“They’ll shoot you if you go down there.” Bet said. The dirty man was staring at a Dyson cold-storage facility. “It looks unprotected but it aint. There’s buttons hidden down there with scatter guns.”
He turned a squint, bloodshot eye to where Bet stood in the tall grass. “What do you know about it little girl?”
“I seen a guy shot.” She said. “He got past the fence and down around the second building two buttons popped up and ripped him up with them scatter guns. Whyn’cha go down there an see if I know what I’m talkin’ about?”
He turned his attention back to the buildings on the other side of the fence. “You know how much food is in there? Enough to feed an army.”
“You hungry?”
He looked at her again. “Yeah, so?”
“I know where we could get some food.”
“You tryn’a lure me somewhere?” He took a step toward her, looking her over. “I got nothin’ worth taking,” he said, “whoever sent you wont be too happy if you come back with me. Get outta here, leave me alone.”
Bet laughed in his face. “You think I’m trying to rob you? Have ya been anywhere near a fuckin’ mirror lately? Ya look like scabbed-over cuntmeat.”
“Don’t talk like that.” He said. “It’s not right for a girl your age.”
“You don’t know how old I am.”
“Ok, how old are you?”
“Fifteen.” She said.
Now he laughed. “Twelve at the most.” He said. “Where’s this food?”
“It’s a soup room out near the beach, but a girl can’t go there alone.”
“Why, they afraid it’ll turn into a pickup spot for whores?”
“It’s not that.” She said. “The guy who runs it has a buncha wives all covered up in sheets. Any single girl who goes in there winds up in sheets, so you gotta come with me an pretend you’re my husband.”
“What the fuck? Nah honey, I’ll pretend to be your father.”
“If you were my pa I’d run down there and let the buttons shoot the shit outta me.”
“You wanna eat or not?”
“Alright then, come on.” She said. “What’s your name?”
“Miller.” He said. “Yours?”
“Betina Majorca-Christophe Marino.” She said. “Or just Bet.”
They walked five miles to Pacific Beach, taking a long detour to avoid the Grand Avenue checkpoint. On a tarp someone had spray painted the words ‘Free Soup’ with an arrow pointing down to an open garage door. Bet and Miller climbed the wooden stairs and entered a small dark warehouse space. There were folding chairs set up in rows on either side like a church, and a stage area in front, made of cinderblocks. There were some sunburnt drunks sleeping near the back, and a couple of scrawny punks with skateboards near the front, sharing a smoke. Miller and Bet sat in the middle near the aisle.
They sat for a long time, not talking much. Miller was distracted by his hunger, he clutched his stomach and watched the door, looking for the soup. A mother with two small children came in, her eyes darting around, assessing the danger of the people in the seats. She sat as far as she could from everybody.
Finally five women in light blue burqas came in, the one leading the way carrying a suitcase. Bet stared at each one in turn. The lead woman set the down the suitcase at the front of the stage and opened it. She took out a long candle and lit it with a red plastic lighter. Each of the other women took a candle from the case and lit them from the first one’s flame, and then they walked to the four corners of the warehouse, and put the lit candles in holders on the walls.
They were humming quietly as they came back and repeated the process, taking these candles to different holders that Bet hadn’t noticed were lining all four walls of the place. The melody they were humming was indistinct at first, but they got louder as they worked, and soon they were punctuating the humming with vocalizations here and there. Miller recognized the song as Could You Be Loved by Bob Marley, but Bet had never heard it before. They repeated the candle-lighting process two more times, and there were candles lining all the walls, not brightening the gloomy warehouse much, but creating a religious atmosphere.
The singing women arranged themselves along the back of the stage, while the one holding the first candle climbed onto a chair and placed it in a special holder on the back wall, above the others. The singers were going full-out now, singing the song as if it were a traditional religious hymn. The woman climbed down from the chair and went back to the case and brought out a gnarled chunk of wood and a stick. She climbed the chair again and lit the end of the stick and then came down to the front of the audience and held the chunk of wood out to the skinny punks. It wasn’t until the kid sucked on the end while the woman held the flame to the other side that Bet realized it was a pipe. The smell of powerful marijuana reached them as the second punk took a hit. The woman approached them holding out the gnarly pipe.
