HIGH MEADOW, THURSDAY, 21 August 1979, 6:40 A.M.—Wapinski’s mind was scattered, attempting to solve a score of problems simultaneously. Nothing came out. His body too was bloated. He was in the upstairs bathroom, on the toilet, afraid to push again. Already the water was bright red. Damn, he thought. Damn it. I don’t have time for this.
He clenched his teeth, rested his forehead on the heels of his hands, his elbows on his knees. His back hurt. Not horribly, just pressure-pain and constipation. His hemorrhoid had been bleeding since Tuesday, since it had blown like a high-pressure line letting go and his pushing had produced the first ptsssssss and the bowl full of blood. Ten months earlier it had happened for the first time and it had scared him. He’d gone to a general practitioner who’d chuckled about the cold “butt-hole scope,” who’d laughed out loud, saying, “There it is. I can see the hole in the vein right there.” Wapinski had felt violated, humiliated. Since that time he’d treated himself with creams and suppositories. It had popped again in the spring and he’d worried but he had not told anyone. That flare-up had gradually subsided, had left him feeling embarrassed, vulnerable, angry, slightly anemic, slightly depressed.
Bobby rose, flushed, cleaned the red splatters from the porcelain and the seat, flushed again.
Noah was downstairs. Sara was in the boys’ room. Paulie, in a diaper and T-shirt, was holding her leg. “Igooutsidetoo?” He said it as one word, one long singing sound without any syllable being emphasized. Sara cocked her head questioningly. “Igooutsidetoo?” Paulie repeated. He looked anguished. “Igooutsidetoo?” he said again.
Bobby looked in. He stood with his buttocks squeezed tight. Sara bent, grasped Paulie’s hand. To Bobby Sara seemed bigger this pregnancy than she’d been with either Noah or Paul, and more tired. “Igooutsidetoo?” Paulie pleaded. Bobby chuckled at the babble. Sara kissed the boy. “Sure,” she said. It amaze her how complete and grammatically correct, if slammed together, were his sentences. “After breakfast,” she said. “Then you can go outside, too.”
Sara turned, saw Bobby watching them. Slowly she straightened, sighed. For five years she had been either pregnant or nursing or both. Noah was four years four months; Paulie twenty-three months. Sara was exhausted. She was not simply taking care of the two boys. There was Bobby, Josh and the house; there was the women’s group, the vets she tutored, and Tony with his new problem. She was six months along; her career was on hold; and she was feeling as if she hadn’t just married Robert J. Wapinski but had married his causes, High Meadow, EES, and the constant chatter about Viet Nam.
“Talk to your son, will you?” Sara said.
“Noah?”
Sara nodded.
“What’d he do?”
“I caught him with two pieces of candy this morning and I found broccoli stuffed behind his booster seat. And Josh is still shedding! Can’t he stay outside?”
Bobby lumbered to the kitchen doorway, spied Noah with half a dozen small cars and trucks lined up in a column on the kitchen table. He was pushing the last, tittering as the first crashed off the table edge. Bobby brightened. Then wailing like a police siren he barged in, twanged “Hold it! You’re under arrest. Anything you say will be held against you.”
Noah giggled. “Cut it out.”
“This is the High Meadow vice squad,” Bobby said. “No cutting it out allowed.”
“Papa!”
“Ahha!” In a cartoon characterlike voice. “A code name. Write that down, Sergeant.”
“Papa, what sergeant?” Noah was becoming unsure of his father’s intention.
“Sergeant Sara informs me that you have been observed perpetrating a vicious vice,” Bobby continued the charade. “That without provocation or permission you viciously attacked and ate two—not one but two—pieces of candy before breakfast!” Wapinski grabbed the boy about his chest, lifted him. Noah squirmed, half-heartedly attempted to escape. “And broccoli behind your booster seat?! Yeck!”
“Paulie did it.” Noah wriggled to the floor.
Bobby had been up since five. There were so many things going on, so much to do. Yet his ass was dragging. He blamed it on the hemorrhoid. He blamed it on Sara’s tiredness and his extra effort helping her with the boys. He blamed it on Paul Volker, chairman of the Federal Reserve. The discount rate had been rising steadily since its 1977 low of 4.75 percent. It was now at 11.75 percent. Construction loans, if available, were at 13 percent or more. Bobby blamed his tiredness on all the prominent economists who were predicting recession, and on the national financial columnists who, in spite of the recent Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident and OPEC’s July jolt to oil prices, were declaring that “Energy from the sun may be free but the capital outlay for the collection apparatus is so high it is cheaper to heat, even today, with conventional fuels.”
