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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 35 SATURDAY the EIGHTH - The
ruins of dinner strewn about their table like bones in a wolverine's lair, Andy
sat back, feeling his stomach settle after a rare, somewhat frightening hour.
Table talk still buzzed in his ear like gnats. Glenn. Whining, boasting...
one or the other. Always! "...so,
you see, you'll always be a prophet without honor because you don't
know how to do deals, compromise. So you... I'm talking in the general sense
about the protest people, that is... retain your integrity but, while you do,
real people suffer and some
die. And it’s your fault," he
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Andy
replied without conviction... unfamiliar food and drink having muddled his
stomach and head. "So what's that prove? We let Ratso’s
people register voters at the Sanctuary. I'm not against registration... hell, if you're not registered then not voting is simply
laziness instead of an act of conscience."
"Glenn,"
Anne needled, "I don't see you
volunteering to join the New Lincoln Brigade and get your head shot off in the
jungle."
"I'd
hope I'm not that stupid. Besides,
"Yeah,"
Andy continued slowly, "that Washington situation’s too weird for me but
still boils down to guys all fighting over who gets to be in charge, no real
difference between left and right anymore.
Heat, but no light. Spooks staking out turf, dogs pissing on
hydrants... you'd have to be a doctor of spookocracy
to figure out what's really going on. Or
let the Russian hackers explain it for you.
Or the Ukrainians. Or Chinese. I'm not a doctor or a spook, don’t have a
computer, and I just hope I’ll never be one of your useful idiots..."
"You're
too pigheaded to be useful..." Anne assured him. “You’re eminently qualified to serve in Congress!”
"No way!" Andy picked up one of the bones... the
lamb was gone but there was a little skein of gristle to strip off and
worry. "Zealots I know would kill
me for eating flesh here, and those others... they'd do it for eating bacon in
a pig restaurant with a couple of pigs... some of 'em would kill each other
because they can't agree what would be the more important reason for killing
me. I mean... welcome to the century of the sensitive people, the
violently sensitive! And it ain’t just Pakistan or Libya… they called Pinhead's health
inspectors down on the Chinese market, not because of the plague, you see, but
claiming that the vendors oppress their chickens, ducks, frogs, turtles, crabs
and clams. They grok the psychology of clams!
Set fire to the Zika virus research lab at the U.
because either they were saving mice or... some of 'em, even, the
uber-sensitives... say that mosquitoes deserve self-determination." He
burped, looked away. “My… this girl,
woman called me a cisgender fossil; I don’t even know
what she was talking about. Only cis- I ever heard of was what they called the Soviet Union
while it was breaking up, before it went back to just plain old Russia again,
so am I some sort of Russian? Is that
bad?”
"Catfish
says that people who narrow their political focus down to single issue
obsessions," Anne changed the subject, "suffer from information
overload."
"Naah," Andy snapped back, "they’re just tuned in
to the loudest frequency. March off to wherever on their own wavelengths like
ghouls from one of those zombie n’ werewolf movies following the voice of
Wolverine Jack on the Nazi punk station, but with crummier music. I have to deal with them all! Pro-choicers,
dirt-eaters, lost Obamaniacs, Make America Greaters… people who protest electric bills, tree-spikers,
gun nuts, anti-gun nuts, missing children anything to prove to themselves and
somebody out there that they matter ...
all that concerns me for the next few
days is whether they’ll have their plot of God’s green earth to sleep by night
after ranting by day… maybe a slab of cardboard, too, if they’re lucky…"
"Well,
that's what Anne meant," Glenn stressed, "...you either specialize or
fall into whatever parade's passing through and wind up in a Disneyland of lost
causes. Do you think the Coalition's above all those distractions? Not so!
