When they were through, we turned on the news and heard that the number of people alongside us was definitely over half a million, possibly over a million, with more and more arriving every minute.
After about an hour’s worth of walking, we reached downtown. The buildings were unremarkable, municipal. The flatness of the land was mirrored in a flatness of architecture. The walls were bland or blank or brick, the windows empty or blinded. It felt like the kind of place that always seemed shut down. The locals looked shell-shocked for the most part, unprepared for this sudden invasion of easterners and westerners, northerners and southerners. A few, however, had decided to profit from the occasion and were selling bottles of water for thirty dollars each, more than twice what they would usually go for. At this point, they had very few takers.
We fell in step with a church group as we reached the street leading to the rally. The police had divided the street roughly in half, with the Stein rallygoers veering to the left and the Decent protesters roped off to the right. The opposition candidate had decided to have his own rally in Wichita at the same time as Stein’s in Topeka, but there were still thousands of anti-Stein people here, yelling and jeering at us as we passed.
“Don’t pay them any attention,” Virgil warned.
Still, it was hard to ignore them. No matter how loud we chanted, their dissonance was thrown at us. So I looked, and Jimmy looked, and what we saw nearly stopped us cold. There were only a few signs with Stein’s opponent’s name on it—these people weren’t pro-him as much as anti-us. So instead of mass-produced campaign posters, there were hundreds of handwritten signs, each one more vile than the last.
STEIN IS A SODEMITE.
THE MEAK SHALL NOT INHERIT THE U.S.A.
GOD SAYS FAGS SHOULD DIE!
GO HOME JEW FAGS—THIS COUNTRY ISN’T 4 U.
I recoiled, tried to back away from them. But Jimmy took my hand and held it tight. Held it so everyone could see it. Held it to defy them.
We got their attention. Suddenly the yelling was directed at us. Telling us to go home. Telling us to die. Telling us we had no right to be here.
I could sense Jimmy getting angrier and angrier. The pastor from the church group next to us tried to block us from the taunts, his face full of concern. One of the Decents decided to throw something at us—just a plastic juice bottle, not something that could really hurt. It hit the pastor instead, the leftover juice spraying the three of us.
That was it, as far as Jimmy was concerned. He was about to charge them, about to curse and yell and fight if he had to. And I—well, I held his hand tighter. Even as he started to pull away, I held on, dug in. He was surprised, but he didn’t let go. I pulled him forward a little. He resisted. Then the pastor looked at us and said, “Let’s keep walking. Just keep walking.” Brushing the juice off his jacket, asking if we were okay.
I wondered if anyone else had noticed. Then I got my answer: Janna and Mandy started singing “Amazing Grace” again—and this time it was loud, meant to be heard. The golden thread turned into a banner. People all around us started to sing along. The Decents yelled louder, but they couldn’t break the melody and the harmony.
“’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.”
The pastor could tell that I was still shaken and Jimmy was still enraged. Even Elwood looked ready to go back and make some trouble.
“Don’t let them get to you,” the pastor told us. “All they have is hate, and in the end hate is worthless. They want for us to become hateful, too, and to forfeit His love in our anger. When faced with such hate, we can only embrace love tighter. As Paul said, ‘Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.’”
I had not let go of Jimmy’s hand. But now I tried to let my grip ease, to get us back to level. In this way, we passed the corner where the last of the Decents shouted, and made our way into the area in front of the Kansas statehouse.
Hearing that there were over half a million people hadn’t prepared me at all for the sight of it—the enormity of it. There were people as far as my eye could see, and I was sure there were people beyond that as well. Bodies and banners and signs, clothes of all colors, faces of all ages. Children on their parents’ shoulders, people in wheelchairs. Hot-thrumping guys and journal-scribbling girls, picnic families and motorcycle gangsters. Holy Ghostwriter fans with bad haircuts and I’M 4 STEIN 2 B PREZ buttons. Proud Kansas voters for Stein, identifiable by their PROUD KANSAS VOTERS FOR STEIN
T-shirts, with Don’t mess with my vote written on the back. I couldn’t stop taking it all in.
