Set It Off

By Myanne Shelley

JJ Carlisle is the beloved youngest brother of his blended family, a boy who grew up thinking he was destined for greatness. Instead, he finds trouble, with sister Jackie and stepsister Karen regularly there to bail him out. While their lives settle as the years pass, JJ feels personally affronted by the roiling economy of the 21st century. The Occupy movement gives him a shot at leadership. But his hubris and anger threaten to radicalize him farther than the rest of the family can imagine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Myanne Shelley
• Release date: Jun 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301868094

Myanne Shelley

Recently retired San Francisco nonprofit worker, SFSPCA cat volunteer, pickleball player, boxer, writer.

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Set It Off

by

Myanne Shelley

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Myanne Shelley at Smashwords

Set It Off

Copyright © 2013 by Anne Shelley

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter 1 Amateur Images

San Francisco, 2012

The 70 second video clip went viral within minutes. The handheld image swoops briefly upward, as the protester hauled himself onto a table. Then it pans the Occupy Oakland crowd streaming into the bank. (They’ve arrived together, taken BART across, to supplement the SF movement.) You hear shouts, grunts, a loud clatter as one of the ornate chairs crashes to the floor, and again as the glass door shatters. Faces, contorted in anger, chanting we are. One man moves into focus. He swirls, exhorting those following him, and swings back around, his whole arm like a battering ram, knocking down a smaller, older man. Someone from the bank, who had stepped forward toward the protesters. From above, you see man on the floor, a shocked expression on his face, and then the guy who knocked him down is screaming, He’s one of them! He doesn’t deserve our pity! Several other young men lash out toward the banker, kicking him, while others pull back; the chants lessen and there are confused sounding exclamations. A vicious blow lands to the man’s head and his eyes role backwards. A woman screams from behind the counter. The image abruptly cuts out.

Most people who were there didn’t actually see any of this. The bank’s lobby was small, the crowd intent on shutting down business as usual. That they had clearly done. A younger, determined bunch, already schooled in earlier demonstrations, sat in front of the entrance and linked arms. Others milled about on the sidewalk and into the street.

An ambulance arrived about the same time as the young cameraman posted his video feed. Even as people outside, one then another saw it, showed the link, asked themselves what had happened, the leaders inside were standing their ground. This was not filmed, this was what people said later, during the police investigation. TV news, complacent and inured to the regular protests by this time, had missed it all and had to rely on the amateur images.

JJ Carlisle, the guy who had – seemingly by accident – knocked over the bank branch manager and yelled with such fury to the crowd, was not the one whose kick had delivered the dangerous blow. Rather he had seemed intent on unleashing his personal fury at each bank employee individually, his contorted, screaming, angry face as close to their faces as he could manage. One or two held their ground, but most had retreated to back rooms in genuine terror.

A group of at least a dozen had wreaked more actual violence. In addition to kicking the one banker and throwing punches toward anyone official who came near, they had overturned furniture and knocked aside the bank’s video monitors and paper displays. Then blended back into the crowd, the crowd that impeded the police from making their way into the bank.

After the earlier incidents of brutality, the force had been served notice to move with caution. Of course, after the officers realized the extent of bank exec Robert White’s injuries, that tide could easily turn again.

Jackie Carlisle and Karen Emerson met in the hallway at 850 Bryant three days later. Sister and stepsister of JJ Carlisle, each summoned with a barrage of texts and messages, his way of ensuring that someone who looked responsible to the police would arrive to pick him up.

Jackie had a clean t-shirt and a hoodie, pilfered from the back of her husband Tony’s closet. Karen brought a burrito, triple wrapped in foil and still warm. The women compared notes at the counter, as they stood waiting. Their appearance as upstanding citizens, middle aged nicely dressed women, did not spur the police staff to move with any haste.

It’s the siege at Kresge’s all over again, Jackie muttered. She referenced an incident from over 30 years ago, when they were high school friends and JJ a runty 7 year old, bullied into shoplifting and caught red handed.

Karen flashed a grin. He wanted us to bring him food back then too, didn’t he? Together they had sweet talked the store manager and paid for the small trinkets, downplayed the whole thing to a misunderstanding to Jackie and JJ’s parents.