We’re winning, but we still need help…"
"Not
innarested! Wanna know what
the demo’s about, what I got tossed in jail for? Coupla months ago, before this permit thing blew up, people
we knew were gonna rent the Embassy for these forums people wanted on
everything under the sun... just the logistics, sublease out the politics to
anybody who wanted and came up with the cold, hard cash and no firearms
permitted in the building. OK, first to get this application in is some gay
group... and part of their workshop is the role of sadism and masochism in our
society. Shoulda invited Pinhead's police n' a
certain bureaucrat but, anyway... part of the committee says no, can't do it,
it's degrading to women. So you got lesbians on one side, feminists on the
other... then the animal-righters step in and say we gotta
kick the workshop out because they kill animals to make their leather whips and
motorcycle gear. Shoulda been easy, right, but
different people banning workshops for different reasons each want their position
on top on the letters of rejection... out of the three factions, which two do
you think get into actual physical bloodletting?"
"The humane communities?" Anne guessed.
"And
this goes on and on... Feminists for Fair Play for the Taliban gets into the
act, endorsing their fatwa on that little girl in Pakistan, over there, and,
finally, nobody wants the responsibility of setting up workshops; everybody
else is too busy trying to find some PC way of shutting everybody else
down. It’s like the great Occupy Wall
Street protests that fizzled soon as it turned cold, just like everybody knew
it would. Nothing gets
done! Ever!"
"I
draw the line at civil rights for fish," Glenn said hesitantly, "they
may have feelings but God made them healthy to eat. If he'd meant for them to
pick up the gun, he'd have given them fingers."
"And
that's another element of the problem," Andy said, "the whole health
nut kick. They’d have banned donuts on
campus but, then the police… you know?"
"Jack
goes along with that. He says the only reason governments get away with
imposing fascism is that they're promising the big "I",
Immortality," Anne explained. “And
that cost us a pile of Bloomberg money.”
"I
think he's on unsteady ground," Glenn clucked, "it's provocative, but
ultimately detrimental, to argue against safety. Look at those Republicans who refused to wear
masks and vaxx up, they’re going extinct. Some of them..."
"Why?"
Andy responded, taking out his GodMartTM
pack. "Before I have to go outside for another... don't want to sound like
a broken record, but I thought all we used to go through was to force some kind
of breakthrough, for liberation! OK... there was the war and the
assassinations, Nixon and Reagan and Trump... and then what? Terrorism! Now
what? Concentration camps in the desert for melanomically-incorrect
kids caught holding a bag of kat, or just plain
flaked while the beautiful people caught with one of those Federal raps on weed
get lawyers and community service and a month in ritzy rehab? The National I.D.? Palm
swipes for Whole Foods? Microchips in the necks of felons… which your Catfish person
supports, by the way? Savings tax? Dictatorship of the Insurocrats? Pill grannies smuggling in
cancer drugs, tracked by the cellphone companies and jailed for twenty years?
UN observers in the black helicopters snooping everywhere... how many
terrorists have they captured recently? If you can find a job, you still
have to drop your drawers and piss in a bottle whenever the boss feels like
jacking you off because the Supremes said private corporations aren’t subject
to public laws. If you can't, they make you go through psychological testing
from eighty thousand a year government shrinks or that yacht racing guy to get
forty dollars’ worth of rent stamps that they tax the people who do have jobs
for. Makes me glad I can't afford a car... what with all those tattletale
computers inside and cheerful gestapo roadblocks
every fifteen miles looking for Mexicans but they have to stop everybody
because it’s against policy to profile Mexicans. Then they bring in the drug dogs, and, if
they want your car, shit manifests. That
or having it get ripped off be sold for scrap cause no
one cares how many alarms you put in..."
“That’s
cynicism,” Glen demurred. “People like
you are what’s wrong with the left…”
“So
does that make you what’s right with the right?” Andy plucked the last handroll
from its bed. "What the fuckin' liberal idiots in Washington are after is
the extinction of humanity... in the sense of souls, if not bodies… absolute
elimination of every difference in thought, mind, size or character that
differentiates one individual from another.
Robo-world!
