299 Days VIII: The War (39 page)

Freddy smiled, too. That was rare. Shipley had never seen Freddy smile before. Freddy
had been through a lot, more than most people would ever know. Times ten.

Allen Shipley looked at the dead man. He walked over and kicked his head with his
boot. “Bastard. That’s for Larry.”

What has happened to me? Shipley asked himself. He grew up in a nice family. His dad
was a preacher and his mom was a nurse. He had the most loving family imaginable.
He had rebelled against their apple pie and goodness but, in hindsight, they were
fine people.

It was hard being a preacher’s kid. Everyone expects you to be a goodie-goodie, but
Allen Shipley was no goodie-goodie. He was a tough guy. With a twist: he protected
the weak.

Allen was bigger than most kids and instinctively knew how to fight. He ruled the
playground in school. He ruled it by beating up bullies. He had protected the weak
since he was a little kid, when he started protecting his younger sister and brother.
He would just walk up to a situation, see if someone weaker was getting abused, and
start fighting the bully or bullies doing it. He couldn’t control it. His instincts
took over and he went into ass-kicking mode, even if it left him with split knuckles
and bruises.

Allen was an excellent student, but he hated school. He was very intelligent, but
he thought just about everything they were teaching him in school was stupid. He was
bored. All day in class he would think about the flag pole after school, which was
where the fights were. He was either fighting someone that day or figuring out who
to support or which bullies to get the next day.

The geeks and losers loved Allen. There was Allen, with a black leather jacket, looking
like a junior criminal, checking in with them to make sure no one was picking on them.
That never happened to geeks and losers. Guys in black leather jackets weren’t nice
to the weaklings.

Allen got kicked out of school all the time. He would get so frustrated with how stupid
the teachers were. He was solving their bullying problem, but he was the one who got
in trouble, which was when he started to hate corruption. Those bureaucrat teachers
just wanted to get rid of trouble makers, even when the “troublemaker” was doing the
right thing that the teachers were too weak or lazy to deal with themselves. They
should have given him a medal for all the wrongs he was righting at that school.

Allen remembered the day he got kicked out of high school for the last time. It was
a permanent suspension. His mom was in the principal’s office crying. Allen looked
at the principal, a hateful little man who loved to boss people around, especially
little kids who couldn’t fight back, and said, “Well, sir, no good deed goes unpunished.”
Allen got up and walked out. He wouldn’t see his family again for thirty years.

Allen stayed for the next several months at the homes of the geeks and losers he’d
helped. Everyone wanted to support him. He was constantly amazed how much respect
and thanks he received. He loved the losers. He felt at home with them. He realized
that he, too, was a loser, just not in the traditional sense. He was a loser because
he couldn’t manage to stay in school and fit in with everyone else – well, he couldn’t
fit in with all the stupid people and bullies. Fitting in was overrated, anyway.

Allen needed to leave his town of Cupertino, California. His parents were there and
they constantly carped on him to cut his hair, dress different, and go back to school.
He loved and respected them, but he couldn’t live in the same house with them. He
needed to do his own thing, so he spent his late teens and early twenties in Los Angeles.
It was the 1970s, when there were actually jobs for a young hard-working person. He
did all kinds of jobs, from fast food to construction. He’d rent an apartment with
a bunch of friends and have a good time.

When he turned twenty one, he got a job as a bouncer at a bar. Then he got offers
at better and better bars. Pretty soon it was clubs, very fancy ones with A-list stars.
This was LA, after all.

Allen earned tons of money, but he wasn’t happy. There were no losers around. Allen
missed them. He missed fighting bullies. He couldn’t shake the strong feeling that
he was supposed to fight bullies. So he got on a Greyhound bus one day and rode north.
He’d just get off in some town and start over. That was the extent of his plan.

The bus stopped in Olympia, Washington. Allen looked around. It seemed like a nice
town. The dome of the state capitol was visible from the Greyhound station. That was
different. Maybe this would be a good place to be.

“Stop it!” Allen heard a man scream. Two big guys were grabbing a retarded man and
taking his little cassette player with headphones. Allen ran over and beat the living
hell out of them, quickly and thoroughly. In the process, the retarded man’s cassette
player fell to the ground and broke. He was crying. That cassette player was everything
to him. With it, he was cool like everyone else.

Allen came over to the man. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you a new one.” The man couldn’t
believe it. Allen took out a $50 bill and said, “Let’s go get you another one.”

They walked a few blocks to an electronics store downtown. He told the man to pick
out whichever cassette player he wanted.

“My name is Monte,” the man said.

“I’m Mr. Shipley,” Allen said. He didn’t want to use his first name. He didn’t know
why. He just didn’t. Maybe because Allen was his dad’s name, too.

“Thank you, Mr. Shipley,” Monte said. “Why are you doing this?” Monte was used to
people trying to take advantage of him. His mom was always telling him to be careful
of strangers, but for some reason Monte felt safe around Mr. Shipley.

“Because people did something wrong and I can fix it,” Allen said. “That’s why. It’s
a good enough reason, don’t you think, Monte?”

“Yes, I do, Mr. Shipley,” Monte said. “Yes I do.” Monte smiled. That was why he was
doing this, Allen thought to himself. That smile. Monte’s self-respect and dignity.
That’s why he was doing this.

They got a really good cassette player with headphones, a Sony Walkman. It was an
upgrade from the one Monte had back at the bus station. Monte was so happy he couldn’t
believe it.

When it was time to leave, Monte wondered if this Mr. Shipley man would want to take
naked pictures of him like one of the other men who had helped him before. Monte had
said no to that other man. Monte knew that naked things were wrong. That man eventually
left him alone.

“Stay safe, Monte,” Allen said as he shook Monte’s hand. “And remember that God has
never made an insignificant person.”

