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Edited on Mon Nov-07-05 11:30 PM by bigtree
tentative title: 'Talking About a Revolution'
author: me
John Strong was marching, marking time by the sound of his boots as they echoed against the marble and granite buildings that lined the deserted city canyon’s broad avenue. He mouthed a quiet cadence as he strode:
“Your left, your left, your left right get on down!”
This was the first time that he had walked into town from this direction. It was still dark when his girl woke him up, screaming for him to get out as she drove him onto the early morning’s frosty lawn. His worn jeans had soaked straight through and they stiffened in the cold air. He struggled to pull his boots on over his bare, wet feet as he stumbled in the direction of downtown. The pants drooped low without his belt, which now lay in a heap in the alley behind her apartment with the rest of his belongings, where she threw them from 4th floor window. He reached down again to adjust the waistband up over the hungry middle of his lanky frame.
It was Sunday and the city was closed down because of the Free Trade protest and union rally at the port, the prospect of which had whipped the city council and their media cohorts into a futile fury. All they could manage was to frighten the locals and the tourists away, warning them against hazarding the certain gauntlet of cops and hired government enforcers, the armed protectors of the besieged commonwealth attempting to contain the certain hordes of invading, sign-carrying, chanting rabble rousers.
Strong held the rim of his jeans with one hand and dug into his front pocket with the other and fished out a couple of crumpled bills. It was the only money he had left anywhere. He reached around and pulled out a wrinkled banner that mapped the directions to the rally.
‘Say No to Free Trade’, read the stenciled pamphlet in bright red beneath the union logo. He twisted the paper until the tiny map faced up the avenue and he squinted to read the street signs against the rising sun. His thin, roan hair had grown onto his shoulders - more from poverty and neglect than rebellion - and it spilled untended over his brow and muddled his view.
He kept his pace through the intersection and took his bearings, gathering his slick bangs through his narrow fingers and pushing them back over his thinning crown and behind his ears. Massive ancient stones gathered from around the globe shouldered soot-covered foundations for the city’s sleeping towers and filthy metal monuments. They echoed his advance and mocked the burden of his forced march He kept to his silent cadence as he quickened his march to double time:
“Hey, hey Captain Jack.
Meet me down by the railroad track.
With that knife in my hand
I'm gonna be a cuttin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
For Uncle Sam
That’s what I am.”
Down the avenue, the gray facade on one side brightened into the improbable red and yellow arches of a McDonald’s sign hanging low over the entrance of a cellar store. He needed a bathroom. He looked inside and spotted a clerk behind the counter laughing with someone on the customer side. He pushed in and caught a hard stare from the gritty slacker behind the counter and he exchanged a look with his dangerous looking friend.
Strong forced a grin and pointed to the common bathroom in the middle of the hall. He grabbed the door handle and tried to push his way in, but it was blocked. A woman’s scratchy voice hollered from inside, “Hold on! Hold it! I’m in here! What do you want? You coming in here?”
He jumped back from the entrance. Down the hall the counter punks snickered. The voice inside the bathroom became syrupy and apologetic, “Just a moment! I’m coming out.” Strong could see her bearded profile through the crack in the door as she collected her clothes, perfumes, and lotions and stuffed them hastily into her pull cart, lapsing once again into her angry, incoherent muttering.
Strong stayed put. There was no way he was going any further without bursting. Better to make a stand here than settle for some alley wall in the back of a building. The bearded woman pulled out of the small room chattering to herself, alternately agreeable and scornful, and pushed out the front door.
Strong made his way in and out of her temporary dressing room and headed for the counter to spend his last money on something from the menu. The dreadlocked friend of the counter clerk leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets. If Strong had been outside he wouldn’t have put himself within running distance of these two characters. The deserted lobby felt like a dark alley.
He reached in his pocket and cautiously separated two crumpled ones from the fiver and dropped them on the counter with a weak smile and looked up into the eyes of the counter punk. “Fries and a small Coke. That’s all I got.” He pushed the money at the clerk, feigning a sigh.
Strong could see the punk against the wall glaring at him like was going to pop him any second, but he didn’t. Strong resisted the urge to turn and look the punk’s way and spun round the other direction with his bag of fries and soda, slipping out, finally, onto the familiar concrete.
He put his face in the bag and pulled out a few fries. Across the street to his right, someone hollered out, “Hey! Whadja you get for me mister?” A homeless old fellow lay wrapped in blankets against the wall of the building on the other side of the street, sitting up on his arm, waving at him.
“It’s all I got, man.” Strong held up his meager fries and Coke.
“How ‘bout a cigarette?” The old man was getting louder.
