“So what’s the meaning of all this?” The book was clearly hand-bound and not mass-manufactured. It looked old but well cared for, and there was a number on the inside front cover, suggesting that this one and the others were part of a large series.
“It’s one of the things the Founders’ Keepers do,” Molly said. “We remember.”
“You remember speeches and letters and things?”
“We remember how the country was founded. You never know, we might have to do it again someday.”
“So you keep it in your heads? Why, in case all the history books get burned?”
“It’s already happening, Noah, if you haven’t noticed. Not burning, but changing. Ask an elementary school kid what they know about George Washington and it’s more likely you’ll hear the lies about him, like the cherry-tree story or that he had wooden dentures, than about anything that really made him the father of our country. Ask a kid in high school about Ronald Reagan and they’ll probably tell you that he was a B-list-actor-turned-politician, or that he was the guy who happened to be in office when Gorbachev ended the Cold War. Ask a college kid about Social Security and they’ll probably tell you that it was intended to provide guaranteed retirement income for all Americans. Ask a thirty-year-old about World War II and they’ll recite what they remember from Saving Private Ryan. Do you see? No one really needs to rewrite history; they just have to make sure that no one remembers it.”
He closed the book carefully and gave it back to her. “Molly?”
“Yes?”
“Hit me with a little Thomas Paine.”
She took his hand, and spoke quietly as they walked.
“ ‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’” Molly said. “‘The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
“ ‘What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.’”
Back in Molly’s section of the loft she gave Noah his iced tea and took a seat on the edge of her hammock. He sat on a nearby divan made from crates, a simple frame, and random cushions. The tea turned out to be as sweet as she’d warned it would be, but it was good.
“That looked like a small arsenal Hollis had back there,” Noah said. “Are all those guns legal?”
“Two of them are registered. The rest are just passing through. He’s on his way to a gun show upstate.”
“So the answer’s no, they’re not legal.”
“Do you know what it took to make those two guns legal in this city?”
“I can imagine.”
“It took over a year, and the guy who owns them had to get fingerprinted, interviewed, and charged about a thousand dollars to exercise a constitutional right.”
“Welcome to New York. There’s a lot you’ve got to live with when you live here.”
“Wait, didn’t you say you were pre-law in college? I would have thought they’d have spent a few minutes on the Second Amendment.”
“Yeah, they did,” Noah said. “The experts differ quite a bit on its interpretation.”
She spoke the words thoughtfully. “‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed’—that seems pretty clear to me.”
“You left out the part that causes all the arguments.”
“The word militia meant something different back then, Noah. Ben Franklin started the first one here. The militia was every citizen who was ready and able to protect their community, whatever the threat. It was as natural as having a lock on your front door.
“Today the police are there to protect society, but they’re not obligated to protect you and me as individuals. The Supreme Court’s ruled on that quite a few times. And they certainly won’t protect us from the government, God forbid it would ever come to that. So the way I read it, the Second Amendment simply says we have the right to be ready to defend ourselves and our neighbors if we have to.”
“Speaking of the way you read it,” he said, “why don’t you tell me about your bookshelf there.”
She looked over at it briefly. “What about it?”
“I was noticing some of the titles. That’s quite a subversive library.”
“People use some of those books to smear us, and some of them were written by our enemies. I read everything so I’ll know what I’m up against, and how to talk about them. You don’t see any harm in that, do you?”
“Who’s this Ragnar Benson lunatic?”
She smiled. “He’s not a lunatic. That’s a pen name, by the way; hardly anyone knows who he really is. He writes about a lot of useful things, though.”
“Like how to make a grenade launcher in your rumpus room?”
“That one was from his mercenary days. He’s mellowed out some since then. Now he’s more about independence, and readiness, and self-sufficiency, you know? The joys of living off the grid.”
“It almost sounds like you know this guy.”
She considered him for a moment and then leaned a little closer. “Can you keep a secret?”
“This is probably the wrong day to ask me that.”
“It’s Hollis’s uncle,” Molly whispered. “And guess who took up the family business and wrote a few of those books himself.”
“Hollis?” He pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “My Hollis?”
She nodded, smiling a little. “You shouldn’t judge a person by appearances, you know. He’s a very smart man.”
“Yeah, so was the Unabomber. Top of his class, I hear.”
“You make little jokes when you’re nervous,” Molly said. “That’s kinda cute.”
“Thanks.”
“Now finish your tea or I’ll think you don’t like it.”
He did, in one long drink, and Molly patted a place beside her on the hammock with one hand.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve lived twenty-eight years without trying to get into one of those. You sit over here with me.”
“Come on, it’s easy, chicken.”
“It’ll flip over.”
