I Have a Dream
"And He said also to the crowds, when ye see a cloud rising out
of the west, straightway ye say, a shower is
coming; and so it happens. And when [ye see] the south
wind blow, ye say, there will be heat; and it
happens. Hypocrites, ye know how to judge of the appearance of
the earth and of the heaven; how [is it then that] ye do not
discern this time? And why even of yourselves judge ye not what
is right?"
Luke 12:54-7 Darby Bible
The day was unseasonably warm ... not as sweltering as the
military bases we'd once lived on, and certainly not as torrid as
that exotic Asian battlefield I had served on, but refreshingly
warm for late autumn. We'd arisen early to clean the garage and
clear the attic. This not only involved much stoop labor, but
also many discussions on what was junk and what was treasure.
By dint of reducing chaos to mere disorder, we'd worked ourselves
into satisfied exhaustion. I took note of how attractive my wife
was with some dust smudges and a glow of perspiration. Perhaps by
some feminine wiles, but definitely by some favorable
inheritance, she was still youthful appearing. She wore a scarf
over her hair, jeans and hikers, and a delicate necklace peaked
out at the throat of her seersucker blouse. As usual, she'd
accuse me of loafing whenever she caught me looking at her. I
couldn't help it ... she was so graceful that it was a pleasure
to watch her move.
Her pickup truck was loaded about shoulder high with all kinds of
debris, from rusted fencing and desiccated paint cans to soiled
carpeting and broken furniture. I'd just added a feed sack of
planter flats when she asked about the old hose ... it wasn't
split or ruptured, but it kinked so much that it wasted as much
time as it saved. The doors of the truck stood open, like dog's
ears, and she leaned on the seat in the shade. Her gloves were
hanging out of her pocket and she was examining a snagged
fingernail. I didn't care about the hose. I didn't use it very
often, but she wanted me to decide. I walked toward her and she
looked up with that warning glance that said too clearly:
don't mess with me right now ... so I pretended that I
had intended to get the rope bag from behind the seat, and only
kissed her soiled cheek after leaning into the cab.
I started tying down the load, beginning with a bowline at each
corner and half-hitching or diamond-hitching my way around the
stack. She arched backward far enough to turn the ignition switch
to checked the time. She said that the dump would close soon, and
that my tie-down must be a negative on the hose. I mentioned that
the hose could be dropped in anywhere, slipping between the
lashings, and if she wanted to discard it, then would she please
remove the brass nozzle first. She gazed at the garden plot
beside the garage, then glanced at the hose hanging in a coil on
the garage wall, and finally at the trash cans outside the
backdoor of the house. She said that the trash would have to wait
for another run, by which I inferred that no decision was a
decision to keep the old hose another year.
As I anchored the last point, she replaced the rope bag and swung
into the driver's seat. She cranked the engine, started the fan,
and put some Celtic music into the player. I clambered into the
shotgun seat, noticing her wallet on the console, just as she
started to roll out of the yard. Her accelerated turn closed my
door just as I was reaching for it. She shot me a devilish grin,
and I winked back at her. We executed a rolling stop out
of our lane onto the county road. The dump was on the other side
of town and our burg was too underdeveloped to have a bypass. We
hummed and tapped along with the music, enjoying this
intermission before winter's onslaught.
The world had changed in the past forty years of our marriage,
most notably in telecommunications, but also in cultural
redefinitions. We drove past a baseball diamond that now sported
a contiguous soccer field, where all the teams had
politically correct mascots, and everyone was a
winner. The courthouse had been decorated for Halloween,
but could not be dressed for Christmas or Easter, even though
these were still official holidays. The IGA, which
formerly held a truck farm sale in its parking lot every
Saturday, had been displaced by a super store that sold
everything with the groceries under one gigantic roof. A health
care clinic, staffed by PAs and nurse's aides, had replaced the
old doctor's office. The gun shop was gone, and a florist shop
was occupying that space. The barbershop was closed, leaving only
a unisex hair salon. Cigarettes were now as hard for adults to
buy as it once was for kids. There were no more diners or mom
'n' pop eateries, but only franchise outlets of
international conglomerates. We used to tease visitors that our
MacDonald's was so small that it had only
one arch! ... and that our Pizza Hut
couldn't make a pie larger than medium. We were
not overwhelmed by a future shock of choices, but by a
monopolization of multiplied mediocrity. Every day in every
way we felt more and more folded, spindled, and
mutilated.
