Chapter Thirty-Eight

“What happened,” Gary Ackerman demanded.
“There’s been a terrorist attack,” the pageboy said. “It’s the flower show. They attacked the flower show.”
David broke into a run, pushing past the congressmen and nearly trampling them. This wasn’t just a bomb threat. The Antifreeze Lobby actually carried out a terrorist attack to stop the subcommittee from hearing his poem.
David burst out of the crowded entranceway. Helicopters roared overhead and the smell of panic filled the air. People ran in all directions, trying to get far away. They seemed to run with no destination, but David headed straight for the gazebo.
A wall of riot police blocked his way and a large burly one grabbed him.
“You can’t come through here.”
“But I’m a poet!”
“It doesn’t matter. No one’s allowed through.”
“But that’s my flower caravan out there!”
“Not any more it isn’t. The terrorists have taken it.”
The other flower caravaners ran up to David’s side.
“Let us through. I’m Gary Ackerman, Chairman of the House Committee on the Middle East.”
“I can’t let you through, sir.”
Gary shot David a look that said, “Use a poem.”
“But that’s my gazebo,” Elizabeth said.
A short policeman with a handlebar moustache spotted them. “You’re with the flower show, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Follow me. I’ll take you to the hostage negotiator.”
“Hostage negotiator? There’s hostages?”
The short policeman nodded. “Four hostages. Employees of yours, we think.”
They followed the policeman. He led them along the barricade of policemen and police tape. David glanced between the policemen’s shoulders and saw a few people on the gazebo platform holding what looked like automatic rifles. There was something taped with duct tape to the posts supporting the roof—probably explosives. Four people seemed to be tied to the posts, one to each. Probably the drivers. One of them was definitely Marcy; David recognized her distinctive shape.
Police held back television reporters, preventing the cameras from getting too close.
The policeman brought them to a large square-jawed man with a crew cut and a dark suit. He was sitting on a folding chair and sipping water from a plastic cup.
“Sir,” the short policeman said. “These are the people with the flower caravan.”
The hostage negotiator nodded slightly, took another sip of water, and looked up at them. “Whose gazebo is that?” he asked in a gravely voice.
“It’s mine,” Elizabeth said.
The hostage negotiator nodded. “We have a situation here,” he said. “A hostage situation. Three armed men with bombs strapped to their chests, explosives all over the gazebo truck, and it’s all wired to blow.”
“What do they want?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don’t know,” the hostage negotiator said. “I didn’t ask them.”
“Why not?”
“They’re terrorists. I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“But that’s your job,” Natasha pointed out. “You’re a hostage negotiator.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job.” He took a sip of water. “I don’t tell you how to do your job, do I?”
“But how do you expect them to release the hostages if you don’t talk to them?” Natasha asked.
“First they have to release the hostages. Then we can talk.”
David pounded his fist into the palm of his hand.
“So you’re just going to let them slaughter our drivers?!”
The hostage negotiator sipped his water and pretended he hadn’t heard David.
“Look,” David said. “Just because they’re evil doesn’t mean they’re completely irrational. They probably have some bizarre logic. The only way to find out is to talk to them.”
The hostage negotiator looked David straight in the eye. “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
If the hostage negotiator wouldn’t talk to them, then David would have to do it himself. He knew he could convince them to let the truck drivers go. There was nothing that poetry and flowers couldn’t do. That’s basically what poetry was: hostage negotiation. He wouldn’t look at them like terrorists. He would try to see them as sunflowers—sunflowers with bombs strapped to their chests.
David straightened the green carnation on his lapel and bent under the police tape.
“Hey!” the hostage negotiator shouted. “Stop him!”
David walked briskly towards the gazebo, the policemen yelling after him to stop.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” one policemen yelled.
David didn’t think they would shoot him, but he still picked up his pace. He approached the gazebo and held his hands out to the side so the kidnappers would know he meant no harm. They aimed their machine guns at him as he slowly ascended the gazebo steps.