“No, it won’t.” She held out her hands to him, beckoning. “I just want to forget about everything else for a little while, okay? Come here, now. Don’t make me ask you again.”
It would have been hard to say no to that, and he didn’t try. With her guidance he sat next to her on the precarious edge of the hammock.
“Now we just hold on,” Molly said. “Let your feet come off the floor and lie down, and try not to roll off the other side.”
He followed her lead as she leaned back, and from there it was a touch-and-go fun-house ride for quite a few wobbly seconds. Amid the swinging and shifting and overbalancing and a great deal of welcome laughter, things gradually settled down into a fragile stability. In the end they found themselves pleasantly entwined with one another, held close in the pocket of the hammock in a comfortable, gentle sway.
There was no ceiling to the enclosure of her room, and high overhead among the distant steel beams someone had arrayed several dim strings of white Christmas lights in a pattern reminiscent of a starry evening sky.
“Hey, Molly,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“What do you say we just stay here like this, for a really long time.”
She held him a little closer. “I wish we could.”
He’d noticed her silver bracelet before but now it was close enough to see the marks of its worn engraving. “What does this say?”
She brought her wrist closer to his eyes. “It’s been through a lot, and I’m afraid it’s getting a little hard to read.”
Noah held her hand and found the right distance an
d the proper angle in the dim light to allow him to make out the faded lettering. When he was sure of what they said he read the words aloud.
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
“That’s right,” Molly said.
“Whose quote is that? I’ve heard it before.”
“Thomas Paine.”
He laid his head back down next to hers. “But how do you think you can do that, Molly? I’m not saying you can’t, but I don’t see how.”
“There’s more,” she said. With her other hand she carefully twisted the bracelet so the inner face of it turned out, and there was another inscription on that side.
Faith Hope Charity
“That’s “nice?”
Nice.”
“I guess I don’t really understand,” Noah said. “I mean, I understand those words, but that’s not really a battle plan, is it? Do you know what you’re up against?”
“Yes,” Molly said. “But I doubt that our enemies do.”
“So tell me.”
“Okay,” Molly said. “Pop quiz: Who fired the first shot in the American Revolution?”
“That’s a trick question. Nobody knows who fired the first shot.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“Yep.”
She worked herself up onto an elbow so she could look at him. “It wasn’t fired from a gun. The first shot was a sermon, delivered by Jonathan Mayhew, years before Lexington and Concord. It wasn’t a politician who first said ‘no taxation without representation.’ It was a preacher.”
“Ah. So that’s the faith part.”
“It’s more than that. Our rights come from a higher power, Noah. Men can’t grant them, and men can’t take them away. That’s the difference, I think, between what happened in the French Revolution and what we achieved in ours. We believed we had the will of God behind us, and they believed in the words of Godwin. One endures, and the other fell to human weakness.”
He touched the second word engraved in her silver bracelet. “And what about hope?”
“That means we believe in the strongest part of the human spirit. Hope and truth are tied together; if everything we know is a lie, we don’t have a chance. When a doctor tells you you’re sick, you don’t blame her for the diagnosis. You have the truth, then, no matter how bad it is, and you can make a plan to get better. That’s hope. To know that even when things look darkest, there can be a better day tomorrow.”
Molly pointed out the last word of the three. “And charity is simple. We believe that it’s up to each of us to help one another get to that better tomorrow. Ben Franklin explained my whole bracelet when the president of Yale asked him to sum up the American religion. He answered: that there is a God, that there is life after this one and He will hold us accountable for our actions in this life, and that the best way to serve Him is to serve our fellow man. That’s faith, hope, and charity.”
“It sounds good.” Noah adjusted a pillow and laid his head back onto it. “I hate to say it, though; I just don’t think it’s enough.”
“Maybe it’s not something you get right away,” Molly said. “It didn’t come to any of us overnight. When you’re ready to understand, you’ll understand.”
A sketch on white paper was attached to the wall at their side, placed so it would be easily visible to someone lying where they were.
“Who drew that, over there?” Noah asked.
She turned her head that way, rolled over slightly, reached out to tug the paper free from its pushpin, and then held it so they both could see. “I did.”
It was a drawing of a small log cabin in a valley in wintertime, near a stream within a secluded patch of woods. The details of the place were carefully rendered; a porch swing, a spot for a garden to the side within a low split-rail fence, a path of flat stones to the front steps, puffs of drifted snow on the eaves and windowsills. It was only simple lines and shades from the edge of a pencil, but the scene was fondly captured there in the artist’s sensitive hand.
“It’s really beautiful,” Noah said. “Where is this?”
“Only in my head, I guess.” She looked at him. “And do you want to know something?”
“Sure.”
“This is all I want, really, this little place. I imagine that makes me sound pretty simple to someone like you.”
