Seventh Enemy (3 page)

“What’s the matter?”

“Look.”

I looked. The golden dome atop the State House gleamed in the morning sunlight. On the sidewalk in front a mass of people were milling around in a slow circle. I saw that many of them were carrying placards.

Several of them, in fact, were dressed in cartoonish animal costumes. I saw a Bambi, a couple of Smokey-the-Bears, and several person-sized rabbits.

They were chanting. At first I couldn’t distinguish what they were saying. Then it became clearer.

“Kinnick’s a killer.”

That was the chant: “Kinnick’s a killer.”

I turned to Willy with raised eyebrows.

“Animal rights activists,” he said. “For some reason, they don’t like hunters.”

“Ah,” I said. “The good folks who splash red paint on fur coats. Does this happen often?”

He nodded. “Yep. Some places you expect it. Washington, of course. Denver, New York, San Francisco. Dallas, on the other hand, or Cheyenne or Billings? Never. Boston, or, best of all, Cambridge? Definitely.”

“I love their costumes,” I said.

Wally shrugged. “Part of their schtick. Come on. Let’s go.”

We climbed the steps that took us from the Common up to Beacon Street. The demonstrators patrolled the sidewalk across the street. From where Wally and I stood I could read the signs they carried.

LET’S MAKE HUNTERS THE NEXT ENDANGERED SPECIES
, read one.

A Smokey look-alike carried a placard that said,
SUPPORT YOUR RIGHT TO ARM BEARS
.

HUNTERS MAIM WITH NO SHAME
. A big rabbit held that one.

PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS
. An uncostumed pregnant woman.

KILLERS JOIN SAFE.

FUND FOR ANIMALS.

STOP THE WAR ON WILDLIFE.

HUNTING: THE SPORT OF COWARDS.

ANIMAL LIBERATION.

COMMITTEE TO ABOLISH SPORT HUNTING.

OPEN SEASON ON KINNICK.

KINNICK’S A MURDERER.

REMEMBER BAMBI.

There were thirty or forty demonstrators, I guessed, an equal mix of men and women, various ages, costumed and not, moving slowly hack and forth, chanting “Kinnick’s a killer” and waving their placards. A policeman stood off to the side watching them.

“I didn’t realize you were so popular,” I said to Wally.

He grinned. “Like it or not, I’ve become the nation’s most visible hunter.”

“I would’ve said you were an outdoorsman, a conservationist.”

“Sure,” he said. “Me, too. But to some people, if you hunt, that’s what you are. A hunter. None of the rest matters. You’re a murderer, and it doesn’t matter what else you do, what else you stand for.”

“How’d they know you’d he here?”

“Gene McNiff probably told the media that I was testifying. That’s McNiff’s main thing. Politics, lobbying, public opinion. He speaks to any group that’ll listen. Watchdogs the six New England legislatures. Prints his newsletter. Keeps gun issues alive in the media. That’s SAFE’s whole purpose. If they didn’t do these things, they believe the Second Amendment would be doomed.” He touched my arm. “Well, shall we?”

“Lead on,” I said.

We crossed the street and approached the milling crowd of demonstrators. “Excuse us,” said Wally. “Please let us through.”

Some of them paused and stepped back to let us pass. We began to edge through the crowd. Then someone shouted, “That’s him! The big guy with the beard! That’s the killer!”

Others echoed the cry. “That’s Kinnick! That’s him!”

“Come on, folks,” said Wally. “Get a life, huh?”

They closed in around us. The chant rose up, loud, frenzied voices. “Kinnick’s a killer. Kinnick’s a killer.” Their bodies bumped ours. They were yelling into our ears. I felt an elbow ram into my ribs. Something thudded against the back of my shoulder. I felt a hand grab my arm and yank me. I stumbled forward.

Wally was tugging me up the steps and the crowd was behind us. “Wait, now,” said Wally. “Be cool.”

We stopped at the first landing on the stairway, flanked by the statues of Horace Mann and Daniel Webster on the State House lawn. I turned to look back. The demonstrators, people and ersatz animals, were all staring up at us, waving their placards and yelling. I could read the passionate hysteria of their conviction in their faces. Their chant was out of sync now, so that their words mingled into an undifferentiated swirl of hate-filled noise.

