The Cause (10 page)

“Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because you have potential. I see it lurking within, but now it is up to you. All you have to do is step out from the darkness and accept what you see.”

“I admit the country is fucked up, but should that mean I should turn my back on it?” But even as I asked the question, I knew my own answer. He moved an eyebrow upward, as if he too sensed a tone in my voice signaling a shift. His eyes gazed back deeply into the darkness, flecks of starlight twinkling in them from vestigial stars.

My eyes moved to the expansive sky. I searched for Cassiopeia and then above it for Andromeda. It was out there somewhere, another galaxy mixed in with the Milky Way. Distance can always be deceiving, proximity a matter of degrees.

“There’s something large going on here,” I said.

His tone stiffened. “That much is obvious.” He stood, brushed his mottled pants off. “But reality up there is not the reality on the ground. I need your word of commitment.” Then he was off into the darkness, breathing heavily, but physically not breathing at all. He strode into the thick forest, which gobbled him up without making a sound.

Standing here now, gazing out at the first snow peppering the woods on the streets of the capital in the year 2026, that first battle at The Abattoir seems a distant memory, one reflecting as a wavering blur, a thousand shards of Seee in them.

In the winter of November 2022, I tossed and turned after the night at Second Sight Peak, Seee’s words a balance inside my head, tipping from one side to the next on the idea of nation.

The next day, the men were bothered when Mir asked what Seee’s idea of fear was, to which he replied, “We are all prisoners of something—whether it is this body, this Earth, this solar system, galaxy, or universe. As you saw, Roth is a prisoner of Montgomery. You do not have to live behind bars to be in a prison. The paradox of liberty is that it disintegrates with time. Freedom is usually something we are too afraid to take. Fear is ignoring truth and seeing a reality that is metamorphosing and distorted as something continuous, when indeed it is not.”

The whispering surrounding this statement swirled amongst us throughout the day.
What was he trying to say?
was the question on everyone’s mind. While debate sparked among us, I kept the previous night’s conversation to myself. What no one argued over was all of us glaring into the eyes of blinding belief. We, the jealous, searched our inner souls for the same spirit, questioned larger contexts, acknowledged what he was saying was not abstract. Our ears simply refused to listen. As overachievers, the message came as a challenge instead of an answer. The camp split and became argumentative, unable to come to a resolution. Arguments based themselves on intent, not
on patriotism, and did not flare into accusations. At least, none spoke openly about it.

After dinner, four more men followed Seee and I to the ravine—Split, Brock, Conroy, and Mir. Others would follow in the coming days. The gravity of Seee, pulling us together bit by bit. A man who came at you in fragments, a mosaic of the full picture, and all of us were curious to fit the missing shards of the man together, to resolve the enigma, the attraction too large to resist.

We sat in a small circle and watched the sunset begin to form. Split lit up a cigarette and it was passed around, the end burning like a sun, a fusion reaction between us, the first spark of the fire that would begin to unite us.

Seee took a long drag on the cigarette, and told us it reminded him of his days smoking the peace pipe with Ahanu. He told us that American history was dirty just as much as it was inspiring. He spoke of slavery and how Native Americans suffered the wrath of an enemy too strong, how they were dispossessed of their lands by the white man.

“Ahanu says that his people were too slow to adjust to the creep of change.”

“Yet, does he still consider himself Native American?” Split asked. “He was in the Marines. He fought for America.”

“Ahanu is a wise man who considers himself American, while at the same time respecting his roots,” Seee said. “He isn’t a man rooted in the past. He looks to the future.”

Then Seee began a story. “Perhaps you don’t know, but Ahanu was a descendant of Kicking Bear—great, great, great grandson or something like that. Legends were passed down. Who knows if it’s true, but he told me a good story once. He told me the Bear liked tall tepees. So they build one in the winter of the late 1800s that gets particularly tall—has a massive space within. All of the tribe is engaged to paint the inside of it. When it’s done, the crackling fire inside lights up the static lives on the canvas above.
The characters on the canvas are their ancestors—grandfathers, grandmothers, legendary braves and chiefs. But up above, nothing is a lie. All of the scenes are things that actually happened. At least that’s what I was told. The space is filled with these warm lives. When the nights are ten below zero and the earth is an icicle, everyone bundles under buffalo skins after a ghost dance while each one of the tribe in turn tells the story of their drawing from above. They gaze up and watch the spirits of their ancestors dance in the shadows. The stars poke through the tiny slit at the top of the tepee, and this is the spot they call God’s Eye. What they notice is both the figures on the canvas and their conscious eyes direct themselves to the slit above, to the darkness and the thin shimmering starlight bleeding into the fortress.”

