Llewellyn’s Child

Jinny watched blood, like crimson wine, transfuse Levenstein’s white, fitted dress-shirt.  Two large exit-wounds in his back collapsed him to his knees;  he toppled onto his face and crushed the signature wire-rimmed glasses in his pocket.  He was dead.  The autographed baseball had fumbled from his fingers and rolled the length of a bat toward home plate.  Fans clamored to their feet; cell-phone cameras transmitted photos from every conceivable angle to every imaginable corner of the planet; Frendbook  and Likesbook broke all records.  And then—every seat in the house lost value, including those in rural Abilene.  Caleb gave up his seat, wrested the remote from Conor’s hand, and killed the picture, but the DVR continued to groan.    Tears had gathered and found a well-trodden path down Jinny’s tanned cheeks.  She wiped them away with the back of her hand, but they just kept on coming.  “Oh Papa, please, no more, no more dying.”

No one spoke again until Lance innocently asked, “Papa, why did he drop the ball?”

Before Caleb could say something, before he could say anything, Conor protested.  “For crying out loud, this affects the whole country.   Why did you turn off the TV?  Don’t you think we need to know what’s going on?”  Jinny nodded, almost imperceptibly. Caleb heaved a sigh, threw the remote on the carpet, and watched the batteries spring out and roll under the couch. He dragged ten fingers down his face like a harrow attempting to break apart a field of cloddy disillusionment and then wrapped his arms snugly around his little boy.

“The Vice President of the United States has been shot, son, like President Kennedy was shot when I was young.” He paused, ended the hug, looked into Lance’s eyes, and blurted, “The dear Lord knows we’ve been exposed to more than enough tragedy around here without having to invite more of it into our home today, right, Lance?”

Then Caleb surprised everyone by clapping his hands together as if he were trying to break a witch’s spell. “Dessert! We need dessert.  Who would like to drive to Rampton’s Drug Store and pick up a gallon of fresh-made vanilla ice cream?”

Lance lighted up. “I’ll drive, Papa.”

Jinny cried a laugh. “Lance and I will go, but I’ll be the chauffeur.”

Caleb pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and stuffed it in Lance’s hand.  “On your marks—get set—go jump in the station wagon and be off.  Oh Jinny, maybe you should see if Mama needs . . . no, on second thought don’t speak to Mama, I will.”  Jinny pocketed her license, key, and trailed Lance and the money out the back door. It didn’t slam.

“Buckle up.”  Jinny started the engine and looked over her right shoulder. The vintage Oldsmobile whined as she backed from the driveway onto the county road; the warm exhaust swirled out of the tail-pipe and mugged the crisp October air.  Lance was on the verge of tears.

Caleb reassembled the remote and pop-popped the VCR and TV buttons.  Instantly, eight square yards of Boston sky filled the screen—a sorry sign that left field camera 7 no longer had an operator.  A voice from high above home plate stammered, “Can anybody hear me? This is Stan Waggoner, your play-by-play announcer. F-f-f-olks, if you’re still tuned in, you can’t see me; I’m trapped, scared out of my socks, and hoping somebody in the trailer can hear me. The shooter has an automatic weapon, and he’s braced against the outside wall of the Red Sox dugout next to Ronnie, at camera 4.  Ronnie doesn’t look so good.  I think he’s unconscious.  Poor Clara.” More gunfire.

Henny Hernandez, the catcher, looked like a faithful Muslim who had hastily responded to a call to prayer. As he lay spread-eagle across home plate he watched agents draw Sig Sauer machine guns and form a kneeling perimeter around the Vice President.  The agent in charge lifted a sleeve to her mouth and shouted: “Hopalong is down!  I repeat, Hopalong is down! Hopalong is down!” A black Escalade roared from the gangway, ramped into the air—wheels whirring–carved a donut on the infield grass, and slid to a stop between the Vice President and the active shooter.  Passenger side-doors flew open and more gunfire erupted while the Vice President was retrieved and rudely thrust onto the back seat.  An agent went down.

Caleb paled.  “How awful.  Conor, I feel so vulnerable. I’m sure they’ve trained for scenarios like this, but my goodness, I can’t believe my eyes.”   The monitor went black and hid the chaos for fifteen long seconds; it wasn’t long enough to suit Caleb.  “Oh no, a stampede.  Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

A hand-held camera panned between Concourses A and D— left to right—and then back again, streaming more tumult through the ionosphere.  Waves of fleeing fans rippled from the stadium into the parking lot where a quailing cable news reporter, his mouth agape, gazed upstream at the onrush of humanity and yelled over his shoulder, “Willie, here they come; stay with us.”

Ben Bayer, his hair disheveled, his tie cork-screwed,  had a bruise on his left cheek, and the microphone trembled in his hand.  Ben wore an unbuttoned blue blazer and kept his elbows tucked closely to his body as dozens of panicked fans stampeded by, threatening to trample him and the woman to whom he clung. “I’m Ben Bayer, Trager News, reporting from outside Fenway Park.  With me is—”

“Iona Havitol.”  She spelled it out.  “Ms. Iona H-a-v-i-t-o-l.”

“Yes.  With me is Ms. Iona Havitrol.   Tell us what, wait—STOP IT, MAN, LET GO OF ME!!!”  Still anchored to the stout female, Ben regained his balance and continued, “Describe what’s going on back there?”

“BANG.  BANG.  GASP. That’s what, going on, Buster Brown.  I was four rows behind home plate, and my son, Heber—that’s H-E-B-E-R—was, GASP, climbing the backstop fence, GASP. And when the Vice President bit the dust I dashed up the concourse, and here I am waiting for Heber, GASP.” Iona’s eyes darted wildly from side to side.  “Man, I Gotta go.  I mean, I really gotta go.”

As the anchor-man released his grip on the woman, she rolled away like a large dumpster, and another fan grabbed for the microphone. “Can anybody tell me if this means the whole series is cancelled? . . .  Anybody know how I can get my money back?” He made a face at the camera and away he went.

Anguished Ben Bayer exclaimed, “We’re done. Back to you in the studio.  Shut off the camera Wee Willie and let’s get out of here.  Forget the van.”  Ben turned to run.  Still in focus, his shirt-tail hanging out, he stopped short, tapped his earpiece, and listened to a verbal command unheard by Caleb and Conor in Kansas.

“Man up! Get back in the ballpark and shoot more pictures.”

SHOOT? I’d say that a poor choice of words coming from someone whose out of range 1400 miles away, thought Bayer.

The network executive continued, “Other than yours, the only operational camera is number 7 in centerfield—but Benny Boy, YOU are making history.  Now move it.”  Continuing to stream live, Wee Willie Maxwell and the producer fought the oncoming tide of humanity and followed in Ben Bayer’s wake; he stomped one discarded scorecard after another and fought the current upstream—through Concourse A.

Willie’s camera zoomed in and briefly captured the contorted assassin, his arms pumping an AR-15 up and down.  Caleb and Conor uncomfortably followed the drama from the leading edge of the couch. “There he is, Papa. There!  See?  He’s hunkered down in a bunker next to the abandoned Red Socks dugout and using a slumped-over cameraman as a shield.”  A black duffle bag sat conspicuously perched on the dugout overhang.  Conor assumed it was full of ammunition.

Ben Bayer stammered: “The perpetrator of this terrible deed has long black hair, a light beard, and I’m scared to death.  I’m sure I’ll be accused of racial profiling. He is wearing . . . let’s see—wholly Hollywood, a blue and yellow jacket, labeled,Trager Sports Network, just like mine.  You who are watching may be able to hear spurts of gunfire.  Willie, can you see where the shooter’s aiming?  Oh, my goodness, you’re right, he’s firing into the upper deck.  Everyone has panicked, dropped to the floor, or run for cover.  Who knows when we’ll all wake up from this terrible nightmare. “Hold on Willie, did the shooter just activated the stadium’s public address system?”

Caught on camera and pumping a fist, the jihadist bared his pearly whites and screamed: “Allahu Akbar! One Jew is O-U-T.  GAME OVER. Allahu Akbar!”  A well-placed sniper’s bullet ended both the terrorist’s television debut and his life—but he got great ratings.

“Got him.  Bogie’s down.  Repeat.  Bogie’s down.”

Caleb slumped.  Conor cheered, “They got him.”

Bayer continued to babble, almost blubber: “I can hear the Secret Service shouting, ‘Shooter’s down! Shooter’s down!  Move in.  Stay sharp!’”

From a repositioned canonical camera angle in centerfield, the airwaves drained the swamp of un-edited sorrow into the O’Dwyer living room.  The images discolored and permanently damaged the psyches of two Kansas natives on what would otherwise have been a beautiful fall afternoon.  Caleb and Conor watched Federal Agents descend on the shooter’s position like a bunch of well-dressed teenagers vying for an errant foul ball and quickly deprive the corpse of its constitutional right to bear arms.  Proximate cameramen and photographers—except for the dead network employee—had abandoned their positions, hoping to survive by leaping the wall; they were stopped and ordered to drop to their knees, interlace their fingers behind their heads, and await the zip ties.

“Shouldn’t we turn it off now?” Caleb asked.

“No, Pop.  Hang on until we know this is over.”

The Trager Sports Mobile Communications Control semi—an aluminum-clad fourteen-wheeler jacked on pneumatic levelers and sequestered beneath the grandstand—straddled diagonal white lines. On its roof sat four under-fed satellite dishes.  “Relay more action, NOW,” demanded the Omaha station executive.  “We may never have an opportunity like this again.”

Wee Willie—a woman–screamed. Her eardrums burst when an explosion knocked her, Bayer, and their producer to the steps by Tier 1, row H, above first base.  Collateral shock waves bucked the Trager trailer and unshelved the satellite dishes.  Parking lot asphalt rippled, setting off hundreds of car-alarms, and the quaking earth registered a magnitude five on the Richter-scale-paper-recording at Boston College.

Ben Bayer moaned and rolled to his knees. “Willie!  What the heck just happened?”  Tourists walking across Concord Bridge twenty miles away asked the same question and concluded a fireworks display had gone awry.

Wee Willie answered, “I’m on it Ben.  I’m on it. I mean, I’m on her! Irma is unconscious and blood’s running from her nose.”

Ben grabbed a handrail, pulled himself to his feet, and stared down at his producer, whose eyes fluttered open.  “What happened.”

“A bomb happened.” Ben pointed toward ground zero.  Wee Willie swung around and steadied the camera, locking her elbows to her sides while Caleb and Conor watched in astonishment as tattered ribbons of noxious smoke spewed from within the bowels of the thirty-seven-foot-high Green Monster, curled hundreds of feet into the air, and blocked out the afternoon sun like a blight of locusts fleeing the jaws of hell.  Two hundred and forty linear feet of fans had been swallowed by the green monster, and a ruptured pipe beneath Lansdowne Street could be seen spewing culinary water one hundred feet into the air; then gravity took charge and dropped the water, smashing windows, inflating air bags, and snarling traffic.  Sirens—many sirens—could be heard whoop-whooping in the distance.

Willie’s camera tracked stunned fans who had arisen to pledge allegiance to their survival by crawling over seats, fleeing up steps, down steps, crowding concourses, shoving and trampling one another in mindless panic—all to escape the madness.  A few fans totally lost it, jumped wildly from Tier 3, and died in more expensive seats.  Ben and his cameraman climbed over a few rows to secure a better view of the stadium and continue reporting.

“Perhaps a hundred heroes, volunteers included, are on scene helping with crowd control and assisting the injured.  First responders from the city, fire companies, emergency medical teams, and ambulances crisscross the diamond, headed for left field.  Now back to Trager News Central for a further update.”

“I’m Weston Rendell.  The Vice President was pronounced dead at 5:48 p.m. eastern daylight time.  Sequestered in a secure location, the President has yet to announce or confirm who is behind the terrorist attack and bombing.   Now back to Brett at Fenway Park and our exclusive on the World Series bombing.”

“I’m Ben— not Brett—Bayer. In a moment you should see an aerial view of the Green Monster wall.  Our local affiliate, WBGY, has a chopper overhead and confirms that all two-hundred and seventy-four seats behind the wall are gone, disappeared, and I quote: ‘into the belly of the beast.’  Additionally, about a hundred standing room only fans lie injured or entombed in the flaming, twisted rubble.”  The posted, wooden scoreboard numbers caught fire two minutes ago.”

Ben unsuccessfully smothered the microphone. “Willie, see if you can get a close-up of the stands behind the left-field foul pole . . .  good.  And did you know you are bleeding, too? Huh?  Me? I’m Okay.  Now pan counterclockwise slowly from the corner toward home plate.  Thank you.  You at home should be able to see three fires in left-field:  One flaming from behind the green wall, one eating at the roof, and . . . wait, I guess there are only two fires.  Hoses have been pulled from the trucks, but something is wrong. Or, I guess I should say, something else is wrong.  They have no water pressure.”  Ben sat on the concrete steps and felt something mushy.  Nachos.

“Despite the pandemonium, the injured are making their way, being dragged, or carried to the outfield grass at multiple locations where triage is underway.  Folks, gulp, it’s a war zone out there . . . organized chaos.   Twelve to fifteen ambulances—no wait, let me count . . . make that sixteen—are on scene.  It may be days before the dead are numbered and their names released to the press. Willie, pan up.  Do you see?  Yes, there. As we speak, two military helicopters are approaching to assist with the evacuation, as we suppose.  Where did our producer go?  Are you sure? . . . Ladies and Gentlemen, minus a producer this unprecedented report is still a Trager News exclusive.  I’m Ben Bayer sending it back to you in the studio.  I don’t feel so good.”

Temporal veins throbbed beneath Caleb’s pale skin, his mouth filled with cotton, and his heart pounded. He lunged forward on all fours, yanked the power cord from the outlet, and inadvertently stripped the wires bare from of the plug.  Sparks splayed.  “Sorry, Conor, overkill.  But leave it to me to break the news to your mother.”  Caleb arose and locked his hands onto Conor’s shoulders.  “For now, I want you to get in the flatbed truck, drive out to section twenty where I mowed yesterday, leave the keys under the seat, and bring the combine home.  Punch on your flashers and drive slowly; the flywheel doesn’t want to stay engaged.  And don’t forget your cell-phone.”  Caleb shuffled barefooted to his bedroom and closed the door. “I need to lie down a few minutes, but first . . .”   He knelt, leaned forward, rested his arms on the bedspread and prayed—for family, countrymen, and then, for his enemies.

Conor avoided a conversation with Gemma, left the house, climbed in the truck, and rumbled toward the county road.  Isabelle appeared in the rearview mirror; she stood in the yard waving goodbye.  She could tell that more than the weather was about to change.

An hour later and for the second time, Gemma quietly opened the bedroom door and gazed at her husband, who still knelt against the bed.   She made her way to his side, knelt, and ran her fingers through his thinning, silver hair.  “Dear Caleb . . . OH PAPA!”

An ambulance arrived, wrapped, and carried away the oldest family treasure, shrouded in white linen.  The autopsy would later confirm Gemma’s diagnosis—Caleb died of a broken heart.  Soon, Uncle Albert—seated with the family around the oval table—scribbled and distributed unwanted assignments:  Relatives to notify; funeral arrangements to be made; chores to be managed.   No one felt like listening, eating ice cream, un-puzzling a puzzle, watching TV, or sleeping—but everyone felt numb.  Jinny turned the radio on low and listened to the strains of a string quartet.  Three bars before its conclusion, the music was pre-empted by a familiar voice: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the President of the United States.”

Albert rocked back on his chair and mumbled, “Some gift, Mr. Speaker.  Unwrap and stash him in the closet with my income tax returns.”

Jinny winced.

President Martin Linforth—just shy of ten months in office–spoke slowly and distinctly:  “My fellow Americans, it is my sad duty to confirm that Vice President Joshua Levenstein, assassinated by a sniper’s bullet at Fenway Park, was pronounced dead at 5:28 p.m., eastern daylight time.   Within minutes an explosion of unknown origin then took the lives of approximately three hundred of our citizens seated behind the famed Green Monster Wall during the opening ceremony of the World Series.  Today’s senseless acts wound Boston and freedom-loving people everywhere.  The shooter is dead.   Mr. Tehrani Ahmadi, age 31, an Iranian student attending Carlsford University, had been in the United States for two years.  This second day of October, two-thousand and thirteen, will live in infamy.”

Albert tipped his chair clear back against the wall and muttered, “Quoting President FDR won’t get you off the hook for this one, Mr. Linforth.”  Jinny winced again.

The President continued: “I have directed Homeland Security, the FBI, and other federal agencies to share resources, identify, and apprehend anyone else complicit in these heinous crimes. Justice will be served.  Consistent with my Constitutional authority as Commander-In-Chief—and with full transparency—I have further ordered that three additional A-Class battle ships and The Dwight D. Eisenhower be dispatched to the Persian Gulf.  I have spoken personally to Israeli Prime Minister Baron and assured him of our continuing and unwaivering cooperation in the hours and days ahead.  Furthermore, in concert with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I have ordered military resources to be deployed to Gaza, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Turkey.

“Secretary of State Gabriel is working to enlist the support and participation of others of our allies in the region.  God bless the families of the fallen, and God bless the United States of America.  For those of you at home, I can’t take questions, being sequestered as I am in this underground bunker.”  The President, sweated profusely, looked up at his weeping wife of 35 years, hoping for a tissue.

Taylor Gladstone, Secretary of Defense, appeared on network and cable news channels one half hour later.  “By order of the President, National Guard units are being activated in all fifty states. Commercial flights have been grounded, and as I speak, reinforcements are being airlifted to bases in Afghanistan and Turkey.  You listening in who are of military age, male or female, consider enlisting in the armed forces.  With the heinous attack in Boston earlier today came a wakeup call to patriots across the land.  It is time to stand together.  It’s time for Congress to congeal.”  Secretary Gladstone disappeared from the screen, and a large poster featuring Uncle Sam read:  Uncle Sam needs YOU.  See your recruiter TODAY.   

Jinny, updated by Conor and now blanketed in sorrow, sat out front and rocked Isabelle in the wicker chair late into the evening.  Attentive fireflies tried to drop sparkles of cheer into the evening gloom, but Jinny wasn’t having it.

Random cotton candy clouds stretched as they arose from slumber and then  gently pulled apart to create translucent, unfettered fantasies—one shaped like a poodle, another like a lamb. Encouraged to move on by occasional claps of thunder, a night of torrential rain had bowed out of Dickinson County, but not before Jinny tossed, turned, and beat her pillow into submission.  In full retreat, even the woolen blanket had fallen to the floor. Father time had passed on, leaving only Jinny’s Timex still ticking—all this transpired just as it had long ago on the night before Jinny’s first day of kindergarten.

She stood on the roadside watching and waiting, unaware that morning sunbeams danced a jig on her still-wet, brunette pony-tail.  Her chocolate brown eyes, occasionally shuttered by long lashes, rolled first in one direction and then the other, taking in paired yellow stripes, centered on the asphalt and disappearing in both directions.  Jinny glimpsed eternity and then checked her watch.  “Kansas sure is flat.  I hope the bus hasn’t gotten one.”

Scenery sanctified by a brilliant blue sky played host to a circling convocation of seagulls. Imitating Congress; their dissonant voices counseled and cawed, unable to agree on anything, even on where to stop for a continental breakfast.  Otherwise, tranquility ruled the rural Abilene winter morning.

A parsimonious pigeon nervously anticipated the departure of a friend. He fluttered, flinched, bobbed his head, and looked down from atop the blistered Bus Stop sign before running out of patience.  The White Homer capitulated to severe homesickness, lifted off, retracted his landing gear against an empty belly, and—dropping bombs along the way—lit out for the O’Dwyer barn without looking back. Jinny raised a hand to wave goodbye, but alas—too late.  She stood alone but didn’t feel abandoned.  Twin puffs of a single breeze tickled and tousled her hair.  It was short, too short.

The bus was long, too long, but “right on time—bus time—ten minutes and thirty-three seconds late.”  Jinny shielded her eyes with an ambidextrous hand and choked the handles of the green duffel bag with the other.  The Silver Bullet trolled to a stop; air-brakes exhaled, sighed a familiar shish, and the doors do-si-doed.  Simple symmetry.

A smiling, barrel-shaped driver—clad in a plaid shirt, bolo tie, jeans, cowboy boots, and with a chaw of something in his cheek—sprang from his seat, bounced down the steps, and crowed, “Good Morning soldier! May I stow your bag in belly of the beast?”

Jinny mirrored the smile and nodded.  “I hope this beast doesn’t have indigestion, too.”

