Significance

Chalen Tilghman’s head whipped back and forth between the bulldozer revving behind the line of riot police on the far side of the empty field and the skanky blonde yoga chick greeting Jeff Kiernan as he emerged from the forest they were protecting.  Jeff, as the leader of the “Reclaim the Earth” movement, was being mobbed by Chalen’s fellow protesters like counter-culture royalty.  The blonde seemed to be the more immediate threat in comparison with the bulldozer, although she appeared to be equally implacable, so Chalen squirmed and elbowed her way through the protestors to his side. 

“Mr Kiernan,” she called out.  The people around him, known by nicknames such as “Mole”, “Monkeywrench” and “Hardcore”, laughed at her formality.  Up close, Chalen found Jeff handsome in a hadn’t washed for three weeks, pale from living off a diet of macrobiotics and clandestine hamburgers, strident eco-warrior kind of way, but she was more interested in his strategy for implementing a global conservation policy than asking him out.

“Call me Jeff, please.”  He glanced down at her and looked puzzled.  “Have we met?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask.”

“Sorry?” 

The blonde tugged him towards the rope ladder leading to their camp in the trees.

“I have a memory deficiency.  I have problems distinguishing between real memories and vividly imagined experiences or dreams.  It’s congenital, partly.”

“Ok,” he said with a weak smile, and both she and the blonde lost him to the surging crowd. 

Chalen looked back to the bulldozer and cursed.  It was grinding across the field, well ahead of schedule.  She grabbed a loudspeaker from the blonde, broke off from the crowd and dashed into the no man’s land between the protesters and the riot police.  Alone, she stopped directly in the path of the approaching bulldozer, just before a small bridge.  The yellow behemoth shuddered to a halt, dwarfing her slight figure.  She lifted her megaphone, put her other hand in her pocket, and started the protest speech she’d been practicing to herself for a week.

“This is a sacred forest…”

The driver, looking down at her with a mean grin, gunned the massive diesel engine.  Gouts of black smoke poured from its exhaust and the ground shook.  Her protest was drowned out completely.

She lowered the megaphone and shouted to him.  He eased up on the engine.

“What?”

“I’ll give you to the count of three to turn this thing around and get out of here.”

There was ragged laughter from the motley crowd behind her.

“You go, girl,” someone shouted.

“Who is that, anyways?” the skanky yoga chick asked.  “Does anyone know her or what the hell she thinks she’s doing?”

Chalen lifted her megaphone.  “That’s one,” she said, her voice booming across the field.

The driver patted his pockets.

“Two.”

He found a thick cigar and a Zippo lighter.

Chalen lowered the megaphone.  “I’m serious,” she said.  “Turn it around.”

He shrugged, lit the cigar, crossed his beefy arms and sat back.

She lifted it again and shouted “Three.” 

Her voice echoed between the forest and the uneasy ranks of shielded and helmeted police.

Chalen broke the long moment of silence by pushing the button in her pocket.

The bridge under the bulldozer heaved and splintered.  With a deafening roar, a massive explosion sent huge sprays of water and dirt bursting from either side.  A billowing cloud of dust and smoke erased both Chalen and the driver. 

The protesters stood gaping.  The riot police rustled, eager for their order to advance.

When the cloud cleared, Chalen stepped forward.  The driver, now level with her, sat dazed on top of the wrecked bulldozer trapped in the shallow water.  In her ten million hit YouTube moment, captured by a dozen hand held smart phone cameras, she lifted her arm, brought her fist up and extended her middle finger.

Chalen turned around to her fellow protesters to see them running towards her in all their rag tag glory.  She flashed them a peace sign, laughing.  After a lifetime on the periphery, for a wonderful moment she felt the unfamiliar warmth of inclusion. 

If her ears hadn’t been ringing so loudly from the explosion, she would have heard the riot police charging from the far side of the field. 

The official report said she was hit simultaneously by three Tasers.

Chalen thought it felt like more.

-*-

Chalen spoke into a microphone in the packed courtroom.  Her grimy associates, their ranks swollen by her new found fame, filled the gallery behind her.  She hoped that Jeff Kiernan was amongst them and was following her speech.  A court appointed attorney sat by her side, tapping his pen on the table and checking his watch.

“…another example of the havoc our society is wreaking on the planet we share is…”

Her attorney put his hand over the mike and pulled it away from her.  He leaned close to her, and then back a bit.

“You need a bath,” he said. 

“I’ve been in jail, you idiot,” she shot back.

“Cut the attitude, kid.  You’re looking at a ten year stretch, hard time.  The DA is offering two years probation.  Take it and shut the hell up.”

Chalen yanked the microphone back.

“May I act as my own counsel?” she asked the judge.  He looked over his glasses at her and sighed.

“It’s within your rights, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Chalen turned to her attorney.

“You’re fired.”

