On ‘Plainview 4’ Marty’s growing up. And he hates it. It’s a difficult thing to leave the certainties of childhood behind and grasp the idea that adult life isn’t all about drinking beer and driving cars (hopefully not at the same time…), but about a bewildering array of conflicting choices. Maybe that’s why Reconstruction might be attractive – it makes the world simpler, by telling people who might otherwise use their brains what to think and feel and say. Nothing is ever black and white: even faith. As it says in Mark’s Gospel: "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." I always think that if we were all a little less certain, then the world would be a safer place.   Plainview 4 - August 2004   I figured that all the talk about global warming was true. It was high summer and hotter than hell itself. It hadn’t rained for months, not since early June, and the ground had baked so hard that it had cracked into little hexagons. I wondered why it did that, and not squares or any other shape. The creek hadn’t so much dried as been fossilised, and the weather forecasters on TV had taken on a slightly manic demeanour when the news anchor asked them if there was going to be any change in the weather. The sprinklers were working all evening, all night, all morning, all over town. I lived my life to the sound of tsst-tsst-tsst, and it was strangely quiet around noon. Out in the fields they were doing what they could, but the corn was looking sick. The men at the mill were always cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, but there wasn’t a drop of moisture in the air to lay so much as a particle of dust. Every wheel, every footfall sent a little beige cloud into the air. A car coming down one of the dirt tracks telegraphed its progress with a biblical pillar of smoke. You get the idea. It was damn dry. Of course, I couldn’t say damn anymore. My Dad had proposed a local ordinance against blaspheming, swearing and general cussing back in the Spring, and it had been adopted enthusiastically by the citizens of Plainview. Since I was a minor, I was free of being fined the ten bucks that was imposed on adult offenders, but my parents would have to carry the can, and hey, my Dad was mayor. There was one bright point on the horizon: I was going back to Plainview Elementary, and I could goof around with Pete Mayer properly, the way kids are supposed to do. My Dad had said he’d fix the school up, and the school board now resembled a mix between the church flower rota and the local rotary club. I never asked about what happened to the old school board. May be they got ground up with the flour in the mill and we’d be eating them in our Wundabread for the next year. That was the way things seemed to work now: not the flour thing, I made that up, but that the same people seemed to be running everything. The whole of Pierce County had gone over to Reconstruction. Even the Sheriff got voted out and replaced. I didn’t even know that the town could do that. One moment, he was everywhere in his black and white cruiser, the most recognisable figure in Plainview, the next he was just… gone. Someone else was sitting in the driver’s seat, and I wondered if the new guy had taken over his house and his family too. Mr. Mayer was lucky the new regime really liked their golf, or he would have gone too. His greens were oases of life in a brittle, crumbling world, and he worked twice as hard at keeping them that way. So although he never disguised his faint amusement with Reconstruction, as if it was some passing fancy that would be here today and gone tomorrow, the townsfolk appreciated his efforts and tolerated his unsaid criticism. That was another thing: Reconstruction had split the town in two. Not in equal halves, but into a majority for and a minority against. When I say against, I don’t mean they were burning tyres in the street and waving placards demanding the right to say "Crap". It was more like those in favour saying, "We’ll shop at this store, they’re Reconstructionists here," leaving the reverse unsaid. It was shock then to be told one night at the dinner table that I wasn’t to play with Pete Mayer anymore. I fought my immediate reaction, which was to fling my cutlery down and make a scene. I was even uncertain if I was allowed to say "Geez!" because it might be short for Jesus and that would be blasphemy. "Can I ask why?" I finally said. My knuckles were white on my knife and fork with the effort. "Chris Mayer’s taking me to court," said Dad, "and it wouldn’t be fair to you boys to have to take sides. This is grown-up stuff." He shrugged, as if he had lawsuits filed against him every day. "Why’s he doing that?" "Apparently, I’ve violated his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. Don’t worry, the Party is backing me. We’ll be fine." Mom reached out over the table and put her hand on mine. "I know this is going to be difficult for you, but it’s best you don’t go over to his house. Until this whole thing is settled." Like I wasn’t going to play with Pete until we were all grown up. I’d have to extend my list of excuses to cover this one, too. But I couldn’t let it just happen to me without some sign of protest from me. "I don’t understand why this had to split me and Pete up. It’s not like his dad says bad things about you when I’m over there." Dad looked serious. "That could change. Lawyers can play hardball in cases like this. He says the Profanity Ordinance is unconstitutional – that’s fine, it’s his right as an American citizen to challenge it in court. But the Reconstruction Party says it isn’t. Doesn’t stop a man saying whatever he likes, just as long as he doesn’t foul the air with bad language. The judge’ll decide one way or the other." I watched enough TV to know how these things worked. "But if you lose, you’ll appeal. If he loses, he’ll appeal. It’ll go on forever." "So we’ll let the Supreme Court decide." "Sure, in ten years time." "Marty," said my mom, her voice full of warning. I chose to ignore her. Dad tried a different tack. He tried to reason with me for may be the first time in my life. "You don’t get