The Spirit of Resistance Read online

  “What do you mean?” I’d said.

  “Well, a single person can’t do nothing about Congress or the media, or Hollywood. But the President—now that’s a different story.”

  “Whaddya mean ‘do something?’ Like run for office?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. Ain’t nobody gonna vote for you or me. We’d have to sell ourselves out and become like lawyers or politicians to even get close, and by the time we got there, we’d be just as corrupt as the ones we’re trying to replace.”

  “Well, that’s the problem then. It’s the system, not the man in it.”

  “Yeah, it’s the system. But that’s what’s gotta be brought down.”

  “Okay. How?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m thinking. D’you know how World War Two got started?”

  “Yeah, Hitler invaded Poland. Or Czechoslovakia, or something like that.”

  “Yeah, but how did Hitler get started?”

  “I dunno. He took advantage of the economy. Got himself into power by giving the Germans a scapegoat. The German economy was in the toilet because of the peace accords of World War One.”

  “Right. That’s what I was getting at. World War Two changed everything. Our whole way of life accelerated with the dropping of the atom bomb, the invention of the computer, television, radar, advances in avionics. All that found its source in the turmoil of World War Two. Necessity is the mother of invention. But World War Two came out of World War One. So how did World War One start?”

  “Well, it was a tumultuous time. There was a lot of change in the air from the Industrial Revolution. The old ways were crumbling. The new ways were untested and scary. I think it was Malcolm Muggeridge who said, ‘the Rock of Ages has been blasted for us.’”

  “Right. Sound familiar?”

  “What, you think it’s the same thing today?”

  “I think it’s very similar. I think that’s what our culture wars are all about. The last couple of elections have been down to the razor—and despite the fact the country is more divided than ever between left and right, it’s still going right down the drain. Just like it was at the turn of the last century.”

  “Okay.” I was puzzled. Martin had an intensity in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. “So what’s with the history lesson?”

  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

  “George Santayana.”

  “Right. So today is a lot like it was a hundred years ago. What broke it all out? What burst the bubble and brought about the war?”

  “Oh. The assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist.”

  “One man. One bullet. Changed the world.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting that maybe it’s time for the tree of liberty to get a little refreshment.”

  It was the first inkling he was going down Jefferson’s road to revolution. I didn’t like the look of it at all. “You are speaking hypothetically, right?”

  He laughed and rubbed my shoulder, then started the car and drove us to the store for chips and beer. Later, as we walked back to the car, he’d said. “What if I weren’t speaking hypothetically?”

  I clutched the six-pack we’d pulled from the cooler. The bottles were cold. I felt their chill run up through my arms and freeze my insides. “Then that would be treason. And it would be stupid—suicidal, ‘cause there’s no way you’d get by the Secret Service.”

  “What if you could? What if you could actually get away with it?”

  “It would still be stupid. And it would be immoral.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged and climbed into the car. “What do you mean, ‘why?’ It’s murder. Murder’s wrong.”

  “What if you were killing Hitler?”

  “That’s different. Hitler was evil.”

  “So it’s okay to kill evil people.”

  “That’s—aah.” I shook my head and waved him off. Martin drove us home. He let the subject die the rest of the night. But this morning he brought it on full force. All hypothetically speaking, of course.

  Except, I feared, he wasn’t.

  I heard the screen door open behind me. Martin stepped out onto the porch. “That was Jerry,” he said, coming up to stand beside me. I nodded. “He’s coming by when he gets off work.”

  It was time to be direct. “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “What you’re hypothetically talking about.”

  He leaned against the porch, a penknife in his hands, cleaning the dirt from his fingernails. “Scared?”

  “Hell, yeah!”

  He nodded. “It passes. First time I went into combat I nearly crapped my pants. They try to prepare you for it. In basic they fire live rounds over your head while you’re crawling through the barbed wire. It helps a bit—but even then you know it’s not real. You know they’re trying to miss. I think some guys get shot ‘cause they still believe that. It’s like they can’t wrap their heads around the idea that someone might be shooting at them, and not just toward them. Next time you go out it gets a little easier. Third time, fourth time, you don’t even notice. Ah hell, you still get scared. Don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t paralyze you. You can do your job. The fear is like a friend to keep you on edge. Keep you alert. Keep you alive.”

  “I don’t want it to pass, Marty. I just don’t want to do it.”

  He grabbed my shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. “I know. I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t wanna do.”

  “I don’t want you to do it, either.”

  The squeeze grew hard. He pulled me around and forced me against the column, his eyes boring into mine. “Well, that might not be an option. If we do this, I’ll need your help. You and I, we’re all we’ve got. I know you’re scared. I know you don’t want to do this. But what’s right is right. And it’s time you took a stand.”

  “Marty!”

  “Some men are born great. Some achieve greatness.” He let go of my shoulder. “And some have greatness thrust upon them.”

  I rubbed my left shoulder. It hurt. He might’ve bruised it. “William Shakespeare. Twelfth Night.”