She surrendered a MEPS voucher for her ticket and took a seat without glancing across the street toward home.  She shielded her eyes.   Only Gemma, thinking herself hidden from view, brooded behind the screen door.  She stiffened as whirring wheels ceased whirring and then moments later rolled on and on, soon out of sight.  Cried goodbyes had already soaked in.  Jinny had vanished but not vaporized.

Jinny closed her eyes,  relaxed, bowed her head as if bundled in prayer, and ping-ponged back and forth: “Dare I doze, or should I stay awake?” The turn-signal blinked an audible, “click-click, click-click, click-click.”  The bus geared down and entered the I-35 South on-ramp.  The clicking stopped.  The silence returned.

A voice harped:“STOP THE BUS!  LET ME OFF!  I’M DONE.”  Startled, Jinny sat up, coiled against the window, and cocked her knees ready to kick. Before the driver could activate the emergency blinkers, persuade the diesel to throttle back, and guide the bus safely to the shoulder, a clean-shaven, ruddy-faced redhead jumped to his feet.  He teetered, regained his balance, grabbed the polished seat hand-hold, stumbled forward one-two-three-four-five rows, and collided with the stainless-steel rail behind the driver’s head.

“You scared me!  What’s wrong, son?”

“I ain’t your son, and I’m just done.  End of the line.  Let me off this bus!”

Sitting directly behind Jinny, a shapely, wigged-out woman, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, grabbed her companion’s cast-iron right arm.  “Mag!  What do we do now?  Is he armed? Will he kill us?  I’m scared.”

Mag’s taciturn reply sizzled from behind clenched teeth: “Bella, just shush. Don’t overact or you’ll ruin our gig.”  Across the aisle a trembling old man ducked to the floor in front of his seat; behind him someone pumped an inhaler; but in the rear of the bus a lightly bearded man hadn’t budged; he seemed oblivious to the on-board commotion. A capped, half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels sloshed back and forth in his lap; a plaid fedora rested on his nose and almost hid his Logo Lenses; twisted ear-bud cords disappeared under the lapels of his wrinkled, grey, pin-striped business suit.  He wore a thin black tie.

As the bus latched onto the ramp’s shoulder the exigent red-head again lost his grip, tumbled into the stairwell, crashed into the symmetrical doors and—like a pocket knife—folded in half.  He felt very small.  Necks strained hoping to detect the soldier’s demise, but he was laughing—or crying.  Air-brakes exhaled in relief as the bus lurched to a stop.  The rattled driver levered a handle, manually opened the doors, and pitched the twenty-seven-year-old head over heels onto his back.

“Ugh.” He lost his laugh, shook his fist, and slowly picked himself up off the ground.  “It’s all your fault mister!  I have half a mind to . . . “

The driver, name-tagged Rick, interrupted: “Half a mind won’t get you very far in this life, lieutenant.”  The soldier doubled his fist, but Rick, unafraid—or, if he was afraid, it didn’t show—climbed down and stormed past the muscular veteran.  “I’m pulling your bag from the storage compartment, so hold on and cool your jets, junior.”

“Name ain’t Junior, old man.  And for your information, I know three soldiers who only got half a mind. . . or none at all.  Do you hear me?  THREE soldiers.”

Convoluted nostrils pressed against the windows on Jinny’s side of the bus and fogged the glass as wide-eyed passengers demanded that the driver knock the traitor out or hold him for the MPs.  Those still seated and minding their own business covered their ears and wished they were someplace else; that is, they wished the self-appointed circuit court judges were someplace else.  Only the man wearing the wrinkled grey suit and  sitting in the middle of the last seat–and Jinny–remained unflappable.

The soldier dead-lifted his camouflaged rucksack from the ground, heaved it over his shoulder, lost his balance, and fell to his knees.  Hard.  The gravel cut into his knees like shards of glass.  “I hate you, Mister.  I hate the Army.  I hate the nightmares.  I hate . . . oh, Rachel . . . Rachel.”  He grabbed and flung a handful of gravel at the bus and then staggered to his feet.  His knees bled through the torn uniform;  saliva and tears mingled and dripped from his chin; his rucksack— choked at the neck—dragged behind him down the ramp toward Chauncey Road.   Jinny wanted to rescue them both.

Rick retrieved and slapped dust and moisture from a large, sealed, manila envelope.  It bore the stamp of a combat boot and read, Morrison.  Since abandoning his seat on the bus the lad had diminished in size.  Rick watched him exit the on-ramp and haplessly wander into traffic. Tires squealed.  A woman screamed.  Morrison’s life ended.  Horrified, Rick gasped, his jaw dropped, and he backed against the bus.

“Hey driver. Yes, you.  Let’s get moving.  You can lollygag when we get to Lawton.”  Rick straightened up and without a word climbed behind the steering wheel, belted-in, and pumped the pedal.  The diesel rallied, the doors collided, and the bus lurched onto the concrete and rumbled forward.  Rick studied the wide rear-view mirror above the windshield, searched for, and eyeballed his detractor, then took a deep breath and numbered his passengers.

“Seventeen. Sorry ladies and gents.  Wish I could say that was a first.  I probably should have stayed till the cops arrived.”

The man seated in row nine and emboldened by the rows between them, pointed a finger and barked, “You screwed up, Ricky baby.  That dude oughta have your foot on his chest and be pinned to the ground waiting for the cops to arrive and haul him away.”

“ENOUGH,” Rick and Jinny trumpeted together. Staring into the mirror, Rick fingered the intercom: “Mister, that soldier was headed back overseas.  Now he’s headed for . . . oh never mind.  Just relax.  We only lost five minutes . . . and one desperate hombre.  Give him a break.  Click.”  Rick spotted Jinny, who mouthed, He’s already broken, Rick. 

“Yep.”

Jinny grabbed her armrests when she heard, “Oh shoot. No, no, not again.”  Bella from behind had jettisoned the contents of her purse on the floor.  “Oh Mag, now look what I’ve done,” she chuckled and grunted. “I’ll bet you’re sorry you posted my bail.”

“Posted what?” Mag bent forward to retrieve Bella’s droppings, got stuck, grunted, and broke wind.  Bella started to giggle.  The giggle was contagious, the scent, intractable.  Mag sniffed and broke out laughing.  Soon beet-red in the face, both women howled and gasped for air.

“Ugh.  Bella, enough, enough.  You’re not helping.  We could get fired, and besides, we don’t want everyone on the bus to know.”

“To know what?  That my battery died?”  More laughter.  “You’ll find two new ones in the golden container with my Modafinil.”

“Oh stop. I said, enough.”  Face to face, they exchanged wry smiles, rubbed tears from their eyes, sat up, leaned back against the doilied headrests, and sighed out loud. Mag chuckled again.  “You put them with your what?”

“My Modafinil. Got it in Virginia.”

“Weren’t you afraid you might accidentally swallow it?”

“Swallow what?  Virginia?” More giggles. “No, look, the pills are the same color as urine.”

“Bella. Bella.  They look like roly-polys to me.”

“Here . . . hold out your hand. These will keep you awake ‘til we cross the border. By the bye, did you hear the girl soldier say, ‘the red-head is broken’?”

“I didn’t, but I must say, you’re . . . oh never mind.  No, I’ll say it:  In my twenty-three years of service you’re the first partner that’s made me laugh—at anything. I’ve had some who made me want to cry. But enough.”  Conversation collapsed.  Lashes fluttered.  Silence prevailed.

Rain pitter-pattered against the window as if it hoped to be invited inside, but Jinny enjoyed having two seats to herself.  She absent-mindedly stared at nothing, unaware that she was fooling with a loaded button on the armrest.  The seat-back snapped forward. “WO.  At ease, Private.”   She sighed, yawned, nestled against the windowed wall, and watched the high plains drift by at seventy miles an hour.  I had no idea property could move so fast.  Guess Papa should have gone into real estate. I wonder . . .  Her eyes caved to gravity, and her grin flipped upside down.  “Oh Papa.” His leather tote in her lap, Jinny traced the embossed Irish name—Llewellyn—with an index finger; and then, not wanting to draw attention to herself, she slowly tugged on the zipper and remembered  the mischievous look on Gemma’s face when she had zipped up the satchel, patted it, looped its strap over Jinny’s shoulder, and tittered, “Now remember, don’t open this until you’re seated on the bus, or it might just . . . well, let’s just say there’s a surprise inside, and leave it at that.”

“I hope Mama’s surprise doesn’t jump out and skitter down the aisle.”  Jinny peaked inside.  “So far so good.  No spring-loaded booby traps.  That would be Conor’s trick, but he’s at Fort Benning.  But wait.  Hold on.” A bag bearing the Target label was knotted at the top.  “Mama, you wouldn’t really hide . . . or would she?”  Jinny untied the overhand knot, peaked inside and, one by one retrieved five Ziploc bags. “Okay.  Peanut butter sandwiches—good; crunchy potato chips—better; eleven Extra-Stuff Oreos—best.  Lets’ see here . . . what else?  A boxed Hawaiian punch drink; a bottle of water; a small package of Advil, and no trail mix!”  She smiled. “Bless you Mama.”

Not yet hungry but still curious, Jinny returned the Ziploc bags to the satchel and retrieved a familiar manila envelope—her name, address, and serial number slapped across its face in smudged, bawling, black letters. The postmark, captured in a circle, read:  Washington, D.C., A.M., December 25, 2014.  But all Jinny saw was the bulge.  Aha.  My surprise.   Hastily bending the metal clasps to clear the hole, she shook the envelope. Out dropped her orders and a bland, rumpled brochure:  Welcome to Ft. Sill.  Ballooning enthusiasm popped and shrank.  Sigh. “Some surprise. Oh well, maybe it will help me get some shut-eye. Page one.”  Jinny drew a ball point pen from her jacket, clicked the cap as she read, and looked for something worth circling.  Rick seemed to hear the click, his microphone went live, and he cleared his throat.

“Folks, we’re coming up on Wichita.   Yes, we’re still in Kansas.  Time to gas up and stretch our legs.”  The Silver Bullet geared down and exited the freeway; directional blinkers flashed; the bus splashed across the median and rolled to a stop.   “Restrooms are in the back of the convenience store.  I’ll honk twice when it’s time to board.”  First off the bus, Rick was promptly accosted by a one-armed, green handled bandit:  Diesel Fuel. $4.89/gallon.  Pay before filling.  “Talk about highway robbery.”  He stretched all right, but not his legs.  Ruffled by the recession, he stuffed a chaw of Red Man in his cheek and nodded politely at disembarking passengers.   Everyone climbed down and sloshed toward the Food Mart—everyone, that is, except Jinny, the two women sleeping behind her and, way in the back, the man wearing the wrinkled, grey pin-striped suit.

Rick dropped the pump nozzle into the neck of the filler tube.  Instead of gurgling gasoline, he imagined silver dollars splashing one by one into the black hole.  “Who said I’m not a gambling man.”  He pulled the jacket over his pate and, circling the bus, carefully inspected and kicked each tire in the shins.  Jinny heard the thumps, rubbed her eyes, and yawned. “I’ll give the crowd five minutes to clog the toilets.”  She gazed down and watched the rain pound, dance, and pogo to the asphalt from the hood of a parked station wagon.

“YIKES! You scared me, Mister.  Oh, my g-o-s-h!  You?”  Without making a sound, the wrinkled, grey pin-striped suit had slunk down the aisle and slithered into the empty seat  next to Jinny.

“Bye-bye, girly-girly,” he slurred.  “With you dead, I git half.  When you see Curly in hell tell him his old man . . .” Jinny resisted with both hands as in slow motion a loaded syringe plunged down, down, down and pricked her neck.  She winced as a blurred object swished in a menacing arc,  glanced off Huey Corker’s right ear, and snapped his wrist, catapulting the syringe into the aisle.  Saved by a day-stick, Jinny crisscrossed her arms and tried to eject through the side of the bus while Corker rocked back and forth shrieking, “You broke it. You broke my arm.”

“You mean your wrist, Mister Magoo.  Hold still, unless you want your pickled brain to decoupage the seat in front of you.” It was Bella, still in rare form. She put her gun in the hit man’s ear and flashed her creds in Jinny’s face.  “FBI, soldier.  We’ll take it from here.  Get off the bus.”

“But . . .? “

“She said, GO. We’ll catch up with you at Fort Sill.” Mag slapped on the cuffs. Huey Corker cried out in pain.  Jinny zipped up, shouldered her satchel, stepped over Curly’s drunk dad, lunged forward, leaped, and landed upright on the pavement—nose to nose with the bus driver.

“Miss, you don’t look so good.”  Rick looked just like Caleb for about as long as it takes an old man to fall asleep in his rocking chair.

“I saw that dude move across the aisle and slide in next to you.  Are you okay?” Glancing up at the window, he quickly added, “What’s all the commotion about?  Maybe I’d better . . .”

“The FBI has the guy in handcuffs; there’s a broken syringe on the floor; but please believe me, I’ve done nothing wrong, except, well, I did want to punch him in the mouth.  Please. Believe me.”

Rick gulped, swallowed his chaw, grabbed his throat and–trying not to show his distress–forced out: “Oh, yeah, I believe you, Miss.  Why don’t you go do your business while I throw up?   I’ll wait for you . . . a syringe, you say?  I better get that cleaned up, too.  Gag. What a day.”

The FBI filibuster delayed the bus for nineteen minutes and thirty-seconds, but Hubert Corker—AKA, The Torch—was going away for a long time, or so Jinny supposed.   She checked her watch then stared through neon OPEN sign in the convenience store window as Bella and Mag dragged Curly’s dad across the pavement–his arm taped to his body, his head bowed– and buckled him into a back seat of the white panel truck. “Southern Star Gas, just like in the movies.”  Jinny shuddered before dumping coins into her hand and paying for another package of Oreos.  Outside, a horn honked twice and minutes later the bus rode over the gutter and headed for the freeway.

After debating for an hour—the majority party pointing fingers from left side of the aisle, the minority casting aspersions from the right—most commuters, like Congress, fell asleep.   Sitting alone, Jinny wished she’d never left home. To lift her spirits she skillfully tongued apart an Oreo cream sandwich, licked off the frosting, a downed both cookies in three bites.  Satisfied that her nutritional needs had been met for the day, she unzipped up the leather satchel.  “What?” A puzzled look zig-zagged across her mouth.  Jinny leaned and looked.  “Is this the surprise?  Oh, Mama, I can’t believe it:   Papa’s reading glasses.  I don’t need glasses but what a treasure.  Wait, is there more in this pocket?”   Anticipation drizzled, pooled, and beckoned her to dip down further and salvage a single sheet of paper.  It had been torn from a diary and folded neatly in half.  Papa’s journal? I didn’t know he kept . . . THE SURPRISE.”

 Spectacled chocolate brown eyes teared up.  Pupils enlarged.  Water-colored handwriting blurred.  Jinny blinked, blinked again, and hurried the tears away.  But not too far away.

05 July 1996. Before details dim– Following a difficult pregnancy, my dear Gemma gave birth to our second-born child and first-born baby girl, Virginia Diana O’Dwyer, born yesterday, the Fourth of July, at 02:00.  Everyone in the hospital heard her greeting break the sound barrier.  What a reunion.

I say reunion because of my belief that the Llewellyn-O’Dwyer clan knew and loved one another before coming to earth. Jinny inherited both the bright, fiery disposition and good looks of her mother.  Gemma held the baby up and smiled at Conor through the nursery window.  He had a runny nose, squirmed , pressed his nose to the glass, and pounded the window.  His penetrating blue eyes just stared, but his lips spoke pig-Latin.

 29 August 1996. And thus we may see: I’m not a  faithful journalist; how time files—but tonight while reading, I felt a prompt to reconnect, to write about what I’ve been reading.  I hope it will benefit someone someday down the line.

 Two hundred and twenty-one years ago today, General Howe’s superior British professionals and Hessian mercenaries, bayonets fixed, advanced through the Long Island woods, confident that they would soon stain the rocky shore with rebel blood and vanquish the American dream forever. George Washington—half his men having either died in battle or deserted and gone home—found himself trapped against the Brooklyn shore.  So, you may ask, what were Washington’s options?  Turn and be cut down on the beach?  Surrender?  Or take to the water and like sitting ducks be riddled by the guns of five British warships anchored nearby?   

 Out of options, on the eve of August 29, 1776, 997 men commenced loading into small boats and barges in hopes of being ferried across the wide East River to temporary refuge in Manhattan–an untenable choice save they should rely on the ambient oars of seafaring men like the Marblehead mariners and the outstretched arms of Divine Providence.

 Dear posterity, here ‘s what struck me as I read from David McCullough’s book :  1. Howe’s foot soldiers, slowed by heavy rain and poor decision making, arrived in time to fire but an ineffectual volley at the fleeing flotilla. 2. A rolling, unusually dense fog kept five British frigates floating blindly until the all the American army had been ferried to safety.  To any who might read, I add my witness that even in our day, no, especially in our day, God’s hand still reaches down to sustain and rescue the faithful of his children. Caleb O’Dwyer, 4 a.m. Since it just my diary, I guess I didn’t need to sign off.

 Jinny wore blinders on her self-imposed headstall, indifferent to whether or not anyone had seen or been bothered by her tears.  She folded and stashed her father’s testament in a pocket over her heart.  Alone but not lonely, wary but not worried, she thumbed a button, reclined her seat, folded her arms, and let the rhythmic hum of the diesel  lull her to sleep. It was as if General Washington, Caleb, and God had together laid hands on a patriot’s head and reawakened her resolve, with Rick as witness, watching through a looking glass, pondering what might lay ahead for his pensive passenger.

“Folks, ten minutes to Lawton, Oklahoma.” He yawned.  Rick’s mouth opened wide enough to swallow an apple whole.

Jinny awoke. “Wo.  Are we here?”

“Ten minutes, soldier.  Any more questions?”

“Someone in the back with a megaphone for a mouth waved a hand.  “What do you know about the guy arrested by the Feds?

“Nothing.”

“Okay.  Are you at least cleared to tell us about Ft. Sill, or is that above your pay-grade, too?”

Rick proffered a hearty thumb up.  “Thought you’d never ask.  As I remember it, Ft. Sill is listed on the national historical register because it’s the last operating fort on the Southern Plains, and today it’s an Army training school.  Only those with appropriate background checks are allowed on base, but a beautiful museum, built in the 1930s, stands adjacent to the Fort and is open to the general public. To be honest, General Public is the only general I’ve ever met.  How about you?”  Jinny smiled. Rick smiled at Rick, then paused to wet his whistle.   “Mano-mano, look at it rain.  Hope you all have umbrellas.”  He squoze the steering wheel, stomped the brake, and leaned into the horn.  “No! No!  You’re too sm-a-a-l-l.  Confound it. Don’t do that. Can’t you see I’m a bus?” After honking like a goose and cursing like a sailor, Rick veered away from puddled profanity and apologized.

 “Let’s see, where did I leave off speaking the King’s English? . . . Fort Sill is the original home of the army’s airfield and tactical combat aviation division. Soldiers from here have fought in every war since the Philippine insurrection of the 1880s, I think, but don’t hold me to it.” As promised, he kept his monologue short: “One more thing: Posthumously, Staff Sgt. Jared Monti, who trained at Fort Sill, received the Medal of Honor for his bravery while on patrol in Afghanistan in 2006. He was from my home town.” The bus slowed; the turn-signal click-clicked; the brakes exhaled; everyone stood at once and a few clapped.

“Here we are folks.  Fort Sill’s gated entrance is two hundred yards that-a-way.”  Rick wiggled his left shoulder and sprang to his feet.   Hope you have an umbrella.” Jinny did not.“Thanks for riding on . . .?  Duh . . .  Silver Bullet Lines.  I need some shut-eye.”  He climbed from the bus to unload the baggage. Jinny rubbed her eyes and stared through the dirty, rain streaked window while passengers, anxious to disembark, tailgated one another toward the door.  Jinny waited her turn, collected her thoughts, and was the last one off the bus.

“Thank you, Rick.”  She took her bag and turned to go.

“Say, wait just a second, I got something for you.  He reached into the cargo hold and pulled out an umbrella.  “Somebody left this behind a while back.  I want you to have it.”  Pushing a small lever, he popped up the resilient canopy and handed it to Jinny.  “Call it a parasol if you like.”  Smiling, Rick saluted her with two fingers.

“Thank you. Thank you, again!  I’ll never forget you.”

“God bless you, soldier.”  Rick swallowed twice.  Embarrassed, he turned away, wiped his eyes, and locked the bus.  After regaining a modicum of composure, he reeled around and, in an attempt to mask his stare, blew warm air between his cupped hands and whispered, “There you are, little princess.”  His hushed words resonated as if uttered through a temple veil. The parasol swayed and bobbed; Jinny splashed like a doe fleeing up Thrush Hollow; but before crossing the street, she paused, looked back, and waved; then she was gone from sight.  Outside, Rick felt wet and cold.  Inside, for some reason he just felt grateful.