The gallery filled with derisive laughter.  Her attorney shrugged theatrically, shook his head and gathered up his papers, muttering.  She snatched the police report out of his hand before he left.

“I move for dismissal,” she said, holding up the report.

The prosecutor at the table next to her jumped up.  “Your honor, the prosecution moves to adjourn.  The accused is not capable of mounting a credible defense.”

“Agreed,” the judge said, pulling out a calendar. 

“Wait,” Chalen said sharply.

The judge glared at her.  “Young lady, you address this court as “Your Honor””.

“Wait, your Honor.”

The judge leaned forward, his finger pointing straight at Chalen.

“I let you have your little speech.  I let you fire your counsel, stupid as that was.  What I will not do is let you disrespect this court.”

He made little stabbing motions to punctuate his words.

“Your Honor, if I may, might I call your attention to the bottom of page two of the police report where it describes me being repeatedly Tasered while unarmed and offering no resistance?”

The protesters behind her hissed and booed.  The judge rapped his gavel and nodded to the prosecutor.

“Your honor, the accused was inciting public disorder…”

Chalen cut across him.

“The report then describes how I was taken into custody, semi conscious and temporarily deafened...”

The protesters jeered, further infuriating the judge.  He glared at them, too, under his bushy eyebrows and pounded his desk again.

“Order!  There will be order!”

Chalen shouted above the tumult.  “Your Honor, are you aware of the Supreme Court decision Miranda versus the state of Arizona, 384 US 436 of 1966?”

“I warned you,” the judge shouted back.  “You are in contempt…”

“Then perhaps the prosecutor can point out in the report when, in my deafened and semi conscious state, I was informed of my constitutional rights?”

It went so quiet that voices in the hall outside could be heard while the prosecutor flipped vainly back and forth through the report.

“I think the words you’re looking for are ‘case dismissed’, your Honor,” Chalen said.  She could swear the stenographer winked at her.  The judge scowled and pointed at the prosecutor, whose mouth kept opening and closing like a goldfish. 

“You, get over here right now.”

He swung his gnarled finger to Chalen, and then to the door.

“And you, get out of my court.”

The room erupted in cheers.  Chalen, flushed and elated, stood up and was swept into a crowd of well wishers.  She took little hops, trying to peek over their shoulders, thinking she had caught a glimpse of Jeff Kiernan.  Instead, she saw a familiar, smug, self satisfied bitch of a woman watching her without a trace of humor. 

Her heart sank.

She knew two things.  Her family had found her again, and from the look on her second cousin’s face, Emily had been sent to deliver bad news.

Chalen pushed through her raucous supporters to her cousin.

“What do you want?”

Emily had been one of a blur of faces across a barrage of childhood breakfast tables as her extended family shuffled Chalen from home to home like a package of no significance with postage due.

“You have to come to the reunion at the ranch.”

“Why on earth would I ever do that?”

“Your mother.”

Chalen flinched. 

“She’s sick.”

-*-

Chalen found it strange to be back at the Tilghman ranch after all these years. 

The place seemed diminished somehow.  Everything seemed smaller and closer together.  Some of it was just as she remembered, like the old pond and the stables.  She’d been taken every year to the family reunion, held amidst the serenity and beauty of the mountains and the forest.  Some years, she was pawned off to another set of relatives like an unwanted kitten.  Other years, she went back with the family she was stuck with.  The ranch itself was the only constant in her life.

A crowd of familiar faces greeted her when the limo from the airport dropped her off at the main house.  They looked anxious, like they didn’t know what to say to her.  Her stout, forbidding Aunt Dorothy was there, too.  She stepped ahead of her other relatives and looked her up and down.  What a battleaxe, Chalen thought.

“Chalen.”

“Dorothy.”

“We put your mother in the frontier cabin.”

“She must really be sick, then.  I’m surprised you let her anywhere near the ranch.”

“She is family, Chalen.”

“She’s a heroin addict.  She’s a thieving junkie.”

Dorothy nodded, her eyes steely.  “Your mother was always needy and weak.  That man…”

“That man?  You’re talking about Joe Moore, my father?”

“That man took advantage of her.  He turned her to a life of squalor and degradation.”

“She made her own choices.”

“Bad choices.  Speaking of bad choices, I understand you were in jail again.”

“Are you referring to the time I was falsely imprisoned for protecting a forest from destruction?”

“You know what I mean.  You’re wasting your life.  You’re better than that.”

“Pardon me for trying to save the world.”

“Family comes first.”

“The future of the planet comes first.”

Dorothy snorted.  “Come with me.”

They left the others behind and walked in silence up a dusty dirt road between rows of towering pines.  It was a hot day and Chalen wasn’t used to the altitude, but she wasn’t about to show it.  When they got to the cabin, which was bigger than Chalen’s last three apartments combined, Dorothy didn’t knock.  She just barged in.  A nurse was fussing over a beeping machine.

