Susan had a nice little bright spot last chapter (after the looming existential dread), got a bee in her bonnet to make things better and start organizing by networking with people who also want to make things better, so now of course it’s time for reality to come crashing down.
—
Hank Walton was having a hard time adjusting to life as a poolie. Born to considerable family wealth, want was an alien phenomenon and leisure an assumed right. Having to work, hard, every day, and for little gain outside of three simple meals and a spare bunk did not suit him.
“Which makes me sound terrible,” he groaned with a wan smile. “I know, in my head, that most people in the world, throughout history even, have lived like this. Worse than this. I tried to help them, in fact.”
Hank had headed up half a dozen charities and civic improvement foundations. He’d been handed his first charity foundation by his grandfather. It was a healthcare clearinghouse that helped working-class families deal with catastrophic medical bills. The goal, as far as his grandfather was concerned, was to improve the family’s reputation after a damaging exposé revealed exactly how little their employees were being paid.
But Hank took to the work with enthusiasm, discovering great joy in swooping in with his family’s money bags and helping souls in need. He also discovered a facility in himself for sharing that enthusiasm with his fellow one percenters, for telling stories of lives broken by tragedy and the salvific miracle of huge infusions of cash. This allowed him to secure donors outside his family, and the foundation’s endowment and reach grew.
After a few years of rescuing the unfortunate from medical bills, Hank began to see a troubling pattern. Medical emergencies would get handled and then they’d go home to apartments without running water or homes without heat. Medical issues reoccured or acquired complications. So Hank launched a second charity to handle housing emergencies.
And then came the Walton Education Initiative. And a foundation to address homelessness. Then the mass transit lobbying group. Hank was running or on the board of twelve different charities when he realized he was running around putting out fires without even asking what was setting them alight.
“That was not an easy question to ask,” he told me with a sigh. “I’d leave one of my fundraisers where everyone was wearing a small fortune in wardrobe and jewelry, get driven home in a company car with a company chauffeur, ride the elevator up to my penthouse which I had neither bought nor paid any taxes on–the family trust took care of that–and fell asleep on silk sheets wondering if I was the cause. No matter how much money I funneled into doing good, I knew that a hundred times that–a thousand times that–was pouring into my family’s bank accounts. Were we the problem?”
Hank’s crisis of faith put strain on his relationships with his parents and aunts and uncles who owned and now ran the family conglomerate in the wake of his grandfather’s death. He did not improve matters by suggesting they increase wages or allow union reps to speak on company property. They refused, vehemently, citing Hank himself as the reason they did not need to change their ways. “The only reason you exist,” his uncle told him, “is so we don’t need to deal with the whiners.”
While that was hardly proof that his family’s lifestyle was causing the miseries that he was frantically addressing, it did leave a bad taste in Hank’s mouth. He started thinking of his family’s charitable contributions as hush money (and tax credits). Not long after that, he wondered if the same characterization properly applied to his other sponsors.
And then the whole enterprise turned sour for him: he didn’t help the unfortunate, he exploited the guilt of the powerful. And to what end? He told them that they need do no more than give a small fraction of their massively disproportionate share of the wealth. So small, in fact, that it wouldn’t be missed, would have no impact on their day-to-day lives.
To fix the situation, Hank did what he knew how to do: he started another non-profit. Unlike its predecessors, however, the Economic Justice Project eschewed direct action in favor of lobbying local government. Almost immediately it branched out to providing logistical support for organizing fledgling unions. He launched himself (and his legion of lawyers) directly at his networks of supporters and benefactors.
Only later, sitting in the back of a stolen pickup truck trundling up the mountain, did he realize that he had been testing them, and harshly. If they opposed the foundation, if they complained to him in some back room at a society gala, if they suddenly pulled their funding for his older charities, then he knew. They only wanted to feel good about themselves, they had no interest in changing things. They didn’t want to fix anything.
“Which was really just ludicrously judgemental,” he admitted with a sigh. “Damn them for not having the same exact epiphany I did. Damn them for not wanting to help strangers at the cost of their own well-being. What kind of asshole expects that of people as some kind of barometer of morality? Especially when I failed that test myself.”
Because his family came after him. Their employees had unionized, and the union had released a video secretly recording contract negotiations. His uncle had explained in excruciating racist language exactly what he thought of the union representatives. Public reaction was horrified; stock prices fell into a tailspin. And then the family discovered that the union had been organized by Hank’s Economic Justice Project.
