “You’re all set for the next ransom video with that hairdo, Kristen. Nice try locking me and Roca in the bunker. That was genius.”
“Real mature, Sabia,” says Lin. “You could have seriously injured the President with those scissors and your barbaric barber attack.”
“The risks of high office,” says Sabia.
Silver almost does not mind. She thinks Sabia may be on to something about using the nasty effect of her head for the next hostage video, if there need be one.
On TV, Alecta O’Roura-Chavez takes center stage. She thanks the members of the media and everyone assembled. She pounds the lectern: “Our investigations into the bombing will continue, along with the search for all assassins and coup plotters. Our highest priority right now is to locate and capture former FBI Director Maximilan Castelan who has refused to surrender to authorities.”
“Get him,” says Lin. “Get 'em all. Lock 'em up and throw away the key.”
President Silver watches in silence. She grows angry and jealous at everything she is missing out on and cannot control.
Alecta O'Roura-Chavez looks and sounds determined and proud as she reads through a carefully constructed script, documenting the many progressive accomplishments of her young administration and vowing many more to come — most in relation to the ransom demands for the release of President Silver and Ellen Lin. Alecta vows to see justice served to those involved in the bombing and coup. And then Alecta focuses with ever greater concern upon the camera. Suddenly she begins to speak directly, in effect, to Sabia:
“Now, I want to make a personal appeal, to those who hold President Silver and Ms. Lin for ransom.” Jenna looks at Sabia whose gaze rapidly intensifies onto the screen. “Do them no harm. It’s not too late to free the President and Ellen Lin, for we must be a merciful people as well as just. Mercy can be a great part of justice in which all may benefit. Please, release President Silver and Ellen Lin, now. Our nation would greatly appreciate your doing so. I would personally greatly appreciate your doing so.”
Alecta looks directly at the camera for a long moment, then with her left hand holds up a tennis ball. She puts her other hand over her heart.
“She's talking to you, Sabia,” says Silver.
The camera moves for the first time throughout the whole talk. Alecta waits. She has clearly ordered it. The camera zooms in. Alecta’s face fills the entire screen. Here eyes are practically inside Sabia’s underground home. “I hope you will free President Silver and Ellen Lin — immediately. I personally urge you to do so — now.”
Sabia’s head rocks back as if she has been struck.
“Motherfucker!” says Sabia.
Sabia turns on President Silver.
“She’s talking to you, Silver-Death! Are you finally going to do anything she says?”
Sabia storms to the TV.
“Fuck!”
Sabia powers off the TV.
“Anyone needs me, I’ll be in the greenhouse saving the fucking world, since no one else cares to.” Sabia leaves the great room for the greenhouse.
“Our hero needs some rest,” says Roca.
Silver fumes. She adjusts her cap. “Silver-Death, my ass.” She turns to Jenna, pushes her.
“Hey!” Jenna raises her arms, and prepares to defend herself.
“You created a little monster!” says Silver. “You made her that way! You’re older. You should know better.”
“Stop it,” says Roca. He steps between Jenna and Silver. “Jenna's my real guest here, Madame President.”
Silver tries to push Roca aside.
Jenna reaches out and balances Roca. She holds off Silver. “Pick on someone your own weight and age, Bitch!”
Lin slides between Silver and Roca and Jenna. “Easy,” says Lin. “We're all in this together, okay?”
“You don’t fuck with Sabia, anymore than you fuck with me,” says Jenna to Silver. “Haven’t you figured that out by now? You're complicit anyhow.”
“She's not,” says Lin. “President Silver is not complicit in anything. She’s merely trying to keep a bad situation from getting worse.”
“Oh, bullshit,” says Roca.
“Be that as it may,” says Lin. “Let’s see what’s going on with the speech.” She reaches over to the TV and powers it back on. The news has cut to images of the blast site and the Perez farmhouse.
“There we are,” says President Silver. “Middle of fucking Iowa.”
Boom! A loud explosion is heard in the direction of the greenhouse. They all react with shock. They all look toward the sound.
Moments earlier—
Sabia storms into the greenhouse.
