“Hell, I can see all that, Paul,” Jim said. “But here—I mean, what’s happened? I don’t feel like it’s my country.”
Paul stopped, grinned, and nodded. “Exactly. We wanted it that way.”
“We? Who the hell is ‘we’?”
“Big Congress types and us little roustabout types. Look, Jim. The F.M.A. and the A.M.S. were pushing all through the decade to get a neck-lock on profits from medicine. Any kind of medicine.”
“The A.M.S.? But doctors aren’t that way—”
“I’m not saying anything about doctors. Doctors, individually—they’re mostly a nice bunch. Hell, I got most of this info from Dr. Bagdasarian. You remember thin little Doc Bag, don’t you? Sure you do. That big org that represents doctors, though—all through the eighties it was contributing lots of money to politicians who were pro-smoking and anti-gun control—more than it gave to ones who actually shared ethical concerns with the majority of A.M.S. members. The A.M.S. did it ’cause of economics. It’s a money-driven org. Here at the end of the nineties it’s the same thing. Economics. Money.”
“OK. But you said not only them, but you, too. You said “we.’ ”
Paul grinned. “That’s right. When it looked like this legal hoohah was going to be pushed through by these loonies, some of us jumped on the bandwagon. We made sure that if they were going to regulate beta carotene and saw palmetto berries, they were sure as hell going to have to regulate chicken soup, too. We made sure if they were going to regulate peppermint tea, they had to regulate walking and any other kind of exercise, too. We wanted this, because—hey, duck down!”
Paul grabbed himself behind a snow-capped cedar, dragging Jim with him.
A moment later, a police-car cruised past without slowing.
“Close, huh?” said Jim.
Paul shrugged nonchalantly, peeking over the shrub before leaping to his feet again. “Hey, come on! I see a crowd! Maybe it’s happening!”
“Crowd? Happening?”
“At the restaurant! I think this is it, big-time!”
He went racing ahead through the snow.
“Hold on!” Jim cried, seeing where people milled before a store. Several police-cars had stopped with lights flashing. “What the hell you talking about? You want arrests?”
“Holy shit, yes—and look!”
“Vicki,” Jim said, seeing but not believing his eyes. A crowd of people stood around a storefront that boldly advertised its illegal offerings: “Rose Hip, Peppermint, and Echinacea Tea: NO SCRIP NEEDED. Zinc-Propolis Lozenges: NO SCRIP NEEDED. Garlic Caps: NO SCRIP NEEDED. Wholefoods advice, free of charge: NO LEGAL LICENSE POSSESSED. Bran muffins: NO SCRIP NEEDED. Chicken Soup! Chicken Soup! CHICKEN SOUP! NO SCRIP NEEDED!!! HERE AT VICKI’S VICTUALS & TEAS! HOME OF ILLICIT-BECAUSE-HEALTHFUL BEVERAGES! EAT WELL BECAUSE IT’S GOOD FOR YOU!” They massed around the store carrying placards, some of them no more than sheets of paper: “I Write My Own Scrip,” “Tea for Cups not Cops,” and “Don’t Give In To Uncivil Obedience!” Jim saw little Doc Bag carrying a sign bigger than he was: “Doctors AGAINST Govmntl STUPIDITY.”
A pair of policemen led a proud-looking woman from the restaurant. She smiled grandly and serenely as if to be so led constituted a marvelous accomplishment. She wore her hair pulled back in a scarf, with a black wool coat falling nearly to her ankles. She moved like a queen, escorted toward one of the police cars. She smiled at the shouting crowd around her.
Her eyes widened when she glanced over.
“Jim!” she shouted with a smile as he ran near.
“Vicki! What the heck’s going on?”
“Jim,” she said again. “Hey, glad you made it in time for my arrest!”
“Your arrest? What’s going on?”
She shrugged, still smiling. She looked at the policeman beside her, who nodded at her unspoken question. She stepped away from them, reached out to put one hand on each of his cheeks, and kissed him. “Welcome home,” she said.
“Home? Home? This is home? You’re getting arrested—”
“It’s great, isn’t it?”
She squeezed his cheeks and retreated into the waiting car, waving a hand at the cheering crowd.
“Jim,” said Paul, “hey, this is great, isn’t it? Wow—glad we could be here at the moment it all comes down!”
“But why?”
“Why? Because this is what we want. Listen. If the laws look like they’re going to turn absurd, then you’ve got to make sure they’re absurd—and then challenge them! When people see what’s going on, they realize they’ve abandoned their government—and it spurs them to get involved again! It’s just like you say—you don’t feel like it’s your country any more—so you fight to get it back! Now we just have to get ourselves a walking ticket. That would be icing on the cake.”
“I thought we were trying to avoid getting one, just now.”
“Hell, I was trying to look suspicious, Jim. Trying to get a ticket. We need one. We’ve got an arrest on serving chicken soup, and we’ve got an arrest on selling Echinacea tea. Now if we get a ticket on walking without scrip, then we’re on our way to the High Court three-fold.”
“Well, you know, I guess I already got—well—”
“What you say?”
“I guess I’ve got one already.”
“A what? A ticket?”
“Sure.”
“No!”
Jim held it out. He felt like he held not a ticket from a cop but an admission ticket to a weird and wild fair.
The crowd around them, momentarily silent at the revelation, erupted into a new cheer. Jim realized he stood at its center.
“You want this?” he said.
“Ha ha!” Paul danced around. “Our young professor!”
Jim suddenly thought of his chances at tenure. “But what if the dean hears—”
“I’m behind you. All the way.”
Jim whirled. He hadn’t noticed the man in the blue-grey, knee-length coat. Fat old grey-haired Dean Hegerman. Smiling approvingly.
As soon as he did he felt a blast of cold behind him, and the now-familiar feel of snow going down his neck.
“What the—”
He spun back, just in time to duck before getting a snowball in the face. From the reaction behind him, he judged Hegerman had received the missile. Jim grabbed snow and threw it at Paul. A dozen others plunged gloves into the white and cold, and turned the sidewalk into a blizzard of flying missiles. He caught a glimpse of Doc Bag lobbing a hefty one at a police car.
Somewhere inside him, some irritated part of him stopped itching. Jim thought of tiny Pia, of the poison-wood, and of healing, and shouted one in pure joy at the nonsense of the syllables: “Gumbo-Limbo!”
“What’s that, some new dance?” said Paul just before getting a face-full. Dean Hegerman laughed.
Jim thought then of spheres of silence, dissolving beneath the hot Sun—
And dissolving now again, beneath the blinding flurry of still-falling winter white—
“Fiesta!” he yelled this time, feeling the inanity of the situation melting into something even stranger still but infinitely more comforting.
A jubilant enfilade of disrespectful missiles followed the departing police. One of the cars beeped a horn—then all did, as they disappeared. Vicki waved from a back window.
Community, he thought, laughing amidst the jubilation and the falling, falling snow.