David immediately recognized the ruddy, pudgy man pointing a machine gun in his face. Agent Black had shown him the man’s picture in the truck stop bathroom. It was the arch-terrorist, Terry “the terrorist” Grawgowski. David was standing face-to-face with the commander-in-chief of the Plant Liberation Army.
He recognized the other two terrorists from their pictures, but he couldn’t remember their names. One was about forty years old with a narrow face, beady eyes, and teeth that jutted out even when his mouth was closed. The other was only a few years older than David, had sparse blond whiskers, and kept licking his lips.
The hostages were duct taped to the posts, their mouths also covered with duct tape. Big Marcy looked pleadingly at David, her eyes swimming with tears. The other hostages were the drivers Sparky Williams, David Schweitzer, and Slim Henry. They also looked terrified.
“Hi,” David said, breaking the awkward silence.
Terry “the terrorist” Grawgowski nodded politely. “Hello.”
“Hi,” the others mumbled.
David had never been in a hostage negotiation situation before, but he had seen enough movies, so he figured he knew what to do.
“Why don’t you let the women and children go?”
“There aren’t any children,” Terry said.
“Well then let Marcy go at least.”
Terry looked down at Marcy and seemed to consider.
“Untie her,” he said to the younger of the two men.
The young man pulled out a knife about six inches long. It looked very sharp. He quickly slashed the tape holding her wrists and then slashed the tape holding her ankles together. He ripped the tape off her mouth and Marcy let out a shout of pain, then another shout of relief. She rushed over to David, crushing the wind out of him with a bear hug.
“Go on,” David whispered urgently. He was about to pass out from loss of air. “Get out of here. Quick.”
Marcy released him and hurried down the stairs, rubbing her sore wrists. She rushed across the lawn, stopping only to pick up a potted begonia before disappearing into the line of policemen.
“Now,” David said. “Why don’t you release one of the men?”
Terry shook his head. “I have a few demands first.”
“Okay,” David said. “What do you want?”
“First, I want the flower show shut down.”
“Okay. We can do that. I’m sure that can be arranged.”
“And second, I want all agriculture abolished.”
“That could be more difficult.”
“Difficult, but it’s absolutely necessary.” Terry the Terrorist spoke eagerly and sounded as if he had drunk too much coffee. “The Animalists have managed to almost completely destroy the world in only a few thousand years. For millions of years there was no agriculture and we lived in harmony with plants. If you were hungry, you’d just pick some berries off a bush or snatch a tasty mountain goat. Then, people started harvesting plants and the whole world went south. People needed to justify agriculture so they created Animalism, which is really nothing more than propaganda that animals are supposedly superior to plants, that it’s better to have cell membranes than cell walls. The people thought they were in control, but the Animalism took over and they began to separate everything into superior and inferior. They divided animals into higher and lower animals and enslaved the “lower” animals. Thus animal husbandry was born. It even entered between human beings. One person thought he was better than another, that he should rule over him, and so slavery was born. Then one nation thought it was better than the next, that it should rule over its neighboring country, and war broke out. That’s what war essentially is. When someone believes his country is an animal and the other country is a plant. You want to end war? You have to strike at the root of the problem: agriculture. Before there was agriculture, there were no wars.”
“Yes there were,” David said. “There were wars.”
Terry froze. He looked surprised to be contradicted. Perhaps with his cult out in the forest, no one asked questions.
“Name me one,” Terry challenged.
“They didn’t name them back then,” David said.
“That’s because there weren’t any. The first wars in history came from the establishment of agriculture.”
“No. That’s just when people started writing down what happened. But there were wars. What about cave paintings? They were before agriculture and they show wars.”
Terry the Terrorist lifted his weapon and pointed it at David’s face. “There were no wars.”
“Okay,” David agreed. “There were no wars. But why do you have to use violence? This is a free country. You can just state your opinion. You could get some poster board and magic markers. You didn’t have to hijack a gazebo.”
