Signwave (4 page)

Early summer. Hummingbirds fighting over a fuchsia bush,
jays screaming at the chipmunks digging up acorns they'd stashed. Rascal patrolling, keeping the whole place a cat-free zone.

But that wasn't his job; it was just something he wanted to do. When Dolly was outside, humming a Piaf tune to herself as she groomed one of the lily hybrids she was trying to develop, Rascal went into a different mode.

Guard.

No barking, no threatening. If you walked back there and surprised Dolly, you wouldn't be walking out. Rascal was a self-launching torpedo in a tiny ocean he could navigate blind. And if you dove in, you were dead in the water.

Everything as it should be.

Peaceful. Precious. Protected.

—

T
hen a coalition of environmentalists showed up.

I don't mean they were outsiders. This town is home to dozens of Green Groups, each of them aimed at a different target. Lumber mills, toxic waste, endangered species…

Some of them were always “calling for” something. Boycotts were a favorite: eggs had to come from free-range chickens, beef from cattle that hadn't been dosed with antibiotics, salmon mustn't have been “ranched.” Some also went international: whaling, dolphin capture, global warming…a long list.

“Green” had religious status, but some of its splinter groups were so small they only had one member. I know this because of a letter the newspaper printed. The writer proclaimed he'd “be well within my rights” if he were to go ahead with a lawsuit he was “contemplating.” His next-door neighbor actually
smoked
in his own backyard! So, every time the wind shifted,
the letter writer was exposed to secondhand smoke against his will.

I don't know if he expected some enviro-posse to form or what, but responders either took his letter as some kind of spoof or loudly distanced
their
group from him.

Me, I didn't think this nasty little man cared about anything but his “rights.” Deep-rooted entitlement was like any other infection, except for one thing: whoever caught it didn't want it cured, he wanted it spread.

Normally, for the actual groups to join forces on
anything
was unheard of, but now they'd united for the common cause of blocking this logging road the government wanted to build.

It wasn't the road itself they had banded together to fight, it was the route that had been picked for it—a jagged Z-line through a few hundred acres of land nobody wanted. Nothing grew there except for some scrubby bush and stunted trees. No river, no lake, no access to the bayfront. Any road cut through there probably wouldn't even displace a raccoon. But it was state-owned land, so it belonged to “the people.”

As at other places I'd been, everyone was claiming to speak for “the people.” Harder to do in Oregon, since the Indians were the “original” people. At least, that's what those who had voted against building a casino on private land said…and they won. But when the local tribe wouldn't even take the land as a gift, the gates opened up.

That was when this coalition emerged to protect “virgin green space” from “government rape.” Why chain yourself to a tree that was going to be cut down no matter what you did? Why not just
buy
the whole parcel outright, and legally bar any road? It couldn't cost
that
much.

But that wouldn't work, they said, shouting “Eminent domain!” like the threat of an approaching tsunami.

Then the “small government” crowd jumped in, forming common cause with the “enviros” for the first time. The state
couldn't just
take
property—private property was no different from the right to privacy itself. If the Second Amendment was to have any meaning, it would have to apply to more than just fighting any ban against a citizen's right to own firearms, including those stupid background checks. The state wouldn't even know who to take the property
from
, except that all deeds had to be filed, and “Registration Is the First Step to Confiscation!”

Those posters were plastered all over town. That put the “all power belongs to the people” crowd on autopilot.

So many referendums were slated for the next ballot that the Voters' Pamphlet would be the size of a phone book. It's easy to get damn near anything on a ballot out here. I don't know how many signatures you need, but it's not a lot. There's no polling booths; you just mail your ballot in.

But even
that
was too much trouble for some.

One group had a Web site saying that they were united against paper voting. Dolly had insisted on showing it to me. “Can you believe it? It's not about the hassle of standing in line, or even ‘hanging chads.' They're angry because they actually have to
mail
their ballots. They want to vote over the Internet, the same way they do their banking, pay their bills, and find their true love. They need to be ‘connected' all the time. There's enough of them to actually get a referendum going. But a ballot initiative requires a certain number of signatures, and you can't gather those online…so they're not going to be bothered even doing
that
much!”

Their Web site's banner was “Passive Resistance.” I guess that meant, if they couldn't vote online, they'd boycott every ballot.

I got the “passive” part easy enough, but I didn't think even Gandhi could find a trace of the other half.

—

“G
et it, Tontay!”

I looked out the back window. Half a dozen teenage girls in cheerleader outfits, bouncing up and down in their eagerness to encourage Dolly. For years, our “kitchen” had been swarming with teenage girls, turning it into some kind of…clubhouse, I guess. Not a hangout for outcasts, but a place where they'd be welcomed—one of Dolly's rules.

Dolly's rules always had reasons. Her reasons. The school's princesses mixed with the untouchables in
her
house or else it was
la porte
for them. None of them wanted to be excluded from a place where they could learn things they all wanted to know…and be loved at the same time.

She'd been “Aunt Dolly” to them until she suddenly decided that made her sound too old. The minute she said, “That's
Tante
Dolly to you!” they all picked up on it. But my wife hadn't made the jump from English to French quick enough, so
“tante”
came out “tontay,” and they'd converted that mess into
their
name for her.

Any kind of strict glance from Dolly when they used it just started them all giggling. I guess she finally gave up trying to stop them.

Those girls knew Dolly would rapid-fire French at me if she didn't want them to understand, so I think they were playing dumb with this “Tontay” nonsense. I kept that thought to myself.

“If I break something, you'd all better start running,” Dolly mock-threatened, igniting another chorus of giggling. Then my wife—who had been a yoga practitioner since she was a child—jumped up, threw her hands toward the sky, and floated to the ground, landing in a perfect split.

