Wide Awake Now, page 17
When we sang “Happy Birthday,” a lot of the people around us chimed in. It felt like group effort again. When Stein came out to talk to us, I half expected him to wish Jimmy a happy birthday, too. Instead he told us we were fighting the good fight, making good trouble, and that even though the process of justice was moving slowly, we were helping to sit on the scales to make sure it moved in the right direction.
Then, roughly ten minutes after he left the stage, news started to come in from Tallahassee.
* * *
—
You could see it spread through the crowd. People noticing something on their phones. Telling the people around them to take a look.
Then: shock and horror.
In our group it was Keisha who saw it first. She immediately called out to the rest of us to show what had happened. And there it was, contained by a screen but still right in front of us: the car driving into the crowd. The screams and falling bodies. The way it went on and on, until finally the car stopped and police surrounded it.
Then, more news. Another car attempting to drive into the crowds in Harrisburg. Calls for people not to panic. A man in Sacramento pulling out an AK-47 and firing it in the air. The chief of police in Topeka taking the stage, telling the millions of us to stay calm, that law enforcement was on high alert.
Everyone started getting phone calls. To make sure we were okay. To tell us to come home. I could tell from my mother’s voice that she was crying, terrified. Even Jimmy’s parents were upset, were wondering what was going to happen. He assured them we were okay, but he didn’t take it one step further, saying it would all be okay.
I was shocked, but I was not surprised. I was horrified by what I was seeing unfold, but it also felt like forces had been unfolding such violence for years. Deep in my heart, I’d known something like this was going to happen.
After so many years of vitriol. After so many years of demonization and dehumanization. After so many years of conservative gatekeepers looking the other way as white supremacists and conspiracy theorists walked through the gates. After people in power told their followers that the truth was theirs to bend to their will. After people in power told their followers that they had to fight or be replaced. After months of voters being told by the other side that the election was going to be stolen from them. After all that…it felt inevitable that someone was once again going to drive a car into a crowd, killing whoever stood in their way. And then other people were going to copy this act.
We were told Stein would come out to address us in a matter of minutes. Part of me wanted to tell him not to, to tell him it was too risky. Who could say there wasn’t a gunman in the crowd? How can you protect one man from a multitude that stretches millions?
He must have been afraid. It’s human to be afraid when you know there are people who will stop at nothing to make you afraid.
Stein went onstage and told us violence was not the answer. We all chanted it after he said it.
Violence is not the answer.
Violence is not the answer.
Violence is not the answer.
Even as I said these words, I thought, But violence has always been the question. Not a distinctly American question, but certainly one that has bedeviled our country, the more so as it became easier to use a weapon to kill many people in an instant, without having to be at close range.
Stein called on the opposition candidate to condemn what had happened, but the opposition candidate couldn’t bring himself to do it fully. He said the protests were an aggression, and that aggression incites aggression. He made himself the victim, because powerful people losing their power will always slide into the victimhood they deplore in people who are actually victimized by systems of power.
The governor of Kansas was more decisive, saying that no violence would be tolerated, declaring the entirety of the protest zone a weapon-free area. I didn’t know how enforceable that was, but it was still good to hear. The governor was willing to take away our votes, but at least he didn’t want us to be killed on his watch.
The news showed some people leaving, the crowd having more empty spaces. Not as many people were coming in to replace them. Stein made many announcements asking us all to stay where we were, to prevent the chaos of a mass exodus.
Virgil called an emergency meeting.
“I’ve been getting word from all your parents,” he said. “They want us home, and they want us home now.”
“So that’s it?” Jimmy said. “We give up on peaceful protest the minute the other side uses violence? Is that what history teaches us, Virgil?”
Virgil shook his head. “I hear you, Jimmy. But at the end of the day, you’re all still minors. And if your parents call you home, then I gotta bring you home.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying that.” Jimmy sounded disgusted.
“Don’t take it out on him,” Flora interrupted. “He’s as heartbroken as you about this.”
I thought Jimmy would relent, but his body remained tense. I tried to put my hand on his shoulder, but right there, in front of everyone, he pulled away.
“Well,” Janna said, “we can’t leave until at least tomorrow. It’s getting dark and they’re telling everyone it’s safer here than trying to get on the roads.”
Virgil nodded. “That’s what I told your parents, and they understand. The last thing they want is for us to be trying to press through the crowds in the dark. So hunker down…for our last night here.”
Nobody was in the mood to celebrate anymore—not Jimmy’s birthday, not our pride in being present. Instead we remained as glued to our phones as we could be with chargers in short supply, watching as the National Guard moved in to protect us, and as a few rogue truckers decided to express their views on our protest by stalling their vehicles on the main highways out of Topeka, snarling traffic further. It looked like we might not get out anytime soon. And instead of feeling like protesters, we were starting to feel like sitting ducks.