There were still about two hours to go before Stein would speak, so there was no focus to the crowd, no direction that we all faced. From above we’d look like a gigantic mass, but under a microscope we’d be divided into our own cells, talking and eager with anticipation.
Once again, it felt like history. But this time our piece was even bigger.
Our group had managed for the most part to stay together. Virgil and Flora and Mrs. Everett were fueling themselves on stories from the past, stopping every now and then to compare aches and pains. Sue kept largely to himself, searching the crowd around us from his singular place within it, considering each face before moving on to the next. A few feet away, Gus had planted himself and Glen on an old sheet he’d brought, and was regaling him with tales of his own misadventures.
“…and then—no lie whatsoever—I found myself on the shore, drip-dry nude, and I thought to myself, Only a foolio like myself would break up with a vengemeister before going skinny-dipping. I never got the clothes back, la, and had to swindle-borrow this cape from a noodle of a seven-year-old in order to make my way homeward. You wouldn’t believe the major-wrong tan line I got that day. I can be such a void when it comes to boy issues.”
“Aw, don’t be so self-deprecating,” Glen said, clearly charmed instead of alarmed.
“If I don’t deprecate myself, who will?” Gus asked playfully.
“How ’bout I appricate you instead?” Glen offered.
“I’m ultra open to apprication.”
A kiss immediately followed.
A long kiss.
An epically long kiss.
“They’re going to need some oxygen when that’s over,” Mira observed from the side.
But neither Mira nor Jimmy nor I could really criticize—we’d all been like that, even if we might not have been quite so public about it. I had one of those momentary fantasies—one of those imagination side trips that last a little longer than a hope but a little shorter than a daydream—that Jimmy would lean into me now, whisper something snide and sexy like, Hey, darlin’, how ’bout you and I appricate each other, too? and lead me into the same kind of kiss.
But Jimmy didn’t seem to be paying too close attention to what was happening with Gus. I felt, in fact, that his attention was still back on the gauntlet we’d walked, stuck in the jeers and provocations that had been hurled at us.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Just moody, I guess. I know it’s not really in accord with God’s love, but I seriously wanted to set some things straight back there. I know it’s a free country, but nobody should say those things. For whatever reason. Somebody needs to tell them that.”
“Do you really think they’d listen?”
“No. But it would make me feel better, I guess. To know I didn’t just let them get away with it.”
“They only get away with it if we let it get to us.”
“Not really, Dunc. I mean, think about their kids. They’re going to teach them to be just like they are. How do you stop that?”
“By getting the world around the kids in better shape, I guess,” I said. “I mean, if everyone was just like their parents, your dad would be just like your grandparents, and you’
d be just like them, too. Which, I’m happy to report, isn’t the case. I would have a really, really hard time making out with your grandparents.”
Jimmy smiled slyly. “I’m sure they’ll be relieved to hear that.”
I was smiling now, too, because somehow I’d managed to bring him back to me. We might have gone on for a little longer, but Mira said, “Hey, take a look at this!” and gathered us around her screen.
“…Olivia Butler is the fourth Kansas election official to resign in protest of the governor’s recount, and the ninth person directly involved in the elections to allege tampering on the governor’s part.
“‘If you have an honest recount, I bet you’ll see that Stein won by more than a thousand votes in this state. What’s happening is politics, plain and simple. The governor promised his party the state, and he’s doing everything he can to deliver it.’
“The governor’s spokesman has labeled Butler as a ‘Stein supporter’ whose own motives are political.
“‘That’s just not true,’ Butler says. ‘I actually voted for the governor in the last election. But never again. What he’s doing is wrong.’”
“Isn’t this enough?” Mira asked. “I mean, how can anyone believe him now?”