Rain drops peppered Jinny’s polyvinyl, careened into the gutter, drowned, and evoked uninvited memories:  troubled waters; a lost friend; the black money bag. It’s been a year.  Why is all this coming back to haunt me now?  Why did Curly’s dad want me dead?  He said half the loot was his.  If so, then who was he in cahoots with?  Who ordered me killed?  Not Ozzie, he’s in jail.  Not Wheezer, he’s dead.  Oh my—not the FBI:  Not Bella and Mag, I hope.  But why did they haul Mr. Corker away in a Southern Star Gas truck?  Dear Lord, please, please separate me from this grief so I can serve my country.  Please.  Enough.

Docked curbside with another uniformed soldier, Jinny teetered on the block awaiting the starter’s gun to sound so she could dive in and swim across the street. “Isn’t this storm something?  Just look at the river. It’s almost flooding over the curb. If we stand here much longer we’ll need a ferry.” The stranger winced and grunted as if he’d pinched a nerve in his neck but said  nothing.  WALK.   He leaned from the curb and lifted a soggy shoe.  “WAIT.” Jinny stiffened, planted her feet, grabbed his arm, and violently jerked the G.I. back from the brink.  The driver of a light-colored panel truck had ignored the light, plunged by Jinny into the intersection,  spewed water five feet into the air, and then floored it and fishtailed on down the road.

“Wo there.”

“Oh, my gosh.  A . . .  Why did you . . .?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t really know.  But you just took a bath, Mister.”

“Water, I can drink.”   He spat. “But a speeding car?  You know you just saved my life, don’t you?”  Without waiting for a reply, the soldier abruptly teased his coat over his head, looked both ways, stepped from the curb, and hastily water-skied across the street.

WAIT.  Jinny sponged rain from her brow, then blinked water from her eyes and stared at the large highway sign stretched overhead.  Dozens of white reflective dots pimpled from a green skin where they had collected, pussed, and now wailed like seductive sirens ready to burst:  Abilene 506 miles.  Fall back. Go home.  Instantly, another silent voice countered: Jinny gal, stay the course, darlin’.  Now’s the time to press forward, not fall back.  In the twinkling of an eye the present will merge with the past. Look to today.  Retain hope for a bright future.  Be prayerful.  I’ve got your back. Everything will work out.  Only then did Jinny realize who it was that had prompted her to intervene in behalf of another soldier.

She idled until the light segued to WALK, and then, emboldened by a thankful heart, spilled from the curb and poured her soul into a song: “Doodle-oo-do-doddle-doodle-oo-do.  I’m sing-ing in the rain, just sing-ing in the rain.  What a won-der-ful feeling I’m fee-ling again.”  (Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown).  She sang the measured melody in a key that unlocked her confidence and warmed her heart.  No one watched from plush seats, no one clapped as Jinny, twirling her parasol, danced from puddle to puddle, exited stage right and climbed the tilted sidewalk toward the pearly gates—no, the guarded gates.  A large canon glistened in the dark—poised and ready to fire point-blank at a lighted, lettered brick wall:

Fort Sill Oklahoma: Home of the Field Artillery – –

Best Fort in the Army– – Bentley Gate.

Jinny marched by, eyes right,  and picked up the pace.  “Hey General Howitzer, some nose job. But aren’t you aiming in the wrong direction?”  she chuckled. “I’m not!”  She looked ahead and up, and then she saw it. “OH MY.”  Within ten steps of the guard station she abruptly stopped on the walkway and  came to attention—oblivious of the guard, the rain, the traffic noise, and the people hurrying by.

Rain purged her forehead as she tipped back her head to behold  Old Glory, flooded in light, soaked but unfettered.  Jinny’s  duffel bag dropped; she straightened; a brisk salute touched a templed forehead; she blubbered aloud the oath of enlistment taken at the Military Entrance Processing Station in Abilene:  “I, Virginia O’Dwyer, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  So help me God.” TWO.

Up ahead a Military Policeman—clad in a yellow rain-slicker, his cap covered by a clear bonnet—sheltered in a small, lighted booth centered on an island between egress and ingress traffic.  Shielded from the downpour, he peered through the windshield of his lighted cabin and looked like a tuna fisherman standing at the helm, steering into the waves, straining to see the lighted house on Rocky Point.  As cars approached, the attentive MP stepped out of the wheelhouse, braved the torrent, looked for a window sticker, then saluted and waved the driver through—or he raised an open hand like the crossing guard at Mc Kinley Elementary back in Abilene.  STOP.

The sentry saw Jinny coming up the sidewalk; his arm stiffened mechanically and he pointed toward a small, stuccoed building at her twelve o’clock.  She picked up the pace, bounced forward like a gazelle fleeing a poacher, and hydroplaned to a walk-up window, shut to keep out the rain and wind.  Jinny tapped on the glass three times with her high school ring.

The soldier seated inside slid open the window without looking up from his computer.  He tapped the counter, and drawled, “Orders.”  Jinny resisted the temptation to reply, “A Big Mack and fries to go, please.” Instead, she reached into a protected pocket, retrieved, and dropped a manila envelope in his hand.  His uniform clasped three chevrons.  You are Sergeant Tagg. His austere grey eyes glanced at the orders but evaded both Jinny’s gaze her increasing anticipation.  The window closed.  Jinny watched as her photo and OMPF appeared on the computer monitor.   The sergeant fixated on the photo, lubricated his lips with his tongue, and, trying not to appear over curious, slid open the window and beheld Jinny’s fair countenance.

“Oh, yes.”  His eyebrows danced, his features softened, and he almost smiled. “Getting wet out there?”

Jinny nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He kept staring.  “You don’t ‘sir’ a sergeant, Private O’Dwyer.  Do you have your orders?”

“Yes, sir, I mean Sergeant.”

“May I see them?”

“They are next to your pinkie.”

He un-goggled his eyes from Jinny’s face and looked at his desk.  “Oh, right, right . . . son of a gun.  So, you’re from Kansas.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Jinny glanced at the idling shuttle parked in the red zone fifty yards up the slippery slope.

Sergeant Tagg drummed his keyboard, looked up and again tasted Jinny’s chocolate browns, but his instructions sounded pre-recorded and almost melancholy.  “All basic combat training soldiers must process into the 95^th Adjutant General Battalion.”  He brightened some more.  “If you hurry, you’ll catch the tail end of that shuttle.”  He pointed and Jinny turned to run.  “Hold on, I’m not finished.  At the Central Issue Point you’ll receive your uniforms, fill out vital forms, and . . .  now you may proceed.  Welcome to the Army and have a nice day.”  As Jinny sprinted away, the sergeant stood, stuck his head through the window and yelled, “I see by your file number you’re doomed to train in Bravo Company, beginning next Monday.”  Sitting down, he mumbled, “I want a transfer.”

Jinny wedged into the last seat on the last bench of the last link of the tram.  She jerked the duffel up on her lap and puzzled over what Sergeant Tagg had yelled, but she didn’t look back.  Next to her sat a gangly young recruit, protected by a contractor-size trash bag holed out at the top so his head could poke through.  The cheap straight-jacket held his hug in place, but he coughed spasmodically and sounded like a sputtering, out of time, pickup truck’s engine–in need of a tune-up.  He had no cowlick; he wasn’t blonde; his wet red hair was matted down; his freckles hadn’t washed off, but he was soaked to the skin and shaking as if he had Parkinson’s.  Jinny groped in her blouse pocket until she retrieved three or four cough drops.  “Here you go, soldier.”  She dumped them in his pale, cupped hand. “If they help control your cough, I’ve got more in my duffel.”

The runny-nosed soldier wiggled as if he wished to be liberated from either the bag or the seat.   “What do I owe you?”  His contagious question masked neither levity nor temerity.  He stole a first glance at Jinny and gulped.  Jinny affected a lot of men that way.  “Just kidding, but thank you, Miss.”

The third recruit on the bench faked a cough.  His most prominent feature was a pug nose.  His hair had been clipped tight, and he wore a sleeveless muscle shirt, jeans, tennis shoes and hogged half the bench.  He needed a bath and a shave; his biceps resembled pool balls sawn in half. Partially hidden in the clumped fur on his chest was the tattooed the emblem of the NRA, and he was swallowing the last bite of what appeared to be a banana peel.  After swallowing like a python he said, “What are you lookin’ at, girly?”   He wiped his face with the back of his hand, reached toward Jinny, and demanded, “Let me see one of them suckers.”

“Dare all in my mouth,” replied the congested middle-man, fearing the big dude was speaking to him.  Jinny retrieved a lozenge from her pocket, dropped it in the burly hand and watched him examine, sniff, and then toss it over his shoulder onto the pavement.  A smug smile drew back the curtains on his large, yellow teeth.  Saying no more, he stared ahead as the aging tractor jerked forward, reared up on its hind wheels, overcame inertia, and crawled like an arthritic centipede towing three thousand pounds of American treasure—and one turd.

A red bell high on an exterior wall clanged, you’re late.  Fifty thousand raindrops later, brakes squealed, and forty necks whip-lashed.  Ducking quickly from beneath three puddled canopies, anxious recruits hurried to the Central Initial Issue Point—a huge hanger that smelled—at least to Jinny—like a musty barn in Kansas.   Pounding rain mixed with Coca-Puff sized hail body-slammed the corrugated sheet-metal roof and sounded like thousands of ball-bearings being dumped at the same time—or fifty-caliber machine gun fire.  Jinny dropped onto a cold, dinged folding chair, back row middle, and leaned into the USARMY silk-screened on its back.  She snugged the duffel close to her feet and tried to ignore the intimidating barrage pounding overhead.  Silence below.  Pandemonium above.  Jinny droned, “Here at last. Finally, I can relax.”  Wrong.

A dour staff sergeant stood at a podium, cupped the microphone with his hands, and administered mouth to mouth. “Atten-hut.”  The mic was unresponsive.  No one heard the command.

“Just give me a minute, Sergeant,” pled a young technician dressed in dungarees and wearing a bright yellow Geek Squad tee-shirt.  He continued crouching before the amplifier, feverishly flipping switches, fiddling with connections, and worrying at glass-covered needle readouts like a candy-striper trying to save a patient on life-support by remote control.

From behind Jinny, an honor guard of four proactive cloggers took the law into their own hands and marched forward counting aloud, “1-2-1-2-1 . . .” to post colors.  When the red and white of the flag kissed Jinny’s cheek she sprang to attention, jump-starting the rank and file.  Feet flattened, backs straightened, and chins jutted as wave after wave arose like fans all wanting to see the baseball go over the fence.  Everyone in the hangar saluted, and some, including Jinny, remembered the charred pole in centerfield and a tattered flag retired.

It became apparent to all that a kaput sound system was going to be a problem.  The alpha-male sergeant couldn’t here himself think.  He opened his mouth and screamed, “REPEAT AFTER ME-hee-hee-hee.”  He wasn’t laughing; he had dislocated his jaw while bawling the command.  His salutary salute dropped six inches, he grabbed his face, and pitched over like he was suffering from the bends—or having contractions.

Without him holding the reins, a roomful of recruits harnessed and trotted out twenty  phrases as if they’d been one voice singing in the darkness, and they concluded with, “. . . indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  One indescribable emotion—even during a thunderstorm.

Heard only by the sergeant, his technician muttered, “We’re go to ready.  Uh, we’re live, sir.  No, no,  wait!”  Too late. The sergeant’s stressful hyperbole hissed through the microphone, raced through the cord, amplified fifty times, and reverberated in a hundred directions. It even upstaged the thunder, and every anguished soldier within two hundred feet stopped his ears too late:

“IT’S TIME TO GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN-TAKEN-TAKEN-TAKEN; AND NO, YOU CAN’T POWDER YOUR FACE-FACE-FACE-FACE.   ROW TWENTY-FIVE ON MY SIGNAL PREPARE TO FALL OUT OUT-OUT.” The panting, hound-dog-faced tech had fallen to the floor, stopped wagging his tail, covered his ears, and submissively rolled over on his back, unable to figure out how to muzzle the harmonics.

Staff Sergeant Bellingham stepped back from the microphone, squared his jaw, executed a crisp left-face, and, like a mechanical railroad crossing arm, gestured toward the middle aisle. “This here’s the gauntlet.  It runs from where that female soldier is standing tall at row twenty-five to where I’m temporarily deployed.  The fire department calls this a no-parking zone.  That’s why it’s painted red.  Some of you already dropped gear on the gauntlet, so pick it up.  Here’s the drill.  Follow instructions.” He swiveled ninety-degrees and faced the assembly head-on.  “Everybody on my right flank raise your left hand.  No, soldier, your other left hand.  There you go. Now prepare to exit your rows to the left, starting from row twenty-five.  Got it?  What the h _ _ _ are you doing, son?”

A skinny soldier had excused himself five times for stepping on toes while he sidled his way to the gauntlet where he pulled up, brushed himself off, faced forward, and timidly raised his hand.  The sergeant boomed, “You just set off my silent alarm, newbie.  Why weren’t you paying attention?  Atten-SHUN. I haven’t finished giving directions, son, but since you aren’t potty trained, what do you want?”  Thunder clapped; Jinny bristled; lighting lashed out. ENCORE.

“Soldier, I can’t hear you?”  Nor could anyone else. “What is it?  Speak up.”

Knowing he couldn’t out-holler the storm—the one outside or quell the one brewing in his gut—the sorry recruit reluctantly shuffled forward.  He stopped, saluted from atop his eyebrow, cupped his hands around his mouth, and whispered something.  The Sergeant didn’t whisper.  He didn’t know how.

“‘RIGHT FRANK??’  NO, hot-dog, I didn’t say ‘right frank.’  Anyway, you turned left.”  Raucous laughter gagged up like it had been choked to death when the sergeant slapped the microphone.  Jinny didn’t have to seize up.  She felt sorry for the soldier.  Even the rain seemed to observe a moment of silence by stopping mid-flight, but not Bellingham.  “YOU.  Get up here.  Cower at attention right there and remain mute as a mosquito until every soldier in this bleepity-bleep-bleep hanger has been processed, grown old, died, and gone to wherever they got reservations.  Everybody else line-up single file in front of the cameras.  Pose like you are glad to be in the armed forces of the United States of America.  We’ll take two shots—one across your bow; the second—a head-on.  Fall out.”

Jinny stood tall and tried to mask her dis-ease as the camera focused andclick, clicked.    She ruminated on the fleeting impression left by the sound, Click-click. Misfire-misfire.It was disconcerting and not the last time she’d hear the metallic rejoinder. Not by a long shot.

TEXT MESSAGE. 28 Dec.

Mama! Arrived safely. I meant to check in with you before I went to bed but fell asleep LOL! Good morning! Today I may be interviewed by the FBI… like on a TV! Sorry for the shock but wanted you to hear it from me before you read it in the newspaper. Was accosted by a drunk on the bus during a stop in Wichita. Luckily 2 female FBI agents came to rescue. They were annoying, but I’m grateful now. I’m fine.! Don’t worry about me. Can’t say more until the FBI investigation is complete. Sorry! Anyways, I’m good, everything is fine. I graduate from BC in 9 weeks… thank goodness! Can you come?

Love you! 💟

Oh, and what was that about Uncle Albert’s “situation”???

One more thing-what is Conner’s APO? I haven’t heard from him… have you?

We’ll talk later. Not sure when they’ll restrict phone service at FS, but soon.

Love you! XO 💋

Jinny rolled over on her back, opened her chocolate brown eyes, and scratched her tummy. She wasn’t panting, but the dog-tags felt cold against her chest. She tongued her dry lips, stretched, and muzzled a raspy bark:  “What time is it?”   No answer.  She was the only soldier awake in the barracks and liked it that way. Her wake-up routine included slipping slender fingers under the mattress to feel for her CAC—common access card— phone, and scriptures.  Safe and sound. Freshly laundered clothing and towels lay neatly stacked by her bunk.

A kinky Venetian blind high overhead intermittently clattered against a window in need of re-glazing.  Outside the cinder-block wall, a stiff breeze nagged, and  stringed chimes continued practicing arpeggios.  “Tinkle, tinkle little tubes, are you as cold as both my boobs?”  Jinny rubbed, blew into her hands, and cupped them over her breasts—which of course were covered with a white tee-shirt.  No one had ever accused her of immodesty.  Never. She smiled as the memory of  Bing Crosby and Bob Hope took center stage. But being clad in a native skirt,  wearing a split-coconut bra, and dancing the hula weren’t on today’s duty-roster.  Nevertheless, like those movie stars of yesteryear, Jinny the was “On the Road” to the end of the road.

The curly head in the top bunk came to life and demanded , “If you insist on talking to yourself,  discuss something besides your boobs.”  A bugler sounded reveille. “That’s not what I had in mind.”

After showering and donning her duds, Jinny piqued like a ballerina, tugged on the drawstring above her bed, and raised the Venetian blind so she could peer through the window.  Her breath fogged the pane, which squeaked each time she rubbed it clean.  “Snow, snow, and more snow.”   Stippled like a Christmas card, Ft. Sill’s 93,000 acres shivered beneath the colorless camouflage and bore silent witness to a relentless invasion of millions of crystalline paratroopers.  Teased by the wind, down they swirled, effectively protracting the skirmish between inclement weather and the intrepid soldiers, hunkered down and preparing for battle. “Jinny girl, are you sure this is Oklahoma?”

Hidden to the east and far behind the storm, silhouetted hills awoke to dawn’s first refracted rays and splashed wayward clouds with water-colored gold, then amber-orange, and finally—for one brief, shining moment—a burst of brilliant red.  God had said, “Good Morning.”  On her knees, her eyes closed, Jinny said, “Amen.”

Thirty minutes later, mugs drained, forks clacked, plates emptied, and bellies filled as hungry soldiers gulped, gobbled, and gabbed while time simply evaporated.  The officer of the day sat alone at his corner table relaxing, sipping hot cocoa, and reading the newspaper.  Randy Staley–slim, trim,  and topping-out at six-feet six inches–had been gifted with a brown skin tightly stretched over his shiny pate.  His head roughly resembled a sausage with its chin curved forward–hence the nickname, Savannah Sausage.  Bravo Company labeled everything and everybody, but Jinny  was circumspect about which labels she allowed herself to repeat out loud.

“Jinny,  the lieutenant wants you over at his table, pronto.  Uh, uh, don’t look at him.   Just back out of where you’re stalled and canter over there nice and easy like.”

“Very funny.”

“No, really, Jinny.  Go.”

“O-o-o-o-kay, thanks, but this better be for real.”  Jinny decommissioned her fork, pursed her lips, wiped her mouth, and climbed from the bench.  “Don’t eat my apple.”  Nodding, her companions huddled, nuzzled, and whinnied quietly as she made her way to the lieutenant’s paddock.

“You wanted to see me, Sir?”  To be true to the present metaphor, she pawed the floor nervously.

Lieutenant  Staley glanced up from reading the ARMYTIMES, stopped sipping, and swallowed hard.  Captivated by the shapely brunette’s  large, chocolate brown eyes, high cheekbones, thin lips, and gracefully sloping nose, his mouth fell open. “Huh? Come again, Corporal?”

“I was told you wanted to see me, Sir.”

“No.  Well, yes.  I mean, no.”  Jinny’s beguiling smile momentarily left Staley speechless.  Finally he stammered, “Someone’s pulling your leg, Corporal. Dismissed.”

“Yes, Sir. Excuse me, Sir.”  Jinny’s eyes narrowed, she briskly executed  an about-face and stared daggers.  Her squad grinned like children posing for a snapshot at a birthday party after pinning a tail on the donkey.  YOU.  She holstered her hands in her pockets, scrunched her nose, clenched her bared pearly-whites and chomped at the bit, ready to rear up, gallop back, and scatter the herd.  End of Metaphor?

“Hold your horses, Corporal.”  The lieutenant  eyeballed Jinny’ comely figure from behind.  Warily, she rotated like an oven timer’s minute hand—ten-twenty-thirty-clicks, all without dinging.

“Lieutenant, I’m done  here, Sir.”

“You’re done when I say you’re done, O’Dwyer.  What’s your locker number?

“13, Sir.”

“Okay, number 13 SIR, today’s your lucky day.  In thirty minutes you call cadence on our jog to the range.  Talk tough. Talk loud.  Got it?”

“Yes, Sir.”  Jinny forgot to salute, lost her appetite, and forgot her apple; her shoes squawked at the worn linoleum as she raced out of the mess hall.  The Lieutenant’s bewitched heart wasn’t far behind.  It raced  as if the morning jog had already begun.