Stein and others came out to rally us, to tell us we were still fighting the good fight. Volunteers passed out water and food and blankets, because the night was supposed to dip well below freezing. The singers came on with their protest songs, but fewer of us were singing along.
* * *
—
I didn’t really have a chance to talk to Jimmy alone until we were back in our sleeping spot. It was only nine, but we’d decided to call it a night. We half expected Virgil to get us up at sunrise to try to make an early retreat, if the roads were cleared and the conditions were right.
The breaking news kept breaking us. One of the victims in Tallahassee was a nine-year-old girl. Another car attempted to crash into the protest in Austin, but the police shot the driver before he could make it to the crowd. Hundreds of violent white supremacists were trying to circle the Supreme Court building in DC. The justices were supposedly under heightened guard.
I tried to remember it was Jimmy’s birthday, and that I had to try to be extra nice to him. But I didn’t know how to reconcile that with his anger.
“You can’t take it out on Virgil,” I told him, cuddling in to counter the cold. “It’s not his fault.”
“I know it’s not his fault,” he said. “Or our parents’ fault. Or Stein’s fault. It’s this fucking country’s fault.”
“We’re part of this country, too,” I reminded him. “You can’t define us by our worst elements.”
Jimmy rounded on me then and said, “I can when they win! Don’t you see, Duncan—they’re going to win. Because they’re willing to kill people. Because they’re willing to wreck the truth. Because they don’t care about anyone but themselves, and are willing to take us all down as collateral damage. Guess what: It’s an effective strategy! Fear works!”
I didn’t like seeing Jimmy like this. I hadn’t really seen it before, this despair. It was unnerving because he was supposed to be the positive one, the optimist. I was supposed to be the cynic.
“We can’t give up,” I told him. “Not now. Not when we’ve come all this way. If we give up now, then they really do win. And if they win on their terms, then it’s much worse than any single election.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said. “Can’t you see…it doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” I argued. “It has to.”
“I’m telling you, they’re going to win.”
This was it. The abyss.
I had glimpsed it before. In my parents’ haunted faces the morning after Trump won. In the early days of the pandemic, when we took shelter in our houses and didn’t leave. When I wondered if every time one of my parents went to the grocery store they’d come back with something deadly. When the number of deaths built into a mountaintop. Then, the insurrection. Seeing the wild, uncontrollable crowd storm the Capitol, gleefully calling for politicians to be killed. Thinking: This is how the American experiment fails. This is how democracy and the safety of democracy get yanked from our hands. This is the breakage of our society. And all we’ll have left is…the abyss. We will be toppled by our own greed. We will be toppled by our lust for violence. We will be toppled by the fuel of hate added to the fires of resentment. The danger was always there in front of our eyes. But we chose to look away, at our entertainments. We ceded responsibility so we could shop and argue with our neighbors. The abyss was always there; we just build more entrances.
America is a lie, but it’s a useful one. It’s something we can work toward instead of the abyss.
Those in power liked to think our system was safer, better than others. We had staved off the chaos of other societies, the warfare. But all along we’d been much closer to crossing that line than we’d thought. And that “safer, better” had only applied to the majority all along.
I didn’t think I had the strength to pull Jimmy from the abyss, but I had to try. I knew I didn’t have the strength to pull America from the brink of the abyss, but I had to try.
“No,” I said to him, making sure he was looking at me, that we were seeing each other clearly. “They’re not going to win. Because most Americans are like us. They don’t want to plunge into the abyss. They don’t want people shooting up stores or schools or nightclubs. They want elections to be won by the person with the most votes. They don’t want crimes to go unpunished and lies to go uncorrected. They don’t like politics and politicians, but they like entropy even less. They want security, not insecurity. They want peace of mind, not fear. We are the majority. For the past four presidential elections, we have been the majority. But voting aside—most people want to live by love, whether it’s God’s love or love for each other or both. They want to leave the world better than when they got here. They want the future to be better for the next generations. They don’t want another civil war.”
“Then why are we here? Why does this keep happening?”
“We are here because we need to make our principles visible. The other question has thousands of individual answers. Every person who allies with the abyss has their own story, because selfishness is always part of the equation. But the antidote to that is one story, and that’s the story we’re here to defend.”
Jimmy was shaking now. From fear, or sadness, or anger, or maybe that overwhelming wave when all of them meet. I held him, and he held me back, and that was how we built the life raft, that was how we resolved everything we knew we couldn’t resolve. We stepped back from the abyss, into the mundane. So we could find a way to sleep. So we could find a way to face the morning.
twenty-seven
Shortly after we woke up and got the lay of the land, it became clear we weren’t going anywhere.
Not only was there trouble on the highways going out of Topeka, but people had begun to come back in again. In the wake of Tallahassee, a new group of people had been energized to join us, to condemn the violence and aggression.
