Sunil Yapa - Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

The smile he wore like a clip-on tie because he wanted to give the appearance of friendliness, because these were his citizens, he was the people’s police, and yet they were the homeless and the mentally ill and my son lives down here and the mentally disturbed who belong in asylums, but do we even have asylums in America anymore, weren’t those for the fucked-up nations of the fucked-up world, weren’t those for paranoia and schizophrenia, and don’t show your fear because he wanted to know in which tent his son lived, but he did not want his officer to have to shoot anybody.

The beat cop stopped in front of a cheap-looking nylon tent which Bishop recognized immediately. It was his, purchased however many years ago and forgotten in some closet, except his son had not forgotten because here was where Victor was living: in his father’s tent bought five years ago for a fishing trip they never made. He must have broken into the house and found it in a closet. When did he break into the house? He was in my house? Bishop removing his cap in a gesture almost of deference as though at a grave, at an accident, something equally real, equally incomprehensible, the emotions running across his face as he stood and looked, as he stood and thought and remembered. He was in the house. Victor. My son.

The tent was empty.

All around him, the encampment made its noises of the domestic. The settling in. The eating of dinner, the howling of a drunk, and the beat cop saying he was just going to go check on some folks and asking Bishop if he was cool for a minute.

The Chief of Police saying, “Yeah, I’m cool.”

The tent as empty as the house as empty as Bishop now felt.

He gestured to the pilot. He had seen enough.

“Bring her down,” he said.

“Bishop,” the Mayor said. “I’m calling the Governor. We need the National Guard.”

What a panicky little political machine, thought Bishop.

“Sir, you don’t want to call them. You, sir, are the one that will take the blame. And I would be sorry to see such a promising political career cut short at the knees.”

The Mayor looked at him and then turned away, a greenish cast to his face.

Bishop looking out the bubble at the massing crowds threatening to overwhelm his city. He heard the unmistakable ring of authority in his voice — it was how he led his troops, it was, in some ways, how he’d won Suzanne, it was, finally, he thought, how he recognized himself, when he sometimes became afraid.

The PeaceKeeper motored through the streets, climbing curbs.

Ju could feel the grumble of the diesel engine all the way up through her spine, the coughy asynchronous roar ascending like exhaust through the rubber soles of her booted feet, a trembling vibrato in the deep tissue of her thighs, and she held tight to the rail to avoid being thrown.

She ducked when they hit a trash can and cups and cardboard went flying.

A garble of static from her radio. Then,

South on Seneca. Anarchist seen headed south on Seneca in possession of a flamethrower device.

Four-one-three. Did not copy that. Repeat. Did you say…? A flamethrower?

Repeat. A flamethrower. She appears to be using her mouth.

Ju looked at the radio and thought that was probably the stupidest thing she had heard in her eight years of policing. She shook her head. Finally, they stopped at the market. The engine wound down to an idle and Ju stood on the running board, feet planted wide, and began loading her six-shot semiautomatic projectile launcher, her GL6, or — in the words of the civilian crowd passing before her — her tear gas gun.

MACC had stationed the PeaceKeeper at Pike Place Market. They had called over the radio and said the crowd was rushing the market, arming themselves with fruit and other projectiles.

She only knew she was kitted up for civil war in the streets and people were freaking out.

But Ju? She was calm.

A man was building a pyramid of tomatoes under the overhang of the market. The neon lettering above him reflecting in the wet puddles along the walkway and she felt a tingling as she slid each round into its cylinder, locked it home, and spun to the next empty chamber, a tip-tap raindrop drumming on the canvas skin of her heart because what was a tear gas round but a genie in a bottle? Once free of her gun it would no longer be under her control, but captive to the vagaries of chaos, loose in the crowd — the milling, stamping crowd of feet and legs — and the gas — the powdered particulate — free to blow wherever the wind chose. Not in her control. Not under her domain.

Yes, violence was a genie in a bottle, even state-sanctioned, legal violence, because she knew the primal law, the lead-lined equation which was the foundation of all that happened on the street: if you want to carry a gun, you better be prepared to pull a gun; and if you pull a gun, you had better be prepared in heart, body, soul, and mind to fire a gun. To kill. Why else carry the freaking thing unless you were prepared for that? An empty threat was worse than none at all. And an officer unprepared or unwilling to kill? Just another walking target, another boob in blue and black.

PeaceKeeper idling. Ju loading her gun, foot astride the running board, feeling the vibrations running through her leg and up her hip. Concentrating and working carefully — perhaps working too closely, a little too fully absorbed in the task of round to chamber, the lock and spin, because when Park appeared at her elbow she was taken completely by surprise.

“What you say, JuJu?”

His face was hooded, smiling a devilish little smile beneath his black poncho as if he knew he had caught her unawares.

“Park,” she said.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you.”

She gave him an up and down disdainfully as if clocking a staggering driver on Ventura Boulevard who stepped from his Porsche, breath so laden with bourbon it could be considered a flammable substance, to say, “Well, I might have had one drink with dinner.”

“Only thing you’re spooking in that getup,” she said, “is your mother’s memory of the sweet little boy you never were.”

He grinned. “I was a good boy,” he said. “Greatest boy ever, according to my mother’s birthday cards.”

“Hey, Park,” she said, “where’s your horse?”

He said nothing, but the look on his face was enough — he was a boy. A thirty-five-year-old boy with a fucked-up face. Something about him that was pure resentment. A pouting sulky little boy who had been wronged by the world.

“It’s all over the radio,” she said.

“What is?”

“How you harassed some kid with your horse. How the Chief intervened and busted you back to the MACC. That’s what.”

Park smiled and leaned in. “Ju,” he said, “don’t get too excited. You hear about the FBI report?”

Beneath the hood of the rain slicker he did not look right. Was he sick?

“Park, you’re supposed to be back at the command center. I heard the order myself. So I say again, what are you doing here?”

“The FBI report, Ju. Did you read it?”

She looked down at the GL6 in her hands. She noticed she was nervously fiddling with the last of the tear gas rounds. She slid it home and locked it tight.

“I read it, yeah. The Feds put the risk at low to medium.”

“Correct.” He stepped forward and let his hand come to rest gently on her shoulder, behind the gun. “But the risk of what? ”

“The crowd going violent.”

“Is that what it said?”

“Yes, that’s what it said.”

“No. Incorrect.”

“Park, what is the point of—”

He stopped her with a raised finger.

“The risk of a terrorist attack,” he said. “Low to medium.”