“Filona works at the LORA shelter,” said Madeleine.
He smiled. “What do you do there?”
“I’m an RC. There are three of us.”
All that came to mind was Roman Catholic. “RC?”
“Recovery companion. Sorry about that. When you’re in something, you forget that not everyone else is in it.”
He could feel Madeleine’s be nice gaze on him.
“So LORA is . . . pretty special?”
“Very special. It’s all about the spirit. People think taking care of abandoned animals is about getting rid of their worms and fleas and giving them food and shelter. But that’s just for the body. LORA heals the spirit. People buy animals like they were toys, then throw them out when they don’t act like toys. Do you know how many cats, dogs, rabbits are tossed out every day? Like garbage? Thousands. Nobody thinks about the pain to those little souls. That’s why we’re here tonight. LORA does what no one else is doing. We give animals friendship.”
The voices of the TV talking heads had gotten louder, more argumentative. Occasional words and phrases were now clearly audible. Gurney tried to stay focused on Filona. “You give them friendship?”
“We have conversations.”
“With the animals?”
“Of course.”
“Filona is also a painter,” said Madeleine. “A very accomplished one. We saw some of her work at the Kettleboro Art Show.”
“I think I remember. Purple skies?”
“My burgundy cosmologies.”
“Ah. Burgundy.”
“My burgundy paintings are done with beet juice.”
“I had no idea. If you’ll excuse me for just a minute . . .” He gestured toward the cubical structure housing the bathroom. “I’ll be back.”
On the far side of it he found a recessed door panel. Next to the panel there was a small red light above what he guessed was a pinhole microphone. He further guessed that the red light indicated that the bathroom was occupied. In no hurry to get back to the discussion of burgundy cosmologies, he stayed where he was.
The variety of people with whom Madeleine cultivated friendships never stopped surprising him. While he tended to be attuned to the dishonesty or loose screw in a new acquaintance, her focus was on a person’s capacity for goodness, liveliness, inventiveness. While he found most people in some way warranting caution, she found them in some way delightful. She managed to do that without being naïve. In fact, she was quite sensitive to real danger.
He checked the little light. It was still red.
His position by the bathroom door gave him an angled view of the wide screen above the hearth. Several more party guests, drinks in hand, were gathering in front of it. The talking heads were gone. With a fanfare of synthesized sound effects, a swirling jumble of colorful letters was coalescing into words:
PEOPLE—PASSIONS—IDEAS—VALUES
THE AMERICAN DREAM IN CRISIS
The list then contracted into a single line to make room for three statements covering the width of the screen, accompanied by a martial-sounding drum rolclass="underline"
EXPLOSIVE CRISIS—HAPPENING NOW
SEE IT ON BATTLEGROUND TONIGHT
NOTHING’S AS REAL AS RAM-TV
A moment later these statements burst into flying shards, replaced by a video of a nighttime street scene—an angry crowd chanting, “Justice for Laxton . . . Justice for Laxton . . . Justice for Laxton . . .” Demonstrators with signs bearing the same message were thrusting them up and down to the rhythm of the chant. The crowd was being contained by waist-high movable fencing, backed up by a line of cops in riot gear. When the video source was switched to a second camera angle, Gurney could see that the demonstration was taking place in front of a granite-faced building. The words WHITE RIVER POLICE DEPARTMENT were visible on the stone lintel above the front door.
At the bottom of the video screen, the words BATTLEGROUND TONIGHT—ONLY ON RAM-TV were flashing in a bright-red stripe.
The video shifted to what appeared to be another demonstration. The camera was positioned behind the demonstrators, facing the speaker addressing them. He spoke in a voice that rose and fell, paused and stretched in the cadences of an old-time preacher. “We have asked for justice. Begged for justice. Pleaded for justice. Cried for justice. Cried so much. Cried so long. Cried bitter tears for justice. But those days are over. The days of asking and begging and pleading—those days are behind us. Today, on this day that the Lord hath made, on this day of days, on this day of reckoning, we DEMAND justice. Here and now, we DEMAND it. I say it again, lest there be deaf ears in high places—we DEMAND justice. For Laxton Jones, murdered on this very street, we DEMAND justice. Standing on this very street, standing in the place anointed by his innocent blood, we DEMAND justice.” He raised both fists high above his head, his voice swelling up into a hoarse roar. “It is his sacred RIGHT in the sight of God. His RIGHT as a child of God. This RIGHT will not be denied. Justice MUST be done. Justice WILL be done.”
As he spoke, his dramatic pauses were filled with loud amens and other cries and murmurs of approval, growing more insistent as the speech progressed. An identifying line was superimposed on the video like a foreign-film subtitle: “Marcel Jordan, Black Defense Alliance.”
The group standing in front of the Gelters’ TV, holding colorful cocktails and little hors d’oeuvre plates, had grown larger and more attentive, reminding Gurney that nothing attracts a crowd like aggressive emotion. In fact, that one nasty truth seemed to be propelling the race to the bottom in the country’s political discourse and news programming.
As the demonstrators began to sing the old civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” the video scene changed again. It showed a crowd outdoors at night, but very little was happening. The people were loosely assembled with their backs to the camera on a grassy area just beyond a treelined sidewalk. The illumination, evidently coming from overhead streetlights, was partly blocked by the trees. From somewhere out of sight came bits and pieces of an amplified speech, its rhythms indistinctly captured by the camera’s microphone. Two patrol officers in modified riot gear were moving back and forth on the sidewalk, as if to continually vary their lines of sight around the trees and through the crowd.
The fact that nothing of significance was happening in a video selected for broadcast could mean only one thing—that something was about to happen. Just as it occurred to Gurney what it might be, the video frame froze and a statement was superimposed on it:
WARNING!!!
A VIOLENT EVENT IS ABOUT TO BE SHOWN
IF YOU WOULD PREFER NOT TO WITNESS IT
CLOSE YOUR EYES FOR THE NEXT SIXTY SECONDS
The video continued, with the two officers again moving slowly along the sidewalk, their attention on the crowd. Gurney grimaced, his jaw clenched in anticipation of what he was now sure was coming.
Suddenly the head of one of the officers jerked forward, and he fell facedown onto the concrete, hard, as though an invisible hand had slammed him down.
There were cries of shock and dismay from the guests around the TV. Most continued watching the video—the panicky movements of the second officer as he realized what had happened, his frantic attempts at first aid, his shouting into his cell phone, the spreading awareness of trouble, the confused milling and retreat of many of the nearest onlookers.