Even so, JJ had achieved a brief bit of notoriety in their small home town of Blossom Valley. He had, in the second grade, developed a hitch in his walk, the small swagger that remained to this day. Some of the other kids looked to him for direction at recess, even though he was average in stature and neither brainy nor exceptionally wild.

Until then, JJ had not been exceptional at all, just the much loved youngest child, the only boy, conceived in a last ditch and unsuccessful attempt to save a failing marriage. Back in small town Pennsylvania, JJ’s image had easily faded back to obscurity. It took more reckless behavior in later years to cement his bad boy reputation, though even that had hardly crossed the small community’s borders.

Now, he had been identified in the clip that had been viewed by millions and counting, commented on by thousands, discussed in Occupy meet ups, college campuses, and everyday offices by tens of thousands more. Both Jackie and Karen had seen the video, but neither yet realized how widely it had circulated, nor had really considered what it might mean for JJ and his family.

Karen had a 19 year old daughter who had always looked up to JJ, the fun uncle, closer to her in age and still capable of boyish enthusiasm well into his 30s. She was glad Bethany was unaware of this little journey downtown, though. JJ had sounded so angry in his voice messages. Furious at the arrest, though surely it hadn’t been unexpected. Self righteous, unwilling, or perhaps unable to see the harm he had instigated, sure he’d be bailed out of this, as ever. And indeed, one of the astoundingly young Occupy Oakland legal guys had posted bail, with a simple, wearied click of his iphone app.

Eventually a tired looking police officer appeared, JJ at his side. The policeman’s pace was measured, while JJ strained, yanking his arm away, tossing his head around, pulling himself as far ahead as he could get. The officer dropped his arm as if he’d been carrying dog do the moment they passed the security gate.

JJ’s angry expression morphed quickly to a carefree grin, and he launched himself between the two women, awkwardly hugging them both.

Jeez, JJ, you really need a shower, Jackie said, teasing although not inaccurate.

Karen dangled the burrito bag. I feel like I should ask you to explain yourself first. That’s what your mom would have done. She smiled, but her eyes remained serious.

JJ plucked the plastic bag from her fingers and tore through the foil. Good old mom. Glad she missed this. He took a bite. Mm, I’m so hungry. He looked up, eyes darting between them, focused on the food but at least a tiny bit aware of the social niceties of the situation. Thanks for coming down here. I didn’t mean it like that about Mom.

Jackie nodded. Their mother had succumbed to a fast moving cancer just a couple years back. Dad and Amelia are, um, concerned. They saw your picture on the news before anyone even told them about the arrest.

Karen noticed the way that everyone within earshot was listening, daggers shooting from several sets of eyes. It occurred to her that someone might consider this a news event. Bailing out her ne’er do well stepbrother could well revolve into some further televised embarrassment. Let’s go, you guys, she said, picking up the grimy bag that had been dropped at JJ’s feet and expecting him to follow.

Can’t get out of here fast enough, JJ sneered, with a quick hostile glance toward all the uniforms behind the counter.

They all three walked quickly, Jackie’s heels echoing on the marble floors. Past courtroom doors, out the lobby, past the bored looking security guards and random confused people shuffling in for afternoon jury duty.

Karen was aware of people watching them, murmuring, at least one snapping a quick picture. She lowered her head, trying to obscure her face without giving the appearance of shame. Jackie had her phone out – she was preoccupied, texting her husband, trying to remember how much time was left on the meter. But JJ walked as though he expected people to pause and take note of his progress. He paused for a moment at the top of the steps, eyes blinking in the bright sunlight, then spread his arms slightly. As if offering benediction. As if everything was right with the world.

Chapter 2 Just Another Phase

Blossom Valley, 1975

A few months after she turned 12, Karen Emerson began a brief but passionate phase of writing down absolute truths on the covers of her three ring notebooks, then inking over them so thoroughly that the ballpoint pen raised hash marks like Braille on the inside. In this way she could be reminded of what she had written, what she knew, but not risk anyone else like her brothers or parents reading it.

Everything was a phase, according to her mom, who was recently into pop psychology. It was as if anything anyone in the family thought to do could be easily dismissed as some unoriginal reaction to the outside world. Predictable and soon passed. Her mom (please, call me Amelia to her friends, so embarrassing!) could even joke about her own journey, as she called it, into feminism. It was a little behind the time the new women’s movement had hit the big cities, and quite a lot more subdued. But she was on the journey!