the big picture, Marty. Come next year, we’re reckoning on a Reconstruction President and a Reconstruction Congress. They’ll amend the Constitution so that the Profanity Ordinance is applied in every State, and there’ll be no smart lawyer who can gainsay it. In the meantime, we let the courts pass it around." Big mistake on Dad’s part. He’d just told me that his stupid Ordinance was wrong, and Pete’s dad was right, at least until they’d fixed up the First Amendment like they fixed up my school. I knew they behaved like this in the soaps, but my own parents? Straight after dinner, I vowed, I’d hightail it over to Pete’s and tell his dad everything. I liked Pete’s dad, and at that moment, a whole lot better than my own. I covered myself with a meek, "Okay. Guess so," and started eating. I knew I’d fooled Mom, and perhaps Dad too. I hadn’t counted on Charlie, mainly because she was my dumb little sister and she didn’t come up on the radar very often, if at all. After dinner, I made my excuses – some friend over on 6th Street - and went straight out to the garage to get my bike. As I sat in the baked-hot driveway, timing my pumping more air into my tyres to the tsst-tsst-tsst of the neighbourhood sprinklers, Charlie snuck up behind me. "You’re going to see Pete." I jumped. How was it that she could be so quiet when the rest of the time she filled her world with meaningless noise? "Am not." "Are too. I was listening, and I know you." She walked around in front of me and stood just like Mom; arms crossed in front of her, leaning slightly back. "Charlie, you just go away." "Won’t. You can’t tell Mr. Mayer what Dad told you. It’d be wrong." "You can’t stop me." "I’ll tell Dad. I’ll call him now." I put down the pump and got up smartly. "You will not." "Marty, Dad could go to prison." I moved closer to her, not wanting to shout my business so anyone could hear. "How do you figure that?" "Well, Dad’ll have to swear on the Bible that he’s telling the truth. If Mr. Mayer knows he’s not, they’ll lock Dad up. What would we do then? What about Mom?" To my shame, I hadn’t a ready reply. I shuffled my feet in the dust. Finally, I said, "What about Mr. Mayer?" "He’s the one who’s taking Dad to court. Get him to drop it." "But he’s right, Charlie!" There it was. My first feelings of injustice. "If Mr. Mayer wants to cuss in the street, we should let him." "It’s a stupid thing to fight over, but it’d be even more stupid to hurt Dad. Mr. Mayer’s going to lose when the new President gets elected." She freed her arms and let them dangle. "You and Pete could be friends if Mr. Mayer dropped his suitcase." "It’s a lawsuit, Charlie." "Whatever." I wracked my brains for a way out of this. For once, Charlie was right. Reconstruction was like the goods train that hauled flour out of the mill. Once it got moving, nothing was going to stop it. Dad was right. In a year or so, all the fancy legal talk for and against the Ordinance would be over. And Mr. Mayer was right, too. For the moment. What a thing to land on a twelve year-old. So I did what any other person without a spine would have done: I put off making the decision. That was the way I worked it in my mind. I didn’t have to go one way or the other. I could sit on the fence all nice and tidy, and see which way it worked out. Anyone else would have said that I was just opting for the easy life and taking the coward’s way out. But not me. I put my bike back into the garage and moped upstairs to my room. I lay on my bed, looking at the map above me, eyes moving from one gold pin to the other. Five. Just as I was drifting into a trance, chasing the names of the capital cities of Europe, the window shook in its frame like I’d left it open and a storm had slammed it shut. I was back out into the street, along with the rest of the town. Mom was screaming "it’s a bomb, it’s a bomb," and trying to wrestle me and Charlie into the tornado shelter at the same time as Dad was saying, "it’s the mill, it’s the mill." I don’t know why. Maybe to make up for the yellow streak I’d shown earlier. I grabbed my bike and started pedalling furiously towards the looming black cloud that was spiking the clear blue sky of evening. The mill was a couple of miles outside of town, off Route 13 where it crossed the Burlington Railroad. I slowed briefly as I came to the Highway, but everyone was too busy gawking at the smoke to drive. I hurtled down West, and the town’s one fire truck overtook me, bells ringing, horn sounding, volunteer firemen hanging from the back and still trying to get dressed. A pick-up truck was right behind it. It looked like our next-door neighbour’s, but it slewed to a halt a hundred yards ahead and it wasn’t Mr. Taylor who leaned out. "Put the bike in the back," said Dad, and I threw it up and over the tailgate, still running. He was pulling away even before I’d got the door closed. "You got two choices, Marty. You can sit in the truck and touch nothing, or if you think you can do exactly what you’re told – and I mean exactly – you can come with me." I figured I wasn’t a little kid anymore, so I said. "I’ll do as I’m told." Someone gave me a lift back, after dark. I was soot-smeared, dog-tired, and I had some ugly stains on my clothes. Other people’s blood that wouldn’t come out after a couple of washes. Mom threw them out. "What was it like, what did you see?" asked the eighth-grade kids when we started back in the Fall. The thing I remember most was the sheer number of men just stumbling around, their clothes in tatters, bleeding from their ears and their noses. Some were burnt, bald as coots and skin blistering, blind as well as deaf. Some were wounded, hit by shrapnel from the exploding silo. But most seemed like a ragged zombie army, walking a few steps, falling over, getting up, leaving the last threads of their shirt on the ground. I told the other kids it was smoky and scary, and left it at that. After a while they drifted off, leaving me with the image of a ladder being used as a stretcher, my Dad at one end, and volunteer firefighter Mayer at the other, hauling body after body out of the main milling floor.