I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

The Parrish Farm Burning.

I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Nine

The light of dawn, made gray by the lingering winter storm, began to creep over the Mall and monuments of Washington D.C.. From the padded box he called an office, Wyatt Douglass stared sleepily out the lone, wide square window behind his desk. He was watching the morning in a daze, the concrete and granite buildings beyond the thick, unpolished glass obscured by a thick layer of frost. He mostly could see only himself reflected in the light of his brightly glowing computer screen. The old monitor hummed loudly, limping through its long days and fast approaching a state of desperation in terms of needing repairs. Wyatt never held his breath when he went to push the ON button. He just assumed it wouldn’t respond and so was pleasantly surprised each morning to be wrong about that. Once, he actually let himself wonder where he was on the waiting list. That, however, was months ago.

Wyatt should have been at home. But, there had been work to do before he could rest. He was nearly finished now. All that remained was filing his report, officially closing the case of the events at the Parrish farm. Wyatt turned his head enough to look at the buzzing monitor. The whole process was taking much longer than normal.

Two files at idle on the screen. Words were organized into sentences and those sentences assumed the structures of basic paragraphs spanning multiple pages. The letterhead of his agency and office were affixed to the top of each document. The similarities between the two files ended there, leaving the bulk of the contents in stark contrast to each other. The shorter of the two was a report he could have written blindfolded from his office without ever actually having traveled into the field. It was exactly what had been called, exactly what was expected from him. It was an inside the box write-up that patted the backs of the agents and agencies involved. It described the scene and characters precisely as it had been predicted Wyatt would find it in. It was a reassurance the bubble housing the world those in the know lived uneasily under had not begun to weaken or come apart.

Wyatt blinked, shifted his eyes over barely a degree to stare at the second file. There were more pages in this document. There was more to be described, more to take into account. He had done his best to piece the bloody puzzle together in his head from all the information he had collected. This report no longer assumed the innocence of those agents or authorities that had fallen at the scene. Wyatt shifted in his chair as he considered exactly what he had written.

Staring again at the frost on his office window, Wyatt imagined the Parrish house the morning of the raid. That’s exactly was it had always meant to be. He’d discovered the paper trail upon his return to the Capital. Wyatt saw the orders to seize the property. The use of any force or means necessary was clearly printed more than once throughout the chain of command, from the building he sat in to the local sheriff’s office that would be providing an escort. A raid is exactly what Old Man Parrish knew was coming.

The wise, old farmer had seen the signs like a wide-eyed sage. He had readied his family as best he could. He had hopes of standing their ground like any injured citizen would. There was a machine much larger than themselves about to roll over them. One family, a few tight-knit individuals were standing alone against the cold, oppressive powers which had swollen to extremes without check. Old Man Parrish knew what he was facing and knew what he had to do.

One of them had to get away, they had to be elsewhere and cease to exist in that house. His daughter, young but able, might have a chance. She could live and find a way to tell their story, to confess the truth about what happened. During the tearful goodbye’s, Wyatt imagined the purging of her life amongst them had earnestly begun. Any picture of her was removed and thrown, with school papers and diaries, into a hot and hungry fire in the gaping, brick hearth.

Madeline had told him it was her brother that had led her into the barn. Wyatt calculated it was at this point the sedan with his peers, along with their escorts in dusty patrol cars from the local sheriff’s office, were cruising up the length of the driveway. Here, a detail Madeline may have never been aware of existed in a veil of lies and deceit. It had taken a return to the scene after the snowy morning with her. Wyatt discovered tire tracks he hadn’t noticed before. The mud and snow made them seem to glow with a harsh and violent clarity. The truth will not be hidden, Wyatt had thought. It was the tread of tires fixed to a vehicle too big to be an ambulance. A haunting thought hung in his mind. He dared not shudder but a cold no chill in the winter air could compare with surged within him. A black-boot squad, Wyatt had guessed without doubt.

Near the blackened, crumbled remains of the barn, Wyatt had stood utterly bewildered. In the first visit, he could not fathom the need for the old building to be razed like that. “He burned it down,” said one of the wounded deputies. Wyatt had broken into his hospital room in Ardmore before his flight. It didn’t take long for the government wet nurse, Gordon Parks, to track him down. But Wyatt still managed to gain a few minutes of free interrogation time.

“Who?”

“The kid.”

“Who,” Wyatt had asked again, his voice sharp and direct. They were knocking on the door of the hospital room by that point. Wyatt had jammed it, trying to give himself more time. “What kid? The farmer’s kid?”

“Yeah! The so...son.”

“Why did he set it on fire?”

“I don’t know. He was a stupid farm boy.”

As calmly as if he were going to fluff the young deputy’s pillows, Wyatt reached down and firmly placed his hand upon the bloodstained bandage taped below the man’s right shoulder blade. The pain he felt must have been instantly tremendous by the watery, wide-eyed glare he shot at Wyatt. “Try again,” Wyatt said.

“Ahghh! I don’t know! I was near the back door of the house.”

“What happened to the boy?!”

“He had something in his hand! Aghh! He was coming out of the barn! He surprised them!”

“Them? Them who?”

“The...ahghh! Please....aahghh! The black-boot guys!”

Wyatt’s stomach had dropped. He knew it. He stepped back from the deputy. The knocking on the door had turned to heavy pounding by that point. With racing breaths, the deputy said, “That’s when all hell broke loose.”

Wyatt didn’t get to speak with the other deputy. He didn’t need to. He had the scene in his head. Having smuggled his sister to the cellar in the barn, the Parrish boy emerged from the barn, startling the black-boot taking a flanking position around the farm house. He must have had a gun or shovel or ax in his hand. But, he also may have only had the padlock for the barn door. The black-boot fired his weapon, killing the younger of the old farmer’s two sons. Parrish must have been watching at the window. He smashed the glass and fired his rifle, a deadly spray of shotgun shell striking the anonymous soldier in the back of the neck.

The next shots came from the back door, bullets piercing blindly through the wood. It was one of his fellow agents. Old Man Parrish simply must have pivoted to the corner of the wall near the window, aimed at the wooden door he knew would not stop the blast of his gun and fired. By now the house was being stormed. The second agent must have stepped over the fallen body of the first, kicking open the door and firing. They would miss, leaving the spray of small craters in the wall near the spot Parrish was using for cover. Parrish would discharge another rough, blood from the agent stumbling backwards splattering the foyer.

The family wouldn’t last long against the force sieging their home, but they lasted long enough. The other two agents would be felled before it was all over. The blood in an upstairs bedroom amongst constellations of bullet holes had told Wyatt one of the family members had been acting as a sniper. An agent was trying to get away, making them the last of the opposing force to die, not the first.

Wyatt sighed with ill despair. The burning of the bard hand been nothing but after-the-fact theater, smoke without the mirrors. He turned his chair away from the window to face his desk. He looked at the computer screen, taking another deep breath. Of all the elements he had included in the longer file, there was one detail left out. He smiled, thinking of her as he submitted the long document into the system for review. He deleted the first one, the shorter version, wondering how much he had just made the bubble shake.

Wyatt turned the noisy monitor off and reached for his coat. The hazy, gray light of the morning poured into his office from the lone window. He looked out to the nation’s capital once more. He thought of Madeline out on the plains. He hoped with all of his heart she would make it to where she was going. Even if she didn’t, he wondered if she felt like she already had. Despite her sadness, Wyatt wondered if a part of her was smiling. She had survived and told her story. Somehow, she had known-or, at least had enough faith-that Wyatt would find the strength to deliver her story, her family’s story, to the world.