  He grinned and tousled my hair. “You always know the source, don’t you Peter?”

  He was wrong. I didn’t know the source of this at all.

  Three

  Jerry showed up a little after seven. He brought pizzas with him, which ought to have gone down very well with our beer. I could barely taste mine. We sat around the kitchen table with a catalog of Barrett rifles Jerry brought from the store. The page was open to the M107.

  Jerry read aloud, “The Barrett M107 is a .50 BMG caliber Special Applications scoped semiautomatic sniper rifle. Meant for long-range firing, it has the capability to hit on target from a distance of 2,000 meters. The complete system consists of the .50 caliber semiautomatic rifle, various optic sights that can be used in all kinds of weather, day and night, a ten-round detachable magazine, detachable bi-pod, tactical soft case, transport case, detachable sling, cleaning equipment and manuals. The rifle weighs ten kilograms unloaded with a barrel length of 736 millimeters.” He folded up the catalog, looked at us and said, “And, I might add, it’s completely illegal in New York State.”

  “So how do we get one?” said Martin.

  “Got to order it special.”

  “And the suppressor?”

  Jerry chuckled. “Good luck with that. You make a move to buy one and the ATF will be breathing down your neck.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Keep talking. How do we get one?”

  Jerry grinned and said to me, “Persistent little booger, isn’t he?” I didn’t answer. Jerry went on. “I got a friend in East Rochester owns a machine shop. He builds parts for me when I need him. He could probably make one to fit.”

  “Untraceable?”

  Jerry shrugged. “I guess so. Parts are custom made. Not like he signs ‘em or anything.”

&n
bsp; I listened to this exchange with growing apprehension. Sometime between the back porch and Jerry showing up, I’d convinced myself this wasn’t really happening, that my brother was just talking hypothetically, processing out his frustration through some kind of violent fantasy.

  “‘Course, you get caught with it, I don’t know you at all.”

  “Good luck with that. All they gotta do is open up our high school year book.”

  “I’m just saying. You want to buy something like this, just keep it on the down low.”

  Martin shook his head and grinned. Ever since middle school he, Jerry and I had been involving ourselves in one kind of escapade or another. First there was the time we took over the photography lab in seventh grade. It was a simple matter of locking the teacher in the darkroom with the lights off until he cried to be let out. The principal called our father on that one, but Dad only shook his head and said the teacher, Mr. MacGuire, was a pansy for being afraid of the dark. Jerry was grounded for a week and told not to play with us Baird brothers for a while, but Dad made sure we apologized to the Knapps, who probably forgave us too easily.

  In high school, we were more daring. Jerry managed to obtain a key to the bus garage. Before the Friday night football game in Fairport, we snuck in after school with a set of socket wrenches and climbed aboard the football team’s designated bus. We removed all the bolts to the seats, leaving them to fall over loosely as soon as the players climbed aboard and started on their way. The school called the cops on that one, but Jerry threw the key into the bushes before anyone suspected it was us. We never got caught, and never told anyone either. It was the closest thing to a brush with the law we’d ever had. Things settled down for us after the Knapps moved to Webster to be closer to the store. Jerry had to transfer to a different district, and our days of conspiring against the school were over.

  Jerry was saying, “Seeing as it’s my neck on the line here, if you don’t mind my asking, what do you want all this for?”

  Martin poked a finger at him. “See that? That’s how I know you’d never make a real arms dealer. Now a real arms dealer doesn’t want to know. Like Lucius Fox in Batman. He just supplies what’s ordered. No questions asked. That way he can’t be held responsible.”

  Jerry grimaced. “Sorry, Bruce Wayne! I thought we were friends.”

  “Try Tim McVeigh,” I said. Martin cast me a warning look. I ignored it. If he was gonna drag Jerry into this too, the man had a right to know what he was in for. Besides, I could use an ally.

  “McVeigh?”

  “Marty here wants to assassinate the President.”

  Jerry stared at me a moment, then started laughing. He shook his head and picked up his beer. “Shoot. You two had me going. Can’t believe I fell for that.”

  Martin leaned back in his chair. “Little brother’s only half-right. I don’t wanna just assassinate a President. I want to start a war.” He stood up and walked over to the sink.

  Jerry’s laughter faded. “What are you talking about?”

  Martin turned around and leaned against the counter. “Revolution. We need one. Our entire country’s been taken over by a bunch of Marxists and Socialists. Our own government has turned against us. It’s a bureaucracy now, bloated and ineffective for anything except stifling freedom and oppressing people. Since the 1900s the federal government has grown to be about ten times its rightful size. People aren’t free anymore, Jerry. And what’s worse: about half of them don’t want to be. The other half—people like you and me and your Dad—they’re suffocating.”

  “Well, how is starting a war going to do anything about that?”

  Martin ran a hand through his hair. “It’s—ah—it’s sorta complicated.”

