The Burning Men: A Nathaniel Cade Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

anything else?” Marc shot back. “When we were at the last demo, you were doing a puppet show when I was punching a cop.”
    Julius scowled. “Puppetry is an effective method of mocking the power structure and educating people, with a rich history dating back to the 14th century.”
    Josh watched Marc and Julius argue. They were at Burning Man right now, but they could have been anywhere. In their dorm room, in the dining hall, in class, or sitting on the quad. They went through it with new energy every time, no matter how often they repeated the same lines.
    Josh tried to play peacemaker with a joke, but they ignored him. Ty and Cooper were content to be the audience, grinning like morons. As usual, they all looked to Adam to make the final ruling.
    “The world is burning,” Adam said. “We’re all doing what we can. But maybe it’s not enough.”
    That calmed them down. Adam was the authority. They could all debate about libertarianism or anarcho-syndicalism but the fact was, he was their leader, no question and no argument. Their little group revolved around him, followed him, and always deferred to him, even if they couldn’t always say why.
    Maybe it was because he was ridiculously handsome, almost physically flawless. Josh knew Adam had been a catalog model for a little while — it was how he’d paid for college. Even when he slouched, Adam looked like he was still posing for an unseen camera.
    But there was more to it than his good looks. People just listened to Adam. It was like some kind of Jedi mind trick. He could say the stupidest shit, and everyone would nod like it was the smartest thing they’d ever heard. His jokes didn’t have to be funny for people to laugh. They didn’t even have to be jokes.
    Josh had heard the word charisma before, usually in his poli-sci required reading, but until he met Adam sophomore year, he’d never actually seen someone with it.
    It was Adam who got them all into causes, Adam who took them all to their first Burning Man, and Adam who led them into the Occupy movement. They’d all read the books he recommended (or, in the case of Marc, pretended to), mouthed the same slogans he did, and marched in the same demonstrations. They never would have said they were following him — they were individuals, they all just decided to do the same things that Adam did on their own.
    Josh was the only one who thought it was funny when he pointed that out. He didn’t mind. He knew his role. He was the clown. He kept things from getting too serious.
    It wasn’t like Josh disagreed with anything that Adam said, or believed. He knew the world was screwed. They were all loading up on student loan debt, trying to put off the day when they’d go out into the free market and learn firsthand how there were no jobs. In the meantime, the ice caps were melting, and a bunch of bankers had stolen all the money. Josh didn’t know what signing online petitions or squatting in a park was going to do to stop that, but it was better than nothing, right?
    They watched the group of fire-dancers in front of them with glazed eyes. There were always a lot of people doing fire-related tricks at Burning Man — it was there in the name. Every year about 50,000 people came out to the Black Rock desert in Nevada to listen to music, ingest a whole shitload of drugs, and watch a giant wooden man get burned to the ground,. Every year, before the man was burned, there were dozens of performances from people who would dance with burning torches, light vodka from their mouths, and even jump naked through flaming hoops.
    But this group was really good. They seemed to be able to make the fire itself dance, and unlike some of the amateurs playing with gasoline, they were never even singed while they performed.
    They called themselves the Sons of the Salamander.
    Personally, Josh wanted to go look for the topless girls giving away free hugs, but Adam was fascinated and refused to move. So they all stayed with