“Sure, freedom of speech,” Terry scoffed and his lips twitched. “You can say whatever you want, but no one listens to you. I wrote letters to the opinion pages of newspapers, but they wouldn’t print them. I stood out on the street with a sign and handed out pamphlets, but everyone just laughed at me. So finally I had no choice but to turn to militant action. I liberated a few stalks of corn—took them from the field and brought them back to the forest. But the farmers didn’t even think to report it—probably didn’t even notice. So I carried out larger operations, destroying large amounts of crops. I would have liberated them, but I couldn’t carry that much. The stupid farmers said it was a crop circle and blamed it on aliens from outer space. I had to get us in the newspapers, so we started going after flower shops. We would break the windows in the middle of the night and liberate the flowers. But even that didn’t work. It never got us on page one. We have to do this to get our message across, and the Animalists understand only violence. It is not our choice, but theirs. We have to make people pay attention.”
“So you’re just doing this to get attention? Were you a middle child or something?”
“I was an orphan.”
“A lot of people are orphans. That’s no excuse. What, did you have some traumatic incident in your childhood involving a house plant?”
Terry’s face twitched.
“What kind of hostage negotiator are you anyway? Why are you insulting me? You should be trying to keep me calm, so I don’t do anything crazy.”
“I’m not a hostage negotiator. I’m a poet. And not the kind that makes you calm. I’m a workingman poet. I rile things up, shake up the status quo, make people think. You’ll never see me as Poet Laureate.”
Terry’s eyes dulled and he drummed his fingers on the bomb strapped to his chest. There was an awkward, dangerous silence. David considered apologizing. He needed to say something before this terrorist blew them up out of sheer boredom. So David said the first thing that came to mind.
“Do you consider lumberjacking to be a form of agriculture?”
Terry looked surprised. And intrigued. He stopped drumming his fingers on the bomb and scratched his forehead. His two colleagues shared an intrigued glance.
“Well,” Terry “the terrorist” Grawgowski said. “I suppose that would depend on if people planted the trees. If people planted them, it would be agriculture. But if the trees grew naturally in the forest, then I see no problem with chopping them down. Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering if there would still be paper after you abolish agriculture. If there’s no paper, there couldn’t be poetry.”
Terry scoffed. “You don’t need paper for poetry. There has always been poetry. Before there was anything to write it down on, poetry was transmitted orally. Why do you think poetry uses rhymes, alliteration, meter, and other poetic devices? It’s a memory aid. The modern poets today who refuse to rhyme or use a steady, consistent meter are distancing themselves from the oral tradition of poetry, separating themselves from nature. They’re Animalist poets. Did you ever notice that when poets go out in the forest to commune with the trees, not as masters over the trees, but as their equals, the poetry inevitably rhymes, it has a consistent meter, uses alliteration, and beautiful imagery? This is because these forest poets are in touch with the oral tradition in poetry, the way poetry is supposed to be. Poems should rhyme.”
“You sound like my father,” David said. “He also thinks poems should rhyme.”
“Your father’s a wise man. You should listen to him.”
“So, what, you also think I should get a teaching certificate?”
“It’s always good to have something to fall back on.”
David felt his anger rising again. “You’re pretty bourgeois for a hunter/gatherer,” he said.
Terry fingered the bomb on his chest. “Pretty soon, we’ll all be hunters and gatherers.”
David remembered what the Department of Agriculture agents had told him in the truck stop men’s room.
“It’s nuclear?”
“It’s conventional,” Terry said. “People will go back to hunting and gathering willingly. Your flower show is a symbol of Animalism. Destroying it will be a rallying cry for everyone who agrees with us but is too afraid to say anything. They’ll rise up and abolish agriculture. It’ll be the end of Animalism.”
David didn’t know how he was going to convince these people. They were completely insane, beyond barbaric: they were hunters and gatherers and predated capitalism by thousands of years. How was he supposed to move them with the plight of the workingman? They didn’t even know what a workingman was. He would have to use another type of poetry. But which one?
Sudden inspiration struck him. He would use physical poetry. Capitalism didn’t just lead to specialization in factories, turning workers into cogs to make the capitalist machine move more efficiently. Specialization had even taken over the Arts. Dancers, for example, had become specialized in using their bodies and were expected to refrain from speaking. If a dancer started to talk in mid-performance, the audience would probably complain. They had become glorified mimes.