His mother delivered the family’s ultimatum from the hospital bed in the penthouse suite she hadn’t left in three years. Shutter the EJP or the family would pull their support for all the other charities, and ask their friends and business partners to do the same. The family could, if unanimous, remove him from the family trust and leave him penniless. Hank didn’t own his penthouse apartment, didn’t own the cars he drove, didn’t even own, technically, the clothes on his back. And they would take all of it away unless he shut down the only thing he had that stood a chance of changing things.
He caved.
The Economic Justice Project closed its doors a week later and Hank went back to putting out brushfires.
It didn’t last: the world started falling apart a few months later. Hank and his father waited for his mother to succumb to the Parkinsons that had been eating her alive for a decade. The city collapsed around them but they knew they wouldn’t wait long. They held a funeral which no one else attended; police sirens wailed futilely in the distance as they put her in the ground.
He and his father left directly from the cemetery, but only Hank made it to safety. A local sherrif’s department had commandeered the Waltons’ SUV, backing up their request with a few well-placed warning shots. Hank didn’t find out his father had been hit until they rolled up to the trailhead and the elder Walton stopped the truck they’d stolen to get there. He’d stained the driver’s seat scarlet and couldn’t stand on his own feet.
After Hank came through the gates, he demanded medical help return to the trailhead to see to his father. Cole shook his head and insisted the man was no doubt already dead. Hank knew that the Director was right, but that didn’t make it any better.
Hank found labor pool and all the refuge’s adjusted accommodations entirely unsurprising. He had never thought much of the place when his father dragged him up the mountain for “manly bonding time.” Now not sleeping in the Lodge, and reliving those memories suddenly turned painful, was a blessing. Hank threw himself into the work, no matter how grueling, as nothing worse that what many others had put up with before. Many others for whom the EJP had been founded, and who Hank had betrayed.
It took a couple months of this self-imposed purgatory before Hank’s grief cleared. The refuge’s many abuses turned mundane, even banal, and he realized that it would continue like this forever, slowly dwindling away its residents’ spirits, unless someone did something. Just what was to be done, though, Hank didn’t know. It wasn’t like he could launch a non-profit to address the problem.
“I’ve got some ideas on that front,” I told him as we handed out towels for some other Lodge’s shower day. “But for the moment, we just need to find each other.”
“Who’s we?”
“Those of us who’ll risk our own well-being for the benefit of everybody,” I said with a tight smile. “Strangers, family, friends, even enemies, if we’ve got any. But it’s not getting any better for any of us unless we stick our necks out and fix things.”
—
Caden and I were gathering up used wet towels outside the bath house when Bukhari found us. “Susan,” she called imperiously, and waved an impatient hand at the towel I held. “Put that down. I need you to run an errand for me.”
I finished the fold and placed the greying towel on the stack before me. “What do you need me to do?”
Bukhari sipped at her ever-present orange drink. “Your husband’s getting discharged,” she explained. “I need you to go down to the infirmary, pick him up, and show him around.”
Before I could answer, Caden piped up. “Can I go, too? I haven’t seen my dad in a week.”
The pinched look of distaste that the sweetie directed at my boy actually inspired a little hope in me. Apparently I wouldn’t need to worry about Bukhari around Caden, as I’d been warned. Still suffering the last vestiges of gawky teenagerhood, Caden must register as ‘just a boy’ to the woman. His older brother might be another story, though.
Bukhari waved her cocktail again. “Like I care. Sure. Go see daddy.”
“Thank you, Bukhari,” I said pleasantly enough. “I assume Arthur will be bunking in the Ponderosa barracks?”
She lifted a brow and smiled at me. “I don’t know, how cute is your husband? I’m between paramours at the moment.”
“My ex-husband,” I corrected mildly. “You want him, he’s yours. But he does snore.”
“Best take him to the barracks, then,” she nodded. “And be sure to show him the Mess. He’ll be working there till he’s off crutches.”
“Is he okay?” Caden blurted, brow furrowed.
“Normal healing process,” she answered blithely. “But in the mean time, he’s slow and awkward so I sure as hell am not going to wait on his ass as he huffs and puffs up the hill.” She bestowed on us both a patently false smile. “Then I remembered you were working here today. And voila, instant family reunion. Anyway. Best run along, so you can get his gimpy ass back up here by dinner time.”
The walk down to the infirmary was pleasant enough—the weather was warm and clear, the wind sighed through the trees, and the gravel road was stable under our feet. Caden was vibrating with happy energy at the prospect of getting his dad back, and I tried to siphon off some of his enthusiasm.
It didn’t work. I knew I’d have to deliver some bad news to Arthur, and I could not imagine a positive response.
