This chapter is dedicated to Hudson Booksellers, the booksellers that arein practically every airport in the USA. Most of the Hudson stands havejust a few titles (though those are often surprisingly diverse), but the bigones, like the one in the AA terminal at Chicago's O'Hare, are as goodas any neighborhood store. It takes something special to bring a personaltouch to an airport, and Hudson's has saved my mind on more than onelong Chicago layover.
Hudson BooksellersBarbara called me at the office on July 4th weekend. I wasn't the onlyone who'd come into work on the holiday weekend, but I was the onlyone whose excuse was that my day-release program wouldn't let meleave town.
In the end, they convicted me of stealing Masha's phone. Can you be-lieve that? The prosecution had done a deal with my lawyer to drop allcharges related to "Electronic terrorism" and "inciting riots" in exchangefor my pleading guilty to the misdemeanor petty theft charge. I got threemonths in a day-release program with a half-way house for juvenile de-fenders in the Mission. I slept at the halfway house, sharing a dorm witha bunch of actual criminals, gang kids and druggie kids, a couple of realnuts. During the day, I was "free" to go out and work at my "job.""Marcus, they're letting her go," she said.
"Who?""Johnstone, Carrie Johnstone," she said. "The closed military tribunalcleared her of any wrongdoing. The file is sealed. She's being returned toactive duty. They're sending her to Iraq."Carrie Johnstone was Severe Haircut Woman's name. It came out inthe preliminary hearings at the California Superior Court, but that wasjust about all that came out. She wouldn't say a word about who she tookorders from, what she'd done, who had been imprisoned and why. Shejust sat, perfectly silent, day after day, in the courthouse.
The Feds, meanwhile, had blustered and shouted about the Governor's"unilateral, illegal" shut-down of the Treasure Island facility, and theMayor's eviction of fed cops from San Francisco. A lot of those cops hadended up in state prisons, along with the guards from Gitmo-by-the-Bay.
295Then, one day, there was no statement from the White House, nothingfrom the state capitol. And the next day, there was a dry, tense press-conference held jointly on the steps of the Governor's mansion, wherethe head of the DHS and the governor announced their "understanding."The DHS would hold a closed, military tribunal to investigate"possible errors in judgment" committed after the attack on the BayBridge. The tribunal would use every tool at its disposal to ensure thatcriminal acts were properly punished. In return, control over DHS opera-tions in California would go through the State Senate, which would havethe power to shut down, inspect, or re-prioritize all homeland security inthe state.
The roar of the reporters had been deafening and Barbara had gottenthe first question in. "Mr Governor, with all due respect: we have incon-trovertible video evidence that Marcus Yallow, a citizen of this state, nat-ive born, was subjected to a simulated execution by DHS officers, appar-ently acting on orders from the White House. Is the State really willing toabandon any pretense of justice for its citizens in the face of illegal, bar-baric torture?" Her voice trembled, but didn't crack.
The Governor spread his hands. "The military tribunals will accom-plish justice. If Mr Yallow — or any other person who has cause to faultthe Department of Homeland Security — wants further justice, he is, ofcourse, entitled to sue for such damages as may be owing to him fromthe federal government."That's what I was doing. Over twenty thousand civil lawsuits werefiled against the DHS in the week after the Governor's announcement.
Mine was being handled by the ACLU, and they'd filed motions to get atthe results of the closed military tribunals. So far, the courts were prettysympathetic to this.
But I hadn't expected this.
"She got off totally Scot-free?""The press release doesn't say much. 'After a thorough examination ofthe events in San Francisco and in the special anti-terror detention centeron Treasure Island, it is the finding of this tribunal that Ms Johnstone'sactions do not warrant further discipline.' There's that word, 'further' —like they've already punished her."I snorted. I'd dreamed of Carrie Johnstone nearly every night since Iwas released from Gitmo-by-the-Bay. I'd seen her face looming overmine, that little snarly smile as she told the man to give me a "drink."296"Marcus —" Barbara said, but I cut her off.
"It's fine. It's fine. I'm going to do a video about this. Get it out over theweekend. Mondays are big days for viral video. Everyone'll be comingback from the holiday weekend, looking for something funny to forwardaround school or the office."I saw a shrink twice a week as part of my deal at the halfway house.
Once I'd gotten over seeing that as some kind of punishment, it had beengood. He'd helped me focus on doing constructive things when I wasupset, instead of letting it eat me up. The videos helped.
"I have to go," I said, swallowing hard to keep the emotion out of myvoice.
"Take care of yourself, Marcus," Barbara said.
Ange hugged me from behind as I hung up the phone. "I just readabout it online," she said. She read a million newsfeeds, pulling themwith a headline reader that sucked up stories as fast as they ended up onthe wire. She was our official blogger, and she was good at it, snippingout the interesting stories and throwing them online like a short ordercook turning around breakfast orders.
I turned around in her arms so that I was hugging her from in front.
Truth be told, we hadn't gotten a lot of work done that day. I wasn't al-lowed to be out of the halfway house after dinner time, and she couldn'tvisit me there. We saw each other around the office, but there were usu-ally a lot of other people around, which kind of put a crimp in our cud-dling. Being alone in the office for a day was too much temptation. It washot and sultry, too, which meant we were both in tank-tops and shorts, alot of skin-to-skin contact as we worked next to each other.
"I'm going to make a video," I said. "I want to release it today.""Good," she said. "Let's do it."Ange read the press-release. I did a little monologue, synched overthat famous footage of me on the water-board, eyes wild in the harshlight of the camera, tears streaming down my face, hair matted andflecked with barf.
"This is me. I am on a waterboard. I am being tortured in a simulatedexecution. The torture is supervised by a woman called Carrie Johnstone.
She works ............