Her militant escort had cringed with the sound. Then he’d asked someone nearby what to do with Mia. “She’s been acting up,” he explained. “Found a knife on her.”
“Put her with the politicos,” came the response. Then, “Wait.”
Her blindfold was removed and another veteran in urban camo with rolled-up sleeves approached, studying her features like she was a zoo animal. The scrolled words “Essayons” and “Sapper” slashed across his forearms in angry, violent ink. A bald eagle tore across the side of his neck, Old Glory draped from its mouth. His interest ceded to recognition.
“Captain Tucker,” he said. “I remember you. Your blue-blood family, too. You all are rich as hell.”
He turned to alert Veteran Zero. Then, in something like a string, maybe, with pieces and beads almost certainly missing: a clash. A cry. A body on the ground, a body in urban camo. That body’s gun, floating, its sling free as a snake. Pete shouting, “Now, hostage! Fire fucking now,” his binds breaking apart like papier-mâché. Then Pete crashing into a group of militants. Unless the binds came off before that, and unless the crashing into happened before the floating gun. Either way, after and then, then and after, a shot fired. A shot, single and alone and assured. Then shots, all at once, many and together and hysterical.
The silver tree of American Service glowing bright behind it all.
The militant, the young veteran, the chandelier-admirer, the Mormon pamphleteer, whoever he was and whoever he wasn’t, a man of multitudes or a simpleton fool, falling to the ground next to her, blood spilling out of his throat and his eyes slipping up to her for—what, exactly? She didn’t know. She didn’t care, either. Because with him dying at her feet and the others running or standing, or fighting or figuring, she could rise and rise away, and that’s what she did, a swimmer’s ascent through air, finding a stained-glass windowpane cracked open at the top of the ballroom and moving through it, into the summer night. She flew and she flew and she didn’t stop flying until she knew for sure it was just them, her and her unborn, gone and alone in the black sanctuary of sky. Then she took them home.
Riverbrook Sixth Grade History Exam (page 3)
The Palm Sunday attacks occurred on Sunday, March 28, 1998, and were a series of coordinated terrorist attacks carried out on what American target(s) in Federal City? A) The National Cathedral
B) The metro rapid transit system
C) The Nixon Memorial
D) All of the Above
During the New Greco-Turkish War, who/what set off the nuclear device in Crete? A) Communists retaliating for American support of the Russian Revolution
B) Greek radicals
C) Turkish fascist militia
D) U.S. military system malfunction
Which singer turned politician served as President Haig’s vice president from 1984 to 1988? A) Bing Crosby
B) Frank Sinatra
C) Gene Kelly
D) Elvis Presley
During the Persian Coup, who made off with the deposed shah’s gold bullion? A) Kurdish rebels
B) Shiastan militants
C) The Persian Popular Front
D) Unknown
President Richard Nixon’s “Grand Bargain” with Chairman Mao included what? A) A new trade deal between the USA and China
B) The end of the U.S. Navy’s blockade in the Taiwan Strait
C) The end of Chinese military and economic support of North Vietnam
D) All of the Above
CHAPTER 12
XAVIER STATION WAS a military processing center, one of the largest in Empire City. It had marked the beginning of Jean-Jacques’s military career, where he’d gone in high school to meet recruiters about the Legion, to learn how a fat immigrant could become a citizen by Spilling Blood for America. It’d mark the end of his career, too, someday: it was where area veterans went to face their medical tribunal.
He’d seen a veteran with troubles the day he went to sign his enlistment papers. The man wore a camo boonie cap and had black pins for eyes. Both his legs were bandaged stumps and he kept sipping from a cheap plastic bottle filled with something the color of maple. A woman had been wheeling him around, a wife or sister or cousin, a plastered look of both resignation and relief across her face. They know, Jean-Jacques thought, understanding even then. They know he’s gonna fail and get sent to a colony.
It was necessary, of course. America couldn’t have tens of thousands of vets with troubles walking around, breaking the peace. This was better for everyone. Like President Rockefeller had once said: “The colonies aren’t a great solution. But they are the best one.”
Still, though, teenage Jean-Jacques had thought. Necessary things can be sad things, too.
Barricades had been set up three blocks out from Xavier Station, so Jean-Jacques turned around, parked, then slipped in like sand through backyards and an alley. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected but it hadn’t been what he found. Emmanuel wasn’t joking, or exaggerating. There’d been a riot at the station’s gates.
The night oozed police. There were dozens of them, some in uniform, others in jeans and tees, still others in cumbersome SWAT gear. Siren lights swathed the block in incandescent whites and reds. A mound of confiscated weapons had formed on the building’s concrete steps; pipes, bats, some switchblades, and a single flash-bang, listless as straw. One of the pipes glinted blue under the moon, smeared with blood.
The air fizzed tangy bleach—tear gas, Jean-Jacques thought, nothing like it. A large homemade painting of a grim-faced soldier tied between two poles rested against the school gates, an act of tenderness that defied everything around it. It was in the Artibonite style, all bright impressionism and surreality. Loose cries and moans filled the dark, a serene anti-peace settling in. A handful of paramedics treated injuries, but most of the bodies scattered across the sidewalk were being helped by neighborhood people with homemade first-aid kits.
A man in rags was leaning against the gates. He was breathing hard through his nose and still clutched a trash can lid as a shield. “What happened here?” Jean-Jacques asked him.
“Holy blood. Holy redemption,” the man in rags said. His voice carried the starry lilt of a mystic.
“Uh-huh.” Jean-Jacques ignored that madness and kept walking.
Order had been cleaved from chaos, pockets of young men on their knees, surrounded by their less arrest-worthy friends. A collection of brown and black teenagers wearing flat-brimmed baseball caps held the most handcuffed, and the most accompanying police. Across the street were eight or nine white boys wearing new tan boots and black backpacks. Their clothes were nice, prim even, and a cold stun had sealed along their faces. They were new to this, whatever this had been. Adjacent to the weapons cache, a uniformed cop spitting fury was being held back by his precinct comrades. He wanted at one of the white boys. Another large group was too far away for Jean-Jacques to make out but seemed of particular concern to the plainclothes police. He didn’t see Emmanuel’s bird frame anywhere.
One of the white boys in boots made a break for it, straight at Jean-Jacques. He’d slipped the cuffs from his thin wrists like grease. The police shouted after him but didn’t seem interested in a foot chase. Jean-Jacques reacted on instinct. He leveled the kid with a quick clothesline to the chest. The kid dropped to the ground, too stunned to do anything but hold at his neck and gasp.