High Meadow sales were not bad. The columnists declared a solar water and space heating system would cost between $13,000 and $20,000. EES was installing equivalent systems for $6,600 to $8,000. The columnists claimed the solar equipment would not last long enough to reach a monetary break-even point. Bobby was confident that EES collector panels were of such quality and design they should be trouble-free for forty years. Every collector panel, every control box, every storage system now carried a small engraved brass plaque:
MADE IN AMERICA
by Veterans of The Viet Nam War
Bobby was absolutely committed to quality workmanship, to the belief that only quality workers produced quality work, and that anyone who strove to be a quality worker would be a quality worker. Further, he believed that with superior product design and superior craftsmanship any company would succeed, would ride the rough economic waves of recession, the changing tides of social attitudes.
High Meadow’s problem was not product, not price, not even buyer resistance. It was simply that High Meadow and EES still had but one full-time salesman. Bobby had tried to induce Tom Van Deusen into a sales role but Tom had shied away. He’d tried Charlie Knabe and Gary Sherrick without success. Erik Schevard showed some interest, but he was still at the beginning of the program and simply wasn’t ready; and Don Wagner, who may have been ideal, was running fire circle sessions full time. Tëpi!
Bobby was out of steam. Even on the farming side, Bobby was the prime seller. Tony could sell, did sell, but he didn’t enjoy it and always settled for the initial offer. Mike Treetop and Mark Renneau helped, but ... Bobby knew, selling is an art. None of them were sales artists.
Cash flow was again a problem. Attempting to support thirty-five vets plus three families on the two businesses was stretching High Meadow and Bobby to the limit. Vets were sympathetic—they hadn’t come because of the wage structure—but Bobby insisted they be reasonably paid because that was essential to their understanding of their own worth and their learning successful money management attitudes. Bobby held stringent reins on his and Sara’s expenditures. That too sapped him.
And, though he had not yet realized it, he was empty because High Meadow had grown so fast that it had outpaced its goals. Each facet of business and program individually was chugging along but collectively High Meadow was adrift, unsure of where it was going. Bobby was so busy selling, acting, re-acting, there was no time to plan, redecide, pick new targets, assess. Elation evaporated.
In the hour before Sara and the boys rose, Bobby had thought about these problems, about his own energy, about how, in California, he’d planned a running regimen, gotten into shape, finally run the Dipsea and felt strong, full of energy and endurance. And he thought he’d better get back into shape if he was going to keep up with his sons and the vets. Yet after fifteen push-ups and twenty sit-ups he’d been puffing, fatigued. He’d told himself, one higher each day. That’ll do it.
He’d thought too about Father Tom Niederkou at St. Ignatius who had announced on Sunday that the parish was going to sponsor a family of Viet Namese refugees and would everyone volunteer a little time or clothing or ...
And he thought about the newest vets, about his conversation last night with Sara. She’d said something about their dreams having been crushed. He’d answered, “That’s a problem, Sar, but that’s not the biggest problem. People have to have dreams for dreams to be crushed. Some of these guys have never had one. Their ‘pipe dreams’ were put down at one or two or three years old and that damaged the dream-making machinery. They have no dreams, no images, no visions. They can’t see themselves being anything other than what and where they are.” As the sun had risen, Bobby’d thought hard about this syndrome being worse than posttraumatic stress because there was virtually no foundation upon which to build.
Sara came down with Paulie. Now Bobby was at the table, reading a story in the newest issue of Newsweek entitled “The End of the Hmong.” More crushed dreams, crushed dream machines, he’d been thinking. Noah had taken his cars into the living room where he was crashing them against Josh’s legs. Without speaking Sara put Paulie in his high chair, shuffled to the stove where the teapot was whistling. We’re like the 101st, Bobby thought. We’ve got a rendezvous with destiny. A rendezvous with those crushed dreams, with the Miriams, with the dream crushers. It was not yet seven.
Gary Sherrick was in the barn library. He, too, had been up since five, reading, studying, making notes. The 1979 barn exercise, as he conceived it, would put both the American government concept of the war, and the prime American players in the war effort—from Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger—on trial. Sherrick had had no difficulty persuading the vets to participate, nor any problem getting pro and con volunteers, but the vets had resisted his tight rules of evidence and procedure, issues of law and discovery phase exchanges. “Damn it.” Sherrick had seethed at Wagner and Mariano. “There’s a format here that’s got to be followed.”
Mariano had countered, “Gary, I thought you hated attorneys because of that shit.”
“You dumb shit, no! It’s because they don’t follow it. They twist it, use it to harass the other side, use it to bury facts and evidence.”
Sherrick wanted to charge the federal government with not being true to the founding principles of the nation. With that as the formal charge, he’d set out to prosecute while Steve Hacken and Jim Thorpe had taken the roles of defense attorneys. The trial was set to begin in October. Currently the vets were in investigation, abstract, and the first phase of discovery.
