Hour of the Rat

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

IT’S WEIRD SEEING HIM after all this time. His hair’s lighter than the photo I have-bleached, I guess, but cut short. He’s clean-shaven, and his cheeks have lost some of that fullness. He looks thinner and older.

The eyes, though, they look the same, toffee-brown with those flecks of gold.

“I’m Ellie McEnroe,” I say.

“I figured.” He’s holding a wooden flute, and he uses it to gesture toward a bench at the far end of the plaza. “You want to sit? It’s a nice view.”

“Sure.”

I follow him over to the bench. He’s wearing jeans and a battered North Face jacket, probably counterfeit, though it’s getting harder to tell.

He sits, facing away from the plaza. He’s right: The view is amazing. Below us is a valley. Terraced fields climb up the opposite hill, and they’re different colors, all these shades of green, some of them white, like maybe they’re planted with flowers. I can’t really tell from here. There are clumps of dark trees among the fields, a cluster of wooden houses. White smoke rises up from a controlled burn, meeting the white mist drifting down from the peaks. And those torn white flags on crooked sticks, fluttering in the breeze.

“You’re a friend of my brother’s?”

“Yeah. From the Sandbox.” I mean, he knows that already, right?

“Why’ve you been looking for me?”

“Doug asked me to,” I say. “He’s not doing so good. And he’s worried about you. He wants you to come home.”

Jason makes a sigh of a laugh. “Yeah.”

It’s almost like he doesn’t care. But I don’t know how much he knows, about what’s going on with Dog right now. If he didn’t get the email I sent, maybe none of it.

He fingers the wooden flute. I hope he isn’t going to start playing it.

“So… is he worse?” he finally asks. “Or is it just the same old tragedy?”

I can feel myself bristle. It pisses me off, hearing him talk like that. What the fuck does Jason know about what Dog went through? About what any of us went through? Sitting on his ass in some coffeehouse playing his flute.

“He’s in the hospital. He’s had some seizures. They’re not sure what’s causing it.”

Jason doesn’t say anything. He’s looking at the valley below us. Maybe at the peasant in the field across the way, plowing through the mud behind a water buffalo. Just like they’ve been doing it for the last five thousand years.

“And he wants me to come home. Why? So I can get what’s coming to me? Go to prison?” He laughs again, and now it’s hard. “He can go off to Iraq and Afghanistan and fight for oil or whatever. And that’s fine. That’s patriotic. Me fighting for the future of the planet? I’m some kind of deluded, stupid freak.”

“He doesn’t think that.”

“How the fuck would you know?”

“Because he told me, dickhead,” I snap back. “He said he thinks the charges are bogus.”

“That’s new,” he says. “I guess it’s true, brain injuries change your personality.”

“God, you’re really a little turd,” I say, and I have to admit I’m surprised. I thought he was going to be different. You know, idealistic and all.

I mean, shit. I nearly got killed chasing after this kid.

“Yeah, that’s one of Doug’s nickname’s for me.” He grins slightly.

“Fine, whatever. You’re fighting for the future of the planet. You still can’t go burning people’s shit down.”

“Tell that to the people in Afghanistan we blew up with our drones.”

“Okay, I’m done.” I stand up, slower than I’d like, waiting for the spasm in my leg to ease up so I can walk out of there.

Mission accomplished. Fuck you, asshole.

“I didn’t burn anything down,” he says suddenly. “We had a plant in our group. FBI or Eos security. I don’t know which. He got people pumped up. Kept pushing everybody. That night we went to the Eos facility, it was supposed to be a nonviolent action. Stickers and stencils. I still don’t know what happened. I think he set the fire himself.”

“Burned down his own company’s lab? Destroyed company property?”

“Sure, why not? It’s just one facility. They had all the data backed up. They do that, they can discredit the movement, put a bunch of us in jail, make everyone think it’s okay to treat Greens like terrorists-”

I’m getting that hollow feeling in my gut again. The one I get when I’m hearing something I don’t want to hear, because I know it’s true.

“We threaten them because we’re telling the truth, and they can’t stand that. They don’t want people to know. They just want to keep poisoning the planet and counting their profits, and that’s all they give a shit about. Not about you, not about me, not about a bunch of farmers in China, or India, or the US. We’re fucking roadkill to them.”

Jason’s rigid, tensed up, ready to fight. Now I see the passion that drove him into the mess he’s in. The kid I thought he was.

And then he just deflates.

He’s too young to look this exhausted. This defeated.

Then I remember how I looked when I was his age.

“Anyway, I can’t go home,” he says.