Plowed clean, Wabash Road absorbed the pounding of one hundred and sixty boots as Bravo Company jogged along the ridge above the whited gunnery range.   In measured cadences Jinny chanted the lyrical lingo.  The company shouted it back.  “Re-re-repeat after me—

Hey! Hey! Hey! Wha-da-ya say?
Gotta run, run, run–all night all day.
If I was voted in as President
I’d sell the White House and buy a tent.

Hey! Hey! Hey! Wha-da-ya say?                                                                                            Gotta march, march, march—all night all day.                                                                        If I was promoted to the General’s chair                                                                                I’d buy a pipe and grow some hair.”

Snow continued to fall, but Jinny stayed on her feet.  The frigid air made her as hoarse as a cheerleader at the end of the third quarter, but she  wasn’t winded.  As her eyes took in the bleak landscape below the descending road, Jinny’s imagination  overlaid it with translucent tissue paper etched with images of home.  Instead of the range, she saw the Eisenhower Park Fairgrounds just west of Mud Creek in Abilene, which included:  The band-shell, the rodeo arena, the race track, the skeletal, white-washed remains of  concession booths, the observation tower, the pentagon-shaped boweries, and the stickered kiosk—all settled down for a long winter’s nap. Some greeting card.

“Company, halt.” Bravo Company came to a stop and stood at ill-at-ease.  A keyless Schlage padlock, numbed by the cold, secured the entrance to the range–no custodian; no Captain Klopfer; no armorer; no trespassing. .  “What now, Lieutenant Staley?  Its bitter cold out here.”

“Okay everybody, listen up.  Yes, the captain is late again–maybe because he’s three weeks from mustering out.  And yes, it is colder here than inside a Kelvinator refrigerator, but you can still breathe.  Don’t waste this opportunity to learn something that may save your life somewhere down range of this place. There are lessons to be learned here, even from bad examples.  I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, ‘yeah, I can learn how to be a bad example. Ha. Ha.’”  Nobody laughed. “But if nothing else, you should learn how one person’s tardiness affects company morale.  Right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And long before you are pinned down in enemy territory, you gotta learn patience. Right?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“RIGHT?”

“YES, SIR.”

“In this man’s army, leap-before-you-lookers lose.  Watch where you’re going–even when you’re standing still. Control your thoughts and emotions.  Focus. Train your minds to think ahead, to follow orders.  Stay positive. Remember, idle thoughts fill cemetery plots.  Don’t let that be your epitaph. Practice visualizing what you’ll do when something unexpected happens.  And it will.  Am I right?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Am I right?”

“YES SIR.”

“Your job is to learn to make better choices today than you did yesterday.  Learn from your mistakes. Think, men . . .  and women.  Deal with every exigency as best you can.  An exigency is an urgent demand.  Don’t waste time thinking about how bad things are. You can’t buy good luck. You are patriots. You are warriors. You are brothers and sisters.  Look after one other. People depend on you.  Again, stay focused.  Now fall out and line up by twos.  The captain should be here presently.”

Like an icycle twenty minutes dripped, froze,  cracked, fell, and stabbed before the clunk of a pinging engine heralded his arrival.  The jeep stopped.  The engine knocked erratically, and Captain Klopfer answered.  “Okay Bozos, we’re here.  Bail Out.” Two agitated aids—one the armorer, and the other, Corporal Myrna Clugg—jumped from the jeep but didn’t snap to attention.  “At ease everybody,” said the leather-necked Captain.  He oozed from behind the steering wheel like sludge oozes from a cold oil pan. “Clugg, why don’t you toss your wind-slicker on the windshield to keep off the snow till the end of our shift. Copy?”  Shivering, she  complied with the order.  Klopfer had one overriding concern: Klopfer.  He wanted everyone to know he was in charge for three more weeks—especially Bravo Company’s officer of the day, Lieutenant Staley.

“Ta, ta, ladies.  I hope we didn’t keep you waiting.   By now you should know the range clock runs on time—Klopfer time—my time,” he said, poking his chest with both thumbs.  “Think of me as your practiced prodder.”  He strode to the gate, dropped to one knee, and rammed a strip of steel into the key-way—well, halfway into the key-way.  No fewer than six keys and several hundred shivers later the lock dropped open. The gate swung wide.

The captain pranced forward like Rudolph, but his nose was purple, not red.  He rolled his shoulders back and forth like an over-weight fashion model strutting the runway at a  show-off, but he had nothing else in common with the anorexic set.   Oops! Wheels up and airborne, his engine cut out; he lost altitude—all of it—and landed flat on his back in the snow.  Eighty soldiers, including Jinny, seized up.  Some bit their tongues; most lost their composure.  Feet stomped, arms waved, thighs were slapped, torsos rocked, tears flowed, and jowls guffawed—the best stress relief they’d had in three weeks.  Even Lieutenant Staley couldn’t hold it back.

Jinny whispered, “I see what you mean, Sir.”

“Mean about what?”

“I see what you mean by ‘getting something good out of being patient.

Neither Clugg nor the armorer dared smile—on the outside.   Klopfer fumed, clawed at the ice, regained his feet, and gnashed his teeth on Corporal Clugg.  She hesitated, then said, “Oh, I agree, Sir, it wasn’t that funny.”

Klopfer twisted like a dishrag toward those who had enjoyed his calisthenic performance. “You-u-u-u-u.” He flipped a vulgar sign with his fisted hand, swung around, spread his arms like a tight-rope walker, and—trailed by his mealy-mouthed corporal and armorer—gingerly sidled down the slippery slope toward the base of the observation tower, forty-feet away and fifty feet tall.  For a few minutes the old Captain felt small–smaller than a poodle’s puddle.  At the base of the stairs, he snowplowed to a stop and punched a lighted button wired to a plastic box mounted waist-high.  A stilted recording of his own voice sounded loudly over the public-address system.  He loved to hear himself talk.

“Attention all incoming personnel.  On my signal, march single file to the backside of the armory.  The corrugated steel eve bottoms out at six feet overhead.  If you are taller than five-foot eleven, duck.  Listen carefully to these instructions:  Belly up to but do not lean on the counter; hold up four fingers and a thumb.  The armorer will distribute ear plugs—drop one finger.  Next, he will distribute safety glasses—drop a second finger.  Get the drill?  When you receive a carbine, drop a third finger.  Finally, you’ll be given a loaded magazine; now only your thumb should be extended.  If you are missing any of your digits how did you get into the infantry?  Everybody enlists with ten fingers because the United States Army is fully digitized.  Get it? Otherwise, when the chips are down who can count on you?  Now do you get it?”

Jinny groaned.  The recording  droned:  “At the whistle, gear up and report to the  platform.  Find the numbered station that matches your range-tag, stand at ease, and await further instructions from the tower.  Do not arm your weapons.  I repeat, do not arm your weapons.  Await further instructions from the tower.  You may now proceed single file to the counter.

A whistle blew loudly, the recording fell silent, and the surly captain and his caboose commenced chugging up the snowy stairs like a 4-4-2 locomotive traversing Berthoud Pass in a blizzard.   The faded green and white striped canopy covering the tower, like Klopfer and Clugg, showed serious signs of deterioration–all sagged in the middle.

Jinny lined up near the armorer’s counter and waited her turn.  Once issued  safety glasses, hearing protectors,  a rifle, and a magazine, she went looking for her numbered station.  Finding it was no easy task.  The deck was covered with snow up to her ankles.  After five minutes of foot-sweeping,  she found,  stood at ease on her number, and looked down.  “Dipplewanger! Thirteen again. This must be my lucky day.”

Uninvited goosebumps partied on the back of Jinny’s neck, while overhead a cacophony of gulls, silently slapped at the dewy sky and flew non-stop toward Lake Lawtonka, .  Jinny tracked their decent  until  a bass voice  on her right flank expelled and ignited a breath of lethal gas– profanity’s blue flame– and singed Jinny’s soul.

“I know, I know.  Sorry O’Dwyer, but I thought hell was supposed to be  hot, not froze over.  Can you still feel your toes?”

“Yes Lenny,  but like you I’m as anxious as a fox in a freezer full of chickens.”  Even the warmed-over exchange made Jinny shiver.  As soon as Sergeant Klopfer and his corporal  topped the stairs and disappeared beneath the canopy,  another shuddering soldier cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Yo—Captain Bligh—we’re freezing to death down here.  If you don’t get your butt in gear, mutiny on the bounty will swing broadside and begin firing on your position in two minutes.  TWO MINUTES.”

Lieutenant Staley snapped to attention and summoned up a stiff reprimand, but he was upstaged by a Tap, tap, tap on the tower microphone. It was Corporal Clugg.  “Captain . . . Sir, sorry to bother you but is this microphone alive?”

 Stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp.  “Give me that dohickie, dumkopf.”  Klopfer wrested the microphone from his assistant’s grasp, pushed from beneath the canopy, and stepped to the rail.  “Attention soldiers on the line.  Assume the prone firing position and wait for further orders.  Period.”  Pause. “You—number eleven on the line—why are you still standing there sucking your thumb?  Dump your G.I.s on the mat—NOW.”

The befuddled recruit sat his fanny down in the snow,  toppled backward like a freshly cut sapling, and  splashed  slush.  Unable to manage his misery, he stiffened as if ready to be wrapped in discouragement, fitted for a sarcophagus, and mummified,  all for please his master.  But before the recruit and his rifle could roll over, Pharaoh Klopfer barked  again.  “HEY, you.  Yes you, you rawboned roustabout—I ordered you to roll over on your stomach.”  Klopfer’s nostrils flared; he leaned precariously forward so as to rest his pot belly on the rail, which forced a turbid stream of sanctimony from his mouth, followed by, “Yes, like that.  Good dog.” Klopfer unhitched his belly from the railing and stepped back.  Sag. “Okay, let’s get this shoot done.  Soldiers on the line listen up.  Seat the magazine firmly in your weapon, smack the bolt-catch with your left hand, and prepare to fire . . . number twelve—yes, you again—have you got wax in your ears, hot dog? . . .  No, no, don’t remove the muffs.”  The soldier death-rolled onto his back like a listless alligator  and sat up again.  His reply–unintelligible to Jinny–made Klopfer bristle like a porcupine.

“What do you mean your magazine ‘don’t fit’?  Then go get one that DO fit.” The  soldier’s  facial expression betrayed his distress.  He rendered a feeble thumbs-up, but before he could stand, Jinny slid to his side and  tapped the loaded magazine home.

“Private Lister, you have a new friend,” she whispered.  She brushed snow from his shoulders, his back, then smiled and  returned to her station. But Lister still had a problem.  With a plea for more help halfway out of his mouth, he pointed at his weapon’s open chamber, squinted up at Klopfer, and shrugged.

Klopfer vised his head between his hands. “Just smack the bolt-catch, son . . . you say what? . . . No, it’s not stuck, man.  It’s on the other side of the rifle in front of the hand-grip.  THAT DOES IT.  THREE—TWO–ONE,” he boomed.  Enough.  Number eleven on the line, listen up.  Remove the magazine, retract the bolt, pick up the round, drop your stuff on the counter, and get off my range.  Comprendo little man?  OR SHOULD I ORDER MY CLUGG-COMBO TO SHINNY DOWN THE FLAGPOLE AND GIVE YOU A CHEESY HUG BEFORE YOU GO? “

Captain Klopfer’s eyes darted back and forth twice before he yelled again. “Numbers fifteen and sixteen on the line—YES, YOU!  Who in the blinkity-blank-blank gave you permission to speak?  Mind your own blinkity-blank-blank business.” Jinny shuddered and defensively bunched her shoulders in an  attempt to cover her ears, but  profanity fell like saliva mixed with acid rain, splashed  her face,  and marred her sensibilities.  Before she could shake off her angst, she looked down-range.  Her mouth and eyes opened wide.

Uncle Albert!  What the . . .

A sheet-metal cutout,  welded to an over-sized  truck tire, came cartwheeling across the open range without leaving tracks.  Albert wore purple and white-checkered  tights, cotton-tipped half-moon shoes,  and a court jester’s pointy, checkered cap.  His painted image paused momentarily, and Albert teetered upside down as if suspended in a fish bowl. Jinny’s thumb fled to her mouth to keep her dismay from going public.  “Now I’m having day-mares,” she wailed through her teeth.

Albert mechanically came to life, bared his gums,  and clumsily moved his lips.  Jinny got the message.   Don’t- get- caught- holding- the- bag.   Then he vanished.

“Do we have a problem here, Corporal O’Dwyer?”

“Yes, I mean no, Lieutenant Staley. I was just thinking out loud.” Then, as if cued by someone reading the script,  Corporal Clugg countered:

“Uhh,  Captain K,  we’ve got a problem..”  Klopfer froze; his brows peaked; his forehead furrowed like ice cracking on a reservoir full of stupidity.  Sensing a draft, he patted his posterior as would a woman applying makeup without a mirror.   He gasped, Holy Crap, I’ve got a rip i my trousers. His colorful Batman underwear filled the void, and his leathery  complexion shaded red as the pressure mounted.  He turned around and there stood Corporal Clugg, half-covering her eyes.

“Sir, it’s not as bad as you may think, Sir.  Try to control . . . “

Klopfer disappeared beneath the canopy, lost control, beheaded the microphone with the back of his hand, and watched in slow motion as it completed a one-and-a-half gainer before hitting the floor. Threatcon three.  The amplified concussion imitated the blast of a .44 magnum, prompting four boys from Buffalo to bounce to their feet and hightail it toward the gate.  At the same instant a few soldiers—including Jinny—propped to one knee and defensively aimed their rifles at the tower; others scampered behind anything they could find. The armorer locked his Dutch-door and ducked behind the unshuttered counter.

Unruffled, Lieutenant Staley stood in place.   “Hold your fire, men.”

Men? Jinny grimaced.

Staley drew and brandished his sidearm at the  men loping toward the gate.  “The four of you get back here.  Ten, nine, eight . . .”  Four rattled soldiers put on the brakes, executed an about face, and with wary eyes on the tower returned to their positions on the mats.  Staley approached each man, one at a time, and held up an index finger. “That’s once.  That’s once.  That’s once. That’s once.”  He turned, cupped his hands toward the tower, and yelled: “You in the tower, who fired the gun?  Lace your fingers behind your heads and step forward so we can see you.”  Clugg intended to comply but shook so hard she couldn’t.   Klopfer had bent to retrieve the battered microphone, and r-r-r-r-i-p–his pant-seams parted like the waters of the Red Sea.

“OH, MY. . . LAND!”

Klopfer smacked his head against the underside of a table and down he went.  Clugg submissively laced her fingers behind her head, hustled to the rail, and cried, “I surrender, by my Captain is suffering from over-exposure, and he’s hurt.”

“Harrison, take a medic, get up there and find out what’s going on.”

Jinny tracked the soldiers’ rapid ascent.  Rifles locked and loaded, they skipped every other step and, reaching the landing, they eased beneath the canopy and found  Klopfer pushing up to his knees.

“Hands up. Don’t move.  Who fired the shot?”

Klopfer, who had hatched a goose-egg, pushed his hands to his ears, bent forward, and rested his forehead on the floor, moaning and rocking back and forth, looking like a troubled soul pleading for clemency at the feet of the pope.

It took both Harrison and the medic to help the dizzy dullard to his feet.  As he straightened up, Klopfer caught his breath, jerked free, grabbed at his back, looked at Harrison, and yowled, “Oh no, no, not you, too.”

The soldiers misunderstood and took offense.  “What do you mean, ‘You two?’  Let’s go Harry.” Miffed, they let go of  Klopfer’s outstretched wings and fluttered like fledglings down the steps to report.

Klopfer issued a mellow plea. “If you please, please.” Clugg assisted him to his feet so he could limp back to his cold, orange, plastic molded chair.   He lay his head on the desk between his folded arms and said, “Look, Corporal, just do your job, okay?  But here me now.  if you ever leak what you just saw up here I’ll put you on report until every rat at this installation dies of natural causes . . . or until you do.  Now stop staring at my underwear.”

Klopfer screamed, “COMMENCE FIRING.”

The soldier at station 13 fixed both  chocolate brown eyes on the paper target.  Even with the scope it looked like an RFD mailbox turned on end.  Jinny made mental calculations, adjusted X and Y coordinates for wind, distance, elevation, and lined up the shot.    She slowed her breathing and— pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop—emptied the magazine in seven seconds flat.

 Another minute passed before the microphone squealed like a greased pig restrained by its tail at the Dickinson County Fair.  “Sorry about that.  ACHOO.  Sniff, sniff.   Unclear your weapons and collect your brass and return your stuff to the counter.  Sank you.”   Corporal Clugg had a cold–or she was crying.

After the announcement and  unbeknownst to Klopfer, Clugg  failed to disengage the microphone–that is, it was  live.  The Captain’s outlook on life had improved–he suctioned the binoculars to his eyes so he could oogle Jinny’s every move.  By the time she  had cleared the Colt M-4 for inspection, knee-bumped to her feet, bent over, collected the hollow brass, and returned her rifle to the armorer, Captain Klopfer had audibly squeezed a dozen filthy thoughts from between his lips.  Drool ran down his chin, and everyone on the line below heard every word. “ Oogle, oogle, Miss McDugall; isn’t she just something?  Clugg, come do your duty.  I’m busy. ”  Lustful pause.  “Where did you go. sweetheart?”

“I’m standing right here, as ordered,” Clugg replied indignantly. The loud speaker grew lips.  The listening audience grew even more attentive.

Klopfer looked up and growled, “Oh yes, of course, and then there’s you.   Now hear this, NEVER say, ‘thank you,’ to the grunts, and NEVER apologize–it’s a sign of weakness.  Now brush off your uniform, blow your nose, and go sit down.  I’m busy.  And oh, I almost forgot, order them to march downrange, collect, and sign their targets.”

Corporal Clugg narrowed her eyes, threw her arms in the air, doubled both fists, and slammed them down on the counter.  “SO JUST WHO MADE YOU MY OLD LADY?  YOU CAN GO TO HELENA IN A HAND-BASKET.  DO IT YOURSELF, YOU LUSTFUL LETCH.  I’ve got to take care of business.”  She blew her runny nose and simulated  the cry of a discomfited cow moose during the rut.

Lieutenant Staley looked apologetically at Jinny and then barked, “Let’s go.”  Seventy-nine soldiers—some grinning, some disgusted– hoofed it down-range to collect paper.  Jinny slogged silently through the snow and glanced left, then to her right.   The line was straight enough to create the illusion of a company linked arm in arm—one unbroken chain of command.  Exhausted puffs of steam assured her that all had achieved ignition—all but one.  All were plugged into duty and pistons were firing, except for one sorry soldier–Private Lister.   What lesson shall I take away from this bleak morning madness? The question was both telling and worrisome.

The paper target grew larger and larger.  Twenty yards to go.  Jinny– unaware that another pair of eyes had drawn a bead on the back of her head–grabbed up, chewed, and spat a handful of tasteless snow, then brushed, checked, and snugged the Velcroed patches against her uniform.  She already  paraded more emblems than clung to her 4-H denim jacket hanging in a closet back home:  Rank (cap and chest), the flag (upper right sleeve), unit ID (right sleeve), blood type (right sleeve), surname (right breast), USARMY (left breast), BRAVO (left sleeve).   Soon a pewter insignia—its emblem a target centered within a wreath of laurel leaves and joined at the bottom by a knot hosting two rings, attached to a free-swinging bar—would designate her as a sharp-shooter.

A disagreeable slurp-slurp—someone siphoning cola from a twenty-four-ounce jumbo-sized cup—stalked Jinny from behind.  Heavy footfalls telegraphed a red-alert to the small gaggle of goosebumps huddled on the back of her neck, but she stayed the course.  Jinny seldom looked back.  It made her homesick.

“How’d you do, Jinny?”  It was Mugs Laughlin and Melbourne Keats, jocular members of her squad.  Before she could reply, Melbourne’s eyebrows poked him in the forehead.

“Uh oh. You got company, Jin.  Come on Mugs, let’s go.”  The friends briskly stepped off twenty paces then turned back to watch the fireworks. “Why is the Colonel closing in on Jinny?  Do you think she’s in trouble?”

“I dunno, but we better move on.  See? He’s giving us the evil eye.”

“Well, give it back.”

“Don’t press your luck.  Let’s go.”

“Yes, you two move on and tend to business,” commanded a booming voice.  Jinny tensed as if someone had just stuck a piece of dry-ice down her neck; she reeled around and there he was.  Big Foot.  In the flesh. She stared first at the slushy size 14s, then pushed the button labeled, oh boy, and elevatored her eyes from the basement—one floor at a time.  She stopped three floors above the mezzanine.  Big Foot’s baby blues looked down from the seventh floor.

