«So what happens now?» I asked the Chairman.
«We wait and see.»
I saw a junkyard dog once, a real four-legged dog, get his paw caught in a trap the junk dealer had set for guys like me who like to sneak in at night and steal stuff. Poor damned dog was stuck there all night long, yowlin’ and cryin’. Dealer wouldn’t come out. Not in the dark. He was scared that if his dog was in trouble it meant a gang of guys was out there waitin’ to whack him.
I felt like that dog. Trapped. Bleedin’ to death. Knowin’ there was help not far away, but the help never came. Not in time. By morning the dog had died. The rats were already gnawin’ on him when the sun came up.
«You’re just gonna sit here?» I asked him.
«There’s nothing else we can do.»
I knew that. But I still didn’t like it.
The Chairman put out his hand and rested it on my shoulder. «You may not realize it, my young friend, but merely by sitting here you are fighting a battle against the enemies of humankind.»
I wanted to say bull[deleted] to him again, but I kept my mouth shut.
It was Jade who asked, «What do you mean?»
«This man you call Moustache. The men with him. Your friends Lou and Rollo—»
«They ain’t no friends of mine,» I growled.
«I know.» He smiled at me, kind of a shy smile. «I was making a small joke.»
«Nuthin funny about those guys.»
«Yes, of course. Moustache and Lou and the rest of them, they are the old way of living. The way of violence. The way of brute force. The way of death. What the human race needs, what the people want, is a better way, a way of sharing, of cooperation, of the strength that comes from recognizing that we must all help one another—»
I was about to puke in his face when he smiled at me again and said, «Just the way you tried to help me when Lou was beating me.»
That took the air outta me. I mumbled, «Lotta good it did either one of us.»
«Have you ever thought about leading a better life than the one you now live?» he asked.
«Well, yeah,» I said, glancin’ at Jade. «Sure. Who doesn’t?»
«There are Indians living in the mountains of Moustache’s country who also have a dream of living better. And nomads starving in man-made deserts. And fishermen’s families dying because the sea has become so polluted that the fish have all died off. They also dream of a better life.»
«I don’t care about no fishermen or Indians,» I said. «They don’t mean nuthin to me.»
«But they do! Whether you know it or not, they are part of you. We are all bound together on this world of ours.»
«Bull[deleted].» It just popped out. I mean, I kinda liked the guy, but he kept talkin’ this crazy stuff.
«Listen to what he’s trying to tell us,» Jade said. That surprised me, her tellin’ me what to do.
«The reason the World Council was created, the reason it exists and I serve as its Chairman, is to help everyone on Earth to live a better life. Everyone! All ten billions of us.»
«How’re you going to do that?» Jade asked. She was lookin’ at the Chairman now with her eyes wide. She wasn’t holdin’ my hand anymore.
«There’s no simple answer,» he said. «It will take hard work, for decades, for generations. It will take the cooperation of all the nations of the world, the rich and the poor alike.»
«You’re dreamin’,» I said. «The United States is one of the richest countries in the whole [deleted] world and we still got people livin’ like rats, people like me and Jade and who knows how many others.»
«Yes, I understand,» he said. «We are trying to convince your government to change its attitude about you, to admit that the problem exists and then take the necessary steps to solve it.»
«Yeah, they’ll solve the problem. The [deleted] Controllers swoop in and take you away, scramble your brains and turn you into a zombie. You wind up as slave labor in some camp out in the woods.»
«Is that what you believe?»
«That’s what I know.»
«What would you say if I told you that you are wrong?»
«I’d say you’re fulla [deleted].»
«Vic!» Jade snapped at me.
But the Chairman just kinda smiled. «When all this is over, I hope you will give me the opportunity to show you how misinformed you are.»
«If we’re still alive when this is over,» I said.
«Yes,» he admitted. «There is that.»
He was quiet for a minute or so. I didn’t like the way Jade was starin’ at him, like he was a saint or a video star or somethin’. But I didn’t know what I could say that would get her to look back at me.
Finally the Chairman pipes up again. «You know, I was born of a poor family also.»
«Yeah, sure,» I muttered.
«My grandmother escaped from Vietnam in an open boat with nothing but the clothes on her back and her infant son—my father. They went from Hong Kong to Canada. My grandmother died of pneumonia her first winter in Vancouver. My father was barely two years old.»
«You’re breakin’ my heart,» I said. Jade hissed at me.
«My father was raised in an orphanage. When he was fourteen he escaped and made his way into the United States, eventually to Houston, Texas.» The Chairman was lookin’ at me when he was sayin’ this, but it was a funny look, like I wasn’t really there and he was seein’ things from his own life that’d happened years ago.
«My mother was Mexican. Two illegal immigrants for parents. We moved around a lot: Houston, Galveston, the cotton fields of Texas, the orchards of California. I was picking fruit almost as soon as I learned to walk.»
«You never went hungry, didja?» I said.
«I have known hunger. And poverty. And disease. But I have known hope, also. All through my childhood my mother told me that there was a better way of life. Every night she would kneel beside me and say her prayers and tell me that I would live better than she and my father. Even when my father was beaten to death by a gang of drunken rednecks my mother kept telling me to keep my eyes on the stars, to work hard and learn and aim high. She worked very hard herself.
«After my father died we settled in California, in a little city called Modesto, where she worked twelve to fourteen hours a day cleaning people’s homes by day and office buildings at night. By the time she died, when I was sixteen, she had saved enough money to get me started in college.»
«At least you had a mother,» I muttered. «I was so young when mine died I don’t even remember what she looked like.»
«That is very sad,» he said. Real soft.
«Yeah.»
«I remember the prayer my mother taught me to say: she called it the ‘Our Father.’»
«Oración al Señor,» whispered Jade.
«Yes. Do you know it? And the line that says, ‘Thy kingdom come?’ That is what we must aim for. That is what we must strive to accomplish: to bring about a new world, a fair and free and flourishing world for everyone. To make this Earth of ours as close to heaven as we can.»
«Thy kingdom come,» Jade repeated. There were tears in her eyes now, real big ones.
Me, I didn’t say nuthin. I kept my mouth shut so hard my teeth hurt. I knew that prayer. The one thing I remember about my mother is her sayin’ that prayer to me when I was so little I didn’t know what it meant. That’s all I can remember about her. And it made me want to cry, too. It got me sore at the same time. This [deleted] big shot of a Chairman knew just where to put the pressure on me. I sure wasn’t gonna start bawlin’ in front of him and Jade. Not me.
And I had lied to them. I did remember my mother. Kinda hazy, but I remember what she looked like. She was beautiful. Beautiful and sweet and— I pulled myself up short. Another minute of that kinda thinkin’ and I’d be cryin’ like a baby.