She had taken a part time job a couple years back when Karen was in 5th and her younger brother in 3rd grade. More recently she’d cut her hair into a modern shag. She had a group of friends who had a monthly night out, women only, and brought home books that were, she said, brimming with new ideas.

Karen, frankly, had gotten busy enough with her own life not to pay all that much attention to her mother’s doings anymore. Seventh grade meant the Junior High across town, rising super early to catch the bus, seeing the transformation of kids she had known since kindergarten. Some were already growing tall, developing, pretty popular girls and athletic boys, while others pushed their way into one or another newly formed lesser tiers.

Karen, who had always coasted pretty easily in the middle ground, found herself scrambling a bit in the new scheme of things. She got along pretty well with boys and girls both, and with older and younger kids. She had two brothers after all, one older and one younger. But lately she was understanding what her older brother Peter had tried to tell her, one rainy afternoon the summer before. It’s just different, it’s just different, he had repeated several times, finally shushing her so they could both watch the repeat of Star Trek on TV.

Peter had reached high school, so they took different buses and didn’t talk much now day to day. He had grown suddenly taller (his growing phase according to Mom) as well as become irritable and sometimes spookily quiet. He could be in a room with the rest of the family but also somehow not there. As if he was actually hovering somewhere above, or in a science lab somewhere, observing the rest of them through a microscope.

She could see now how hard junior high might have been for him, a quiet and skinny boy who was smart but in a way that probably branded him a teacher’s pet. Karen was usually referred to as nice or sweet or fun, where Peter was the smart one, their younger brother Clay the funny and clever one. She wasn’t dumb. Just not as smart. But smart enough to see that being real smart wasn’t a good thing anymore, nor popping your hand up in class every time you knew the answers.

Karen instead worked to establish herself as friendly and nice. The sort of girl who would say hello to anyone she saw, who wasn’t mean to the unpopular kids or scared of the rough country kids, the ones who got into fights during lunch period. She had her eye, already, on the high school twirling team, which was two rungs below cheerleaders, one below pom poms, but better than marching band. Or the kids who did nothing at all.

Lucky for her, she had a little group of friends who had hung around sometimes in elementary school. These were girls who quickly sat together where they could, and found a table toward the front of the cafeteria that first noisy frightening day at lunch period A. One of the girls had left the group, morphed into the tanned, shiny haired, perfectly made up group that sat together with the popular boys at the dead center at lunch. But Karen had met and brought in a new girl, Jackie, who easily took her place.

Jackie’s family had moved from Boston, which she breezily called the city. She was a tall, broad shouldered girl with perfectly feathered ashy blond hair, a wide smile despite her braces, and a fast, bossy way of talking that Karen admired. On their first day in class, Jackie had interrupted the Home Ec. teacher to clarify the appearance of boiling water. Somehow the way she did it, smiling and confident, hadn’t bothered the teacher, who was like a hundred years old and probably just glad anyone was even listening.

All of their little group lived in the same part of town. The nice part, their mom called it. The boring part, Peter said – although it’s not like there was really an interesting section of Blossom Valley. There were a couple streets up at the top of the hill with bigger houses, lush lawns, wide porches with views of the whole area (the fancy part). Karen didn’t think anyone with kids lived up there though, it seemed like mostly old people. And there were two trailer parks, but it was dull there too. Mostly grown ups there worked in the factory a couple towns over – people who tried not to draw much attention to themselves. Kids who lived there usually tried to hide the fact, although after awhile everyone knew.

The rest of the town stretched over the rolling hills, modest suburban tract homes all built around the same time, back when people started settling here, extending a pattern of escaping Philadelphia and then the busy suburban towns around it. To the east were a series of larger and more populous towns, to the west it was more rural farms dotted with small villages until you got to solidly into Amish country. In the very center of Blossom Valley there were some older structures, brick or stone, and just one block with some stores and a gas station. For most everything else you needed, someone had to drive 10 miles or so over a highway too dangerous for bikes, which was totally frustrating for everybody under age 16.

Fortunately Jackie lived in easy biking distance from Karen. And happily her mom didn’t care where she rode her bike as long as she stayed off the highway. Jackie’s parents were actually kind of strict about where she went. Jackie just laughed this off as the burden of being the oldest. She just had to prove herself responsible, she assured them