“Wow!” one of the cheerleaders shouted. They all applauded, as happy as if it was raining beauty on them.

—

“S
omething else is going on, Dell,” she said to me.

It was after midnight. We were in bed, and Rascal had planted himself at the threshold to our bedroom, like he'd trained himself to do.

“With what?”

“With that whole logging-road fight.”

“Fight? It's like some kind of hobby for them. They have to show how ‘green' they are, like a damn religion. But it's just talk. Like those anti-tax people. They always get stuck in their own glue.”

“I know you don't think much of—”

“It's not that, honey. It's that circle thing. Uh…Okay, you remember when some of them started a campaign to ban the sale of cigarettes? Not to minors, to everyone. Statewide. But before they could even get it on the ballot, some of that
same
crowd said tobacco was sacred to Native Americans, and we couldn't disrespect their culture. They kept going round and round, but they never
got
around. To doing anything, I mean.”

“I know,” my wife said, a sad tone in her voice that I'd heard before. Not often, which is probably why I picked up on it so quickly. “But there's a different…intensity to this thing.”

“Because…?”

“I don't
know
, Dell. But it's not like usual. That piece of ground, it's, I don't know how to say this, but…vibrating. Like a big train is coming.”

—

I
didn't know what people in the village thought of me.

Most of them probably didn't even know I existed. But those who did knew if anyone tried to hurt Dolly it would be the worst kind of mistake. Nothing to do with my pride, my self-respect,
or my ego. And it wasn't possessiveness, either. You don't own a woman like Dolly. But protect her,
that
I could do.

For me, Dolly was that
raison d'être
future-promised to all new legionnaires. A promise none of us ever expected would be kept, so we felt no disappointment when it turned out to be still another lie, part of our daily diet. To be disappointed, you must first be surprised.

Olaf had never been a legionnaire. To us, “survivor” had a different meaning. Those who survived the training could never lie about it. Who would we lie to? Our commanders watched the training. They could count the survivors easily enough—they knew exactly what those survivors would have proved.

The tests would get progressively more difficult. Not just physically—the assault on each man's will never stopped. They said this tested the ability to “adapt.” To show fear, that was acceptable…so long as the fear did not alter your conduct. But to show despair, no. That was considered a sure sign of a man who would not succeed in the field.

Our ranks were culled as a breeder of dogs would destroy runts from each litter. Only the “best” got to prance around in shows, pampered like royalty throughout their lives. But such a life was reserved for dogs. For men like us, passing all the tests meant we would be awarded the privilege of war.

And
those
survivors could not lie, either. If you started out with eight men, you returned with eight men. Not necessarily alive, but all bodies had to be accounted for.

Never abandon your dead or your wounded. Never. But instead of some
esprit de corps
, our only code was that of the criminal: Whatever you see doesn't matter, not if you keep that information to yourself.

I was there when a tall, ink-black Senegalese we knew only as “Idrissa” locked eyes with my friend Patrice, forming an invisible
bridge over the body of another man—a soldier so badly wounded he would never survive being carried back to our camp. I watched as both men nodded their silent agreement. Patrice shot the dying man in the top of his head. Idrissa swung his heavy blade in a short arc, cutting through flesh and bone as easily as a knife through brie. I picked up the dead man's rifle as Idrissa held the severed hand of the forearm he'd removed and slammed it against the brush to roughen the edges of his too-clean strike.

When we got back to base, Patrice explained that the enemy had launched an RPG round, and all that we could find of the dead man was what Idrissa was still holding. I handed over his rifle.

We were questioned, individually first, and then as a unit. Our accounts did not vary. Our commanders were not surprised at this.

Maybe that was why they reacted with such lavish praise years later, when I carried what was left of Patrice's machine-gunned body all the way back on my own. None of our unit had offered to help me with that insane task. I would have refused if they had. I knew they would still stay close enough to cover me. Even if they regarded me as a demented fool, they couldn't move much more quickly than I did. If they arrived ahead of me, they would have to explain why
two
bodies had not been returned.

I could never say why this mattered so much to me. I knew there would be no shipment home, no funeral mass held, no tombstone to honor him. Patrice would be buried in the dark earth that surrounded our camp.

The officers allowed me to dig the grave. It took me all through the night to make it deep enough to keep predators from digging up the body. Hyenas count on vultures to point out fresh kills, but those carrion eaters are pure sight-hunters. I
rolled some heavy stones over the spot to discourage the jackals even more.

I must have passed out at some point. When I awoke, another night was coming on.

I wished I knew some words, but I was empty.

How could I say aloud that my true friend's only dream would never become truth? Patrice had avenged his childhood mate so openly that even his comrades back in Ireland told him he could not hope to return for many years. Any revolutionary who dared take the life of a soldier in the Army of Occupation would be ruthlessly hunted. Or informed on. Patrice had to stay away until…

I knew there would never be another like him in my life.

—

D
olly wasn't the kind of woman who could content herself with sadness.

“Widow's weeds suit some,” Patrice had told me, another life ago. “That's their role, to mourn. Ah, sure, after a proper period…a year or so…they could find another man. But some of them, they never do. It's not that they loved their man so deep that no other could measure up. That's their story, maybe, but a story it is, lad—one they keep on telling, because no one would dare tell them to stop.”

I don't know what Dolly would do if I was gone, but I know what she
wouldn't
do.

—

L
ike I said, our kitchen wasn't just a place to cook.

Dolly had me take down a wall when we first moved in. I'm no expert with tools—not with the kind you use for carpentry,
anyway. But I can tell if a wall is load-bearing, and the one that separated the kitchen from the living room wasn't.