“Fuckin' everyone's a traitor,” she says. “Even fucking Alecta. How dare she come after me. How dare she accuse me of doing the wrong thing. How dare she—”
Sabia walks the length of the greenhouse. She turns. She stops and wonders if Alecta is merely covering her ass by appearing to plead for Silver's return.
It did not seem that way, but can Alecta really mean it? How? She and Sabia are saving the the country and world by Silver's absence.
Alecta must know now that she is the kidnapper, and Alecta loves her like she loves Alecta. The two of them, it's all about the Revolution. Everything for the Revolution.
There are no more hostages anyhow. If President Silver wants to “free” herself, Sabia is no longer in position to stop her.
Everyone is a conspirator or co-conspirator now. The revolution has morphed.
Sabia goes to the frog pond and waterfall to consult with the frogs and the watersong.
“Who can say that social ransom is not righteous?”
Sabia sees no frogs. The water flows continuous.
“Especially since it all sort of happened on its own. Almost.”
In her own backyard. In her own home.
Silver is only looking our for herself, whereas Sabia is here for the People. So how can Alecta blame Sabia? Alecta knows that.
Sabia hears a dull whirring noise above, outside. She looks up. Billy Yonkin's drone descends toward the greenhouse roof about to touch down.
Boom! The drone is blasted to bits. Exploded pieces of plastic and metal clatter onto the greenhouse.
A bright snow parka outside catches Sabia’s eye, half-hidden behind the trunk of a dormant oak tree. It's Avery Yonkin. She looks more closely beneath the flutter and shimmer of dried leaves that hang on in their tenacious winter grip, marvel of nature. Avery crouches there with a big gun, a shotgun. Mad marvel of man.
Avery sees Sabia inside. He glances around the landscape. Then he races to the greenhouse.
Sabia meets Avery at the door.
“Give me that.” Sabia takes the gun from his hands and pulls him inside.
“Got any more shells?”
Avery pulls a box of shotgun shells from a coat pocket. Sabia takes the box.
“Thank you for doing that. Good shot.”
“Billy wasn’t going to stop.”
“I know.” Sabia sets the shotgun shells in a planter.
Then she sees Billy approach on his snowmobile.
“Get down, get down!” Sabia pushes Avery out of sight behind trees and plants.
“Careful, Sabia, that thing is loaded!”
Billy rides to the greenhouse wall. He gets off the snowmobile, picks up pieces of drone. “Goddamn son of a bitch!”
Sabia walks up to Billy on the other side of the glass and waves the full length of the shotgun at his face. They stand nearly nose to nose through two panes of plate glass.
“Billy! You creep! Come around here again and I’ll shoot a hole in your fucking snowmobile!”
Billy shakes his fist at Sabia. “You'll pay for this, Sabia!”
Sabia steps back and points the shotgun at Billy — the barrel tip and lead shot and Billy's body separated by mere glass and air and Sabia’s will, nothing more. “Yeah, I don't think so,” says Sabia.
She does however keep her finger away from the trigger. She may be crazy, not stupid. Not in the moment, at least.
Billy spins from the point of the gun and positions himself behind a thick wood beam. “You're crazy, Sabia Perez!”
“You fucking spy, Billy! You creep!”
Billy air-punches Sabia. He looks closely at the shotgun. “Where did you get that gun, Sabia?”
“Where did you get that brain damage, Billy?”
Billy takes a last look at the shotgun, then mounts the snowmobile and rides off, leaving behind the blasted trash of his drone camera.
Avery gets up from floor.
“He thinks I did it,” says Sabia. “When he asks, tell him I wanted the gun to scare off the media.”
“I guess you did,” says Avery.
“I’ll pay for the gun, Avery. You watch your back around Billy.”
“I always had to before. Are you going to call the police on him?”
“Are you crazy? They would probably arrest me. I might call the President though. Alecta. I need to talk to her. I have a few things to say Alecta right now.”
Nobody bosses Sabia Perez, not even Alecta O’Roura-Chavez.
“I’ll teach you to shoot, Sabia.”
“I told you never come here without being invited.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“This one time, I’m glad you did.” Sabia kisses Avery on the cheek, then on the lips. “Now go beat your brother home, Avery. Bye.”
