We Are Unprepared (16 page)

I didn't move.

She heaved out loud in a full-body sob, this time attracting the attention of someone else in the store, a young woman who peered around the corner of the aisle.

“Does this still matter,” the woman yelled again, not as a question, but a statement.

The bereft woman opened the glass door and began throwing bags of frozen vegetables at her feet. They stacked neatly until a sack of sliced carrots exploded and the other woman who had been watching ran over. She put her arms around the crying older one and shushed her in a manner that seemed condescending to me, but worked. I was facing them now and had that expectant look on my face that people have when they wish to appear helpful but secretly hope someone else does the helping.

“Shushhh,”
the young woman said again while the older one let out one final sob into the shoulder of this apparent stranger.

I just stood there. I wanted the whole episode to be over, not only because it was awkward, but also because it was frightening. This woman didn't seem crazy or drunk. She seemed like a nice motherly lady who was terrified, and that terrified me. I needed all the nice mothers of the world to be brave and optimistic then. I thought about my own mother, the inventor of motherly bravery and optimism, and vowed to call her soon. Or should she be calling me? Why doesn't she call me more? No doubt, she's completely preoccupied with my needy brother and my sister's kids, I thought. I resented my siblings for the distance that had grown between me and my parents, knowing full well that the distance was a product of my own inaction.

The woman stopped crying and I bent down to help them pick up the vegetables. Another man about my age who had wandered over during the commotion joined us on the floor. His curly blond hair was pulled back into a bun, which looked surprisingly cool on such a masculine guy. I envied the effortless wear on his fleece jacket and imagined that he rock climbed in his spare time. We looked up at each other briefly, saying nothing, and it was clear that he had been rattled by the episode, as well. Had he been crying, too? His eyes were red and his face puffy.

When most of the carrots had been collected, I stood up quickly and nearly ran for the door. Waiting in line behind the crying woman or bun man to pay for my groceries seemed too much at that moment. I needed air. So I left my half-filled basket in the aisle and walked out.

It felt as if I might hyperventilate as I climbed into my car, unsure of where to go next. Why did the man in the store look so scared? I knew why. He was scared because that woman was crying, and she was crying for the same reason we all wanted to. We couldn't live in this perpetual state of fearful anticipation that The Storm suspended us in. It wasn't healthy or sustainable. Our nerves would break before It even arrived.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breath in. Breathe out.

I turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the parking lot slowly, unsure of my destination. A few more cars were on the road by then and it was noticeably warmer than it had been twenty minutes before.
Everything is fine
, I reminded myself. I rolled past a bustling gas station and the firehouse.
Everything is fine.

As I neared the high school, I fell in line behind a row of cars all waiting to turn left into the parking lot. I couldn't imagine what so many people would be doing there—schools hadn't reopened yet since the last storm—so I craned my head around to get a look. A group was gathering around the front doors, but it was too far away for me to discern what they were doing. With nowhere else to go, I followed the cars in front of me and pulled into the lot. Massive piles of melting snow were heaped around the perimeter, where the plows had pushed the excess. It created a sort of coliseum.

As I drew closer, I could see that a few people were holding handmade signs and chanting.

“Hope in God! Hope in God!” they yelled.

I left the car and walked as quickly as I could with a bum foot toward the action to get a better look. A group of people, old and young, surrounded the front doors of the high school. They were dressed shabbily in camouflage and hunters orange. I imagined that most were from once-thriving small farms that had slowly dried up, leaving the remaining generations with few resources and much anger. I felt sympathy for these Vermonters—even a pang of jealousy at their utter
real
ness—but I didn't know any of them personally. At the center of their circle was Roger, crazy Roger, the one who pulled out the gun at the meeting and was escorted off in handcuffs. He was again in handcuffs, but this time they were attached to the front doors of the school. He was a protester and these were his supporters. I could see their signs now; the smaller ones all repeated their “hope in God” mantra. One very large banner required a handler at each end and had a bible verse on it: “Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and a cold out of the north.” —
Job
37:9. It was a pretty uncanny fit for the actual superstorm forecast.

A police officer whom I recognized from the town hall meeting stood nearby.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Rodney Riggins,” he said. “You know, that evangelist or whatever he is. There was a town vote over whether he should be allowed to host one of his talks here at the school, and the Riggins people lost, so they've decided to make a federal case out of it.”

The crowd was growing bigger as we talked; apparently word of the kerfuffle was spreading around town. I saw a local newspaper reporter waving a microphone; he looked about sixteen.

“I'm just keeping an eye on things,” the officer went on. “They aren't breaking any laws at the moment.”

I nodded. It was difficult to imagine any civil disobedience in Isole that rose to the level of police force, but stranger things had been happening lately.

“We need a voice!” one woman shouted. “Who represents the God-fearing people of Isole?”

“Government should be by the people, for the people,” a man shouted. “We need more God in government—now more than ever.”

The reporter put his microphone in front of the man's face and asked, “What exactly are you protesting here? Is this about the vote to host Rodney Riggins?”

“Heck, yes, it's about the vote,” the man said. “The vote was rigged! Where are our rights?”

I stood watching for another moment before an oncoming roar shifted my attention. An enormous pickup truck pulled into the parking lot, jacked up high over wheels as tall as an adult human and splattered with mud. It was blasting a power ballad out the front windows. When the truck got dangerously close, it slammed on the brakes and cranked the music up even further. There was a dramatic electric guitar swell, and then—
bam
—with a crash of drums, a smiling man popped to his feet from the back of the truck and the protest crowd broke into applause.

It was Rodney Riggins. He wore work pants, a neat-fitting blue sweater and hiking boots. His lustrous coif, parted on the left side, gleamed in the sun as he turned and waved to the crowd like a rock star about to start his set. Despite the filthy appearance of the truck that carried him, Riggins looked dewy fresh.