On the outside of town, near some campgrounds and a subdivision
on the way to the county airfield, was a 7 Eleven
convenience store. It was, along with the Tastee Freeze
beside the town park, the oldest chain store in the area, and was
typically crowded with customers wanting last minute or
supplemental items. Noticing the ad for the anniversary of the
Slurpee, she crossed the road to pull onto the verge,
just beyond the parking apron. Since unloading was always easier
and faster than loading, we had time to indulge ourselves with a
cold drink ... especially one as old as our marriage. We used to
tease about being so poor that we'd had to serve
Slurpee's at our wedding instead of champagne. And I
remembered that she, in a tender gesture of sweet oneness, bought
me a celebratory Slurpee when I returned from overseas.
Traffic was pretty heavy ... well, relatively heavy for our area
... so I was careful about stepping out onto the roadside, aware
that someone might want to turn into the lot past our tailgate.
As I reached through my window for the sawbuck she'd dug out of
her wallet, I heard a snot-nosed Southern drawl that sounded
familiar. Still engaged in the exchange, I leaned past the cab to
look over the bed into the parking lot. There must have been
twelve vehicles, three in motion, and easily a dozen people
moving around the lot. A blond man was standing in the doorway
talking to two young women in bicycle tights. A woman shepherding
three children was passing between them, while a man carrying a
keg of beer passed through the door that the blond held open. Two
hardhats were getting into their pickup, and a businesswoman was
locking her car door. Three teenagers were standing in
conversation near the outdoor phone that was situated between the
doorway and the ice locker. A mechanic from the Exxon
station was arranging his purchases on the passenger side of his
truck. A sleek limousine with tinted glass was parked on the far
side of the lot.
I leaned back into the window and asked if I was seeing what I
thought I saw, and she confirmed it with a glance over her
shoulder. I wondered what the hell this low-life snake in the
grass was doing polluting our pleasant town. Why did this
degenerate decide to blight our little corner of paradise? Wasn't
it enough that he chased the bright lights around the
globe so he could voice his fatuous opinion about everything from
music and cars to underwear and sports? Wasn't it enough that
he'd protected his political options with cowardice?
Wasn't it enough that this draft-dodging milksop had burned our
nation's flag? Wasn't it enough that this fellow
traveler had made a pilgrimage to his communist sanctum?
Wasn't it enough that this parasite on the body politic had spun
sax playing and sex playing into our country's presidency? Wasn't
it enough that this mush-mouthed glad-hander had protested our
involvement in a foreign war, and then sent his underlings around
the world to indulge his foreign policy whims? Wasn't it enough
that this ignorant cracker made war on his own lawful citizens
while abetting international terrorism? Wasn't it enough that
charming Billy did as much as he could to diminish and
obstruct the American military? Wasn't it enough that this
arrogant dupe had impaired and imperiled American liberty, from
the safety and security of his protected position?
When was enough enough? Better men had died to keep him
free ... and he had neither appreciation nor understanding,
neither respect nor reverence. I thought about the more than
fifty-thousand names on the memorial wall. I thought about
friends and comrades I'd lost in that distant test of American
character ... and this poltroon had declared that character
didn't matter. I thought about the legacy of
my war, its persistent myths, its inexorable
lies. I thought of the frauds and fiascos of foreign adventurism
that wasted military resources during his maladministration. I
thought of the demoralized military that would always bleed for
the wrong war in the wrong place at the
wrong time ... good men going where they've been sent
and doing what they've been told by bad men. I thought about
honoring what he'd dishonored, of preserving what he'd
squandered, of restoring what he'd wrecked. I looked at his pudgy
body as he animatedly courted women younger than his own daughter
... and then I looked at mine: a mass of scars and two prosthetic
arms. He had never sacrificed anything ... not blood or sweat or
even a missed meal ... for the benefit of someone else, for an
unselfish cause, for a noble ideal. He personified everything
that was wrong with my generation, with my culture, with my
nation. And he stupidly stood there braying like a jackass! I
learned a long time ago that I was not bulletproof, but did this
vain and boorish lump of white trash know that he was
not shatterproof? I let the bill fall from my hook onto the seat.
I could hear her call my name as I walked toward the store.
Over breakfast this morning, we had discussed the meaning of the
devotional passage: sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof, which she had interpolated as don't borrow more
trouble than what is allotted. It could, of course, have
also meant that no one will receive more troubles than he can
handle; so I gave her the preceding passage as my warrant:
don't worry about tomorrow, it will take care of itself.
This endorsement echoed in my mind as mental girding preparatory
to the coming ordeal.
