American Subversive (5 page)

It was Jodie who brought up my brother. I'd been introduced to everyone by then, seen the smiles turn, the expressions fleck with sadness, pure and haunting. These were people like me, people who'd spent the last month trying to come to terms with the world they inhabited, a place of gorgeous sunsets and godless deaths, and you just couldn't think about it too much—about how it happened and who was responsible—without losing your mind.
And now here was his sister
. Jodie cleared the air gracefully and without artifice. She just said how much Bobby would have wanted to be here, at this moment, with the fire, the lake, the company. That was all. No piling on. People nodded and raised their drinks. I could have stayed right there forever.

Tight joints and cheap red wine. Carter was talking about a country separating from the natural world. His voice gave way to a chorus of others, a conversation expanding ever outward. At some point I realized Carter and Jodie were gone. Several people were gone. Turned in maybe. Pleasantly stoned, I got up, dusted myself off, and stumbled toward the small cluster of tents in the grass above the beach. The moon shone as the sun had earlier, illuminating the lake like a dream.

I found the tent Carter had set up for me and began unzipping things—flaps and folds, a sleeping bag. The ground was hard and cold,
but tonight it felt like home. I lay there, between water and woods, and experienced that rare sensation of coming down just right. Glowing contentment, perfect languor.

The voices must have woken me, but the flashlights are what I saw. Beams dancing in the darkness.

Is Paige asleep? I heard Carter whisper.

I think so, Jodie answered. She wasn't up by the fire.

More footsteps, people bunking down. I peered through a flap and there was Carter's foot, inches from my face. He was searching through a backpack.

I'm awake, I whispered.

Carter jumped, startled, then quickly regained his composure.

I'm sorry, he said. We didn't mean to be so loud.

What time is it?

Late.

Where were you guys?

A meeting, Carter said, his voice low and earnest. Behind him, I could make out Jodie's silhouette. She was brushing her teeth at the water's edge.

Do you usually hold meetings in the middle of the night?

Pretty much every week, he answered. Five or six of us. Kind of a core group.

A core group of what?

Do you really want to know?

Well, I'm up now.

Carter tilted his head and regarded me curiously, as if silently debating something.

What is it? I asked.

Nothing. It's just . . .

I kept my eyes on him. He sighed.

Okay, come with me.

I slipped my sneakers on and followed him back to the fire. The clearing was deserted, the flames reduced to thin wisps of smoke. We sat on the ground, our backs against a log.

You cold? he asked.

I was, but told him I was fine. He picked up a stick and started poking at the ashes. I watched him and waited.

So, he said. I'm not sure how to say this. But in terms of activism or advocacy—Carter patted himself down, searching for a cigarette he didn't have—well, some of us are more
involved
than others.

In what?

In trying to change things. His eyes narrowed. He was concentrating on the end of the stick in his hand. He swallowed and continued. Living off the grid is one thing, he said, but it's mostly a defensive measure. You don't like your neighbors or your church or your government, so you pick up your ball and go play by yourself. And that's fine. Actually, it's admirable. But there's a more
offensive
approach as well.

Like protests?

Like
action
.

My eyes were adjusting to the darkness. I could make out rock formations across the lake, trees behind the trees that surrounded the clearing. Distance and depth and it felt like I'd traveled a great distance to get there. Carter was watching me; I could feel the weight of his gaze. Then he tossed his stick in the remains of the fire and looked up at the brilliant sky.

When I was a kid, he said, we had a telescope on our porch. I used to spend hours looking for the American flag on the surface of the moon. And after a while, I always convinced myself I'd found it. I guess I just wanted to believe in my country.

I think there are six of them, I said, smiling.

Six what? Carter asked.

American flags on the moon. One for each Apollo landing.

Really? How'd you know that?

I read too much.

Carter looked almost sheepish. What I was trying to say, he continued, is that I've never lost that feeling, that na
ϊ
ve patriotism, even with all that's happened in America.
Especially
with all that's happened.

Are you telling me this because of Bobby?

I'm telling you because you asked.

And if I asked you to keep talking?

I'd say I would have guessed as much.

Na
ϊ
veté.
Carter used the word that night in the woods, and it still hovers over me these many months later. How a girl like me could fall so quickly, so deeply, into a world like that. Let me say, first, that the transformation occurred in stages, one leading rationally to the next. At least it seemed rational at the time. And perhaps that's an answer right there.
At the time.
Because I was drowning, even before Bobby was killed. My many personal failings, at work and in love, in New York and then D.C., had led to a loss of . . . not
hope
, per se, but
anticipation
. At twenty-eight, my life had simply stopped getting better, had reached a plateau in a windowless K Street office, in a crumbling basement apartment off Dupont Circle. The air around me no longer circulated, and I'd retreated inside myself. Was I depressed? I suppose, though I'd never have admitted it at the time (and even now I struggle with the idea of that clinical diagnosis,
any
clinical diagnosis). My problem was one familiar to political idealists and aid workers everywhere. I was beginning, through countless cycles of hope and disappointment, to understand the bitter truth of governmental stagnation. Policy was achieved solely through great power, progress by something more like accident. And when you've fallen for all the youthful clichés about making a difference, when you've tailored your life around them, hitting that impenetrable wall of reality is devastating. For things were only getting worse. The global economy was in shambles, the developing world falling out of reach. I was falling out of reach. I was losing myself.

