WASTE
By Richard Sutphen

NOTE: “Waste” is the kind of story I sometimes write for mystery and dark-fantasy magazines. They’re a break from my usual communications, and great fun for me to explore as a writer. This story is representative of its genre, which is a polite way of saying, it is not for everyone. Know before you begin, my goal was to generate empathy combined with fear. I chose a subject/problem we all ignore, hoping it will go away on it’s own. It won’t. Thanks for reading.

 "They're human waste," the speaker said, facing the semi-circle of bored faces. Microphones were perched on the tables in front of the four men and two women comprising the Sand Point Town Council. "It started as a social welfare problem, that turned into a harassment problem, that's become a nightmare. Have you smelled the park? They're defecating in the bushes. It's disgusting and unhealthy."

From the gallery of observers, someone said, "If the town provided public restrooms the problem would be resolved." Heads turned to see a man slowly rising. He was middle-aged, with greying shoulder-length hair pulled tightly back into a ponytail. His soiled clothes hung loosely on his large rawboned frame.

"Who are you?" The mayor's amplified voice echoed off the bare walls of the school gymnasium, rising above the mutter of the crowd.

"Ridley McConnell, sir."

"Well, Mr. McConnell," the mayor said, scrutinizing the unkempt man, "it isn't the responsibility of this town to provide for people who aren't taxpaying members of the community."

"The homeless have a legal right to be here. What are they supposed to do when they have to go to the bathroom?"

"What do you mean `they'?" the mayor asked. "You're one of the homeless, aren't you?"

"All homeless people aren't the same, anymore than all Latinos, or blacks or Asians aren't the same."

The mayor, a balding man in his sixties, was wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt and a dark tie more in keeping with a corporate boardroom than a small town meeting. "Did you join us tonight, Mr. McConnell, to get out of the cold night air or to do your civic duty by informing us of your need of bathrooms?"

"I hoped to open a channel of communication between the homeless and the community leaders."

"You're the elected spokesman of the local homeless?"

"No, sir, just fifty-two men, women and children who live on the beach below Sand Point. We get most of our food from the sea and rarely come into town. But lately we've been hassled by the Sheriff's department."

"Good," someone yelled.

Above the catcalls and jeers could be heard a voice protesting, "Go someplace else."

"Get out before we force you out."

This was the first time one of the homeless had attended a Sand Point Town Meeting. The town of 821 people was located on a jutting coastal point halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The residents were a mixture of retired pensioners and yuppie commuters who worked in nearby San Luis Obispo. The Sand Point motels on Highway One were usually filled with tourists drawn by William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon estate.

"Why don't you get a job?" said a woman in the back of the room.

"How old are you?" asked the mayor.

"Fifty-five."

"Is there any reason you can't work?"

"None that you'd be interested in hearing, sir."

The major shook his head. "You know we can't legally force you or your friends to leave, but we will continue, how shall I say it, to `monitor' your activities."

"Monitor? Bullshit!" said a man in the gallery. "I say we declare war on the transients." 

Spontaneous applause broke out in the gallery, while someone chanted, "War, war, war!"

"Please," Ridley said, raising his hand. "There are at least two hundred homeless people living on the beaches and in the hills above Sand Point. Many of them are sick and hungry. They need your help."

A councilwoman leaned into her microphone and said, "You have no idea how sick we are of your kind ruining our town."

A woman sitting beside Ridley stood up and put her arms around him. Her clothing was nearly as tattered as his. Her honey-colored hair hung straight down her back to her waist. "Don't you have any compassion at all?" she cried.

The crowd quieted.

She continued, "This man fought for you in Vietnam. He received the Purple Heart and came home on full disability."

"Don't, Lynne," Ridley said.

"Then the Veteran's Administration should take care of him," someone said.

Tears furrowed Lynne's dirty face as she said, "The V.A. gives him a monthly check and he uses it to help feed his friends."

The room remained silent.

Lynne took Ridley's hand and led him out of the gallery and up the aisle to face the council members. "You lock the doors on every gas station restroom, and you put up signs on your restaurant restrooms saying CUSTOMERS ONLY. Your houses are posted with armed response security signs. Last week, a homeless seven-year-old boy broke his arm, and the medical clinic told us to go to L.A. for treatment."

Tears blinded Lynne's eyes and choked her voice. "Look at history -- when too many have too little, the result is revolution. Every day there are more of us. Soon there may be more of us than there are of you. Then what?"

"Are you threatening us?" the mayor asked indignantly.

"I'm relating facts," she said.

"You're telling us if we don't respond the way you want us to, you'll start a revolution? Is that right?"

Lynne didn't reply.

"IS THAT RIGHT, MISS?"

"That's right, Your Honor." Her voice was mechanical.

The mayor stood up and pointed at the couple before him. "I want Bob to escort these two out of this meeting."

