19
The meal tent was jammed full of chitter chatter and excited recounts of the day’s close calls. Miles hopped in line for a slice of the action. His fresh face was far from lost in the sea of water protection.
“FNG, huh?” the patron saint of waiting in line turned to ask. “You just get here?”
“That obvious, is it?”
“Yep,” she granted. “Nothing against you or anything, we’re just a pretty tight crew and everybody knows everybody. Plus, you’re not nearly beat up enough to have been here for long. I’m Selam.”
“Miles.”
“Good to meet you Miles. And welcome to camp, we’re glad you’re here.”
“Thanks, good to be here, not sure what to do next though.”
“Well that’s easy, I’d go for a slice of pepperoni and one of those elk and broccoli ones down there, that’s the chef’s specialty.” She grabbed a plate from the stack and filled her own duplicate order. “I’m just messing with you man, I know what you mean, I remember it being a bit overwhelming walking into a scene like this and not knowing where to fit in.”
“A bit,” he agreed.
“Well, do you have any special skills? Like building stuff, or working with solar panels, or cooking or anything?”
“Not particularly.”
“Are you arrestable?”
“Arrestable?”
“Yeah, are you willing to get arrested at the frontline? Do you have any warrants or anything that would come back to bite you. Are you illegally in the country? Are you planning to run for president or something? Not everybody here goes out there, we still need a support team back at camp though, so the protectors that can’t jeopardize a run-in with the popo, hold it down here while we’re disobeying the servants of civility.”
“I guess I’m arrestable, never have been before, would kinda prefer not to be though.”
“Wouldn’t we all. Well, I don’t know, I think some of them like it, another notch on their belt of police brutality. But I’m with you, I’d rather be in and out of there before they know what hit them. But you could get locked up just for being here at camp, you know?”
“For real?”
“Oh yeah, they threaten a raid every week or so, claim we’re trespassing and organizing crimes, but they’re probably just trying to scare us off before we gain too much traction out there. Do you know how to do dishes?”
“Yeah, of course,” he muttered, as he imagined his first night of incarcerated invasion.
“Well there you go,” she settled it. “That’s a great first job until you get your hands dirty and your feet wet, plus you’ll be everyone’s hero before they even know your name. Here, you wanna come sit with me and my crew at that end table over there? You got a lot of people to meet, so you might as well get started.”
“Sure, thanks.”
“No probs, just don’t get discouraged if some of them take a while to warm up to you, we’ve already had a few infiltrators through here and we’re expecting more as camp really gets rolling. You’re not a spy, are you?”
“Don’t think so, probably not smart enough to pull that one off anyway.”
“Good, cause you have to tell me if you are, it’s in the rule book. It’s whatever though, we’d still give you some pizza, and we’d probably have you turned from the darkside by your second piece.”
They took a seat at the last table in the row as she introduced her new recruit. It was a rowdy bunch, all frontliners he figured, and undeniably bonded in a way beyond anything he’d ever witnessed. He was warmly welcomed and passively interrogated, the Earthhouse earned him some points and a foot in the door. What kind of self-respecting DAPL-doer would spend a month playing in the dirt?
Johan was the fixer, he could get ahold of anything anywhere at anytime, he had some kind of outside support team that made him the go-to guy for special requests. Bill built stuff, around camp and out at the frontline, he was a covert ninja who could slip in and throw up a treesit right above their noses. Miles couldn’t make out what it was exactly that Ambrose did, but he could tell it was something clandestine, and he appeared to know an awful lot about the machinery they were up against.
Selam was the biggest enigma, she seemed to be a leader of some sort, or at least the lead strategist, not that they delved too deeply into their top secret agenda with unvetted ears tuned in. She was Ethiopian, but was adopted into the American dream when she was five. She went from literally being a starving kid on the streets of Africa, to the only child of a fifty-something white conservative christian couple who had been out of touch with their own generation, let alone two generations deeper into the age of technology, where a black teenage orphan grew up struggling to connect with those closest to her. They’d rescued her from the dirt roads of poverty, gifted her with the excess of the middle class, she was the luckiest little African and her white saviors let her know it anytime she didn’t fall in line with a way of life that she began to recognize as the very institution that destroyed her homeland in the first place. They really did mean well, in their own self-righteous kind of way, but it was only a matter of time before she broke free to join the rebel alliance.