“Yikes.  I mean, Colonel Robertson.” She snapped to attention.  “Sir.” She saluted.

“At ease, Corporal.”

That might be easy for you to say.  He was built like a Kansas City Chiefs corner-safety—minus the helmet—and tall enough to hook his chin over the goal-post crossbar.  At least that was Jinny’s first take of the man. “I said, at ease.  Hand me your target, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.” What have I done to deserve this?

He steadied the target between both hands and held it up to the morning light.  “Uh, huh.  That’s fair shooting.  But how come there’s only one hole at dead center?  You fired ten rounds.  I count nine holes.”

Jinny replied, “Permission to speak, sir?”

“You just did, Corporal.”

“Yes, sir.”

Big Foot gave Jinny the once over—then the twice over—focused on her tags and pretended to see her name for the first time.  “At ease, Corporal O’D-w-y-e-r.  Yes, I asked you a direct question, so speak up, I don’t have all day.”

“First, sir, I need to explain that I pre-qualified out here last week.  Second, I usually hit where I aim, Sir.  With all due respect, my groupings were deliberate, Corporal, uh, I mean Colonel Robertson, Sir.”

“I only count nine holes, Corporal.”

“The tenth hole trailed the ninth through the center, Sir.”

“So, you fancy yourself a good shot?”  No reply. “Was it luck?”

“No, Sir.”

Colonel Brendon Robertson bristled.  “Tell me something, soldier.  Where did you learn to shoot?  And speak up.” He handed back the target and looked at his watch.  “Don’t be impertinent, and don’t make me ask you twice.”

 Talk about impertinent.  “Uh, I guess growing up on a farm outside Abilene helped, Sir.  When I wasn’t working or in school I did a little shooting—well, a lot, actually.  I often hunted with my older brother, Conor. He joined the army, too, but for me shooting straight came naturally, I guess.”  My knocking knees aren’t natural. I hope he doesn’t conclude there’s nobody home.

“You’re from Kansas, right?”

“Yes, sir. And my brother’s in training at Benning, hoping to qualify as a Ranger.”

“No, he flew out yesterday.  He ‘pre-qualified,’ as you put it. You’d of had a hard time waving goodbye seeing as you’re a thousand miles short of Cusseta, Georgia.  Am I right soldier?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me this, Corporal O’Dwyer,” Colonel Robertson continued, “Why in the hell do I have two FBI agents smelling up my office and wasting my time?”

GULP.

Follow me.

If  Colonel Robertson had grabbed up Jinny and forced her onto the back of a wild bull at a PBR final, she’d not have garnered more wild-eyed stares than followed her to the idling jeeps.  She climbed aboard the Wrangler stalled by the gate; but before she could latch her seat-belt, the driver double-clutched, prodded the stick into first gear, and stomped the gas pedal to the floor.  The rear wheels spun.  Snow and gravel flew.  Contact. And they were off.  The jeep  fishtailed wildly up the hill, forcing Jinny to hang on to the roll-bar or be bucked into a snowbank—whose slippery deposits had again begun to accumulate interest.

From the back seat the driver’s ID was unreadable through the rear-view mirror, and he paid his passenger no mind.  She was hot to trot.  A few scathing epithets crackled from the flyleaf of her army vocabulary and singed  his ears. The Jeep bucked.  Jinny swallowed bitter herbs, and it was time to hang on for dear life.  Sonny Chalmers, renowned for his loquacity,  crowed a tune from the top of his lungs and sounded like he’d dislocated his shoulder.  With one hand he sashayed the jeep down the icy road and sang a backwater ballad to the tawdry timing of Miss Whipple, while letting the other hand hang over the side of the jeep, presumably so he could flick cigarette ashes away from his uniform.

“Hook up the still, Miss Whipple, the thumper and the pot.  Condensulate some whisky, we got more gut to rot. Brew up some hooch, Miss Whipple, ‘tis true we got no cash; but looky, don’t you know it? We’ve hustled corn for mash.

“Fill Benny’s cup, Miss Whipple, he’s stinkin’ awful thin. His step-pa up and run away with his ma’s next of kin. The moon’ll shine till mornin,’ the sun left outta spite.  So thanks a bunch, Miss Whipple, fer helpin’ out ta-night–fer helpin’ us get tight.”

Lenny laughed; Jinny chaffed.  “You know you managed to hit every pothole in the road, don’t you?  Tell me I’m wrong,” she groused.

“Well,” Lenny replied with a grin, “as Uncle Dill used ta slice it, ‘Mondays is the potholes of life, so jist be glad they only come ta call every week or so.’  Accordin’ to Uncle’s way of cipherin,’ I figure we jist drove six weeks in seven minutes.”  Lenny’s head wagged back and forth like a sprung jack-in-the-box—a sign of mild self-absorption—or Parkinson’s disease.  “Say, missy, how’s about you and me meetin’ up when I git off? “

“You’re already off.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Slow down.  How are we supposed to get past those posts blocking the road?”“

“Oh them.  No worries. They’s bollards.  The Colonel’s a magishun, donsha know?  Watch.”  The jeeps slowed; the bollards sank into the road; the jeeps passed over; the bollards finned up like manatees from the sea.  Lenny stared through the rear-view mirror.  Does that make yur day, or what?

“What.”

“Huh? . . .  Wanna know how he done it?”

“No thank . . .”

“Oh, oh.  Hang on, Miss Delta Dawn.”  The Colonel’s jeep had turned into a driveway.  Lenny overshot, under-compensated, cranked the steering wheel hard to the right, plowed into the curb, jumped the curb, and all four tires left the pavement—just like in the movies.  “HEE-HAW.” The jeep pogoed, stumbled forward, and skidded across a half-full parking lot the size of four tennis courts laid end to end.  Jinny recovered her composure and stared straight ahead.  The Colonel’s jeep brake-lights flashed red, and then—perhaps in shock—lost their color.

“Are we here already, I hope?”

Lenny’s throat tightened; his tone came out gnarly-like.  “Almost and doubly so, missy; and here’s a weather advis’ry, complements of the govermint constabulary who pays our bills.  I don’t cotton the cause, but a storm’s brewin’ in that Wrangler ahead; so take some advice—batter down the hatches; don’t climb outta yur seat till the colonel gives the nod; try ta stay on his good side—which would be behind him; don’t tailgate; ‘n don’t lollygag; and mostly, don’t say nothin’ that you ain’t willin’ ta substitute yer name, rank and serial number fur.  Got it?”

“Got it.”  Jinny bit her lip.

Hot, wet cylinders and domino-shaped pads clenched until the jeep came to a stop at the curb; then the partnered pugilists instinctively parted to cool off.   Colonel Brendon Robertson—still seated in his jeep—held a cell-phone tightly against his ear.  He gesticulated with his right index finger and appeared to be trying to bayonet an imaginary bee.

Jinny released her seat-belt.  “Where are we?  I don’t see no . . . sigh, I don’t see any signs.”

Lenny looked through the rear-view mirror, closed in with his face and added a quizzical “huh?” to his self-absorbed state of mind.  He pointed at the curb and sneered, “Then yur not ready fur Afghanistan.  Didn’t you see it as we turned into the lot?”

“See what? Afghanistan?  No.”

“Huh?”  He did a double-take, then extended his left arm and pointed at the regulatory sign printed in bold black letters on a retroreflective field of white—DEAD END. 

“Right.  But what I meant was . . .”

“So here’s how my Uncle Dill used ta slice it.  “A wicked and adultrus generashun seeketh after a sign.  And besides,” he put his finger to his lips and whispered, “If I told ya where we was, I’d have ta . . . you know.” Lenny drew his thumb across his neck, made an obnoxious guttural sound with his saliva, and laughed under his skin, rocking and rolling beneath the light-blue fourragere draped over his right shoulder and tucked under the right epaulette.  Jinny was in no mood to dance, and she detested thread-bare clichés.  Lenny turned and looked down the bridge of his stubby nose. “Like I say, there’s yur sign, Missy. Are ya sure you don’t wanna . . ..”

Jinny leaped from the jeep before she remembered—Don’t get out before the Colonel.  She froze.  Lenny smirked; his demeanor continued to sour. “You just stewed yur goose in the Colonel’s juice, Missy.”    Jinny was having none of it, or so she tried to convince herself.

Colonel Robertson levered out a leg, climbed from his jeep, and stepped to the curb.  Without breaking the silence he returned a stiff salute to a passing, biodegradable lieutenant then looked at Jinny, grunted, wrapped a  plaid scarf snugly around his thick neck, and without further ado led the way, puffing  like an on-duty tugboat on the line.  Short circuit. Overload. The Colonel tooted.  Jinny endured.   Her shiny brunette hair—too short to tantalize her eyelashes—taunted her cheeks and for her what would ordinarily have been a hop-skip-jump gave way to  plod-trudge-slog.  She fell in and, dragged her feet, annihilated Robertson’s tracks.

Lenny, still distracted by his fair fare, languished behind the wheel, forgot the frantic windshield wipers, and watched Jinny get smaller and smaller.  She reminded him of mottled goat being towed on a barge up a frozen river and soon to be offered to a heathen god on the altar of sacrifice–a narrow, raised planter bearing the skeletal remains of a plethora of snow-sanctified geraniums.  On either side of the walkway punchy breezes conspired to suffocate yearling shrubs beneath the pillared portico by covering them with snowy pillows.

Jinny studied the frigid face of the building ahead—a conglomeration of grey bricks sandwiched together by weeping mortar and holding captive fifteen tall, tinted, narrow, evenly spaced slotted windows. Each window looked more like an overstated exclamation mark–minus the dot–than a window.  Each was partially obscured by winter’s witness, piled high.

Ash trays stood erect on either side of the paired, steel entry doors and provocatively posed the exhumed butts of dozens of cigarettes.  A one-eyed, closed-circuit spy-cam affixed above the entry chalked erratically back and forth like it had rheumatoid arthritis.  Jinny tilted her head, stuck out her tongue, and crossed her eyes at the camera.  Colonel Robertson stooped—uncharacteristic for a ranking officer—and stared down a bio-metric retinal scanner.  A paneled LED flashed orange; the latch snapped; another LED flashed green, and the doors swooped inward, exposing two military policemen.  Each soldier brandished an AR-15; each came to attention on opposing perimeters of a black, studded floor-mat; each tried not to gawk at the comely corporal.  The doors sucked air as they swooshed closed and hid the dreariness without.  Beneath and beyond the wet, studded mat, a gaudy red carpet flooded the foyer but left Jinny feeling like an unwelcome child in a casino.  She tailed the Colonel to the end of a  long hall and disappeared into a lamp-lighted office labeled, PRIVATE.

The door latched securely behind her as if to say, “Gotcha.”

“Hello again.  Remember us?”  Bella paused, rubbed her nose, and then dribbled out a perfunctory embellishment. “How are you doing?”  Neither she nor Mag proffered a reassuring smile.  “I asked how you are doing, Corporal?”

“Fine, thank you very much.” Jinny folded into a straight-backed hickory chair and, like a passenger about to careen downhill on a roller coaster, grabbed the armrests and braced for the ride.  The Colonel glanced her way and cleared his throat.  Oops.  Jinny unfolded and ramped to rigid attention. “Sorry, sir.” He wagged his head, blew an imperceptible puff between his lips, mumbled, and sauntered around behind his desk.

“Be seated, Corporal.” Jinny unbuckled her knees, sat straight and watched all six and a half feet of the old patriot flex painfully forward. Ugh.  He pressed his knuckles to the desk.  Dominant blue veins on the backs of his hands merged to ferry oxygen-starved blood to the resupply depot in his lungs, all without supervision.  The colonel looked askance, first at Bella, then Mag.  “I’ll referee this match, you two,” said the colonel glibly.  He dropped into a leather- studded chair, slid in tight, and opened a dossier labeled, O’Dwyer, V.  “It’s your serve, Agent Magleby.  Stay on task.”

Mag nodded and swallowed her gum.  Bella blew into her hands and rubbed them together; her St. Louis supervisor’s demands beat like a snare drum in her ears— “Get down to Ft. Sill, interview that soldier, find out if she’s complicit, and if she is, haul her _ _ _ in here for arraignment, war or no war, money or no money.  Either you close this case or go find a soup line.”

Metaphorically speaking, Mag and Bella didn’t need lunch.  And they needed to score more than a few points.  They needed a win—game, match and set.  Mag rearranged her body parts in the chair, held up a small electronic device, and asked the first question.  “Okay with you if we record this interview?”

Jinny replied demurely, “Fine.”

Click. 

“Tell me, Corporal, when did you first come in contact with Oswald Otwyler?”

Jinny’s eyes narrowed. “You already know the answer to that question, Agent Magleby.”

“I don’t,” barked the Colonel. “Answer the question.”

Jinny gulped down a teaspoon full of anxiety and scrunched her elbows to her ribs like a boxer about to be pummeled on the ropes; tension lines furrowed her brow, but she didn’t drop her guard.

“Sir . . . and Agent Magleby, it was the first Sunday of January last year.” Curly and I were hunkered down in the loft of his Grandpa’s barn waiting for a storm to blow over.”

“Why were you in the barn?” Jinny glanced at the Colonel and figured she’d better answer the question—again.

“We were biding our time until the storm broke or moved on.  We’d been hunting and—well not really hunting, I guess.”  Jinny felt as pinned down as when she had lain beneath Curly on the loft floor. Scurrilous innuendo dominated the questioning for five grueling turns of the minute hand.  The agents asked and Jinny responded to a flurry of disingenuous questions—questions served up with a lot of backspin–regarding her affair with Curly.  Jinny lobbed returns as best she could until Bella popped a bubble and stopped the match  long enough to mark her scorecard.   FBI: match point; Jinny: Love.

While blowing her nose, Bella bugled, “Where did you get the truck?”

“It was Curly’s pride and joy.  He unveiled it that day and told me it was his inheritance; he kept it covered by a tarp in the barn and worked on it as he earned money for parts.  If I might add—both the barn and Curly gave me the creeps, I mean, being alone with him in there.”

“So, your boyfriend gave you the creeps,” sneered Bella.  “Shift gears, Corporal.  Describe your first encounter with Otwyler and James.”

Jinny sighed audibly. “It’s all in the affidavit.  I don’t understand why. . . “

Colonel Robertson’s vocal chords thumped solemnly two octaves below middle C.  “Just answer the question.”

“Okay, here goes.” Jinny reached back and painfully unstuck from memory a file labeled, confidential—do not open.  “Curly and I were in the loft visiting when two men wearing hoodies and covered with snow unlatched and opened the barn door.  We hid and wondered at first what the taller man was dragging behind him. Because the wind blew so hard, the shorter man needed help pushing the door closed.  You know the rest.”

Mag flipped through her notebook, paused, and looked over the top of her reading glasses.

“So, neither man detected you in the barn?”

“Correct.”

Colonel Roberson twirled a pencil between his fingers like a baton.  Bella stretched, fired an elastic at her own foot, and the band stopped playing. The Colonel piped up.  “I’m confused, Corporal.  If I understand correctly, neither man laid eyes on you or your friend in the barn.  Is that right?”

“Yes, Sir.  I wouldn’t be sitting here if they had.”   The Colonel, antsy to hasten things along, continued.

“Then line up a few answers for me, Corporal, and we’ll tick my questions off one by one. Question number one–Did you see Otwyler again, and if so, how many times and where?” Bella huffed and puffed but said nothing.

“I only saw him one more time, Sir, and that was the day after Curly died.

“And he saw you, too,” I take it?

“Yes Sir, the day after Curly died.’

“But he’d never seen you together?” Bella rudely interrupted, catching the Colonel with his mouth open.

“No, not that I am aware of.”

“Then how did he know you’d both been in the barn that day?”

“Um, I’m sorry, I don’t get where you’re going with this, Agent Belfast.”

“Well, in the affidavit you testified that he recognized you on the road.”

“What road,” spouted Robertson, who glared—not at Jinny—but at Bella.   “Just answer the damned question.” Jinny fished for an answer that wouldn’t float the interrogation downstream and over the rapids. Straightaway, she expelled air like a rubber raft punctured by a sharp rock.

“Yes . . .  Sir. Sorry Sir.  I was standing by the road in front of our home.  Mr. Otwyler muttered, ‘Yum. Yum.  See you later baby.’ Then hecocked his thumb, pointed his trigger-finger at me, fired, and drove away.”

“Let the record show that Mr. Otwyler missed.”  Bella sniggered disdainfully.  “Truth is, I think you are lying to us, Corporal.”

“I certainly am not.”

Bella licked her thumb, paged through her small notebook, and rolled her eyes like a slot machine ready to payoff.  “Then how do you explain . . .”

“Bite it Bulah.” Colonel Robertson flipped his pencil across no-man’s land, watched it careen through the air, perform a one-and-a-half gainer, then land point down, stabbing the maroon carpet at Bella’s feet.

“My name’s Bella, Jack.”

“Okay, Bella.  Now hear this–call me Jack one more time and I’ll run you out of here faster than soldier can fart.” Everyone stopped breathing.

Bella’s tongue wandered back and forth inside her cheek as if it were trying to parry its way between her lips.  She leaned forward, retrieved the pointy pencil, broke the lead with her thumb and deposited it on the desk as if it were a spent casing.

“Why did you do that?”

“Do what, Colonel.”

“Break my pencil?”

For ten seconds each radiated enough heat to melt down two nuclear reactors.  The Colonel was first to lean back, cool his coils, and look at Jinny.  “Corporal, how did Ottoman, or whatever his name is, recognize you on the road?

“I honestly don’t know, Sir.  But in Mr. Corker’s shop, it was clear to me that he did know.  Weren’t you agents able to get the answer from Otwyler?  He is in prison, right?”

Bella jumped to her feet. “You know, Corporal, you must be a slow learner.  You have the bad habit of shoving the answers ahead of the questions.”

“Hold on, hold on. Answer Corporal O’Dwyer’s question,” demanded the Colonel.  “Is Otwyler in prison or not?”

Now Mag stood up. “Bella, squat and take five.”  Without turning around Bella backed to her chair, sat, and continued to glare.  Her left eye involuntarily shuttered closed. “Yes, Colonel, Otwyler is in jail; a federal judge bound him over without bail months ago. The trial is set to commence on March 13^th.

Jinny lifted off her chair like a spinster librarian from an errant thumb tack.  “Wait-wait-wait a minute.  A year and three months?   Don’t tell me Ozzie hasn’t yet been tried and convicted for murder.”

“Bear in mind how this works, Corporal O’Dwyer,” replied Mag. “You’re not dealing the cards. We deal; you play your hand.   But I’ll tell you this.  To date, Otwyler has confessed to nothing but vagrancy.”

“But you have my sworn testimony that he killed his partner.”

“Answer me this,” interrupted Bella.  “Did you actually see Mr. Otwyler murder his partner?

“No.  I heard his partner confess to shooting somebody during a robbery up north; then I heard the twang of a shovel that killed Mr. James.  But no, I didn’t see Mr. Otwyler strike his partner with the shovel. Curly didn’t see him either.”

“Then any evidence that Otwyler murdered his partner is simply hearsay.  Would I be right in drawing that conclusion?”  Bella smugly replied.

“I smelled the body; the sheriff recovered the body from the barn; I wouldn’t call that hearsay evidence, would you?”

“Just answer the question, smart aleck.”  Bella crossed her legs and pumped a foot up and down—without striking oil.  Agent Magleby sighed and sat down. “Two points for you, Corporal.  Please sit down.  And Bella, enough already.”

Jinny slid to the front of her chair.  “As for drawing conclusions, Agent Belfast, you may scribble anything you like, but stop trying to box me in.  I am innocent of any wrongdoing.  Remember if you will that I helped put Otwyler behind bars, didn’t I?  You saw him attack me.   You used me as bait.”

“I caught you in a lie, Corporal.”

“I meant . . .  now you’ve confused me!”

“It was Corker who attacked you. And since you bring him up, he’s out on bail.”  Mag and Bella watched the Colonel’s jaw drop.

“I don’t get it.  All three of you were on the bus; you saw and heard everything that went on, and Corker’s out on bail?”

Jinny’s eyes glazed over. She sank back in the chair—as far as one can sink into hickory.  She rubbed and tried to relieve the kink in her neck. Bella continued.  “Here me out.  Like I say, Corker’s wife sold her father-in law’s property and used the money to bail him out.  The judge said that when we obtain Corporal O’Dwyer’s written testimony . . . “

“Wait.  Back up.  You hadn’t told us that.”

