Wild Is the Wind

Wild is the Wind

I watched the corn fields sway in the summer breeze from my desk. I piled my long hair, the blonde recently streaked with a few nearly-undetectable greys, into a bun on top of my head––my ritual before starting to work.

For the first hour I thumbed through the pages of a well-worn biography on the Leader’s father, then opened up my laptop and set up an archive crawler.

My colleagues had started to call my new book my magnum opus. Initially I’d been embarrassed by the attention, but lately I too had come to believe that this book was bigger and more important than all my others.

The reason was because the local university, where I worked, had given me special access to their archives on the Leader. It was the kind of security clearance granted to only the most trusted comrades. I was writing the first biography of our Leader.

Around mid-day, I opened the top drawer of my desk, where I kept my bottle of pills. I took two, and worked until the sun drained from the sky. When my trance-like state waned, I went back to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

All the lights in the house flickered.

The grid was weak. We’d been told all month to conserve what we can.

I turned off the lights in my library and went to my bedroom. I lit a candle and cranked the radio. A song was playing:

Love me love me love me say you do

Let me fly away with you

For my love is like the wind

And wild is the wind

Wild is the wind

Nina Simone. Something about the way she sang––with passion, rage, desire––always stirred me. The song ended abruptly. I checked my watch. 8pm. Time for the national announcement. I blew on my tea, checked a hangnail. The Leader began:

Patriots,

We are happy to report that the border crossers have been apprehended and sent back. The breach in our wall has been fixed. There are extra border patrollers in the area. Our people have done a fantastic job.

There are fair and legal ways to enter our country, and we will not accept criminals sneaking in. Our jobs, our land, and our opportunities are for our citizens first.

Moving on, I have some exciting news. The new airport in Austin, named after my father, is opening this Saturday. It’s a architectural masterpiece and a tremendous monument to our glorious country. Tune in next week for the official opening, just in time for the G20 Conference. We’re looking forward to welcoming our international colleagues.

It was sad about the people from the South. Their country was falling apart, they were starving for god's sake, their children dying, criminals running rampant. But the Leader was right. We can’t open the door and welcome them all - what would happen to us? They would just bring their problems up here.

The national announcement was over. They wouldn’t be monitoring attendance anymore, so I turned the radio off. I had a headache, so I opened the top drawer of my nightstand for the other pill bottle, and took two.

As I’d begun to drift to sleep, I heard the doorbell ring. I lifted myself up from bed, a little woozy. I could see Duke’s tall, muscled frame in the pink dusk light on my front porch.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed.

Duke had the regulation haircut but it was almost too long. He was an anthropologist but his latest request to take a research trip to Vietnam had been rejected by the funding board. Not enough resources, they told him. Everyone knew that. Still, Duke was bitter; he hated being cooped up, not allowed to travel.

Duke flashed a smile. Always the charmer. “Thought I’d come by for a nightcap instead of twiddling my thumbs. How about it?”

I waved him in.

Duke and I had grown up together, from grade school to the university to our professorial positions. I barely remembered a day without him in it.

We sat in the salon. Duke poured us drinks - two scotches.

“Did you hear the announcement tonight?” Duke said, taking a swig.

“’Course.”

“The airport.”

I studied his face. Duke was practically salivating at the thought of an international flight. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I called in a favour with Henderson.”

Henderson was the China specialist. “What kind of favour?”

“He got me a flight to Beijing with the ambassador.”

“Are you crazy? Your funding got pulled.”

“Don’t need it. Their government’s covering it.”

“The Chinese? Did you clear it with the board?”

Duke drained his glass and leaned forward, hands on his knees. “Look, I can’t wait to get clearance from the fucking board. They won’t let me leave. It’s like we’re imprisoned in this country. I got a way out, and I’m taking it.”

I looked at him, appalled. “What did you come here for?” I whispered.

“Drive me to Austin.”

“Why?”

“You’re loved by the administration. You, and only you, can get me on that flight.”

“And what happens to me when they find out you’re gone?” I felt a flare of anger. Typical Duke: doing whatever he felt like, everyone else be damned.

“Marina, I’m dying here.” I looked at Duke, his bloodshot eyes, his weathered face. He’d lost twenty pounds this summer. We were the same age, but it looked like he’d aged ten years in six months.

I’d always thought he was too handsome for me, Duke. Too successful, too confident. A string of beautiful girlfriends. I was more concerned with writing books, garnering commendations from the administration. But each one of those girlfriends had come and gone, and Duke still walked the three miles to my doorstep every week just to say hi.

I wasn’t immune to the irony: I was just coming to the understanding that Duke wanted me––for how long had he felt this way? Years? Decades?––when he was about to leave forever.

What if I had made the same request of him? If I really did love him, then I had to help him.