Seee took another drag on the cigarette and passed it to Split. “Now, none of them was told how to paint their scene, but all the characters’ actions are funneling to the hole in the top of the tepee. Kicking Bear thinks this an omen. He claims that under this tepee, God’s Eye is glittering, the drawings magnetized to it, the light pouring in is more radiant within. The tribe ends up believing it is a crack of Nirvana, to which all of their ancestors journey. They say it is a remnant of the ghost dance, a celestial crystal ball to see within the heavens. A month later, on a clear night, the tribe is bundled once again in the tepee, gazing up at the slit, waiting for stars. But ominously, none come. Puzzled, Kicking Bear goes outside and sees a sky full of stars. There’s not a cloud in the sky. Long after all of the others have gone to sleep having grown impatient looking for one, Kicking Bear stays awake gazing through the slit at the dark sky. Still, no stars pass through the window. The Sky Father has closed The Eye on them. When morning comes, Kicking Bear wakes everyone and forces them out of the tepee. Then he takes a torch from a fire outside and burns down the Tall Tepee much to the lament of the rest of the tribe. He claims the Sky Father disapproved of the tall
structure and that the tribe should remain close to the earth, close to its roots and what is already known.”

When Seee was quiet, Brock said, “Makes you wonder. What happens when the universe becomes darkness? When the last star flickers out?”

“The universe did not end happily for Kicking Bear,” Seee said. “He ended up being a clown in a road show.”

“From warrior to mascota,” Split said.

“It’s the metaphor for our great nation,” Seee said.

“How do you mean?” Brock asked.

“Too many of our people are becoming Kicking Bear, either waiting for a star that isn’t coming, or like a clown, dancing around oblivious to the world around them, willing to give up their freedom for the status quo.”

“I don’t think it’s quite that bad,” Conroy said.

“You don’t? Curfews? Drones? Robotic police? The expanding apparatus of the surveillance state? The government’s attempt to confiscate weapons and gold? Disallowing money from leaving the United States? Then, they give themselves the right to detain you as they see fit for as long as they want, all under the widening umbrella of national security. What about the internment camps? You don’t see that as problematic?”

“You mean the Uplift camps?” Conroy asked. “I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration. People are exercising their rights by protesting.”

“Isse, what do you think?” Seee asked. “You were in the riots. Give us America’s pulse.”

I scratched the stubble growing on my chin. Eyes around the fire gazed at me eager for what I would say, ready to make a judgment, and Seee cleverly put me in the spotlight.

“I think the element within the crowd has changed,” I said.

“How so?” Seee asked. He swung around from a reclining position where he was perched on an elbow, swiveled his hips in a break-dancer move, and ended up sitting in a lotus position.

“It’s not only your street punk, anarchist, or left-wing radical out there now. Most of the protestors are no longer the fringe. The circumference of the circle is thickening, with a large majority of them now the middleclass.”

Mir interrupted. “What did you mean this morning, Seee? You talked about the paradox of liberty and reality metamorphosing.”

“We are all born into the State, and therefore we are part of it, constituents with passports, birth certificates, tax payer IDs. The State tracks us. They regulate when we can leave or go. They take judicious records of our birth, whether we pay our taxes, and our eventual deaths. The State gathers taxes from the collective, from a group whom are supposed to represent our interests. They vote on how the funds are to be used. But over the last sixty years, funds taken in have not met the insatiable urge to spend. Naturally, the State borrows, making promises to return funds to their lenders. But in effect, they shifted the burden of payment in colossal amounts to the future, as the future was distant, a day so far ahead it was inconceivable for it to come. And then it did. That day is now, and slow change is accelerating, the result of which is civil disobedience, to which the State responds with confiscation of one’s liberty.”

“And you think the riots are because of this?” Conroy asked.

“The riots are a symptom of financial hardship, which has been caused by rising prices, the creation of funny money, and a kleptocratic political system intimately tied with a corrupt financial system. But it has moved very slowly throughout the years. So slow you can’t see it or understand how it happened. Only now are eyes opening. People are dripping with discontent and it’s leaking out onto the streets. The media is nothing more than a propaganda machine bogging you down with disinformation and shifting the blame. They claim the rioting is caused by the fringe, the undesirables. Or they simply bury the coverage.”

