Chapter 22: Protest 8

Last update on the novel for a while. I gotta write more! Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . .


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
CHAPTER 22
Gripping Peggy by the hand, Gilbert stealthfully slipped through the crowd as a flurry of rubber bullets whizzed past. The Mayor-inspired chanting was replaced by the shrieking of innocent victims. Pigs hemming the sheep in, pigs attacking, Gilbert thought. Orwell was so right. It’s a goddamn animal farm. Far off, a woman walked with a baby high above her head, shouting, “let me through, please.” Gilbert was grateful that Peggy didn’t witness what happened next. The bullet, officially classified as non-lethal, intentionally fired by a rookie cop trying to make an impression, struck the soft spot of the infant’s skull, which exploded in a fine pink mist. Gilbert winced, but said nothing and continued to lead Peggy past the injured and scattered dead.
To their right a man whispered, “Gilbert.”
“Who are you?”
“A gift from Samantha.” The man pressed a business card into Gilbert’s hand.
“Did she say any--” Gilbert started, but the man was gone.
Peggy struggled to keep up. Sensitive to the pepper spray, she could only open her eyes to slits through which only her puddle-splashing footfalls and Gilbert’s black shoes could be seen. The helicopters grew louder. Gilbert looked up, and watched with panic as their hatches opened. “Down!” He pushed Peggy to the ground, her wobbly knees yielding easily. She covered her head with her hands as Gilbert embraced her while looking up. Six canisters struck at ground zero of the protest, killing several innocents. Tear gas snaked outward from mushy crators. Gilbert rose and looked around . Through clouds of smoke and flailing arms he saw a clear opening to the street. “Let’s go,” he shouted. As Gilbert held his breath, Peggy, reinvigorated, opened her eyes fully and burst into a sprint. With Peggy in the lead they reached the street and kept on running.
Samantha had been led away from her smashed equipment by Agent Ballenger. Her mouth was ball-gagged, and she was pulled by a chained leash affixed to her front-positioned handcuffs. Outraged and humiliated she mused. I’m a law abiding, I pay taxes. What the fuck.
They reached the van. Another agent opened up the back. “As a matter of national security we’ll have to blindfold you for your little trip,” Ballenger said. Samantha stared at him, her terror rising. Ballenger continued. “Surely now you realize that your kind of news coverage doesn’t fly well in the New World Order. You must be more responsible, don’t you agree?” Samantha nodded. Then Agent Taylor secured a black blindfold across her eyes. She did not resist. Ballenger looked pleased. “Ah, the smell of cleansing rain, Ms. Williams. It’s the smell of the advent of a new age, washing away the foul spirit of anarchy. Liberty means bound by security now. Security is all that matters. Evolution, Ms. Williams, has elevated man over mother nature. The wild elements are being driven out of man’s nature. Evolution will have it’s way.”
Samantha was guided into the van and the restraints were applied. The smooth movement of the drive drove her thoughts along a meditative path. November 7th. 11-7. The world has turned again. How usual this crazy turn. I am 27 years old and I am not crazy, at least I feel that I’m not. Newschannel 8 helicopters assisted the state today by engaging in surveillance work and unleashing tear gas for chrissakes. Children were murdered by the state today. America no longer hides her tyranny. Nothing will be the same. The worst is happening and I, a woman who’s always followed her conscience, am being taken somewhere to be questioned by who knows what agency, and about what is anyone’s guess. I did nothing wrong. I am not crazy. Against the pressure of the blindfold she felt the sensitive gelatin roundness of her eyes. Her jaw ached from the ball-gag. I did nothing wrong. I am not crazy.
Peggy, panting, stopped running. “I’m too tired to run anymore.” Gilbert slowed to a fast walk and released her hand. In the distance smoke rose above Park and Main like a death mask. Sirens wailed. Ambulances, not cops. That was significant. Gilbert stopped and looked into Peggy’s red, wet eyes. Beneath his hat Gilbert’s face was pink-stubbled and sweaty. Peggy’s face trembled as she inched toward him. She reached her arms around his wet jacket and collapsed against him, heaving with sobs. The heaviness of the day’s events reached a threshold of crumbling in Gilbert’s mind. His composure could not hold. He gave in, loosened, and cried hard against Peggy’s slim body.
