The Second Occupation
by Jeffrey Greene
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
Jens and Alva weren’t really that close to the river, more than two miles up the long southern slope of Sentry Hill, and from mid-April to late October the trees hid even a glimpse of it from their hilltop house. But in bare-branched winter, they could see glimmering pieces of bends, rocky shoals and rapids, and in the western distance, where the river was widest, two thickly wooded islands that appeared as one long, chicken-thigh shaped island crowding the middle of the stream.
These were those days in late fall and early spring when summer was offered either as a rerun or a coming attraction. Jens and Alva could sit on their deck and bask in living not only within sight of a mighty river but in their ten acres of old-growth hardwood forest surrounding the house, a modern, shyly unobtrusive assemblage of three, tall, glass-and-redwood modules of different heights, that they’d designed and contracted themselves.
The multitiered, ironwood deck wrapped around the entire structure, so that no part of the landscaped grounds was hidden from the admiring or curious eye. The gravel road snaking steeply down from the cobblestone driveway was quickly lost among the trees, and it was a comfort knowing that in all seasons the house was invisible from the county road at the foot of their high-fenced property. True, in winter it could be seen by a hiker with good binoculars in the nearby national park, but the Robbennolts had long ago accepted that perfect privacy and security were impossible, though having been infected, even this far from the city, by their share of the times’ endemic fears, they still wished for it.
Having finally acquired, in their early fifties, the means to build such a house on a hill, they were now, a decade later, still alert to the changes that moving from the city to the country had continued to make in their personalities. Living rhythmically, as it were, in the diurnal seethe and nocturnal sough of the forest, each with its changing guard of creatures, had, in subtly different ways, sensitized them both to the non-human world and as well to the day-into-night currents of their own thoughts and emotions. For ex-urbanites well-tempered to city noise, they were rather naïvely surprised to find that country living had sharply reduced their tolerance for any disruption in that ongoing mediation between their inner and outer worlds.
The raging scorn of a chainsaw (“the most obnoxiously male sound I know,” Alva called it), however near or far away, set one’s teeth on edge. Low-flying planes or helicopters felt like a personal affront, and those who loved shooting off guns and fireworks on the slightest pretext were unloved by Jens and Alva Robbennolt. They had neighbors, of course, many of them native to the area, to whom they waved and occasionally exchanged greetings from rolled-down car windows, but luckily, none whose houses were either close or exposed enough to see from any window. And for ten years they had had the amazing luck to have so far avoided an Occupation.
When the occupiers finally did come, one early summer afternoon in the eleventh year of their residence in the hilltop house, they were as outraged as they were unprepared for it. While certainly aware of the more absurd laws passed in recent years by a flailing and ineffectual Congress trying to curry favor with the now-alarming majority of unemployed voters, they had worked hard to achieve a detachment from all strife that they honestly believed was spiritual, and which would serve them well in any eventuality. That it did not was the true beginning of their struggle.
A tent-sized mushroom fruiting on her lawn could have surprised her no less than the big orange tent that greeted Alva, the usual first riser, just after dawn as she stepped through the sliding doors from the kitchen onto the deck to enjoy her morning coffee. The early June weather had been mild enough to sleep with the windows open, and they had heard no unusual sounds in the night. The shock of such a brazen trespass was compounded by the large sign erected next to the tent in equally loud red lettering: OCCUPATION ATTEMPT AUTH.#B-6YJ-223, NOON TO NOON, JUNE 3-5. The first thing she did was to close and lock every door and window in the house, including the electronic fireplace cover. The sound of her frantic rushing about soon woke Jens, who joined her at the window, cursing as he pulled on his pants.
“You didn’t close the gate when you came in last night?” she asked. He didn’t have to reply. She’d neglected to close it herself a few times. Why had they thought it so unlikely ‘way out here,’ that such carelessness would invite an Occupation?
“I’m sure they’ve already documented the open gate, so we can’t say they climbed over the fence,” he said, pouring a cup of coffee. “I’ll call Joel Diamond as soon as his office opens. See what our options are. Sure everything’s battened down? Basement windows, too? Okay, I’ll check the security cameras.”
Their eyes kept straying back to the ugly orange tent, erected at the western edge of the yard between two immense tulip poplars. So far no one had come out. According to the sign, the occupation didn’t officially begin for another five hours.