A crew-cut sheriff's deputy approached the couple. "Come along, don't make trouble."

Ridley and Lynne left quietly. As they stepped out the gymnasium doors into the foggy November evening, the people inside applauded.

Hand in hand the couple walked slowly down the hill, past large houses with warmly glowing windows, terraced with flowers and neatly trimmed lawns. The smell of burning logs in fireplaces wafted along the sidewalk and mingled with the salty tang of the sea, tinged with wild sage that blew out of the hills. A car shot up the hill, its headlights glowing in the fog like an aura, its tires singing on the moist pavement.

As they crossed the last street, the houses gave way to sand dunes crowned with dead grass and sand hills that sloped to cliffs overlooking the Pacific. Ridley led the way, following a familiar trail through slowly drifting tendrils of fog, in the direction of the breaking waves. At the top of cliffs forming a small cove, they stopped and observed three campfires on the beach a hundred feet below. People were huddled together around the sources of warmth.

Ridley leading, holding Lynne's hand, they followed a crude switchback trail down the slippery cliff wall to the sand and joined their friends.

"What happened?" asked a sad-eyed young woman cradling a baby swaddled in rags.

A white-haired woman wearing an army coat and baggy pants, used a notched stick to pull a dented coffee pot from the fire. She poured the dark brew into battered tin cups, and handed them to Ridley and Lynne.

Lynne shook her head and said, "We only made it worse."

"Worse?" The word reverberated around the campfire and spread to the next fire and the next.

From beyond the pounding surf came the cries of sea lions, as if the news were being echoed out to sea.

"Worse? Seriously?" asked a hard-eyed man.

"I think so, Dirk," Ridley sighed, hunching his shoulders as he sipped his coffee and stared into the leaping flames. The collar of his frayed coat was turned up against the cold breeze off the water. He tried to keep his mind focused on the problem. Ever since Nam -- '71 or was it '72 -- when a chunk of shrapnel had pierced his skull, only extreme effort enabled him to concentrate for any period of time.

"What do we do, just move on again?" Dirk asked.

"Bullshit," said Twitcher, joining them from another campfire. "There'll never be an end to it."

Twitcher was one of many Vietnam vets who lived on the beach. His name resulted from the involuntary twitching of his left eye.            He stomped both feet hard in the sand and said, "Let's do what we've always talked about doing."

"Fight back?" someone said.

"Nobody knows how better than this group. Half of us are vets," said Dirk. He laughed a crazy laugh and added, "It would strike a blow for every homeless man, woman and child."

Lynne said, "Then we'd have to move on for sure."

"We will anyway," someone said.

Ridley kicked sand into the fire. "Let's wait and see if it does get worse.

* * * * * 

The following morning, in keeping with their daily ritual, Ridley, Dirk, Twitcher and six other men greeted the dawn by casting their fishing poles into the sea. This time of year the best catches were to be had two miles south of the cove the group called home.

After three hours of fishing the men had full stringers of perch, corbina, halibut, calico bass and sand shark. While they fished, several women gathered edible greens and mushrooms in the hills above the town. With the addition of some cornmeal purchased in a Sand Point store, the fifty-two would eat well for another day.

The fishermen returned to the cove to find the camp in disarray, and several women in tears. A long-haired teenage boy ran to meet Ridley, yelling, "Sheriff's deputies ... they wrecked everything and beat up Jigger."

"Slow down, Billy," Ridley said, placing his hand on the boy's shoulder. The other men ran to the camp.

"They were so mean, Ridley," Billy stammered. "They said we couldn't live on the beach ... we couldn't have fires on the beach. They said they were searching for drugs. Old Jigger tried to stop them, and they hit him with their batons and made his face bleed, then they arrested him for resisting them." 

On the following day two more members of the fifty-two were beaten and arrested for petty theft. A witness told Ridley the "theft" had merely been something that had already been discarded in a trash dumpster.

The third day Lynne was followed from the grocery store by two deputies. When she was near the beach and well out of sight of any witnesses, the officers stopped her and demanded to look at the sack she was carrying.

"The store thinks you mighta shoplifted something, lady," said the piggy-faced deputy.

He took the sack out of her arms, found a ten-pound bag of flour, baking powder and a receipt. Scowling at Lynne, the deputy let the bag of flour slip out of his hands. It fell on the rocky ground and split open, the contents puffing cloud-like on the sea breeze.

"Damn you," Lynne said.

In a snarling rage, the deputy drove his fist into Lynne's stomach, causing her to double over and fall to her knees gasping for breath. The second deputy kicked what was left of the flour into her face. "It's your word against ours, bitch."

After the fourth day of harassment, Twitcher said, "They've declared war."

Ridley said, "I suggest we vote to move on or fight back."

The decision was unanimous.

