Free Savage Season by Joe R. Lansdale Page A

thing is understood, there goes the mystery.  Everyone can live together and love one another, no sweat.
    "But when I finally got the lid off, looked down there, I saw the machinery was a lot more complex than I originally thought.  You couldn't glance at it and see how it worked.  I had to go down in the machine and study it, become a mechanic.  Change some things around so it was simple.  I figured I could do that.  Figured when I came up out of the machine, it would be smooth and well oiled and would run the way it was supposed to.  Without prejudice and wars and sexism.  People would be kind to animals, loan their tools, and locks would come off doors."
    I nodded.  "Peace, brother."
    "You got it.  So I decided to team up with these other mechanics.  People who had the right ideas, you know, wanted to get down in that machinery with me, do some work.  This machinery analogy was theirs, and they started calling themselves the Mechanics.  You don't hear much about them some reason or another, but they were active as ants."
    "I heard of them," I said.  "Started out getting people to register to vote.  Pushing the ideas of a democracy, then they splintered.  The ones that continued to call themselves the Mechanics were kind of like the radical branch that split off from the Students for a Democratic Society and called themselves the Weathermen."
    "You got it.  The splinters all died out pretty quick without their original leader.  He was a charismatic kind of guy.  Had come into the group as one of the Indians, but in no time was chief.  A few of the Indians split, tried to form their own tribes, but the diehards stayed with him.  And it took him to hold things together, keep the Mechanics on track.
    "So the Mechanics got their monkey wrenches and went to work.  Said to hell with this democratic society shit, the answers are in the street.  You got to wreck some things to get them built up new and different.  We went underground.  Got guns, started hitting anyplace we thought didn't jive with human rights or supported the war in Vietnam.  There were lots of targets.  We bombed a few ROTC buildings throughout the state.  Moved on to other states.  Traveled all over and didn't get caught.  We were a different kind of criminal than the FBI had dealt with before.  Smart people with a smart leader.  We had a cause, and there's no one more dangerous than the zealot, and we were that in spades."
    "How many of you were there?" Leonard asked.
    "Twelve at first.  Took in a few more here and there off college campuses.  Did some sneaky recruiting.  We had been students, so we knew where to go to talk to the right people— people with a similar political mind.  We hooked them in, fed them radicalism like pudding.  The leader of the Mechanics was especially good at talking that shit.  Thought he was one of life's poets, one enlightened sonofabitch.  Didn't hurt either that back then every college kid wanted to be Che Guevara.
    "We were good at what we did.  Knew how to forge documents, make new identities.  Worked what jobs we could get, spent very little, moved often.  Stayed near college campuses mostly; all kinds of free stuff you can get at the bigger ones.  Play it right and live simple, you can do well mostly on the labors of others.  And that struck us as right.  We saw ourselves as ripping off a capitalistic society."
    I had been sitting there trying to remember a name, and suddenly it came to me.  "Gabriel Lane," I said.  "That's who the leader of the Mechanics was.  Goddamn! That's you, isn't it, Paco?"
    "Long ago.  I'm Paco now, and Paco I'll be till they find me somewhere dead in a cheap motel and cart me off to a pauper's grave."
    "I think you guys were fucked up," Leonard said.  "Doing what you did."
    "Our hearts were in the right place, but we got caught up, and pretty soon our hearts shifted.  An innocent bystander dies when we bomb some capitalistic bank, some ROTC