“No, it doesn’t. It sounds good.”
“Just a place like this to share with someone, and the freedom to live our lives there. The pursuit of happiness, you know? That means a different thing to everybody, and that’s the way it should be. But this is mine; this is what I dream about.”
“I hope you get there someday.”
“I hope we all do.”
He thought for a moment. “Why don’t you just go out right now, and find that place?”
“You mean, why don’t I just grab mine while I can, and to hell with everybody else?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant—”
“There’s a cancer in our country, Noah. We’ve both seen the X-rays now. If we don’t stop it, it’ll spread wherever we try to hide. And I want you to know something. I need for you to know something.”
“Okay.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t give up to defend my country. No matter how hard it might be, there’s nothing that’s in my power that I wouldn’t do.”
“I understand,” Noah said. “I admire that a lot.”
“But I don’t want this on my shoulders. I don’t want to be right. I wish things were different. If I could I’d stay here just like this, like you said.”
“I just wish I felt that strongly about anything.”
Quiet minutes passed, and as he lay there gazing up at those imitation stars, feeling her close to him, he tried without much success to remember exactly what it was he’d been pursuing for all these years, if it wasn’t a simple togetherness just like this.
Then he noticed a subtle blur that had crept into his vision. A little shimmer had formed around sources of light, and though he blinked it away the strange haze returned after a moment more, this time accompanied by an odd discomfort, like a passing wave of vertigo.
“Whoa.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I think I got the whirlies there for a second.”
No sooner had the feeling left than it came over him again, but stronger this time, and he stiffened, tried to shake it off. Molly raised herself on an elbow beside him, concern in her eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he breathed out. “I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t fine. There’d been a time in college after a stupid drinking game when he’d downed far too much of the spiked punch too quickly, and all that alcohol had hit his bloodstream at once. It had been the worst feeling of helplessness, because by the time he realized his mistake there was nothing he could do to stop what was coming.
“I need to get up,” he said. His own words were slow to reach his ears, and they didn’t sound right. A flutter of panic was beginning to take hold inside, and he felt her cool hand on his forehead, comforting.
“Be still now,” she said.
But it had almost all drained away by then, first the strength and then the will to move, all replaced by this building sensation of a slow-motion, backward swoon at the sheer edge of a bottomless ravine.
As the cloudy room began to swim and fade he saw that three strangers were standing nearby, young men dressed in business suits and ties.
“It’s time to go, Molly,” one of them said, the voice far away and unreal.
“Just give us a minute. Wait for me downstairs.”
And they were gone, and another, taller figure appeared.
“You’ll stay with him, Hollis, won’t you?”
“I’ll stay just as long as I can.”
He felt her arms around him tight, her tears on his cheek, her lips near his ear as the blackness finally, fully descended. Almost gone, but the three simple words she
’d whispered to him then would stay clear in his mind even after everything else had faded away into the dark.
“I’m so sorry.”
CHAPTER 22
Agent Kearns had retired to the kitchenette of his double-wide mobile home to make breakfast. This left Danny Bailey sitting by himself in the parlor in his borrowed pajamas with a wicked sleep hangover, an ugly off-white cat, and a full-scale model of a small atomic bomb.
The Sunday news from some distant city lay folded at the far end of the couch. It would have been nice to see some headlines but the paper was a little too close to the cat to be safely retrieved.
“So you’ve never been to Winnemucca, you said?” Kearns called through the narrow doorway.
Again with the frickin small talk.
“No, can you believe that?” Danny said. He was looking over the elaborate cylindrical device in its heavy wooden cradle on the coffee table. “Never knew what I was missing.”
“If you think this burg is dead, wait until you see where we’re going to meet these guys tonight. This whole part of Nevada was voted the official armpit of America by the Washington Post a couple of years ago.”
“Sounds like a hoot. Hey, Stuart?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to come off like a puss, but is this bomb-looking thing, like, radioactive?”
“Nah, not too much.” Kearns returned with their coffee and sat in a nearby chair. “The core’s inert; it’s just a big ball of lead. There’s some depleted uranium under the lining, so it’ll set off a Geiger counter in case anybody checks. Here, look.” He flipped a switch on a boxy yellow gadget on the table and brought its wand closer to an open access panel at the fore end of the model. The meter on the instrument twitched and a rapid clicking from its speaker ramped up to a loud, raspy buzz as the tip of the wand touched an inner metal housing. “Sure sounds hot enough though, doesn’t it?”
“But it’s not dangerous.”
“No, but I wouldn’t keep it under my bed at night.”
“And these dudes we’re going to see, the boys who want to buy this thing, why would they ever believe that a private citizen could get his hands on a working nuclear weapon?”