As he closed the door to his office, Wyatt knew everything would be different now. Maybe no one would read his report. That didn’t matter. He knew. Wyatt walked out of his office into a different world. There was no grass to be greener. He was in a hallway. And, it was winter. So he thought of another saying as he waited for an elevator, feeling a sense of insufferable gloom shrugged off his shoulders.

The truth shall set you free.

I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Eight

Mark LeVine slowly opened his eyes. He stretched, feeling the muscles in his arms and legs tense. He yawned unstoppably then sat up, resting some of his weight on his elbows. He felt like he’d been asleep for hours. Glancing at the clock, he realized it had only been minutes, a dozen at best.

The bathroom door was closed. Yellow-white light ringed the caramel-colored partition. Mark rose out of bed and stood at the door. He touched the handle. He knew it wouldn’t be locked. Zach never locked it. He started to turn the handle, but stopped. His weight was already pushing against the smooth surface of the wooden door. Above the sound of the shower spray on the other side, Mark could hear Zach’s voice ringing sweetly off the walls. He was singing. Mark was smiling as soon as heard him and then felt his smile broaden when he recognized the lyrics. It was their song.

Mark stood against the bathroom door, letting the minutes fade away into the background of his life. All that mattered for the moment was the sound of Zach’s voice, the words he was singing into the shower walls caressing Mark’s heart and putting to rest any remaining anxieties he felt.

Mark walked about the house as if he were floating. A sense of serenity, unlike any other he had ever known, had washed over him. Each step across the soft, sky-blue carpet felt more like a bound from cloud top to cloud top. He was floating on an air of self assurance. He had stared down the mouth of lions and walked away alive. For the moment, nothing else in the world existed beyond their walls, their furniture, their yard, or each other. Mark felt himself suddenly thinking of the bakery and, for the first time in two days, let himself smile about it. Standing on the edge of the cold, kitchen tile, Mark breathed easy. Everything’s going to be okay, he thought then stepped into the darkened room. He tapped a nearby light switch. Even if it isn’t, it still will be.

He was laughing at his thoughts as he quickly began to busy himself. Soon, the whole kitchen was alive. The smell of eggs and batter slowly firming on old, grease-scorched pans circled about him and gradually the rest of the house. Zach took a deep breath when he emerged from the bathroom. He followed his sense of smell, attracted by the hints of his favorite breakfast, and his sense of sound, perked by the hiss and buzz of things cooking, down the narrow hallway.

“What are you doing,” Zach asked. He had been standing against the corner of the wall at the edge of the kitchen. His bright smile grew even brighter when Mark looked up at him.

“Cooking,” he answered smugly, smiling. He had been about to flip another pancake when Zach spoke. Without looking down, he playfully tossed the golden-brown flapjack into the air. It did not end gracefully. Zach laughed. Next to his singing, it was the sweetest sound Mark had ever heard.

They ate standing up, never leaving the kitchen. They laughed like friends on a first date, comparing stories of childhood embarrassments and memories of moments unique to each other. They talked like they hadn’t in years, seeing each other anew, remembering themselves and the things they had once shared. At the sink, with their late dinner of breakfast now only cooling pans stained with batter and egg whites, Zach stacked their plates freckled with pancake crumbs standing like small atolls amongst seas of maple syrup. His attention was directed at the dishes he was rinsing. He didn’t notice Mark stealthily approaching. He wasn’t paying attention to the plate in Mark’s hand or the way he was dipping his fingers into the leftover pool of syrup.

“Guess what,” Mark said, inches from Zach.

“What’s that,” Zach said, barely glancing over his shoulder.

Mark leaned in close to Zach’s ear. “You’re it,” he whispered, trying not to giggle. Mark didn’t have to do anything else. Zach did it for him. Acting in a surprised reflex, he turned his head with a start, causing his ear to drag across Mark’s syrup-laden fingertips.

Mark laughed as Zach recoiled. Zach laughed back, grabbing the small spray nozzle with one hand as he tried to clean his sticky ear lobe with the other. Zach gave no warning to Mark. He squeezed the trigger on the sprayer, sending a rapid burst of warm water splashing against his partner. Mark shouted, still laughing, as he tried to duck out of the way. He scooped more of the maple mess onto his fingers then lunged toward Zach who shifted with a giddy shriek. More water erupted from the small nozzle in Zach’s grip, spraying Mark on the face and neck.

Mark was undeterred. It led to a chase out of the kitchen when Zach ran out of hose for the sprayer. They laughed as they teased each other around the house, jumping over furniture and scurrying around corners. The youthful energy suddenly pumping through their veins seemed unending. Hours seemed to pass before they finally tackled each other breathlessly on the couch.

“That was too much fun,” Zach said, still giggling.

Mark only nodded.

“What time is it?”

Mark glanced around the living room for a clock. “Late,” he finally said with a chuckle.

“Should we finish cleaning up and go to bed?”

Mark took a slow, deep breath. “Probably.”

Zach blinked sleepily for a moment, feeling the giddy adrenaline drain away. “Okay,” he finally said. “You handle the garbage and I’ll finish the dishes.”

Mark smiled and nodded. He realized how tired he actually felt when he stood up then turned and helped pull Zach off the disheveled cushions of the couch. At the same time though, Mark also never felt more alive. Every heartbeat, every breath seemed to register in his mind with radiant, almost overwhelming clarity. The way the lamp light around the living room splayed across the painted walls seemed strangely new to him. He listened to the low rumble and rattle of the heating vents in the floors as the warmed air was pushed through the house.

In the kitchen, there was the sensation of the cold tile under his feet again, the feel of the old ceramic tiles and the narrow valleys of dirt and water-stained grout that led him toward the back door. Zach was back at the sink, the water running out of the faucet softly distorting another noise. Mark looked up from the garbage bag he was tying closed. Zach was humming again. It was the same song he had been singing in the shower. Mark smiled, happier in that moment, in that night, than he had ever been. Let them come get us, he thought boastfully. Let them come in and smash all our things and take our store away. Zach noticed Mark staring at him with that warm smile that had become such a rare sight the last many months. He smiled back at him, blinking like a silly flirt.

Mark chuckled. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be done here in a minute,” Zach replied, placing the dripping pan clutched in one soaked hand amongst the other dishes already in the dishwasher. “I’ll meet you in the room.”

“I look forward to it,” Mark said with a coy smile, his eyebrows bouncing playfully. He slipped his bare feet into an old pair of sneakers as he unlocked the back door. A fist of cold air was the first thing to greet him when the door creaked open. “It’s still snowing,” Mark said.

Zach leaned forward over the sink, pushing the thin curtain hanging loosely in front of the small, square window overlooking the backyard. Mark turned on the outside light fixed to the wall above the concrete stoop. “Wow,” Zach said. “It’s so beautiful.”

Several inches of snow had already coated everything in sight. Mark closed the door behind him and stepped off the stoop into the freezing powder. He stopped, gazing around the serene winter wonderland that had once been their unimpressive backyard. The dried patches of grass and warped, plastic lawn furniture they never sat in were all covered in snow. Only frosty mounds marked the spot the old chairs stood. Maybe this year he would get rid of those plastic pieces of junk. Maybe he could build them new furniture. Mark didn’t know how to build furniture. He could try, though. He could do that, and maybe-just maybe-he might actually learn a new skill he wouldn’t otherwise have. Mark smiled at himself.

