C. sat at a wooden picnic table sipping coffee in the wintry morning sun that warmed a corner of the Occupy Boise grounds. The sun lit up the tesselated face of the old state courthouse, its Deco tower rising with monumental grace above a quiltwork of tents and canvas structures and hand-painted banners. Across from C. sat M., who smoked a cigarette and nodded in agreement as she spoke.
“The police were pretty good, actually,” she said, fluttering long red-painted fingernails from her broad hands. “They blocked off the streets and guided us right through downtown. It was a march to remember all the homeless that died this year, twelve of them, and two counselors, too. Did you ever know —?” she mentioned a name I didn't recognize. “He was a sweet old man. I even tried to set my mom up with him. He just liked to go sit by the river, under the bridge that was his place. He'd have a drink and watch the river. So sweet. He was one that died.”
“Because of the cold?” I asked.
“No, that was in June. I don't know how he died. But it was for folks like him that we marched, to remember them.”
As C. spoke, her voice began to deepen with trust, her big brown eyes settled on me and her hands calmed in her lap. She found her coffee mug and took a pleased sip. “So you're a writer, huh? You know what someone should do? They oughta do a biography of everyone here. Everyone's got a different reason for why they came. You can't pin it on just one story. That's why I'm starting my nonprofit — for the mentally disabled. It's called Dream,” she glowed proudly. “I wanta talk about the issues we're having around here, and the politics that's going on. But I want it to be nice, you know? Not like Disneyland nice, but community nice, without the mean politics. I even got a television show I'm starting.”
“A television show?”
“Yeah, on community access. I'll get people from the community and counselors to come on and talk about stuff that matters to us.”
“You'll host it?”
“I will,” she said confidently, then laughed: “A friend said I'll be the Oprah of Boise.”
We got up to walk around and keep warm. M. had left us to get more coffee from the mess tent. Ada, who had remained cuddled in my arms, feeling shy before the strangers, now wanted down to walk too. The many different types and colors and conditions of the tents – some neat as a nun's habit, others wind-sunken with fallen leaves, were of great interest to her. “Look,” she pointed, “there's a funny man.” And sure enough, there was. Seated on a foldout chair was a halloween skeleton, the words “We the People” bandaged on his head, and “Citizens United” painted on a butcher knife burried in his ribs. “Yes, a very funny man,” I said, directing her attention to the stout stairway leading up to the courthouse foyer. Ada loves stairs the way monkeys love monkey bars.
While C. went ahead to the communications tent, where she hoped to show me their internet connection and library, Ada and I scaled the stairs and rapped our fists on the brass lamp posts. C. returned shortly and invited us into the communications tent. She held back the flap door, and the gamey smell of a season spent camping in the cold was enough to make me hold back a charging curious Ada. I looked in and nodded at the sullen young man sitting before a computer screen amid a small floorspace crowded with blankets and piled clothing and manuals and a forlorn guitar standing against a canvas wall.
“That electrical chord is coming from the courthouse?” I asked, stepping back into the cold clean sunlight.
“Yes, they been pretty good about it.” C. dropped the door flap, sensing my reluctance to enter. “We got to keep the place clean,” she said admittedly. “There's a rule against drinking. Of course, at night some of us go off to have a drink.”
We started to walk again. “There's the library tent, and the clothes tent.” A man strode by carrying two tall thermoses. “Hot cocoa, anyone?” he called. He stood the thermoses on the ground and removed two styrofoam cups from the stack in his arms, poured cocoa into the cups and handed them to us. I kneeled beside Ada, blew on the hot drink, and let her have a sip. “Made it myself,” said the man. “Ground the cinnamon myself too.”
The man, a fast-talking type, a pastor, I would soon learn, jumped into conversation with C. about the grand assembly the Occupy members were having in an office in the Capitol building. “So many ideas,” he said, “so many points of view. The problem with the left is we work at it from the outside. Everybody's on the outside working towards a common idea. The right is already in lockstep. They start narrow and work out from there.”
“David's working on a story,” C. informed the pastor.
“Yeah,” he studied me. “A story for who?”
“I won't know till I write it.”
“Well you better get it right! The other day a couple of journalists from Salon came down here, and there happened to be a bunch of Tea Partiers here too, and guess who they interviewed? The woman asked all the questions and the man wrote the story and got it all wrong.” The pastor began to rant, a little abstractedly, about politics and media misperceptions of the Occupy Movement. I liked his ideas but I didn't like his ranting, abstracted as it was.
Thankfully Ada, bored, squirmed away from us and ran back to the solid white stairs. The girl's instincts are sharp, alright. I thanked the pastor for the cocoa and excused myself. C. caught up to us. She put her big hands on her knees and bent forward to Ada. “This is for you, Ada,” she said, and handed her a small cloth American flag on a stick. Ada watched C. to make sure the gift was indeed for her to have. “That's right, you keep it,” smiled C. Ada looked at me. “Can we put it on the bike, daddy?”