One tenderhearted animal lover in a rabbit costume was giving us the paw.

The policeman hadn’t moved. The expression of resigned cynicism on his face hadn’t changed.

“Jesus,” I said.

“True believers,” said Wally. “Goes to show what happens to people with too much time on their hands.”

“Are they here for the hearing?”

“Naw. They don’t care about assault weapons. They care about animals. They’re here for me.

“They’re kinda scary.”

“All true believers are.”

W
E CONTINUED UP THE
long flight of steps and entered into the lobby of the State House. It was packed with tourists on this Monday morning. A teacher was addressing a knot of elementary school children in front of a glass-covered display case. I wondered if she was explaining the example of democracy at work that Wally and I had just experienced outside.

Wally and I wove our way among the people into the second lobby, which was equally mobbed. More school children. Tourists. A busload of senior citizens. Harried tour guides and teachers. We passed through into the third round room, this one directly under the golden dome. It was an oasis of relative quiet. Old murals encircled the arched ceiling. Historic flags were illuminated behind glass cases.

We stood there for a moment before Gene McNiff appeared. He grabbed Wally’s hand, shook it, and said, “You guys okay?”

“Fine,” said Wally.

“Speak for yourself,” I said.

“Did they hurt you?” said McNiff to me.

“I’m fine.”

“If they did, we can sue their assess. Right, Mr. Coyne? You’re a lawyer. I’d love to be able to sue those animal nuts.”

“They seemed pretty harmless,” I said.

“Don’t count on it,” said McNiff. He turned to Wally. “Right?”

Wally shrugged. “They’ve got friends in high places, they’ve got money, and they’ve got one of those deceptively convincing arguments. I never underestimate them.” He grinned. “They’re something like SAFE.”

McNiff glanced at Wally and frowned. “Well,” he said with a shrug, “they’re not our concern today. The Second Amendment. That’s today’s agenda. Let’s go.”

Wally and I followed McNiff to a flight of stairs that descended into the bowels of the State house. We turned down a corridor and came to a door marked “Hearing Room.” Someone had written “S-162” in black felt-tip on a piece of typing paper and taped it onto the door. McNiff pulled it open and we stepped inside.

We found ourselves standing at the rear of a narrow rectangular room. In front was a long table behind which sat four men and two women with microphones in front of them. A smaller table in front of the committee had one chair and one microphone. A uniformed policeman sat there facing the committee, mumbling into the microphone. I couldn’t distinguish his words above the drone of voices in the acoustically primitive room, because behind the witness were rows of folding chairs—a hundred, minimum, I guessed—and it looked as if every one of those chairs was occupied. The narrow aisle down the side of the room was blocked with standees. This was a public hearing, and, at ten o’clock on this Monday morning in May, the public had turned out for it.

I scanned the audience. I saw only a few women in it. Ninety-percent men. Some were wearing business suits, but most of them wore shirts open at the neck, working clothes, blue jeans, boots. None of them had on an animal suit. It was a predominantly blue-collar crowd, and their unspoken message was clear: We are the voters, the masses, the majority that refuses to be silent. We hold the power to fill or to vacate legislative seats. We are watching you.

Many of them, I noticed, were glancing around at Wally and mumbling out of the sides of their mouths to the people around them. They seemed to be ignoring the policeman who was testifying up front.

Wally, Gene McNiff, and I stood at the side of the room leaning our backs against the wall.

“Who are all these people? I said to McNiff.

“Ours,” he said.

“SAFE?”

“Yep.” He smiled. “We turn ’em out. The sacred right to bear arms is under attack everywhere. We’ve got to be vigilant.”

True believers, I thought. Paranoia rampant.

“Why don’t you try to find a seat. Mr. Coyne?” said McNiff. “Walt, we’ve got to get up front with the witnesses.”

He led Wally toward the front of the room. I spotted an empty seat. I edged my way down the aisle and squeezed in between two flannel-shirted men.

A minute later the guy on my left thrust a clipboard into my hands. It held several mimeographed sheets of paper. Each sheet had “S-162” and the date printed across the lop and columns marked “name, “address,” “pro,” and “con.” I flipped through them. The “pro” column had been checked by none of those who had signed the sheet. The “con” column was solid with checkmarks.