Sabia escorts Avery to the door, secures it behind him.
She retrieves the box of shotgun shells from the planter.
On phone, she searches: “How to use a shotgun.” She replaces the shell that Avery shot. The gun is fully loaded. She aims the shotgun the length of the greenhouse.
Then Sabia strides into the great room and aims the shotgun at President Silver. Lin screams.
“Holy shit, Girl,” says Jenna.
“Silver, don’t test me,” says Sabia. “Abuelo, open the door. Back to the bunker with them.”
“Sabia, wait. Let's think this through,” says Roca. “I think we can all get along here.”
“Don’t fail me now, Abuelo. Jenna, you do it. Take them. I'll show you where.”
“Don't be crazy, Sabia,” says Silver.
“I don't know why people want to call me that. I think it's time we found out how crazy I really can be.”
“I think we already know,” says Lin. “Sabia, Roca’s right. Think now. You hate guns. We all know you do.”
“Not today. Billy the Creepy Kid needed to learn a lesson. Do you want to be next, Silver-Blood?”
“Sabia, we’ll die down there,” says Silver. “It’s a dungeon. It's literally the end of the Earth. You won’t shoot us.”
“Try me. Taste of your own lack of medicine, Silver-Brain. Move it. Abuelo! Tell her!”
Silver and Lin stand immobile in front of Sabia’s gun. Sabia redirects the aim of the shotgun to their feet, which they nervously shift.
“Do you want to dance with your feet full of shot, Silver. How would you like to pick lead pellets out of your toes?”
“No,” says Roca.
“No!” says Jenna. “Sabia!”
“You’ll blow off our feet at that distance, Sabia. You don’t know what you’re doing,” says President Silver.
“Oh, I think I do,” says Sabia.
“Sabia, wait.” Roca goes to his bedroom.
“Even your own abuelo won’t help you this time, Sabia,” says Silver. “Put down the gun. Jenna, be responsible here.”
“Put it down, Sabia, please,” says Lin.
“Go ahead, run, Silver. If you want to pick metal out of your butt. If you’re lucky. No one knows you’re here, remember. No one needs to know. Ever. Maybe you were never here. I don’t think you were.”
“Sabia, don’t do this.”
“This isn’t right, Sabia.”
“Then get to the bunker. You can think long and hard about what’s right and what’s wrong down there, Silver-Killer. Get going.”
“Alecta doesn’t want you to do this, Sabia. You heard her,” says President Silver.
Roca re-emerges from his bedroom with a .22 rifle.
“I’m sorry, Sabia. I kept this gun hidden from you all these years. Sin of my father. His gun.” Roca points the gun above the heads of Silver and Lin. “I'm sorry, Ellen. Kristen.”
“We're not going anywhere, we’re not moving,” says President Silver. “You won't shoot us. We know you won’t.”
Jenna finds Roca's metal-tipped sturdy wood walking stick. She picks it up and points it like a sword at Silver and Lin. “Maybe they won't need to,” says Jenna. “Do what Sabia says.”
“Precisely,” says Sabia. “Who has the monopoly on violence now? Not the state. Not here. Nothing like it.”
“Listen to Sabia for once,” says Roca. “It's Alecta who will issue the pardons, not you, Silver. We all know that. No one believes you. You can’t be trusted. You proved it.”
“Long since,” says Jenna. “No one pardoned me. Where were you for me and Jasmine, President Silver?”
“I never even heard of you before today. Okay?”
“Exactly,” says Sabia. “Political prisoners don’t mean Jack Shit to you. You lock them up and throw away the key. Isn’t that right, Ellen?”
Ellen Lin looks like she is going to puke.
President Silver suddenly runs toward the mud room.
Jenna steps up, takes a full swing, and whacks the President’s shins with the walking stick.
Silver screams. She crumples to the floor. She does not try to get up. Jenna pushes the metal-tipped stick into Silver’s back to be sure.
Lin holds up her hands.
Sabia nods. “That's better.”