Miller waved her away. “We don’t smoke that,” he said, “we’re here for soup.”
The shape of the cloth covering her face changed, indicating that she was smiling. “There’ll be soup after words from Papa Ras.” She said. She moved on to the mother who also waved her off, and then she went back to the drunks, who happily took big hits off the pipe.
She walked back up the aisle and extinguished the flame at the end of the stick and put it and the pipe back in the case, and then joined the singers at the back of the stage. As the song ended two little girls in white dresses came walking down the aisle, swinging homemade censors and trailing smoke. They walked casually, almost bored, up to the front where they set the censors down and sat on either side of the stage. Then Papa Ras Terilian made his entrance.
He was a tall man, 6’3 or 6’4, with a long half-grey beard, and short-cropped hair. He could’ve been a youthful 65 or a grizzled 45 years old. His bright-white robe was belted at the waist and it touched the ground as he walked. He carried a chubby little baby, naked except for a diaper, and held the hand of a boy, no more than five years old. He walked down the aisle in silence and handed the baby to one of the little girls and the little boy went and sat next to the other girl. He stepped up onto the cinderblock stage and turned and faced his sparse congregation.
“Imagine a film or a book.” He said. He seemed to be speaking quietly, but everyone in the place could hear him clearly. “The invented world of that film or book is filled with many characters but we, the audience, identify with just one of them. The main character, the protagonist, the hero. Why? How do we know which character to identify with? It’s signaled to us in ways that we are barely conscious of. First of all it’s usually the character that we know the most about, the storyteller tells us his history and his journey. The story might be told through the main character’s point of view, so we know, through the course of the story, which character is the one to watch. We understand why he does what he does. This identification with the main character is what gives the story its power.
“As human beings, who do we know the best? Who are we always with? Whose motivations do we understand the most? Ourselves of course. It’s the same mental mechanism as in a story, we observe ourselves so closely that we identify with ourselves. We even come to think that we are ourselves, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not true. You, all of you, everyone in the world is only a close observer of themself.
“But wait a minute, you say, I have free will, I can change my mind, I’m in charge of myself. Well let’s imagine that movie again. Haven’t you ever wanted to shout out to a character on screen ‘Don’t go down those stairs!’ or ‘Don’t tell him that, he’s working for the enemy!’ Why do you have the urge to shout at the screen? Because you know something that the character doesn’t. Now let’s imagine a movie where the audience doesn’t know anything more than the main character knows. Then you would yell ‘Don’t go down those stairs!’ and the character up on the screen would stop and decide not to go down the stairs. How would you know you hadn’t controlled him? How would you
know he wasn’t obeying your commands?” Ras Terilian smiled at the punks in the first row. “Before this conflict began, before the crash, I used to minister to convicts at the super-max prison. These were men who had committed violent crimes. They all said something similar, ‘I don’t know why I did it,’ or ‘It was as if someone else was doing it.’ Some even thought they’d been possessed by demons.
“I’m sure many of the people gathered here have something shameful in their past, some action they’ve taken that they can’t explain, even to themselves. Those events should give you a hint that you aren’t in control. Jah has a plan for everyone. It isn’t just the bad things either, many heroes have the same experience. They were acting on instinct. Something took over and let them do what they did. Artists and visionaries all say they don’t know where their art comes from, it’s just there. You can feel the separation between the observer and the observed, the you and the real you. It’s always there if you look for it. That’s why we smoke the chalice, to feel that separation.
“When I was first brought into the Restilian world, the beings who brought me there made this fact clear to me. They showed me myself, ministering at a homeless shelter. The thing that I thought was me, my body, my voice, myself -was functioning perfectly without me. That was the first lesson the Restilians taught me…”
“’Fucks he talkin’ about?” Bet whispered to Miller.
“He thinks he seen some aliens.” Miller said. “This soup better be hearty.”