He knocked on the glass window of his driver's cab to signal for him to kill the music. When it stopped, Riggins shook his head in false modesty and waited for the rowdy crowd of protesters and onlookers below to quiet.

“I apologize for the dramatic entry!” he yelled, climbing down from the truck. “I was getting a tour of the damages from the storm. It's hell out there...but this is nothing compared with what's ahead.”

Riggins walked toward the crowd. “Were you scared? I was. The suddenness of the storm...the uncertainty...it's frightening. But I'll tell you, it's not so bad when you've got the Big Man on your side.”

He stopped just a few feet from me and I thought I could smell cologne on his repellent body.

“You've heard that God helps those who help themselves, right? That's all we're doing here in Isole,” Riggins said, briefly locking eyes with me. “We're getting prepared and we're putting a little faith in God that he's going to reward us for our smarts when the superstorm strikes.”

The policeman stepped forward and cut in, “Sir, we've got no problems with God. I just want all these good folks to go home. Is all this your doing?”

Riggins ignored the question. “Let's open up these school doors!” he boomed. “Let's open up the doors in our hearts and start preparing ourselves for this test we're about to face. We'll be okay, and the great town of Isole will be okay, with a little hope in God!”

The protest group, which had doubled in size by then, began chanting, “Hope in God! Hope in God!” and Riggins smiled his big perfect smile.

The onlookers had increased in number, as well. I saw Salty and several of the town elders standing nearby. One of them said quietly, “Maybe it's less disruptive if we just allow this nonsense... Surely the school district will let them have the auditorium for a night or two.”

“I don't think we should do it,” Salty responded. “They lost the vote. It's undemocratic.”

I recognized the recent inconsistencies in Salty's approach to democracy but didn't feel particularly disturbed by them. Maybe I should have. I knew that it wasn't quite right to be making municipal decisions in secret as the Subcommittee was, but the old rules didn't seem to apply anymore.

A rowdier group of spectators on the far side from us had begun arguing with the protesters. I couldn't tell what they were saying, but I recognized three of the people from Pia's prepper meeting. They were hollering at one another now and the energy level in the crowd was escalating.

“Your God isn't worth shit!” one of the male preppers yelled, provoking a crazy-eyed protester to break from the circle and shove the man, who took a few stumbling steps and fell hard on his backside.

This caused the entire crowd to begin yelling, with some calling for the police to help and others, aroused by the violence, looking for their own opportunity to join in. The lone police officer on-site called for backup and stepped into the ring to intimidate the aggressive characters. As soon as this happened, the flash of a professional camera went off: one, two, three. The reporter was getting his story.

“You don't scare me!” the prepper yelled at the cop. “That badge isn't going to be worth anything when all hell breaks loose! Enjoy your power now, fat man!”

This wasn't just a pejorative cliché, but a statement of fact. The policeman was enormous, which made it seem all the meaner. I wanted to jump in and help the officer, but it wasn't clear who the aggressors were.

“All right, then,” Riggins said calmly, as if his voice alone would be a cooling sedative to the crowd. “Let's keep it neighborly.”

Rodney Riggins was a fast study, and there was no doubt that he had mastered the look and accent of the locals. But he had a slow swagger about him that gave him away as an outsider. It astounded me that anyone could see anything other than a phony, a desperate actor, when they looked at him in his unscuffed boots. But he filled a void at that moment in Isole and he'd made allies.

“You're not Jesus!” someone yelled at Riggins and I stifled a laugh at the assertion. It didn't come from one of the preppers, but one of the unaffiliated onlookers. “Go back to where you came from! We don't need you here.”

Several others hollered and clapped in agreement and I saw a look flash across the officer's face as he realized that the scene might become too much for one cop to handle.

Just then, another police cruiser pulled in and three more cops jumped out, slamming their doors forcefully.

An officer raised a piece of paper to the air and said, “Shut it down. He's in violation of parole.”

She was referring to Crazy Roger, who maybe was a drug addict but didn't actually seem crazy at all at that moment. He was one of the few in the crowd who, although chained to the door, seemed peaceful as he observed the chaos around him.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Roger shouted. He was angrier now but seemed to recognize the inevitability of his arrest.

“'Fraid so, Rogg,” the cop said while she and the larger one worked to break his handcuffs with a wrench.

Several protesters tried to stop them, but they submitted after being held back, uncommitted to the idea of assaulting a police officer.

The onlookers wandered back to their cars and drove away as the excitement abated. In the corner of my eye, I saw a flashbulb catch Salty wiping sweat from his forehead, and I was struck by how deeply he felt everything that happened to Isole.

Two officers pushed Roger to the ground while another called something in on the radio. Roger kicked one of the officers in the stomach and the man doubled over, losing his grip on Roger and leaving the first officer alone to deal with him. I was only a few strides away and hobbled over to help.

Roger kicked some more, until I squatted down beside him and he saw my face. He stopped moving.

“Hey, it's you,” Roger said. “Mr. Hero-New-Guy. What the fuck do you want from this place anyhow?”

I was so startled by his recognition of me that I couldn't think of an answer.

“I...I don't want anything. I live here,” I said.

“Why'd you do this, Roger?” the cop asked, now with compassion in her voice. It was clear that he was well-known by the local force.

“Gotta believe in something at the end,” Roger said. “It ain't gonna be me. And it ain't gonna be government. So maybe it's God.”

Roger turned back to me. He was sitting calmly on the ground now. His clothes smelled like stale cigarettes and urine.

“I hate it here, man,” Roger went on. “I don't know why anyone would want to come here. If I could get out, find a job, I would. You nice, do-gooder types want to try to control the chaos that's going to break out when The Storm comes...make this place nice again after it all blows up. It's not so nice.”