  “There’s another problem,” I added quickly. Martin did not look happy. “The federal government is like the Hydra. From Greek mythology,” I added for Jerry’s sake. He wasn’t as well-read as Martin and I. He didn’t have our father. “You cut off one head. You kill the President. Cut off one head. Another’s going to spring right up in its place. Vice President becomes the President. You kill off both of them. Now the Speaker of the House becomes the President. I’m sure you don’t want her to lead.”

  “I don’t want any of them to lead,” Martin said. “I want to bring the whole thing down.”

  “Yeah, but won’t trying to assassinate the President just make everything worse?” Jerry was starting to warm up. “I mean, look-lookit—look at nine eleven. They brought the Towers down, right? What the government do? Pass the Patriot Act, right? I mean, hell, I thought it was a good idea. Go get the bad guys. But those civil libertarians have a point. They can use that act. They’ve expanded their powers, and we’ve got less freedoms now!”

  “I know.” Martin folded his arms. He looked like an impatient high school teacher.

  “So you’re just gonna make it worse!”

  “Exactly.”

  Jerry looked at me for help. I shrugged. I didn’t understand it either. “How does that help you?” he said.

  He came back to the table and sat down. “When we went into Iraq, we were first hailed as heroes. We brought down Saddam Hussein. Killed off his sons. Liberated the people. Within a very short time the United States military was bogged down trying to keep the peace between the rival factions of Shiites and Sunnis. We imposed martial law, and the people revolted. They used guerilla warfare tactics to keep us off balance. It wasn’t until the surge that we were finally able to quell the resistance and bring about some order to that country.

  “Right now our country is divided, and our military is exhausted. We just elected a man to be President who is a Marxist, but he’s also inexperienced. And his staff is inexperienced. We take him out and his administration will overreact. They will impose martial law on the country. Hell, they almost imposed it when the banks collapsed.

  “Once martial law goes into effect, and the people see what’s happened to their rights, that’s when the resistance will start. The government will continue to do what the government’s been doing. They will continue to try to control power, enforce their will; but the military, burned out from the war, won’t be able to help. In fact, they won’t even want to help, because most of them would be on our side. They’re not going to agree with this guy’s government. That, and the fact the libs have gutted the armed forces anyway—they won’t be much use.

  “The media won’t be able to help out, because the martial law will affect them, too. And with the economy in the shape that it’s in, the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards.”

  Jerry shook his head. “I-I don’t know, Marty. The whole thing just sounds too far-fetched to me. I mean, come on. What are we here? We’re just three guys sitting around a kitchen table in the middle of the country, drinking beer and eating pizza. You really think you can take on the federal government?”

  Martin shoved a bite of pizza into his mouth and said between chews, “Why not? That’s how our country got started.”

  “Yeah, but then the government was Great Britain, and they were a thousand miles away across an ocean.”

  “Yes, but you’re also forgetting that Osama Bin Laden lives in a cave somewhere on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and he’s taken on the U.S. Why do you think he’s so frickin’ popular over there?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “look how well it’s worked out for him.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is that it’s possible to do this. If there was ever a time in the last fifty years to try to do something about our country’s decline, this is it. We may never get a better chance. Now, I’ll understand if you ladies want to sit on the sidelines and watch your country slide into moral, economic and political ruin, but I feel like standing up and doing something about it. ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.’ Why?”

  I frowned. “‘Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’ Margaret Mead.”

  He sighed. “Look,” he said to Jerry,
“if it makes things any easier, all I need from you is the gun, rounds, and flash suppressor.”

  Jerry was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Hell, Marty. We’ve been friends forever. If you’re doing this, I’m with you. I never liked that guy anyway. ‘Some people just need killing.’”

  I stared at him.

  “Solid Snake. Metal Gear? Online gaming?”

  I shook my head.

  Four

  Jerry and Martin continued talking in the kitchen. I got up and returned to my perch on the back porch. The sky was pitch black now. A warm breeze blew the smell of decaying leaves and musty earth across the yard. Light from the single streetlamp on the road in front poured white across the lawn, casting stark shadows that stretched away from the house like a living thing, as if something were thrusting the blackness of my brother’s thoughts out of the house and into the deep woods.

  What’s going to happen when they find out about this? The feds would surely swoop down here and cart my brother off to prison or to a mental institution—possibly taking Jerry and myself along with him just for good measure. It wouldn’t matter that I disagreed with Martin’s plotting. The mere fact I refused to inform on him would make me complicit.

  It’d probably be the mental institution. The court would order a psychological evaluation, determine that he was suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder—Gulf War syndrome, or something like that (hell, maybe even a new diagnosis)—and cart him away for “treatment.”

  I think the Soviets did something like that with political dissidents. How could anyone possibly disagree with the State? You must be crazy!

  I chipped away at the paint. We really should get out here with some scrapers and a couple of gallons of Sherwin Williams. Sometime before the whole house fell apart through neglect.

  My brother wasn’t crazy. He was angry. He was frustrated. And he was coldly rational. I didn’t think for a minute his plan would work. Guys who try to kill the President always get caught. In the twenty or so different attempts on Presidents’ lives throughout our nation’s history, none were committed by an “unknown assailant.” They always caught the guy.