Tonight’s the night.

The mantra was shared by many, separated by miles. In unison, phones were shut off preceding the leaving of homes and bars and prior events leading up to the one they had been waiting for. Again, tonight was the night.

Roger Carrick had found the place they were going to hold it. For a while they’d met only at houses of the members assuming there was a certain level of privacy afforded by mortgage or rent payments. But, before long, there were ruptures to this belief. Unexpected knocks on the doors by officers claiming neighbors’ noise complaints, an excuse that never really made sense considering they had good relationships with all the neighbors around the abodes they’d wind up at. It made them uncomfortable. It made them feel watched. So, Roger—owing to an insecurity about his position in the group which everyone, including him, knew only existed because no one really cared enough to tell him that there was no real reason for him to be around—had gone ahead and taken initiative and found what he described as “the most bitchin’ abandoned mill you’ve ever seen,” which he’d invited Chesley Carson out to lunch to relay the information to, in hopes that he’d go ahead and relay it to everyone else. The excursion was one Chesley only agreed to because around the time he’d begun paying (most) of his own bills he’d made it a point to never turn down a meal on another’s dime, even if the invitee was someone, like Roger, that he disliked. They’d gotten ramen and Roger insisted upon midday shots of sake of which Chesley imbibed while he savored the spicy broth.

The mill was more of a barn, and it stood abandoned miles away from anything useful. As the sun set the grass surrounding was untouched, somehow still dripping the dew of the morning, but once darkness had taken over, upon that same grass, was the metallic herd that brought the congregants, trampling but not grazing.

Upon entering the first thing that was seen was a table, fold-out, heavy on alcohol, light on snacks, heavy on plates, light on cups. Beyond the meager offerings was a semi-circle of metal chairs—also fold-out—that created the shape inside which one could preside and sermonize. The chairs didn’t nearly number the expected attendees, but when was it ever that someone held everyone’s attention? They were joined but splintered: a frayed end to a shoelace, attempting to ward off predators in the same way a school of fish suggested size. 

Then, beyond that, it was unfurnished. The Venmo donations leading up to the meeting were sparse. Before, they’d felt comfortable filling movie theaters and concert venues with their QR code and their message but, with recent developments, they thought that the less their presence was amplified to the uninitiated, the better.

The unclaimed, empty space, upon the arrival of J.R. Purvis and the Toadies, was swept. The lack of dust, revealing the subtle differentiation in the dirty grey of the rest of the floor from the clean, marked the stage, where the lifeblood of dissent was to emanate from. The extension cord almost wasn’t long enough to keep power strip in useable range.

J.R., that self-styled troubadour, marched through with loaded hands, never less than three to four hundred dollars worth of equipment at once, bumping into or nearly bumping into each and every person who arrived quote-unquote on time. His height was a source of discomfort for most, and his gauntness only added to the feeling that a creature made of only limbs was cavorting through their shared spaces. It had been years since he hadn’t ducked underneath a doorway, and he had felt the kiss of chandeliers with such frequency that he had begun to consider proposing to the next one he found himself lip-locked with.

The night was well underway. The formerly deceased structure was momentarily resuscitated, and the waves of sixties Dylan, laughter, and conversation spread outward toward the trees. Amy Still stood back amongst the last vestiges of shadows, Dasani in hand, and surveyed the scene with the mild scorn she held for her compatriots. She viewed them as day-scholars, tourists, trawling a space in which she lived. They arrived for hedonistic pleasure more than they had for any specific cause and though she understood that power and legitimacy existed in numbers she couldn’t help but scoff at the association with some of the individuals preening and prancing around, that within the eyes of the law, should they be caught, they were the exact same.

She’d woken up to the injustices midway through the teens like most others her age and was dismissed by self-described liberals as hysteric whenever the word fascism was peppered into conversation. They believed in America, and only matching grey uniforms with black eagles could signify descent into the unsavory; anything else could be handled by checks and balances. “That can’t happen in this country,” or something to that effect was definitively stated, putting an end to any further discussion. Then the Capitol was breached, but it still couldn’t happen in their country. Then polling for the next election began to trickle in, but it still couldn’t happen in their country. Then the God Emperors of the United States, on the first of July, sanctioned any presidential whim, but it still couldn’t happen in their country, and so November came to pass, and those who’d continued to insist that Cupid Shuffling in the name of the rotting corpse they left on display was enough to deter the inevitable were left mimicking Munch’s most famous creation, wondering where they’d gone wrong.

She had marched to oppose death, demonstrated to oppose local militarization, and had done both as well as posted to bring attention to genocide. She saw the flames that engulfed and ran at them, ignoring the stink of burning flesh. She had more than proved her bonafides, and on the single occasion that she had taken up spirits with everyone else she had gotten aggressive and had grilled the others to try and prove theirs. There were some who had marched, more who had posted and, when they’d only done the latter, she questioned why they hadn’t done the former and responses ranged from lack of awareness of where groups gathered to a fear of termination from jobs they hated but needed to keep. Her tirade finally arrived at Vinny Gray, J.R.’s right-hand man, lead guitarist, and, when he was on stage, Toadie Number One. Vinny blew cigarette smoke in her face as she made her accusations. His eyes were red and looked through her in the moments they weren’t fixed on taking in everything her neckline revealed, the only moments in which the corporeal registered. She breathed deeply upon finishing, ending by asking why he was there if he didn’t care, to which he said, “I do care. I care just as much as you.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

“Not at all. I get up on that stage and I play. Your resistance is in the streets. Mine is there. I spread joy. They want to take that away from us. I give it back to the people. Joy is an act of resistance.”