Gary continued with his notes. He was adapting a speech delivered in another time. He had been reading Joseph Buttinger’s The Smaller Dragon and The World’s Famous Orations, America, Volume III, edited by William Jennings Bryan. By changing the parties, Sherrick thought, the words could have been spoken in the late ’40s or early ’50s by Ho Chi Minh.
Who among you, my countrymen, that is a father, would claim authority to make your child a slave because you had nourished him in infancy? ’Tis a strange species of generosity which requires a return infinitely more valuable than anything it could have bestowed....
Courage, then, my countrymen; our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty....
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude more than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!
Sherrick was thinking, could Ho have said to the Viet Namese “colonists” what Samuel Adams had said to the Americans in 1776? The question was difficult. Hacken, Sherrick was sure, would first attack him on the phrase “shall be left to mankind as asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.” All year there had been a steady flow of news stories indicating that united Viet Nam was anything but an asylum for liberty. Sherrick thought to strike the phrase but he also thought if he could find a speech by Ho that stated the same idea, he’d be able to support the entire Adams’ speech. What had happened post-1975, he reasoned, should not demean Ho’s early intentions. Sherrick bracketed the phrase, picked up his photocopy of Uncle Ho’s March 6, 1946, speech to the “multitudes” before the Municipal Theater in Hanoi, on the occasion of the government accepting French reoccupation. Underlined were Ho’s words, “I would rather die than sell our country.” Sherrick stopped. Outside there was a rush of cars. Then banging.
“I’m gonna make it. Man, I’m gonna make it.” Tony was muttering, talking to himself, trying to convince himself. He lay on the cot behind the barred door in his old cubicle. It had been a long time since he’d spent nights there and the past two nights had not been by choice. Linda was irate.
“How could you?!” she’d screamed.
“It was years ago.” He’d twitched. He’d fidgeted. He hadn’t thought she’d get so angry.
“Zookie! Zookie, that bitch with the neck tattoo?!”
“The kid could be anybody’s,” Tony had stammered.
Linda yelped. “That’s not the point! Get out!”
He’d withdrawn, shaking, more upset at Linda’s reaction to the paternity suit than to the suit itself, not understanding Linda’s reaction was not to the suit at all but to his admission of liaison with someone she’d met, someone she loathed.
Tony put his hands to his head, massaged his temples. Things had been going so well for them. On August 11th Jo had taken Gina and Michelle, and Tony had taken Linda to Philadelphia for a beer at the EM Club where they’d met eleven years earlier, then to dinner and dancing and an evening at the Hilton Hotel. The girls were now nine years old. Linda’s career was established. Tony had been in Mill Creek Falls for four years, back with Linda for two, more stable and secure with every passing month. They’d begun talking, tentatively, about another child. “I’m thirty,” Linda had said. “If we’re going to have another, it should be pretty soon.” Tony, one of four brothers, had been dreaming about a son. Then the summons and papers and a demand for $12,000 in back support had arrived.
“I’m gonna ...” Tony mumbled. He rolled on the cot. “Goddamn pig! If those motherfuckers ... Kid’s probably Gaylord’s. Could be anybody’s. If they tie it to me that’s it. I’m gone. I’m on the Harley. I’m outta here. I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna work the rest of my life for some pig and her kid. Shit! When the hell was that. Five years ago? Six?” He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand.
Cut me a huss. All night his heart had been pounding, jarring him as he lay on the firm bunk. Finally he’d stammered to himself, “How would Bobby handle this? Could it actually be mine? I gotta maintain. I gotta main-fuckin-tain.”
Through the heavy door the shouting above was muffled.
Tom Van Deusen had been up early that morning. He was sitting at the drawing table in Grandpa’s office. Spread before him was the schematic for a domestic hot water and space heating system. The solar heat collection loop was in black; the space heating loop including five radiant floor zones was in red; domestic hot water was in green; and incoming cold was blue. Domestic hot water and space heating each had separate two-stage storage tanks and heat-exchanger coils; for all loops combined there were eight pumps. Bobby had taken one look at it the day before and had said, “More complicated is not more sophisticated. We’re looking for simple, inexpensive, elegant solutions.”
“Right,” Tom had answered. Right, he now thought. Atop the schematic he laid a blank sheet. On the first line he wrote, “Bechtel’s Energy Cell.” Then he diagrammed a soccer field, sketched in positions, inserted player’s names. On Sunday the 26th, The Energy Cell was scheduled to play Rock Ridge’s Pulaski Club.
Van Deusen startled. “What the fuck’s that?!”
The reaction at the dam was similar. They too were taken totally by surprise.
An hour earlier they had set out from the big barn; six of them in rucksacks with two-day resupplies; led by Don Wagner in his old red plaid shirt and bright orange pants (designed purposefully to interrupt old mental associations); with Rick MacIntyre at slack; followed by balding Kevin Rifkin, “Blue Dog” when he was with the 1st Cav; then Juan Varga, who’d served with the 4th Infantry Division; Joe “Doc Trash” Forbes, 1st of the 5th Mechanized; and Dave “Bro” Bailer, 3d Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment.
