Chapter 6: Fun with flags

(This is the sixth installment of a hopefully novel-length humor/social criticism piece — find the other (draft) chapters in previous posts.)

Tyler had been on the force about three years, but was still considered a bit of a rookie by some of his peers. He had answered the 911 dispatcher’s robbery-in-progress with lights and siren, but had switched them off a couple of blocks away; he braked hard, careful not to screech the tires, at the suburban driveway with the jacked-up pickup. He double-checked the address, since there were plenty of lookalike houses and vehicles in the neighborhood.

The dispatcher had been right; the caller was obviously drunk. The man said his name was William and that he had been robbed by a church lady, or that was the best that could be made out of his slurred speech. Tyler told him to stand outside as he entered with his service weapon drawn. There was a William-shaped indentation in the otherwise brushed orange shag (Shag? he thought, is he an antiques dealer?), and an open bottle of cheap tequila announced its presence with its unmistakeable odor.

William, forgetting or ignoring the cop’s demand that he remain outside, came back in as Tyler was finishing up clearing the scene for active suspects. He showed the gun cabinet to the policeman, opening the case with the combination, and pointing where the weapons had been. Tyler coughed at the reek of Michael’s soaked t-shirt and boozy breath.

“Do you drink much, Mister Winslow?”

“What? No!” Michael spluttered, “That’s for guests, I mean, look, the bottles on the bar are unopened except for, uh, this Cuervo here, she must’ve spilled it to make me look bad.”

“So a church lady made you drink tequila, got you smashed in fact, unlocked your guns while you were…indisposed…and stole nothing else. A gun-running church lady.”

“Look! I have video!”

He went to his desktop and pulled up a video that showed a small woman with a bible approaching the door. The rest was static.

“Damn! What a time for’t to crap out!” William slurred.

“So you’re saying she unlocked this case, took out some really expensive guns, locked it back up, and made you drink booze,” Tyler said. He had a thought. “Are your guns insured, Mister Williams?”

Tyer’s sarcasm was lost on Michael, who had already flopped into a La-Z-Boy and accidentally triggered the recline and massage buttons. “Wha?”

“I’ll write a report, that’s all I can do for you right now, Mister Williams. We’ll let you know if we find your guns.” Right behind the altar of the First Temple Of Marauding Little Church Ladies, Tyler thought, suppressing a smirk.

“I pay your goddamn’ taxes and I expect, ah,” — but the massage was having its effect, and Michael was asleep by the time the officer closed the door with a click. In his dream Jesus walked across the pool and through the back door, reached into the gun rack, and made off with Michael’s pearl-handled pistol.

………………………….

“Lucy, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” Pierre said, as they carried a bundle of large-ish flags into the rear door of the Sprinter. She hopped in and headed for the driver seat, casually walking over the flags.

“Well, this stunt is practically guaranteed to be mostly harmless,” she replied, digging in the seat for her lip gloss.

“No, I mean, how can we put these these things in front of those Klan types and not get stomped? Also, won’t we get identified with facial recognition stuff?

“Oh. Well.” Lucy opened the overhead cabinet over the sink and pulled out two containers. “We mix these two hours before the event, keeping them cool with a bit of the dry ice, and brush the stuff on the flags. We’ll have to clean up pretty carefully. Then we set them out on the edge of the sidewalk by the Park Blocks, you wearing the anonymizer mask and me with a veil over my hat. I warned the Black Bloc not to mess with these, that it’s not what they think, and they’ll probably keep the rookie antifa off of them.

“Safety first,” Pierre said, and Lucy looked back at him as she started the van. She wasn’t going to take the bait.

“Sure, Pierre, somebody could take the flag and get hurt. But we’ll time it right.”

They arrived at a parking lot several blocks away, and took a minute to prepare the flags, and to shove them into thick garbage bags. There was a worrying delay as one of the disposable bikes had a flat tire, which they solved with Lucy’s can of flat-fixer (“Don’t leave home without it,” Lucy said, as she tossed it back into the van).