“What about you Miles?” she asked, as she took a bite of crisp and fluffy frybread crust. “You got any daddy issues?”
He had, in fact, butted heads with his father, as he struggled to escape a similar set of conservative values. A common upbringing among the population of black sheep, whose predisposition for rebellion was fostered from an early age. He tried to wrap eighteen years of repression into a tight yarn to unravel, but the thread was cut short, as the last two members of the squad sat down at the cool kids table.
“Nice, you found us. I’m Jordan by the way.”
“Miles.”
“Good to know you brother. And this is Tiana.”
Miles gave her a subtle wave and a “Hey,” but all he got back was an unenthusiastic nod. Selam cut in before he had time to overanalyze her blasé demeanor.
“You guys’ll be happy to know that Miles here has volunteered to do the dishes.”
He’d almost forgotten about them.
“Good one,” approved Jordan. “I knew I had a good feeling about you. Are your homies somewhere around here too?”
He’d almost forgotten about them.
“Oh, I see ‘em, over there kicking it with Chef and Smokey,” Jordan nodded over Miles’ shoulder. “Now those guys know how to get in at camp, always be friends with the kitchen, rule number one.”
“I thought rule number one was to always back in,” teased Selam.
“He told me it was to always pee first,” Bill jumped in line.
“Alright, alright, alright,” Jordan defended himself. “You guys know I have a highly complex rule numbering system that, quite frankly, I wouldn’t expect any of you to understand, so I just cap it at one, for your benefit.”
“Oh, is that what it is?” deciphered Selam.
“Maybe. Plus, I also told both of you that we were best friends, now I’m gonna let you guys figure out which one I rounded up.”
The table erupted, Jordan had won his second zing of the night, or so he thought.
“Nah man, Ambrose is my best friend,” Bill exchanged a slap and a bump with his closest ally.
“Yeah, and my best friend is this girl I’ve known since I was a kid, Jenny Jenkins, real do-gooder, you’d probably like her.”
“Looks like you’re on your own for this one pal,” Bill completed the zing reversal.
“I hate you guys,” Jordan muttered, as he held his head in shame.
“Oh c’mon, that’s not very nice, especially to your sixth and seventh best friends, eighth maybe, top ten for sure.”
Jordan perked up as he launched an unwanted crust at Selam’s forehead, which she effortlessly caught and devoured. “Thanks bud.”
“Alright, alright, alright,” he conceded with his hands in the air. “You win.”
“As if that were ever in question.”
Miles was loving it. The quick wit chemistry of the unit. And as he looked around the tent, he saw clusters of energy just like this one, and travelers buzzing around them all, sharing laughter and food and information, each person a cell in the organism of revolution. He extrapolated the web of connection to the next level, soon there would be multiple mess halls, and there are already other camps, all focused on their various flavors of resistance, but all rooted at the core. The transients in-between are the same that fill their ranks, and Miles was experiencing being the conduit of Levi’s nomad mojo. Pretty cool.
He also noticed a similar vibe of style among his campmates, and maybe an actual vibe too. Everyone wore all sorts of different apparel, yet they all felt like they were part of some cohesive grand design, threads interwoven on people interweaving to create a symbiotic hive of poetry in motion.
“Well, one thing that is in question,” segued Yohan. “Is what in the hell was going down on the radio earlier? I don’t see any of those guys here yet.”
“Yeah, I know. Squatch is gonna be mad if he doesn’t get at least half a pie,” estimated Ambrose. “What were they working on down there?”
“Ahem,” Tiana edged in, with her first word of the conversation. Miles thought he saw her eyes cut towards him as a signal to tighten loose lips.
“Probably something ridiculous anyway,” Selam deflected. “I’ll go check them out in a minute, maybe even make a delivery while I’m at it. But they better tip me this time.”
“Here’s a tip...” Jordan’s scope was set on vengeance. “...shit...I got nothing.”
“Ha, two for two, and I wasn’t even trying, better luck next time...bestie. Hey, you wanna get Miles here set up on dishes? Then maybe we can all get together later for a safety meeting.”
“Safety first.”