It had been hard enough selling him on the idea of physical labor as equals; informing him that he was now a member of the underclass would only inspire fireworks.
Aubrey looked up from the receiving desk as we came through the door. Her face registered surprise, closely followed by suspicion. Her eyes swept over us, finding no sign of injury. Loose poolies were not a common sight.
“We’re here to pick up Arthur,” I explained. “For Bukhari.”
She lifted one shapely plucked eyebrow and picked out a clipboard from a stack on the desk. “You’re her little errand girl, huh?”
I shrugged, helpless before her inexplicable ire. “That’s me.”
“Follow me,” she directed, and strutted down the length of the little building. I kept my gaze level despite the bouncing show her behind was putting on; I dimly wondered if she was sashaying any more than usual just to taunt me. She stopped and turned at the dispensary door, but waved at the next door down the hall. “Your daddy’s in there, hon,” she told Caden.
The boy went in and I could hear their excited greetings, but Aubrey speared me in place with a look. “Got a package for you, errand girl,” she said, and produced a white envelope from the dispensary closet. She leaned close as she handed it to me. She was wearing her perfume—light and floral and familiar.
I took the envelope. “Who’s this for?”
“Mahone,” she told me, and then looked me in the eye. “Thank you, Susan.”
I thought my knees might buckle. I swallowed. “I’d… I’d feel better about this if I knew what this was.”
But she was already pulling away. “Safer if you don’t,” she said, and headed back up the hallway. “Go fetch your husband.”
“Ex,” I muttered to no one and pushed through the door.
Arthur was already on his feet, two in boots and one rubber-capped at the end of a crutch. Behind him, Caden slung a pile of clothes wrapped up in a towel over his shoulder. “Suze!” his father beamed. “So good to see you. I was starting to worry you’d abandoned me here.”
“No such luck,” I answered tartly, and held the door open. At a dark look from Caden, I made an effort to be civil. “Things have been… busy. And it’s not like they’ve got visiting hours here.”
Arthur hobbled out the door and into the hall, awkward on the crutch and wincing when he moved in a way his healing leg didn’t like. As I followed, I wondered once more how much of a show was being put on for my benefit.
“Caden tells me you’re taking me to the barracks?” Arthur finally managed once we were outside. “Are we soldiers, now?”
I decided to leap right into it. “Things here in the refuge are not… exactly as promised. There is some significant crowding, and our accommodations are… compromised.”
He paused to say something with a sneer, then thought better of it and pushed himself forward again. Momentum was precious, especially up a hill. “Well that sounds promising,” he grunted. “What’s that mean?”
“We’re not in a suite,” Caden told him. “We’re in the labor pool, everybody’s crammed into this big garage–”
Arthur didn’t look to Caden as he spoke, but to me. A look of betrayal dawned on his face.
“It’s pretty bad,” I admitted with a short nod. I had to get out in front of the torrent of bad news coming out of Caden’s mouth. “The suites went first-come, first-serve and the rest of us are in temporary housing. But we’re building new cabins as quick as we can.”
“But in the mean time I’m going to recover from a gunshot wound in a garage,” he spat. “Are there even beds?”
“Bunks, cots, hammocks,” I explained, knowing full well that the last proper bed had been claimed the day before. Desperately, I offered, “I thought you could take my bunk. It’s right next to the boys.”
“Wait, but where will you be?” he asked incredulously, craning his neck over the shoulder hunched atop the crutch. “I thought we’d be together.”
“Oh, I’ll find a hammock or something,” I said quickly, before his words sunk in. Together. A cold lump formed in my gut.
An incredulous voice in my head bleated: does he really think the apocalypse comes and we’re magically a happy family again?
It was answered the weary voice of experience: of course he does, this is Arthur. That makes perfect sense to him.
“Oh my god, Arthur, I do not have time for this,” my mouth said before I could stop it. “We are not back together. We’re not getting back together.”
He looked guilty and hurt at the same time. “I just thought—”
“I know what you thought,” I spat, and one small, still corner of my mind thought: oh look, there goes my temper. “I didn’t come get you because I’m still in love with you, I came to get you because the boys asked me to. I brought you here so you could be safe—”
“Well look how well that turned out!” he shouted. “Safe in a barn. I’m so glad I got shot and hiked up a damn mountain on my bleeding leg so that I could sleep—safe—in a garage!”
“You did not have to come!” I shouted back.
He sputtered. “Come with me if you want to live, that’s what you told me, standing on my front porch—”
“That was a movie quote, you idiot, I was trying to alleviate the stressful situation—”
“Guys, guys,” Caden interjected, finally shouting, “Mom! Dad!”