We kissed, that night, and I let him into my bed. And every night that followed before the Opening.

The trip was approved by the end of the week. On the morning of the Opening, Duke was outside my house with a sports bag on one shoulder.

“Hey kid,” he said, flashing that smile.

“Trouble,” I said, pushing him over to the passenger’s side.

We got in my pickup. It’d been five years since I’d left Oklahoma. As we headed out of town, it was cornfields, blue skies, more cornfields.

“Why don’t you come with? Might be your last chance to leave.”

“Why’d I want to do that? It’s worse out there.”

Duke scoffed.

“What?”

“You ever think they’re not telling you something?”

I eyed Duke. “What do you know?”

Duke studied the road.

I knew Duke wasn’t just an anthropologist. He never published any books after his first one, right after his doctorate. His international forays were for something, or someone, else. But I didn’t expect him to tell me anything, either. The people who did that disappeared.

“Just look around you,” Duke said. “Enough food here for everyone, surrounded by electrified fences. They keep us on pills instead to stop the hunger pains.”

“They need the corn for fuel,” I said. “After the embargo. The Middle East won’t give us oil, so we have to make our own.”

“Why won’t they trade with us?”

“They’re threatened, they want to limit our––”

Duke laughed out loud. “The Human Rights Commission intervened.”

“What do you mean?”

“How long are you going to deny what’s going on here? The famine, the disappearances, the millions dead. Do you really think people from the South are clambering to get in here? What a pack of lies.”

“I don’t understand––”

“Marina, look out!”

There was a blockade around the airport. Police cars and military personnel surrounded a dazzling white building. The new airport.

I rolled down my window. The officer examined my authorization letter. Then the officer glanced at Duke, and waved us both in.

As the truck went into motion again, I realized I was shaking. I’d never been so close to the Leader before.

“Steady, kid,” Duke said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You got this.”

I kept Duke in my field of vision. I don’t think I’d ever been happier than the last week we’d spent together as lovers. All those years alone: what a waste! What could have been had we’d gotten started sooner. Maybe Duke had been right––I had a tendency to deny things right in front of me.

The ceremony was a spectacle. I couldn’t believe it. We were in a terminal with thousands of people. We were on the second floor, the arrivals deck, while the honoured guests and performers were on the main floor, the departures platform. Where did they come from, these performers, this audience? Everyone smiling, gleaming, clothes clean and without holes, bodies fattened up. They cheered and sang and danced in unison. “America, America, we stand on guard for thee!” they sang.

The ambassadors looked on with nervous smiles. Beside them, the Leader laughed and cheered, looking on proudly and checking every once in a while that the ambassadors were pleased.

After two hours, the ceremony was over.

“Now,” Duke said. He pointed to the Chinese ambassador on the main floor. “Let’s go.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

As the crowds started to head towards the exit, we went down to the ambassadors.

The Chinese ambassador glanced up and caught Duke’s eye, then started moving towards the gate. Duke followed.

I grabbed Duke’s hand. “Wait––”

Duke hugged me tight.

Then he was gone, walking with the ambassador, towards the gate. They’d almost reached it when I saw the Leader conferring with two guards. The guards walked swiftly to the same gate. I was getting pulled towards the exit with the rest of the crowd, but I started swimming against them, back to Duke.

Duke and the ambassador were running now, to the plane at the end of the gate.

“Stop!” the guard yelled, raising his rifle.

Bang!

The ambassador fell to the ground.

The Leader looked up, among a group of startled ambassadors, then he laughed and herded them through a private exit to their cars.

The crowd lurched.

That’s when I heard another gunshot.

Duke.

I felt numb. Nowhere to go. It was then I realized that there was something dangling from my neck, tapping against my chest: a heart-shaped locket. Duke must have put it on me when he was saying goodbye.

I opened it. On the inside was written ‘E 42.’ A gate number.

I’d never been the adventurous one. I didn’t want to be in danger. Yet this connected me to Duke. It was the only thing that mattered. I didn’t know what I would find on the other side of that gate. At that time, I didn’t care. All I had was absolute trust in Duke. I knew he loved me.

I walked through the crowd, studying the gate numbers with my peripherals, hyperconscious of the armed guards every few feet.

E 42.

As soon as the guard looked away, I dashed inside, bolting down the ramp. The door to the airplane was open. I went inside.

On the plane was another Chinese ambassador.

“Your comrade?” I asked, breathless.

“Gone,” he said grimly. “One of us had to stay back for you, I’m afraid.”

“Did Duke...?”

The ambassador looked down, apologetic. “Yes.”

Tears streamed hot down my face.

“Was this his plan all along, to bring me here?”

“Yes. You’re the historian. You’re going to tell the world what’s gone on here. Please, buckle up.”

I stared out the window, whispering goodbye, as we lifted into the air.