Jeff Kozzi

 

They threw themselves into the public eye in August, 2015, following the murmurs and shouts persistent well before then, reaching back into the McCarthy Era when their kind attacked everything from Elvis’ pelvis to Superman. Someone my age can’t understand such prudery, not after my ninth grade girlfriend got pregnant from our gym teacher. What happened that August was horrible, simply horrible.

I had just turned sixteen on July third, and Dad was treating the trip to Sea World like it was my birthday present, which it was, even though he’d given me lots of stuff on The Date, and even though Kayla was there, googling at the fish man.

Kayla liked her, but I didn’t. Dad always said I was more sensible than Kayla, who resented Dad always saying so, which was probably why she was always googling at people who weren’t smart enough to do anything better for a living than throw fish to the Great Whites or serve as test subjects for scientific experiments. Kayla was scarred for life that day. Mom too, I think.

Not only didn’t I like her, but till that day, I always believed in the same things that the M.P. believed in, that sex ed belonged at home, in adoption over abortion, in respect for our elders. Now don’t blame me—I came from a good upbringing, from parents who loved me enough to break yardsticks across my butt. I didn’t know that not all parents told their kids about sex, or that some parents completely ignored their kids all together, and would just say, "Hey, whatchoo botherin’ me ‘bout it for?" when the police knocked on the front door to tell them that Junior had been shot in a drug raid. Like I said, I was only sixteen: I didn’t know any better, and if I hadn’t been there that day, I might have joined them later on. Word was they recruited at places like Yale, where Dad promised I’d go, and even at some of the lower schools like MIT.

A helicopter hovered over the Great White tank as the show began. The whirlibird moved real quiet and looked like an old army chopper, a troop carrier, one of those used in all those "Be all you can be" commercials, with the large bay doors on the side that the actors in the commercials used to jump out of. Only this one was painted virgin white.

More and more people noticed. The chopper’s side was open, and we could see people inside. Their bald captive was not her usual defiant self. She couldn’t be, you see, for they had her tied up, and sealed her mouth with duct tape. Dad snapped pictures of the whole thing, along with most everybody else; the Internet and the newspapers were full of amateurs’ pictures, some with the ends of fingers in one corner. Sea World was a tourist place after all, and everybody had a camera ready, even if the technologies they used surpassed their comprehension.

One of the men in control lowered over the tank on a rope ladder, holding a megaphone. His white suit glowed in the August sunlight. The very color of his suit hid the fact that his fly was halfway down until some of the tourist photographs were given closer scrutiny.

"If I could have your attention above the tank...."

His voice boomed through the megaphone without losing its polite tone. "I represent the Morality Police!"

"What a dweeble!" Kayla said.

I answered her, of course. She was two years older than me and had beaten me up too many times when we were smaller kids for me not to answer her now that I was bigger than she. "Of course he’s not your type, Kayla. His clothes aren’t ripped."

Dad told us both to shut up. He waved his hand at us then leaned forward, towards the hovering helicopter. I think he had already recognized the bald woman in combat boots. At that time, I still thought she was a guy.

"We are the vanguards of America! We are men and women like yourselves who want nothing more than to see our country and our world return to order and peace! We want nothing more than drug-free role models and virgin marriages for our daughters!"

Too late for Kayla.

"We mean to see the wrongdoers of our world punished, to set the proper example, not to our children, but to all the children of poorer counsel than we provide ours! Someone must remind the wrongdoers that we grow impatient for His justice, and will begin exacting our own!"

They lowered their captive. I still didn’t recognize her.

"An added bonus, free with your admission to Sea World and at no cost to Sea World or the little fishies, is a he-man who needs no introduction, straight from her ‘Rabbis molest Children Too’ Tour! Sing for us, whore!"

Irish eyes did not smile. Their dark hungry circles belied everything else, save perhaps fear and anger. Mostly fear. But, to her credit, she regained enough of her world-infamous defiance to spit on his nice white shirt when he tore the duct tape from her mouth. Maybe if she shaved that light mustache as well as her head, the pull would not have hurt as much.