Their progress was slow. Legless Rick used his arms and thickly gloved hands to raise his torso, then swing his body forward, rhythmically banging out three-foot steps. The Corps had once fitted him with prosthetic devices but he’d found them slow, confining.
“We’ll break on the dam,” Wagner said. The morning was cool, crisp. It had rained violently the night before, then snapping gusts had blown the storm from the Endless Mountains almost as if the winds were blowing the hot, hazy summer away and bringing an October day. Wagner noticed the transformation on the trees of the woods they were about to enter. Overnight, scattered leaves had turned yellow, some had already dropped, here and there splotches of red had erupted. Don thought it was too early, felt it was an omen of a long, hard winter.
Juan Varga fidgeted. Water crashed through the spillway. Varga was a city dweller. The water rush unnerved him, the woods terrified him. “I can’t sleep in the dark, Man,” he whispered to Bailer.
“Me neither, Man,” Bailer said. They were sitting on the dam leaning against their rucksacks. “This dumb. I ... you know, Man, I thought we’d jus de-tox like at the VA. We goin in there.” Bailer lifted his head toward the trailhead and the woods. He too was a city dweller. The gap, the Pennamite Camp, the fire circle meant nothing to him. And to him Wagner’s hè, tëpi, wëli, and yuho were Mickey Mouse Boy Scout bullshit.
Refkin broke out smokes, passed his pack. MacIntyre shook his head. “Can’t, Blue Dog. I gotta keep my wind.” Rick shifted. The trek over the knoll was hard on him and he could feel the pain in his legs that were not there. “If I do that, I can’t keep my upper bod in shape and I can’t do what I’m doing now.”
The four newbies lit up. “Shee-it,” Bailer whispered to Varga, “I aint done humped since ’66. Fall a ’66. Jus fore the monsoon hit. We moved ... we was like near Da Nang ... we moved up with the others and we run smack into an NVA regiment. One moh fuck-over, Man. Jus one moh.”
Most of the vets who’d arrived in ’79 believed being a veteran of the war in Southeast Asia was a terrible blot upon their character, a stigma that had destroyed their lives. Yet they identified with that period more strongly than with any other. They projected their “stigma” like a giant scarlet A.
“You been fucked, huh?” MacIntyre said flatly.
Bailer’s eyes jerked to Rick. He glared. He hadn’t meant for anyone but Varga to hear his comment. He looked away. “Yeah,” he said. “Fucked royal.”
“By Nam, huh?” MacIntyre said.
“Yeah.” Bailer was defensive. He tried to act cool. “You too?”
“No,” MacIntyre said. “Not me.”
Bailer, Forbes, Varga, looked at him warily. Blue Dog didn’t look at all. For them, in this early encounter, it was as if they could not show their recognition of Rick’s condition.
“What?!” MacIntyre blurted. “My legs, Man?”
“You aint got no legs,” Bailer said. His voice was icy, tentative.
“Huh!” MacIntyre lurched. “Hey, you’re right. Hey, who took my legs?” He began to laugh. “Aw, who the fuck needs legs? Maybe it’d be nice. I’m going to tell ya something though. No matter what your experience, wounded or not, physical or mental, you’ve gained something by having been there. Seeing what you saw—what no one else in this country has seen—makes you a deeper person than those who never went. You just don’t recognize it yet. The more you experienced that place, the more you saw the good and the evil, the corruption that was with our forces and all the other forces too.... Man, once you recognize it as a great teacher, then you’ll understand what you have to offer.
“And to your Nam experience you’ve added the homecoming experience,” Rick continued. “How you were treated. You know from that how to treat others, how not to treat others. And hey! Now you’ve got another experience. You’re experiencing High Meadow and the Brotherhood. That’s something deep, strong, more than most people in their station wagons and ranch houses and bank accounts ever know.”
“Where you comin from, Man?” It was Blue Dog. His eyes flicked furtively to Rick, away.
Doc Trash added, “You sound like that g-g-guy, Wapinski.”
“How come he don’t come?” Bailer asked.
“He’s in the office so much”—Wagner shifted in closer—“or in his car on sales, he’s got no wind for the climb.”
Blue Dog interrupted. “I asked this man”—he gestured toward Rick—“where he comin from.”
“Way down,” MacIntyre answered. “Down below the bottom. Man said to me, ‘Why you here?’ I said, ‘Shit if I know.’” Rick chuckled as he spoke. “He says, ‘What’s your reason?’ I say, ‘Fuck off, hair breath.’ He says, ‘Everybody’s got a reason for being here. Why are you here?’ I begin to answer but he says, ‘Don’t tell me.’ Then he split. Why you here, Blue Dog? Doc? Don’t tell me. I’m not talking here at High Meadow. Comprende?”