The aliens had told Papa Ras that Haile Selassie I was one of their own but had been kept from his rightful place as liberator of humanity by a powerful cabal of Satanists and on and on for a good half hour. Finally one of the burqa’d wives came down passing out sheets of paper with lyrics written on them. They’d written new lyrics to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and Ras Terilian encouraged everyone to sing along:
We wake up from history’s slumber
Looking at the world we’ve made
People starve and people suffer
Work and toil and sweat and slave
Games are played with people’s lives
And those with power have no shame
They will fall in fire and thunder
And the world will curse their name
Joy is present if you seek it
Love is here for everyone
Restilians have brought the message
That we all must live as one
The drunks and the skate punks sang loudly with Ras Terilian and his wives. The mother and Bet and Miller just sat there waiting for soup. Finally one of the wives opened a side door and Ras invited the congregation to partake in the bounty. In an adjacent room they’d set up a hotplate with a pot that was much too big for it. There were cardboard bowls and plastic spoons and behind the table were more wives in burqas. The punks went first, one of them arguing that the woman hadn’t put the ladle down far enough, and that he hadn’t gotten any potatoes. After the mother and her two children it was Bet’s turn.
There were two women standing against the wall behind the one ladling soup, and as Bet held her bowl up she stared intently at one of them. Miller saw the covered wife Bet was looking at shake her head no, and her eyes, the only part visible, maybe pleading. There was a table with chairs and Bet went and sat next to one of the punks, never looking away from the woman standing against the wall. One of the other Terilian wives seemed to have noticed the looks being exchanged. Miller got his soup, thanked the woman with the ladle and sat next to Bet. He got a couple of good spoonfuls of soup in him. “Friend of yours?” He asked Bet quietly.
“My sister.” She said.
“Well don’t stare, you’re drawing attention to yourself.” Miller took another couple of mouthfuls of soup.
“I gotta get her outta here.” Bet whispered.
“Just be calm,” Miller said, “we don’t wanna piss off the Restilian horde.”
They ate their soup in silence, Miller finishing his well before Bet. Bet kept an eye on her sister. A woman came over with a trash bag, collecting empty bowls, and Miller noticed Bet’s hands were shaking as she put hers in the bag. She stood up from the table with clenched fists. “Why you wearin’ them bed sheets Liz?” Bet shouted. “Whyn’cha tell these dumbshits to fuck off?”
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to stare. The woman who’d been ladling signaled another wife standing against the wall and she took the hand of Bet’s sister and headed for the door. Bet’s sister stopped and turned around. “Bet, run!” She shouted before she was yanked out of the room.
The lady who’d been ladling came around the table and kneeled in front of Bet. “Little girl, how do you know sister Elizabeth?”
Miller stood and put a hand on Bet’s shoulder. “Liz is one of my daughter’s friends.” He said. “You’ll have to forgive the outburst, she was upset when Liz joined your… Um… Order.”
“Why’d you rush her outta here?” Bet asked. “I wanna talk to her.”
“She’s not ready to talk to outsiders yet, her education isn’t complete.”
“Are you holding her against her will?” Miller asked. “Didn’t we just sing a song about justice?”
“Achieving freedom isn’t easy.” The woman said. “She’s chosen to be isolated from the outside world while she learns the truth. She can’t afford any distractions right now.”
“So that big alien stickin’ his dick in her aint a distraction?” Bet shouted.
“Language sweetheart.” Miller said, squeezing Bet’s shoulder. “Excuse her,” he said to the lady, “she’s upset. If we could just talk to her a minute.”
“It’s possible.” Ras Terilian said, entering the room. It seemed too small for him, and the drunks stopped slurping their soup to watch the show. The lady who’d been speaking to Bet and Miller took a step back. “But I’d like to know a bit about you first. I’m a curious person and I always wonder how people are surviving this profane war. Occupation, annihilation, liberation, then occupation again, it’s a cycle that has made normal life all but impossible. I understand why you’re not fighting, you have to take care of your daughter, what I’m curious about is how you’re living. Tell me about it.”