A statuesque brunette, wearing shorts and a halter, had joined
the young women wearing tights, and the door-holding blond
lothario was entranced. I wondered why these women, and what
woman in the world did not know this sleaze's reputation, were
still talking with him ... but they, who practiced the detection
of fool's gold, were probably astonished to find a
spluttering pole star fallen from the firmament into
their midst. As I approached the building I noticed a chauffeur
attending to the limo ... he didn't seem to be armed. And under
the guise of maneuvering out of the way of moving vehicles, I
glimpsed different angles of the store's interior through the
open door. I noticed two men in suits flanking the checkout
counter. Except for the bank president and the school principal,
men did not wear suits around here, other than on Sundays; so
these were bodyguards ... but they were standing on the wrong
side of the impending beaten zone. I heard my wife start
her truck, and I briefly wondered if she'd head for the sheriff's
office. It would be much too late ... for I could almost smell
the quarry, and was ready to taste the prey.
I was just ahead of a father and son duo on the right and a
clutch of preteen adolescents vectoring in from the left, so I
angled behind the women in darling Billy's boresight,
which delayed me enough to let the entryway crowd up with
non-combatants. By changing my angle of approach I was directly
facing slick Willie himself. He may have been photogenic
from afar, but up close he was simply pathetic. He had bags under
his eyes, and his corpulence was suety. His dye job needed
retouching, and his expensive regalia didn't fit properly. He
looked like a dissipated clown. This clinquant pol reminded me of
a desperate salesman trying to sell himself ... of an actor
without a theater, of a preacher without a temple. It didn't
change anything. He was just like the other exploiters, who have
neither humility nor mercy, but demand forgiveness for being
shamelessly apprehended in their despoilment. Such traitors to
the American dream had destroyed my compassion. I
reserved my pity for those who would only inherit our lost
cause.
As the doorway filled with innocents, I strode briskly forward
and powerfully kicked the impeached ex-president in the groin! He
never even noticed me ... after all, I wasn't an alluring female.
The three women, who'd been transfixed by his magnetism, screamed
and flushed like a covey of powder pigeons. As he bent over in
pain, releasing the door, I transferred my weight, lifting the
other leg into his face, and swinging my prosthesis out to
intercept his falling arm. My knee hurt and my pants were covered
in blood, but there had been a satisfying crunch
of a broken nose and shattered teeth ... I'd just known they were
capped! Other than a grunt of expelled breath, he hadn't made a
sound, but he was trying to collapse into a fetal ball on the
ground ... hey,great leader of the Free World, none of
that! Clamping my hook onto the neck of his shirt, I held him
upright and chopped him sharply in the mouth with my other hook.
Unlike some of the more modern lightweight prostheses, mine are
suspended from a chest harness; so as long as I have upper body
strength, my arms will hold as much as I can lift with my torso
... it's pretty amazing leverage, and right now the effect was
not pretty.
I'd been hearing background noises, but as anyone who's ever been
in combat can tell you, nothing outside the immediate focus is
important enough to notice. It had only been seconds, but I was
fully in the zone. There was a screech of brakes and a
crashing of metal behind me as I prepared to pound some payback
into this detumescent excrescence ... but somebody was calling my
name. It was my wife. She'd backed her truck at high speed right
up to the entrance. She was hanging out the driver's side window
and yelling for me to get into the truck! ... what a terrific
lady! She'd have been fine flying chase on recon extractions! I
almost stood there in marvelous appreciation of her perspicacious
courage ... this sexy broad had real guts! ...
and a microsecond later, I implemented her impromptu
exfil program.
Keeping my hook buried in his neck, I reached down and clipped
onto his belt ... being a little rushed, I probably grabbed some
overlapping tummy as well ... and swung this sorry sack of
shit into the back of the truck. I scrambled on top of him,
changing my hold from his clothing to the bed lashings, and
called out for her to leave. I told her that all the
trash was loaded, so we could now go to the dump!
Running in four-wheel drive, she fishtailed out of the lot onto
the highway, putting up a smoke screen of burning rubber. As I
looked back, the chauffeur was standing slack jawed, and the
bodyguards were finally outside, but unable to shoot. The cool
breeze felt wonderful as we raced away.
I don't know how they got onto us so quickly, but I could hear
the approach of a siren. I lifted up and looked around, hoping
not to see what I heard. The more I looked, the louder it got ...
and then I turned off the alarm. I looked at my wife's picture on
the nightstand, remembering how beautiful she was. I was back in
my sister's garret, and this was trash day. I pivoted out of bed
and maneuvered myself into the chest harness. As I padded into
the bathroom, I remembered the dream. I doubted that today would
turn out like that vision, but one could always hope. I have a
dream. I dream that my country will heal and unite; and that our
promise will stand for all who want to be uplifted. It would be
so lovely.
by Erin Galloglass
... who is a combat disabled veteran, a bookseller, and freelance
writer; his work has appeared previously in this magazine.
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