They’re the Souljackers. Just
like the Taliban. Or
Chinese social credit. Or Nanny-state Communism... but without the free healthcare and
cheap rent. Vote for Shmoomberg or Bloomberg and they’ll save you from those
diabolical Cokes and slap you into jail for child abuse if your kid goes
outside without a helmet. Live forever,
feel nothing and spend your last three decades in a bed full of piss and shit,
hooked up to IV 'n TV... that way murder and genocide isn't any worse than
turning the light off when you leave the room. For chrissakes,
the numero uno movement at
the U. is the pedophiles against circumcision, circulating their petitions
against cutting babies' weenies off. Not that I disagree, it sorta makes sense... but with all these wars on, millions
of people sleeping in the streets, vandalizing synagogues on behalf of
outlawing the bris?"
"I
always wondered," Anne mused, swishing wine around in her mouth, "if
the guests at these Jewish ceremonies ate brisket afterwards..."
"That’s
racist, Anne. If you're not doing
anything wrong," Glenn pointed back, "you should have
nothing to fear. Suicide and liberation are mutually exclusive in Christian
societies. Unless you're Jim Jones or Abbie Hoffman.
Or some of Tillerman's crazier militia people,
slinging terroristic threats..."
"Mark
Cobb?" Anne taunted him.
"That's
not fair!"
"Well,
when the Coalition was in an earlier phase... Tillerman
used to be much more powerful... it had a rather, how shall I say, patriarchal
flavor..."
"Oh yeah, that Rocky Mountain Mafia!" Glenn shot
Andy a conspiratorial smirk. "Funny thing... now Anne's supposed to keep,
what is it... lines of communication?
Open? With Tillerman
and his survivalists you read about in the papers..."
"Who
is Tillerman
anyway?" Andy inquired. "Most of those who want to come here and
protest don't know what to make of the Catfish, some of them even sort of like
him... but they all say Austin Tillerman is Hitler
reincarnated but with a full set of junk.
Or Trump, if he believed in global warming. Quoting from that manifesto… narcissists
don’t write policy papers, they write manifestos… from that militia guy who
killed all those migrants in New Mexico?
Except a few way-out Earth First types who've stopped coming round...
says in the Urinal he likes to have the Marlboro Man theme play when he gets
introduced. Wasn't that like Gary Hart… I mean, if he
was some sort of swinger, he couldn't have been that bad..."
"Fascist
accusations have been slung around so often, they're worth less than the air
that it takes to breathe them," Anne replied, and somewhat angrily.
"Yes, Tillerman is rich and he gets high marks
from Hannity and Glenn Beck and that crowd and used
to be a regular on O’Reilly before that Green New Deal flameout, even gets
grudging respect on Drudge… yes, he's concerned about the environment, but
without sounding all preachy and Al Gorey. And if you dig deep enough, I've no
doubt someone will pull skeletons from his closet. But he and some others...
not all from the burnt out boonies in Colorado... they did start
the CNC and the Catfish, well he just sort of moseyed into town after he had to
quit Congress, liked what he saw, and took over."
"And
thank the heavens and all little fishes that he did!" Glenn said.
"Want to know what Tillerman's really like? Ever
watch Dynasty - Next Generation on the cable? That mean
old white-haired billionaire? That's Tillerman! Flat taxes are too liberal, let’s bring back
Maggie Thatcher’s poll tax and the debtors’ prisons… Jack proposed it as a joke,
Tillerman’s serious.
Wants to seed the Arizona border and its failed wall with landmines...
even got Senator Joe Arpaio hollerin’
‘hold on, there’! Some
friend of the Earth!"
"What
an awful comparison!" Anne shuddered.
"Debates
don’t matter to me; don't have cable," Andy shrugged. "Don't even
have TV at the shelter anymore... except for the sound... and when the FCC cuts
off the U’s low-power feeds we won’t even have that. Don't have time to watch, anyway, always
somebody around to tell you what to think, some crisis to make you do what you
have to do.. What does Ratso
think... whoever he's for, I'm against."
Glenn
sidestepped as best he could, coughing lightly.
"Uh well... as you know, you don't always get to choose all your allies.
