Cemetery Dance

'My name is Rich Plock, executive director of the organization Humans for Other Animals. It is my honor and privilege to present to you our organization's chief spokesman. Please give a warm welcome to Alexander Esteban!'

This seemed to rouse the crowd somewhat, and as Esteban stepped to the top of the bleachers the clapping and chanting intensified. Esteban smiled, looking this way and that over the small crowd, letting the noise continue for a minute or two. At last, he put out his hands for quiet.

'My friends,' he said, his deep rich voice the polar opposite of Plock's, 'instead of giving a speech, I want to try something different. Call it a cognitive exercise, if you will.'

There was a shuffling of the crowd, a ripple of feeling that they were here to protest, not listen to a lecture.

D'Agosta smirked. 'Cognitive exercise. Look out, here comes the riot.'

'I want all of you, every one of you, to close your eyes. Take yourself out of your human body for a moment.'

A silence.

'And put yourself into the body of a little lamb.'

More shuffling.

'You were born in the spring on a farm in upstate New York — green fields, sun, fresh grass. For the first weeks of life, you're with your mother, you're free, you're snuggled in the protective embrace of your flock. Every day you gambol about the fields, following your mother and siblings, and every night you're led back to the safe enclosure of the barn. You're happy, because you are living the life God meant you to live. That is the very definition of happiness. There is no fear. No terror. No pain. You don't even know that such things exist.'

'Then one day a diesel truck arrives — huge, noisy, foreign. You are roughly separated from your mother. It is a terrifying, almost inconceivable, experience. You're driven with prods into the back of the truck. The door slams. Inside, it stinks of dung and fear. It is dark. The truck lurches off with a roar. Can you try — try with me now — to imagine the terror that helpless, tiny animal feels?'

Esteban paused, looking around. The crowd had gone silent.

'You bleat pitifully for your mother, but she doesn't come. You call and call, but she is not there. She won't come. In fact… she will never come again.'

Another pause.

'After a black journey, the truck stops. All the lambs are taken off the truck — except for you. Becoming a rack of lamb is not your fate. No, something far worse is in store.'

'The truck drives on. Now you are completely alone. You collapse in terror, in the dark. The loneliness is overwhelming; it is, in a very real sense,biological. A lamb separated from the flock is a dead lamb — always. And you feel it, you feel a terror more powerful than death itself.'

'The truck stops again. A man climbs in, wraps a stinking, blood — encrusted chain around your neck. You are dragged out, into a dark, dark place. It is a church, at least of a kind — but of course you do not know this. It is crowded with humans, and it stinks. You can hardly see in the gloom. The people crowd around, chanting and beating drums. Strange faces loom out of the darkness. There are calls, hissing, rattles shaken in your face, the stomping of feet. Your terror knows no bounds.'

'You are led to a post and chained to it. The pounding of drums, the stamping of feet, the closeness of the dead air — all these surround you. You bleat out in terror, still calling for your mother. For this is the one thing you still have: hope. Hope that your mother will come and take you from this place.'

'A shape approaches. It is a man, a tall, ugly man in a mask, holding something long and bright in his hand. He comes at you. You try to escape, but the chain around your neck chokes you as you try to flee. The man grabs you and throws you to the ground, pins you on your back. The chanting grows faster, louder. You squeal and struggle. The man seizes your head by the fur and yanks it back, exposing the delicate underside of your neck. The bright shiny thing gets closer, flashes in the dim light. You feel it pressing against your throat…'

He paused again, letting a silence build. 'I'm going to ask you all again to close your eyes and make a sustained effort to put yourselves into the body of this helpless lamb.'

More silence.

'The shiny thing is pressing against your throat. There is a sudden movement, a horrifying flash of pain — pain that you never even knew existed in the world. Your breath is suddenly choked off by a flood of hot blood. Your small, gentle mind cannot begin to fathom the cruelty of this. You try to make one last pitiful cry for your mother, for your lost flock — those sunny green fields of your childhood — you cry for your dead brothers and sisters… But nothing comes. Only a gurgle of air through blood. And now your life rushes out over the dung — encrusted floor, into the dirty hay. And the final thought in your mind isn't hatred, isn't anger, isn't even fear. It is simply: Why? '

'And then — mercifully — it is over.'

He stopped. The crowd was deathly silent. Even D'Agosta felt a lump in his throat. It was maudlin, it was mawkish, but damn if it wasn't affecting.

Without speaking — adding no commentary of his own to Esteban's speech, no call to action — Rich Plock stepped down and began walking across the field with that same determined walk. The crowd hesitated, watching Plock walk away. Esteban himself seemed taken by surprise, not quite sure what Plock was doing.

Then the crowd began to move, following Plock. The short man cut across the field and reached the road to the Ville. He turned and headed down it, accelerating his determined pace.

'Uh — oh,' said D'Agosta.

'To the Ville!' cried a voice in the now surging crowd.

'To the Ville! To the Ville!' came the response, already louder, more urgent.

The murmuring in the crowd became a rumble that became a roar. 'To the Ville! Confront the killers!'

D'Agosta suddenly looked about. The cops were still half asleep. Nobody expected this. In a split second, it seemed, the crowd had become electrified and was in determined motion. Small or not, this group meant business.

'To the Ville!'

'Evict the Ville!'

'Avenge Smithback!'

D'Agosta unholstered his radio, tuned it. 'This is Lieutenant D'Agosta. Wake up, people, get your asses in gear! The protest is not authorized to approach the Ville.'

But the crowd continued to move — like the tide, not quickly, but inexorably — down the road. And now Esteban, a look of alarm on his face, belatedly joined the moving crowd, pushing his way through, trying to get to the front.

'Confront the murderers!'

'If they reach the Ville,' D'Agosta shouted into the radio, 'the shit's really going to hit the fan. There'll be violence!'

There was a burst of talk on the radio as the diminished knot of police belatedly tried to equip their riot gear, to move into position and stop the crowd. D'Agosta could see that they were too few and too late — they had been caught completely off guard. A hundred or a hundred thousand, it didn't matter — he could see blood in these people's eyes. Esteban's speech had roused them in a way nothing else could have. The group was streaming past the baseball diamonds onto the Ville road, moving faster now, blocking any possibility of police cruisers getting ahead of the march.

'Vincent, follow me.' Pendergast set off at a swift pace, cutting across the baseball diamonds toward the trees. D'Agosta immediately saw his plan — to take a shortcut through the woods and get ahead of the mob moving down the road.

'Pity that someone took down the gate to the Ville… eh, Vincent?'

'Don't give me shit, Pendergast — not now.' D'Agosta could hear, at some distance, the chanting of the group, the shouting and yelling as they marched down the road.

Within moments they emerged onto the road a little ahead of the crowd. The chain — link fence was to their left, the gate still down. The crowd was moving at a rapid clip, the front ranks almost jogging, Plock leading the way. Esteban was nowhere to be seen. The crowd control cops had fallen far behind and there was no way to get ahead of the mob in a squad car. The press, on the other hand, were keeping up nicely, half a dozen running