And suddenly I realized our shouts had shot through the thin mountain air, bouncing off the few trees and buildings around us. A stupid argument about a stupid misunderstanding had filled the space of the refuge. In our ensuing silence came no other sound—no birds, no work crews, no idle chatter carrying from the lodge porches.
How many had quieted to listen in to our drama?
We had made ourselves cheap entertainment: the only kind available in the refuge.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then pointed at the path to Ponderosa Lodge and the barracks beyond. “That’s the way to where we sleep. But we’re not going there just yet. The Mess is up ahead and it’s nearly time for dinner.”
Arthur gritted his teeth and pushed himself further up the hill. “What do they feed us, gruel?”
I counted to five before answering. “A whole lot of rice, some greens, and a little fish. Probably exactly the same as you’ve been getting in the infirmary. It’s monotonous, but it keeps us going.”
Caden eyed the two of us. “If you guys are done fighting, I’m going to go drop off Dad’s stuff on Mom’s bunk… or Dad’s bunk, now. If I hustle, I can catch back up with you before you get to the Mess.”
We both nodded wearily and watched him go. When he was out of earshot, Arthur said, “It’s cute how he thinks we’re done fighting. Sad, but cute.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back up the road. “I’m done fighting.”
He snorted. “You are blithely continuing the fight by shutting down, glowering at me, and pretending that everything is fine.”
“Nothing is fine, Arthur,” I groaned. “And only you would think I’m continuing to fight by not fighting.”
“You’re a talented woman,” he said, turning to flash me a vicious sneer. But his eyes skipped past mine to some distance behind me. “Who’s Caden talking to?”
I looked back to see Caden stopped on the path to the barracks, talking with a quartet of young sweeties I didn’t recognize. I said as much.
“Sweeties?”
“Oh, ahm—the folks who got a suite,” I said as I watched one of the young women in the group laugh at something Caden said. He slung his hips in intentional nonchalance. “As opposed to poolies, in the labor pool.”
“So there’s even has a caste system,” he exclaimed with mock enthusiasm. “This place has got everything!”
I ignored him, watching the scene unfold around Caden. The girl laughed again and reached forward to brush a lock of hair from his forehead. “Shit,” I muttered.
“What?” asked Arthur, oblivious.
“The sweetie’s hitting on Caden.”
Arthur frowned through the trees. “How is that a bad thing? She’s cute. Go Caden.”
“And looks to be college aged,” I pointed out, “not to mention she’s a sweetie.”
“Are we not allowed to socialize with them?” he asked incredulously, then gasped. “Or is the worker’s revolution already upon us, and you’re worried about him sleeping with the enemy?”
I looked sidelong at Arthur. “I don’t think he’s sleeping with anybody—unless he’s told you something he hasn’t told me.”
“What, Caden?” he snorted. “I’m still trying to figure out if he’s straight or thinks he’s gay.”
I made a noncommittal sound. I knew as much as Arthur. “Still. This goes nowhere good.”
“You sure?” Arthur asked dubiously. “Maybe some well-placed romance with the upper class would earn the family some good will from on high.”
I took a deep breath and counted to three. “I’m going to give you a moment to consider how many steps it is from what you just said to whoring out our children for social position.”
Arthur snorted again. “If it’s as bad as you say… oops, show’s over.”
Caden was loping down the path towards the barracks; the four sweeties strolled up the road towards us, chatting amongst themselves. Arthur got back to work climbing the hill, but at his pace the kids passed us moments later. They took no effort to obscure their conversation as they passed us. We were just two old poolies, after all. They were talking about some movie, as best I could tell. One of the young men made some remark, vying for the attention of the girl who’d flirted with Caden. He said her name: “Hey, Zoe!”
“Shit,” I said again, once they were out of earshot.
Arthur didn’t stop. Momentum. “What now?”
“That’s not just any sweeties,” I told him. “That’s Director Cole’s daughter.”
“He’s the architect of this… glorious abomination of a place you brought us to?” Arthur mused. “Yeah, that sounds like upgrading from ‘playing with fire’ to ‘playing with dynamite.’ Still. Gotta give Caden credit for ballsiness.”
“And speak of the devil,” I muttered, nodding up the slope. Gregory Cole himself came down the gravel road, shoving a bedraggled man before him. The Director was flanked by a handful of men and women in tactical vests and toting guns. Wolfpack. Their commander, the amazon Tzavaras, brought up the rear.