The group was silent. Perhaps skeptical. Conroy’s deep look of worry and Brock’s little shake of the head deadened the conversation. The sun was edging out of the horizon, scorching the sky. Finally, Mir spoke. “The forefathers had a vision of a government that would stay off the backs of the people, and in their time that vision was mostly realized. But let’s look at how that vision is different than the reality of today.”

“Within our democracy, we have the power to vote out the politicos though,” Split said.

“Do we?” I asked. “Does it really matter who we vote for? Has it made any difference in the last fifteen years?”

Seee added, “We are gravitating closer and closer to a dangerous situation when the blood on the streets will thicken. How will the people have the means to defend themselves? Mir brought up a good point. Let us ask: Should the State be altered to bring it back in line with the vision of our forefathers? If so, do you think it would be allowed? Who would try it?”

“You are saying the citizenry is becoming hostage to the State,” Brock said.

“How has the United States evolved for the better,” Seee asked, “and how has it veered off course? How do we effect change if it can’t be done through voting? Is anything moveable through the vote anymore?”

We all thought deeply about these questions. The men argued longer while Seee kept silent and listened. Then Conroy asked, “But how do you go about changing anything?”

Seee replied surreptitiously. “I’m not sure. What I do know is how I choose to live my life and that entails sacrificing for my beliefs. Not because I think I’ll be judged, but because I
am
judge in the here and now, and I want to be a clear lens for those to see the country’s true shape. Tradition does not equal truth, nor does it guarantee liberty. When liberty fades then what you have is tyranny, and then what use is a country?”

As Brock was in the middle of a reply, a large blast rang out in
the distance. Another explosion quickly followed. Seee shot to his feet, reached into his pocket, and put in an earpiece. “Talk to me,” he said, then cupped his ear and ran briskly into the forest. Through the earpiece we heard,
Enemy in the wire
.

We bolted back to camp, Seee in the lead, slithering through trees and underbrush. Under shadows, we swarmed through the jungle, all of us in the wake of Seee’s path, blisters on his feet slowing him down. The explosions continued with the rattling shots of a machinegun. As we got closer, we heard screaming deep within the jungle. More machinegun rounds blasted sporadically from several more guns. Then, the sound of grenades came.

Two hundred yards from camp, Seee broke off and leapt into a teak tree, scampering up it like a monkey. He threw down two shovels, pointed to a spot away from the tree and commanded us to dig. Split and I frantically shoveled earth, tossing it over our shoulders. Seee whispered to us that this was not a drill. He said they were probably guerillas after weapons, some of them probably tripping off mines around the perimeter.

A few inches into the soil, Split and I hit metal with our shovels, then dug around a trunk as the others helped push the soil away—an arms cache, a treasure chest of everything from machineguns to RPGs. We suited up in flak jackets, unzipped ammo bags and stuffed them with grenades and shells. Each of us fit an infrared NVG over a helmet. I grabbed a shotgun and slung it over my shoulder. Seee threw Mir an M40A3 and took one for himself. All of us picked up M16s mounted with sights, and slipped in close to the camp where the view was less obstructed by trees.

We crawled through the bush on elbows and knees with our M16s in front of us until we were fifty yards away. Seee counted twenty-one men in the camp clearing. Most had flak jackets on. Others were poking about the perimeter. Several teams of four or five gathered rucksacks, preparing to leave on patrol. Out on the
perimeter, two of the enemy were pulled out of the jungle by their comrades unconscious and bleeding. Even with the light smothered by a waning sunset, we could plainly see they were Asian, the first people we had seen outside The Abattoir. Our eyes lit up with the revelation of a secret.

We inched a few yards closer and saw Eaton Atlas and Drew Gareth on their bellies, pinned to the ground, hands zip-tied behind them. Three other friendlies were face-down in the mud, bodies limp. From that distance identification was impossible. It looked like the others had scattered. Machinegun bursts came blasting from the hills, but the interval between the rounds lost pace.

Out in the clearing, we watched a soldier pop out of Seee’s camouflaged wigwam with a map fluttering in his hands. Four men dragged Atlas and Gareth to their knees. Two stood on each side, pinning them in place. The man with the map shouted in broken English as he circled around them, shoving the map in front of their faces. The two remained stiffly quiet. The enemy wore olive green short-sleeved uniforms, red patches on the side, like something out of old Korea. The map man had a flashy bald head, shiny even in the dimming light, a skull more spherical than egg-like, a chin dimpled and hairless. Here stood a man who had never been taken seriously. Now, he had to prove everyone wrong and double-down on severity.