Poets were the other extreme. They had become specialized to use only words. They were completely separated from physical reality. Physical poetry brought poetry back into the physical realm; it was no longer just words on paper. Poetry became matter. Time, matter, and poetry fused into one, and David felt no fear. He was pure energy as his fist slammed into Terry’s jaw.
There was a sharp crack and David figured he broke the terrorist’s jaw until he felt a screaming pain in his wrist. He saw Terry grinning and his own hand hanging limply at the end of his arm.
Terry slapped David hard across the side of the head, knocking him to the ground. The three terrorists gathered around the poet and began kicking him in the ribs. David supposed it was naïve of him to think he could be a great physical poet the first he tried. Did he think he was some kind of genius? What arrogance! One couldn’t expect to be great all at once. Poetry wasn’t magic as the Romanticists claimed. Poetry was work; it took practice and perseverance. He was a poet and they were hunters and gatherers who killed wild boars with their bare teeth. He was no match for them physically.
David’s only hope was to use a workingman poem. Sure, it wasn’t the ideal style, but he had to stick to what he knew best. This was a serious situation—it was no time for experimental poetry. His plain rhyme-less, meter-less workingman rhythms might infuriate these terrorist, but there was no other option. He shouted out lines of his poem between kicks in the ribs, improvising as he went. There would be no second draft.
This gazebo that you want to blow up
is the gazebo where I interview for my job,
where Derrick became a professional citronella candle,
where I leapt from the side and stabbed my boss’s husband in the throat,
where the rich and poor huddled in classless solidarity
before leaping out to shout a fatal “Surprise.”
Howard came here to get out of the rain
when he was in his coffin.
I kissed Natasha for the first time here.
We mounted this gazebo to this truck and rode into town,
getting bitter bugs in our teeth,
but giving out sweet candy bars.
Workingmen from gray towns ascended this gazebo
to look to down at these beautiful flowers
and be inspired to realize what was really important in life.
A terrorist chained herself to this gazebo
and escaped Gimpy Barry’s axe just in time.
People from all over the world, China, Brazil, all sorts of countries, stood at the world’s capitol of freedom and saw beauty.
Simple flowery beauty
The terrorists had stopped stomping him and were listening. David unpinned the green carnation from his lapel and pressed the flower in Terry’s hand. Terry looked down at the green carnation and bit his lower lip. The terrorist mastermind was trying not to cry as he realized how much more there was to life than blowing up a gazebo. He was seeing anew all the simple beauty he had overlooked. The other two terrorists looked at the ring of flowers circling the gazebo. All three were flowerstruck. They probably felt pretty silly, standing there in a gazebo on Capitol Hill with bombs strapped to them.
Terry helped David to his feet. “That was a beautiful poem,” he said and turned to his two accomplices. “Let them go.”
They cut the duct tape off their hostages and tore the tape off their mouths. The drivers rubbed their sore limbs and took off quickly down the stairs and across the grass.
Terry’s two accomplices took off their heavy bomb-laden vests and hung them on the gazebo railing. They set down their machine guns, walked down the stairs, and across the grass with their hands up. Policemen roughly threw them to the ground and pushed their faces into the grass. They yanked the terrorists’ arms up in the air behind them and snapped on handcuffs.
Terry stroked the green carnation petals and smiled at David.
“You’re a great poet, son.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t rhyme, but you get the job done.”
David forced a nervous smile. “I appreciate the compliment.”
“I admire you. You go your own way and don’t let anyone tell you what to do.” Terry pulled a red handkerchief out of his pocket, gently wrapped up the green carnation, and placed it gingerly in his pocket. “Now go.”
“Okay,” David said. “Let’s go.”
“I’m staying here.” He patted the bomb strapped to his stomach.
“I thought you weren’t going to blow it up.”