“I don’t g-get it,” Doc Trash said.
Rick eyed him playfully. “You think you’re the only one, don’t cha? You’re not,” MacIntyre said. “I’ve been down that road. Maybe not exactly the same as you, maybe I hit different potholes, maybe I avoided some scattered clumps a dung from the dung wagon, maybe you stepped in more or less. But it was the same road.”
“Da-da-don’t go minimizing m-m-my feelings”—Doc sputtered bitterly—“ya wa-wa-weird little fucker.”
Wagner’s anger rose like a mortar round launched. He shot up but Rick guffawed so loudly and with such jubilance Wagner dropped back.
From the woods, from the knoll, from the downstream trail, men with rifles emerged. The newbies thought it was part of the exercise.
The first time Ty Mohammed went before the parole board he was turned down. This had little to do with his behavior during his first three and one-half years of incarceration. Indeed, his behavior and attitudes, after the operation and radiation therapy, swung back to the Tyrone Dorsey of San Francisco—back to the man studying his speech, expanding his vocabulary, walking, talking, being proud, reading, learning about the world’s greatest salesman, examining the plight of minorities, their seemingly growing economic divergence from the wealth-path of the mainstream. He did not expound upon his views to the board. He acted the quiet, remorseful, contrite recalcitrant the board most favored. But boards are political. And parole boards are vindictive in the name of social responsibility.
After four years in prison, after his second hearing, Ty Mohammed was paroled on 1 August 1979. It took three additional weeks of complicated exchange and extradition procedures for him to be allowed to return to Pennsylvania. On the morning of 21 August Ty drove a leased gold Cadillac into Mill Creek Falls an hour after local, state and federal agents rendezvoused at the esses near the Old Mill on Mill Creek Road.
Suddenly there was commotion. Clumping on the front porch, then banging on the door. Bobby’s head snapped up. Sara’s instantaneous reaction was anger, interpreting the noise as vets playing grab ass. She was barefoot, not even dressed except for a loose-fitting muumuu her mother had sent her when she’d learned of Sara’s new pregnancy. Commotion erupted in the yard. Sara’s eyes riveted to Bobby, flicked to the back window, then to Paulie and Noah. Josh barked. The back door burst open. Bobby’s heart froze, jolted, raced. Men rushed in. Bobby’s eyes locked on their weapons, pistols, M-16 rifles. Instantly he searched for his own weapon, anything.
“Freeze!”
“Don’t move!”
The voices were hard, harsh, threatening. The men wore black shirts, black pants, black hats.
Bobby exploded forward between Sara and the men. “What the hell are you—”
One man grabbed him. Outside there was shouting, screaming, cursing. Sara plucked Paulie from the high chair. A second man smashed Bobby behind the knees with a club, the first hammered him down with a pistol butt on his collar bone, then held the pistol, cocked, barrel on Bobby’s temple. “Freeze!” Josh barked viciously, leaped, his old dog legs barely getting traction on the floor. Immediately he was clubbed across the nose, knocked to the floor.
“Don’t move!”
“Don’t move!”
Paulie shrieked.
Noah was frozen rigid in the living room, watching the men hit his father, hold a gun to his father’s face, his father on his knees, his mother holding his shrieking brother, another man with a rifle leveled on them, his dog on the floor before him, between him and the others, bleeding from the nose, twitching. Men yelling things he didn’t understand, three now on his father, pushing, frisking even though his father had on but a T-shirt and sweatpants. Then men grabbed his mother, grabbed his brother. More men came. Noah couldn’t see them wrench his father’s arms behind him, handcuff his father, handcuff too his mother. Armed men darted by him, rushed the stairs, leap-frogged forward, up, frightened someone upstairs would fire on them.
There was no break in the motion. Sara was now down, kneeling, trying to reach Paulie, frantic, trying to see Noah. They’d been caught so off guard, so unaware, then were so dumbstruck by the assault, there was no time for thought, no concept of what was happening, how to resist.
More men spread through the house, secured it room by room. In the kitchen Bobby’s ankles were shackled.
“You’ve got the right to remain ...”
A deafening blast erupted from the roof of the barn. In the kitchen, agents lurched, dropped to the floor, one smashed Bobby. One plowed Sara over, knelt on her. In the living room Noah peed. All over High Meadow noises, shouts, banging, could be heard amid the deafening shriek of the air-raid siren.
“Here’s the search warrant!”
Bobby still did not know who the men were. He was furious. What was happening was just beginning to come together, to form a pattern in his mind.
“... probable cause ...”
Sara was lifted, led to the other room. Bobby was turned to face the kitchen cabinet below the sink, unable to see where they had taken his wife and children, unable to see out of the room, out of the windows.
