I think he was right, although I have not been able to discover how seriously the Government considered bombing the whole valley back to the Stone Age. Years ago, I might have found out through the Freedom of Information Act. But the Supreme Court closed that peephole.
Darwin and his troops knew the lives of the hostages were valued highly by the Government. They didnt know why, and I am not sure that I do, either. I think that the number of people with money and power had shrunk to the point where it felt like a family. For all the escaped convicts knew about them, they might as well have been aardvarks, or some other improbable animal they had never seen before.
Darwin regretted that I, too, was going to have to stay in Scipio. He couldnt let me go, he said, because I knew too much about his defenses. There were none as far as I could see, but he sounded as though there were trenches and tank traps and mine fields all around us.
Even more hallucinatory was his vision of the future. He was going to restore this valley to its former economic vitality. It would become an all-Black Utopia. All Whites would be resettled elsewhere.
He was going to put glass back into the windows of the factories, and make their roofs weather-tight again. He would get the money to do this and so many other wonderful things by selling the precious hardwoods of the National Forest to the Japanese.
That much of his dream is actually coming true now. The National Forest is now being logged by Mexican laborers using Japanese tools, under the direction of Swedes. The proceeds are expected to pay half of day-before-yesterdays interest on the National Debt.
That last is a joke of mine. I have no idea if any money for the forest will go toward the National Debt, which, the last I heard, was greater than the value of all property in the Western Hemisphere, thanks to compound interest.
Alton Darwin looked me up and down, and then he said with typical sociopathic impulsiveness, Professor, I cant let you go because I need you.¨
What for?¨ I said. I was scared to death that he was going to make me a General.
To help with the plans,¨ he said.
For what?¨ I said.
For the glorious future,¨ he said. He told me to go
to this library and write out detailed plans for making this valley into the envy of the World.
So that, in fact, is what I mainly did during most of the Battle of Scipio.
It was too dangerous to go outside anyway, with all the bullets flying around.
My best Utopian invention for the ideal Black Republic was Freedom Fighter Beer.¨ They would get the old brewery going again, supposedly, and make beer pretty much like any other beer, except that it would be called Freedom Fighter Beer. If I say so myself, that is a magical name for beer. I envisioned a time when, all over the world, the bored and downtrodden and weary would be bucking themselves up at least a little bit with Freedom Fighter Beer.
Beer, of course, is actually a depressant. But poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.
Alton Darwin was dead before I could complete my long-range plan. His dying words, as Ive said, were, See the Nigger fly the airplane.¨ But I showed it to the hostages.
What is this supposed to mean?¨ said Jason Wilder.
I want you to see what theyve had me doing,¨ I said. You keep talking as though I could turn you loose, if I wanted. Im as much a prisoner as you are.¨
He studied the prospectus, and then he said, They actually expect to get away with this?¨
No,¨ I said. They know this is their Alamo.¨
He arched his famous eyebrows in clownish disbelief. He has always looked to me a lot like the incomparable comedian Stanley Laurel. It would never have occurred
to me to compare the rabid chimpanzees who hold us in durance vile with Davy Crockett and James Bowie and Tex Johnsons great-great-grandfather,¨ he said.
I was just talking about hopeless situations,¨ I said.
I certainly hope so,¨ he said.
I might have added, but didnt, that the martyrs at the Alamo had died for the right to own Black slaves. They didnt want to be a part of Mexico anymore because it was against the law in that country to own slaves of any kind.
I dont think Wilder knew that. Not many people in this country do. I certainly never heard that at the Academy. I wouldnt have known that slavery was what the Alamo was all about if Professor Stern the unicycist hadnt told me so.
No wonder there were so few Black tourists at the Alamo!
Units of the 82nd Airborne, fresh from the South Bronx, had by then retaken the other side of the lake and herded the prisoners back inside the walls. A big problem over there was that almost every toilet in the prison had been smashed. Who knows why?
What was to be done with the huge quantities of excrement produced hour after hour, day after day, by all these burdens on Society?
We still had plenty of toilets on this side of the lake, which is why this place was made an auxiliary prison almost immediately. Time was of the essence, as the lawyers say.
Imagine the same sort of thing happening on a huge rocket ship bound for Betelgeuse.
37
O
n the last afternoon of the siege, National Guard units relieved the Airborne troops across the lake. That night, undetected, the paratroops took up positions behind Musket Mountain. Two hours before the next dawn, they came quietly around either side of the mountain, captured the stable, freed the hostages, and then took possession of all of Scipio. They had to kill only 1 person, who was the guard dozing outside the stable. They strangled him with a standard piece of equipment. I had used one just like it in Vietnam. It was a meter of piano wire with a wooden handle at either end.
So that was that.
The defenders were out of ammunition. There were hardly any defenders left anyway. Maybe 10.
Again, I dont believe there would have been such delicate microsurgery by the best ground troops available, if it hadnt been for the social prominence of the Trustees.
They were helicoptered to Rochester, where they were shown on TV. They thanked God and the Army. They said they had never lost hope. They said they were tired but happy, and just wanted to get a hot bath and then sleep in a nice clean bed.
All National Guardsmen who had been south of the Meadowdale Cinema Complex during the siege got Combat Infantrymans Badges. They were so pleased.
The paratroops already had theirs. When they dressed up for the victory parade, they wore campaign ribbons from Costa Rica and Bimini and El Paso and on and on, and from the Battle of the South Bronx, of course. That battle had had to keep on going without their help.
Several nobodies tried to get onto a helicopter with the Trustees. There was room. But the only people allowed aboard were on a list which had come all the way from the White House. I saw the list. Tex and Zuzu Johnson were the only locals named.
I watched the helicopters take off, the happy ending. I was up in the belfry, checking on the damage. I hadnt dared to go up there earlier. Somebody might have taken a shot at me, and it could have been a beautiful shot.
And as the helicopters became specks to the north, I was startled to hear a woman speak. She was right behind me. She was small and was shod in white sneakers and had come up ever so quietly. I wasnt expecting company.
She said, I wondered what it was like up here. Sure is a mess, but the view is nice, if you like water and soldiers.¨ She sounded tired. We all did.
I turned to look at her. She was Black. I dont mean she was so-called Black. Her skin was very dark. She may not have had any white blood whatsoever. If she had been a man at Athena, skin that color would have put her in the lowest social caste.
She was so small and looked so young I mistook her for a Tarkington student, maybe the dyslexic daughter of some overthrown Caribbean or African dictator who had absquatulated to the USA with his starving nations treasury.
Wrong again!
If the college GRIOT~ had still been working, I am sure it couldnt have guessed what she was and what she was doing there. She had lived outside all the statistics on which GRJOTTM based its spookily canny guesses. When GRIOT~ was stumped by somebody who had given statistical expectations as wide a berth as she had, it just sat there and hummed. A little red light came on.