“Yeah. I get that.”

We sit and watch the farmer in the paddy below us, slogging through mud behind his water buffalo, against that backdrop of emerald hills covered with white flowers. I think I can smell them, the flowers, a hint of sweet in the sharp scent of pine.

“He’s probably using a shitload of pesticides,” Jason says.

“So why did you want to meet me?” I finally ask. “Is there something I can do? Something you want me to tell Doug?”

He turns to me, frowning. “I didn’t ask you here,” he says. “I knew who you were because some friends of mine told me you were looking for me.”

And now I’m getting that prickly feeling between my shoulders. Like someone’s got me in his sights.

“I figured you were… I don’t know, maybe working for Eos,” he continues. “Working for somebody.” He shrugs. “I just don’t care anymore.”

“I’m not,” I say, and I’m looking around, looking for Buzz Cut, looking for hajjis, for whoever might have followed me here.

But there’s no one. It’s utterly quiet, except for the wind blowing through the leaves, like a faint shuffling of cards.

“Listen,” I say, “someone spoofed your email address. Said you wanted a meeting with me, and that I’d know where to find you. I figured out where you were through your Langhai videos. And the way I got here, I don’t think anyone followed me. But…”

I take another look around. At the silent plaza, at the cow skull on top of the pole. At the mountains, the mist, the fluttering white flags.

“I don’t think you should stay here,” I say.

“Fuck,” he says quietly.

I expect him to… I don’t know, react. Freak out. Bolt, grab his stuff, and head out of town.

He fingers his flute, like he’s going to start playing it. Then shrugs. “It’s not like I have a lot going on. I’m teaching the village kids some English. I’ll miss that.”

“Sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “But if you’re trying to hide? Maybe this isn’t the best place.”

“You think there’s a better one?” He’s looking out over the hills again. “Where can you hide anymore?”

“Maybe some place that’s not in China, for a start. Or a place in China that’s bigger. A city, like Guangzhou, or Shanghai, where there’s a lot of foreigners and you won’t stand out.”

“A city like Guangzhou or Shanghai’s the last place I want to be.” He turns back to me. “The way we’re going, who knows how much longer there’ll even be places like this left? I want to be in them while I can.”

I get it. I stare out over the hills, at the cultivated wilderness, at the people living on this land who aren’t living that differently from how they did hundreds of years ago.

Except they probably have Internet.

“Okay. But at least get yourself as far away from Eos and Hongxing as you can. Away from here, or anyplace you posted as Langhai. And for fuck’s sake, delete those videos.”

“No.”

“No? Seriously?” I want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, hard.

“If they catch me, if that’s what I’m leaving behind, then I want them out there.” He manages a smile. Cute, almost cocky. “Maybe I’ll hop the Great Firewall and cross-post them to YouTube. Think I’ll get more hits?”

Stubborn as Dog’s been about this whole mission? I’m thinking it runs in the family.

Okay. If he wants to stay here, I’m not going to be able to talk him out of it. But I feel like, after everything that’s happened, I have to try to do something. Something positive. I don’t know what.

“I’m going back to Beijing,” I finally say. “I’ll see if there’s something I can do to help.”

He snorts. “Like what?”

“I don’t know, like…” I think, suddenly, of Moudzu and Peach Computers. Of Moudzu’s parents, who’d hoped I was a reporter.

“I know some journalists back in BJ. I can talk to them. See if someone wants to do a story. It could be a big one.”

“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” he says. The way he says it, I’m guessing he doesn’t think it’ll help.

“In the meantime, seriously, get yourself someplace else. And set up another email address. Email me when you’re settled. Just don’t say who you are.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“You’ll think of something. We’ll figure it out from there. How to get the evidence to me. Backups of the videos. Just in case you… decide to delete them or something.”

In the distance I hear some of those crazy pipes, like I heard on the street in Kaili yesterday. Drums. And now high-pitched singing.

“Festival tonight,” Jason says. “Why don’t you stick around?” He smiles, a little hesitantly. “You can tell me about Doug. You probably know a lot about him I don’t.”

I shake my head. “I’d like to. But I’d better not. Stay, I mean.”

Now I stand up, muscles between my shoulders twitching. I’m feeling like I’ve already stayed too long. Like someone’s coming for us.

“Remember what I told you,” I say. “And… write me. Okay?”

He nods.

Who knows if he’s listened to anything I’ve said?

Me, I’m getting the fuck out.

I take one look over my shoulder as I reach the path that leads out of the plaza, into the village. See Jason sitting there, his back to me, his shoulders slumped, staring at the rice paddies below.