Chalen’s mother was in a hospital bed.  She’d never been heavy.  Now she looked skeletal.  Her skin was covered in dark red raised blotches.  Her eyes were sunken and she had oxygen tube at her nose.  Chalen barely recognized her.

“Melody, sit up,” Dorothy said sharply.  “Chalen is here from New York.” The way she said it, it sounded like Chalen had just crawled out of a cesspit. 

Her mother’s eyes fluttered open.  They were a pretty blue, just like Chalen’s

The nurse moved the end of the bed up and helped Chalen’s mother to lean forward.  She waited patiently while she had a coughing fit.

“Who?” she said after catching her breath.

“Hello, mother.” 

“I need my medicine,” she said. 

Chalen sighed.

Her mother’s eyes widened when she focused on her.

“Chalen?  Is that really Chalen?  My Chalen?”  She sounded scared and lost.  “She looks so grown up.”

“I’m twenty four, mother.”

Melody blinked a few times and looked around the room.  “How old am I, then?” 

“Take it easy.”

Melody stared at Chalen for a long time.  “Yes, I remember you.”

Dorothy shifted, skepticism plastered across her face.

“I remember when you were a little girl.  You had a red bike.”

Chalen moved forward.  “I think I remember that bike.”

“You wore a pretty blue dress.”

“With yellow flowers.  I waved to you.  You had an apron on…”

“Yes, it was blue, too, I remember!”  A genuine smile crossed Chalen’s face. 

“You idiots.”  Dorothy’s harsh voice hacked through the moment like a chainsaw.  “That was a laundry detergent commercial.”

They stared at her.

“You took some bad drugs when you were pregnant, Melody.  It messed up your memory, and hers.”

Chalen nodded slowly.  “I did some research.  The drug increased the effect of a shared Apolipoprotein E fault.”

Her mother wasn’t following.  Her attention dropped away like a forgotten syringe that had delivered its load.

“It accelerated neuron failure in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Like Alzheimer's Disease.  That interrupts the retrieval from the long term memory store.”

A familiar awful lump rose in Chalen’s midriff.  The single shared memory that linked her to any kind of past with her mother was a lie.  That said it all.

Dorothy shook her head.  “I’ll leave you two to catch up, then.”  She walked out without a backwards glance.

The buzz of cicadas came from an open window.  Chalen sat down next to her mother’s bed.  She didn’t have the first idea of what to say.

“You’re lovely, Chalen,” her mother said, looking at her with a weak smile.  It was as though she had dropped the previous interchange, too weak to hold its complexity. 

“Do you have a boyfriend?”  She held her hand out.  Chalen waved away the latex gloves the nurse offered.  Her mother’s hand felt hot and dry in hers.

“No one special.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m saving the planet.”

It took her a while to respond to that.  “Is that a good thing?”

“Yep.”  Chalen found herself patting her mother’s hand.  It was utterly surreal.  She rocked in her chair for a long time.

“Did I do a good thing?”  Her voice was so soft Chalen could barely hear her.

“What’s that, mother?”

“When I had you, did I do a good thing?”

She looked so fragile and vulnerable.  As much as Chalen wanted to smash her like an empty beer bottle, to scream abuse at her, to slap that baby look off her undeserving face, after all the years of neglect and misery, here at the end she just didn’t have the heart. 

Chalen turned her face to the window.

“Yes, Mom, you did a good thing.”

Her mother settled back in the bed.  The nurse got out a newspaper.  The pages rustled when she turned them.  Dusk fell.  After a while, the stars came out.  Chalen let go of her sleeping mother’s hand and decided to go for a walk, maybe up to the meadow.

-*-

Chalen stepped out into the night, following the trail further up the mountain to avoid the rest of her family.  No doubt they were scheming and judging her in the main house.  She walked in the starlight, far up the mountain until she found the empty field she was looking for. 

It was a place she always felt was her own, her very own private meadow.  The soft, thin grass felt like home.  She stood with her neck craned, watching the blazing canopy of stars she’d missed so in the city.  The moon slowly rose, bathing her in its soft glow.  She listened to the whisper of the wind in the trees that stood in a circle around her like old friends.  The air through the pines smelled so fresh, like it had been scrubbed clean.  It warmed her heart to be connected to the purity of nature again after the weight of her family had pulled her down again. 

The moment was marred by the nagging but certain feeling she was being watched.

“Who’s there?” Chalen said, annoyed.  Was there no place she could go for peace?

There was a rustling on the far side of the meadow and a voice broke the spell.

“Chalen, is that you?” someone stage whispered.

”Who is that?”

“It is you, Chalen.  I knew I’d find you here.”

Chalen’s father came out of the trees.  He looked gaunt and used up.  His movements were furtive and desperate.

“What are you doing here, Dad?  They’ll kick you out if they find you… maybe worse.  And I might help them.”

