Driftless (51 page)

“
You’ve got to wake up!
There is a group of men no larger than this group here tonight who already own most of the world’s wealth. Their names are never mentioned in public and you won’t see their pictures in the papers. They don’t want you to know who they are, but through holding companies, trading boards, and interlocking directorates they control the insurance companies, banks, and investment cartels. They own the Federal Reserve, the Trilateral Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and most of the world’s private prisons. They own the oil companies and the biggest defense contractors, the chemical and seed companies, newspapers and broadcasting networks. Their lawyers draft the legislation for your senators and representatives. They own your so-called president as surely as you own the change in your own pocket. They determine whether the Supreme Court will hear a particular case and personally oversee the activities of the State Department and the Pentagon.

“Yet this gang of robbers want more, and the implementation of their insatiable designs is forcing you off your farms. There’s no appealing to them because there’s nothing to appeal to. They have no community ties, no allegiance, and no faith. They are loyal only to their own lust for money and power. When their lawyers lay before them plans to take away your farms and add your families to the lists of the homeless, they ask only if a quicker way can be found. They want total control of food production—all of it. They want to own all the fertilizer and all the seed, the final harvest and all the equipment to harvest it. They want patent rights on every living organism.

“They only want two things from you,” he said, and held up two fingers. “Two things. First, they want your hard labor, and they want it as cheaply as you will allow them to steal it from you. And second, they want you to be quiet about what’s happening to you.”

The crowd stared mutely forward.

“Know this: there are plans under way—worldwide plans—to make your children accept, like slaves born into slavery, a lifetime of working for arrogant fools who neither appreciate nor respect them. And when your children remind them of the days when their parents and grandparents owned their own businesses and farms, they will laugh out loud. ‘Those days are gone,’ they will say. ‘You work for us.’

“The time has come, my friends, to look corruption in the eye and not blink. The courts are not there to protect you. They are there to protect the superwealthy
from you.
When did you last hear of the revocation of a multinational corporation’s charter because it polluted a community, defrauded the government, or cheated its workers? Is it because the superrich never commit crimes? Is it because the privileged are always good—unlike the poor and working people who fill the prisons?
Do you really believe that?

“Stop lying to yourselves. Law and order, the police and the Army, are on the wrong side. Being a good citizen should be a sin and bad citizenship an obligation. The people making the laws should never be obeyed and least of all believed. Your government is venal and corrupt, and you should have figured that out a long time ago. The only reason you haven’t is that you’re afraid of the demands it would make on your honor.

“But I ask you, does God want your children and grandchildren to serve as slaves to wealthy masters, plodding out their lives in crates of worthless space? Is destiny on the side of those idle toads who want to drive you off your farms? Does the Lord form alliances with men who have never worked hard in their entire lives—never once put their whole strength into
anything
—never lost a single night’s sleep over a sick animal or the welfare of a child? Would the same God whose Son was crucified for you give victory to those same forces that nailed Him to the cross?

“No! God will stand with anyone who is willing to oppose them, but you
must oppose them.
Stop hoping their conscience will suddenly come alive. It won’t. They have no conscience. You must oppose them. When they look at what stands between them and the
world they lust after, they must see an open revolution staring back at them, because nothing short of that will ever stop them.”

Gail sat in her folding chair, drinking the bottle of beer she brought from July’s house, her pupils dilating. She hadn’t known what to expect when she’d come, but
this
seemed more unexpected than the Unexpected.

She looked at her brother, who was seized by the momentum of the moment. He leaned forward as though listening to the beating of tribal water drums.

The militia leader continued.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re afraid. You want to believe it makes sense to trust those in authority. You’ve suffered for so long the outrage of being told things you know are untrue that you wonder how long you can continue standing. You’re like trees too tired to hold up your own limbs. You want to believe that behind the mask of democracy there are no conspiratorial faces—only the fair competition of ideas. You’re like sheep imagining you’ve stepped out of the food chain because of the safe pasture you find yourselves grazing in.

“But that can change, and it’s changing all across this country as men wake up and prepare to take action. You don’t have to live in open conflict with your conscience. You can learn to stop being intimidated. You can learn the tactics of modern warfare so the threat of violence will no longer make you timid. You can learn to be free men again, to assume those massive virtues of your ancestors and stand without shame before them.”

Gail watched as her brother’s chapped hands clenched together and his head nodded up and down.

“As you train you will begin to see a faint glimmer of something new and hard. You will recognize it as your new self. You were not born to live like sheep waiting to be slaughtered. You can stare back at evil, and the hunted become the hunter.”

Grahm shifted eagerly in his chair.

Gail looked anxiously at July Montgomery and he stood up.

“Wait just a minute,” he said.

In a single snap of his head, Moe Ridge located the source of the sound, and two pairs of eyes measured each other. July laughed self-consciously as he walked forward, shaking his head, repeating, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

When he reached the front of the room, he turned and addressed the group.

“Most of what this man says is probably true, but you still shouldn’t listen to him.”

Moe Ridge walked over and stood close to July, making him look small in comparison, and July smiled again self-consciously.

“The trouble with some people,” July said, “is they believe their thoughts are new. They don’t think anyone else has ever thought them. Most of us in this room have thought them many times.

“Is there a bunch of greedy fools at work in this and every other country? Yes, of course. Do they often lie, cheat, steal, bribe, intimidate, and murder to get what they want? Yes, they do. Is their propaganda often persuasive and does it convince many other folks to go along with them? Yes again. Does power corrupt? Sadly, yes.”

“If you agree with me,” snapped Moe, “then join.”