He tilted his head back and looked up into the dark, swollen clouds hovering in the sky. He couldn’t really see them, only the heavy flakes of snow that fell angelically out of the silent shadows of the late night. Mark always loved the snow as a boy. What child doesn’t, really? Even as he got older, Mark always managed to hold a ten year-old’s enthusiasm for the frozen moisture. To him, as with many-including scores of youth-the snow simultaneously meant fun and peace.

This year though, for so many it just added to the heartache and strife so many were already enduring. The winter storms and unpredictable cold snaps had compounded the already troubled movement of essential goods and services. Farmers struggling to keep their crops healthy had their problems exacerbated by the unforgiving winter. Mark took a deep breath. God’s punishment, he thought, still looking up through the falling snow. You aren’t mad at me, are you? Mark blinked into the dark, wintery silence of the sky. The snow fell and fell without end, cold flakes kissing his tingling cheeks and nose.

The dinted, unremarkable, pale metal cans Mark would have to drag to the curb at the end of the week-if the service was running again-were around the side of the house. A layer of snow had collected on the flat lid of the closest barrel-shaped container. Mark brushed it off quickly, the harsh cold of the snow lightly burning his hand. He shivered slightly as he picked up the lid and dropped the sealed bag into the rank confines of the trash can.

Replacing the lid, Mark began to turn back the way he had come. His ears perked and he stopped before really having started. A noise beyond the falling snow landing quietly against the settling layers already enveloping the ground suddenly seemed to consume the peaceful night. It didn’t take Mark more than a second to recognize the din of an idling truck. With a single step toward the tall, dense hedges running a straight line between their yard and the next one, Mark peered through the silent storm. He gazed past the side of their house and toward the street beyond their front yard. He couldn’t see anything. There was only the snow and the darkened shape of the house across the street. Mark listened for another moment then shrugged his shoulders. Must be the neighbors, he thought, turning around.

He had rounded the corner into the backyard when a twig snapped somewhere in the snow-draped hedges. Mark stopped in mid-step. His breath caught in a quiet gasp. He watched the leafy, dark masses partitioning the two yards for a long moment. He let his eyes shift and glance up at the darkened windows of the house beyond the bushes. It belonged to an old woman. Mark couldn’t remember her name. He completed his step, walking slowly sideways toward the back door. It’s an animal, Mark figured.

The night had become still once more, save the falling snow covering the ground under another layer of cold, wet flakes. Mark glanced at the back door, still closed and only a half dozen steps away. He turned his head back toward the yard. The darkness beyond the snow shifted suddenly. Movement in the hedges seemed to echo with frightening ferocity though the silent winter storm. Mark’s breath caught again. He watched the shadows take shape as black-dressed figures advancing swiftly out of the fringes of the yard. Mark’s heart began to race. Closer they drew and suddenly he understood, suddenly he knew instantly who these midnight-cloaked soldiers were.

“No,” he shouted into the thinning space of snow and night that separated him from them. The incandescent, yellow-white glow of the porch light ringed the polished barrels of their guns, drawn and ready to fire and the end of their thick, outstretched arms.

“No!” Mark turned with urgency and bolted the remaining steps toward the door. He heard the movement in the snow behind him, the violent kick in the powder that told him they weren’t about to let him get away.

Mark only turned around again when he was in the house and closing the door. One of them was already on the stoop. He lunged forward as Mark swung the door toward the frame. Wood and padded armor collided loudly. A thrust of weight Mark wasn’t ready for knocked him slightly off balance. He quickly found his footing again, bracing against the force opposing him. He shoved the door back against his foe who slipped backward. There was a moment of surprised hesitation Mark instantly regretted. He rebalanced again and tried to slam the door the rest of the way shut. A gloved hand appeared in the last second before the door was in place. A muffled shout of hot pain coursed through the wood and glass to Mark’s ears. Mark would have smiled in victory then. But there was no victory to be had.

A sharp pop exploded through the cold beyond the back door. Mark felt it before he heard it. More precisely. He felt the searing shell of the racing bullet that punched a scorched hole through the wooden door graze painfully off his side. He felt his flesh tear open in the moment after the bullet had already past. It cracked against a wall somewhere behind him. Mark’s strength suddenly lagged and he backed off the door a half step.

The piercing scream of glass violently shattering filled their little house. Wood splintered as both the front and back doors were suddenly kicked open. Mark wasn’t done fighting though. He moved with anger beyond any rational thought he could recognize. He wasn’t trying to protect the house, only himself and then Zach. The nearest object he could grab was a broom. One of the faceless figures stormed past the wrecked doorframe nearby. Mark charged forward, swinging the yellow handle in a wide arch that caught the black-clad foe off guard. The figure adapted swiftly, catching hold of the thin, fiberglass pole that had slapped his cloaked face and padded helmet.

The situation was spiraling rapidly out of control for Mark and he knew it. In the rest of the house, more of the faceless soldiers tore through the last shreds of their personal space, invading their lives like tendrils of a cancer that cannot be stopped. Mark could hear Zach shouting. He could hear the heartbreaking thuds of furniture, or a body, being thrown and broken. Still, he wrestled with the foe before him, staring into the black, soulless goggles obscuring the eyes he knew were glaring back at him. Mark wasn’t going to win. He knew he wasn’t going to win. He had to try. He could, at least, do that much.

The broom handle, gripped by both men, swung wildly left and right then up and down as they danced a warriors dance of strength and death around the kitchen. There was a swift crack against one end of the broom that sent shudders down the length of the long handle. Razor sharp glass rained down from the broken light fixture attached to the ceiling. In the sudden darkness that wrapped tightly around them, Mark felt the splintered shards glance off his neck and arms, the small rivulets of blood hot on his skin. He felt the sting of sweat in the new wounds for only an instant. Then, there was only a blinding pain that erupted from the back of his skull.

“Enough!”

Mark blinked. He was on the kitchen floor. He felt the cold tile and grout under the glass pieces pinching his cheek. Black boots caked with snow filled his spinning line of sight. “Get him up,” a muffled voice shouted from above him. “Let’s stop wasting time!”

Unforgiving hands hoisted Mark off the darkened kitchen floor. “You boys are in so much trouble,” another muffled voice said. Mark couldn’t tell who was talking. He couldn’t tell how many of them there were. His vision was swimming in a hazy fog. He was certain he had a concussion. “Look at all the pretty things,” came another voice. “Look at all the pretty, illegal things.”

“Wha...What do you want,” Mark tried to ask. He was out of breath and out of strength.

His answer came in the form of a fist across his face. Through the overwhelming fire of pain, he hears one of the figures shout, “Shut your mouth! You’re under arrest!” A figure walked into view in front of him. “Get them outside,” he barked from behind is mask and goggles.

Mark was dragged outside into the cold and snow. Behind him he heard Zach’s soft moans. They were dropped like sacks into the freezing powder beside one another in the middle of the yard. It felt good to lay down, even if the cold burned as much as fire. The feeling of respite was not to last. Gloved fingers gripped Mark’s blood-matted hair, yanking him backwards and up onto his knees.

“Get up!”

Zach yelped, pulled upright the same way. His frightened moans became panicked, racing sobs as the sound of a dozen heavy boots shuffling into the snow was suddenly muted by the cocking of pistols. Bullets were being readied to fire. A strange feeling suddenly washed over Mark. Somewhere beyond him, Zach was trying to say something. But Mark couldn’t hear him. He felt his mind drifting, floating between this world and something far more dream like. Through the haze he was the faces of his mother and father. He hadn’t thought about them in years.

