An American Radical by Susan Rosenberg

Author:Susan Rosenberg [Rosenberg, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp
Published: 2011-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

And kill him with his own gun.

This once delicate young woman with AIDS, demented, in chains, en route to her death, in a prison van, a victim of war.

Which war? I do not know.

Wasn’t Lt. Calley only following orders?

And doesn’t Agent Orange kill more than trees?

I could only hope that writing would help me again as it had before. It had become my means of survival.

The recreation yard was the size of a small backyard plot, It was a fenced-in inner yard, all concrete and surrounded by buildings. Even with the bright Florida sun glinting off the razor wire, it was bleak. A basketball hoop had been unceremoniously stuck on the wall; otherwise, it was empty. Walking the perimeter took thirty steps, not enough to work up a sweat.

I was walking in circles, trying to get my blood moving while my brain was buzzing around, when the door from the hole opened. A middle-aged white woman with long, scraggly brown hair stepped through the gate. Wearing an oversize orange jumpsuit, she surveyed her surroundings and then me. I did not miss a step. Feeling worn down, I did not want to talk to her. Since arriving in Florida my own internal surveillance system was in full gear and I had not seen one black prisoner. This woman looked like a Midwestern meth edrine addict, old before her time. I was not up for conversation.

She fell right in step with me. “My name is Janet.”

I nodded, looking at her out of the corner of my eye. Her pale, parched skin and red-rimmed crystal blue eyes told me she had only recently arrived. From her look I guessed she had been shunted from one jail to another for quite a while.

Oblivious to the aloofness that I was trying to send her way, she asked, “Who are you?”

“Rosenberg,” I muttered.

She stopped walking. “I know who you are.”

I thought for a second that I would have to fight her. Not being able to tell where she was coming from, I kept walking.

“I’m a political prisoner, too.” The emphasis was on the word “too.”

“Yeah, what did you do?” I asked, getting more exasperated with each turn in the yard.

“I hate the government,” she said.

I kept my pace.

“I bomb abortion clinics,” she went on. “Me and my husband, that’s what we do. We’ve bombed nine of them.”

I took one full look at her and turned on my heel, walking back to the seg door.

She said, “I saw you in that documentary, Through the Wire.”

“Then you know to leave me alone.” I had no idea what I meant by that; all I knew was that I was seething at her, at the guard for putting us together, and at the whole scene I was now in.

She was still talking as I tried to get back into the building. “I’m in the hole for refusing to work. Our hatred of the federal government gives us common ground.”

Common ground? I did not want common ground with her. I did not want my enemies’ enemy to become my friend.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.