He laughed and started kicking her. Tethered by the rope that hung from the helicopter, she just kept bouncing back for more. Sweat darkened the M.P.’s suit while he made a show of kicking her, but he laughed an insidious, self-satisfied chuckle the whole time. I still remember that laugh. I think of it often during football games. When he was done, he held her next to him and put the megaphone to her ear.

"I said, 'SING FOR US’!"

She swore at him, language and words that never would have escaped a lady’s mouth, but then again she wasn’t, so I shouldn’t have been a bit surprised. What can be expected of a middle-aged woman who shaves her head and wears combat boots and said on national T.V. the prior summer that she’ll get married only when she meets the right neo-nazi Korean bisexual?

(She did later add that she’d settle for one who wasn’t Korean.)

I gasped as the M.P. drew a long knife, one of those all-purpose survival and fish-scaling models you could get on the Internet for $5.00, plus shipping and handling. He cut her, just a light scratch on her arm, drawing the tiniest amount of blood. It trickled down her arm, dripping off her pointy elbow and into the tank. Then he held the knife to her belly.

She tried to sing, she really did, a low remorseful melody. I couldn’t quite make out what words she sang.

"Oh, I like that song," Kayla said.

Dad whirled to her faster than the chopper blades. "You shut your mouth! Someone might hear!"

I’m sure Kayla wouldn’t care who heard, but the look on Dad’s face scared her into silence.

The M.P. slapped her again. She bounced on the tether, spitting at him with her last defiance. "Not that song! Your hit!" He slapped her again. She spun on the cord like a music box with a hatless Nutcracker soldier on top. "You can’t get confused—you only had one!"

So she tried, and she sang, hoarsely and sadly.

He slapped her again. She groaned, unmelodiously. "Forget the garbage part! We want the chorus!"

She cried while she tried. Her voice cracked, and not just from the tears. She never sang too well after that dainty female pop singer got so ticked off that she punched her in the throat in ‘02. Or had that been Boy George? I only remember the newsreels of this colorful long-haired thing swinging wildly, and leading the "punch" with his/her/its wrist instead of the knuckles.

The man with the megaphone kicked her aside and turned back to the shocked audience below him. "That’s right! Nothing compares to us—the Morality Police!"

His knife gleamed in the sunlight.

She squinted against the brightness, as if she’d been kept for too long in the darkened dungeons of her own home. "You’ll never get away with this!"

This time he spat at her. He cut the rope. It seemed to suspend for a moment. She fell into the tank....

It was spotlighted for more than a week in all the papers, and made all lists for news of the month, and the following December and January, in the media’s constant, depressing tendency to look back rather than ahead, it was spotlighted in The Big 5 Events of ‘05. And the newspapers showed exactly why the M.P.’s could get away with it. Papers at both extremes ran subheads that said things like GOT WHAT SHE DESERVED.

The Feds barely looked into it. They can be particularly slow in dealing with things that certain officials consider as much public service than crime. But eventually it found its twisted path into the winding roads of the United States judicial system.

It was a divided case, with some human rights people saying that nothing was violated, and some animal rights people telling them not to stick the case in their domain. It was like everything else in America. There were loud, obnoxious vocal groups at both ends, shouting to all the people in the middle who didn’t care. I guess a lot of them thought it was her newest publicity thing.

The commotion remained inflamed for the next few years. Illegitimate children, ex-husbands and former girlfriends tried suing Sea World, but the courts quickly decided that Sea World was in no way liable or supportive of what happened, and that the Great Whites had indeed done a double mid-air rolling somersault after their treat, so people still got something of the show they paid for.

I can’t say it was bad. I mean, for the times, it was, and the M.P. got the instant attention they wanted. Afterwards, they used less melodramatic methods, for the most part, but seldom wavered in their terrorist approach to reinstating old values. And compared to some of the even more extremist groups that followed, that little incident at Sea World barely found its place as a footnote in the "End of the Decade" specials.

But at the time, nothing compared.

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