Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

There was so much she wanted to say, so much that needed to be cleared up, and whatever his story, whoever he was, Mrs. Freeman wanted this young man to know, for she had decided he was someone she could trust.

But here was Tiphany, already knocking at the door. She had come to tell them their time was up. Tiphany had played her hand well, Mrs. Freeman decided, and she couldn’t help feeling a bit of pride. For decades Mrs. Freeman had held her tongue. She had quietly deferred. She had been a credit to the company but never to herself. Tiphany could be forgiven for not understanding what it had taken for her to get where she was. And Mrs. Freeman would not be the one to tell her. She envied Tiphany’s ignorance.

Mrs. Freeman would never fire her. Never.

Back at the sofa, the young man was gathering his things.

Mrs. Freeman said, “I wish I had been able to give you what you wanted.”

Some people ran into one another in coffee shops and bars. For McGee and April, it had been picket lines and rallies.

It was 1999. They were both in their second year of college, barely more than acquaintances. McGee’s plan had been to fill a bus with friends from various groups: environmentalists, pacifists, anarchists, unionists, vegans, conservationists, feminists, Buddhists, socialists, queers. But it was November, toward the end of the semester, and everyone had tests to take, papers to write, dogs to walk. McGee would’ve gone by herself, if she’d had to. She’d heard from people who knew that something big was going down in Seattle, a movement, a piece of history. She wasn’t going to miss it.

April was the first to sign on. “Why not?” she’d said. “Sounds like fun.”

McGee’s second recruit was Myles. At that point they’d been seeing each other for just a couple of months, a situation they liked to think of as casual, even though their weekends together had become automatic. Holmes came along because Myles had asked him to, not wanting to be the only person there who found his mind wandering whenever McGee or one of her friends mentioned globalization or the evils of international free trade.

Fitch came because he liked road trips and because he was trying to book gigs for his band, whose western tour had so far stalled out in Ann Arbor. Also, Fitch was trying to sleep with McGee’s friend Kirsten (the fourth recruit), and although his efforts were pitiful and exhausting, everyone put up with them because Fitch’s van was the only vehicle they had capable of driving five thousand miles without losing a wheel.

The seventh in the group was Inez, a dour, unsmiling friend of Kirsten’s whom no one else particularly liked, but they were still glad to have her, if only because seven somehow seemed like a more substantial number than six.

They drove nonstop, taking turns at the wheel, and they arrived in Seattle on a Monday night, crashing in the house of Kirsten’s older sister, seven bodies laid out on the carpeted basement floor.

McGee had been in contact with one of the local groups organizing the protests, and in the morning they met up in a park. It was only a little after sunrise, and the paths were already choked. There were placards taped to light posts, bedsheets hanging from apartment windows. THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING, one of them read.

The seven of them moved through the crowds as if they were rubber-banded together. Even April and Kirsten, just as experienced with protests as McGee was, wouldn’t leave her side. Myles and Holmes looked alternately overwhelmed and amazed.

On a platform at the edge of the park, a black man in a green dashiki stood above a crowd stretching farther than McGee could see. People before profit , he shouted into his microphone, and the crowd shouted the same thing back. Here alone there must have been a thousand people, and there were thousands more all around. The protests were expected to last five days, coinciding with a meeting in the city of superpowers, industrial nations intent on slicing up the globe into their own private markets. People had come from all around the world to make sure that didn’t happen. There were signs in French and Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese. Alphabets McGee couldn’t even recognize.

“You didn’t tell me it was going to be like this,” Myles said.

McGee took his hand and led him through.

As they’d planned, McGee and the others (except for Fitch, who’d vaguely said he’d “catch up with them later”) fell in with a group of students marching into the city from the north. Someone said there were four thousand of them, but McGee would have believed twice that many. It was less like walking than like getting swept along by a wave.

When they reached the city center, the police were already there, waiting. The cops had set up cordons in anticipation, but they’d underestimated the scale of what was coming. All they could do was stand and watch as marchers descended, arms linked together. Almost immediately protesters blockaded the main intersection. The scene was surreal — drummers and dancers and a man breathing fire and human butterflies on Rollerblades. Another intersection was blocked by a papier-mâché whale. Three teenage girls stood on a street corner dressed in baggy suits, monocles, and pocket watches attached by gold chains. They were passing out handfuls of money, throwing it into the air like confetti. Everyone had flyers and picket signs. STOP EXPLOITING WORKERS. DEFEND OUR FORESTS. SAY NO TO FRANKEN FOOD. RESIST CORPORATE TYRANNY. CAPITALISM KILLS. SHUT IT DOWN. STOP THE NEW WORLD ORDER. A steel drum band laid down the beat for a troupe of clowns and stilt walkers, while a parade of older, sober-looking men in trucker hats pulled up the rear. Steelworkers and teamsters, according to their windbreakers. They carried a banner on which a coiled snake snapped at the words DON’T TRADE ON ME.

On the periphery of it all, completely unamused, units of riot troops huddled in Kevlar. And Myles wanted to know why.

“It’s like a circus in the middle of a war zone,” he said.

Why were the protesters at the blockade wearing goggles? he wanted to know. Why were they dressed in garbage bags? Why the bandannas?

It was a strange place for McGee to feel like a tour guide. “Because,” she said, suddenly feeling scarred and world-weary, “it’s about to get ugly.”

In truth, she’d never seen anything like this either, but she knew Myles was looking to her for answers, and it would’ve been worse if she’d admitted how far she was in over her head. Another battalion of riot cops had begun advancing upon one of the blockaded intersections, shields on their helmets lowered. A voice over a bullhorn was issuing threats. Everyone was to be removed — if necessary, with “chemical and pain compliance.” As if these were special new products, name brands everyone would recognize from television commercials.

“This way.” McGee grabbed Myles’s hand, and they headed west, where the road appeared to be clear.

Cracks and booms were bursting behind them, like fireworks misfiring on the ground.

All at once the drumming stopped. McGee could hear the crowds at the blockade shouting courage .

Then the chants turned to screaming. The cops had swarmed the intersection, ripping off the protesters’ goggles and gas masks, firing pepper spray point-blank into their eyes. Another line of cops was advancing on the scattered bystanders and picketers, shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at anyone not chained in place.

“Go back to the park,” McGee said. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Where are you going?” Holmes said.

A concussion grenade exploded around the corner. McGee was having a hard time thinking clearly about anything.