“Mark!”

A gloved hand slapped the backs of both their heads. Mark hissed in pain, feeling his scalp and skull throb together in overwhelming waves. “Shut up,” a voice commanded sternly.

“Mark LeVine and Zach Goyer...” another voice rattled off behind them. At least he got my name right, Mark thought. “You both are under arrest for crimes against the country. And, my goodness, are you two ever-so-guilty.”

The faceless figure Mark began to assume was the leader continued speaking as he paced somewhere behind them. He called them names and laced their supposed charges with as many foul remarks and curses as possible. Mark could barely listen to him. His mind was still turning, still floating in and out of consciousness. In the haze of his mind’s eye, he saw his parents again. They seemed to be waiting for him. He felt ten years-old again, stepping off the school bus and seeing them smiling at him. They were waiting for him to come home.

“I’m scared,” Mark suddenly heard Zach whisper between the racing sobs. He was trembling from head to toe.

“Pray,” Mark whispered back. He didn’t know where word had come from. He didn’t remember it forming in his throat or slipping past his lips. But, he had said it. He said it again. “Pray, baby.”

“I’m scared,” Zach said again.

“Shut up,” the soldiers directly behind them barked as the leader continued to speak.

“Don’t be scared. It’s all okay.” Mark didn’t know how or why, he just absolutely felt he was speaking the truth. “There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s all okay.”

“Shut up!”

“Just pray, Zach. Don’t be frightened any more.”

“What?!” The leader was at Mark’s right ear. Mark felt his ear drum try to explode when the figure, a man, screamed his question through his mask. “Don’t be frightened?! You should be! You should be! Look at you! You’re worthless!”

“Pray, Zach,” Mark said again. His voice was even. He kept his eyes closed. He could still feel snow on his cheeks even as the vision inside his mind was a different place and a different time. His parents nodded to him.

“Don’t pray! Who are you going to pray to?! Look at what you’ve done! Look at the damage and destruction you’ve caused! Do you think we want to be here?” The leader’s gloved hand pressed hard against the back of Mark’s head, forcing his eye line toward snow. “LOOK AT IT!”

“Pray,” Mark whispered. “Don’t be scared.”

“The Earth isn’t going to listen,” the figure screamed. “No one is going to listen to you. You’re so stupid!” But under his voice, his squealing tones, Zach had begun to pray. He didn’t pray to the Earth. He prayed to God. He didn’t even consider the alternative. Why would he?

“He’s praying to God,” one of the figures standing directly behind them said.

“God? God?! You are going to ask forgiveness from some ancient form in the sky? It’s the Earth you live on, stupid! The Earth!” He slapped Zach again and again across his scalp as he spoke.

Zach cried out but did not cease. His prayer continued as if all existence beyond his own depended on it. Mark kept his eyes shut. He clamped them tighter, not wanting to see any of this. A sudden vision flashed before him, replacing the sight of his parents for only a moment. Maybe it was all his imagination, his mind hiding from the terror and violence. But, maybe it wasn’t. Mark didn’t know. He didn’t fight against it. He saw people, crowds thousands and thousands thick. He saw friends and strangers alike. He sensed something about them. It was a feeling of resistance.

“...And you have damaged the Earth,” the figure was saying. “You and people like you. Filthy dregs. I hate you! We all hate you. And you will pay for your crimes.”

“We’re not frightened,” Mark said.

“One-Zero-Seven,” the leader shouted, ignoring Mark. Another of the black-clad soldiers snapped to attention. He was standing under the porch light. The soft yellow radiance was the only light in the yard. “Is that an incandescent bulb in that light,” the leader asked.

The one he had called One-Zero-Seven looked up at the warm light emanating from a dusty bulb. “Yes.”

“I don’t understand it,” the leader sighed, shaking his downturned head. “Something so simple. Maybe you could have saved yourselves. But so much contraband...including that little bulb. The feather on the stack crumbling now.” He turned his head toward the soldier under the light. “Destroy it.”

The one called One-Zero-Seven stared into the light for a long moment before reaching upward. His thick glove embraced the hot glass of the bulb as he carefully unscrewed it from the dirty socket. At the same time, the leader of the dark-armored band turned back toward Mark and Zach. “By the powers fully vested in me as a protector of our Earth and nation, I find you both guilty of all charges.”

“We are not afraid,” Mark whispered. Beside him, Zach’s praying grew just a little louder.

“The punishment is death...”

“We are not afraid.”

“To be carried out with even swiftness in order to preserve the system of justice.”

“We are not afraid.”

“Well, you should be!” There was a snarl in his voice that surprised everyone. Hidden eyes all turned to him at once. “There’s only two of you.”

“There will be more.”

A thousand racing heartbeats seemed to span the sudden silence that followed Mark’s quiet challenge. The leader stood in the snow, staring at the back of Mark’s head. There was something definite in Mark’s voice that he could not explain which rattled his core. And, the long pause was becoming evidence of the event. So he took a long, loud, deep breath. “One-One-Zero...One-One-Two, I hereby authorize you to carry out the sentence on my command.”

The two figures behind Mark and Zach readied themselves. Zach’s voice, trembling almost hysterically, was still softly echoing his prayer into the falling snow. Mark let himself smile. He saw his parents. He saw old friends and strangers. He felt the confidence they all shared. “There will be more.”

“Ready!"

The hand on the bulb still turned. The connection to the socket was beginning to break. The yellow light flickered.

“Aim!”

Mark watched his parents nod to him once more. He was going home again. The hand on the bulb felt the connection break, the light within the fragile, dusty glass disappearing. Darkness swept across the yard. In the frozen shadows of the late night, Mark finally opened his eyes. He still felt the snow on his face as he turned to look at Zach.

“I love you,” he said.

Zach turned his head sharply. He felt Mark’s fingers take his trembling hand and smiled.

“Fire!”

For a moment there was only darkness. Even the snow seemed to vanish in the cloak of the night. Then, the darkness shrank away once, then twice. It happened as quick as lightning. Air blistering cracks from the emptying pistol chambers echoed long after the brilliant, twin muzzle flares that made the white snow sparkle like a field of diamonds for an instant. Then, there was only silence. Two nameless bodies lay lifeless in the snow turning from white, to pink, to red. The black-clad soldiers turned and began to disperse without a word whispered or gestured. The job was done, though one lingered for just a moment.

He stood staring beside the stood at the light bulb in his hand. A snowflake landed without any noise on its warm surface. He looked up into the night, at the house next door beyond the shrubs. He almost didn’t see the old woman moved suddenly deeper into the darkness of her bedroom. With a soft, longing sigh, the one called One-Zero-Seven joined the others as they returned to their idling black truck. The job was done.

I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Seven

The bitter sleet had turned to snow by the time they reached the edge of the farm. Several inches were already blanketing the ground with more continuing to fall. It crunched with the frozen grasses under their feet. The dense flakes fell with hardly any noise, only the occasional whisper of a shivering breeze brushing the wet powder against their clothes, their faces, and the sulking blades of grass persisted in the air around them.

Wyatt’s eyes strained in the predawn darkness. It should have been getting thinner, the blackness of the night retreating from the oncoming violet and pink of dawn’s first hours. Instead, it seemed as dark and infinite under the heavy, gray clouds hanging low in the winter sky as it would be at midnight. “Are you sure you want to do this,” he asked softly to the girl he didn’t know walking ahead of him. “We could go somewhere else.”

