Rod dropped me off at the bus stop at 5:30 AM. We said our goodbyes groggily, gave one another a few pats on the back, and turned to meet our respective days. The bus station in this town was outside a decrepit truck stop, so I went inside to grab myself a few provisions before the bus arrived: extra-strength benadryl so I’d be knocked out for the ride, a singly packaged hardboiled egg, and a pack of cigarettes. The cashier gave me a grimace as she rang up my items.
I returned to the station, which was essentially a shack with a bench in the corner of the truck stop’s oversized, pothole-stricken lot, and ate my hardboiled egg standing up, lighting a cigarette quickly afterward with the idea that my noxious breath would dissuade any eager conversationalists.
When I arrived a few people were already there, one of whom seemed to have been there overnight. He wore an oversized beanie above an unkempt beard, and sported a large red flannel torn in several places. He nodded in and out of consciousness on the bench in front of the bus station; I wasn’t sure if this was due to sleep deprivation or drugs.
There was a woman there too, middle-aged. She wore a thin, light-pink sweater, which was altogether inadequate for the morning chill, and folded her arms to her chest. She tapped her right foot on the pavement compulsively. She never looked anywhere except down and toward her toes, but I caught her snatching glances out of the corners of her bloodshot eyes at me and the dazed man on the bench.
As the minutes wound down to the bus’s arrival a few more pilgrims of public transportation arrived: an Arab man with a potbelly and a gold-plated watch (no luggage), a younger man wearing over-ear headphones and an olive colored cloth messenger bag, and two men, one obese, and the other lanky and effete. The fat one wore a trucker cap and a thick work coat, and the skinny one wore filthy pants covered in paint and a sun-faded ball cap. They chatted loudly.
“-Ms. Hinkle, man, what a dumb bitch. Why’d you have to remind me of her?” the lanky one giggled, opening and then guzzling a tall boy beer within the span of thirty seconds. “Goddamn that hair of the dog hits good.”
“That cashier had the same glasses. Big and thick black ones with the horned rims. She kinda looked like her too.”
The two of them laughed loudly, and the skinny one rubbed his head.
“It fuckin could have been her. She was a dumb bitch. Wouldn’t be surprised if she worked at the fuckin gas station now.” He groaned and looked at his friend. “Man, I got a fuckin hangover from hell. The Devil’s using my skull for a fuckin abductor machine.”
“Just drink more. You should know what to do by now.” the fat one said.
“What the hell are you talking about.”
“You’re hungover everyday brother.”
“No I’m not.”
“Alright.”
“I just don’t get enough sleep.”
“That too.”
“Troy, kill yourself you fucker.”
The fat one laughed. “I’ll think about it after we get to Vegas.”
- - - - -
WEPT had no need to pretend that this class of people had ‘revolutionary potential’ locked deep within them by virtue of occupying the bottom rungs. I was free from that sort of ideological trap: acting as if the magnets of the group’s moral compass were the down-trodden and dispossessed had made seniority on my first assignment in California almost too easy.
WEPT called for one thing as regards social relations, capital, power, and the powerless: as one distributed evil deserving only annihilation. Much simpler, if more foreboding.
When Jemima Robinson handed me their dossier a few months ago, I did not know much about them other than their name, and the Union did not have information aside the whereabouts of one member: Baldwin. When I saw the words “Empty Planet” I thought it indicated they were a group with a Malthusian ecological agenda. Wyoming is fairly empty as far as the States go. My immediate expectation was that I would be embedded with some pot-smoking cowboys who went camping at Devils Tower a little more than average. We smoked sometimes, but that was as far as my expectation converged with reality.
The Union has three separate designations it gives to different radical groups with different subcategories within each. The first designation is the one that was supposed to be a precondition of my employment at the Union, and which led to my attempted resignation: Violent/Non-Violent.
The second designation loosely indicates ‘type’. Types are divided between Cult/Political and Organization/Special Interest Group subcategories.
The differences between these three subcategories are nebulous and the Union frequently gets them wrong. For example, the APRA was labeled a Special Interest Group because they were supposedly agitating on behalf of Native Americans. They were a cult. WEPT was labeled as a political organization, and while I wouldn’t say they were a special interest group or cult, I think anti-political organization may have been more accurate.
The third designation indicates the structure of the group. There are five subcategories in this designation: Parliamentary, Centralized, Cellular, Atomic, and Evangelical. The Californians were designated parliamentary, and the APRA was designated evangelical, despite gas station raids and forced hypnosis stretching the traditional usage of the term.
The difference between Cells and Atoms are minor but important, and the words themselves are helpful for understanding their operation. A cell is entirely self-sufficient, alive and operates according to codes that regulate its development and reproduction while it coordinates with other cells. An atom is isolated and generally reacts with other elements, sometimes in a combustive manner. I assume our poor compatriot Bart from earlier dealt strictly with atoms.