Look, Tillerman's bunch all have that fresh-scrubbed,
pink cheeked John Denver look... brains all full of snow and Kaopectate and eagles' wings, flapping 'round in nature's
boundless void. Atheist Teavangelicals!
They’re nothing but reincarnated alt-Trump Youth with a side of Paris
climate accords; rather be right than be, or support, the President… sorta like your bunch, come to think of it. Henri… he's always on the side that's
winning.”
"Hey,
I'm no expert, but I know that! Ratso teamed up with
Pinhead's Health Department to close down a lot of the old hotels here,
downtown, where poor people lived, a lot of
elderly? Said they were bringing them up
to code, then slapped on a paint job and sold them off as grad student
condos. The supposed public senior
housing never got off the ground, so we get those throwoffs
all the time at the Sanctuary, the ones that nursing homes won’t take with all
those new neO-bamacare rules. He's a piece of shit...
and anyone who collaborates with him… they’re shit, too."
"OK...
OK!" Glenn answered. "This shit's for dessert... anyone else? Piece of pie?"
"I'll
order if you do." Anne gathered her purse. "Have to pay a visit to
the little girl's room..."
She
left as Glenn gestured the waitress over to clear their plates and bring
dessert.
"Try
the blackberry. It's great. Trust me! Three..." Glenn decided for them all
before Andy could reply, "and three coffees..."
He
shook his head. "When you have something valuable to protect, maybe you
overreact, sometimes. You remember how Anne behaves around men."
"More
or less..." said Andy, poker-faced.
Glenn
shot an incriminating glance at the table of Turks, chewing their sensible
meals thoughtfully and conversing in low, glottal Baltic Sea tongues, brought
his hands up to the table, rested them there while his fingers performed
imaginary machinations, as if they were part of an assembly line. "She's supposed to be doing confidential work
with one of Tillerman's lieutenants - Rinker, this
communications slick. Nothing
dishonest. Just keeping them
happy and on the team when they lose... which they will. But I don't know, I
just hope she's keeping the personal and political separate..."
"Sort
of like undercover work?" Andy volunteered.
"That's
an unfortunate analogy..."
Andy
raised his hands. "Sorry!"
Glenn
raised an eyebrow to indicate Anne's imminent return. "What you do and
what I do isn't so different, except that what I do matters...
and I get paid for it.
And, by the way, don’t knock Bloomberg.
He’da been a terrible President, but he’s part
of the strategy…"
“What
strategy?” Andy scowled.
“Rayna’s strategy.
It’s all in the Catfish books and Don Jones Index lessons… flood the
election with minor parties, single issue candidates, favorite sons… it dilutes
the field, shakes people out of their mindset that they’ll always have to
choose between Republicans and Democrats.
And then…”
"Hello...
you look terrible!" Anne said, kissing Glenn on the forehead. "Was
the fish that bad?"
"I
did want to thank both of you for the permits," Andy
struggled. "From what I hear, you went to a lot of trouble with that
Congressman. I hope it didn't hurt you in other ways..."
Glenn's
eyes flickered coldly. "That... no, we'll get by..."
The
pie arrived, a welcome respite.
"I
didn't think we'd agree," Andy said, digging in, "but you wouldn't be
where you are without people in the streets. I'm certainly not as smart as you,
I don't have connections... hey, I'm just stating
facts. You don't get reform without the specter of revolution hovering in the
background!"
Glenn
spat out his forkful of pie. "A seed! This sucks." He raised his voice for the
benefit of the waitress, who'd moved on to another table. "Sucks!
You and people like you, you don't solve anything," he turned back.
"All you do is obstruct and get hauled away to prison."
"Without
Malcolm X threatening revolution and the Pantheners
cleaning their nails with switchblades," Andy reminded him, "Martin
Luther King would've been just another preacher in a slum congregation,
worrying about how to raise money to fix the church roof."
"Andy,
you've never known what you're talking about," Glenn said, shifting his
glare to stare Anne into putting down her fork, "...and I think that you
are going to have to face the fact you are probably never going
to have any influence about what happens, anyway."