“No,” she said without looking over her shoulder. Her dry eyes burned as the occasional snowflake would drift between her matted eyelashes. They had been in such a rush to leave the house in town. She didn’t get to straighten up, to look more presentable. What did it matter, really? Her family was dead and she was mourning. She was allowed to look a little horrid. She certainly felt like it.

“I want to be here,” she said. “I need to stand amongst the ruins for a little while.” She stopped near a snow-covered tractor and glanced over her shoulder at Wyatt. “Are you afraid your partner is following us?”

Wyatt shook his head, stopping beside her. “No. He’s probably watching the house, trying to spy what we’re doing there.” Wyatt had told Eleanor, the cashier, and her boyfriend, Jonah, to create an atmosphere of intimate debauchery. Gordon Parks apparently had a dirty mind. Wyatt was willing to humor the younger fool at the fool’s expense.

“Are my friends going to be okay?”

“Yes. He won’t do anything to them. He’s only doing his job.”

The girl looked at Wyatt. “Oh? What is that?”

Wyatt held her gaze. Snow descended swiftly to the ground between them. “To spy on me.” Wyatt turned his head, his tired eyes peering past the abandoned tractor to the distant outcropping of buildings. They seemed farther away in the frozen dark. A subtle orange glow persisted where the charred remains of the barn lay crumbled upon the earth.

Wyatt waited for her to ask another question, to enquire why he would need looking after. She said nothing else. Either she didn’t care or assumed the very fact Wyatt was with her now was enough evidence to warrant his being spied on. “We better keep going,” Wyatt finally said.

She nodded her head and walked around the sleeping, snowy tractor. She continued to lead the rest of the way to the place she had once, even so recently, called home. At two hundred yards from the house, she stopped again. Wyatt stepped beside her once more. They were still in the empty field, the livestock absent from sight or smell. A thin, loose cord of barbed wire bowed between two rotted, wooden posts a few feet apart from one another. A thin layer of snow traced the length of the rusty, steel string. Wyatt was going to put his hands on it. He kept them in his coat pockets instead.

“This is close enough,” she said softly, taking hold of the fence with a delicate motion.

For a long time neither spoke. Wyatt let his gaze shift back and forth from the ruins of the girl’s home, to the falling snow collecting on their coats, their hands, and down their bodies. But, he also found himself watching her, trying to figure out who she was-who her family was. What did they mean to anyone but each other? Why are we really here, he asked himself.

“Why are you here, Agent Douglass?”

Wyatt blinked. Her question caught him off guard and he wondered whether he had voiced his thought out loud. He took a small and quiet breath. “I want to know what happened here yesterday morning. I want to know why six people are dead because of an obscure environmental infraction.”

“I wonder if six people are dead because of that,” she said into the pale darkness. Her voice was flat and raw. “I wonder if six people died because someone decided to stand up for themselves.”

Wyatt blinked again, startled when she turned to look at him sharply. There was blame in her eyes and as she spoke, Wyatt found himself willing to accept it on behalf of the heavy hand he knew he was a face for. “Because,” she said, “someone...my father and my family together...said no. Not here. Not us. Not anymore.”

Wyatt waited until she turned her head before he allowed himself to look away from her. “Tell me what happened here,” he said.

“Don’t you have reports? Didn’t your people already give you that information?”

“They gave me a perspective...one side of a story I can’t help but believe I haven’t come to fully comprehend.” Wyatt lifted his eyes from the snow obscuring her shoes to find her watching him. “I want to know. I need to know.”

She stared at him for another long moment, then turned her head once more to watch the dying embers of the crumbled barn being slowly smothered by the wintery powder enveloping the charred remains. She realized, then, she was trembling. Small bits of snow slipped free from the barbed wire under her quivering grip. She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly in an attempt to steady herself before she began to speak.

The daughter of the farmer named Parrish told of the first time she had seen the men from the government at their home. It was a year before and a late afternoon in the spring time. Her older brother had picked her up from school. She had been helping out with one of the clubs. Her mother and father were standing firmly but politely in the way of a man who seemed eager to learn all about their land and the methods of her father.

“He never asked about us,” she said. “It’s like we were just flies on a plate to him. We existed as something not needing to be considered.”

She told Wyatt of the fliers and notices that began to cover the breakfast table. She described the strangers that walked up their driveway claiming to be our neighbors. She pointed toward the tractor behind them. Six months before that freezing early morning it now stood quietly in, its engine was gutted and some of its parts stolen. She managed a smirk, though there was no joy or illusion of happiness on her face. “Is it ironic that the tractor actually belonged to our neighbors?”

Wyatt listened as she explained the fines that began to get levied against them. Her father saw their taxes rise unexpectedly and in stark contrast to the others who lived around them. But that was when her family really took notice of the number of farmers that had given up, their land surrendered to the government. “New people showed up. On the Montright farm...some people who had never even seen a combine or a harvester before.”

Crops didn’t grow. The fields were cleared of the stain of Man and his efforts, “the acres preserved” the main phrase spoken with a smile by men and women with faces like snakes. She told him of the announcement that new solar farms and wind farms were going to be built-the orchards and pastures of a new and greener century. Wyatt nodded his head as he listened. He knew those projects had yet to be completed or even begun.

“They wanted our farm. They wanted our livelihood,” she said. “‘It was our turn to let someone else have theirs’ they told us. Apparently, my father was too successful in his career.”

The girl took another breath. “My father was not afraid. Not for himself, anyway. He would not budge but he knew they weren’t going to stop. He had watched the way the country went. It was like standing in the way of a train that doesn’t know where it’s going but too many others are afraid to stop. That’s what he said, anyway.”

She paused for a long moment. The soft breeze had picked up into a steady wind. It howled through the snow banks of the open field. “And sure enough,” she said at length, “...they came.”

Wyatt stood beside her, his back against the wind. He felt the sting of it, of the snow that bit at the exposed skin of his neck. He ignored it as best he could, sheltering her from the passing gust. “What really happened yesterday morning?”

She told of the final warning they had received days before. Then, their water was cut off. Then, because they still would not comply, the power was shut down. Still, the family stayed. In a way, the description of her father the girl provided matched the profile documented by Wyatt’s peers, but only to a point. While he did seem stubborn, he also seemed noble. He wasn’t just trying to protect his home. He was trying to stand and defend against the blatant attack on his family, on his children. Their future was being robbed from them by the nullification of their present.

She didn’t watch all of the events. She saw the cars coming up the driveway. She was told she could not stay. With unstoppable tears her parents hugged and kissed her. They told her to run and not look back. She had to live. She had to survive to tell the world what happened to their family. As the cars came to rest a short distance in front of the house, her brother was dragging her into the barn. “He hugged me tighter than I’ve ever been hugged,” she said into the snow and wind. Her eyes were locked onto the blackened remnants of the fallen structure. “He kissed me on the forehead and told me he loved me...that he believed in me.”

At the back of the barn, she pointed out, was a small cellar accessible by a heavy, wooden hatch. In the cellar was a wall that could be pushed aside, revealing a third rate tunnel that led all the way to the highway. It was meant to be used to install a new type of irrigation system her father had been developing. If it worked, it would have actually saved water.

“My brother smiled at me before he closed and locked that hatch,” she said distantly. “It was the last time I saw him. It was the last time I knew he was alive.”