And then I lost my brother.

When Bobby died, I went from feeling helpless to feeling nothing. I left my life in Washington behind and began operating in a far less definable space. Outwardly, I poured my energies into taking care of my parents. Christmas was coming and they'd thrown themselves into the season with all the vigor of true believers, zealots on a mission to prove that enough tinsel and lights and wrapping paper could conceal their suffering forever. I couldn't blame them, but I couldn't watch them either. The house I'd grown up in had changed overnight. The seventies motif, once homey and eclectic, suddenly seemed worn down and badly dated—the carpets clashed, the furniture bled. At some point the numbness began to wear off, and what replaced it was quiet anger, then seething rage. Nights of not even trying to sleep. Days
of wondering why. Why him? Why me? Was this how America paid people back? My insides churned to the point of physical sickness, and as the new year approached and my parents began a slow and somber recovery, I realized I had to leave. But I had nowhere to go, nowhere I
wanted
to go. The East Coast—New York then D.C.—had failed me, or I, unprepared and ill-equipped, had failed it. San Francisco loomed, of course—as it always had for searchers and misfits like me—but it was really just a name, an aging idea, the place where you ended up when you could run no farther. But run I had to, somewhere. Anywhere.

Carter must have guessed my mind-set that night by the fire. He must have known I'd say yes.

With my parents' blessing (they were thrilled to see me getting out of the house, even if they didn't know exactly why), I started driving to Boone once or twice a week. Carter's little cabal had almost a dozen members, and we met in private homes or designated places in the hills. Someone usually brought wine, but it was never a party. Too much was at stake. The group's goal was to bring environmental offenders to the public's attention. They attended protests—from local boycotts to national marches—and wrote opinion pieces, but that, I soon learned, was a benign front, a public face for friends and family. Because their real talent was civil disobedience and minor subversion: vandalism, sabotage, agitation, sedition. They disrupted press conferences, leaked stolen company documents, and tagged physical structures with wanton artistry. Their targets were lumber companies, chemical factories, and biotech start-ups. Small-town mills and national food conglomerates. Anyone and everyone who treated the world as a waste site.

I was indoctrinated slowly. I cooked meals, painted signs, and handed out flyers at rallies. The tasks were small but exhilarating, for we were confronting the world ad hoc, on the fly. And the results were right there in front of us—on local newscasts, in the morning papers. My former employer—a leading environmental-policy institute—spent tens of thousands of man-hours a year accomplishing not nearly as much. At least in terms of visible progress.

Bobby's death afforded me a certain status among Carter's friends,
a kind of inherited trust (that also served to dissuade romantic inclinations). In this tightest of groups, I was suddenly everyone's sister. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd snuck in through a side door. I had no credentials, warranted no respect, so I set out to earn these things. I raised my hand when others didn't—to buy supplies, to research targets. January passed, then February. I told my parents I'd found a part-time job with a small environmental group (which was more or less true) and soon thereafter moved into a crash pad outside Boone (though I still came home most weekends). Everything seemed temporary, but I didn't mind. I threw myself into my new life, buoyed not just by the physical excitement of our days, but by talks that lasted all night, discussions and debates, rants and lectures, about how the country had stalled out, and how it might get up and running again.

I began to take a more central role in the Actions. I snuck around warehouses and drove getaway cars. I enjoyed the planning stages—I could lose myself in details and forget my larger life for a while—but carrying out the plans was the real thrill. I didn't care about consequences and quickly realized I had no fear of authority. We saw ourselves as charismatic rebels—striking back at a faceless oppressor—and if such aggressive, offensive-minded thoughts were unfamiliar to me, they were also not entirely unpleasant.

At a meeting one night in late February, Carter pulled me aside and asked if I'd like to be the point person for an Action being planned outside Keyser, West Virginia. One hundred and fifty acres of first-growth forest along the Savage River had been cleared to make room for a new paper mill, and the double-barreled assault on the environment was too much to ignore. I jumped at the chance. The Action was already in motion, and I quickly caught myself up on its particulars. The factory's building permit had been approved by the state in a backroom deal typical of controversial projects. There had been no community hearings. The public, Carter said, was barely aware of the factory at all, and it was up to us to change that.

The plan was to build a massive bonfire in front of the unfinished building. Once lit, the flames would leap into the midnight sky, illuminating a message scrawled above the entranceway in giant red letters:
PAPER BURNS WELL. GET OUT!
We'd alert the press beforehand, so they'd be there to witness the whole gorgeous scene. Would we
ultimately stop construction? Probably not. But if the arson was reported in the news, people would become aware of the factory's existence, and, well, at some point citizens needed to take responsibility for their own communities.

I would spray-paint the wall while Carter built and lit the fire. Jodie would be watching from an idling car, and when she gave the signal (via walkie-talkie), a fourth member of the team would call the local newspapers and TV stations from a nearby pay phone. Timing was essential: we wanted the press (and police) to arrive while the flames were at their height; at the same time, we had to be long gone. So we planned meticulously. We cased the construction site, in daylight and darkness. Carter practiced building fires in clearings, adjusting the tinder ingredients (reams of paper, wood, and a healthy dose of lighter fluid) until the flames leaped and danced and threatened to ignite the world.

Finally, one rainy afternoon in early March, we packed up a car, changed its plates, and drove north.