I scratched my name and address. I checked neither pro nor con. I hadn’t read the bill. Then I passed the clipboard back to the man on my left. I noticed that he looked at it, checking me out.

The policeman finished his testimony and was dismissed. Another witness was called. He wore glasses and a three-piece suit. He took the witness seat and laid a slender attaché case on the table in front of him. He opened it and slid a few sheets of paper from it. I heard him clear his throat into his microphone, and for a moment the low din in the hearing room subsided. “My name is Earl Clements,” he said. “I’m a professor at the New England School of Law. My field is constitutional law, my specialty the Bill of Rights.”

Around me, the men in the audience, SAFE members all, resumed their talking and chuckling, paying no further attention to the professor up front. I guessed that they’d heard him before. They weren’t there to become informed anyway. They were there simply—to be there.

The amplification system in that room was as primitive as the acoustics, and the noise continued as the law professor began to speak, so I only caught snatches of the beginning of his statement.

“…well-regulated Militia… security… shall not be infringed… intended as an individual, not collective, right… Significant that it comes second only to free speech… Militia historically means the citizens at large, not the organized armed force of the state… Federalist 29… Hamilton refers to the militia as a check against the potential despotism of a standing army, which the Founding Fathers feared, with good reason… in Federalist 46 Hamilton emphasized the ‘advantage of being armed’… a ‘barrier against the enterprises of despotic ambition.’”

As he spoke, his voice became clearer and more confident, and as it did, he seemed to win the attention of those seated in the audience. The noise subsided enough for me to hear the testimony more clearly.

Professor Clements cited several Supreme Court decisions which, he argued, tended to be misinterpreted by those who promoted gun control.

From my seat I could observe the six committee members up front. One of them was fiddling with his wristwatch. Another seemed to be studying some papers on the table in front of him. The two female senators, seated side by side, were whispering to each other. The other two members were staring blankly at the professor.

He concluded by quoting the familiar aphorism of John Philpot Curran: “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.” The professor looked up at the committee. “I urge you to reject this bill. It contradicts the spirit of liberty and both the intent and the words of the Constitution. Thank you for hearing me today.

After a pause, a few of the men in the audience clapped. The scattered applause died quickly.

The chairman of the committee said, “Any questions for Professor Clements?”

None of the committee members had any questions.

“Well, thank you, then, sir.” said the chairman. “Please leave us a copy of your statement.” He waited while the professor stood up, handed him the papers from which he had been reading, and left the room. Then the chairman said, “Our next witness is Walter Kinnick.”

As Wally moved to the witness chair, somebody from the back of the room shouted. “You tell ’em, Walt.” Several people applauded.

Wally removed a sheet of yellow paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it onto the table in front of him. He looked up at the committee. The chairman smiled at him and nodded, and I saw Wally return the nod. The room grew quiet. Wally cleared his throat into the microphone. Then he began to read.

“My name is Walter Kinnick,” he said slowly in that familiar television voice. “I grew up in Massachusetts. Although my primary residence is now in Minnesota, I also own a place in the western part of the Commonwealth. It’s a retreat, and I come here frequently to hunt and fish. I have been a hunter all my life, and I own several guns. I’m the host of a weekly television program that promotes hunting, fishing, camping, conservation, and outdoor recreation in general. I speak today strictly as a Massachusetts property owner and taxpayer, a private citizen, a concerned citizen.”

Wally paused to glance up at the six senators. They wore the same blank expressions they’d showed during the previous testimony. Boredom. They already knew what he was going to say. The public hearing was pro forma, something that the law required but which they didn’t expect to inform them.

“I have studied this proposed legislation, S-162,” Wally continued. “I have studied it from the standpoint of a sportsman, a gun owner, one who enjoys recreation with firearms. I have looked for its flaws.” He hesitated, cleared his throat, again peered at the committee people. He waited until each of them was looking at him. Then he said, “I find no flaw in this legislation. I think it’s time that responsible gun owners acknowledged the right of the state to regulate and limit the distribution of certain weapons whose only purpose is to abet the commission of crimes and kill other people. This is good legislation. It’s clear, specific, limited. I’m for it. I urge you to pass it. Thank you.”