She didn’t say anything else, not for a long time. Minutes felt like hours in the howling wind that kicked the wet snow across the frozen plains. Wyatt stood as silent as she was. He didn’t urge her to say anything or do anything. He felt no need, that is, until something in the distance caught his attention. He stared past the bared-wire fence to the darkened farm house, watching the slowly fading shadows. It was movement, a guard on patrol steady and oblivious.

Wyatt heard the girl beside him shift in the snow. “I’m ready to go now,” she said.

He wasn’t watching her. His eyes stared at the dim beam of a flashlight scanning the snow around the house. “It’s probably the best time, anyway,” Wyatt said, gesturing to the lonely guard with his chin.

“It’s getting brighter here,” she said, taking a step back from the fence. “He might be able to see us.”

Wyatt didn’t move.

“Agent Douglass, please...” Wyatt felt her hand on his arm. He looked at her fingers, then into her eyes. “I need to leave this place now. With or without you.”

Wyatt watched her eyes for a long moment before turning his head to look out toward the farm house. The single guard had stopped to talk to another that had emerged on the stoop of the side door. Neither seemed to be aware of them on the other side of fence. Wyatt nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”

The first light of the morning cast the rural Oklahoma countryside in a hazy, gray luminance. The snow had tapered to an occasional, wispy flake by the time they approached the beat-up pickup truck they had borrowed from a neighbor of the cashier, Eleanor. The rusted metal had more dents than paint coating its weathered skin. The windshield was cracked and the one remaining windshield wiper was stuck pointing upward at a sixty degree angle.

The hinges of the driver’s side door wretched as if in pain when Wyatt pulled it open. He wondered if it was just going to come off in his hand. She hadn’t opened the passenger door yet. She hadn’t even walked around to that side of the truck. Wyatt turned around. She was standing near the warped and mangled tail of the pickup. He looked at her, watching her tug on the black, padded straps of the book bag she had been wearing the whole time. Snow fell from the wrinkles and folds it had settled into during their trek back through the white, frozen and deserted fields.

“You aren’t going to get in,” Wyatt asked her. He already knew the answer. He had probably known before they ever arrived.

“I want to thank you,” she said instead of answering his question directly. “...For bringing me out here. I think I needed this more than you said you did.”

“I just wanted to try to understand what happened.”

“I know. And I needed to say goodbye...to mourn.” She forced herself to smile. “Or, at least start mourning. Because, that means I can start moving on, right?”

Wyatt tried to match her smile. He watched the single tear roll swiftly down her cheek. He nodded. “So you’re moving on?”

“Yes,” she said, wiping her face of the tears that were following the first. They were warm on the cold skin of her cheeks and shimmered briefly in the hazy morning light. “Tell my friends I said thank you. They knew I wouldn’t be coming back. I already gave them my goodbyes.”

“Where will you go?”

She chuckled and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not really sure. The Red River is not far that way.” She pointed south to her right.

Wyatt let his eyes peer past her delicate hand to the gray, fog enshrouded horizon beyond. He looked back her and asked, “Will you be able to make it?”

She shrugged her shoulders again. “I don’t know. I know I never will if I stay. There is nothing for me here, not even hope. But out there...maybe I can start over. Maybe I can have the chance to live the life my family gave theirs up for. Whatever the chances or risks or whatever...I have to try.”

Wyatt nodded. “Good luck-” He stopped and smiled suddenly. It was a genuine smile. “I don’t know you’re name.”

Her face brightened in the cold, gray light of the morning. She smiled warmly, as if she were smiling at a joke shared by an old friend or some long lost relative. It was almost like a joke, as she thought about it, albeit a tragic one. She knew in that instant the feeling of trust she had felt upon seeing him for the first time at the bottom of the stairs only hours before was one of the most well-founded intuitions she had ever known. “Madeline,” she replied simply.

Wyatt nodded. “Good luck, Madeline.”

“Thank you, Agent Douglass.”

With that, the girl he now knew as Madeline Parrish turned to face the snow fields leading away to the south. Wyatt watched her intently, studying and storing the sight of the miracle he was witnessing. Wyatt thought of something his grandfather had told him once: that the greatest moments in life always start with a single breath. Madeline took her breath and then her first step into a new life. The old one slowly faded into the snow and haze behind her as she treaded bravely into the cold and snowy wilds. Wyatt watch her until she was out of sight in the field. He let himself smile again, proud of the young stranger he felt so close to. He knew in his gut she would make it. It gave him hope. If she could do it, maybe Wyatt Douglass could find the strength to walk toward his own freedom beyond the wind and snow. He was still smiling as he cranked the chugging engine of the old truck to life. He would follow her tracks one day soon, just not today.

I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Six

Mark LeVine blinked the water out of his eyes. It was raining. He didn’t remember when it had started. It might have been raining when he left the union offices. He hadn’t been paying attention. People on the sidewalk hurried around him, their jackets closed tightly to keep out the dropping temperature and stinging, cold rain. But Mark himself stepped idly along the slippery concrete. It was time to go home yet he wasn’t walking that way. Mark wasn’t walking to anywhere specific. For the time being, he just felt like walking.

Mark had almost jumped out of his skin at the contact of thick, olive-colored fingers on his shoulder. The receptionist hadn’t batted an eye. She never flinched or took her focus off of Mark. It was like the man that was suddenly standing behind him was a ghost only Mark was aware of.

The man spoke as Mark turned swiftly to face him, drawing his shoulder away like the man’s touch was acid burning through his jacket and shirt. “Is there a problem here?” He was shorter than Mark and much older. His slightly squared head was topped with a thin, evenly combed layer of silver hair. He wore a plain black suit and tie that made the white of his shirt stand out like sunlit snow. His faded-blue eyes were disarming and locked solidly on Mark’s. “What’s going,” he asked, his voice not direct at any one person.

The receptionist answered before Mark. “This man stormed up here a few minutes ago.”

“Stormed,” Mark shouted over her. “How could I storm? I’ve been sitting here waiting for over an hour!”

“-He refuses to fill out his paperwork! He doesn’t know where he’s supposed to be! And, he’s trying to cause a scene! He’s blaming us for some vandalism!”

“Because UNION was spray-painted all over my shop!”

The man held out his hands with such suddenness it caught the attention of both of them. “Okay, okay. Let’s just settle down a moment.” He didn’t yell. His raised voice was only loud enough to be heard over them. When the echo of their bickering had begun to fade into the recesses of the office suite, the man spoke again. “May I see his forms, please?”

The receptionist stood up for the first time since Mark had been there. The official looking man took the papers from her outstretched hand. “Thank you, Ms. Kory,” he said.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Bloom,” the receptionist, Ms. Kory, said pleasantly to the man who was obviously her boss, or at least one of them.

Mark watched them, mostly Ms. Kory. He eyed her hatefully, wondering how such a spiteful woman could exist. He almost didn’t notice Mr. Bloom walking past him until he heard the older man politely call his name. Mark turned around, missing the narrow-eyed glare from Ms. Kory’s tightly scrunched face.

“Let’s talk this way, Mr. LeVine,” Mr. Bloom said, gesturing over his left shoulder with a sideways nod.