Ras Terilian pulled a chair from the table and sat, smiling at them. Miller looked at Bet and thought for a moment, and then turned to Ras. “We lost her mother last year and I got furloughed from the guard so I could take care of her. When the well-fed moved in our place was destroyed and we’ve been living rough for the last couple of months. We’re headed south to try to get into Baja until the war cools down, and that’s about it.”
“Remarkable.” Ras Terilian said. “You’re very talented, that just rolled off your tongue as if it were the truth.”
Miller shrugged.
“You haven’t been hungry for months.” Ras said. “I know all about hunger. You might be able to lie but your body can’t. You haven’t been hungry for months, weeks maybe, but not months. I happen to know that you aren’t this girl’s father, her sister is my wife and she says she’s never seen you before. You’re a deserter from the Well-Regulated Militia. I think you’d better get going, and you’d better get going by yourself.”
Miller calmly pulled his array gun from his waist band and put laser points all over Papa Ras Terilian. “Bet’s coming with me, and we’ll be taking sister Elizabeth too.” He glanced at the lady who’d been talking to them and nodded toward the door. “Go get her.”
Ras Terilian smiled at her. “Go ahead.” He told her. The woman left and he turned to Miller. “Are you going to kill me?”
“I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.” Miller said. He noticed the mother was standing in the corner, with her two kids behind her, and the other soup-eaters standing against the back wall. “Get out.” He said. The drunks were the first out the door, followed by the mother and her kids and then the punks. The woman came back in with Liz and told the last remaining wife to leave. She stood with Liz behind Terilian, directly in the l
ine of fire. “Elizabeth, come stand next to your sister.”
She unhooked the face cover. “I told you to run.” She said, walking over to her sister. “They called the buttons.”
“They what?” Miller asked.
“When they pulled me outta here Papa Ras asked if I knew you and when I said no he called the buttons. I heard him tell them he had a deserter for them.”
Miller fired his weapon, killing Papa Ras Terilian and the woman behind him instantly. Elizabeth screamed.
Miller looked at Bet and her sister, who had gone white and was shaking. “Come help me get the sheets off this bitch.” He said, kicking Terilian’s bloody, shredded body out of the way. Bet came over and they started trying to pull the burqa off the corpse of Terilian’s wife.
Miller got the blood stained burqa over his head. “Help me put the fuckin’ face part on.” He said to Elizabeth. She was staring at the two bodies on the ground. “Hey!” Miller shouted. “You deaf? Come on.” Elizabeth came over and helped him with the clasp. “How do I look?” He asked.
“It’s too small.” Bet said pointing to his feet. His busted up boots were visible below the bottom edge of the garment. They could hear the engine of a large military vehicle outside the warehouse.
“I won’t have to fool them for long.” Miller said. “Come on, when we get out of the warehouse, we’ll walk right around the building and just keep going. We stick together and we move fast but we don’t run, got it? Elizabeth cover up.”
The three of them were coming down the aisle between the folding chairs when the voice came over a loudspeaker outside. “In thirty seconds we will disintegrate this building.” It said. “Everyone evacuate immediately. Richard J. Miller come out with your hands on your head.”
Miller and the young sisters emerged from the garage door and looked down at a gray armored vehicle with two buttons in protective body suits standing next to it. Seven wives and a handful of children stood behind the behemoth. The trio descended the wooden stairs and passed the buttons, going toward the assembled wives. Before they got there Miller turned away from them and the two girls followed, and they walked faster up the block. “Sister Roberta you’re bleeding!” One of the wives called out. “Where are you going?”
Miller half waved over his shoulder and kept moving. “Hey!” Another wife shouted to the buttons. “That’s him! He’s getting away!”
“Run!” Miller shouted. The two girls took off up the street, Elizabeth holding up her sheet as she went. The buttons came around the armored vehicle holding scatter guns. Miller shot through his burqa, connecting with one, but he felt his head hit the ground and he knew he’d gotten it too. As he watched his blood leak out onto the sandy concrete he realized he was still hungry. He was as hungry as he’d ever been in his life.
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The Many Iterations of Kendra Dixon