Dana Spiotta - Eat the Document

One night, after everyone had gone, Miranda lingered in the doorway, scrutinizing a flyer with the current week’s schedule.

“What is with this group, SAFE? When is their meeting? I mean they are listed, but I’ve never seen them actually meet.”

Nash shrugged.

“What does SAFE stand for?”

“I’m not sure.”

“This isn’t one of your groups?”

Nash shook his head. “I told you. I just facilitate now and then. Make a few suggestions. I believe they are the Scavengers Against Flat Effrontery. Or is it fatuous effrontery? It says on the flyer they meet after the ‘K’ Nation. But then again, I’ve never actually seen anyone from that group.”

“So they don’t meet here?”

Nash pointed to a footnote on the schedule. There was an asterisk next to the SAFE meeting time. The legend at the bottom said, “Meetings as needed and when necessary.”

Miranda tossed the flyer on the table with all the other meeting papers and pamphlets.

“What about colors, Miranda?” he asked as if they were already in a new conversation. She smiled at him blankly.

“What about all the green and black?”

She shrugged. “It’s all right.”

“I think it’s really from comic books,” Nash said. “I know how you feel about militant environmentalists, but they are the badasses these days, you have to admit it. Did you see that green-and-black flag the ecoanarchist guys have? That looks good. You have those appropriated paramilitary colors and materials. That is powerful. Besides, guerrillas have always copped from the military. These kids mix superheroes with defunct army clothes, acronyms and slang. And those woodcut printed posters, too — sort of Soviet Constructivist looking. I think it’s a legit symbolic strategy. Native Americans used to incorporate American flag designs in their clothes to steal the power of the white man by appropriating his symbols.”

“Yeah? And how’d that work out for those Native Americans?” Miranda said. Nash laughed. Miranda felt very pleased when she could make Nash smile, or even better, laugh.

“The point isn’t to win. They’ll never win, of course. They just make persuasive and powerful the beauty of their opposition.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “But wouldn’t it also be great to win? I think you should try to win. Otherwise it is just a gesture. That’s not really good enough.”

Nash didn’t respond. He just crossed his arms and looked at her. She noticed he did that a lot.

Miranda turned away and went back to cleaning up. When she finished, she leaned out the back door and lit up a hand-rolled cigarette laced with hashish. Sissy had given her a couple, and she found them very calming. Nash came over and leaned on the doorjamb. He was slightly built, but sometimes when he moved Miranda noticed he had an underlying wiry strength, a subtle sort of power. She took a hit and offered the joint to him.

Nash ignored it and pointed at the empty meeting table. “I loved that one kid with the black earth painting on his jacket. He looks like a terrorist, not a doughy little geek like most of my guys.”

“You just care about the aesthetics. What about the issues?” she said.

“And there is the pinning of badges instead of sewing. All those block-print silk-screened badges — they go to a lot of trouble to make those, and then to get that, well, recycled look. And the fingerless gloves, the torn stockings. The way they all match each other without even trying. That hobo solidarity.”

“Clothes are shallow.”

“No. What you wear reminds you of who you want to be. If you want to be fierce, or scary, or stealth. Those are the issues. They are part of the tactics. They communicate.”

“But you don’t wear fierce clothes. You dress like—” She stopped, looked him over. Dark blue sweater, stretched and pilled, with beltless, baggy jeans.

“Like a third-rate lab assistant. Like an off-duty security guard. Like a guy whose boss is younger than he is,” Nash said.

“Yeah, well.”

“Exactly.”

“What?”

“Look, I’m beside the point. I have been noticing these sorts of things for a long time, and I have high standards. I try to avoid being shrill and boring. Only someone your age gets away with, you know, being so instinctual.”

“You think I’m overly earnest.”

“No, I really don’t. I don’t think I could ever find someone too earnest.”

“Shrill, you find me shrill,” she said. He smiled. She took another long drag.

“But why should you care what I think?” Nash watched her through the cigarette smoke. “Miranda.” And he just said her name, isolated and with enough pause before it to not seem part of the previous sentence. She didn’t say anything. She felt a seriousness she couldn’t quite locate as either his or hers. But there it was, now, between them. Nash raked his fingers through what remained of his curly gray and black hair.

How can anyone claim himself as beside the point?

He looked away first, and she realized she really, really liked Nash.

HENRY SAT ON the couch in his living room. The TV was off, the lights were off. He sat in the half dark, and he could not stop it. It came over him.

He has on a uniform. He is flying with two others. The sky is beautiful, an early morning green-blue. The water below is almost the same color. Only the jungle is different. It is a succulent green, the faint yellow-green of snake bellies and new leaves.

Henry sat on the couch, in his living room. He was awake — his eyes were open. He was sweating and clenching his hands, digging his fingernails into his palms.

It is a camouflage green C-123 Provider. He is not in the cockpit. He can see himself, the spray operator, by the bomber doors, operating and checking huge canisters marked with orange, white and blue paint. The canisters ride four across, snapped in, and he can see through the hatch in the bottom of the plane the spray of white aerosol trailing behind them. They are flying very low. They are buzzing rice paddies and villages. They are aiming for total saturation of the foliage. But it is all fucking foliage, isn’t it? It’s a jungle. Some of it splashes back on him when he adjusts the tanks. He can hear anti-aircraft fire from beneath him. They are so low-flying, bullets seem to back-spray from the ground. One of the drums gets punctured by a bullet, and defoliant sloshes on his arm and chest. The plane pitches back and up, gaining altitude at a sickening speed. He moves away from the hatch toward the interior of the plane.

It smells not of decay but of disappearing, of disintegration. An invisible eating away. But that’s not how it works, it doesn’t eat away like acid. It gets into the metabolism of things and overstimulates them until they die. It hyper-accelerates growth until the organism is undone. Herbicide, he thinks, is a better word than defoliant, but neither conveys the endless insinuation of the stuff, the occupation. He breathes the dank spray — it’s heavy, oily, metallic. It almost doesn’t smell, but it clings to you, gets between you and your sweat then sinks into your skin.

Later he will wash his face and hands. He will blow his nose. It’s in his hair, his throat, his eyes. His throat is constantly sore; he rubs his eyes and they sting but they don’t tear. It’s not tears but the stuff itself welling up right under his eyelids. All night he can feel the inventory of its invasions: a stickiness now, between the legs, under his arms, after he showers. As the night gets hotter he realizes the stuff is coming out his pores, it is part of his body now. It inhabits him, in his lungs, in his cells, in his future, in his wife’s uterus ten thousand miles away. It has a half-life, it has a genetic legacy. It will appear in the yet-to-be-born. It has sleeper cells hidden for fifteen years only for you to suddenly taste it, out of nowhere, in your mouth, a slick of oil in your spit.