his arms waving like mad and hold up just long enough for the terrified mark to scramble to the ground. It’s a full-out rout on both fronts. The blockaded vehicles begin to roll. Nine of the remaining squatters drop from their roosts. The loggers, triumphant, swing their saws. Protesters fall back, like deer from a fire.
Mimi sits on the spot where she made her promise. The air behind her whoops. She turns to see flashing lights and thinks, The cavalry. Twenty officers in full armor disgorge from an armored truck. Black polycarbonate helmets with wraparound face guards. Kevlar jackets. Projectile-proof, high-impact riot shields. Police sweep across the clearing, rounding up the trespassers, snapping bracelets on the wrists even of those who already sport one severed cuff.
Mimi rises. A hand comes down hard on her shoulder, pushing her back to the ground. She swings around to face a cop, scared and all of twenty years old. “Sit down! And don’t move.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Mouth off again, and you’ll regret it.” Three Saturday forest warriors jog past, back toward the road and their cars. The child cop yells, “Stop where you are and sit down. Now, now, now!”
They flinch, turn, and sit in place. Nearby loggers cheer. The kid cop spins and sprints toward another group of protesters trying to get away. A squad fans out under the trees. Pairs of them stand under the last treed protesters, smacking at their feet with nightsticks. The five remaining squatters give up, all except Douglas Pavlicek, who climbs higher. He takes his own cuffs from the rucksack and seals one wrist. Then he reaches around the trunk and locks the second wrist into place.
Mimi grabs her head. “Douglas. Come down. It’s over.”
“Can’t!” He rattles his cuffs, locked in the hug of the trunk. “Have to hold out until TV gets here.”
The crazed holdout kicks at the logging ladders that the police position into the fir. He scores one fend-off so athletically that even the loggers cheer. But soon enough, four policemen swarm his lower regions. Chained in place, Douglas can’t move. The police reach their bolt cutters up to sever his cuffs. He pulls in his arms, snugging the chain against the trunk. The loggers hand axes up to the police. But Douglas laces his fingers in front of the chain. The police can reach no higher than his waist. A quick consult, and they cut into his pants with industrial shears. Two cops secure his legs. The third slices the ragged denim up to Douglas’s crotch.
Mimi stares. She has never seen Douglas’s bare thighs. She has wondered, these months, whether she ever might. His desire is as open as the look of wonder on his face when they share a cold fudge shake. The only secret is what has kept him from anything more calamitous than putting his hand on the back of her neck. Weeks ago, she concluded it was some war wound. Now she watches him get stripped in public, in front of a stunned crowd. One leg is open to the air, bony and blanched, almost hairless, the furrowed thighs of a much older man. Then the other leg, and now the jeans hang open from the waist like a shredded banner. Out comes the triple-action pepper spray—capsaicin mixed with CS gas.
The onlookers call out. “He’s chained in place, man. He can’t move!”
“What do you want from him?”
The officer puts the canister up into Douglas’s groin and sprays. Liquid fire spreads across his cock and balls—a cocktail amounting to a few million Scoville heat units. Douglas hangs, dangling from the cuffs, breathing in short little aspirated gasps. “Shi, shi, shit . . .”
“For God’s sake. He can’t move. Leave him alone!”
Mimi twists to see who yelled. It’s a logger, short and bearded, like an enraged dwarf from the pages of Grimm.
“Unlock yourself,” one of the police orders. Words clog Douglas’s mouth. Nothing comes out but a low pitch, like the first half-second of an air raid. They spray him again. Protesters who’ve sat in place peacefully waiting to be booked start to revolt. Mimi rises in a rage. She’s shouting things she won’t remember even an hour from now. Others around her stand up, too. They converge on the prisoner’s tree. Police prod them back. The officers in the tree hit the naked groin with one more canister of spray. The soft, droned pitch in Douglas’s mouth begins a slow, awful rise.