Read Online Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa - Free Book Online Page B

man, just standing there in the warehouse earlier this morning in the gray light of half-dawn watching those women in their cuts-offs and boots and T-shirts, watching those strong women slinging chain and preparing the pipes, he felt the nervous excitement thrumming in his blood. He felt a growing icy thrill in the pit of his stomach that was the beginning of his body’s preparation for the confrontation with the police—the hours of sitting, the facing of his own fears and doubts. He had watched the girls and his heart was singing. His soul felt coiled like a spring. They needed to be medics. Fine. But John Henry, he was a man that when the spirit came a-calling, he answered. Whatever the language. Whatever the price. The words of Mahatma Gandhi inked blue-black across his chest for how many years now:
    Rivers of blood may have to flow
    before we gain our freedom,
    but it must be our blood.

10
    Victor watching the woman who had saved his ass—King she was called—saying, “Okay, people, the cops want us to move. Are we going to move?”
    “Hell no!”
    “The cops have asked me to clear the street. They would like to bring their delegates through this intersection. Are we going to let those delegates make it to the convention center?”
    “Hell no!”
    “Are we going to clear this intersection?”
    “Hell no!”
    “What are we going to do?”
    “Shut the motherfucker down!” they said in unison. Everyone laughing.
    Victor drifting and listening to the beautiful girl with olive skin and green eyes and the muscles of a rock climber. After stashing his backpack in the nearest dumpster and telling him he could come back for it later, but first she wanted him to meet some people, she’d brought him to the group. And the way she looked at him, he knew he didn’t have a choice. He marked the dumpster in his mind and then followed her. King introduced him all around and he raised a hand in a half-enthusiastic greeting. The guy they called the Doctor had pulled him in a wide-armed hug and pressed him tight, saying, “Welcome, brother!” but really what he was thinking of wasn’t the hello, or this new strange group, what he was drifting and thinking of was the moment he’d seen the cop approaching, not the cop with the fucked-up face, but the other one, the Chief of Police, which was when he had given up on the backpack and put the horse between himself and the man. What he was thinking is that when the Chief started talking it was the first time in three years that he had heard his father’s voice.
    Five feet on the other side of a fucking horse saying, “I need you to clear this intersection.”
    Saying, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
    His father close enough to extend a hand. Almost close enough to kick.
    “Okay, people,” King was saying, “here’s the situation. The Portland Liberation Front is one short for lockdown and they’ve asked for our help. Is anyone willing to join their lockdown?”
    The others were looking at each other.
    “There’s a good chance you’ll be arrested,” King said.
    “King, we’re here as medics,” one of the guys said. A guy with a red stringy beard and chunky black glasses, a pinched cowboy hat perched on his head. “Shouldn’t we stick to the plan?”
    Victor broke in. “How do you know you’re only going to get arrested?” he said. “They look ready for war.”
    “You’ll have to trust me,” King said.
    “I wouldn’t trust those cops as far as I could spit. How can you be so sure they’re not just going to beat everyone senseless. That’s all I’m asking.”
    “Because,” King said, “John Henry met with the police and negotiated a mass arrest.”
    Then Victor was turning with an incredulous look on his face to the red-haired fucker with the long beard. “You met with the cops? Wow. It must be nice to be white.”
    There was a stunned sort of silence.
    “Look, Victor,” John Henry said, pulling on that beard, “we’re all glad you’re here,