Maryland to West Virginia to Ohio to Indiana to Illinois to Iowa, ex-FBI Director Castelan avoids the interstates using a marked paper map. He follows even-numbered highways across the country — 26 to 180 to 340 to 50 to 250 to 30 to 224 to 24 to 116 to 34. He has the route entirely set. From Libertytown, Maryland to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia to Wheeling to Wooster to Decator to Peoria to Ottumwa. Castelan speeds across the Potomac, the Monongahela, the Ohio, the Scioto, the Wabash, the Illinois, and the Mississippi rivers and many other euphonious waterways named after the indigenous, in rough approximation of their many languages.
Castelan focuses only on the concrete, the asphalt and the clock, trying to get in as many miles before dawn as he can without speeding. He stops several times along the way for gas, coffee, and corn nuts, and to piss. Cash, car, gas, and a gun — will travel. Smartphone and disguise optional. Never mind the dead body in the trunk.
Night becomes day. Castelan closes in on Iowa. He needs to get gas near Farmington, Illinois — in the original land of the Potawatomi tribe, and once a stop on the Underground Railroad. Not that Castelan knows any of that, nor does he care. He sets the fuel nozzle and lets the tank fill. He walks to the trunk and considers its contents. He has a plan for the body. For Sabia. Who knows? Sabia might require some extra persuasion.
Castelan looks for security cameras on the pumps and building. He pats his beard.
Before long, Castelan pulls into the lakeside parking lot of a recreation area, in the same region of Iowa as the Perez farmhouse. Rathbun Lake is frozen and covered by an unbroken blanket of white, miles long. Castelan likes the look of it. It’s so peaceful. Castelan gets out and stretches his legs. He is almost where he intends to be.
In the bunker, President Kristen Silver limps on the treadmill, determined to walk off her injury.
In the kitchen, Ellen Lin makes an art of cleaning the dishes and other surfaces. She cleans where there is no need to. She tries to make everything impossibly shiny and new.
Silver finishes on the treadmill and moves to a seat at the kitchen table. Lin offers her a glass of water. Silver drinks it all. She is sweaty and does not care, will shower soon.
Lin gives up in the kitchen, throws aside a towel. On the couch she folds her legs and pulls a Mexican blanket onto her lap.
“It’s good to be alive, Kristen,” says Lin. She folds and unfolds, tucks and untucks the blanket. “What were we thinking coming into and Iowa and messing with these country folks.” She massages the course cotton fibers and picks lint off the blanket. “Do you think of your husband often, Kristen?”
“I notice you don't ask if I miss him,” says President Silver.
“Your relationship has rocks the size of cliffs, I know.”
“Everyone knows. People say it's a marriage of convenience. It wasn't. It was a marriage of inconvenience. To me.”
Neither Lin nor Silver laugh.
Lin loves the smooth and bumpy traditional feel of the blanket. She runs her palms repeatedly over the homey texture. She loves the reds and the blues and the yellows and greens and the brown and the purples and the lines and the curves of the soothing designs. She loves the playful stringy fringes. Who does not love a Mexican blanket? This could be the only kind of blanket left in the world, and Ellen Lin would love it even more. She loves the solid weight, the sturdy thickness, the light thinness. She hopes she might die wrapped in a Mexican blanket where she feels safe and warm and secure.
“I never thought I could get married, you know,” says Lin. “Now I'm beginning to think, Why not? People marry when they feel they can't grow anymore, on their own. Isn't that right?”
“Fuck if I know. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It's not that you're not growing, Ellen. It's that you're stuck in a cave. Here with me. Anyway, marriage was the strangest sort of mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t Kristen. Not for you. Not at first.”
“I think it was. I wanted something different, something more, something uplifting. What I got was a step into the abyss of two people always looking the other way from each other.”
“You got to be President.”
“Despite him.”
“I mean. He doesn’t hurt you on on the campaign trail.”
“Well, don't take advice from me. Who can live with me, really? Anyone could live with you. Even I could. And here we are. You're great, Ellen.”
“No, I’m too — tightly wound.” She strokes the blanket. “I can be. I know that. I know it may not look that way, but I don’t veer too much to the left or the right, you know?”