“Sleeping in, I guess,” Jens said. “The bastards.”
“Will we have to talk to them?”
“I’ll see what Joel has to say about it. Some of these so-called ‘occupiers’ are just extortionists, hoping you’ll pay them to leave. But opening any door or window to talk to them is risky. If even one gets inside, we’re gone.”
“So what do we do?”
“Conventional wisdom says wait them out. A huge homeowner advantage was built into the Occupation Law. That was the only way it could get passed. We have seventy-two hours to get through.”
“Three whole days. I can’t believe this.”
“It won’t be that bad. Remember, they can’t use tools of any kind, can’t break a window, pick a lock, disable a camera, mess with the power, smoke us out or deface the property. They can’t even use a megaphone or play loud music. All they can do is try all the windows and doors, stare at us, yell, or call us on the phone. The land line is unlisted, but they’ll probably have our cell numbers by now.”
“I’m not answering mine. Why would anyone? This is so upsetting, Jens. It should never have been allowed to happen.”
“The Occupation Law is the most asinine result of the revolution paranoia going around Washington these days. Don’t worry. Ninety-nine percent of them fail. Anyone stupid enough to leave a door or window unlocked deserves to lose his house. And unless you’re tired of living here, I doubt you’re going to let someone shame you into opening the front door.”
“So we just have to be shut-ins for the next three days?”
“Pretty much. How are we fixed for groceries?”
“More than a week’s worth.”
“Good. As much as I hate to say this, we’re lucky Rory died last year. Not having to walk a dog twice a day pretty much guarantees that nobody slips in. We just have to settle in and be patient.”
“How about some breakfast?”
He nodded. “That’s the idea. We’ll go about our business like any other day and hope for some really bad weather.”
“Isn’t that a little unkind? They’re just like us, Jens. Only homeless.”
“They want our house. That’s all I need to know about them.”
“Don’t occupiers have to meet some basic standard of poverty?”
“The guidelines are very strict. And you’re right, I shouldn’t have wished disaster on them. It’s just hard not to feel angry. They’re invaders, after all, and we’re under siege. Who in our shoes wouldn’t feel the same way?”
“Noon is still hours away. Maybe we should go out there, talk to them. At least find out what we’re up against.”
* * *
He squinted doubtfully as he sipped his coffee. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. First of all, how do we know they’ll play fair? They might take the house key away from me by force and lock themselves inside. Or hold me hostage until you let them in. We’d be stuck outside until we could prove they cheated. And however poor they are, in strict legal terms, the people in that tent are the enemy. Why humanize them by meeting face-to-face?”
Breaking eggs into a bowl, she looked up at him, her morning face pinched with worry.
“It’s all so ugly,” she said, “like a reality show. Both sides are reduced to stereotypes: greedy bums and selfish landowners. That’s not who we are, Jens. And they’re probably just a hard-luck family desperate for a roof over their heads.”
“Well, what do you suggest we do, Alva? Walk out there and hand them the keys? Is that your prescription for a clean conscience? Forfeiting everything we’ve worked for?”
“No. I just... no.”
“All I ask is, no matter what they say or do, don’t let yourself forget that these are land grabbers. Operating within the law, yes, but that’s what they’re here for. To kick us out and take what’s ours. They’ll probably film the Occupation, too, maybe even stream it on the Internet. At least as long as their batteries last, since the law prevents them from tapping into our outlets. So let’s try to keep our cool and don’t give them any good views of our faces. Agreed?”
Turning to face the stove, Alva nodded.
Jens was in his office, working on his computer, and Alva was in the living room, finding herself too distracted to navigate the ever-deepening thicket of Henry James’s prose in The Golden Bowl, when a movement in the yard caught her eye. She softly called Jens, and he joined her with a pair of binoculars, which they passed back and forth, keeping themselves at some distance back from the big picture windows that allowed them a panoramic view of the back yard.
A very pale white woman in early middle age, with a large head and lank, unwashed brown hair spreading over her sloping shoulders, shod in hiking boots and wearing a thigh-length, flower-print dress that wouldn’t have been out of place during the Depression, emerged from the tent, followed by a boy and a girl, both very thin and rather tall and wearing jean coveralls over t-shirts, their ages somewhere between ten and twelve years old. Without looking once toward the house, Alva noticed, the woman, presumably their mother, walked some distance back among the trees behind the tent.