It was Virgil who answered, shaking his head.
“It doesn’t matter what you or I believe,” he said. “It’s about what they can get away with. That, I’m afraid, is the ultimate measure of a man: how he acts when he’s wrong but knows he can get away with it anyway. Now, I have no doubt that the governor and everyone else on his side thinks they’re doing the right thing. I’m sure they’ve managed to justify it in their minds. But the more people know they’re wrong, the harder it will be to ignore it. The question is: When it’s perfectly clear that they’re up to no good, what will they do?”
There was a cheer from the front of the crowd, like an echo before the noise, which caused those of us farther away to pay attention. Thinking we were in the back of the rally, I turned around and found that, no, we weren’t in the back at all—more and more people had arrived, and now the crowd was spilling out in every direction. Speakers and screens had been set up all around town, and most of us had our phones out, too, to see what was going on up front. The speeches had begun, with politicians and movie stars and musicians and authors coming up for their minute of spotlight to say that Stein was and would be the next President of the United States. We were here, they vowed, to make sure of it.
People cheered, but never all at the same time. I think we were still distracted in the daylight, too busy taking in the situation to fully be a part of it. While Mira talked to Jimmy, Virgil, Elwood, and Sue, I noticed that Keisha and Sara had strayed from our group. I looked around and finally found them having a heated conversation about a hundred feet away from us, just in front of a group of dog lovers holding leashes and PUGS FOR STEIN banners. Both Keisha and Sara were crying and, from what I could tell, Sara was trying to argue Keisha out of what she was saying. It was unclear whether or not her arguments were working. But what was clear—shockingly clear—was that whatever they’d done wasn’t just a stupid fling. Sara really cared about Keisha, to the point of pain.
Sara tried to come forward, to wrap Keisha back up in her arms, to embrace the conversation into being over. But Keisha shook her head, pulled back, said something else that made Sara step away and reply with something that clearly wasn’t as pleading as before. Keisha rallied, pointing, telling Sara to go. And Sara did. She said one last thing to Keisha, then picked up her bag and pushed into the crowd, disappearing in a matter of seconds. Keisha just stood there, looking like a buoy in an empty lake.
Nobody else from our group had noticed. They were too busy paying attention to one another or to the speeches. I could have gotten Flora or Janna or Mandy, told them what had happened. But for some reason I felt I needed to go there myself, to finally talk to Keisha, to see what I could do to make things better—or, if not better, at least bearable.
It was funny—I’d never really thought of myself as Keisha’s friend or as Mira’s friend. I’d thought of myself as Keisha-and-Mira’s friend, because I’d always thought of them together. Now that they weren’t, I hardly knew where I was.
When I got over to Keisha and said hey, she took one look at me and actually laughed.
“Damn,” she said, “I thought I was the one who was supposed to be miserable.”
She only found it funny for about three seconds, though. Then she was back inside herself, and I was somewhere else.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“I’d say it’s pretty gone.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“I have a lot of wants right now. That might be in there somewhere. You’re brave for coming to talk to me, you know.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the bad guy. There always has to be a bad guy.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t exactly wrong. But it didn’t feel exactly right, either.
She continued through my silence.
“I’ll give you some advice, Dunc. Whatever you do, try not to fall in love with two people at the same time. While it’s happening, you’re haunted by knowing it’s never gonna work out. And then it doesn’t work out.”
I tried to imagine being in love with someone else at the same time as being in love with Jimmy. But I couldn’t, and told Keisha that.
“Believe me, I thought it was impossible, too,” she said. “It wasn’t like I was looking. I was more than happy with Mira. But then I met Sara and there was just this charge. I couldn’t choose whether or not it happened—it was there, and the only choice I had was to deny it or admit it. And I couldn’t even manage denial. It would be like trying to say I don’t hear you to someone screaming in your ear. I know it won’t make sense to you, and I’m pretty sure it won’t make sense to Mira, either, but it wasn’t either/or—it wasn’t like I had to fall out of love with Mira in order to fall for Sara. Yeah, those were supposed to be the rules—but feelings don’t follow rules. Guilt does. Fear does. But attraction? No way.”
