It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It all depended on what you did with the hand you were dealt. Some hands were better than others, of course—but, like it or not, you were in the game.
Mariah opened the door to the taxi and tossed her beat-up canvass rucksack inside. She hopped into the backseat, upbeat and energetic. Her hair was unkempt.
"Hi, how are you today?"
"So far, so good." replied the driver.
She pointed.
"See that guy? He’s coming with us."
The man-of-the-day pushed open the glass door and sauntered out of the U-Haul office. He gazed side to side, looking cool, but his cheap sunglasses hid furtive eyes. He slid into the cab next to Mariah, then acknowledged the driver.
"Hey man, how you doin’?"
"So far, so good."
Mariah giggled.
"Is that what you say to everyone?"
"If I didn’t, I’d be lying."
The driver pushed the button on the meter.
"Where to?"
Hanna poured four shots of espresso into her travel mug. Today was a big day. She stepped into her combat boots and laced them up. On mornings this cold, she usually drove. But, today, she would take the bus. She expected to spend much of the next few days in jail and didn’t want to deal with a parking ticket, on top of all the other impending nonsense. She sprinkled three days worth of food into her fish tank, said goodbye to Herman and George as they rose up to eat and stepped outside into the cold, dark morning.
Mariah bounced excitedly in her seat, as M.I.A.’s "Paper Planes" came on the radio.
"I love this song," she declared. "I used to dance to it at work."
The man-of-the-day looked at her from behind his shades, "At work?"
"Yup, I stripped in this town for years. I won all the awards—all of ‘em...I swear, this lady has drums in her soul." She started singing along.
"I fly like paper, get high like planes, If you catch me at the border, I got visas in my name, If you come around here, I make ‘em all day, I’ll get one done in a second, if you wait. Sometimes I think sittin’ on trains, every stop I get to, I’m clocking that game, Everyone’s a winner, we’re making our fame, bonafide hustler making my name."
"‘Portland famous,’ I was!" Mariah declared. "Portland famous." Like the guy with the Mickey Mouse ears that begged for dollars on the Hawthorne Bridge. Portland famous, but he’s dead now. Suicide. Or, the guy who used to come into the clubs selling ‘roses for the ladies.’ He’s dead too. He and his wife were shot, while sitting in their car. Murdered. Something to do with their gangbanger son. Portland famous."
The man-of-the-day was impressed.
"So, you were a star?"
"Baby, I’ve got more stars than the Milky Way."
"All I want to do is...bang bang bang bang... and a clik—cha-ching...take your mon-ey, All I want to do is...bang bang bang bang... and a clik—cha-ching...take your mon-ey."
Hanna had been an aggressive defender of animal rights for the better part of a decade. She despised factory farms, as well as the destruction of the wild. Any form of animal torture or abuse infuriated her and she made it her business to be well-aware of such occurrences on an international scale. She carried a righteous anger with her on a daily basis, and her friends gave her the nickname, "Mad Hanna."
"Pirate skulls and bones, Sticks and stones and weed and bongs, Running when we hit ‘em, Lethal poison, for the system."
Yale’s Skull And Bones Society included members of the timber company Weyerhaeuser, along with many members of the Bush Crime Family and countless other liars, thugs, murderers and thieves. Two summers back, Weyerhauser started clear cutting eighty-eight acres of pristine, oldgrowth habitat, with plans to liquidate the timber in Portland’s booming construction market. Hanna got wind of this and it made her mad. So, she climbed to the top of an ancient sitka spruce and lived in a tent on a platform, all summer long, so the tree wouldn’t be cut down.
"All I want to do is...bang bang bang bang...and a clik—cha-ching...take your mon-ey, All I want to do is...bang bang bang bang... and a clik—cha-ching...take your mon-ey."
Mariah closed her eyes and smiled towards the sun. It warmed her face.
"I have no family. I’m a beam without a sun."
Not long ago, she had a family, and at that very moment, her eight-year old son was sitting in school, wondering what happened to his mama. "What happened to you mama?" he thought. "Mama who used to read me books and snuggle up to me at night. Where did you go mama? What did I do wrong?"
Mariah continued, "I was two years away from a neuroscience degree, but I had to leave all that. Had to be free."
The man-of-the-day thought to himself, "Neuroscience? Yeah right. Crazy bitch..."
But, it was true, Mariah had indeed been two years away from a neuroscience degree.
No one on the corner has swagger like us Hit me on my burner prepaid wireless We pack and deliver like UPS trucks Already going to hell, just pumping that gas"
Hanna was going solo on today’s action—didn’t tell a soul. Usually she worked with others, like when she and friends disguised themselves as construction workers and scaled theWorld Trade Organization headquarters in Washington, D.C.—hanging a giant banner that called attention to the evils of the whaling industry. Or, when she was one of a dozen activists that repelled hundreds of feet off the St. John’s Bridge and hung suspended in place for more than a day, temporarily blocking a barge trying to deliver an offshore oil rig to the waters of the Arctic Ocean. "M.I.A. (Missing In Action) Third world democracy Yeah, I’ve got more records than the KGB So, uh, no funny business."
Hanna didn’t have more records than the KGB, but the KGB had her records. Nobody at the agency had ever looked at them, but they had them, simply because they had duplicates of all records at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., thanks to a stealthy hack by the Chinese firm Huawei, gifted to Putin by Xi Jinping.
Mariah was alone in the motel room; the man-of-the day had gone to the liquor store. She slid the needle into her vein and pushed the brown liquid inside. It was too much and her knees buckled as she hit the floor with a thud. She could barely move, but she felt so goooood. She was a beam without a sun. She managed to crack open her eyelids, inches from the bright, shiny steel of the air conditioner—the last thing Mariah’s eyes saw were her own eyes, look ing back at her.
Hanna slipped the bike lock around her neck and clicked it into place. She was now locked to the doors of the Oregon Department Of Fish And Wildlife headquarters and nobody was going inside until the agency withdrew yesterday’s order to begin killing wolves or the lock was cut off (and she was arrested). Word quickly spread about Hanna’s action, and soon, countless other protesters (and the media) showed up. Her mugshot was the most heroic mugshot in the history of mugshots.
While in jail awaiting her arraignment, Hanna was visited by the executive director of a local environmental organization. She was immediately hired to run the organization’s wolf outreach program. Having achieved an environmental science degree from Evergreen State College—paid for exclusively from years of hard work as a stripper—it was Hanna’s first job in her field. Later that year, one day before her presentation as the keynote speaker at a wolf conference in Yellowstone National Park, Hanna hiked deep into the Lamar Valley. There, she saw her first black wolf—a large, Alpha female, sitting amidst the sagebrush and surveying the lowlands below. Hanna looked through her binoculars and saw the black wolf looking right back at her. After a moment, the wolf turned back toward the lowlands, toward the elk and the antelope and the buffalo, and decided it wasn’t yet time to hunt.
Some some some I some I murder Some I some I let go Some some some I some I murder Some I some I let go."
Hanna watched the wolf disappear into the sagebrush, the woody branches combing the fur on her tail, as it slipped through. Sitting there in the valley, among the sagebrush, amidst the mountains, trees, buffalo and wolves, Hanna felt as close to the Creator as she ever had. And, as for those who happily destroy Creation for their own greed? Oh, what Hanna would do to the evil rich, if she were God.
"All I want to do is...bang bang bang bang...and a...clik—cha-ching...take your mon-ey, All I want to do is...bang bang bang bang... and a...clik—cha-ching...take your money."
The end.