A bearded, shaggy-haired man of fifty or so, dressed in cargo shorts, a blue-and-white Hawaiian shirt and sandals came out of the tent, extended his arms in a luxurious stretch, then ducked back inside and came out holding a video camera on a tripod and a small carton of some kind of juice, which he carefully placed on flat ground while he busied himself setting up the camera, pointing it toward the house. He, too, seemed indifferent to being observed, taking occasional swigs from the carton while arranging the camera just so, as well as setting up a circle of folding camp chairs in front of the tent.
If it weren’t for the sign, it would be easy to mistake the scene being created before their eyes as a family of four enjoying a weekend camping trip, who had innocently strayed onto private property. Soon enough the woman reemerged from the woods, and then the man and each child picked their tree of choice, drawing a disapproving chuff from Jens. When they were all back at the tent, the man arranged the three in a standing row facing the camera, the children flanking the woman, her hands around their shoulders, the Robbennolts’ house behind them. After fiddling some more with the camera, the man then hurried to get himself in the picture, behind the woman, his hands on her shoulders.
Fear churned his insides as Jens watched this meticulously false tableau. Whether they were an actual family, or the camera-ready impersonation of one, they seemed to be creating, for the homeowners’ benefit, a mocking portrait of a fait accompli, as if commemorating in video the happy moment of posing before the house that would soon be theirs. Jens and Alva had anticipated a motley, street-toughened assortment of the agile unemployed: roofers, migrant workers, landscapers, expecting failure but hoping for the best. Instead, Jens and Alva almost felt themselves to be the interlopers, spying on a family outing in the forest.
After the video session, the four busied themselves preparing breakfast, most of which was cooked on a camp stove: what looked like instant oatmeal, canned fruit, coffee for the parents and juice for the kids. They sat in a semi-circle in front of the tent, talking, laughing, gesticulating, and then the man went inside the tent and came out with another camp stool, set it up between the kids and handed them a deck of playing cards. The man then sat back down next to his wife, pulled a pipe from a kit on his belt, stuffed it from a pouch and had himself a smoke. As the morning heated up, the wife put on a floppy straw hat with a brim as wide as a sombrero. This little scene of domestic peace went on for quite a while, so long, in fact, that Jens and Alva, who’d been staring in fascination, began to feel impatient and went back to what they’d been doing.
At exactly twelve noon, Jens’s cell phone rang. He came out of his office holding the phone out away from him, as if he’d dropped it in the toilet, then placed it on the counter and put it on speaker. Out by the tent they could see the comfortably seated man holding a cell phone to his ear as he puffed on his pipe. The voice that jumped out at them was a pleasant tenor, soft-spoken, educated, polite, entirely at ease with itself.
“Hello? Mr. and Mrs. Robbennolt? My name is Carl Walden Flynn, speaking for the folks camped out on your beautiful yard. Sorry, I know how awkward this is, and can’t blame you for not wanting to talk. Or even listen. But if you’ll bear with me for just a minute, please allow me to introduce my family. That pretty young blonde there — stand up, honey — is my daughter, Wendy. She’ll be starting eighth grade this fall, though at what school, we don’t know yet. Next, my son Jackson, as handsome as he is clever, is eleven and almost a sixth grader. My loyal and long-suffering wife’s name is Emily, who’s the love of my life. In spite of everything, we’re as happy and proud a bunch as you’re likely to meet, if presently without a roof over our heads. Right now it’s just the tent, which gets pretty cold at times. But we’re not complaining; tough times have only brought us closer together.
“It’s hard, I know, but try not to begrudge us the high hopes we have of a big change in the near future, or that those hopes might have to be realized at the expense of, well, we might as well say it and get it over with, two probably very nice people: yourselves. But as we start our entirely legal and licensed Occupation of your property, Mr. and Mrs. Robbennolt, I want to say that I never in my wildest dreams imagined being forced to do something like this in order to make a better life for my family. We don’t like this situation any better than you do. What kind of person would? That said, the law has given us a chance, albeit a slim one, to improve our circumstances, and we simply can’t afford to pass it up. So from all of us, let me offer my apologies for forcing you to into a defensive position.”
Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey Greene
