Gellhorn laughed. Then she asked if Mia knew of any other superpowered, beyond the three Volunteers. Like the supposed invisible man.
“No,” Mia said. Then, unable to help herself, she asked, “Why?”
“Sweetheart.” Gellhorn’s cheer refused to waver, even when condescending. “The Hero Project. It’s two decades old, at the least. They’ve wanted people like you for a long time.”
THE FEDERAL CITY POST—BOOKS
Review of My Brothers’ Keeper
by Mark Daily
If Americans cared about the war policies being carried out abroad in our name, My Brothers’ Keeper would be atop every bestseller list there is. We don’t, though, which is why last week’s lists were headed by another book on Sinatra’s extramarital affairs as vice president, alien werewolves that live beneath the ocean, and yes, somehow, three more personal testimonies to the grand American victory in Vietnam.
As an army veteran of the Mediterranean, I want to be clear: I Praise the Victors. I Honor my fellow Warfighters. But someday, as a culture and society, we’re going to have to stop indulging in past glories to reckon with the present.
Which returns me to My Brothers’ Keeper, a debut memoir by marine veteran and former Pelican Island colony guard Edwin Rodriguez. With searing clarity and brave truth-telling, Rodriguez chronicles his journey from artillery missions in Sinai back to the homeland.
“Everyone wanted to shake my hand and say the good, pretty words about country and patriotism,” he writes. “Only Pelican Island offered a job with health insurance.”
Seventy percent of guards at rehabilitation colonies are military vets themselves, according to the McNamara Institute. This results in daily encounters like those outlined by Rodriguez, where “A fellow warfighter I would’ve trusted with my life three years before was now asking my permission to get another Jell-O helping.” Last year’s infamous Pelican Island riot is detailed in full here, with a direct view of the president’s controversial decision to send in federal force.
What kind of country does this to those who gave their youths to our republic and empire? What kind of country maintains such a status quo and shrugs at any attempt to remedy it? My Brothers’ Keeper asks those hard questions. It also provides a possible way forward.
“Some of the veterans with troubles had developed hard politics,” Rodriguez writes. “They’d say that maxim: ‘Defy the Guards. Guard Those Who Defy.’ It was a joke that bridged the divide between them and us.
“Now, after the riot, after everything, I don’t think it’s a joke. I was a guard. My colony brothers defied us, and some got killed for it. Now it’s my turn to defy. I don’t know what the right answer is. But it’s not this.”
CHAPTER 18
THE POWER OF bone splitting bone shot up Jean-Jacques’s arm, knuckle to shoulder, like a cold marble. He punched again. Beneath him, the man’s nose cracked open while the back of his throat gurgled with animal dread. He lashed around trying to buck off Jean-Jacques. Jean-Jacques kept his hooks in and threw down more punches and hammer fists until the man stopped lashing. Then he found another and did the same to him.
The men were Sheepdogs.
One of the Sheepdogs got on his back and dragged him to the ground with a metal chain. Jean-Jacques dug in his neck to protect it, arched his back for leverage, and threw back three elbows. The last one connected, snapping the man’s head into the cement. A sound like dead radio fizzed out into the darkness.
Jean-Jacques untangled himself and took the chain as his own. Adrenaline was juicing his veins. Bloodlust smothered his mind. He reminded himself to breathe through the pain in his ribs.
The young men in the social service wing called these Mayday hunts. They weren’t supposed to do them. Lamar Pierre disapproved and had ordered them ended. But Lamar Pierre couldn’t control everything. Social service Maydays looked up to the Mayday soldiers. They wanted to be like them. To fight for the cause, with force. And besides—now they had a war hero of their own.
Deeper in the park, Emmanuel was exchanging knife slashes with a tower of a man. Jean-Jacques used his speed and came upon the Sheepdog with an open palm, keeping the strike at elbow level. The man dropped like a razed building. Anything harder would’ve killed him and Jean-Jacques was proud of himself for the restraint.
“Motherfucker,” Emmanuel said, his mouth gored, face already swelling with welts. Jean-Jacques noticed not-so-shallow cuts across both of his arms. “This is mad fun.”
They’d followed the group from a beer hall in the Bowery to a district across the bridge, past the rusting lady statue with her torch to a quiet place with wide, curbed streets and matching square houses and big porch flags. Emmanuel had set the bait, one lone immigrant lost, far from home. The Sheepdogs took it, following him into the black of a park on a hill. They smelled like whiskey and cigarette smoke and a couple had firefighter tattoos. That might’ve bothered Jean-Jacques a few weeks before, attacking public servants.
He knew better now.
They finished the fight, not too quick, not too slow. Then the ritual commenced. The Mayday version of bagging and tagging. Gather the bodies together, masking tape across mouths for silence, shirts over heads for impotence. Sprinkle around their coins, their lighters, their teeth, like faerie dust. Take the boots, toss away the shoes. Break the phones. Steal the weapons. Take out the can of black spray paint, shake the can of black spray paint. A black circle with three black arrows across each face, each stomach, each groin.
“Freedom Beast, my niggas,” Emmanuel said, both for them and for the others, too.
Mayday hunts, not so different than midnight raids abroad. Of their own accord, for one. Quiet as sin, loud like virtue, for another. A mission for someone, or something, a mission like any other. Voices of command and voices of care and voices of alarm all whirling together into one singular monk chant of violence.
A hunt’s thrills, a hunt’s terrors. Dark everlasting. Jean-Jacques was home, again.
* * *
“Wake up, brother.”
Jean-Jacques opened his eyes to find his cousin looming over his bed. It was still ink-dark outside. His body called out for Vicodin and coffee and ached in a general way that would become very specific as soon as he moved. They were supposed to have the day off. That was why they’d gone on a hunt the night before. He looked toward the floor, past a heap of dirty clothes. The digital green of an alarm clock read 4:04 a.m.
“Get dressed,” Emmanuel said. “We’ve been chosen for rite.”
Jean-Jacques tried to form an objection but all that came out was incomprehension. Emmanuel took it as a question.
“Mayday ceremony. Gotta be there by sunrise. The Chaplain runs it.”
That got Jean-Jacques moving. He found the light switch. Finally, he thought through his predawn stupor. Finally this fucking guy appears.
He put on jeans, boots, a hoodie and reached for his wallet and phone.
“Leave them,” Emmanuel said. “No IDs, no electronics. Rules of rite.”
Jean-Jacques nodded and waited for his cousin to turn around. He needed his phone to text the Bureau agents. But Emmanuel kept looking at him, severe as an owl.