Strong had hesitated too long. He pulled out his last half pack as he crossed the street and took out two smokes. “Here you go man.” He tossed them on the pile of blankets and started off again.
“Hey, you got any money?” the old man hollered after him. “Hey! Come ‘ere boy!”
Strong wasn’t sticking around. He reached into his pocket and crumpled his last fiver into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder at the old man without looking back. He was on the march again and he could hear the wretch behind him scurrying for the money, cursing him.
He resumed his cadence of double time down the avenue. He could see the tip of the dome of the Capitol over the rise. There was still no traffic or pedestrians on the avenue but he could see a jam of cars and people farther up ahead. The sooty gray cavalcade of buildings ended in a long hall of flowering maples and the sidewalk was littered with their matched pairs of emerald pods.
Hiking into the city to hook up with the rally was a long shot, but it was the only thing that kept Strong from finding his own wall to slump against. He had spent a couple of hours at his girlfriend’s surfing the web for any work he could find. The rally was her idea though. They had argued over it, and he had shoved the banner in his pocket that she printed out for him just to stop her from yelling.
The flier said something about a big meeting of world trade ministers who wanted to ‘exploit the workers of Latin America and the Western Hemisphere’. The day before, the city had put on a festival to welcome the trade ministers to town with a carnival-like celebration in the center of town featuring The Sun Duke and his Caribbean Rythmics, a.k.a. ‘the Chairman’, named for his business ties to everything from oil rigs to fancy juke- joints.
The evening news said they didn’t expect the foreign ministers to come anywhere near the celebration or any of the planned protests, although the law required that the protesters be allowed within sight and sound of their meeting place.
The AFL-CIO and a splinter group called Worker Justice mustered up a coalition of labor, citizens' rights, and grassroots organizations to promote fair trade and worker’s concerns and to oppose the star-chamber of world economic powers who were plotting how to mob together to feather the bed for the expansion of the United States’ economic oligarchy.
The dissidents had planned for a full day of events around the city that included a teach-in, a typical union rally indoors, and a concert and rally at the waterfront.
But John Strong wasn’t there to protest anything. He had been out of serious work ever since they closed the Fire River Shipyard in Mass. in 1986, laying off 4,000 workers. He cared enough about protecting other workers rights. At the yard where he was last employed, there were all sorts of accidents and safety violations. He remembered a couple of his mates who had suffocated inside of a tank that had been closed and filled with water, and he could remember falls from broken railings, and fuel fires sparked by under-staffed weld crews and from outright neglect.
Strong wasn’t there for any of that. He had walked all the way downtown on the slim chance that he would find work at the rally. He would need clothes and an advance, but he was ready to board any ship or vessel that would take him on. He checked his wallet for his union card.
Ahead, in the middle of the avenue he could see what he thought was a long row of black motorcycles, but as he drew closer he realized that it was actually a solid wall of storm trooper cops dressed in futuristic black riot gear behind full body shields facing a small park, ready to advance on a relatively tiny crowd assembled there.
Partly covered by the wide trunks and low branches of the long row of maples, Strong strolled to the edge of the curb across from a little park which was filled with about 100 early rising marchers. He was apparently unnoticed by the phalanx of troopers who began to fan out around the gathering. Someone used a bullhorn to announce that the gathering was unlawful because no one had obtained a city permit to convene at that exact spot and ordered everyone to leave the square.
The band of purchased paramilitaries was splendidly outfitted in brand new full-body riot gear, military helmets with face shields, knee shins, elbow and shoulder pads, chin cups, nape pads, groin protectors, Kevlar vests, Kevlar gloves, thermoplastic, expandable side-handle batons, Smith & Wesson SWAT knives, Glock 17 handguns, and M-16 rifles.
The thugs were faced off against a mostly clueless gathering of what looked to Stone to be nothing more than a half-sleep group of young and old men and women in t-shirts and shorts who had gathered in the small park to organize before they marched.
The troopers began to rap their clubs against their shields and the marchers quickly began to gather their signs and belongings to leave. There was no way out, however, because they were quickly surrounded and trapped.
The attackers looked like gorillas, who, when provoked, try to intimidate by slapping their hands against their chests. It quickly became clear to Strong that the paramilitaries were not going to be satisfied just letting folks leave, and, in a unexpected rush of shiny black armor, the storm-troopers rushed forward, screaming and hollering at the terrorized crowd threatening to arrest them.
Strong held his ground on the outside of the scuffle, but it wasn’t necessarily safe ground. A man carrying something resembling a flamethrower fired a few rounds of invisible tear-gas mixed with dust into the square which, although unseen, could be immediately felt by the confused crowd of panicked and bewildered men, women, and children.
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