Eruption

Content warning: features references to the history of racism in the American South during the period of legal segregation that may be sensitive to some readers. Moderate gore warning, as well. 

All was quiet, and all was loud. Hundreds of devotees to the Syndicalist agenda vibrated with their party colors, causing miniature tremors to overtake the Refuge, making us feel like the entire building would collapse in on itself. Their anticipation was deathly, like an old child waiting for daddy's death to reap the inheritance money. The four of us practically stitched ourselves together to stay in place, barely able to stand, much less get our notes down. It appeared that our minds would be our greatest notebooks for the rest of the night, in the mental encapsulation of the Syndicalist promise. 

Even as my view zigzagged from the motion, I kept my eyes firmly placed on Reed's character. Still were his teeth borne in a voluptuous grin, eyeing the fruits of his labors. He observed this crafted chaos, spirited out from lifetimes of pain. He was just the alchemist the people needed to boil their anger to the surface, combusting with the whole warehouse! 

This wasn't a refuge, it was a goddamn cesspool! 

"Rick, what the fuck are you doing? Stop ogling him and let's get to the exit!" 

I shook my head as Jake grabbed my chest. 

"He's not done. We're not over." 

Jase put his hand to his mouth, and our squadron stilled in the wave of humanity. 

"...how could I forget?" 

Senator Jack Reed had no short supply of enemies, that was true. His rhetorical theatrics (and devil-may-care perspective on the physical wellbeing of others) had made him the goriest man in America by reputation alone, inciting violence through the very image of his upward-facing eyes and tightly-lined mouth that was seen in photographs and propaganda posters. 

But if he was the protagonist of this socialist epic, then he needed a foil. And no man had drawn his ire more than his warm colleague in the Senate, hailing from down the Mason-Dixon line. 

Louisiana's finest— 

"Can you see this, Huey!? Red all over!" 

Huey Pierce Long. The "Kingfish" of the South. 

"Oh, shit! He lets that slip now?" 

"Don't you see? He planned it all along! 

He's going to drown us!" 

Dave could barely eke out enough oxygen for the words when a musty fist knocked him on the back of the head. 

"DAVE!" 

I choked as the crowd gurgled with enmity towards Reed's archenemy. I held onto Jason, vision lapsing, with Jake kneeling at Dave's side, motioning into his pockets for the crowbar. 

I couldn't even get a good glance of the final banner, a de facto mugshot of Long himself laid out between Olson and the CSA flag. But I could hear Reed's voice piercing through the uproar—the loudest of them all. 

"He thinks he can build his own Christian utopia! He thinks he can be the one to tell down Tammany Hall and Madison Avenue and the D.C. establishment! Old-age pensions, nationalization, a minimum income for all, eh!" 

Reed started to clap, and in between each fire-branded word, his cackle returned. I felt like my ears were bleeding. 

"He thinks that every man can become a king under his watchful eye! 

Hah! The gall!" 

The crowd chimed and chafed. 

"Get your lighters! Get your lighters!" 

"Let's watch that cotton suit burn right with him!" 

Reed clasped his hands. How's that for fire and fury, I mused, looking back off to him. 

"He thinks his agents can outmaneuver us. Outwit us. Outmuscle us. 

That America is his land to conquer. 

I'm going to enjoy watching his blood barrel down some prison bars from my perch at the White House, when the snow starts falling. 

To see his plans smote down by the ferocity of the CSA!" 

"YEAH!" 

I couldn't breathe. The huffs of words and wills were taking the air out of the place. I looked for the exits, the night sky contorting into a malaise of light. 

But then the world paused for a moment, and instead of an escape, what caught my view was a derelict section of the spectators, portraited by the chaos. 

There was Earl, and his band of artists, intellectuals, and journalists, bearing a unified front of monochrome suits, a show of status as much as anything else in this depression, especially when most of the crowd was crinkling through hand-me-down dusters, tattered scarves, and hole-filled shoes. I could see his hand reaching for something deep in his pocket—not a pencil, I thought, nor a notepad; perhaps what lurked underneath the black fabric was something more defensive. 

Earl and company knew that even this was just the calm. I could see it in the pointed gaze of his eyes, and the slant of his brows. It reminded me of the time he looked at me when giving an assignment for the Polaris, with the white walling of the office corridor staring us down. 

"The readers are demanding an inside look into Long's party organization. I don't blame them; it's a mobilization on a scale we haven't seen in history. I need you to be our eyes on the ground. Got it?" 

