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

Goddamn it, why had she not just stayed with John? Stayed in their off-the-grid paradise, their nation of two? Why had she gone to Mexico in a fit of anger?

Yes. She had been scared to go. Scared and yet angry enough with John Henry to sneak across the border under the radar in the guise of a tourist with her sunscreen and camera and her zip-off pants, safely using an old friend’s driver’s license for ID. Crossing from California into the loud clamorous wrack of Tijuana. Scared and angry enough to not fully consider just how she would get back home when and if the time came. It was never meant to be forever — nothing was — maybe a year or two, but then you get down there and how do you get back. Because going back, going north, it turned out, was nothing like being a fucking tourist. It was about as far away from being a tourist as you could get.

The cops charged and down the kid went again. King heard the scrape of riot boots on concrete and she looked at John Henry and Victor in lockdown. Two faces, two bodies in a circle of eight people sitting cross-legged, facing out into the intersection. Beneath them were pieces of cardboard, torn blankets, anything to protect their sitting butts from the coldness of the pavement. Their arms — their arms were the thing — held aloft and rigid, at right angles to their bodies. Their arms encased in white PVC piping. And helpers wiping their mouths, and helpers holding the pipes in the air. An unbroken circle. Yes, a circle of people sitting in an intersection locked together at the arms with PVC pipes and the cops rampaging on the other side of the crowd. How long before they made it to Victor and John Henry? And look at them. Totally vulnerable. Those cops would massacre them when they finally got here.

They had calls in to every newspaper and TV station and media outlet in the metro area, some national, too. Some of the reporters hung up. Some of the reporters apologized, saying it was not a story. And some of the reporters came down with their cameras and stood in front of protesters locked to each other with chains, and asked, “How do you feel?” “What brings you down here?” “Is this a revolution?”

Despite everything the media might say, and despite what her own wary weary heart might counsel, King knew that what they were doing was important and right. And she believed that if Americans saw what pain their way of life caused in the world they would respond. Americans were a good-hearted people.

So they sat in the street and they chanted and they made witness with their bodies.

Woman’s body for bearing babies. Man’s body for bearing loads.

American bodies no longer on the line. No longer employed in the so-called manufacturing sector. American bodies too expensive for work so they find cheaper bodies to feed the machine.

They were arranging their bodies in circles and lines. They were linking arms. They were enduring overwhelming violence. They were making message with their bodies.

Wasn’t it just a new kind of slavery? Was a cheap pair of socks really worth doing that to a child? People had to see that. The basic wrongness. They knew. But nobody was talking about it because it was hidden. They would have you believe it was the only way the world could be. And the WTO. The organization which makes it all legal and turns it to law? How legitimate could the WTO be if they are forced to beat innocent citizens in the street to protect their own meetings?

She watched and she wanted to believe that the cops would stop. Let it be enough.

She wanted to believe that the media — the reporters with their shaky mikes and gas masks — would pay attention and send this message to the world.

She wanted to believe the police wouldn’t kill any one of the gentle strong people she had brought here.

But she did not.

Not for one beautiful fucking second.

Because how deep the darkness of the heart which longs for control.

Suddenly the kid was on his feet again. Somehow scrambling out from the circle of cops and stumbling away. He had lost his shirt and his American flag. King watched as he stood in the middle of the street, a skinny kid with a concave chest who seemed intent on personal destruction, and he had his fists up, though not to punch, pumping his fist and pumping his fist and pumping his fist, standing in the middle of the street pumping his balled fist, while the cops came charging after him with their batons and pepper spray.

Pumping his fist as if he had won something.

The Chief did not look good. His sandy hair lying damp on his forehead and his glasses askew and his face gone pale beneath the tan. They were chanting and they were singing and they were sitting linked arm in arm and they were not clearing the street. So he grabbed one of the dispensers and let the pepper spray go streaming over their seated dripping bodies. He released the spray to drift down in a fine webby mist.

He pushed his way to the front where two of his men were trying to extricate a boy in an army jacket from the chain-link of arms.

He reached down between his men and removed the boy’s bandanna in one easy motion. He hit him in the face with the pepper spray. His head was shaved. He wore loops of leather and beads around his neck. A purple crystal pendant on a silver chain.

The boy gagged and fell forward, still trying to chant. Bishop blasted him again.

“Sorry, kid,” he said.

People packed between the buildings; people spilling from the sidewalks and up into the potted ferns and cedar chips. People dangling from lampposts and dancing in the crosswalks. He shot the spray hard into their faces, two spots of rough red spreading outward from his bright blue eyes, his thin-lipped mouth. This was the face of a man on the edge of cardiac arrest.

Screaming now. The boy was arm in arm with two girls on either side and now they were screaming and screaming and screaming and he couldn’t believe how angry it made him as these kids sat unmoved in the mayhem and continued to chant.

Bishop laid his baton across the soft meat of the boy’s back. Bishop himself had said in the MACC, he had said it again in the street, “Don’t get out of control.”

He wasn’t out of control.

But he wanted very badly for this crowd to disperse. He wanted to clear a way through. He wanted to protect his city. He wanted the Mayor to quit shouting at him over the radio. He wanted his goddamn city back.

Bishop. KRRRCHHH

Anarchists seen headed north on Seneca.

KRRRCCCCCHH

Flammable liquids. Over

…soft platoon! Who can go hats and bats?

It seemed like everybody was talking on the same channel, and he felt a despondent anger, a helpless sort of rage as he keyed the radio and pressed it to his mouth.

Bishop here. Did not copy. Please repeat.

Chief! Chief!..KRRRCHHH

Fourth and KRRCCCHH

BishKRRCHH.

Bishop here. Did not copy. Please repeat.

Urine. Over.

Paper bags of crap. Over.

He stepped to the side. Kicked one of the girls in the leg, then stepped back and kicked the other one in her ribs. Kicked at their linked arms trying to break them apart.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

People stumbling from the intersection, choking, heading north or east, away from the gas.

He had ordered his troops to fire on American citizens and they had fired and now he could not take it back no matter how much he might have wished it to be so.

BishopKRRRCHHH

Need assistance at Fifth and Pike.

Fifth and Union. Repeat please.

Volley after volley of gas until the intersection was so choked with gas he couldn’t see the hotel on the other side. Couldn’t see the streets behind him. They waded through the crowd, breaking apart bodies as if breaking ice in an icebound harbor. He wedged his heel between their arms and tried some sort of leverage. He smacked each girl with the back of his open hand.