After achieving mutual catharsis Peggy looked worshipfully into Gilbert’s eyes. Her little heart pounded like a rabbit’s, and Gilbert felt its breathless beat beneath her little breasts. “You saved me,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Her brown eyes searched Gilbert’s face, amazed. Her voice was thick and breaking. “I was a stranger to you.” She rested her hands on his shoulders. It stopped raining. “I slowed you down. Why did you stick with me?”
Gilbert pushed up the brim of his hat and adjusted the lay of his glasses on his nose. “We lucked out. I was scared too.”
Peggy shook her head side to side. “You risked yourself for me.” Her splayed fingers tapped against Gilbert’s chest with every word. “Who are you?”
“I don’t know.” He looked away. “I never have.”
“I owe you my life.”
Gilbert whispered. “No you don’t.” Her ear smelled like cinnamon. “You were my reason to act. Without you, who knows, I might not have made it out of that hell. We helped each other.”
Peggy’s heart leaped at the rhapsody of Gilbert’s speech and the panting heat of his words in her ear made her dizzy. She kissed his cheek, her slightly parted lips lingered on the rough stubble. Her soul crackled like a bonfire within. I could love a man like this.
With that thought Peggy clasped the back of Gilbert’s head and kissed him deeply on the mouth. The vitalistic transport of their osculation went on and on in defiance of time and social decorum, broken only and abruptly by the disemboweling slash of nearby helicopter blades. They looked up and beheld the northbound parting of a dozen Newschannel Eight sentries of the air. A great purposeful flock of pigeons, numbering in the thousands, trailed behind, mimicking the undulous rising and falling of the machines. Gilbert and Peggy fixed their gazes on the path of these strange flight fellows till both vanished beyond the far off high-rises of the Pearl District.
“What the fuck,” Gilbert said. “Livin’ in the last days is a fuckin’ trip.”
“Gilbert, walk me home please.”
Gilbert shrugged, scanning the horizon as if for the first time. “Some bored, drunk angel blew a trumpet, and the apocalypse has come to Portland.”
Peggy grabbed his arm. “Please take me home.”
Gilbert snapped out of his nightmare reverie and faced the brown eyes of a dream.
“Yes, sorry,” he said. “You ok?”
She took Gilbert’s hand and led him up the sidewalk. “I need to rest, and so do you. Why don’t we rest together and decide what to do next.”
We? Rest together? Gilbert struggled to keep his mind even. Something nagged at him like an aching tooth suddenly roused from sleep. “Shit,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I gotta work at five, and it’s already four.”
Peggy took out a pad of pink stationary from her purse. The paper was illustrated with an ink drawn image of Peggy herself, paint brush in hand, from which flowed a receding sea of daffodils, rendered in breathtaking realism. Gilbert noted the typed message beneath. Art is the stuff of which souls are composed. Peggy scribbled with a fine fountain pen, tore off the page and handed it to him. Her phone number and address.
“When do get off?”
“I’m scheduled to close, but I don’t think so,” he said. “Not after this. I’ll feign sickness or--” Gilbert thought of the Mayor for the first time since mournfully and impotently watching him being taken away. “I’ll tell my boss a friend needs me.” Gilbert bit his lower lip but the tears flowed anyway. “Where have they taken him?”
They continued to walk. Fresh police cars zoomed by. “We’ll find him, Gilbert,” she said. “Call me when you’re off. We’ll get a drink.” Gilbert nodded. They both lit a cigarette. They crossed Salmon street and stopped. Peggy faced a large apartment building to the left. “Home sweet home,” she said.
Now Gilbert took her in his arms and kissed her. “Thankyou Peggy.”
Withdrawing slowly she kissed Gilbert’s hand. “And it’s time we tell fear to fuck himself,” she said. “Promise we’ll help each other in that?”
“I promise.” Gilbert stood on the porch as Peggy opened the door.
“Then goodbye, my hero, till tonight.” On the fast walk home Gilbert thought, I must be strong now for Peggy, for the Mayor, and for me.
About time, said the voice.