WEPT was designated cellular. Of all the subcategories, these two are almost never non-violent. The inherently closed structure is conducive to distributing the capacity for action across a wide network with little information leakage to the outside world, and with little accountability to other actors in the network. To get in, you have to be in (or have convenient outside intelligence).
I should never have taken the contract for a non-violent, cellular political organization because all three of those designations contradict each other. Non-violent groups have no reason to organize themselves in cells, and cells aren’t exactly helpful if you want to generate political change in a mass society.
- - - - -
Identical purple seats of thick cloth, decorated with wispy green and white streaks lined the inside of the bus on both sides. Some were torn, most were intact, but all smelled of dust and sweat. It was an older bus line than I was accustomed, which testified to the pace of development in this American Siberia.
I took my seat by the wheel-well. After all had handed him their tickets, the driver, an older man wearing what looked to be high tint welding goggles, closed the door and put the PA to his mouth.
“Thank you for riding with Godspeed Busliner,” he said. He spoke laconically and with a geographically unplaceable drawl. “Our next destination is Billings, then Idaho Falls, then Jackson, then Casper, and finally Tannerite, where the line will be terminated, and you will need to switch buses if you plan on continuing your journey. This bus is drug-free, meaning if you are snorting anything, smoking anything, drinking anything, I will stop the bus and eject you myself. This bus is also free of loud music and loud talking aside what I allow. If you play loud music or engage in loud conversation, I will stop the bus and eject you myself. If you are sneezing or coughing too much I will stop the bus and eject you myself, for the sake of public safety.”
“What are you, my mama?” Troy called from the back of the bus.
“Do not tempt me, fat ass,” the old man replied. Only his black goggled eyes were visible in his rear-view mirror. “I’ve had bigger than you act up, and bigger than you will in the future, though that may be hard for even you to believe. I am he who conducts men to their destinations. Some men elect to shorten their journey.”
Everyone sat perfectly silent after that, even Curtis and Troy. I made sure to lay down in my seat to take my benadryl to avoid any unpleasant interaction with the driver. When I popped back up, his goggles were again plainly visible in the rearview mirror, and I at once realized why the driver wore them: he could watch the road or watch the passengers and nobody would know which at any given moment. This was the driver’s domain, a mobile kingdom where his subjects were demanded absolute submission for the duration of their journey. I respected the MO.
I fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep about 15 minutes later and had a very strange dream. I’ve had strange dreams before, but this one was rare; the emotional impact it had on me would lead to situations that almost got me killed. In hindsight, I wondered how it’d all gotten into my head in the first place. Was it the benadryl? The hardboiled egg? Acid flashback? If the Devil is real (and I’m more inclined now to believe that he is), I’m convinced one of his bodiless servants was whispering sweet evils into my ear on that long, long bus ride.
- - - - -
I was in a forest. It was neither night nor morning, but eclipscine dusk. But no celestial body hung in the sky; I only remember faint and wispy clouds.
I walked toward a fire I glimpsed from the woods. The trees bore no trace of green from any angle I peered at them. Pure shadow. As I moved closer to the fire I heard whimpering. I became deeply forlorn. I knew I had failed. My chest tightened, and I entered the clearing. I saw a woman, the woman, the black-haired beauty I’d seen in the RIU office. She looked at me. Her green eyes shone bright against the snapping fire, and her cheeks were wet with tears.
“Tancred,” she said.
“I’m here.”
“Look,” she said. She pointed at the fire. I looked.
A pot laid on its side, its contents bubbling and boiling and blackened where it had dripped into the fire.
“The chowder,” I gasped.
“We’re going to starve.” She put her hand on her belly and looked down. I could see now that her shirt was stretched, and the porcelain skin of her swollen, pregnant stomach poked beneath.
“Why didn’t you buy a proper stove? I knew this would happen.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She wouldn’t look at me. My chest grew very heavy and I began to get angry.
“How could I have known this would happen?”
“You knew as well as I did it would,” she replied. She put her hand on her belly and looked out into the woods, away from the fire.
I said her name, which I could not hear, and do not remember to this day. I knew it was her real name. I said it multiple times, and when she still did not respond I took her by the hand and made her to stand.
“We have to leave,” I said.
“There’s nowhere to go.”
I looked out into the woods, and again the anger bubbled inside of me, hideous and universal, and the heaviness in my chest made my eyes water.
“I will burn these woods to the ground, and then we will never need a stove again,” I said.
“You can’t burn anything but the soup, Tancred.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
She looked away. I grabbed her hand tighter and led her from the fire and into the woods.