Pierre, wearing his mask, was to approach from the South of the demonstration, while Lucy proceeded at a stately pace, so as not to blow off her broad-brimmed hat with its veil. She propped the bike on a Douglas fir and extracted the flags, spacing them several feet apart as she jammed them into the soft earth. The bigots smiled at what they assumed was an unexpected boon from an approving public. Lucy beamed maniacally at them from under her veil. The silk flowers on her hat bobbed, and if anyone noticed the chemical odor, they politely kept silent.

Lucy could see a large man on the opposite side of the park doing the same thing. His face looked rather old considering his youthful bearing, but little suspicion devolved on him, as Lucy had already won them over with her patriotic half-dozen-flag display. Lucy daintily picked off her white gloves and put them in the flag bag, then sailed off gracefully on the little bicycle, with the chemical-soaked bag and gloves in its wicker basket.

Out of sight and blocks away, she met up with Pierre, and they stuffed the bags into the edge of a locked dump box, and checked each other for residue. Pierre found a glob on Lucy’s elbow, and she was grateful to be spared the consequences.

“Last of the red-hot mamas,” Pierre commented.

“Ah ha.”

Lucy shucked off the frilled dress as well, revealing yoga pants and a lavender top. She crammed the dress together with the hat, and Pierre’s mask and overshirt, into the dump box.

“Won’t they find this shit?” asked Pierre, worriedly looking around for cameras.

“Not likely,” Lucy replied, though she also nervously re-checked the brick walls and the languishing tree at the corner. “I’ve used this before. They empty this one at 3 AM.”

They walked for twenty minutes, back to a restaurant that had open-air service near the demonstration. As the Black Bloc and antifa counterdemonstrators shouted at the flag-waving bigots, and as the police sound van issued warnings, they ordered tacos and tea.

“Amazing sound system on that thing,” Lucy commented.

“Are we upwind, though?” Pierre asked, as they received their drinks.

“Should be.” Lucy licked her index finger and held it in the air. “Yup.” She began typing a claim of responsibility for the stunt into social media on a burner phone, pressed ‘send,’ and walked over to a street-corner trash bin to toss it.

Things were proceeding in the usual manner, with the Portland cops standing facing the anti-racists in case they needed to beat them, and the taunts flying on both sides, when a bit of a ruckus broke out. Somehow one of the flags had caught fire. Lucy and Pierre peered from their table.

The camouflage-clad crowd tried to stomp the burning banner out, and it seemed they had succeeded for a moment, when it inexplicably burst into flames again. More flag-stomping then ensued, with a lot of shouting and cursing as a bigot’s waffle-soled footware had caught on fire as well. His compatriots aided him in a rapid de-booting, as he hopped on one foot. To make matters worse, two other flags were on fire, and no one had seen who was igniting them, despite loud calls to identify the culprit. The previous failure of the stomping technique was lost on others, who again plucked the offending flaming flags out from the grass, to flatten them with their expensive, shiny name-brand boots.

The black bloc began laughing hysterically, as the police were forced to turn around. Some genius showed up with a fire extinguisher and put a flag out, only to see it again burst into flames as he turned to another flame-engulfed flag. The police responded by tear-gassing the anarchists, who fled as the Klan types rapidly kicked off their smoldering boots, cursing each other for not helping faster.

Lucy and Pierre ordered beers.

………..

“Local police are asking for your help in identifying a conservatively dressed woman and an older man engaging in terrorism, arson and desecration of a sacred object.” The TV news on the van’s screen showed a distant and grainy view of the flag-planting with helpful circles and highlighting, and a closer view of Pierre passing a shop on his motocross bike. This was followed by coverage of the ensuing mayhem.

Lucy sighed, climbing into her bunk in the van, tossing the TV remote to Pierre. “It’s hard to find absolutely all the cameras, so I kinda expected that. Still, I think it’s time to travel again.”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Pierre.

……………………………….