"Maybe
it's that I'm just too busy dealing with the shit your influenza people keep
throwing at us to sit around and plan the big plans. Like this guy... killed
himself at the Hall of Justice this morning? Paulie,
from the Sanctuary... head case, nobody that you'd be proud to admit knowing.
Just a half-pint junkie thief who hated being locked up... wouldn't have made
it in one of the Catfish concentration camps either. System's
fault, or just his own?"
"His
own!" Glenn responded, cold as liquid helium, swirling around in vapors on
anniversary news footage from the
"Fascism
didn't march in with flags, bugles and parades... it crept in overnight, on
little cat feet. Americans make less real money than they did in 1952, blacks
and women less than back in 1928. Top dogs used to make more than workers...per
capita... than anywhere in the developed world except Brazil, if you call
what's down there with the burning the Amazon development, then those labor
guys overthrew the government, again, took over and pulled them past us so
we're dead last. Forty-fourth of forty-four. And like your Catfish says in that Don Jones
crap… hey, they still got public computers in the library, I keep up… bottom of
the barrel in healthcare. All that food
stamps and rent stamps do, while they last, is keep the poor alive to do their
robberies and shit and keep what's left of the middle class hating the poor
instead of uniting against the rich... I didn't cause any of that shit, I protested every step of the way, even with that
vacant-smiling prick in the White House..."
“That’s
racist!” Glenn stood up, throwing his
fork into the pie and spattering dark, grainy sauce over the tablecloth. “I mean, if you’re talking about Obama,” he
backpedaled…
"While
you were protesting, we worked. And I still have
appointments!" He leveled a finger at Anne. "You'd better be back
upstairs before ten, making those calls. I'm going to be checking on you!"
He gave her an eye/finger threat wielded, a few years ago, by DeNiro against Ben Affleck - Andy tried to remember - or
was it Ben Stiller? Ben
Folds? Fumbling with his wallet
as he rose, Glenn extracted two folded dollar-bills and tossed them towards the
table. "That's our tip... don't throw the cunt a penny more. Doesn't matter whether or not you sell out," he told Andy,
already halfway through the door, "only whether the check clears."
“Incel!” Andy snorted.
"Shit!"
Anne exclaimed, contemplating the filthy money now
draped across her gooey plate.
"Sorry..."
Andy began apologizing.
"Oh,
not that... he has the credit cards!"
"Uh
huh..." Andy said, spotting the same guard lingering by the entrance.
Finally he sighed, took the paper bag of cash from the City settlement out of
the corduroy jacket and motioned the waitress over to bring them their check.
"A man of substance!" Anne whistled. "Listen,
I have to get some details out of the way and hit the ATM, but we should get
together. Later.
Can you meet me around tennish?"
"I
guess so. Where?"
"I,
I don't know..." Anne realized. "Everything's changed around here.
Aren't there any places open we'd remember?"
Andy
thought. "There's Santo's. But it's changed... sort of. It's an oldies
bar, now."
"Well,
so are we! At any rate... Santo's in an hour. I love a
man with a fat bankroll in his pocket..."
They
clinked coffee cups. Andy paid the waitress, leaving a
generous tip as the unsmiling security guard poked his watermelon-sized head
into the Oak Room.
"Shouldn't
we do something about that?" Anne said, gesturing to the
blackberry goo-covered money still on her plate. "I mean... if we left it
she might think it some kind of an insult."
"You're
right," Andy said. He picked up the bills by a corner where they were
still somewhat clean. Outside a wizened little bum, an old Charlie Manson
lookalike in a thin green shirt and shit-stained trousers, sat, rocking back
and forth, against the mass of the Ivona like a mad
mullah contemplating the destruction of America. A styrofoam cup sat before him, anchored by pennies,
dimes and nickels and a scribbly cardboard sign. "It's Homless,
Hungrey And Alone Jesus, Lovs You!"
"Buy
yourself a bottle," he said.
The
little hobo stared and shook his head. "Can you spare more, it's three dollars now for a shortie.
Wine tax; From the fires in California..."
"Mmmm," was all Andy could say.
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