“Hadn’t told you what, Corporal?”

“That Mr. Corker’s wife bailed him out.”

Mag reached forward and tagged her partner’s shoulder.  “Bella, she’s right.”

Jinny’s lower lip quivered; her words came out all hushed and flat.  “Why . . . would his wife bail him out?  He abused her.  Curly told me she’d filed for a divorce.”

The Colonel stood and stretched. “Never mind that, Corporal.  He pointed first at Bella, then at Mag.  “I still don’t fathom why your own eyewitness testimonies didn’t suffice.”

“Here’s the thing, Colonel. First, Bella and I had to be in Hong Kong when Corker was arraigned. Second, we only have circumstantial evidence to link him to the murder of his son.  Third, the defense demanded that the court subpoena your soldier to appear in court.   I don’t know how you wiggled around that one.”

“Enough,” demanded the colonel as he pounded the desk.  “Look, I’ll witness the affidavit.”  Everyone chattered at once.  “No, LISTEN. Let’s get a stenographer in here, take O’Dwyer’s statement, and put Corker away.”

“He’s disappeared.”

“What did you say?”

Bella wedged her way into the conversation.  “Corker’s attorney convinced the judge that the defendant didn’t pose a flight risk. So, his wife bailed Huey out, and he dropped off the map, leaving her destitute. Simple as that.  She even lost her job at Sears, or so we were told by a neighbor.”

The Colonel sat back in his chair and put a foot up on his desk.  “Before you drag me any further into your muddled investigation, and before we get an affidavit typed up, I want the answer to one simple question. Maybe two.”  He pointed his blunted pencil at Jinny.  “You two need to understand something. This young woman is one of three in Bravo Company.  If things go her way, in a few months she’ll fly to Afghanistan to defend the flag—your flag—and perhaps a few freedoms you may take for granted.”  He subconsciously rubbed an ugly, partially hidden scar on his neck.

“I beg your pard . . . “

“Let me finish.  Sit down Agent Magleby.”  Mag reluctantly followed the order.  “Corporal O’Dwyer has been on base but three weeks.  Right Corporal?”

Jinny nodded.

“Notwithstanding the fact that she’s a woman, in less than a month—in every measurable discipline—she has bubbled to the top.  Do you hear me? She outshines eighty soldiers.  She’s outperformed them all and drawn a lot of unwanted attention.  Now what I need to know is this—has Corporal Virginia O’Dwyer violated the Code of Military Conduct?”

Jinny didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t smile.  She didn’t frown.  She resolutely retained her composure; but inside she felt like someone had turned on an electric blanket.

“Then let us ask the big money question, Colonel,” Bella chirped like a smoke detector with a low battery. “Otwyler claimed your prize puppy here and her boyfriend stole the cash.”  Jinny cooled.

“Go for it.  Ask your question.  But mind your tongue, and before you leave I want the name and phone number of your supervisor.”  The Colonel pulled his foot from the desk and sat up straight.

Jinny raised her right arm to the square and slow-pitched a single, dismissive wave of her hand.  “Colonel Robertson, I have done nothing wrong.  I swear it.”  She eased back into the uncomfortable chair, tipped up her chin, shuttered her eyes, extended her lower lip, and exhaled a cubic foot of exasperation. Her hair lifted off then fell helplessly back on her forehead.  “And I know where you’re going with your questions.  I think you’re trying to trap me.”

“Scared of being caught in a lie?” Mag popped her bubble gum and ordered her tongue to clean up the mess.

“Well, no, but . . .” Jinny leaned forward and again grabbed the ends of the armrests.  “Say, ARE you trying to entrap me?  Do I need a lawyer?”

Colonel Robertson clicked his ballpoint pen and scribbled a note—Call JAG HQ.  He continued clicking-clicking-clicking. Bella dropped her chin and glowered suspiciously from over the top of her glasses. “You don’t feel guilty do you, Corporal O’Dwyer?” 

 “Bella.  Enough.” Mag sucked a quart of oxygen and sniffed the beginnings of a cold.  Bella sat up straight and unfolded her arms.  She though Mag was snorting like a bull so she swallowed, faked a yawn, and waved a whatever you say, Mr. Dillon.

“Continue your story but stick to what happened, not how you felt.”

“Look, I confess.  We were scared and curious at the same time.  Oops.  Sorry. You said, ‘don’t share feelings.’ I get it.  Curly wanted to keep some of the cash—maybe all of it; I just don’t know; but I was determined to talk him into turning it all over to the Dickinson County sheriff.”  Jinny leaned forward, rested her hands on her knees, and flexed her lower back.

“So, you did take the money?” asked Mag.

Jinny sidestepped the question. “You may not get it, but Curly and I had been friends since elementary school; we just differed in our definitions of what’s right and wrong.  To him, sometimes the truth depended on the situation.  For me, truth is absolute.  Thou shalt not steal.”

“We are here to inquire after the facts, not your religious convictions,” Bella snorted, then pawed the floor with her left heel.

“Okay, the facts—after chores one afternoon Curly and I met up.  Hey, maybe that’s when Mr. Otwyler spotted us.  We drove to the barn in Curly’s pick-up, and while I stood worry-watch Curly dug up the bag.”

“Worry-watch?”  Mag looked puzzled.

“Yes, I know.  I tried to sneak in how I was FEELING at the time.  Please believe me—I wanted the money dug up for only two reasons.  One—so Ozzie wouldn’t grab and abscond with it before being caught; two—I wanted to help Curly stay straight with the law.”  Shivering, Jinny subconsciously combed fingers through her hair before continuing. “Curly shoveled dirt for a few minutes before he struck something solid.  Am I getting into too much detail?”

“We’ll ask the questions. Just move it along.”  Elbows on their knees, both Mag and Bella sat on the front edge of their chairs mentally fondling their handcuffs.

“Curly brushed away the dirt and exposed the battered top of Mr. James’ head.  He smelled putrid, like garlic, but we left him exposed so the sheriff could find him.  I know it didn’t take the horse flies long.  No wait.  Since it was wintertime, there probably weren’t any flies, but I don’t remember for sure.”

“You’re not making this up as you go are you, Corporal?” grunted the Colonel, now surreptitiously feeling in a pocket for a stick of chewing gum.

“No sir.  I am not.  Fearful that Ozzie might surprise us, we took a quick peak in the bag, saw the ‘loot’—Curly’s words—zipped and dumped it in the truck, and drove to his father’s metal-working shop.  Curly parked inside and pulled the overhead door down behind us.  By now I was on the edge of panic, fearful that we might have been seen. And for the first time I was scared of Curly.   I wanted to run.  Somehow all that money had messed him up, and I could feel it.  . . . Oh yes, ‘stick to the facts.’”  Bella nodded.

“Curly unzipped the bag again, broke open a money wrapper, and threw a handful of bills into the air, crying, ‘Jinny, we’re rich. This cash could set my Ma up for life.’  Well, you know how I felt about that.  I scrambled to gather the soiled bills from the shop floor. Curly had barely started counting when a car door slammed outside, and somebody swore.

“Curly said, ‘It’s my dad. Quick!  Under the truck.’  I dropped to the floor and slid out of sight just as Mr. Corker staggered in and caught Curly holding the unzipped bag.”

Wheels whirred as Colonel Robertson swiveled to his left and, for the first time that morning, smiled at his comely comrade.  His forehead wrinkled and the edges of his thin, closed lips levitated.  Jinny brightened and took a deep breath.  “Mr. Corker used profanity and said something like, ‘You stupid, stupid kid.  So, you’ve gone and robbed a bank and disgraced my family name.’  All I could see was their feet.  They tussled and I heard a slap.  Curly fell to his knees, scrambled between his father legs, and fled the shop through the side door without looking back.  The door swung closed but didn’t latch behind him.  Mr. Corker belched, threw up, and became real quiet.”

“Why did he throw up?”

“Well sir, He’s an abusive alcoholic.  My uncle . . . “

“Stay on topic, Corporal.” Bella rubbed her hands together like one who’d just read a tell and anticipated a winning hand.

“Okay. Well, then he muttered.  I think he was counting.   Three minutes seemed like an hour.”  Jinny’s arms broke out in goosebumps. She hugged herself.  “I was wet and cold.  Suddenly the door flew open and banged against a stud. I hit my head on the differential and bit my tongue.  A deep voice said, ‘I’ll take that.  Hand it over.  Now.  Your kids ripped me off.’  It was Mr. Otwyler.  I’ll never forget the wheeze.”

Jinny pushed up from the chair, still embracing herself.  “May I take a break?  My clothes are damp, and the air conditioner is punishing the back of my neck.   Any chance I could borrow a blanket?  And I need to use the bathroom.”  The Colonel raised his fist, and without a word picked up the phone, tapped two keys, and a long minute later a knock came at the door.”

“Enter.”

“As you requested, Sir.”

Colonel Robertson stood, took in hand the green woolen blanket, walked from behind his desk, wrapped it around Jinny, and patted her on the shoulders. “The bathroom is behind that door, soldier.”  He pointed with three fingers.  Jinny stood as the clerk left the office.

“Thank you.”

“Remember, there’s a war on,” said the Colonel.

Minutes later Jinny was back on the Hickory chair.  Hickory, dickory, dock—no one had stopped the clock.

“Continue,” whispered Mag.  “You were under the truck.”

“I’ve been scared before, but never that scared.  There I was, unarmed, lying in a cold puddle of antifreeze, and within a foot of a cold-blooded murderer.  I had never met Curly’s dad, so I had no idea what he looked like.  But Mr. Otwyler? I saw him first out front of our house as I have already described. Papa said the sheriff told him I wouldn’t have to face him in court and that my affidavit would suffice. “

Bella shook her finger in Jinny’s face.  “Well, just maybe your Papa spoke out of turn.”

Jinny shuddered like a mallard after dipping his head in cold water.

“Please put the lid on it for a few minutes, Bella,” Mag muttered plaintively.  “Continue Private, I mean Corporal?”

“After pausing and wheezing—perhaps to consider his options—Mr. Otwyler said to Mr. Corker, ‘Okay, whatever your name is, I have a proposition for you.’  Or something like that. ‘Take it or leave it.’ I assumed he had a gun.

“Curly’s dad replied, ‘Hold on, Buster Brown.  Huey Corker don’t scare that easy.’ I figured the jig was up and wished I could cover my ears before the gunshot.  All I could do was hold my breath and bite my lip.” Jinny paused.

Mag tilted her head to the side, studied Jinny’s face, and said, “You know what soldier? You’ve got a lot of moxie.”  Her features softened.  “Finish the story.”

“Mr. Otwyler didn’t shoot.  Mister Corker said, “Not that it’s any of your blinkity-blank business, but this bag belongs to my son.  Now you get out of my shop, or I’ll . . .’

Bella’s interruption conveyed a salty air of sanctimony.  “Tell me something, soldier, how is it you are able, one year later, to recall their conversation verbatim?   It sounds to me like your parroting a memorized script.  Did you rehearse for this interview?”

“I’m telling you how it was.  It’s all up here.”  Jinny laid her hand on her head and pressed twice like her mother used to do before measuring Jinny’s height at the door.  “It’s one of my gifts . . . or curses.  Take your pick.  Shall I continue?”

“Go ahead.” Mag patted her pocket.  “Just don’t forget, you’re being recorded.”

“Let’s see, where did I leave off?  . . . Oh yes. Mr. Corker told Mr. Otwyler to get out of his shop, or else.   Mr. Otwyler threatened, ‘or you’ll to do to me what must be done to your kids?”  I was terrified.

Mr. Corker became more agitated.  “’Hey man, now are you threatening my kid?’”

“’Easy mister.  Remember, I’m the one with the gun.  Don’t hyperventilate all over me like you did on the trunk, or that’s how you’ll leave this junk yard.’”

“’What do you mean by that?’”

“I mean, if you don’t mind your tongue, you’ll leave ventilated.’”  Curly’s dad got all quiet.

 “’Look, for your information I only got one kid, and because of you he got away.  I was gonna smack him with a ball-pin hammer where it wouldn’t show.  I just needed to nail down some of his faults, don’t you see, as if it were any business of yours.’”

“’It is my business,’ Mr. Otwyler screamed. ‘Your son and his woman witnessed a murder; and both have to be silenced.  You said you wanted to nail down some faults.  I don’t care how you do it, but I nominate you for the job, and I get to play the trump card.’”

“’Nominate me for what?  You mean you want me to kill my own kid?’”

“’For ten grand you’ll kill both of them,’” replied Ozzie—people like you will do anything for a few bucks.’”

Six pair of eyes peered into Jinny’s baby browns.  Colonel Robertson’s pen clicked, dot-dot-dot—dash-dash-dash—dot-dot-dot. Jinny missed the coded alarm.

“’ Who do you think you’re kidding?’  Mr. Oswald replied.  ‘There’s gotta be ten times that much money in here.  Maybe, if you’d caught me in the right mood I’d kill the girl, but . . . .  I’ll tell you what, let’s go someplace warm and negotiate.  Till then, the cash stays locked up in this shop.’”

“‘What about your kid?’  If you lock up, can’t he get in?’”

“’Naw.” Pause.  “Well, let me cogitate a minute . . .?’”

“’That does it. Let’s go.  I’ll carry the bag,’” said Mr. Otwyler.

“’What do you take me for, a fool?’ replied Mr. Corker. ‘”

“’I thought that was obvious.’”

“’Huh?  Come on in the house.  It’s warm and my old lady is working at Sears till midnight.’”

“’No, I’ll carry the bag.  Come with me. There’s somebody I want you to meet.  But be careful what you say, he’s a pistol.’”

The Colonel piped up. “You said, ‘he.’?  Does this pistol have a name, Corporal?”

“I don’t know who owns the name, Sir.  But as they turned to leave, one of them bumped and knocked the hammer to the floor.  It bounced underneath the truck and landed three inches from me.”  The frightful recollection caused Jinny to breathe through her mouth then tightly purse her lips.  “You know what?  . . . let’s leave out a description of how I felt.”

“Good.”

Jinny purposely didn’t divulge how hard she had prayed that night.  Actually, praying hadn’t been hard; to her, it was more like picking up the telephone to plead with a trusted friend for help.  “Mr. Corker and Ozzie left, latched, and locked the door behind them.  I heard a car engine turn over and saw the headlights sneak under the door then retreat. That’s it, unless you have more questions.”

Colonel Robertson surprised everybody.  “Don’t leave me hanging, Corporal.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, Sir.  I waited about fifteen minutes, slid from beneath the truck, unlatched a window, climbed out, and ran for home without looking back.  That was the last time I saw Curly free, and the last time I saw the money.”

“So Curly’s dead and you had no hand in his death?” asked Colonel Robertson.

“Yes.  I mean no, Sir.  No hand in his death.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“No.  But I have my suspicions.  I came here hoping these agents would fill in the blanks and let me return to my platoon.”

“You came here on my orders O’Dwyer.  And you’ll be dismissed when I dismiss you. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.”  Jinny stood, stretched, and glanced at both agents.  “Have you learned anything from Ozzie?  Surely he has answers.”

“We ask the questions.  You answer the questions.  It’s that simple.  Haven’t you gotten that into your bright little head, missy?  Sit down, or . . .”  It was Bella again.

“Enough,” demanded the Colonel, rising to his feet like a phoenix from a funeral pyre. “One more disrespectful dig like that and I’ll have you thrown off this base faster than a . . . oh, whatever.  Do you hear me?  You didn’t come with a bench warrant and based on what I’ve heard you are not only wasting my time, you are needlessly badgering one of my command.  So, cut the crap.”  The Colonel gathered up, filed his emotions, and then sat down and asked, “What do you think happened to Curly and the money, Corporal?  Please be seated.”

“Thank you, sir.”  Jinny took heart.  “Colonel, I have no idea what happened to the money, but I believe Curly’s dad trapped him, cuffed him to the truck, and welded the door shut; he was a welder, after all; I suspect he thought he’d figured out how to make Curly’s death look like an accident.  But according to Curly, Mr. Corker was usually too drunk to think straight, and he was abusive, to put it politely.  Am I right?” Jinny paused for air.  A few more riffles timed their way downstream. Still no nibbles from the agents.  The Colonel picked up his ball point pen and resumed sending dot-dot-dot—dash-dash-dash—dot-dot-dots.

“None of you has detailed how Curly died.”

“Sorry, sir. I thought I had.  Curly drowned in a canal near my home.”

“Near your home?”

“Yes, sir. A county road runs past our farm and for a few hundred yards parallels a large irrigation canal.  Curly died there while my Papa struggled to free him from the wreckage.

The Colonel looked over at Mag and Bella.  “Are you up to speed on this accident?”

“Oh, it wasn’t an accident, sir,” replied Jinny,

“Agents?”

“According to the sheriff’s report, she is correct, Colonel Robertson.”

“Who killed him?”  Jinny was quick to reply.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but as I said, Curly had been handcuffed to the steering wheel, the truck had lost a rear wheel, the driver’s door had been welded shut, and the carburetor forced wide open.  His truck spun out of control and plunged into the canal near my home.  My Papa nearly lost his life trying to save him.   The last time I saw Curly, the paramedics were pulling his body out of the water.  And I don’t think it was Curly who stowed the black bag in the truck.  Somebody wanted it to look like Curly was skipping town.” Jinny teared.

“I know this is hard on you, Corporal, but I have a few more questions.  Tell me about the bag.”

“Sir, as I’ve already explained, I do not know what happened to the money.  An EMT pulled a black bag out of the drink.  I was there when he unzipped and laid its contents on the ground.  He pulled out some clothing, a rifle, and some soggy ammo.  But no money.  I have no idea who ended up with it.”  She locked eyes with Mag.  “Have you searched Corker’s house?”

“Yes, and it’s not there,” she replied.

The Colonel fired a question at Bella.  “Has the rifle been linked to any crimes?”

“No, Colonel Robertson, for your information it has not.”

“Tell me about your encounter with Corker on the bus.”

“Yes, sir.  As to why nearly a year passed before Mr. Corker’s attempted to take my life by sticking a syringe in my neck, I do not know.  If Agents Belfast and Magleby hadn’t been seated behind me that rainy day on the bus in Wichita, either Mr. Corker or I would be dead. Personally, I think they deserve a commendation for rescuing him, not saving me.  May I go back to my unit, Colonel?”

Billie Joe Quagmeyer left the infirmary, put his forearm against the fingerprint-smudged door, and waited to be buzzed through.  “Come on.  Come on.  Come on.”  The cool glass felt good against his swollen cheek.

Lister—the beefy, short-haired screw seated behind the wire-reinforced glass— pretended to be deaf.  Billie Joe had learned not to be in a hurry, but he was five years behind schedule.  The guard, on the other hand, was in for life, a short life Billie hoped.  He watched Lister stretch, yawn and, like someone feeling his way through the dark, reach across his cluttered desk to palm the electronic door release. Two things happened.  First, Lister tipped over his caffè latte; second, as his neck bent forward the tatted scorpion flinched.  Cool, Billie thought.  Something to consider. The buzzer sounded and he pushed forward, oblivious to the ruined paperwork being swept off the desk into an overflowing wastebasket.  With nary a grunt, the guard wiped his hand on his uniform and returned to the dog-eared paperback.

Billie saw the flickering light at the far end of the windowless corridor and began shuffling toward the annex, seemingly unaware that his shackles had been removed.  He went out of his way to squash a pair of cockroaches performing a lude act.  The stale air stunk of coffee.  The floor needed mopping.  So did Billie.  Sweat had saturated his new white dress-shirt at the armpits, his chest, and lower back.  His breathing was labored.  He smelled of disinfectant.   He hurt.  Three hours earlier, four twisted screws from HR had summarily stripped, blindfolded, and run him through the gauntlet on his hands and knees—twice—all for the amusement of the warden.  Blakely had yawned and waddled off to bed ten minutes before number 4032 cried uncle.   Billie had no uncle, and the Mississippi State Penitentiary had no AAA rating; but, as of tonight, it had a vacancy.  Billie’s cell was empty.

The revolving door sluggishly slid and swooshed when Billie put his back to it.  He dizzied through three revolutions of the muggy chase before lunging into the annex.  The thirty-three-year-old con had spent most of his dreary life rutting around in circles—in and out of scrapes, in and out of juvie, in and out school, in and out of foster care—but tonight he just wanted out.  He stepped forward, laid his black gym bag on the counter, and waited.  Then he waited some more. “Anybody home?”  No reply.

“Hey, I got a bus to catch.  Will somebody sign me out?”  No reply.  He body-slammed his gym bag against the counter three times.  Nothing.  He peppered the room with profanity.The salty southerner turned around.  A small window in the locked door between him and freedom overlooked the yard, fogged in darkness.  He wiggled the handle.