The two of us walked through the forest, in the unearthly quiet beneath the shadows. Our footfalls made no sound. The only sensation I recall was that of her hand in mine and the soft breeze tickling my cheeks. I feared no wild animals; these woods were dead of them.
“It’s just darkness,” I said to her. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I don’t feel fear,” she said, which I thought was a strange thing for a pregnant woman to say.
We continued to walk. The light did not change, but eventually the woods thinned and the forest floor changed from pine-needles to soft sod. I heard new sounds behind me, a gurgle and a coo.
My feeling changed abruptly as soon as I saw her carrying a child in black cloths. I felt elated, relieved, and my breathing eased, but there was another sensation there that dwelt beneath my relief. I felt a soft mistrust, that I could not, on pain of death, reveal to her.
“We’re parents,” I said. I gave her a forced smile.
She nodded and kissed my cheek.
“Can I see him?”
She shook her head, and smiled, before pointing past me to something at the edge of the woods. I turned around.
I saw that we were no longer deep in the forest, but at the edge of a large, well-manicured yard, and beyond the yard, I could make out massive stone columns leading to the roof of a large building. I led her into the yard, out from beneath the last trees, ending our uncertain odyssey.
Outside of the woods, the light changed. It was definitively daytime, or perhaps something greater even than the day. I could see now that we had stumbled upon an immaculate estate, constructed in a neo-classical style with large columns and archways. To our left, the yard seemed to extend for miles. It was cut through with crisscrossing pebbled pathways and all sorts of gardens containing flowers of many colors and varieties, lilies and azaleas and begonias and roses, and within the gardens, statues of figures who I could not make out, but who seemed to face us and exult in what seemed more and more to be our triumphant return.
And I was met with a new sensation, strange in this context, that all my fears previous were groundless, that I was forgiven for leaving the chowder to topple into the fire, that I was absolved for being suspicious of our child, that it was no issue I wanted to torch the woods, that my fear and heaviness had been a bad dream, and that this estate, which was too good to be true, was ours, and that the world was vindicated in its being good to me and her.
This feeling intensified as we walked through the large wooden front doors, carved with scenes from our romance, and explored the interior. There was a high-ceilinged parlor at the end of a hallway where I could smoke, read, and receive guests, and I knew upstairs there were innumerable rooms for our child, and a larger room where her and I would spend our time languishing with one another, and when not enraptured by our lovely peace, we would be engaged with the fearful and wonderful task of filling the rest of the rooms with our children.
“It’s ours,” I said. I looked at her. “This is what has been accounted to us for our labors,” I replied, and again I said her unknown name. “Trust me. We’ve been vindicated. Everything we did was worth it.”
I began to feel frantic. This incredible place had set us free from our terrible toil, and I could tell she didn’t believe it, couldn’t.
“It’s ours,” I repeated. “Just ask him,” I said, turning abruptly to the door, where there now stood a man who had walked in behind us, haggard, unkempt and bearded, with sticky brown locks that fell to his shoulders and a flannel torn in several places. He was the same man I’d seen at the bus stop, lying on the bench. He squinted and held his hands together in front of him and his shoulders were bowed forward. He nodded sleepily.
“Please tell her,” I said. “Tell her it’s ours.” He continued to nod slowly and weakly. “That’s not enough. Tell her. Tell her we earned it.”
I started to walk toward him, and the heaviness returned all at once, my throat tightened, and my eyes streamed hot tears. “Tell her.”
The haggard man opened his eyes suddenly, and I realized they weren’t eyes at all, but goggles within the sockets, deep black and reflective, and when I got up close to the man, my arm raised, frothing at the mouth with my demands, I saw in the reflection not myself, but a hairy, doglike beast, curled on the carpet of the entryway, sleeping.
I stopped in my tracks and ceased my entreaty to the man. He grew larger then, and towering above me, said: “You’re here. This is your destination.”
I felt the man’s hot breath on my face and awoke from the dream instantly.
The driver stood over me with his black goggles.
“You’re here. It’s Tannerite,” he said. “Wake up. I’ll take your ass to the depot and you can spend the night there if you don’t move.”
I shook my head and sat up. “I’m sorry, sir.” My voice faltered and I realized I was in tears. I wiped my face, embarrassed. “I’m really sorry.”
The driver shook his head.
“Them transit dreams are something else,” he said, moving from the wheel well to his seat by the stairs at the front of the bus. I looked to the back, half expecting to see Troy and Curtis but they had left some time ago. The bus was vacant.
I patted my pants to make sure I had everything I brought with me, and quickly walked past the driver and descended the stairs.
“You’re welcome,” he called out before shutting the doors behind me with a hiss. Without delay, the bus screeched away, and I was left alone on the sidewalk at mid-morning in Tannerite, Wyoming.