* * * * * 

Ridley and Twitcher combined their knowledge of improvised munitions. They sent the children out to gather the globs of tar from countless oil spills that contaminated the beaches around Sand Point. They directed the women to gather burned paper, white wood ash and the decayed stone of an abandoned building above the town. This provided them with potassium nitrate; by boiling, filtering and removing the salts, they extracted a mixture that, when dried and combined with readily available natural ingredients, became improvised black powder.

At night they took discarded motor oil from the waste pit of a local gas station and combined it with ammonium nitrate fertilizer found behind the nursery. A little fuel oil was added to the mixture and it was stored in old pipes to yield crude bombs. Kitchen-match heads were the basic ingredient of the blasting caps needed to detonate the bombs.

In the auto junkyard they took sulfuric acid from car batteries and methyl alcohol from radiator anti-freeze. By adding $3 worth of nitric acid, they created methyl nitrate dynamite. A coil of old wire from the junkyard and a couple of auto batteries completed the arsenal. It took them three days.

"They arrested Billy and Bojangles on the highway today," Lynne informed the group around the campfire.

"For what?" Dirk asked.

Lynne shrugged. "For being homeless, I suppose."

"That's twelve arrests that we know of since the council meeting seven days ago," Ridley said.

Twitcher laughed. "They've declared war on human waste. We'll fight it with their own ecological waste."

"Karmic retribution," said the woman in the Army coat.

When the twenty-five volunteer members of the homeless army were assembled, Ridley said, "You all know what to do and when to do it." He made eye contact with each member of the motley fighting force. They were men and women ranging in age from fifteen to fifty-five. Most were mentally ill to some degree, but they were all functioning survivors. Their common bond was deep-seated anger and fear -- powerful forces when focused on a cause. "We'll scatter when it's over, then meet again at Christmas on the beach at Cambria."

The army responsed with a chorus of agreement and raised fists.

Ridley and Lynne walked away from the group, across the sand to the water's edge. He removed a handmade longbow from his shoulder, drew the string and unleashed an imaginary arrow at the quarter moon rising out the sea.

"I love you," Lynne said.

"I love you too," he replied, lowering the bow and looking into her eyes.

"What's going to happen, Ridley?"

"Does it matter?"

She sighed and took his hand. "Yes," she whispered.

Ridley nodded. He remembered what it was like in the mental hospital before President Reagan shut down the facilities and released the inmates. He preferred being free, even if it meant being homeless and unemployable.

"Would you go back to your old life if you could?" he asked.

Lynne looked out to sea and didn't answer for a while. "There are times I wish we had a home," she said sadly. "But I wouldn't trade it for what I have with you."

Ridley knew she'd once been married to an alcoholic. They'd gone bankrupt about the time Lynne contracted valley fever -- a rare disease unique to the Phoenix Valley. It sappes the victim's energy for at least a year. With no one to turn to and unable to keep a job, Lynne wound up homeless. That was eight years ago. Today, the homeless life was the only life she knew.

Ridley and Lynne made love in the sand, then held each other, watched the moon ascend and waited until it was time. When his mind wandered Ridley forced it back to what he had to do. It was easier to focus during a crisis.

The members of the homeless army left the cove, one and two at a time. By 4:30 A.M. eighteen of them were positioned at the ends of neighborhood streets all over Sand Point. Lynne was one of the eighteen. She carried a large tin can filled with oil-spill tar and something Ridley had added to the mixture. In her other hand she clutched sticks and a plastic cigarette lighter. Standing in the shadows, she watched the mountain behind the town.

A man at each end of town was stationed atop a telephone pole, ready to light the fuse on the dynamite taped into the clusters of phone lines connecting the town with the outside world. When an orange glow appeared high in mountains, each man lit his fuse, then scampered down the pole and ran for shelter.

Lynne saw the fire on the mountain at the same time she heard a faraway explosion. It was quickly followed by a second explosion, this one closer. Not loud enough to awaken anyone, she thought, bolting from the shadows and running toward the first house. At the front porch, she dipped a stick into the black goo and tossed it against the frame siding. It stuck. She flicked the lighter, touched it to the goo and watched the substance burst into flames.

A moment later she darted across the front lawn to the next house where she repeated the process. Only twenty-two to go. She laughed, sprinting around some oleanders and leaping a fence to get to the next house.

In a dug-out position above the Sand Point Water Pumping Station, Dirk adjusted the car battery between his knees. One wire was wrapped around the negative terminal. He took a deep breath and touched the other wire to the positive terminal. The explosion lit up the hillside. Fragments of concrete shot in every direction as the pressure of the blast bent trees for a hundred yards and sent a dust cloud mushrooming into the air. The sound would have fractured Dirk's eardrums if Ridley hadn't reminded him to plug them with grass.

As the dust settled, fires blossomed in the town below. Some small, some already raging. To the southwest, something else exploded.