“That’s just what I’m coming to,” said July. “I agree with everything my angry friend here says, up until that joining part. These problems have been around since we first lit a fire in the cave and discovered someone stealing our collection of pretty animal bones with the help of the clan council. But my friend here thinks these problems can be fixed once and for all—right now. Africans couldn’t fix them, Egyptians couldn’t fix them, Persians couldn’t fix them, Greeks couldn’t fix them, Romans couldn’t fix them, Arabs couldn’t fix them, Turks couldn’t fix them, Europeans couldn’t fix them, but
he
can fix them.”

“You’re afraid to confront the injustice of a dying civilization,” said Moe. “In the days of the founding fathers—”

“Frankly,” said July, “I don’t give a damn about civilization, dying or otherwise. The only reason we have a civilization is that hardly anyone pays attention to it. Most of us live without trying to change anything. We’re content with more important, private things. Myself, I like to farm. If there were something I’d rather be doing, I’d do
that. I like farming. I like being outdoors, growing things and feeding animals. I like it. I farm to be farming.”

“The tyranny of kings would never have been overthrown without people standing up,” said Moe.

“Tyranny still exists. No, my friend, most of the people in this room feel just like I do. We’re not here to solve big problems, and we don’t really believe in the idea of solving big problems because of the bigger problems that come out of it. We’re here to figure out a way to keep farming. The gentleman who spoke before you—he wants me to sign a petition. That’s easy enough, so I’ll sign it. But you want me to do something else with my life and I simply don’t have time for that. As I said before, I like farming. I like going to county fairs, listening to music, and eating my neighbor’s pies. None of that involves fighting with anyone.”

“You’re afraid to stand up for what you believe.”

“Whoa there, Moe, I don’t doubt your courage and I don’t think it’s fair to doubt mine. I’m not saying I’d
never
join. Someone may someday figure out how to distribute all good and bad things fairly. Maybe you can do that, find a way for even the most unfortunate people to have the same opportunities as the rest of us. Maybe you can discover how to make sure that only those who truly deserve wealth—or poverty—will have it. Perhaps you can find some men and women who after overthrowing the corrupt fools now in power will not become corrupted themselves. As soon as you find them, let me know. Let all of us know.”

The veins in Moe Ridge’s neck throbbed.

“I’ve said all I wanted to,” said July. “Thank you for listening.” He walked back to his chair.

Moe Ridge seemed temporarily unable to find something to say. The crowd began to murmur.

“I’ll join!” yelled Gail, and stood up at the back of the room, smiling her best smile.

Grahm glared at her with a loathing known only to siblings. Everyone looked at her, and because she was one of the few young women in the building, and the only attractive one, they assumed she had been brought in to advertise the militia.

“There’s doughnuts and coffee next to the petitions,” said the white-haired man.

The crowd climbed out of the folding chairs and moved in several directions, some to their cars, motorcycles, and trucks, a few to join the militia, but most toward the pastry.

Grahm and July signed the petition and carried coffee in Styrofoam cups out of the sweltering building to the truck.

While she waited in line for a doughnut, Gail spoke briefly with Wade Armbuster, who had just written his name onto one of the militia’s clipboards.

“Is that your trailer in the Brassos’ back yard?”

“Yes,” said Wade.

“I saw you join the militia. You must not agree with July.”

“Sure I do,” he said. “July and I agree on practically everything. We’re good friends. He just said all that tonight because he didn’t want your brother to join—just like you standing up and saying you would join when you wouldn’t. That’s okay, I understand that. Grahm has a family and a farm. Big difference is, I’m not a farmer.”

On the way out of the building, beneath the hazy light from the lantern, she could hear the insects and feel her new song growing inside her, swelling up with all the sadness, joy, longing, and anger she had grown up around.

THE LOOK OF DEATH

A
S THE MORNING RINSED STARS OUT OF THE NIGHT SKY, JULY Montgomery found his cows bunched up along the lower fence and called to them in a chiding voice. They needed little coaxing and fell in behind High Socks, the self-appointed chief of the bovine tribe.

As he followed them in the growing light, July noticed, again, that his pasture was getting thin. The rye, timothy, and couch grass crowded out the alfalfa. He resolved to plow it up in the fall, plant oats or beans and seed a new paddock on the other side of the barn where the soil had more nitrogen. Alfalfa was a nutrient-hungry plant, and four years was about the life span of good pasture—at least in his ground.

Without ever consciously counting his twenty-six cows, July gradually became aware that one was missing. As they lumbered into their stanchions (all but three or four of the younger animals always went to the same places), he knew which one: the white-faced four-year-old that had given birth to an all-black bull calf the year before.

The cows pushed their wide, wet noses into the little mountain ranges of ground feed he had shoveled into the concrete trough earlier, and July returned to the pasture.

He found her on the side of the hill. She was wedged between a willow and the creek. For some reason, she had chosen to lie downhill and hadn’t been able to get back on her feet. The dreggy ground was dug up from her doomed effort. The grain and fresh alfalfa in her stomach had reacted with digestive juices to produce methane. The gas had blown her up like a leather balloon, choking off her lungs. She was dead.

The thought of the lonely, desperate struggle to reach her feet
and the dumb- animal senselessness of the death brought tears to his eyes—remorse over the suffering and anger over its needlessness. Cows were upright creatures, nearly helpless on the ground. Why couldn’t they be more careful?

July got the tractor and dragged her around in front of the barn, where the carcass could be located easily. He called the rendering service (no longer free since two years ago) from the house and returned to the barn.

As he milked, he tried not to think about how death looked. An hour later, still milking, he heard the rendering truck pull into the drive and the cable winch running. He didn’t go outside. He would wait for the bill.

His relationship with the animals he raised, kept pregnant, milked, and eventually slaughtered was complicated. He worried over their health and comfort, resented them, appreciated them, pitied them, hated them, and loved them.