“... stipulates any and all terrorist documents, explosives, weapons, military equipment ... may be seized ... additionally any military plans, electronic schematics for detonation ... axes, saws ... bombs, gas masks ... additionally all children ... probable cause ...”
Bobby pulled at the cuffs, seething, exploding, “Who the fuck are you?! What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Shut up. Where are the weapons?”
“What weapons?!”
“And the tunnels? Where are the tunnels? You better cooperate.”
In the barn library Sherrick too was caught off guard. It wasn’t unusual to have supply trucks coming and going all day, to have relatives visit, to have the farm or EES vehicles leaving this early. But the noises had been different. As he’d come onto the main barn floor he’d been greeted with, “Put your hands up! Don’t move! Hands on your head! Take four steps forward.”
Immediately Sherrick obeyed. “I’m DEA,” he shouted. “Don’t shoot. Let em surrender. Let everybody surrender. Don’t shoot.”
“You’re ...?” Sherrick’s confidence confused the officer. He hadn’t been told that undercover agents had infiltrated the camp. Other men spread through the barn. A pair with rifles raced up the stairs to the loft while two covered them from the middle of the floor. A fifth man mounted the stairs.
“Let everybody surrender.” Sherrick’s voice was loud, firm, commanding. “They’re not armed.” Sherrick had been through it before—not as an American soldier in a foreign land but as an American drug-enforcement officer storming suspected drug dens in Indianapolis. He knew the fear of the agents, knew the “law and order” loathing of the perpetrators, knew the hair triggers. And he knew the best way to respond, the right things to say, the proper way to negotiate in order not to be accidently shot and killed. He remained still with his fingers laced behind his head. He glanced up as two men prepared to burst into Grandpa’s office, a third scurrying to cover their advance. “We’re not armed,” Sherrick repeated. “Why don’t you just take us all out front?” His voice was calm. In his mind he was already delineating the police harassment case—High Meadow vs. the State of Pennsylvania, the Town of Mill Creek Falls, and ...
The siren sounded. Everyone jumped.
Tony was up, hunched behind the barred door. The alarm siren was shrieking and even in his old cubicle behind the tractor garage the noise was intense. His head was forward, flicking back and forth, searching for a weapon, some way to protect himself. He flashed on retreating into the old deep bunker. With the flash came the smell, the ooze, the rot as strong as the moment they’d pulled the body, dismembered it and pulled it over him, over him jammed in that tunnel ... He grabbed the bar from the door hooks. It was a dry, rock-hard, rough-hewn oak two-by-four he’d taken from an old pallet years earlier. Let em come. He backed a step, set, not hinge side, not behind the door swing, but before it, to the open. Let em come. He was pumped. Eyes focused. The door burst open, two men stepped in. SMACK—Tony clobbered their arms, the M-16s clattered to the earthen floor. Immediately Tony shifted, attacked the pressure, the ambush, holding one end of the bar with his left hand, the middle with his right, hammering forward into the stunned officers, the now bleeding, downed men, Tony banging their heads with the wood bar ... kill or be killed! escape! evade! never surrender! never be captured! Then ... bam.bam.bam ...
In Grandpa’s office, Van Deusen, when he’d looked out the window and seen rifles, had grabbed up the papers from Bobby’s desk, tossed them, not really knowing what they were or why he was doing it, into the fire-resistant safe, slammed the door, twisted the dial. Then he’d hit the air-raid siren. Then the door was kicked open.
Immediately he’d raised his hands. To two men shouting, “Don’t move!” he’d nonchalantly shrugged, stammered, “Yeah ... sure.”
Another man came. Van Deusen was read his rights, cuffed.
“You want the siren off?” Van Deusen asked.
“Yeah.” The reply was curt.
“That switch.” Van Deusen pointed with his chin.
“Don’t touch it!” one agent blurted.
“Geez.” Van Deusen chuckled. “I’ll do it with my forehead. It’s not booby-trapped.”
With the siren off the atmosphere became more relaxed. The agents were in radio contact with their control unit. “Barn, Team Five, over.” One man said into his walkie-talkie.
The radio responded. “Go ahead, Andre.”
“There’s only one up here. Unarmed. There’s a locked rack with four rifles. You know, regular gun rack. This is just a real nice office up here. Desk. Bookshelves. Over.”
There was a pause, then, “Hold him there for questioning. Chief Hartley wants to come up.”
“Roger that.”
Van Deusen stood quietly, looking more relaxed than he felt. One agent held him at gunpoint, not aimed at Tom but at the floor before him so should he move the officer could simply flick the rifle up. The other two nosed around, one checking out the desk, the other, the one with the radio handset, perusing the drawings on the drawing board. None of them had heard the shots fired two stories below.
“Hey, what’s this?”
Van Deusen glanced over. “What?”