“Hold it . . . I said, STOP.”  Billie sluggishly swung around.  “Where do you think you’re going, Mr. Q.?”

Billie dropped his hands to his sides and let his shoulders slump.  He stared at the floor.  “Home.  I’m going home, Mr. Knote.”

“You’ll go home when I say you go home.  Get your bag off the counter.  So, you were leaving without even a thank you?  To me?  Your handler?  You know what ingratitude gets you, right?”

“Yes, Mr. Knote.”

“And didn’t you know I don’t like to be interrupted when I’m prepping for surgery?”

“No, Mr. Knote.

Bertram Knote finished drawing a sliver from his hand with a tweezer and then held it up to the light. He crossed his eyes.  “Can’t tell whether this here’s a beam or a mote. What do you think, Mr. Q.?”

“It’s whatever you say, Mr. Knote.”

“On your knees.”

Billie dropped first to one knee, then the other.  He drew a shallow breath, bowed his head, and closed his eyes; he wasn’t praying, just tensing for the blow. What used to be fire in his gut had dampered down but hadn’t been extinguished.  Here we go again.  Bring it on. He yearned to trade places with his trainer; one minute would suffice. Mr. Knote lifted the hinged counter and stepped forward, striking his open palm with a baton as he circled Billie like a tamer caged in a circus with a languishing lion. Bring it on.  Here we go again.  Knote’s crepe-soled shoes squawked at the tile floor.

“Here pussy-pussy-pussy cat.  Almost time to leave the petting zoo.  What did Doc Chalmers say about your accident, huh?”

“Nothing, Mr. Knote.”

“What did you say?  Squeak louder, mouse.”

“I said, ‘nothing’, Mr. Knote. He said nothing.”

“I don’t believe you. What did you say about your little accident?”

“I told him I fell down the stairs on my way to the yard, Mr. Knote.  Say, can I go now?  I gotta bus to catch.  I don’t want to miss it.”

“Too late, Mr. Q.  You just missed it.”  Loosening his grip on its leather-lashed handle, Knote let his baton free-fall on BJ’s head.  “Still sounds hollow pussy, pussy.  Anybody home?”  He grinned out the left side of his whiskered mouth where he usually trapped a cigar.  “Just remember, Mr. Q., no loitering allowed at the bus stop.”  Billie nodded.  “Get up and get out.”  Billie stood and limped to the door.  Hearing the buzz, he leaned into muggy Mississippi and left behind a manslaughter charge, paid in full.

Billie forged ahead at the pace and stride of a turtle paddling ashore after a miserable four-year stint in a briny sea.  The asphalt sluffed and steamed beneath his flip-flops, but Billie paid it no heed.  “Thirty feet, you can do that,” he mumbled to himself.  “Then freedom.”  But freedom to do what?  A ghoulish guard buzzed Billie through the outer gate.  It slammed behind him and chain-link fencing shook contemptuously.

Halogen pole lights—half of which, like Billy, had yellowed with age– rimmed the pitted parking lot.  The smell of spent gasoline sullied the air.  Alone, Billie sat and ran his hand across the bus-stop bench, still warm to the touch.  It was as pockmarked as his complexion.  Bird dung had pooled in the cracks and dried.  In the dim light across the narrow street, a lowly dumpster-dunker shopped for a snack.  The ring-tailed raccoon paid heed neither to her observer, nor to the bumper sticker crookedly affixed to the bin.

 Thanks for visiting California.  Now go home.  Billie was one hundred and fifty miles from Greenville.

Overhead, a single fluorescent lamp intermittently blacked out then regained consciousness.  It served as a tanning salon to half the frenzied moths, flies, and mosquitoes in Sunflower County and led the list of many in desperate need of a ballast transplant.  Billie needed sleep. He drifted in and out of consciousness while wave after wave of resolute insects meticulously timed their dives and dined on his sweaty skin or died at his hand.  Billie grew weary of swatting his bruised arms and legs.  He needed a break.  He waited.

He waited some more. Facing the parking lot, Billie watched the cars, trucks, and three motorcycles swap places.  Some left quickly.  Others arrived slowly.  A shift had ended. A shift began.  Monotony in the moonlight.  Three hours passed.  The bus rolled up.  The brakes broke wind.  With a finger and thumb Billie pinched his pocket seeking assurance that the get out of jail -ride free token hadn’t abandoned him.  It had.   He climbed aboard, leaving behind an entire squadron of malevolent mosquitoes, grounded for harboring bad blood or lifeless on the bench.

“Lost my token.”

“That’ll be three bucks.”

“I only got a Jackson.”

“Drop it in the bank.”

Billie dropped the crumpled twenty into the collector chute.  It landed on a stippled, grey conveyor belt, housed in glass; the pudgy driver glanced down, punched a button, the conveyor belt carried the bill forward, and the machine gobbled it up.  Billie put out his hand expecting seventeen dollars in change.

“Oh, I’m sorry sonny, I don’t have change for a twenty; I’ll get you a voucher,” said the driver as he grabbed the Brodie knob—cons called it the suicide knob—on the steering wheel.  The doors folded closed.  The air brakes hissed.  The bus lurched forward.  Billie grabbed the vertical balance bar, stood upright, and eyeballed the locked cash box beneath the driver’s seat. “Here. Send this into the company and they’ll do right by you.”

Billie pocketed the card, took the seat immediately behind the driver, and counted the ripples on the back of his neck, there were three—one more than he had chins.   The driver resumed eating his donut; he glanced in the rear-view mirror and, unnerved by Billie’s stare, stopped chewing.

Billie tossed his head back as if to say, “You should feel uncomfortable, Chub.  There are only two people on this bus, and one of them is a low-life thug.”   His stomach growled.  It registered on empty.   And when Billie Joe got off three hours later, so did the cash box.

 By the time he walked the five miles from where the bus driver lay unconscious in the weeds on the side of the road, the board-walks of Greenville had folded up for the night.  But not the dogs.  Dogs don’t fold easily.  Their lurid howling, like Sirens from a distant, rocky shore, taunted Billie’s dark soul. He hated dogs.  He hated coming home.  He hated his solitary life.  He hated being hungry.

His dirty, sandaled feet tightrope-walked the freshly painted double-yellow lines down the middle of Hamblin Street—known to the elderly as Lynching Lane— while Billie painfully recalled the sniggers, the jeers, and the cat-calls from folks who had looked on as his father, goaded by a cop, attempted to push a peanut down the line with his bloodied nose. The Quagmeyers in former days had borne the brunt of more than a few collaboratives’ caustic harangues.   Distain for the disjointed family was knotted into the fabric of local lore.

“WELCOME HOME,” Billie extended his arms, smiled contemptuously, and spun a clumsy three-sixty-degree circle in the middle of town.  “What?  No posse?  No kangaroo court? No tar and feathers?  And, Mr. Mayor, no all-night diner?  Listen up everybody. ODD MAN OUT IS BACK TO GET EVEN.  NOW HEAR THI . . .” He hushed, held his breath, and heard two distinct sounds—one, his own heartbeat, and the other, a mentally disturbed dog, closing fast.

Time to climb.

Billie spent a stressful thirty minutes shinnied halfway up a flagpole in the town square.  Each time he released a hand to scratch a mosquito bite, he slipped a quarter inch toward the lathered jaws of a barking German shepherd.  Slip-scratch-slip-scratch. Snarling back, Billie spat and called the immigrant hound every foul name he’d pedaled in prison.  Soon disgusted, his opponent quit the debate over her right of citizenship and ran off to feed her undocumented pups.  Relieved, Billie slid down from half-mast, dashed over to Holcomb Grocery Co-op, broke a window, unlocked the door, liberated some stale sweet rolls, grabbed a six pack, and sat cross-legged on the floor.  Possessed of a voracious appetite, he inhaled food like garbage disposal.

Above his head a handmade, dog-eared sign had been scotch-taped to the back of an antique National Cash Register.  God helps those who help themselves.  Well sir, he’d better help you if you help yourself!   BJ paid it no mind.  To him, self-reliance and help-yourself were two peas in a pod.  End of story.

Filled with sugar, Billie equated to a two-hundred and fifty-gallon tanker of high octane gasoline.  Both could do a lot of damage.  Time tested, his short fuse and extensive blast radius had proven lethal. The combination had landed him in solitary confinement twice in just the last eight months.  Each time he’d survived the hellish hole by imagining it to be an all-expense paid vacation.  His penthouse suite in cell-block eleven consisted of a four-by-four, windowless hovel with a drain in the center of the floor.  Valeted to his quarters, Billie had convinced himself that he was in total control of his environment.  His first all-expense-paid-trip to Isolation Island had come on the heels of a frantic phone call from his mother:

“Billie Joe, do you hear me, boy?  The feds was here tadie.  Cyrus Raven seed ‘em comin’ up the draw toward the still, an’ so he hitched hisself up that ol’ Cyprus tree by the river.  Whin he refused to come down, them revenue boys plugged him in the gut.  I seed it all for myself.  He flopped into the river, thrashed some, waved, and down he went.  Oh Billie, I’m all alone.”

Wall patch—$300.  Pay-phone–$639.00.  Beating—complimentary.

Metaphorically speaking—at 5:02 p.m. three months and one day later, holes had been tapped and charges laid for a second cataclysmic blast.  Billie Joe had dozed in the day-room and fallen asleep with his mouth full and wide open.  The TV was on, the sound muted.  Billie gagged, came to life, and there she was.  “MAMA.” Karman Jean Quagmeyer—her cheeks, arms and legs all puffy-like–was stretched out across the screen in her skivvies next to a sulking coral snake.  WTNZ flashed the grainy photo on the screen for an eternal fifteen seconds.  Karman looked pretty dead, the snake, not so much.  The reporter announced that she had been discovered by an entrepreneurially-minded census-taker earlier in the day.  He had first peddled the story to the local FOZY News outlet, then violated the contract by posting the story on Tweetter.  His reputation tanked, but Karman got half a million likes—only one of these from the snake.

TV Bracket–$135.  Samsung big screen—$1500.  Punishment—donated. Billie had accumulated enough travel points to visit Isolation Island free for six weeks of quiet repose beside the pool—his plugged drain.   But weeks had passed; now that was water under the bridge.

Billie sat up.  The floor was wet.  He’d fallen asleep leaning against the Co-op’s pop machine.  Both hands of the back-lit Coca Cola clock on the wall stuck straight up.  The imagery wasn’t lost on Billie.

“Bejeebers.  Where am I? . . .  No, where am I not?  Not home.”  The witching hour had arrived, and 5,280 feet of dirt road lay between Billie and his inheritance.  Hurrying from the store without closing the front door, he made a beeline for Dummy Lane.  He found it, trotted twenty yards down the dirt road, heard something or somebody drop in the bushes, turned about, and hightailed it back into town, finally stopping to catch his breath at the corner of Hagan’s Haberdashery.  Billie was out of shape.

He squatted, his knees elbowed, his hands on his forehead.  “Time for a confabulation,” he said to himself in an attempt to steel his nerve.  “If you walk down that lane in the dark you’re stupider than a donkey’s dingleberry.”

“Watch your tongue.”  He thumped his chest.  “The last guy who called me that can’t walk anymore.”  After rubbing down his facial hair and cogitating over his options—all the while keeping an eye out for dogs—Billie poked around town until he spotted a bicycle leaning against the mossy rear wall of a two-story clapboard house.   “Hallelujah and amen.”  He gave himself an unearned, congratulatory high five.  “Yes Reverend, the Lord does help them that helps themselves.  Gimme that o-o-l-d time religion,” he chanted sarcastically.  After snaking through knee-high weeds, he wrapped his hands around the handlebars, threw his leg over the frame, peddled, and instantly proofed Newton’s first law of motion. The bike stopped before Billie Joe stopped.  At the point where his legs formed a “V” he rammed into head-tube.  It was undamaged by the collision.  But not Billie.

A security-minded rascal had tethered the bicycle to a gas meter with a leather harness and BJ had bucked into the saddle horn.  The bucolic backyard instantly transformed into a bullpen.  Frustrated and angry, Billie stomped, and then with his bare hands twisted free a length of copper flex from the meter.  The liberated pipe zig-zagged back and forth, hissing like a frightened sidewinder; escaping gas filled the air with the smell of rotten eggs.  But at least the harness fell free of the pipe.

Only then did Billie apprehend that—although it was free of the gas meter—the harness remained securely knotted to the rear wheel.  He reached down, grabbed the strap, gave it a violent yank and stripped three spokes from the wheel.  That did it.   Like a spoiled brat at his own birthday party, Billie jumped up and down—first on the rear wheel, then on the front—and then he stomped from the yard, deliberately crushing every soybean plant in the garden.

Still on the prowl for transportation, he spied another bicycle lying in the driveway of a rundown residence.  Banded newspapers told him nobody was home, so he rushed forward, mounted up, canted his knees outward so they wouldn’t hit the handlebars, and pedaled for home.   The Little Buckaroo’s overloaded front wheel racked violently.  The chain rattled against the guard. The seat had no give but plenty of take.

An inebriated fisherman on his way home from “repairing a hole in his boat”—a lie he frequently told to his wife—stopped in the middle of the lane and stared at the dark specter closing on his position; he heard the clink-clink of the chains of hell; he heard nascent nostrils’ heavy breathing; he sank to his knees, threw the jug into the weeds, crossed himself, and plaintively petitioned, “No, no Dios!  Voy a cambiar! Voy a cambiar!”

Then Billie rang the bell—not something even a sober Southerner would expect from the black horse and rider of John’s Revelation. The fisherman recanted his pledge and crawled off the road in search of his jug, repeating over and over— “No importa padre.”  Perhaps fortunately for him, both the moon and Billie were full of themselves that night.

After pedaling for thirteen minutes, Billie clattered around a bend in the trail, hit a rut and—absent a seat belt—launched over the handlebars into a shallow orbit.  Upon his re-entry a chorus of crickets chirped until he hit the ground and rolled.  BJ hoisted the bicycle overhead—in the dark he looked like Godzilla taking revenge on Tokyo—and flung it into the weeds that inundated the property.  The ramshackle Confederate barracks didn’t look half bad in the dark.  But then, Billie couldn’t see the other half.  At last he was home.

Following his first night of freedom, BJ sat on the stoop of the dilapidated dwelling listening to a mocking bird and tried to ignore the squadron of fanged flies circling overhead, vying for a turn to land and refuel.  Billie Joe was hungry, too.  Discouraged and chigger-chunked, he exclaimed:  “Looks like I inherited one hundred percent of nothing.”  True to their roots, the Quagmeyer clan had been swamp people for generations and, according to Cyrus Raven, they could trace their genealogy back to the Okefenokee tribe.  Billie had never seen documentation, but he considered himself the last ripe fruit on the family tree.  But then, he couldn’t eat an idea.

From his lonely perch he surveyed the entire half-acre estate.  Forty yards leeward of the barracks, cattails sucked life from green scum; frogs croaked; the ill-reputed coral snake slithered; the Cypress tree, draped with Spanish moss, steamed in the morning mist; the bewitching, muddy river washed its mouth out on the rocky shore, then swigged and swirled toward the salty sea.  The yard—littered with tawdry toys, cigarette butts, foam plates, a few flattened beer cans, drug paraphernalia, and the remnants of a still—apologetically confirmed that Cyrus Raven and his wife had not died of natural causes.

Land which had once grown soybeans in abundance refused to grow healthy weeds.  Most were dead or dying.  BJ had no tools and no way to cultivate the blanched earth.  The tractor wouldn’t start but still bore the manufacturer’s label: Case, Model 1953.  Its lifetime warranty had expired. The rusty crank hung below the radiator  and straddled the remains of a collapsed outhouse.  The transmission no longer peed oil.

Before its own demise, a pernicious bougainvillea had stabbed and strangled a FOR SALE BY OWNER sign and weaseled its way to the top of a tether-ball pole anchored in tired cement.  As a child Billie had played against himself for hours—but had never won.  He twirled around and gazed one last time at his birthplace.  It looked like he felt.  Pealed curls of calcimine wash had left the structure denuded and denigrated.  Hurricane Castro had uprooted a large eucalyptus and dumped it head-first through the barracks roof, creating the bizarre illusion of an upside-down tree house.  Toilet-paper remnants stuck to its branches like ghoulish Christmas decorations and waved goodbye—all a reminder that bad things happen to good toilet paper, too.

The disgruntled ex-con flip-flopped his way back to Greenville, gargled, washed his face, hair, and hands in the drinking fountain by Beno’s Drug, and then slipped into the shadows where he squatted by his gym bag until the town woke up.   BJ discarded the soiled dress shirt and donned one of two new tea-shirts furnished by the warden’s wife.   Its back had been silk screened with If You Met My Family You’d Understand.

Billie wanted to avoid fisticuffs until he’d snarfed down some breakfast.  A new eatery on Main Street—Pancake Palace— caught his eye.  Shiny, tomahawk-shaped, multicolored flags, tantalized by a warm breeze, ran from the eaves to the curb.   A perky Pensacola maiden, her dark hair braided and sporting a blue bow, stopped open the door and tendered a smile to passersby.  Billie checked his coin pocket and followed his nose.

Short of an hour later, still hungry, his shirt torn, his left cheek bruised, BJ was on the run—again.  From a distance, eyewitnesses swore he looked like a bow-legged orangutan fleeing on his hind legs.   With his flip-flops in one hand, a gym bag and a lady’s purse in the other, Billie scooted across the Genesee-Southern railroad tracks only seconds before a freight train—its whistle wailing “not you again”—barreled through, cutting off the Holcomb brothers’ hot pursuit.

Billie found seclusion, food, shoes, toilet paper, and a dandy M-9 bayonet knife in Arkansas’s 435 acre Poison Springs State Forest—a pilferer’s paradise. Three conclaves of campers fled the cathedraled woods swearing they’d been ravaged in the night by the devil himself.  Billie’s impersonation just seemed to come natural.

Keeping parallel to the road, he shop-lifted his way to Kingsland, birthplace of Jonny Cash, man in black, hoping to hook up with the singer who had made himself and Folsom Prison Blues famous.  BJ figured Jonny must be an ex-con.  No Jonny.  No cash.  So, Billie packed it in and—since no passing motorist dared offer him a ride—hoofed it back to a pasture near Pine Bluff where years earlier Cyrus Raven had brought him on a fishing expedition.  Actually, the fishing trip had been an afterthought. The trip’s purpose had been to school BJ in the fine art of boosting cars.  The plan had hooked a snag and sent them reeling.

Seventeen days had come and gone since Billie’s flight into Arkansas, and today marked his eighteenth day of freedom.  He dangled his feet in Big Muddy, fed out his trot line, let down his guard, and—with the line between his first and second toes—drifted to sleep on the grassy riverbank.  Spent autumn leaves, weary of hanging on to life, detached from a shady sycamore and dished back and forth, down, down, down.  More than a few lay in unfettered repose on Billie’s bulk.  He looked like Gulliver—fit to be tied.

On the road above the pasture, two Pine Bluff Humane Society employees—their conversation cluttered with clichés—motored toward home from LaSalle.  A freshly poached white-tail doe and her fawn lay lifeless in the back of the beige panel truck.

“Jasper, pull over.  My eyeballs is swimmin’.”  The truck rolled to a stop so Enid could swing out and take care of business.  Jasper opened the driver’s door to air out the cab.  He untangled the strap on the field glasses, pressed them to his eyes, and looked down range.

“My, oh my, Ida Claire.  Whoever he is, that feller looks peacefuller than a dead pig in the sunshine.”

“Lemme see.”  Enid stretched the overall straps back over his rounded shoulders while he penguin-walked around the truck.  “I cain’t see a thing.  Wait. . . . Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit.  He looks like ten miles of bad road.”

Jasper reached into the back of the panel truck and—hand over hand–commenced dragging out the long, noosed control pole.

“Now hold on thar jest a minute. What in tarnation do you think yur gonna do?”

Jasper scratched his noggin.  “Enid, the way I figure it, this here’s public land, and him there’s a public nuisance.  It’s our swarn duty to noose and cage varmints. Besides, dollars to donuts this uns on the run an’ has a bounty on his hade.  Who knows, he coulda kilt somebody.”

“Lemme see them glasses agin.”  Enid zoomed in tight from seventy-five yards.  “Jest lookin’ at that feller makes me as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs.  Don’ you think he mighta just offed hisself?”

“Confound it, Enid.  He’s got a trot line in the water, don’t ya see? Don’t go off and be an old stick-in-the-mud.  Could be we’re about to hit the jackpot.”

