Extreme Actions

Ian shifted uncomfortably in the pseudo back seat of Sally’s overburdened truck. He jostled Ray, waking the youngest member of the group. “We there yet?” he grunted.

“Not yet,” Sally said from the driver’s seat.

“Sorry man,” Ian said. “It’s a little crowded back here.”

“No problem dude,” Ray murmured, already drifting off to sleep.

Lucky bastard, Ian thought, turning his head to stare at the unchanging line of the breakdown lane speeding past their small convoy. Two more trucks and a van followed Sally’s pickup northward on state highway 12 in western South Carolina. Beyond the pavement lay miles of farmland: fruit plantations, cotton fields and a Wilson Peter’s tobacco plantation, their destination on the crisp summer predawn.

Envious of Ray’s sleeping ability, Ian tried to push the anxiousness from his thoughts. He wasn’t nervous after months of careful planning and years of mostly unvented righteous anger. He was ready. Sally had been planning the trip for months with the group of activists. When she quietly mentioned the possibility of doing more than protesting Big Tobacco, Ian signed up immediately. The barrels and cans carried by their four vehicles represented one less tobacco plantation in South Carolina. The loss of a few thousand acres of cropland wouldn’t affect Wilson Peter’s production rates, but Sally assured them that their actions would make people take notice. It was a bold plan to incinerate the plantation’s nearly ready harvest, one that might land them in jail and would certainly make the news. None of that mattered, just that he so needed to hurt Big Tobacco in a physical way. The butterflies in his stomach weren’t just nervousness, but anger that shook his very being.

He looked down his half-buttoned flannel shirt to the T-shirt underneath. Ian had made the shirt the day before on his computer. “For Matty,” it read with a picture of his infant nephew below the words.

He looked away from the picture of the deceased baby, a clutter of emotions threatening to overwhelm him. Barely repressed feelings of despair, anger, and helplessness surfaced whenever he thought of his dead nephew and his idiot sister Judi’s mistakes. Reassured by her equally stupid husband that it was safe, she’d smoked throughout her pregnancy against the family’s pleas.

Ian remembered the day of the funeral too vividly. Three years before, it was the last time he’d been with his entire family. Six of them, Ian, his father Tom, brother Mike, Judi’s husband Brent and her father and brother in laws carried the tiny, almost weightless casket through the gathered crowd. Ian couldn’t recall the preacher’s words, but the image of the tiny, white coffin lowering into the ground was forever burned into his memory. After the service and departure of most of the mourners and in-laws, Ian’s immediate family stood silently and awkwardly.

When Brent lit up, Ian couldn’t take it. “Given any thought to quitting?”

“No. Why?” Brent asked, lighting his then Judi’s trembling cigarette.

“Just a little thing like your health or SID’s.”

“Ian,” Tom growled in his menacingly parental way.

“The tests were inconclusive, Ian,” Patty, his mother said softly, clenching down on her husband’s hand. She barely whispered, “Don’t blame them.”

“They put warning labels on those death sticks for a reason. I know you know how to read.” Ian pointed at Judi, anger in his eyes and heart.

Judi responded with a hurt look and a long drag.

“We’ve heard your speeches before,” Mike said, calmly putting his hand on Ian’s shoulder.

Ian brushed his older brother off. “But no one listened, and now there’s a dead baby in the ground.”
“Don’t you dare! We would never hurt Matty,” Judi shouted, tears and fury mixing in her eyes.

“You might not have shaken him or slapped him, but how much poison did you give him?” Ian asked accusingly. Judi and Brent glared in response, and when Brent opened his mouth to retort, Ian cut him off. “Can’t you read or listen. Prenatal smoking was the most stupid thing you’ve ever done, and you let this asshole justify it for you. At best, you’re both guilty of child abuse.” He spun furiously and stormed for his car across the field. Tears ran freely down Ian’s cheeks by the time he unlocked the car. Looking back, the five members of his family all turned from his gaze.

It was over a year later when his brother called to talk and told him Judi and Brent were trying to have another baby. Mike agreed with Ian but didn’t oppose Judi on her refusal to quit smoking. When the baby girl, Jade, was born a year later, he sent an asthma inhaler along with his gift of a parenting book. He still hadn’t spoken to his sister or met his year and half-old niece.

A single tear fled from his eye. He wiped it away, catching Sally’s attention. “Oh, you are awake.”

“Yup,” Ian replied.

“You okay?” she asked in a knowing tone.

“Yeah,” Ian said quickly. “Do you think we’re going to make a difference?”

“People will take notice of our little stunt,” she said in the same knowing tone.

“Sally,” her husband, Will, rumbled in his deep bass voice from the passenger seat. Ian had assumed the old chiropractor had been asleep for the duration. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re not even to the pump house yet after all.”