“This is a soccer field, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Van Deusen said.
“What are you doin with a soccer field ...”
“Lineups. We got a game Sunday morning.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too. Who do you play for?”
“Bechtel’s Energy Cell.”
“You guys the Energy Cell?!”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Andre Paulowski. I play for the Pulaski Club over in Rock Ridge.”
“Yer shittin me?”
“No. I thought the Energy Cell ... you know, was like sponsored by a company ... Bechtel’s ...”
“We are. That’s who we are. We make solar heating panels and stuff. Howie Bechtel’s our team captain. He’s a team leader, ah, you know, like a production foreman, downstairs ... where we make the solar panels.”
“What about the bombs?” Paulowski asked.
“What bombs?” Van Deusen was truly surprised.
“They said you guys are building terrorist bombs up here.”
One hundred twenty-nine federal, state, and local law-enforcement officials descended upon High Meadow on the morning of Thursday, 21 August 1979. It was a well-planned, well-executed assault. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, state SWAT teams, local police officers, town officials, state child-care workers, and command, control and liaison personnel—all participated. Twelve men were assigned to the main house, six to each of the vet-family trailers, ten to each bunkhouse, twenty-two to the big barn, thirty-six to land search, and sixteen to tunnels and bunkers. At the dam, particularly after seeing Rick MacIntyre, the police officers were calm, almost gentle. They did not become edgy until they received the report, via radio, that one of the terrorists had badly beaten two officers before being shot and subdued. An ambulance had been on standby less than a mile down Mill Creek Road. It was advancing on the farm. A second ambulance was called for the terrorist.
Linda was on the verge of tears. On the car radio they were playing Elvis oldies—“Are You Lonesome Tonight?” then “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” She was half-singing along, half-talking to herself, half out of her mind, half talking to Tony. “Babe, I’m sorry I got so angry. I know it was a long time ago. I know we were separated then. Please come home. The girls are at your mom’s. I can’t stop loving you.”
Linda did not drive fast. She wanted to practice what she would say to Tony. What kept coming out was, “Why? Why Zookie? Maybe I could understand it if it had been someone like that Stacy Carter. But Zookie? Sometimes you’re such an ass ... such a ... bad little boy ... No, that’s no good.” She passed the New Mill, the Dump Road turnoff, approached the esses by the Old Mill. From behind her came an ambulance with its siren whining. She pulled over, let it pass, continued on. Two police cars and another ambulance came from the opposite direction, whizzed by. “I’m—I’m sorry, Babe,” she muttered. “I let the green-eyed monster control me. We can work it out.”
Before Adolph Lutz’s farm she was stopped by a police roadblock. With a tissue she dried her eyes, blew her nose. “Road’s closed, Ma’am.”
“Why?” Linda asked. “Was there an accident?” She leaned out slightly. Behind the barricade was a television van, men with cameras, a woman Linda recognized as a reporter from the 1st Witness News Team of Channel Five.
“No Ma’am. Just turn around please. The road will be closed for some time.”
“Wait a minute.” Linda got out of the car. “I saw two ambulances. One going, one coming. I’m a registered nurse. And my husband works—”
“Ma’am, there’s an illegal, armed, paramilitary organization up here. We don’t want anyone else hurt.”
Linda immediately grasped at least the surface of the situation. She tried to stall, to learn more. The trooper stonewalled her but she overheard the reporter. “... allegedly a cover for a one-hundred-man paramilitary terrorist force ...” The woman smiled into the camera. Her blond hair barely moved in the morning breeze. “... state and county officials are urging anyone who purchased or had installed any solar equipment, including electronic boards, from any of the following companies—EES, Environmental Energy Systems, The Energy Cell or The Power Pack—to immediately call local police. Do not touch the equipment! There may be explosive devices ...”
Inside Linda’s mind flares rose, alarms sounded, red flags waved. She knew immediately what to do.
Slowly, appearing from various structures about the farm, half-dressed men, their wrists cuffed behind their heads, the cuffs held by safety wire to each man’s belt, were being marched like POWs to a cordoned area between the main house and the big barn. All minors were taken into protective custody by the state child-care authority. Suzanna Shallier, Tom and Joycelyn’s eleven-year-old, kicked, scratched, and bit her handlers, but Erik and Lindsey Schevard, Erik and Emma’s children, stunned or in shock, went “peacefully.” High Meadow was officially subdued and secured in just under eight minutes.
In the cordon: “I wish I were in Nam again, Man. Back in the A Shau. Someplace safe.”
“Yeah. We need heavy ordnance, Man. Call in some fuckin arty. Call in ARA.”
“Pop smoke. Bring in the fast movers. Let em come in right on top a us. Blow these pigs away.”
Individually the vets were read their rights. “You pressing charges?” It was Sherrick, loud, angry. They didn’t answer him. “Are we charged with something or not?”