“You’re fine, Ellen.”
“Sometimes I think I’m too normal to be interesting to anyone.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Most people are of no interest to anyone at all. Trust me. Ask my husband. But seriously, don’t sweat it.”
“I know I’m good on my own, and I like it. But I’m not good being bombed and kidnapped and, fucking, guns shoved in my face—”
“You do you, Ellen. I’ll do me. Don't stare at your monsters, and I won't stare at mine. Okay? Go easy on yourself. We can all improve. Every once in awhile.”
“It's just that I might like to improve alongside someone else.”
“Sure.” Silver sets aside the empty glass of water. “They will be a lucky man or woman, whoever they are, Ellen. But I like you just the way you are, and I think you do too.” Silver painfully stands. She places her empty water glass on Lin's clean counter. “But if you ever want to give someone a shot, and if it doesn't work out, send them right along their merry way. Or kick them over to me. I might be divorced by then. Of the two of us, I’m the hopeless romantic. Not you.”
“No way, Kristen. You will never get divorced. Because you bear up and you suffer through. You take pride in it. And sometimes I think you even like that old dog.”
Lin tucks the Mexican blanket more firmly around her, shaping it exactly to each part of her body. Then she pats it and smooths the wonderful fabric that cannot ever be said to be smooth.
“I don’t know,” says Silver. “It’s just that it can be easier not to choose, choosing is so hard.”
“One is as bad as the next, right?”
“Fuck no,” says Silver. “There’s always one worse.”
President Silver limps off to shower.
In the great room that evening after forcing Silver and Lin back down into the coal mine survival bunker, Sabia, Roca, and Jenna relax on chairs and the couch.
Sabia sets up her laptop so that they can all watch Billy the Moto Kid do a livestream from a room in the Yonkin farmhouse. He scheduled an interview with someone from an up-and-coming men’s movement channel.
“Look at this creep,” says Sabia.
“Which one,” says Jenna.
“Our creep,” says Sabia.
“That other guy looks old enough to be his dad,” says Jenna.
Roca does not glance over. He adjusts his glasses and flips through another seed catalog marking late orders for spring.
“So first I need to tell you about my day,” says Billy. “Sabia Perez blasted my drone with a shotgun that she stole from my brother Avery. I was flying it across the road from her house, perfectly legal. I was making these long swooping lines, and she comes onto the porch — boom!”
“What a liar,” says Sabia.
“Did you report this to the police?”
“No, Hell, I figure they have bigger things to worry about. I can handle Sabia. I need to get a better drone anyway, better video, better audio. My channel is massive now. Sabia Perez will be sorry she messed with Billy the Moto Kid. She thinks she’s some kind of revolutionary. A revolutionary do-gooder. But this shows you who she really is.”
“She thought you were spying on her? You weren’t though.”
“No way! I don’t know why she would think that. It’s a free country. If you ask me, Sabia is kind of weird the way she keeps to herself all the time. I tell you there’s something not right there in the Perez farmhouse.”
Roca Perez looks at the screen for the first time. “Fuck you, Billy. Someone should tell Billy boy Yonkin that pride goeth before the fucking fall.”
“Just ask Silver-Toes,” says Sabia.
The older man steers the interview and veers into speculation about “Why the modern conservative mind is not as popular as it used to be.”
Sabia slaps the laptop shut. “Because people wake up from the dead,” she says.
Roca continues to flip through the seed catalog, his rifle propped against the chair beside him.
Sabia stored the shotgun under her bed but asked Roca to keep out the rifle so she could learn to use it, this most unexpected family heirloom.
Jenna reaches over, takes the rifle.
She examines it, aims it away from them all, at the mudroom.
“Silver and Lin would flip out if you moved into the bunker with them, Jenna. You should do it,” says Sabia. “You could take fresh food, a grow light, a few plants. They would love you and hate you. You wouldn't need to stay long. Maybe you could teach them a few things about the way of the world that they don’t care to know. They would never listen to me.”
“I doubt they’d care for me either.”
“At least you're blonde and as white as a fairy snow princess. You have that going for you with Silver.”