“You’re right,” she sighed. “But can you imagine, four thousand acres of tobacco burning in the morning sun?”

“So long as we’re up wind from the blaze. I don’t want any secondhand smoke,” Ian quipped, drawing a laugh from the couple. Ray grumbled in his sleep, reminding Ian of just how early it was. He settled his head against the cold window of the truck and dozed off.

***

Ian woke immediately once the truck slowed to a halt. Darkness clung to the surroundings, and the mostly cloudy, moonless sky did little to brighten the area. The four vehicles darkened before stopping in a small parking area. “Ray, wake up,” Sally whispered loudly. Ian gave the young man a poke for good measure.

“I’m up,” he grumbled.

“We’re a little early, so we’re going to have to sit tight until my contact on the plantation shows up.”

“Wow, a contact, it sounds all covert and stuff,” Ray observed.

“Yeah, well, there’re disgruntled workers everywhere.” Sally muttered. “This one got screwed for payroll, doesn’t give a damn about Big Tobacco either way. So long as he helps us get to the pump house and turns a blind eye.”

After several unknown minutes spent in quiet darkness, a single green beam of light bounced into view. A hulking man-shape appeared, clarifying into an overall-wearing, worker of prodigious girth. He wore a shirt that was once white and now was as stained and dirty as his skin, possibly as permanent. “I bet his name’s Bubba,” whispered Ian to Ray.

“Or is two redneck names with a hyphen,” Ray muttered back.

The grubby man approached Sally’s door. He wasn’t any prettier up close. Bad breath and BO threatened to overpower the activists as he spoke to Sally. “I `forgot’ to lock up the pump house. You have two hours until the automatic sprinklers kick on throughout the plantation.”

“Thanks Bubba-Joe,” Sally said, handing him an envelope.

Ray and Ian exchanged dubious looks but kept silent as Bubba-Joe explained a few irrelevant details to their leader. After their contact had left, Ian was finally allowed to uncurl from the tiny backseat, only to have to begin unloading assorted drums from the back of the truck with Ray. Sally left them to their work and spoke with the members at the van, who pulled out of the driveway a few minutes later.

When the thirty containers of assorted size had been unloaded, Sally gathered the nine activists around for a huddle. They all dimmed the headlamps they wore, leaving only Sally’s green cellophane covered light to brighten their faces in an alien green.

“We all know what we’re doing here. It’ll take three trips with hand trucks down the path here. We dump our flammables then get out of here as quickly as possible. Half hour, tops.”

Lights turned back on, and the group began the unsteady act of carting the plastic containers, some carrying over twenty gallons of Sally’s special mixture of tobacco-burning chemicals. Even with bungee straps securing Ian’s container against the dolly, he almost dropped the load several times before reaching the pumping shed. The small, prefab metal building sat next to a stream, complete with rippling water to cover their voices. An open door on the shed proved Bubba-Joe’s word to be true. Sally led them into the tiny building, smelling of pesticides and grease. A reservoir, emptied of its pesticide blend of chemicals sat open. They dumped the gasoline mixture into the bin two at a time while Sally and Will inspected the pump controls. Ray winced next to Ian while he hefted his plastic jug to the lip of the reservoir. Ian propped his against his chest and reached to help Ray, earning him a silent nod. Stinking of gas, the pair took their empty jugs back to the parking area.

With minutes to spare, the last drops of mixed gasoline were loaded into the pumping system. They hurried back one final time, light hand trucks clanging over roots and rocks. Sally kept and eye on her watch, meeting some timeline only in her head, Ian figured, while the others loaded the empty vessels and dollies back into the trucks. On her word, they waited inside the trucks for 4:30 to tick by on her watch. Faint whirring of pumps and a hiss of water signaled the beginning of the sprinkler system’s morning run, complete with several hundred gallons of accelerant misting over the fields.

“That’s it for us then,” Sally said with some triumph in her voice. She shifted her truck into reverse, signaling the others behind her to do the same. In less than a minute, their convoy was heading north once again, for a campground they had reservations at. With any luck, they’d be at their prearranged campsites asleep in their tents by dawn. Ian looked back the whole drive, waiting for the flaming arrows the other members promised to deliver into the fields. His eyes remained fixed on the fields until passing into the next town where brick and wood replaced green plants of death.

“That’s a pity,” he mumbled to the sleepy Ray. “I really wanted to see that field on fire.”

“Mmm,” the young man responded.

Ian smiled to himself, eager to see the news broadcast the next morning. He drifted off to sleep with thoughts of Matty looking over the burning fields and laughing in glee at the bright colors.