They separated Sherrick from the others, to the side, but not out of sight. Again he was read his rights. “I asked you a direct question, Sergeant. Are we being charged or not?”
“No.” The man was terse, hard. “There are no charges right now. But, at any time they may be filed....”
“There’s no charges because you don’t have any goddamn charges. Why don’t you fuckin admit it. You guys blew it.”
“You may be arrested at any time.” The sergeant stood square to Sherrick, stood looking like he’d like to club the cuffed man. “You can be charged with additional charges if you talk to anyone....”
“Bullshit!” Even with his hands behind his head Sherrick seemed threatening. “You asshole! You can’t demand that unless you charge us. What the fuck are you going to trump up?”
From the tractor garage, from the main barn floor, from the Sugar Shack, black-clad troops came with knives, axes, saws, hammers, utility knives, toolboxes—all the equipment that any farm or small manufacturing company would normally have. The items were tagged, recorded, loaded into various police evidence vans. Then they came from the house, from the library, from Grandpa’s office, with stacks and boxes of records, plans and ledgers. And from the main floor they took all the electronic control panels under assemblage and all the boxes of components.
Then from the tractor barn—Tony had been evacuated without anyone even knowing he’d been wounded—came word of the tunnel, the deep bunker, the survivalist supplies—mostly food, water, seeds, medicine and books, but also a shotgun (a cheap single-shot 12-gauge) and four boxes of shells.
In the house Bobby and Sara were still on their knees, still in separate rooms. Three times Bobby had been read his rights. Twice they’d showed him the warrant:
There is probable cause to believe that property described herein may be found at the location set forth herein. This property is seizable pursuant to Penal Code 1524, as indicated below by Xs. The seizable property is evidence which tends to indicate that a felony has been committed, or a particular person or persons has/have committed a felony.
“Where’s my wife?”
No answer.
“Where are my sons?”
No answer.
“Are they with my wife?”
No answer.
“You motherfuckin cocksuckers. We fought for freedom. Every man here fought for freedom! This is not freedom when for no god damned reason you motherfuckers can come in here and point a gun at my head!!”
“Sir,” an officer behind Bobby said to a man who had just entered. “This is Robert J. Wapinski. We’re sure of that. His sister identified him.”
Wapinski snapped around. An officer twisted his head back forward.
“Humph!” The man who’d entered snorted. Then, loud enough so Bobby could hear him, he said, “His own mother tipped us off. She said she was worried sick about what he’s been doing up here.”
“Yes Sir. That’s what Mayor Hartley said too. Did they find the mortars or those phu ... What were they called?”
“Phu-gas.”
“Those canisters?”
“Just a matter of time. We’ve got enough to lock these perverts away for life. Half these bastards have records long as your arm. There’s so many drug addicts, convicts and psychos up here ... Shit, they picked up another one coming in from California. Driving a big gold Cadillac. We’ve got to stop this before it spreads.”
Bobby’s knees ached. His back ached. His wrists and shoulders and feet ached. The longer they held him on his knees the more furious he grew, the more he felt disconnected from the present, the more he heard her voice, “Pig. You eat like a pig. You sound like a pig. If you can’t eat properly ... Get down on the floor. Get down there! Down!”
Killing me. The thought displaced Miriam’s words. They’re killing me. They want to kill me.
Sara too was still on her knees, alone, thinking the boys were with Bobby, terrified, miserable, afraid for her baby, her fetus, totally horrified at what the men were doing to her house. Every piece of furniture was inverted, every drape taken down, every rug rolled back. She could hear them upstairs going through drawers, closets. In the living room, before her, where the wallpaper had buckled from the water damage the weekend the dam nearly washed away—they had never repaired the wall—an officer split the bulge to check for drugs. Sara could hear them in the basement, too, and on the roof. They could not have been more thorough. After three hours she was allowed a drink of water; after four she was allowed to sit. Her legs were numb, her feet swollen. Slowly the feeling came back. After six hours, at one o’clock in the afternoon, she was uncuffed. The vets had disappeared from the yard. Bobby and the children were gone. Josh was nowhere to be seen. Still there were police in the house, in the yard. “This is an ongoing investigation,” one man told her. “You’re not allowed to say a word to anyone. Speaking to anyone will result in additional charges being filed against you.”
Finally, at three o’clock, John Pisano, Sr., along with Linda, Isabella and James Pellegrino, Father Tom Niederkou, Johnnie Jackson, and Albert Morris of Morris’ Grocery (now also head of the Mill Creak Falls Chamber of Commerce) were allowed through the barricade. John Sr. was livid. Sara did not know whom he was yelling at. “You tell Hartley he’s gone too far this time. Too goddamned far. Sorry Father.” Then, “Sara! Sara are you okay? Where’s Tony?”