“Speaking truth to power can be a colossal waste of time. You know the key is to get rid of power where it's not justified,” says Jenna. “Forget speaking to it.”
“That's why talking with Alecta was the best. I'll get her back here. You watch. Maybe even keep her.”
Roca and Jenna exchange a look.
“I mean, not keep her here for long. If I don't need to. Until she learns that I know what I'm doing.”
“Sabia. You need to know when to stop,” says Roca.
“Maybe the farmhouse could be, like, Alecta's Regional Iowa Command Center,” says Sabia.
“I think it already is.” Jenna lowers the aim of the rifle to the floor. “Listen to your abuelo, Sabia. Sometimes you need to stop.”
“I'll stop when the worms crawl through my skull.”
“Sabia—”
“There's no stopping,” says Sabia. “You can't. I can't. Not ever. And not now. We're all accomplices to kidnapping the President of the United States of America. We can’t go back from this. We don’t want to. We were born for it. We'll die heroes. Then we’ll stop.”
“This kidnapping can’t last forever,” says Jenna. “What then?”
“It goes on as long as I say it does. What are you going to do — kidnap me? The last thing we want to do is stop ourselves. Too many good people are forever stopping themselves. And look where it's gotten us. The fucking doorstep of Hell as a planet, a country, a culture.”
“So we die martyrs?” says Jenna.” Is that what you want? All of us dead. I thought you were against going to prison, against unnecessary sacrifice.”
“I ain't going to prison,” says Sabia. “Not now. No chance of that.”
“So how do we win?”
“The people win and we pay for it.”
“Martyrs then.”
“It's not really for us to say.”
“How much must we give?” says Jenna.
“Everything.”
“Everything—” says Roca, after a quiet moment. “Everything is a lot. Especially for two as young as you.”
Warm low lamplight in Sabia’s farmhouse bedroom.
Sabia is on top of Avery. They are as one. The only sounds are of their own making in the bed, except for the creaking of the old house by the ancient force that constantly strikes it and twists — the winter wind.
Avery's hands are all over Sabia and moving freely for the first time as she moves on him.
Avery is glad to bear all the weight of Sabia’s passion, though sometimes he wonders if she thinks he is always there, if she is always thinking of him, there. He likes Sabia more and more even if he begins to think he knows her less and less. He thinks it’s probably normal to be confused. He thinks he will come to know her entirely in time. He hopes so.
Gradually Sabia winds down, slows her rhythms, eases toward him. They kiss. Avery wonders if Sabia sensed him thinking about her.
Then Sabia rises again, and she works him until she comes. Avery watches. Sabia raises her left arm and flexes her left hand into a power fist.
Finally she leans forward onto him. She pounds her fist into the bed by his head.
Then they lay side by side in the dim light, hand in hand.
“How did you sneak out tonight?” Sabia asks Avery. They both stare at the ceiling.
“It's Billy they don't trust. Not me. It’s like they’re too worried about him to worry about me. Sometimes I think they don't even know I'm there.”
“True tonight,” says Sabia. “Families can be weird.”
“I know, right? Is your family weird?”
“My family’s dead. All except Roca.”
Avery faces Sabia. “Why is everything so messed up?”
Sabia looks away.
She knows.
She thinks she does.
“I don't know,” she says. There’s too much to say about that sort of thing. You can’t just talk about it sometimes. You need to live things through. And then you know.
Sabia has no desire to consider the state of disunion flat on her back in bed beside Avery. Not for the further education of Avery Yonkin, nor for any other reason. Things can wait. The revolution — Sabia is not in bed with the revolution tonight. It’s Avery, no more, no less.
Tomorrow, though, tomorrow — Sabia cannot know — tomorrow the revolution is coming to kill her.
She has no idea how close Castelan has come, how much he has learned, and how far he’s gone.
All that Sabia knows tonight is what it means to be fat with life at home in the old farmhouse. She feels full and complete with Avery beside her. There's time enough for love. Or if not, so much the worse.
Sabia lies by Avery, and they listen to that old song — strangely reassuring and familiar — the eerie sound of the Iowa winter wind batting the farmhouse. Over and over and over again. Seemingly without end.
