Steve? Previous law enforcement experience?
He’d been a file clerk.
When he was with the terrorists, he’d been a rapist.
But it was not my place to bring this up, not my job to question the hiring practices of the police department, and I said nothing. Maybe Steve had changed. Maybe he’d mellowed out, turned over a new leaf.
I posted the list on our bulletin board.
Although I worked at city hall and lived in Thompson and was therefore personally affected by the actions of the city council, I had little or no interest in local politics. Council meetings were held on the first Monday of each month and were televised live on our local community access cable station, but I neither went to them nor watched them.
Ordinarily.
But on the last day of August, Ralph suggested to me that I might want to catch September’s meeting.
We were eating lunch at KFC, and I tossed the bones of my drumstick into the box, wiping my hands on a napkin. “Why?” I asked.
He looked at me. “Your old friend Philipe is going to come before the council with a request.”
Philipe.
I had not heard from him or seen him since coming to Thompson over a year ago. I had half wondered if he had left, gone back to Palm Springs, gone across the country to recruit new terrorists. It wasn’t like him to be so quiet, to maintain such a low profile. He liked power, liked being the center of attention. He craved the spotlight, and I could not see him settling down into anonymity. Not even here in Thompson.
I tried to appear disinterested. “Really?”
The mayor nodded. “I think you’ll find it interesting. You might even want to come down, attend the proceedings.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
But I was curious as to what was going on, what Philipe was up to, and one night I turned the TV to the Thompson channel.
The camera was stationary, and was trained directly on the mayor and the council at the front of the chambers. I could not see anybody in the audience, and I watched for a half hour, waiting through discussions of old business and protocol, before the mayor tabled the discussion and moved on to new business.
“The first item on the agenda,” he said, “is a request by Philipe Anderson.”
Susan Lee, our only female council member, adjusted her glasses. “Request for what?”
“We’ll let the requestor explain that himself. Mr. Anderson?”
I recognized him even from the back as he passed before the camera and took his place in front of the podium. He stood straight and tall and confident, his charisma obvious against the blandness of the laid back mayor and lackluster council, and I saw what had attracted the terrorists to him in the first place. I saw —
— Philipe, covered with blood, hacking at the two unmoving children.
“That’s Philipe?” Jane asked.
I nodded.
“He’s more average-looking than I imagined.”
“He’s Ignored. What did you expect?”
On TV, Philipe cleared his throat. “Mayor. Ladies and gentlemen of the council. The proposal I wish to make is one that will benefit all of Thompson and is in the best interests of not just the community but of all Ignored everywhere. I have here a detailed list of requirements that I will pass out to each of you. It provides an item-by-item accounting of all proposed requisitions, and you can look at it at your leisure and we can discuss it more fully at the next meeting.”
He looked down at the paper on the podium in front of him. “The broad outline of my plan is this: Thompson needs its own military, its own militia. We are, for all intents and purposes, a nation unto ourselves. We have a police force to take care of disturbances within our borders, but I believe that we need an armed force to protect our sovereignty and our interests.”
Two of the council members were whispering to each other. I could hear excited discussion from the audience.
Jane looked at me, shook her head. “Militarization of the city?” she said. “I don’t like it.”
“Let’s settle down here,” the mayor said. He faced Philipe. “What makes you think we need a militia? This sounds like a major expense: uniforms, weapons, training. We have never been threatened; we have never been attacked. I don’t see any real justification for this.”
Philipe chuckled. “Expense? It’s all free. Thompson picks up the tab. All we have to do is request it.”
“But it is the responsibility of this council to determine whether such requests are reasonable or unreasonable.”
“And this is a reasonable request. You say we’ve never been attacked, but Oates sent troops in here in 1970 and killed a hundred and ten people.”
“That was in 1970.”
“It could happen again.” He paused. “Besides, in my proposal I suggest that our militia have offensive as well as defensive capabilities.”
The mayor frowned. “Offensive?”
“We, the Ignored, have been abused and exploited for our entire history. We have been at the mercy of the noticed, the powerful. And we have been unable to fight back. Well, I suggest that it is time to fight back. It is time to retaliate for all the injustices that have been perpetrated upon us.
“I am offering to train a crack fighting force of our best and most capable men and mount a frontal assault on the White House.”
The room broke out in shouts and arguments. Philipe stood there grinning. This was his milieu. This was what he loved, what he lived for, and I could see the happiness on his face. Against my better judgment, I felt happy for him, too.
The mayor, by this time, had lost all control of the meeting. Members of the audience were cheering Philipe, arguing among themselves, yelling at individual council people.
“They’ve had it their way for far too long!” Philipe shouted. “We can attack, and they’ll never see us. Not until it’s too late! We’ll be in control of the White House! We’ll stage the first successful coup in U.S. history! The country will be ours!”
I could see the way this was going. Even if the mayor and the council turned Philipe down, the public was behind him. If Ralph and the rest of them wanted to keep their jobs, they’d have to go along with his proposals.
I turned off the TV.
Jane placed her head on my shoulder, held my hand. “What do you think’s going to happen?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”
For the next several months, the Thompson channel was the preferred source of news for everyone in the city. It must have really thrown off the Nielson ratings. Our local cable newscaster, Glen Johnstone, provided nightly updates on the training and equipment procurement of the militia. Because of our unique status in relation to America’s top industries, all Philipe and his followers had to do was fill out special order forms for the guns and vehicles they wanted and wait for them to arrive. Someone, somewhere, keeping tabs on orders, probably noted an increase in the demand for military supplies, and someone somewhere probably ordered production increased. New jobs were probably created.
I wondered, at first, why there was no crackdown, why no one from Thompson or National Research Associates or one of the other corporations put a stop to this, why no one from the FBI or the ATF conducted an investigation. On television, Philipe made clear his intent, refusing to tone down his rhetoric. “We will bring down the power elite!” he declared. “We will establish a new government in this country!” I realized, though, that our broadcasts were probably as ignored as everything else about us. The reason no one put a stop to Philipe was because no one knew what he had planned — even though he came right out and stated it over the airwaves.