AUTHOR’S NOTE
The fires began in two places, the outskirts of Flint and the center of Detroit, before spreading house to house and across fields and uniting near Auburn Hills. All sparked by the raid on the Blind Pig in Detroit that night by the police, who were steeped in the dialectic of revolution and keyed into the idea that a revolt might start at any time. It was on the 266th anniversary of the day that Cadillac stepped ashore on what became known as de trois. The National Guard came in to shoot up at the “snipers” after the police were repelled. Soon the Detroit streets were ringing with the chants of “Motown, if you don’t come around, we are going to burn you down.” An aide to the mayor came up with the idea of burn squads. They would get ahead of the riots with Molotov cocktails and flamethrowers. Let it burn, the governor reportedly said. But the dynamics were simply too intricate to sort out accurately. The big map in police headquarters couldn’t handle the information that was being teletyped in — squad cars akimbo, nobody sure where anybody was, rumors spreading even faster than the fire. The governor had begged Kennedy for federal troops, telling him the whole state was at risk, and the federal troops were mustering along the Ohio border — the rumble of tanks could be heard in Toledo. The rumors had had a head start on the fires, anyway: a revolution was at hand. The Negro was going to avenge three hundred years of slavery. The uncured vets would join in; the vagabonds, the waywards. Already the structure of the Grid area was in negotiation; eminent-domain strictures were being argued in the Supreme Court that summer. Several thousand farmers and home owners were bracing for the order to move. Some had taken the offer and moved down to Indiana, where state law forbade the construction of Grid zones. If the wayward want to be wayward, let them do it in Michigan, Senator Clam of Indiana said. Senator Holly, of Michigan, led the fight for the creation of a Grid zone for Michigan, allowing for a safe place — not wilderness, but not urbane — in which certain patients, after treatment, might go to have a controlled transitional experience before being released into the general society.
HYSTOPIA By Eugene Allen
BIG AND GRAND RAPIDS
April’s the cruelest month, they say, but I wouldn’t go that far. At least not yet. I’m going to do my best to make it the cruelest, she heard him say, and then she slipped into darkness and woke, hours later, to the murmur of the engine, the power thrumming under the hood, the hood ornament far out, pointing the way. He had gone in and taken her out of the post-treatment Grid, slipping in, using his words and drugs. His hand was on her leg. Fingers spread. Above everything his talk, his voice ragged and deep, and then as she came up and out of it, his voice and radio static were all she had.
Something was close behind, a spiral of police sirens, the hospital’s clean simplicity, the sedation of the treatment, pre and post, that stayed with her when it was over, and she had to command herself to open her eyes and to look out the windows at the devouring slip of the road into itself …
Groggy, she found her mouth and made it speak, and she was telling him, Find the Ann Arbor channel, the one from the university, Stooges all the time.
Stooges all the time, he muttered.
Then he began coughing and clearing his throat until he had something to spit, and he told her his throat was sore from screaming in Grand Rapids.
It had been a confusing couple of hours before they’d split that scene. The houses had been old, once dignified and fine, now slipping into decrepitude, uncomfortable beneath the trees arching over the wide streets. The trees were tired of shading structures of grandeur, optimistically huge Victorians. Slate shingles gone, hauled away by the looters after the riots.
Shaky had been asleep when they entered his bedroom, treading softly. Rake put the gun to his forehead and told him what he had to give them and how he was to do it and with what kind of movement, slowly, and how much shit he was in, deep, deep unbelievable shit, and Shaky did what they ordered him to do, but when he was doing it he stumbled or made a quick move. He was a tall dark man with knobby knees. One of the tallest motherfuckers you’re gonna see in the Middle West, Rake said.
Rake shot him point-blank, producing a spongy, wet sound, and an outbound spew of bone and blood hit the wall, making another sound that she heard and reheard and heard again.
That’s that, Rake said, kicking the body.
Then they ransacked the house, pulling drawers, spilling underwear, unfurling panties, frilly things that she held for a moment and dropped to the floor.
The feel of silk was still on her fingertips. She could still see the look in his eyes as he stared at the gun. The black barrel in the black pupil.
You’re gonna come out of it, the look said. You’re gonna survive this. I’m dead but you’re going to live. I’m just one more in the wrong place at the wrong time. One more who wakes up into a nightmare. I’m not going to plead with you too hard, no girl, but I’m gonna give you this last little glance to carry with you when you go, the look said before the gun took it away.
In the kitchen he removed a loaf of Wonder from the bread box, a glass bottle of milk with a paper cap, and some cheese, and then they headed off into the morning light.
I’m afraid we didn’t leave a single print, he said. We’re on the lam. That’s part of the deal. We’ve got to mix it up. Sometimes I leave prints, other times I don’t. Got to give the Psych Corps something to think about, got to leave some tracks they can obsessively follow. He talked and talked as they drove the Grand Rapids streets, turning now and then to make sure she was listening or at least awake, poking her with his long fingers, gripping her thigh.
* * *
Do I talk too much? He said.
Do I ramble on, the king of non sequitur? He said.
Do you listen to me? He said.
Do you listen to me going on and on? You most certainly do. He said. Said. Said. He said. He said. He said.
If you’re good for anything you’re good as a listener, set to let me ramble while you nod into it. That first time back there, when I finally got to you, I tried that classic dosage, a big 400-microgram dose, the king of all tabs. You get a girl tripping on that and you’re free to do what you want depending on the structures you’ve set up for yourself and I’ll admit that I have set some up for myself. I’ve got my codes and credos just like the rest of them. That’s all we had over in Indochina. All we had to live with were the rules and regulations.
Them. It’s us against them and they know it, and the thing about them is that the only thing they really know, if you get my drift, is that they failed me. They failed me big-time by not taking care of me when I returned from the war. They took me down to Texas and put me into one of their reenactments and pumped me full of Tripizoid, and then all they did was double it down, increase what they were trying to decrease. If they knew how bad I was feeling, they’d never sleep at night. They’d lock the doors and nail the windows. They’d put me in their prayers and ask for protection specifically against me. They’d walk faster and glance back more often. If they had even the slightest idea that I was wandering their streets they’d unlock their gun cabinets and get their rifles cleaned and make sure the ammo was dry. Some of them have a vague premonition, an ill-formed vision comprised of Vetdock escapees, Black Flag wannabes, trigger-happy acid freaks, and Year of Hate troublemakers. Guys with bad scars, he said. Then he ran his fingers across the scar that ran from his scalp — the part where the hair wouldn’t grow — down his neck to where it disappeared under his collar. He touched it, pulled his shirt open, and stared down as if seeing for the first time the way the scar tissue radiated across his chest in weird formations that had once been his nipples, and into his belly button, where the splash had pooled. (That fiery goop spread over me while I watched — and yeah, I did watch it because I was hit such a blast of dopamine that I flew out of myself and stood there on the battlefield resisting the temptation to pound my chest like Tarzan.)