As I said yesterday in my beat-down of the new movie, Civil War, I don’t believe in just criticizing. If we don’t like what Hollywood is giving us, we should write our own books and movies.
I disliked the fact that the four journalists left NYC for a 200 mile trip in the middle of a civil war with a half-tank of gas. What a dumb thing to do. But don’t just criticize—write your own version!
So I did.
The names and the general premise is taken from the movie.
Hollywood, I’m waiting for my close up contract.
“Did we bring any extra bottles of water?” asked Jessie. “I’m out.”
Lee was at the wheel. She checked the gas gauge. Nearly full. They’d made sure to have a full tank before leaving and had a jerrycan of fuel just in case. They were driving without AC to save on gas. But they’d forgotten to take extra water. Damn!
Sammy, as usual, came prepared: he brought a miniature fan, which was clamped to his window’s rubber strip, but it was still suffocatingly hot in the Hummer. They’d have to stop…where? A gas station? No. They might run into insurgents. What better place for thugs to lurk in, or to control? A gas station now was like a castle with an armory and a smokehouse in medieval times.
“I think I see a turnoff,” said Joel. After all they’d been through together, he could read her mind. And she his. “Look to your left. It looks like there’s a house in the distance, over the hedge.” They hadn’t seen a living soul since leaving New York City that morning. Everything was deserted, burned out, empty. “I think it’s OK to disobey road marks here,” he said, with a smile.
Lee looked to her left. Over the hedge she saw the house on a field about half a klick away. She wished she could turn off-road right there, but the hedge was formidable and she didn’t want to chance it. She took the turn onto a gravel path and steered the Hummer through a thicket of vegetation gushing from overgrown bushes on both sides. After a few minutes they came to a clearing and there was the house on the left, a large, rambling ramshackle old place.
§§§§
A tall middle-aged white woman with brown hair pulled back in a bun stood about ten feet in front of the house.
She was holding a Bushmaster carbine, and it was pointed right at them.
“You,” she said to Lee. “Get out of the car.”
Lee exited slowly.
As Lee got out, she stumbled a little on jelly legs. Only then did she notice that there was a boy standing behind the woman, also holding a carbine. Mother and son. The resemblance was obvious.
“Now sit down with your hands behind your head.”
The woman issued the same order to Sammy, Jessie, and Joel. One by one, they got out and complied, Sammy with a little difficulty.
Turning her attention back to Lee, the woman said in a flat, emotionless voice, “What are you doing here?”
Lee cleared her throat. “I apologize. There were no signs warning us not to trespass. We left New York City earlier today and as hard as this may be to believe, we forgot to take extra water. We would be most grateful if you could spare some water. Uh, could you?”
The woman fixed Lee’s eyes with her own. Her face was a dead mask.
“What I mean is, what are you doing here?”
More than accent, the totality of her voice conveyed something that wasn’t local. An education beyond this isolated place. The boy, despite his obvious connection to her, looked born and bred. She didn’t.
Lee took in a deep breath. Might as well go for broke. “We were on our way to Washington, D.C. to interview the president.”
The woman’s face didn’t twitch, not an iota. “The president. Really.”
After a few seconds she said, “Get up.” When they all began to scramble to their feet she said, “Just her. The rest of you stay here. If anybody moves, all of you get shot. My boy here is a good shot. His daddy taught him, as he taught me. There’s nobody here to help you. Y’all just sit.”
§§§§
It was cool and dark in the kitchen. The woman instructed Lee to stand in front of a window so that she could keep an eye on the others. Not a millimeter did the carbine move.
“Now you tell me what you’re really doing and why you’re here.”
A suspicious, gun-wielding person had more than once held Lee’s life in her hands. The cliché of all cliches out of the crappiest B-movie—one wrong move and she’d be dead—and every word the truth.
She had wriggled out of every situation not by theatrical defiance but by showing empathy. Yes, empathy. Empathy even for the most savage warlord, terrorist, killer. Everyone had their point of view, and it was no time to argue when you were in someone’s gunsights. You accepted their conditions and tried to get out.
And how do you show empathy? That was the hard part, but you began by feeling it, and then radiating it, like the sun’s rays.
And it was easy to feel empathy for this woman. She was no warlord or terrorist. She was a frightened woman, alone with her teenaged son, perhaps other children hidden, no husband—he’d have shown himself by now. She would certainly kill to protect her son but for no other reason. She did not appear to be trigger happy. On the contrary, she gave off a granite solidity. Lee would give the woman no reason to harm them, and she wouldn’t.
I am telling you the truth, thought Lee. I am not your enemy. I would do exactly what you’re doing if I were in your situation.
She gained control of her voice and said, “Please believe me. All we want is water and then we’ll be on our way. We’ll never tell anybody where you are. We are journalists and we had to get to Washington. There are no commercial flights anymore.”
At this, Lee thought she saw a flicker of comprehension break through the mask.
Continuing, Lee said, “We’re on our way to interview the president and to verify just what’s going on. The reports are very contradictory and confusing.”
The woman asked with evident, genuine curiosity, “What is going on? We don’t have internet here.”
Lee felt giddy—here it was, the triumph, that juncture, that crack in time when her would-be killer relented and turned from mortal threat to mere obstacle. Sometimes she thought she lived for those moments.
“It wouldn’t matter if you did, the internet is down. GPS is down. The grid isn’t fried but it goes on and off unpredictably.”
“We have a generator, we just don’t go for that internet dirt. Who’s doing this?”
“No one knows. I swear. I do not know, no one knows. Look, you can shoot us but that just means you’ll be out some bullets and you’ll need them. Gangs are roaming around. All kinds, black, white, Spanish, hip hop, country, you name it—”
The woman cut her off. “Get that old man in here immediately.”
§§§§
Jessie held a cold washrag to Sammy’s forehead while Joel fed him water from a cup. He had almost, not quite but almost, keeled over in the sun before the woman had him brought in.
The gun was gone, secured in a cabinet (“I really don’t like holding it”), although the boy still lurked outside menacingly.
Lee tried to explain to the woman what had been happening but the more she said, the more she realized she sounded insane. Nevertheless, she continued.
“I realize this all sounds nuts, but here’s what’s happening. It started out as local uprisings. No one place. Lots of places. Suddenly it was everywhere. People stopped paying bills. Credit cards. Do you know what happens to a country when everyone stops paying credit card bills? No one signed up for the military—the best people up and quit. You’d be surprised how quickly things in a modern country can fall apart when the middle class stops cooperating. All right, maybe you wouldn’t, but I was.”
“Hm,” said the woman. She leaned against a counter, arms crossed before her, eyes dropped to the floor. Then she roused herself and said, “He seems OK now,” referring to Sammy. “I assume you brought a jerry can for water?”
Lee’s face fell.
“Jeez, you people. Take one. There are few empty ones near the well, out back. You can each pump a bottle as well. He can take two,” she said, nodding to Sammy. “It tastes a little like mineral salts but it’s good.”
She gave Lee another lookover and said, “Still don’t understand what y’all are doing. If everything’s falling apart, don’t you have your own families to take care of? That’s not more important than talking to the president? He’s a dead duck from what you’re telling me.” After a pause she shook her head and muttered: “Jeez, you people.”
§§§§
As they pulled out, the woman called after them, “Give my best to the president.” Then to Sammy she said, “Aren’t you getting a little old for these hijinx?”
“Yes madame, I am,” he said. “I surely am.”