She didn’t know the album title he referred to and mulled on the sentiment to that day. She watched them in their space, adding a bit of ska flavor to “Masters of War”, locked in with only each other, and still couldn’t find it in herself to see it as anything other than frivolous and solipsistic.

The song finished and they took a break and J.R. walked over to the table by the pulpit and, seeing no cups, claimed a half full bottle for himself and sauntered away, followed by the sermon Preston Darby was giving to a few familiar faces and a few he couldn’t quite place.

“I mean, what really can we do? The Patriot Act’s basically guaranteed that any armed uprising’ll be snuffed out before it can even begin. Those towers falling stopped there from being heroes. John Brown? Hero. Carlos The Jackal? Hero. Che Guevara? Hero. Baader-Meinhof? Heroes. The Union Nationale des Etudiants de France? Heroes. Used to be you could walk straight onto a tarmac with a rocket launcher and fuck shit up and get away and now we’re lucky that a drone isn’t on its way right now to wipe this place off the face of the Earth.”

The watching heads nodded, sagely taking in the bemoaning, in various degrees of agreement, unsure what his view of some of the individuals and regimes mentioned truly was. He was impassioned, yes, but if the curtain was peeled back it wasn’t black and white or color photography capturing the actual events, but instead the jittery handheld urgency of Olivier Assayas set to the punk brilliance of Wire, or the career shifting arduousness of Steven Soderbergh, or the vague murmurs about them in the background of a remake of a seventies horror classic that gave him his view of the thing. Hearts were in correct places, some would say, which was all that mattered.

The heat of the night, ignorable at first, made momentarily better by the setting of the sun, returned to being oppressive. The rising temperature, more noticeable each year, beading sweat on every viewable surface. Wet brows and upper lips, and shiny arms and legs were attributes they all shared; none were exempt. Effects went beyond the congregated. Suburban homes struggled to maintain their setting of seventy-two and companies had begun to suggest that it was time everyone began acquiescing to seventy-four, maybe even seventy-five. Rivers grew browner and their depth continued to lower. Medicines sold faster and their side effects grew stronger. Trees were felled en masse and in their place retirement communities and gas stations and shopping centers bloomed. Factory workers came home with coughs their grandfathers and great-grandfathers had come home with. Armored vehicles with turrets on top prowled the streets and searches and seizures no longer required probable cause. The richer grew richer and the middle class became an exhibit in a museum. The college educated and jobless applied on Indeed and Glassdoor and every other site with even dumber names and watched as their inbox filled with another of the same answer while on TV the president and the rest of his cabal claimed jobs had never been more widely available and that, if you didn’t have one, it was most likely because you aspired to welfare, which, like everything else, was on its way out.

J.R. rejoined the Toadies and they began running through the songs associated with Vietnam. The group was restless. Smoke and dust filled the air. The bottles were close to the bottom and a few different people said they would be right back. Amy watched as any semblance of political thought was crushed under the weight of revelry and wondered if there was any point in lingering any longer. Then, just as the kettle neared screaming, just as the outside world was nearly drowned like a bastard child, in walked Huey Hester and Gregory Graham. The music didn’t stop but the dancing did, and all eyes were on the two who walked in exuding all business.

They cleared off the table and placed a large rolled-up paper and something heavy and wrapped down and took in the state of things.

“What the hell is going on here?” Huey asked.

Everyone was afraid to speak so Huey took the opportunity to retain the floor.

“You all stand around partying. When you hit the streets all you do is hold up signs. The time for inactivity is over. The time to strike is now.” They’d heard this all before. Angry and militant Huey and Gregory set fires and defaced public property and antagonized civilians and found even the strident nature of someone like Amy lacking what was needed to make a difference. “You sit around playing songs from the sixties because this generation doesn’t have war cries of their own. You use the slogans of others because you can’t think of what it is you stand for. ‘Sous les Pavés, la Plage’, you say it over and over, but do you understand what it means? Are you to tear up these streets and show the world the sand underneath?” Again, silence. “Well, if you’re not, then we are.”

They unwrapped the heavy object and let them all see the six cylinders, the ivory handle, and the threatening mouth of the most American thing there was. They unrolled the paper and showed the map that was printed on. They had a man on the inside, they said, a disgruntled staffer who was done with the Governor and was ready and willing to show them the lay out of his house and the best ways in which to get inside.

“These monsters won’t respond to words. Revolution isn’t written with ink. Two of the three most famous who refused to fight were gunned down in the streets. We can talk and talk while those who deserve to be drawn and quartered stuff their ears with cotton. These cries, these ideas fall on deaf ears my friends. But what’s coming tonight they’ll hear loud and clear.”

Roger Carrick, frightened by the rhetoric, stepped outside for a cigarette to calm his nerves. The air was muggy and still. They continued talking and he kept walking so that the noise would become faint. As he got closer to the tree line his friends got quieter and the snapping of twigs and panting of dogs got louder. In the distance he could see the beams of the flashlights.