“So you and Sara hooked,” I said.
“Not right away. But yeah. We couldn’t stop it. Because we didn’t want to.”
I knew it was simplistic of me, but when I tried to put myself in the whole picture, I was sure that there was no way I’d ever be able to play Sara’s or Keisha’s role. No, I would always be Mira. As much as I hated to admit it—and would have never said it to him—while I was pretty comfortable in thinking that Jimmy would never cheat on me, I also knew that if one of us was ever going to do it, it was going to be him. So maybe that’s why I found myself unable to tell Keisha I understood what she was saying.
“So you lied,” I told her instead. “You just went off with Sara while Mira was oblivious. I have no idea if it’s better or worse that you were in love with both of them—that’ll probably hurt Mira even more. But whatever the case, you weren’t honest. And then you go and make out with Sara in the back of our bus? You had to know you’d get caught. You had to know that Mira wouldn’t stand for it. No matter how much you might still love her.”
Did I want to make her cry? Did I want to prove the point so that it would never be used against me? Whatever my intention, Keisha ended up falling apart again. The people with pugs—who were keeping a distance so carefully that you had to know they were listening to every word—didn’t make any move to comfort her, so ironically that role was left to me, the person whose words had hit her in the first place.
“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry. I know you feel bad. I was just saying…”
Keisha rubbed her eyes, then waved the rest of my sentence away. “Don’t,” she said. “I didn’t really expect you to understand. What you and Jimmy have is so…I don’t know…sacred. Mira and I could never compete with that.”
“What are you talking about? You guys were the model. That’s one of the reasons this is so upsetting. I’m struggling all the time whe
n it comes to me and Jimmy. But you and Mira—that was easy.”
“You are not struggling with Jimmy.”
“Are you kidding?” I couldn’t understand how she could say that. “I am constantly struggling. There are all of these times when he’s so great and I’m just…okay. I know he loves me and I know I love him, but for some reason I get to be the one who feels it more. I can be standing right beside him and still be missing him, because if he isn’t entirely there with me I feel that small emptiness. He doesn’t, but I do. And now—well now he’s started to wonder how long it will last and I’m afraid I’m going to start to feel like I’m borrowing him, that eventually I’ll have to give him back. I’ll disappoint him too much and it’ll be over. We try to make the struggle as truthful as possible, but it’s still a struggle.”
I stopped there, feeling I should never have started. Why was I telling Keisha all of this?
Before she could respond, the crowd roared—Alice Martinez would be coming on in a matter of minutes, followed by Stein.
The true rally was about to begin.
seventeen
It was like a standing-only concert when the main act is about to appear—everybody pressing forward, closing up all the empty spaces. There was nothing that Keisha could really say to me, no more than there was anything I could say to her to assure her that things would be all right with Mira. She tried to tell me I was wrong about me and Jimmy, but most of her words got lost as we wound our way through the crowd in order to get back to our group. I managed to ask her where Sara had gone, and she told me she had decided to spend the rally with Joe and the rest of her college friends.
When we got back to everybody, Jimmy shot me a look to ask where I’d been, then saw Keisha behind me and had his answer. Since Jimmy was standing close to Mira, Keisha peeled off and headed toward Gus and the triplets while I went back to where I’d been before. Other people pushed and prodded around us, trying to get nearer to the front, stepping over people’s blankets and bags to get there. Something about all the movement and the closeness of it started to make me nervous. It was, I guess, another remnant from the Reign of Fear, when crowds were made to seem like dangerous things, vulnerable to the actions of a single person with a weapon and a willingness to use it. If isolation meant safety, then this was a high, high risk. We’d been taught to never trust strangers.