I nodded, sensing the gravity embedded in the task. The America First Party was just starting its national organizing efforts, and what better way to announce its place on the continental stage than by targeting the cornucopia of political fortunes: the Big Apple. Its populist promises of 8-hour workdays, 'social security' payments, and mass regulation of the railroads, meat-packing plants, and a bevy of other industries seemed scarily familiar to the American reds, all trumpeted by a figure who in some ways was more warm and personable than the western ice lord of New York that was Jack Reed. 

But Earl could pore through the propaganda, and to me unveiled Huey Long's vision for America in its rawest contents: socialism for the Anglo-Saxons. It was as if Karl Marx had been invoked in the Bible for him: Long was able to fuse Evangelical theology with socialist policy to create a form of government that Christ could smile down upon. Citing New Testament passages on campaign stumps while emphasizing the merits of his "Share Our Wealth" redistribution program, he marketed Longism as the only viable opponent to Syndicalism in America. 

While Reed's unionist and anti-religious elements had drawn division between blacks and whites across the country, it was Long who actively aligned himself with the sects and Klans of the South to preach his vision for the nation, and cast his lot with the cotton-colored crowd of the South. 

"I've seen life down there, believe me. This might just be different." 

From what he'd told me, I heard that Earl was originally born in Mississippi before he was able to find work and a new (if not always welcoming) home in New York. He lived through the worst of a post-Plessy South, seeing the toll of the sharecroppers on the way to a poor, pipeless school, at a time when the lynchings often made the cover stories in the daily papers he combed through. Violence and vandalism had long been perpetrated by state and citizen alike, that much was true, but the amount of uproar generated by the Longist movement ignited tensions even further, kindled by the Silver Legion of armed supremacist followers who worked hand-in-hand with the Ku Klux Klan. 

He slapped down the headlines to me, that day: 

NEGROES STAMPEDED OUT OF TOWN BY LEGION ARMS 

NEGROE HOOVERVILLE BURSTS IN FLAMES; LEGIONARIES TO BLAME? 

LYNCHING SEASON PICKS UP IN BIRMINGHAM—IS LONG-MANIA BEHIND IT? 

Of course, these headlines were put on only for show, to grasp the Yankee's attention well enough to fork over a few pennies for the paper fare. Making social progress wasn't where the profit was at, 'course. 

The stories themselves amplified the drama of it all, allowing the Legionaries to cover their crimes with lofty rhetoric and a damnation of the current administration, the cheap silver gloss on their uniforms blinding any unsuspecting readers. Most papers focused on Long's 'progressive' policies either way, the brewing 'black attacks' just a footnote on a packed campaign schedule. 

Where did they get the funding? How did they establish their network of resources and mobilization efforts? Was Long truly the commander leading the charge, or did he passively benefit from the chaos, leveraging the support of entrenched rightist elements in the South to jumpstart his campaign? 

There were too many questions to answer, too many possibilities to ponder, but I knew one thing: I wasn't going to let Earl down. Not a chance. I had to shine the light, I had to! 

That Longist meeting burbles in my mind, a distant memory, churned by the current circumstances but refusing to cooperate with the present slice of my psyche. I wonder if it's the same for Earl, remembering the story I published, maybe hoping I'd be safe; or, better yet, preparing to ensure the safety of his comrades, come what may of the fisticuffs. 

Before the scene continued and tensions exploded, I remember that Jason was peering in the same direction. He must've felt that similar connection to Earl, but buoyed by the kinship of race, of course, a magnification of closeness that I could never quite share, but appreciated and respected nevertheless. I asked myself if he wanted to join them, just for a night, or otherwise if he wanted to lead the way if pain were to come rushing towards us, when the notes were no longer needed, and only the noises of human tumult filled the air. 

Whatever path he chose, it wasn't my business to pry, nor to meddle with. The only thing I could do was be at his side, just like I was at the Polaris, and be that friend to him, in the throes of uncertainty that engulfed our lives. 

* * * 

But I couldn't ponder forever. I heaved a breath, lunging in a random direction, disoriented, newly searching for a way out of here while navigating the political bumps and quagmires nestled across the Refuge. 

"C'mon! We're gonna be goners here...!" 

My eyes scanned everywhere, searching for our salvation. Instead, they found a new spectacle to gawk at, widening in a quick splay of eye flesh, and I heard a crash at the back. 

I knew we wouldn't be gone just yet. 

"The Minutemen! What in God's name—they found the Refuge!?" 