What could have been seconds or minutes later, Mark wasn’t sure which, Mr. Bloom was opening a door into a small conference room. He had been led around a series of corners and down an uncertain number of hallways. Mark felt uncomfortably turned around. Still, he followed the silver-haired Mr. Bloom a few steps further into the conference room. The man had been talking about various random things around the office suite he, at least, found interesting. Mark had only been half listening, trying more to pay attention to his surroundings than find a fascination in labor statistics, color schemes, and the history of a wall. Somehow, Mark realized, he had failed on both counts.

The conference room was a basic, oblong, rectangular space illuminated by a panel of tall windows reaching from the linoleum floor to the soft-tiled ceiling. Most of the floor space in the isolated room was taken up by a long, wide table Mark guessed was about ten or twelve feet long. A dozen black, leather chairs surrounded the polished, wooden edges of the table. Mr. Bloom gestured to one of them as he walked to one end of the table, becoming silhouetted by the late afternoon light pouring in between the narrow slats of the thick blinds draped down the length of each window. “Have a seat, Mr. LeVine,” he said pleasantly.

Mark bit the inside of his lip and straightened his back. “No, thank you.”

Mr. Bloom pursed his lips slightly. “Oh,” he said. He might have been genuinely disappointed. “Well, suit yourself. But, I’m going to sit down.”

Mark watched the older man sit down at the end of the table. For reasons Mark could not explain, he found himself pulling out the closest leather chair and seating himself in it. He sighed, disappointed with himself.

“So, Mark...” Mr. Bloom looked down the table to the young man. “May I call you Mark?” He didn’t really wait for Mark to answer either way. “Mark-”

“I don’t want to join a union!” Mark blinked suddenly. He couldn’t believe he had said that out loud and so boldly. He took a quick breath, drawing the small surge of strength he felt at the surprised look on Mr. Bloom’s face. “That not why I’m here. I came here for answers. My business was smashed and I want to know why...I want to know by whom. I didn’t come here for membership. Just answers.”

Mr. Bloom blinked slowly, thoughtfully. His lips were drawn tightly together, the lines of his soft face suddenly appearing more defined. He didn’t say anything, not for a long moment. He didn’t seem to be waiting for Mark to say anything more. Mark wasn’t sure what more he needed to say. If he had begun to put his thoughts together, they were broken by the sudden sound of a door handle turning loudly and a door swiftly being opened and then closed.

Mark turned in his chair enough to peer over the back of the supple, black leather. A man much younger than Mr. Bloom walked casually past Mark, his eyes fixed on the silhouetted figure of Mr. Bloom perched observantly with his back as straight as an evergreen tree in the chair at the end of the table. Mark felt strangely uneasy about the way the man had seemed to ignore him. Suddenly, like never before in his life, Mark felt lower than any other human being.

He watched the tall man with a slender, muscled frame walk with even, calculated steps toward the end of the table. Mark noticed the paper-stuffed folder he placed on the table in front of Mr. Bloom before walking around the older man’s chair to take a seat on the opposite side of the table from Mark. His eyes were a dull blue Mark could barely make out in the grim shadows hovering against the opaque bands of pale sunlight stretching through the room. His sandy blonde hair was like the world’s perfect wheat field, each stalk trimmed short and even. The skin on his thick hands looked smooth and well manicured. The silver of his watch gleamed for a moment as he sat down. If it hadn’t been for the dull, golden hue of his hair and the softly tanned complexion of his face and neck, Mark would have lost sight of him in the black leather chair.

He wore a black suit and black, silk shirt. Mark suddenly wondered if the man smelled like money. His tie was the oddest part of him, the pattern consisting of narrow stripes purple and red in color. When he looked at Mark, Mark inhaled sharply, maybe too loudly. Mark looked away quickly, spotting Mr. Bloom flipping through the contents of the folder.

Mr. Bloom took a deep breath, laying his hands on either side of the open folder and the documents spread over each flap. “Mark,” he said with a clarity that reminded Mark of his grandfather. It was the way that even when he was wrong, his grandfather could have little doubt he, himself, was absolutely right. It was his grandfather that had tried to exile him from the family. Mark never cared much for his mother’s father.

“Mark, you know that this is simply a misunderstanding. It is a misunderstanding ...a forgivable ignorance that is, unfortunately, leading to unnecessary hostilities.”

“No one wants a war, Mark,” said the man seated across the table. “What happened was unfortunate.”

“Yes,” added Mr. Bloom. “I completely agree. As much as we would like to, we simply can’t control what all of our membership-even the truly advantageous and dedicated members-do all of the time.”

Mark realized, horrorstricken, what this was. It was a close to something like an apology that he was going to receive. But it wasn’t even really that. It was a bold face admittance. It was the truth about so many things said with the smile of a wold as he talks a sheep into letting him through the door.

“Even the best parents can’t control their children all of the time,” Mr. Bloom continued.

“Something you’ll have to learn if you still want a child of your own,” said the blonde-haired man.

Mark’s eyes shot from Mr. Bloom to the blonde-haired man to the open folder on the table in a matter of heartbeats. He recognized his name on several forms. He saw Zach’s name as well. Those were their records. His gaze lifted with awe-fired fear to the two men watching him.

“You can’t adopt without joining a union,” the blonde-haired man said as soon as his eyes met Mark’s.

Just then, the door behind Mark opened again. Two men walked in, one after the other. The door closed loudly behind them. Their footsteps seemed to clamor loudly off the walls around the table. Mark was watching them. He wondered if they were being deliberate in their actions, each one taking a separate route to the opposite side of the room. They placed themselves in the long-backed chairs beside the blonde-haired man.

“You’re under no pressure to join a specific charter,” said Mr. Bloom.

“Your field of employment allows you several key opportunities,” said one of the two men that had just entered the conference room. They were slightly older than the blonde-haired man. The one on Mark’s left had brown hair, the one to Mark’s right had salt and pepper colored hair. Their eyes were similar in color, so were their slightly sunken cheek bones and narrow, pale noses. Mark wondered if they brothers, or cousins. He didn’t have too much of a chance to ponder.

“As a gay man myself, I’d be happy to counsel you on some of the options that, itself, provides,” Mr. Bloom said.

“Huh,” Mark questioned, his brain catching up with what was quickly being said. “Why-”

“You’re a business leader with a unique perspective,” said the man with salt and pepper hair. “We look for that. It’s good for diversity. You could, maybe, make a good leader. Maybe anywhere you like.”

“It’s important to have diverse leaders, especially when and where there might be none.”

Their words and voices were beginning to flow together. Mark was having trouble keeping up with who was saying what. “No,” he said meekly. “I...I don’t want to be a leader anywhere.”

As he was speaking, the door behind him opened once more. The sound of high heels tapping with precision under a steady, intimidating gait muted his words even more. Mark looked at her as she walked around the table to his right. She was an older woman, well past her forties. She wore a close-knit purple blouse with an obscene red pendant near the v-cut neck line that extended a few inches below her collar bone. Her black skirt stretched down to her calves was almost as tight as the skin on her face. She sat down next to the man with salt and pepper hair, quickly acknowledging Mark’s last statement.

“It is truly disheartening to hear such a thing,” she said intensely. Mark couldn’t help but think of his high school principle.

“I don’t want to join a union...any of them,” Mark said, looking at the faces surrounding him, watching him.

“Aren’t you being selfish,” the woman said.

“You’re not thinking of others, your neighbors and friends,” said the younger of the two brothers.

“Don’t you realize how unfair you’re being?”

“Is it right to horde resources, Mark,” asked Mr. Bloom. “Think about that. Think about the country and how fragile it is.”