Monte swelled up with pride. No one had ever said anything like that to him.

“Are you a preacher?” Monte asked.

Allen laughed. “No, not even close.”

“You should be,” Monte said. “You help people and, just now, you made me believe in
God. Thank you, Mr. Shipley.”

Allen cried for the first time in his life. That was it. He would be a preacher. But,
a preacher with long hair and a leather jacket. Not like his dad. He’d help people
on his terms, not by some rule book.

“There are some God people I know,” Monte said. “Let’s go see them.” Monte knew he
shouldn’t do that. He told his mom that he’d be home by 3:30 and it was already 4:10,
but he needed to show Mr. Shipley the God people.

They walked a few blocks in downtown Olympia from the retail area north to an industrial
area. The neighborhood got progressively worse as they went north. Not dangerous,
just sketchy.

“Union Gospel Mission,” said the sign. The place was a dump. There were various homeless
men and some women standing around in the parking lot. Losers. Allen’s kind of people.

Allen felt at home the second he saw the place. Monte introduced him to people and
pretty soon, Big Reggie, the “deacon,” greeted Allen.

“I want to be a preacher here,” Allen blurted out.

Big Reggie didn’t pay any attention. People came in high or drunk all the time. They
said all kinds of crazy things.

“No, seriously,” Allen said. “I want to be a preacher here.” Allen spent the next
twenty plus years of his life there at the Union Gospel Mission. He ministered. He
protected people. He called his parents one day to tell them that he was a preacher.
On his terms. They cried and took the first plane to come and see him. They were not
judgmental at all; they were so proud of their son. He was proud to be their son.

As time went on, things got rougher and rougher in the industrial area, which was
near the port of Olympia. More gang graffiti, more dangerous and deranged street people,
not the decent ones that Allen could work with. Most street people were harmless and
gentle. They got picked on by the mean ones. There were more and more mean ones.

Soon, constant crime became a fixture of activity down by the port. On occasion, Allen
would have to go out and knock some heads. Pretty soon, the word got out that Mr.
Shipley was not the guy to screw with. People left him and his mission people alone.

When the economy tanked, things got even worse. There were tons more people coming
to the mission. Allen had never seen so many. They were different: lots and lots of
“normal” people, not drunks and crazies. All these decent people who lost their jobs
were now at the mission, trying to find a place to stay and some food to eat.

The economy continued to spiral downward. More and more people became increasingly
desperate. There were no jobs. None. Not for these people. And the cops were getting
meaner and meaner. They had no tolerance for the “bums” and would do anything, including
beat them, to keep them in “their areas.” That was “Bum Town,” which was the area
around the mission and the port.

Not all cops were bad, but a couple definitely were. And the good cops didn’t stop
it. Allen would see that and get furious. Here were people who could stop bullying,
but did nothing, just like the teachers who kicked him out of school.

One night, two of the bad cops—the two worst—were beating one of Allen’s homeless
guys. Allen charged at them and beat the crap out of them. They were shocked. All
those stun guns and batons were useless against an experienced street fighter like
Allen.

“Stay the hell out of my area,” Allen said. “This is Mr. Shipley’s territory. Cops
are dead here.”

The cops stayed away from Bum Town after that. It became a police “no go” area. Right
about this time, the Olympia Police Department was having massive layoffs due to the
dropping tax receipts. The city would double taxes, but get less revenue.

The Olympia Police Department was now down to one third of their pre-Collapse strength.
One third - but crime had exploded. They had eight times the murders, and were on
pace for a twenty-fold increase. Theft went uninvestigated. They didn’t even try to
do anything about stolen cars anymore. If a car was stolen, a victim filled out a
report on a website and got an email back saying the police were working “diligently”
on the case. That’s was it. An email. That was the extent of the investigation.

So the police, who didn’t enjoy getting their ass kicked by some biker-looking preacher,
didn’t come back. They had other things to do. They let Mr. Shipley run Bum Town.

The warehouse across the street from the mission had been abandoned for a few years
now. The state fish and game department used it to print materials—yes, the state
fish and game department had its own print shop and produced printed materials that
no one read because everything was on the internet. After one of the many rounds of
budget cuts, even the “vital” fish and wildlife printing facility had to close. The
warehouse was boarded up.

The mission was bulging at the seams, so Allen took a crow bar, a bunch of guys, and
“converted” the warehouse into the “mission annex.” The state was in such disarray
at that point that they didn’t even care that one of their abandoned buildings was
being used by the mission.

Allen was a genius at getting donations, so pretty soon the “annex” was up and running,
housing two hundred homeless people.

Punk kids were coming into Bum Town and trying to beat up Mr. Shipley’s people for
fun. Bad idea. Allen organized patrols and, on three occasions, beat the hell out
of the kids. One of them ended up dying. Oops. Shouldn’t have beaten up one of Mr.
Shipley’s people. No cops ever came around to investigate. They were scared of Bum
Town.

The news right around this time was full of stories about the “teabaggers.” Allen
would watch the news and think about how the Patriots were doing what he was doing:
fighting government bullies. One of his big donors had a Don’t Tread on Me sticker
on a locker in his metal shop. Allen asked him about it and a conversation ensued.
Pretty soon, Allen was in the Patriot underground.

The Patriots used Bum Town to hide out. Mr. Shipley told his homeless people which
strangers were cool; everyone treated the Patriot soldiers and plainclothes operatives
with maximum respect because Mr. Shipley said so.

The Patriots also used the abandoned warehouses—Allen had taken over several by then—to
store things, like weapons. The Patriots even had full time guards in Bum Town to
protect the goods.

The Patriots gathered intelligence there, too. They would ask the homeless to keep
their eyes peeled for things when they ventured into other parts of town.