Tricorn hats shuttled into the warehouse, tens upon hundreds of the Longists' paramilitary fighters pushing back against Reed's diehards. My eyes were gouged by the sway of their white cravats in the wind, the ebony finish on their fabric lined with ridged edges like they'd been kept away from view since the Revolution itself. Fitting, styling themselves in the American facsimile of bloodthirsty patriots, to parade Huey Long's image for the country. Sable boots chafed against the floor as I felt a rumble overtake the entire area. Supposedly, they operated independently of the Silver Legion, though I had a feeling their goals and resources were quite the same. 

"You want red, bastards!? We'll give you plenty to muse about!" 

"Rick, they're coming this way!" 

I choked in a breath, seeing those long, thick shafts of wood branded by them—they were using musket designs as blunt instruments. Not long after were wrenches, mop handles, forks and rolling pins, walking sticks, and all matter of hard-hitting objects lifted from the floor into the Syndie crowd's hands. Reed's Instigators flooded in, commanding officers of the counterattack, arming their comrades and steeling for battle. The screams curdled our blood as much as theirs, no doubt dripping away while we gazed. 

"Stay together, guys!" 

The four of us linked up, arm to arm, with the two armies jerking back and forth against each other. Air pouring fast into our mouths, water flowing out our pores, it was a dynamic equilibrium. An osmosis of human bodies. 

That was until the wave of entropy finally reached our skin. 

"AAAGH!" 

The guttural scream that David echoed blazed through my ears. I saw wood gash into his sleeve, the muck from his shirt scattered onto the floor. 

"Syndie shitheads!" 

Then the punches came. No, not punches, backhands into our flesh. Fists scuffing back out the fabric of our clothes. I saw Jake brandish the crowbar and begin his swinging rampage. Jason took my arm as we scuttled through the chaos. 

"Rick, we'll drop dead here if we can't find an out!" 

Hoarse tones reached my ears as my eyes flicked across the scene. My fingers straddled against hostile torsos flinging themselves against us. Red or black or white, wood or brass or metal. Spit, yes, saliva, dotting the ground. Dammit, Rick, keep your eyes off the floor! 

CRACK! A fresh stalk of bark slacked against my jaw. I felt my head curdle upwards—nigh out of its socket—as I lost myself in the group. 

"RICK!" 

Cigarettes. Splinters crashing. Blood on the tongue. The world shuddered to a halt as the arc of my crown continued. 

But in this broken state, I found an opening. Sharp crystal ends, jutting outward at a slant—but on a single plane, like a portrait fastened onto an easel. And with a big white orb glimmering at the center. 

The orb called out to me with its sparkling eyes. Saying, 'Hoist yourself! Hoist yourself!' I swallowed, backpedaling, hands rushing to below my chin. 

The thing that awoke me from my daze? The sight of a tricorn painted magenta, shooting to the ground. 

"That'll serve ya right for kissin' Daddy-Long-Legs' ass!" 

Jake's crowbar decked a man in the side of the head, and I could see his body slither out into the crowd. 

"Rick! Get a hold of yourself, man!" 

Jason kept me upright, and his pupils followed my view. 

"You saw it too?" 

"The windowsill! That's our ticket outta this hellhole! C'mon!" 

Jase and I started elbowing and jawing and jostling our way through the crowd. David joined in too, using his entire arm as a baton, even as his hand pressed against it to keep the juice from flowing out. Jake battered his way through the Syndies, banking on them worrying more about the tide of Minutemen bolting towards Reed by the second than us. 

The orb kept calling to me. Its crescent shape cut into the sky, slicing against the darkness. My vision crept up its length, wanting to climb to the peak, limbs inching for it. We're so close, just a little more! A little more mucus and muscle-mass to get there! 

"The sill!" 

Jason eked out the words from his throat. I slammed my fist at its surface. The glass cut into my hand. But I could see the moon's reflection in the reservoir that poured from it. 

Jake pretty much picked me up and shoved me through that damn hole, my arms slacking against my sides, trying to weather the shards. Then Jason, then Dave—then Jake sliding through himself, wiping the muck from his pale cheeks. 

As we scurried away, the last snapshot of the night was harrowing: 

Jack Reed. Standing at the center of the platform. Watching on with interest. He was far, my vantage point reduced to a sliver of a rectangle into the Refuge. But I could see the lines of his face creeping upwards. 

Did he know? Did he prep? Did he care? 

I didn't know. Didn't have the time to find out, as we huddled off into my apartment to tend to our wounds. A black canvas painted across the stars, frowning down upon what had just happened, save for the watchful glimmer of the moon that lighted our way to safety. 

The stars must've been looking towards him. His suit, bloodless; his hair, still combed and full of color. And yet, those aspects of his visual character didn't grab me most. 

It's that distant smirk before savagery that still haunts me like nothing else in a war-torn world.