“I saw you on YouTube.”

“What?”

“You got ten million hits when you blew up that bulldozer.  You’re famous.”

“I stopped the construction.  That’s the important thing.”

A moment of silence went on so long it got awkward, but Chalen had nothing to add.  She felt spent.

“You’re famous,” he repeated lamely.

“Yeah, whatever.  What do you want?”

“Can’t a father just say hello to his daughter?”

“Not after he abandons her, steals from her and kills her mother.”

“Melody’s dead?”  A genuine look of distress crossed his face.

“No, not yet.”

“I want to see her before… she goes.”

“She’s in the first cabin down the trail there.  Tell her I said hi.”

“You grew up tough, Chalen.”

“Being abandoned by your parents can have that affect.”

He stood there, rocking on his heels like he was trying to think of something clever to say.

“I’m going to San Francisco, after this.”

“Whatever.”

“My buddy Louis is in the construction industry.”

Chalen didn’t reply.  She looked down and kicked at a small rock with her boot.

“It’s a new start for me.  I’m going to get clean.”

“Uh huh.”  Like she hadn’t heard that one before.

“You couldn’t help me out with…”

Tears stinging in her eyes, she lashed out, shoving him in the chest, hard.  “No, no, no…”

He tried to pull her into a hug, but she yanked away.  “Get out of here, just get out,” she shouted at him.

“Baby…”

“No, I’m not your baby.  You had your chance.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Get away from me!”

A light bobbed up the trail.

“Chalen?  Are you ok?”  Aunt Dorothy walked into the meadow, carrying something over her shoulder.  Her father moved away from Chalen and stood on edge, like a deer ready to bolt.

“Is that Joe Moore?”  Her voice was hard and edged with fury.

Chalen sobbed.

“Well, you’re too late, Joe.”

Chalen looked up, her cheeks glistening in the moonlight.  Her Aunt’s voice softened.

“I’m sorry, Chalen.  I really am.  She went peacefully.”

Chalen crumpled, bawling.  Dorothy patted her back, gingerly, like she didn’t know what else to do.

“What are you still doing here?” she asked Joe.  He licked his lips.

“Melody’s estate…”

“Goes to Chalen.  Always did.  It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Chalen…” He stepped towards his daughter, his eyes bright and shiny. 

There was a ratcheting noise and a click.  Dorothy stood with a rifle at her waist.  It was pointed at Joe.

“Get going.”

“But she’s my daughter.”

“Git.”  Dorothy raised her rifle to her shoulder.

“You can’t…”

Dorothy turned the rifle to the side slightly.  The shot cracked loud in the still mountain air.  Chalen and her father both jumped at the sudden noise and flash.

“You haven’t heard the last of me.  I have rights,” Joe said, scrambling away.

“I’d drop you where you stand except for I couldn’t stand her losing two parents in one night,” Dorothy said, pointing the rifle squarely at him.  He fled up the dirt trail.  Her gun tracked him until he was out of sight.

“Come on, Chalen,” Dorothy said, slinging the rifle over her shoulder.  “The cook left some stew out.” 

Chalen followed her, looking shell shocked.

“There will be paperwork in the morning.”

“Can I stay at the ranch for a while?” Chalen asked meekly.

Dorothy paused.  “Well, this will all come out tomorrow, but yes.  The ranch is yours now.  All of it.”

That didn’t sink in right away.  They kept walking through the trees.

“I was appointed as your mother’s guardian when she went off the rails.  That ended when she died.  Her will gives you everything.”

They got back to the main house.  Lights were on.

“I never had the patience for kids, myself.  The family always fought over who would get to have you.  They all hoped you’d remember them when you came into your money.”

And they never said a word to me about it, Chalen thought dully. 

“What about my father?” she asked, still wrapping her head around recent events.

Dorothy unslung the rifle and threw it to Chalen.  “He can’t have gotten far.  You decide.”

Chalen went in the house and locked the rifle in the gun cabinet.  She sat at a table with Dorothy and ate some stew.

“What’s the estate worth?” she asked after her second bowl.

“The lawyers can figure it out, but it’ll keep you your whole life.  You hold controlling interest in the family’s companies now.  I can stay on for a while to help but I’m ready to retire, myself.  You’ll have to take an active role in the family business.”

Chalen got up from the table, picked up the phone and called the offices of the “Reclaim the Earth”.  She asked for Jeff Kiernan.  It took a while for them to track him down, but he took the call even though it was five in the morning his time.

“Chalen, at last… I looked for you at your trial, but you disappeared.”

“Jeff, I want you on the next plane to Denver.  That forest was just the beginning. We’re starting a global campaign. We’ll use my family’s money to get started, and then grow it from there.”

Chalen smiled at Dorothy’s frown.

“It’s going to be significant.”

Edited word count: 3,643