“No. I’m not going to kill innocent people. I realized I’m a human. You helped me realize that. I almost lost that out in the woods. I can’t kill members of my own species. I won’t be a murderer. But I’m still blowing up this gazebo. It’s wrong to hold plants in captivity and I have to make a statement. Blowing up the flower show is the only way.”
“No it isn’t. You don’t have to do this.”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty? Twenty what?”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen? I don’t understand.”
“It’s the countdown. You’d better run.”
David turned and leapt down the stairs. He ran across the lawn, shouting and waving for everyone to get back.
“It’s gonna blow!”
David dove behind a police car, lay on his stomach, and covered his head with his hands. The gazebo exploded in a shattering blast. The air seemed to tear apart. The explosion blocked out the sun and darkness filled Capitol Hill. Splinters of wood, shards of metal, and dismembered flowers rained down on David’s back. Thick black smoke choked him and a hot shard of metal caught him under the shoulder blade.
*****
*****
A few people hat cuts and scratches from the shrapnel and David had to get a cast on his arm, but one was seriously hurt. Except for the Terry “the terrorist” Grawgowski, who was blown up. Still, America was shaken to the core by the fact that a terrorist group could blow up a gazebo on the lawn of Capitol Hill. To make sure it never happened again, the lawn on Capitol Hill was torn up and replaced with woodchips.
The terrorists wouldn’t be able to hide in the woods anymore. The president promised a forest fire the likes of which the world had never seen. He would hunt them down like foxes.
The attack also brought the flower caravan to the nation’s attention. They wondered what a flower show was doing on the lawn of Capitol Hill. Soon everyone learned about how over four hundred children in the United States died every year from antifreeze poisoning and how it was so easily preventable. Massive grassroots pressure forced the congressmen of the subcommittee to pass the antifreeze bittering bill. Now the bill would go on to an actual committee. Someday soon, dogs wouldn’t have to live in bubbles anymore.
There was a party one afternoon on board the Unsinkable 2 to celebrate getting the bill to the committee. Elizabeth said she wanted to show them something and took them for a walk along the pier. It was a clear, warm day and the docks were packed with fisherman, sailors, and all sorts of people out to enjoy the day. White birds swooped overhead.
“We’ve helped a lot of people see what was really important in life,” Elizabeth said. “But now I think we’ve reached the end of the road. I don’t think I can take any more of the flower caravan.”
It had finally happened. Elizabeth had grown sick of the flower show and decided to dilettante her way on to some new hobby.
“We’ll rebuild the flower show!” Natasha said. “We’ll get new flowers and go back on the road! We still have the trucks! We just need new flowers! And a new gazebo!”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “The flower caravan is over.”
David didn’t know what he would do now. He couldn’t go back to school and get a teaching certificate—that would be doing what the terrorists wanted him to do. And more importantly, it would be doing what his father wanted him to do. But he didn’t have many options. Reading poetry to flowers was the only thing he was qualified to do. And with the flower caravan closed for good, he didn’t think he’d find a job doing that. Derrick was luckier. There would always be a demand for people who could stand around and soak up mosquitoes.
“You can’t fire me,” David said. “I quit.”
“I’m not firing you.”
“I rescind my resignation. But I thought you said the flower caravan was finished.”
“The flower caravan is finished. I still need someone to read poetry to the flowers.”
“You’re setting up the garden again?”
Elizabeth’s eyes gleamed mischievously. “When all those tourists from all over the world were standing together in the gazebo and looking down at the flowers, I realized that people in other countries also need to see the beauty of flowers. We can’t keep flowers just for American.” She stopped walking and pointed at an enormous white boat docked in front of them. “There it is. This is my new boat. I just bought it yesterday. We’re going to load it up with flowers and set sail, showing the beauty of flowers to the whole wide world. The Flower Boat.”
“Are those…solar panels?” Gary asked.
“They are. And there’s a powerful battery to store solar power for night-sailing.”
Elizabeth leapt over the small gap between the dock and the boat. The others did the same and followed her to the center of the wide wooden deck.