By now it was the end of the day’s work shift. First Mess poolies bled out of the dining commons even as Second Mess poolies converged on it from all directions. Cole and his entourage cut through them all easily. Confused and plainly scared poolies scattered to either side. The Director caught the sorry-looking man by the shoulder and redirected him onto the deck of the Mess with another shove.
“Gather round, people,” he shouted, waving his hand in a circle above his head. He looked and sounded like an angry football coach–one backed by half a dozen guns. “Gather round!”
The crowd obliged, muttering and grumbling, asking each other futile questions. No one knew what was happening.
I looked over to Arthur, struggling up the hill on his crutch. I couldn’t leave him behind to see what was about to happen. If the crowd turned ugly, if there was any pushing and shoving, let alone real violence, Arthur would be helpless. I put my shoulder under his arm, opposite his crutch, and helped him along.
“You don’t know what this is?” he asked me, brow furrowed.
“It’s doesn’t seem like anybody else does, either,” I told him. “The refuge is full of fun new developments. Let’s get you somewhere safe. Up on the deck, or better yet, inside.”
He grunted assent and redoubled his pace.
Meanwhile, Cole addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen. Subscribers. Members. Compatriots. All you hard workers,” he shouted from somewhere in the throng. The crowd stilled, listening. “I want you to meet James Isaacs. He’s from the Gray Wolf Lodge, and up until recently he worked side-by-side with you good people. He put in his effort, he did his part, just like all of you.”
With the onlookers pressing their way onto the deck, Arthur and I were able to slip into the Mess proper. The building was half-full, but every body was pressed up against the bay windows looking onto the deck. Trays of today’s dinner steamed on the cafeteria line, forgotten.
Cole’s voice came through the open windows. “He contributed to this refuge faithfully–right up until he decided that wasn’t good enough for him. James here decided he was special, and more important than his fellow man. He decided that working together with you, for our shared future, and getting his fair share of that collective labor–that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted his share, and he wanted yours, too.”
I deposited Arthur on a bench. He leaned forward onto the table with a grateful groan. His crutch clattered to the ground, and I quickly propped it back up against the end of the table. Once he was situated, though, I hurried over to the press of people at the windows.
“James Isaacs is a thief,” Cole thundered. “In the dark of night, he crept out of bed and into the kitchens, into the walipinis, and he stole food. Food that was destined to feed all of us. Food that he had no right to. Food that was supposed to feed your families and your children.”
I couldn’t see what was happening. The other spectators in the Mess had plastered themselves against the windows, forming an impenetrable wall. Frustrated, I clambered up onto one of the tables to peek over their heads. What I saw chilled the blood in my veins.
Outside on the deck, the mass of poolies had formed a rough semi circle around the spectacle of the Director’s show. Cole paced back and forth like a caged tiger, thrusting an accusing finger at Isaacs, who stood cowering center stage. Behind these two were arrayed half a dozen Wolfpack soldiers, all in their matching battle dress. All that alone would be a fearsome enough scene to command the crowd’s attention, but all eyes were fixed on the last element in the tableau.
Behind Isaacs stood a rough-hewn wooden platform, rough pine bark still flaking off some of its edges. Two poles rose up from the base to support a pair of planks that clapped together along their long edges. Three holes, the middle one larger than the others, had been cut out along the seam between the planks. Cole had built a pillory.
“So James is going to spend some time out on the deck,” Cole declared, rounding on the quivering man and shoving him towards the platform. “For the next two days, he’ll be right here.”
Tzavaras and one of her soldiers grabbed Isaacs by the shoulders, then forced his head and hands into the pillory. The top plank came down with a resounding crack; the whole crowd flinched. As the soldiers snapped the padlock shut, Cole turned to his audience.
“I invite any and all of you to pay James a visit while he’s here,” the Director told the crowd. “This is your chance to tell him exactly what you think about his thievery. Share with him your opinion on taking food out of your children’s mouths. Encourage him, perhaps, to join your honest work once he’s done here.”
Cole surveyed the crowd before him. From my vantage behind him, I considered the same tableau. Many, if not most, of the faces were aghast with uncertainty and fear. A handful watched Isaacs with pity etched across their features. But the remainder scowled, sneered, and taunted, their shoulders bunched tense and their hands clutching into fists.
It was to these last poolies that Cole spoke. “I am sure, with your help, we can reform James here so that he never steals from you again.”
And then the Director and the soldiers turned and marched off of their makeshift stage. The crowd closed after them, bodies rushing up to the pillory. I caught the first woman spitting into Isaac’s face and another raising a hand to strike. I turned away before I saw any more.