* * *
—
Jimmy’s spirits seemed to have thawed a little.
“Wanna go on a supply run to the bus?” he asked me. “We’re going to go and get the rest of the food.”
“Whatever you want, Belated Birthday Boy,” I answered.
“I suppose a Holy Ghostwriter encore is out of the question?”
“You mean you want me to put out again?”
“Only if it wouldn’t put U out.”
I swatted at him, and he swatted at me.
“Bickering!” Gus called out.
“It’s not bickering!” we shouted back.
Janna, Mandy, Clive, and Virgil were going to come along with us. As we headed out, the new level of security was clear—not just in the presence of countless police officers and National Guardspeople, but also in the wary expression of people as we passed. I didn’t think we looked at all suspicious, and once people focused on us, we usually got smiles or nods. But at first, when we were just motion-sensed on the side, there was an initial tenseness, a layer of worry.
“We’re leaving Mira and Keisha in the same place at the same time?” I asked Jimmy, trying to make the walk as conversational as possible. “Have you seen any signs of reconciliation?”
Jimmy shook his head. “Nope. But do you really think there should be?”
The rest of our group was ahead of us. It was just the two of us talking.
“You don’t?” I asked.
He paused. We were approaching the counterprotesters. The security was particularly intense around them, and it looked like they hadn’t been given much leeway in leaving their enclosure. They were looking bedraggled—as hungry, cold, and unwashed as we were. Their shouting wasn’t as loud now, but the edge in it was sharper. The police weren’t there to prevent them from insulting us, just from shooting us.
We tried to ignore it.
“Don’t you want them to get back together?” I pressed.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, what Keisha did was pretty rotten, no matter what Sara says. How can Mira ever trust her again?”
“But if she’s sorry, doesn’t that matter?”
We weren’t talking about us, but with any couple, whenever you talk about another couple it becomes at least partly a conversation about your own relationship.
“If Keisha’s so sorry, she shouldn’t have been making out with Sara,” Jimmy said. I wasn’t crazy about the judgment in his voice…but then I thought, If it had been Jimmy with Sara, wouldn’t I be saying the same thing?
It was so complicated. I wanted forgiveness from Jimmy, even though it wasn’t for me.
* * *
—
Once we were closer to the bus, Janna ducked back to us.
“Did you see those Decents protesting?” she asked. “They weren’t in good shape.”
“Maybe that means they’ll leave,” Jimmy said. “We can hope.”
I didn’t disagree with that. It would have been satisfying to outlast them.
We looked ahead to Virgil, Mandy, and Clive. They seemed to be studying something on the bus. When we caught up with them, we saw what they were looking at—eggs had been hurled at the bus’s windows and sides.
“Waste of good food,” Virgil said.
Janna stuck her finger in one of the egg spots. “This is a fresh assault. We could still make an omelet if we hurry.”
We took a look at the other side of the bus, but apparently this side—the one with Gus’s words on it—had been the only object of attack. I felt a little strange—what if the eggsailants were still close by? What if they chose another food group to attack us with?
I think my uneasiness was shared, since we moved with much more efficiency and much less talk than we had the day before. We unloaded the last boxes of food and a few extra blankets we’d taken. Then we locked up and started heading back—although not before each of us had used the bus’s restroom. It wasn’t spacious, but it was still a sight cleaner than the toilet cubes that had been set up around Topeka. We also convinced Clive to run the engine a little so we could charge our phones.
“All right,” Virgil said when the last of us was finished. “Let’s beat it.”
As we started back downtown, Clive said to Jimmy, “I bet this isn’t how you pictured your birthday week would go.”
Jimmy looked over to me, like I’d put Clive up to saying it. Mandy jumped in and asked Virgil what his weirdest birthday ever was, and he told us a story involving a surprise party, an abandoned car wash, a Buick, and Flora with a nest of cherries in her hair.
It was good to be laughing, as all of us were. All of us except Janna, who seemed to have something else on her mind.
It was only when we got to the counterprotesters that we found out what it was.
twenty-eight
“We need to help them,” Janna said.
I knew exactly who she meant, but even Mandy was a little confused.
“Who?” they asked.
“Them.” Janna pointed to the ragged bunch of screamers that we were approaching, their posters a little worn but still full of poisoned words. “Look at those kids on the side. I wonder if they’ve had anything to eat the past two days. We should offer them some of the energy bars we have. We have plenty, especially with the triplets and Sue gone. We should share. It’s what Jesus would want us to do.”
I was in no position to argue what Jesus would or wouldn’t want.
“Really, Janna,” Jimmy said, “I think that’s too much. We can share with the people around us at the rally. Our side.”
“No. Look at them.” Sure enough, there were a bunch of kids at the edge of the counterprotest, looking like they missed home in a big way. A camera crew was nearby, asking an adult to spite-spew for the news.