Ridley and Twitcher used a car battery to set off the blasting caps in the bombs beneath three patrol cars and the short-wave radio communications equipment atop the Sheriff's Department roof. Across the street, behind parked cars, the two men curled into balls until the debris had fallen to earth.

Ridley stood up slowly, notching an arrow into his bow. As he drew the weapon to the length of the arrow, a sheriff's deputy charged out the front door of the burning building pumping a 12-gauge shotgun. Ridley released the arrow. It hissed though the smoke to strike the officer in the throat, throwing him backward. The man pulled the trigger as he fell, blowing out the neon SHERIFF sign that hung over the entrance.

Ridley darted across the street, grabbed the 12-gauge and pulled the deputy's .38 revolver from his holster. He tossed the handgun to Twitcher and slipped reserve shells out of the shotgun side-saddle. Slamming the shells into the breech, he kept his eyes on the head of the stairs, waiting for another officer to appear.

"One or two more?" Twitcher asked.

Ridley shrugged.

Across the street an elderly woman in her pajamas yelled, "What's going on?"

Twitcher fired over her head and the woman disappeared behind a tree.

Ridley opened the front door and started to climb the dozen stairs leading up to the first floor of the building. Twitcher took the stairs leading down to the basement jail cells.

"Anybody down here?" Twitcher yelled before stepping out into the open.

"Who's there?" The voice sounded old and scared.

"I'm Philip Bowen from the house down the street. The roof of this building's on fire."

"Oh, my God," came the reply.

A moment later Twitcher heard the man's footsteps running for the stairwell. The white-haired man didn't even have his gun drawn as he stepped into view and gasped at the sight of the .38 aimed at his head.

"Time to free the prisoners, Pop."

"Oh, please." The old man stepped backward, trembling.

"Where are the keys?"

"Here, here." As the officer fumbled at the key ring on his belt, Twitcher took the man's revolver from his holster.

Accepting the keys, Twitcher said, "You can go, Pops."

Upstairs, Ridley inched into the explosion-ravaged reception area. The glass-partitioned offices appeared deserted. A hole in the ceiling was burning, smoke beginning to fill the room. Fragments of glass covering the floor crunched beneath his feet.

He caught a glimpse of movement to his left as he heard a shot. Pain exploded in his ear. He dropped, firing -- one, two, three times. Glass partitions exploded, showering wood and plastic fragments as he rolled across the debris-strewn floor until he was behind a desk.

Blood streamed down his neck and he realized the slug had taken out a piece of his ear. The only sound was the crackling flames. Cordite, and the stench of burning plastic assaulted his nostrils and burned his eyes.

"You're under arrest," called a nervous voice from across the room.

Ridley remained silent.

"Did you hear me?"

The room glowed orange, and flickering shadows danced on the walls and reflected in the glass partitions and blank computer screens.

"I said, you're under arrest."

Ridley adjusted the shotgun.

When the impatient deputy received no reply, he crept out of his hiding place and bolted in Ridley's direction, shooting wildly. The man ran right into a 12-gauge explosion that lifted him off his feet and slammed him backwards into a coat rack and a recruiting poster.

Outside, Twitcher was waiting with over a dozen homeless people who cheered as Ridley walked out the front doors of the burning building with the shotgun over his shoulder. Beyond the small clan of homeless the town of Sand Point was on fire; flames leaped into the sky from horizon to horizon, all the way down to the sea.

* * * * * 

It was two weeks later that Ridley and Lynne found a copy of a weekly news magazine in a trash dumpster in Santa Rosa. The cover was a photo of burning homes. Large white type was reversed out of the flames: THE HOMELESS WAR.

Lynne read the story to Ridley as they made their way along a quiet neighborhood street to the city park. "The homeless revolution started this week in the small coastal town of Sand Point, California, where everyone is now homeless."

Sycamore leaves crunched underfoot as they walked. Children rode past on bicycles. Ridley listened as Lynne read, but his mind drifted to other things: the color of the leaves, the next meal, the best route to Cambria.

"Are you listening, Ridley? Senator Irving Benson of New York said, `The administration can give billions to the Soviets to buy grain, but won't do a thing to help feed the American homeless. It's time we changed that.'"

Ridley pulled the collar of his tattered coat a little tighter around his neck in the chill of the December afternoon. An elderly couple approached slowly, their cocker spaniel straining eagerly on his leash. Ridley nodded at them. They turned away and seemed to tremble in response.

"Listen to this, Ridley." Lynne shook the magazine at him and continued reading. "Thousands of people are writing and calling their senators, demanding that the government do something about the homeless problem. While they wouldn't act out of compassion, they've finally been motivated out of fear. At last, the people of this country are demanding that society be responsible to the problem it created." 

Copyright by Richard Sutphen, Malibu, CA  2003.