***

Ian and Ray woke just long enough to stumble from their truck into Ray’s too-small tent and pass out onto their sleeping bags. When Ian awoke under the bright midday sun, he saw Ray was already up and gone, his gear stowed neatly at the foot of the tent. Anxious, Ian moved as quickly as possible and left the tent a few minutes later. He’d visited the campground a week earlier and knew its layout well enough to make his way to Sally and Will’s tent site.

Their large, two-room tent proved more spacious for camping and holding a meeting of their group. Will waved when Ian approached and gestured the young man inside. The chiropractor zipped the yellow tent closed behind and sat by the mesh door. In lawn chairs and on the ground sat the entire party from the night before, all watching a television propped on a card table.

Flames sprouted from both sides of a split screen image, slightly fuzzy from the antenna signal. The image proved clear enough for Ian to realize neither picture was a field of burning tobacco. Two buildings, one an office another a warehouse, burned side by side on the local broadcast. Ian looked at Sally, who watched the news with a satisfied smirk. She turned the volume up, loud enough for Ian to hear at the edge of the tent.

“-from an apparently coordinated strike at Wilson Peter’s operations. At least twenty sites were attacked last night, from tobacco fields in four states, warehouses across the country, even their corporate headquarters in Alabama were targeted. As the forth-largest supplier of tobacco products in the country, this terrorist strike will certainly affect the pocketbooks of many.” She turned the TV down when the talking heads appeared and spoke to her group.

“Last night, our membership of Right to Breathe joined with twenty-four other anti-tobacco groups across the country in launching this first strike against Big Tobacco. I’m sorry I kept all of you in the dark about our plans, but to accomplish so much we needed to maintain secrecy among our groups. As far as we can tell, our plan has gone off without a hitch. Hopefully, this time next week, Wilson Peter’s will be filing for bankruptcy. We had to accomplish more than just useless protests against their evil, now we have. This is one bloody nose they won’t forget.”
Surprised at her words but not completely, Ian leaned back, crossing his arms in contentment. For you, Matty, he thought.

A distant siren caught their attention. The campground was situated far from the highway, but the noise grew louder. Sally turned up the volume once again on the TV, trying to shift their focus on the news, rather the approaching siren.

“The president has promised a full scale investigation with arrests already proceeding against what he calls `domestic terrorists aimed at disrupting the economy of the United States.’ Swift action will be taken to ensure these events will not be duplicated against the tobacco industry. He has promised full economic assistance in recovering from this loss as well as calling for an immediate halt to all tobacco taxes to offset increased prices resulting from Wilson Peter’s losses in supply. While some opponents in Congress have already expressed concern over cutting taxes to solve Wilson’s Peter’s difficulties, most have already pledged their support to protect this three-hundred-year-old company from bankruptcy.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ian grumbled at the TV no one but he was watching. The activists’ collective attention focused on the line of police cars swarming the campgrounds narrow dirt road.

“No struggle,” Sally said to her group. Moving past Ian, she opened the tent and met the first police car as it stopped next to her truck. “I surrender.”

Uniformed police and several black-suited federal agents of unknown agency poured from the dozen or so police vehicles. Almost wordlessly, the group surrendered en masse to the officials, who loaded them into vehicles in ones and twos. Ian found himself and Sally stuffed into the back seat of an elderly police cruiser with one local cop and an agent in the front seats.

As they pulled out of the campground parking lot onto the state highway, lights flashing and increasing speed, Ian asked, “Were you supposed to read us our rights back there?”

“No,” the agent answered.

“I better get my phone call and lawyer when we get to the station,” Ian demanded, while Sally sat silently, a triumphant smile on her face. She seemed lost in her own world, oblivious to Ian and the officals.

“We’re not going to the station,” the local cop answered when the agent said nothing.

Further questioning yielded no information until the cruiser, deep in the pack of other police cars carrying his friends pulled into an Air Force base. An ominously olive drab transport plan waited for them on the tarmac. “Where are you shipping us to?” he demanded.

“Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” the agent answered, almost like he was reading off a cue card. “You’re being held as enemy combatants against American interests. Your attacks threatened America’s economic stability and constitute a terrorist act.”

Sally’s smile turned into a grimace of anger. “You can’t stop us all,” she said, fury building in her. “More will follow our lead in destroying Big Tobacco. Even if it takes down a few people in Washington.”

The agent, with a blazing red face, snarled, “You’d better watch it, lady. Threats against this country will not be tolerated. Just keep your trap shut, and things will go easier for you in Cuba.”

But things would never get easier, Ian realized. Not here and certainly not in some foreign jail, a criminal against his homeland, safely tucked away from the public record and those who had gotten away with murder with no hope for justice.