“Everyone has a part to play. Are you going to play yours fairly, Mark,” asked the woman.

“How can anyone know if you are taking only your fair share? What will society think? What will your friends say?”

Suddenly, the blonde haired man leaned over the edge of the table. “Have you thought about your partner, Mark?

“Or, your employees, Mark,” asked the older brother. “Have you thought about them?”

“What about your business in general? It is such an unstable and difficult time we live in, Mark,” the woman said. “Don’t you want to protect your business?”

The younger brother spoke up again. “Don’t you want to protect what’s yours?”

“Wait, wait! Please,” Mark protested, his voice rising above the rattling, attacking din of their voices. “You can’t just sit there and do that. I’m not an idiot you can just talk down to. I have...I have my questions too,” he said, stamping the polished tabletop with his finger tip.

“Who are you people? Why are you treating me like a...a petulant child who doesn’t understand the rules of the classroom?” Mark sat up in his chair. “Well, I don’t care about your rules. I don’t want to be a part of your classroom. I don’t want to be in a union!

“I’m a baker. All my life I’ve wanted to make cookies and be my own boss. I will never be in a union. Or, be some kind of managerial figurehead. I have the freedom to work as long and as hard as I choose. I have the spirit of ingenuity unfettered and I will not submit to change that. I don’t have to wait on my turn or a boss to let me go toward something great or hold me down and keep me in my place.

“So what do you want? My soul? My ethics and my values? Why do you have to tear us down? Do you want to hurt us or our store? Fine! Go ahead! Kick down the doors! Throw rocks through our windows! We’ll fix them! We will do it. Us...ourselves, without your bureaus or your bosses. Do you want to burn it to the ground? Go ahead! We’ll build it again!”

Mark was suddenly on his feet. He was propelled by an anger raging beyond his control, a fear he could feel like a nameless, black weight on his soul and deep in his heart, and a sense of pride he had only felt in the shop of his dreams, standing beside the love of his life.

“So what the hell do you want?!” He was pounding his fist into the table now. “Who the hell are you people?!”

The conference room became deathly silent. Mark’s voice quickly faded between the vacuum of space between the bands of light and shadow stretching from the windows. Mr. Bloom was the first person to speak. He held his hands flatly together in front of his face, though he wasn’t praying. “America is a...delicate place, Mark. It’s sort of like...a wheel. One bad spoke and the whole wheel of America can just come apart.”

The woman across the table spoke next. The tone in her words was beyond impersonal. She could not hide the threat laced within the context of her nouns, pronouns, and prepositions. “America is delicate, indeed. More than that, it is sensitive. The American people are sensitive. They depend on people like us, people who help establish the system that protects them. You can’t just go around disrupting the system.”

Mark shook his head in disgust. “‘People like us’? People like you are part of the problem. Have you looked out those windows?” He pointed past Mr. Bloom to the panels of glass and blinds. “Have you? You aren’t protecting anything. You’re destroyers, all of you.

“Me? And people like me? We run good businesses, honest businesses with decent prices because we don’t have armies of faceless workers promised and then anchored to unfunded and unrealistic liabilities. There are no shadowy puppeteers with one hand pulling the strings and the other taking their share. What we do and what we produce are not natural resources. We have to work for them. And you can’t take them.”

The woman shook her head. “Mark, you-”

“I want to leave now!”

The blonde-haired man leaned forward slightly in his chair. “Are you sure Zach feels the same way as you?”

Mark glared through the shadows into the eyes of the blonde-haired man. “I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.” He looked at the rest of the obscured faces. “We will never give in. Neither one of us.”

Mr. Bloom took a deep breath. “If that’s how you fell, Mark, the door is right there.” He gestured with a subtle nod toward a door on the right-hand side of the room from where Mark was sitting.

Mark hadn’t noticed it before. He didn’t wait for any more prompting, or for any of them to say anything else. The door locked with a loud click behind him and Mark found himself in the lobby outside the office suit. He didn’t keep track of how long it took him to get back outside and onto the sidewalk.

Mark blinked more of the cold, stinging rain out of his eyes. He was standing on a street corner. The green of a traffic light blended strangely with the flashing orange of the DO NOT WALK sign above his head. He felt people pushing past him, trying to cross the street. He had no idea how long he had been standing there. The National Mall stretched from left to right across the noisy avenue. Towering above it in a holy, ivory-white majesty was the Washington Monument. Mark realized he had been staring at it.

He would never know exactly why, nor was there just any one reason, but Mark suddenly had the inescapable urge to touch it. He had not been inside since he was a child. It had been years and years since he felt the smooth stone of its facade under his fingers. He was sure he hadn’t even looked at it since it became closed to the public two years earlier. They never did give a real reason as to why.

The rain seemed heavier, colder as Mark approached the barriers. A few guards patrolled the low-gated perimeter. He thought there might have been more. He wasn’t watching for them. He felt the cold, slick metal under his hands. This could get him into serious trouble. He could be thrown in jail. He could be forced to pay some tremendous and devastating fine. They would make an example out of him. I don’t care, Mark thought. This is supposed to stand for something. It isn’t supposed to be locked behind gates. I have to know. I have to remember.

Mark kept repeating that over and over in his head as propelled himself over the wet barricade. It rattled noisily. He nearly lost his balance, half stumbling as he rushed onto the forbidden hilltop. A guard shouted from somewhere behind him. Then, two more were yelling. He heard them at the barricade, the aluminum ringing under the hiss of the rain and sleet as they scurried after him. Mark turned his bumbling gait into a panicked dash toward the monument. The heavy stones gleamed with a white like angelic snow. He could smell it he was so close. He could feel the bitter wind rushing off its smooth sides. He looked up toward the point of its spire. The obelisk commanded the landscape around it and the sky above it, piercing the sagging clouds.

The guards were nearly on top of him. Mark reached out, his fingers splayed wide, ready to touch the monument. That was all he needed, just to feel it again, just once. He needed it to remind him, to encourage him. They were shouting in his ears. Mark was only a few feet away when one of the guards tackled him. The others were on the scene a heartbeat later. Their hands fought for a grip on his limbs flailing for freedom. They wouldn’t let him get up to walk so Mark crawled. He was less than a foot away when he felt a wet boot connect with his gut, lifting fiercely against his diaphragm for an excruciating instant.

Mark heaved, trying to breathe. He was trying to shout, pleading with the guards who pulled him off the rain-soaked ground with strangling hands on his arms and even his hair. His ears were flooded with demeaning curses slithering off their tongues and past their lips. Yet, still Mark struggled. He reached out again, shoving off one of their hands as pleaded even louder. He just needed to touch the stone once. The wind howled against the writhing mass. Mark managed to gain a few inches of ground. It was just enough. His fingers brushed the cold marble. It was a moment that lasted a heartbeat yet stretched in Mark’s mind for infinity. It was everything he remembered and more. The sensation of the hard, smooth stone against his skin took its time to travel up the length of his arm straining against the pull of the guards.

Mark knew he would never feel the monument dedicated to the first leader of the free world again. He didn’t fight anymore as he was dragged down the shallow slope of the hill. He didn’t resist when the guards shoved him back over the barricade. They spit in his face for the trouble he caused before turning to go back to the easy monotony of their day.

There would be no jail, no fine, no severe public embarrassment. Mark smiled but felt himself sob. In a way, it was like he was granted the gift to feel freedom just one more time. He stared in tearful awe at the monument rising into the clouds and thanked God for that cherished gift. He would never forget it.