“We’ll put a gazebo here,” she said. “The flowers can sit around it on the deck. If it gets too sunny, we’ll move them into the storage below. If anything goes wrong I’ll have to go down with the ship, of course. That’s one of my responsibilities as captain. But hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“Where will we be going?” Natasha asked.
“Wherever the wind takes us,” Elizabeth said.
“It’s not a sailboat,” Derrick pointed out. “You won’t have to listen to the wind.”
Elizabeth licked her finger and held it up to test the wind. “We’ll see which way the wind’s blowing,” she said. “And then we’ll engine our way in that direction.”
“What’s her name?” Gary asked.
“Who?”
“The vessel.”
“What?”
“The boat.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth pursed her lips. “I haven’t given it one yet. I suppose we’ll need to do that.”
“Let’s name it Derrick,” Toby the former hermit suggested.
“No!” Derrick shouted. “That’s my name! You already took my handle. Leave me my name. It’s all I have left.”
“You have us,” Toby said.
“Whatever we do, let’s not name it Howard,” Natasha said. “Or it’ll sink for sure.”
“I’ve got it!” David burst out. “There’s one name so lucky, it’ll never sink. Unsinkable! The Unsinkable 3.”
“It’s copyrighted,” Gary Ackerman said.
Everyone stared at him, surprised.
“Don’t worry.” Gary grinned. “I’m kiddin’. You can use the name.”
“We could call it Howard 3,” Natasha said.
Elizabeth ignored her. “And I want you all to come,” she said. “What’s a boat without sailors?”
Marcy clapped her hands excitedly. “This’ll be great! Now I can be an international plus-size supermodel!”
“I’m not going,” Derrick said. “Do you know what kinds of bugs they have in other countries? They’ve got mosquitoes the size of volleyballs. One of them could bleed me dry. And they spread terrible diseases. I’ll get West Nile Virus. Or Ebola. Or both.”
“Derrick, nothing like that’s going to happen,” Elizabeth said. “It’s just going to be a nice long boat ride. Think of it as a cruise. A nice, long, relaxing cruise.”
“I’m not going on a cruise and I don’t want to be a sailor. You’ll make me walk the plank.”
“Nobody’s going to make you walk the plank.”
Derrick stared at the mollusks stuck to the dock. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
He nodded. “Okay, I’ll go. Beats living in my parents’ basement.”
“Excellent. And Bobby, how about you? We could use a good cabin boy.”
Bobby squinted his eyes and smiled, exposing bright pink gums. “Thanks. I’m flattered, really. But Congressman Ackerman offered me an internship and I’m going to take it.”
Gary Ackerman grinned and clapped Bobby on the shoulder.
“Bobby here’ll make a fine president some day. He won’t burn down all the forests just ‘cause there’s one terrorist attack.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I’ll be sorry to lose you. You’ve been the heart of the flower caravan.”
Most of the drivers didn’t want to come. They weren’t looking to make a career change. They drove trucks, not boats, and didn’t relish the idea of becoming sailors.
“What about you, Toby?” Elizabeth said. “You’ll come with us, won’t you?”
“No,” Toby said morosely. “The corn is calling me.”
“Toby,” Elizabeth said. “I know how you feel. I lost a Howard too. But life goes on. We have to keep on showing the flowers. And maybe we’ll go to one of those bobsled countries.”
Toby nodded and a smile spread on his face. “In that case, I’d better bring my long underwear.”
Elizabeth turned to David. “You’re coming?” she asked.
“Of course.”
Now he could inspire working people the whole world over.
But the crew was still several people too short. They would have to find some sailors. Elizabeth appointed David with the task. He would have to dust off an old poem, but he would make some updates. A poem was never really finished; it was a living, breathing thing, always developing, always evolving. Especially a functional poem like Help Wanted.
Help is wanted
We want your help
Like an organ-transplant-recipient-dog wants a bubble
Like antifreeze wants denatonium benzoate
Like a flower wants a poem.
***
THE END
***
THE FLOWER POET
by
BENJAMIN FISHBEIN
אדר ב ז' תשס''ח
ירושלים
March 14, 2008
Jerusalem