“But what if I got it figured right and he is dade?  Shore as shootin’ somebody’ll trip on by and see us proddin’ him?  They’ll think we kilt him.  We’d be in a mess a hurt. I think we jist otter skedaddle and let em’ be.”  Enid turned and walked toward his side of the truck. “Leave em be, I tell ya.”  He grabbed the door handle and pushed the button.  “We’d have more luck tryin’ to herd a bunch a cats across the road than capturin’ that big monkey.”

“Enid, Enid. Like your Pa used ta say, ‘If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay under the porch.’  I’m gonna lasso me a reward.”

“Okay, okay, you win.  Hold your horses.  If you’ll noose him, I’ll dart him.”

Jasper carried the pole and noose.  Enid grabbed and loaded the tranquilizer rifle.  It had been a long time since the friends had tiptoed to the edge of what came easy, and they’d never had more than a few dollars in their pockets at one time.  They spread out and sneaked down the hill.

The plan had two flaws—Jasper was one, Enid, the other. They had a reputation for being “dumber than a box of rocks.” Like overturned kayaks both men soon floated face-down toward the Gulf of Mexico.

Billie waved a salacious goodbye. Sedate as a dug-in badger, he climbed in the truck, leaned over, and popped open the glove-box.  Out spilled half a box of 12 gauge shotgun shells, a half-eaten Rocky Road candy bar, and—wadded into a ball—a map. Billie chugged down the bar, got out, and smoothed out the wrinkled map on the warm hood of the truck.  “Ya got it caddywompus, Billie.  Turn it like so.”  He used a finger as a pointer.

“Let’s see now, I might could . . . Here’s me, and there’s Gulfport, the second biggest city in Mississippi.”  Billie splashed his finger up and down in the Gulf.  “Thinkin’, thinkin’.   You should be able to disappear on the coast, with all them docks, and ships, and beaches, warehouses, and such.  Who knows, one day, Billie Boy, you might just take a cruise.”  Moving his finger up the middle of U. S. Highway 49 he circled Hattiesburg twice and punched it in the middle. “Hattiesburg.  Hattiesburg?  Ma. That’s where you was born.  Oh, Billie, Billie, Billie.”  Spiked by a few volts of enthusiasm, Billie hastily calculated the mileage.   “Two hundred and ten.  I can make that before nightfall. Highway 49.  Got it.”

He wadded up and threw the map on the back seat, climbed in the truck, slammed the door, floored the accelerator, and turned the key.  Rejection.  “Story of my life.”  But the fuel gauge registered half-full.  Billie’s stomach, on the other hand, floated but half a candy bar and registered hungry.  He turned the key and pumped the accelerator.  Nothing.  He forced the shifter into park and turned the key; the engine turned over and came to life. “Giddy-up.”  He racked the steering wheel, made a U-turn, slapped the outside of the door-panel with his hand, and yelled, “Giddy-down.”  The tires spun, the truck fishtailed down the road, and in fifteen minutes he was bridging the mighty Mississippi and imagining the good life in Gulfport.

Billie Joe invented a technique for staying awake. Since he detested the wealthy, every time a luxury car passed him on the road, he screamed, “high cotton,” and laid on the horn. Every five or ten miles when an oncoming vehicle moved into the passing lane, he dodged back and forth across the median, flashed his headlights, and played chicken.

Two hundred and ten miles later BJ passed Southern Mississippi University.  “I’m nearly there, Mama.”  Not far ahead on the left-hand side of the street, and set back from the blue and white marquee, the eight-story Forrest General Hospital’s windows glowed golden in the afternoon sun.  Billie pulled over to the curb, slid across the bench seat, and climbed out on the sidewalk.  “If I had a camera I’d take a picture of where you was born, Mama.”  A tear tried to moisten his eye but he blinked it away. “And if you was alive, I’d drive back to Greenville and staple it to your head for dying on me without saying goodbye . . . what stinks?”

Billie opened the paired sheet-metal doors on the back of the panel truck and threw up his hands to fend off an attack. The wafted smell of rotting meat cannibalized his senses.  He grabbed the legs, yanked, and parked the doe and her spotted fawn behind the truck, but he nixed the idea of trying to pose them “all natural-like.”  He hurriedly climbed in the cab, slammed the door, and sped away–but not away from the smell on his hands.  To Billie the rancid deer symbolized everything he hated about life—the federal government, the American flag, the South, the wealthy, and Mississippi—his home.  He had spent his life—not just his time in prison—in colorless isolation and poverty. He had never looked to heaven for help. He had never cried for joy.

Instead, Billie had learned to contrive, script, and masquerade his own brand of so-called “pleasure.”  His vocabulary of racial epithets festered in his brain like an infected wound.   He sought solace by screaming out the window at pedestrians and passersby.  He cursed cities, hamlets and hovels along the way. Billie-blinders blocked his vision of the sprawling savannahs, the stands of longleaf, slash, and loblolly pine; the drooping azaleas, mountain laurels, wild orchids, and wild flowers—all intoxicated with their own scent—all now closing up and settling in for the night.

After the sun dropped from sight, Billie commenced looking for a place to hole up and get some shut-eye.  Lettering on the crumpled map and words on a highway sign merged and flagged his mind to slow down.  He buttoned the headlights on high beam with the touch of his toe, shifted down, pulled left across the median and stopped diagonally in the middle of the highway.  The routed beige and brown Forest Service marker, lettered in white, read—De Soto National Forrest:  Caylee Campground.

“Okefenokee for you, Billie Boy.  Time to raise a little hell.”

He rolled off Highway 49, shut off all but the parking lights, and idled down a gravel road beneath the canopy of evergreens.  “Time to torch the truck, jack a new ride, find some grub, and get some shut-eye.”  To his left a dusty, green Winnebago motor home slumbered in the dark.  Further on, a family of four sat on lawn chairs beside a Mercury station wagon watching– “TV?”  Billie drove a quarter mile, pulled into an empty campsite, shut off the engine and listened to the sound of silence; he dozed.  “What, what?  Wake up.” He slapped his cheeks and climbed out of the truck.  After bagging his belongings, including a disassembled shotgun and shells, he retrieved and fired up a cigarette lighter.  Off came the gas cap.

“Boom-boom Billie?  Not tonight.  I’m not that stupid.”  He dropped the lighter into his pocket without closing the lid.  Damage control. Burn, burn. After biting his tongue, slapping his thigh, and dancing a jig for five minutes, Billie regained a modicum of composure.  But his blistered skin still hurt.  He stripped a few suckers from nearby trees, laid them across the truck, slashed its tires, and set out to explore the large campground in the dark.

Distant rippling laughter turned Billie’s head.  He set a course toward the noise and commenced muscling his way through the trees toward the badinage, straight-arming low-hanging gut-stabbers with the shotgun, raised defensively in both hands.  He paused now and then to listen and make minor course corrections.  Presently, the flickering light of a small fire magically meandered through the trees and cheered his dark, baggy eyes.  He grinned.  “Supper time, BJ,” and knelt, but not to bless the food.  After fumbling around in the dark for a minute, he retrieved, assembled, loaded the magazine, and pumped a shell into the shotgun chamber.  After stowing the rest of his gear under a fallen tree, he continued on, combating the underbrush and stomping toward the encampment exuding the confidence of a full-grown water buffalo in heat.

As he drew nearer, one giant step at a time, Billie detected a salubrious soliloquy.  A man’s voice, punctuated with “yep-yeps,” titillated his eardrums.  He paused and pushed a right ear forward like a bull elephant does before charging.  Silence. He shrugged, picked up the pace and navigated around a covey of motorcycles—too many to count.  When he got within ten feet of the camp, someone snarled, “You with the shotgun.  If you were trying to surprise us, your imitation of a Sherman tank was too well done.  Now you’ll soon be well done unless you turn around.  This here’s an exclusive man’s club, so turn your hiney toward the fire and buggar off.”  Billie Joe didn’t break stride.  He broke wind.  One-two-three-four-five steps.

He stopped three yards from four picnic tables, lined end to end and sprawling away from him. Sixteen men— half on one side of the tables, half on the other—stood with one leg in and one leg outside the bench seats, eyeballing the twelve-gauge. At the far end a solitary figure, his features indistinguishable, a ball cap pulled forward on his head, stood with his arms folded across his chest. Billie’s eyes darted from one rebel face to another, taking note of the Glock 19- Generation Fours that hung from studded belts ready for action.  Billie showed no fear.  He was hungry and anxious.

Again the voice standing in the dim light at the far end of the tables barked, “You interrupted our carvin’ contest.  Yep, yep. It’s true.  True enough.  So, before we take you for a big chunk of balsa wood, turn around and run.  I’m not askin’ again.”

Billie stood his ground, his trigger finger straight and ready to curl and pull.  Then the unbelievable happened.

“Well, if I ain’t a horsefly on a sow’s butt; looky who we got here.   What a Petri dish world we live in.”   The gang leader sprang effortlessly onto the table and walked the gauntlet between his men and toward Billie Joe.  It was Jonny Ray Santos, wanted for murder in Charleston, South Carolina. He jumped to the ground with the grace and agility of a Siamese cat, landed two feet in front of the intruder, and took off his cap. “Billie Joe Quagmeyer, are you a sight for sore eyes.”

Orphaned at age seven, Jonny  was three years Billie Joe’s junior.  They had bonded in Mississippi during a botched attempt to rob a grand master of the Ku Klux Klan on his way to supervise a lynching.  To elude capture, BJ had piggybacked Ajani across a snake infested, slimy slew in the dark.  Admiring the high-water mark on BJ’s neck, Ajani set his sights on growing up to be like his role model.  The dream required a long stretch—in the Mississippi State Penitentiary.  Ajani still came up short by one foot, and so he gave up the quest and contented himself with disappearing into BJ’s size fifteen footprints.

The paltry pair had spent most of their time in the shadows.  Jonny, type-cast for his role as tag-along, became adept at pressing like a chameleon against dank walls in the alleyways of life.  Both his tongue and misdeeds left him pricked with regret, but he didn’t bleed.  He’d snatched snakes but had never been bitten. To him, coiling to strike back—or strike first—came naturally.  With arms outstretched he stepped cautiously forward to give BJ a hug.

Billie straight armed Jonny in the chest and stepped back. Sixteen semi-automatics vacated their holsters.  “Yeah, well here I am. Now what?”

“Not meaning any offense, but you do remember me, don’t you?”

“Yes.  I saved your brown hide by carrying your bag of bones through a swamp so as we could get away from the Grand What-cha-ma-call-it of the Ku Klux Klan up north.”

“Did you hear that, boys?  It sure is true.  I was on his shoulders and he was up to his neck in pea soup.  Everybody meet my friend, Billie Joe Q.—the toughest, meanest, smartest man I ever met.  Say, when did you get out?”

“Who wants to know?  I’ve been cuffed up so many times I’ve lost track.  What are you doin’ down here on my turf?”

Jonny eyeballed his men.  “Well, if this ain’t providential.  Yep, yep.  Shall I tell him why we’re here?”  Although weapons were holstered, nobody spoke.  Nobody relaxed.  All eyes were sizing up Billie.  “Well then, I’ll tell him.”  Jonny puffed out his chest, shoved his thumbs in his front pockets, and smiled.   “BJ, how’d you like to go to Afghanistan?  You could be our chief.  I’d nominate you myself.”  The crew muttered in protest under their breath.  Jonny Ray straightened up and wagged his finger.  “Listen up you bunch a hayroobs.  This here fella is a direct descendant the Okefenokee.  You are still descended from one of their chiefs, ain’t ya, Billie?”  BJ nodded mechanically.

“See?  It’s just like I said.  So, here’s the deal, and its sweeter than a mess of grits.  We’re gonna to truck on down to Gulfport tomorrow.”  He leaned forward and whispered, “I got connections. We’re shippin’ out to Karachi, Pakistan, and from there we’ll skip on over to Afghanistan.”

“Skip where, you say?”

“Afghanistan.  Hey, didn’t you watch TV at Club Fed?”  Jonny didn’t wait for an answer.  “We’re going overseas to join ISIS.  It stands for I Stab In Spades.  I figured that out on my own.  Maybe it’s a code word that’ll slick the skids, if you get my meanin.’ Once you’re on the inside ya get chicks compliments of the owner; the chicks love ya; the money comes stacked on government pallets; ya get on TV, and ya can kill anybody who isn’t a member . . . AND,” he leaned up close, “no jail time. Yep, yep, and get this, when it comes to Americans, there’ no bag limit.   Should I continue?”

At first take, the idea of stowing away on a freighter bound for Karachi, Pakistan, spelled “insanity.”  Billie shrugged and pawed the air dismissively with his hand.  “Naw.  Not for me.” But he couldn’t turn down a free ride to Gulf Port.  So, the next day found him hanging onto Jonny’s bunny-hop handles for dear life, racing south at eighty miles an hour on a Harley Hog.

Within the week, Jonny had another sales opportunity dropped in his lap.  He secretly called it providential.  He led the whole gang into Frigg’s Food Mart and Drive-Thru—on East Railroad Street, a block away from the wharf—for some refreshments.  “The drinks are on me.”  The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.   As they slurped down a sixth refill, TRAGER TV re-ran old footage of the October World Series Boston massacre.  It garnered more attention than the overweight strippers in the Catfish Club down the street.   Every bloodshot eye took in more carnage than they could have otherwise imagined. Billie Joe Quagmeyer puffed up like an adder looking for someone to bite. “Wow, what a . . . WOW.”  He gave Jonny a high five.

Everybody grinned.  Gotcha.

Just then the entry door swung open, a bell tinkled, and a cop strolled into the food mart to buy a donut and a Coke.  The gang hushed and meekly walked out the door single file, their weapons covered by sloppy shirts.

“Good morning, officer.”

“Howdy doody, Sir.”

“Have a nice day, Mr. Policeman.”

“Nice ride ya got out there.”

“Hungry, huh?”

“I hate cops.”

They walked around back and congregated by the dumpster to take a deep sniff of ocean air, relax, finish their drinks, and swap stories.  Twinky, the youngest and most fragile of the crew was last to slip by the cop and first to offend BJ by accidentally bumping his arm with his head.  What had been a full cup took three seconds and two forward flips to land upside down on the crab-grass.

” Oops.”  Twinky trembled, swallowed, and tried to drain BJ’s bile with misdirection.  “A . . . Mister Billie, before your release from prison for good behavior did you by any chance come onto that story of the Oregon dude who joined ISIS and had the honor of hacking off the head of an American diplomat on TV?”   The lengthy question depleted Twinky’s oxygen supply.  His face paled.  His feigned smile straight-lined and died.  His lower lip trembled, and he held his breath, fully anticipating that he’d be squashed and thrown like an under-cooked cheeseburger into the dumpster.

Right on cue, Billie’s nostrils flared; he eyes narrowed into slits, and he perceived the ploy—the kid’s trying to buy time.  “Naw, never happened, not on TV.”  Billie stomped on the overturned cup and twisted his foot back and forth, back and forth, as if he were crushing the nicotine out of a Marlboro.  He looked down at Twinky and pressed a giant index finger against his forehead, much like the baton which had so often been pressed between his own beady eyes up in Parchman.  “You’re foolin’ with me kid, and I don’t like it.”  Twinky backed away, tripped on the curb, and fell into the drive-up right in front of an orange, slowly moving VW, causing a hungry patron to punch her brakes.  One foot more and Twinky’s head would have popped like a watermelon—just like those Jinny used to shoot from three hundred yards.  The driver laid on the horn.  Billie leaned forward, bunched up his nose, and fired three rounds of hate into the woman’s chest.  She gulped, rolled up the window, jumped the curb, mowed down a bed of wilting chrysanthemums, and sped off without her order.

Jonny seized the moment and stepped in front of Billie Joe.  No peace-pipe.  “Easy chief, Twinky wasn’t pulling your leg. I saw the hacking with my own two eyes.”

Billie shook his head as if he were coming out of a trance.  “Well, if that don’t beat all.”  He’d been vacationing in the hole at the time the graphic footage first aired, and the mental picture of someone being decapitated on TV stimulated his revolutionary juices better than Jonny’s conciliatory Slurpee.  But Billie didn’t help Twinky to his feet, and he never spoke to him again.

Within a few days, Ajani had filled the boss’s head with fermented, treasonous, propaganda and cunningly topped off the intoxicating brew with, “I give you Karim— Chief of the Okefenokee Clan, the high potentate of the Mississippi Militia.” Billie’s brain cells filled with caustic acid and charged his take on joy. He cherished the notion that somehow his clan and ISIS leaders, or even the Taliban chiefs, might be blood relatives; he panted over the prospect of inheriting 70 chicks in heaven; he drooled over the idea of randomly slashing off the heads of American soldiers with no fear of retribution; he savored a drive to become infamous and wealthy.  A hijab sealed bubbling angst within his soul when, on January 25, the gang gathered round a ceremonial campfire in a secluded wood northwest of Biloxi. They locked arms, swayed from side to side singing Kumbaya, and got bombed on a batch of homemade hooch.  Billie donned a black hijab—stolen from the Bradford-O’Keefe funeral home on Howard Street—and Jonny led the chant. “Karim- Karim-long live Karim, chief of the Okefenokee.”

Ajani had convinced everyone, including Billie Joe, that the Red Cross was filthy rich, that bloodletting leads to wealth and international acclaim, and that Afghanistan lay just over the crimson horizon. (Jonny purposely didn’t factor in the 8,301 miles of turbulent ocean between, “bon voyage,” and “yippy ki yay.”)

Before they sneaked aboard the Mobil Maiden—a supertanker docked at Biloxi—Karim sprinkled hooch on Jonny Ray’s head and exclaimed, “I crystalize you, Ajani, first lieutenant to the great Karim.  We’ve been born again.  Afghanistan, here we come, and it’s all for you, Mama. Wish you were here.”

Smuggled by freighter to Karachi, Pakistan, Karim and his gang stole a truck and headed across the border into Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires.  Eleven hours later they limped into Kandahar, disgruntled that nobody stood on the road into town waving the black ISIS flag.  No fanfare; no pats on the back; no weapons; no matching black outfits; and the Coca-Cola truck was useless—out of gas and had a flat tire.

“Where’s the palm trees, the parks for sleepin’, the Taliban, and where’s all them ISIS warriors we saw on TV?”  Weather-worn and burping carbonated gas, Karim suffered from scurvy and weeks of exposure. He climbed a fire-escape with his men and perched atop a low-lying apartment building where they looked over a parapet into a barren wasteland.  “What in blazes are they doing with all the poppy money?”  Bewildered stares focused on the U.S. Army Special Operations base several clicks outside the city.

“Jonny Ray Santos, alias Ajani, spoke up. “Karim, maybe you led us to the wrong place.” Jonny only got away with the observation because he was BJ’s most trusted lieutenant.

“How should I know? Look Ajani, even cell-phones don’t work good up here,” Karim replied. His unkempt hair, bugaboo beard, and black, hairy brow, perhaps the shaggiest photographed in anthropological history—or pasted on a rap sheet—sprawled over his face and around his coal black eyes, underscored by tired looking tea bags.  He stared into the distance hoping the military base was just a mirage.  Without daring to say it aloud, his men thought their chief looked more like anemic hound dog on the prowl than a chief.  He spit his chaw on the orange clay tiles and muttered, “Any place has to be better than my shack back in Mississippi.”

“What are you thinking, Chief?”  Billie’s nervous system had been a tangle of loose connections for many years, but he was thinking he needed to prove his machismo to his crew by finding someone to “boost”—his word.

“Well, the American base isn’t a mirage.” Slow to arise, his disenchanted men followed Karim off the roof and trudged single file down the road to the north, looking for an easy mark. They spied a sleepy-eyed soldier returning from Kandahar after a day off.  He was on foot, high on something, and headed toward the U.S. Special Operations base near the city.  Karim and Ajani sneaked up behind, tapped him on the shoulder, and asked for his weapon and wallet.  The soldier declined the request and began to run, so Karim tapped him three times in the back with his Glock.  The men would later affirm that Karim didn’t shoot the soldier in the back; he scared him to death, and then fired the three rounds.  Regardless, He gave Arabic-sounding names to a few of his men.  Jonny, liked his alias—Ajani; it stuck like the dirt beneath his toenails.  “Yep. Yep.”  And most importantly, Karim of Kandahar was born on the road that day.

At a shadowed ceremony in the evening—and after again locking arms, swaying from side to side singing Kumbaya—the Mississippi-born curmudgeon renounced his American citizenship over a shared can or two of pork and beans pried open with a knife.  He swore an oath that the only way he’d return home was in a box—preferably dead. Privately, Karim figured he might die of starvation, but he made all kinds of pie-in-the-sky promises to his men and then concluded the service by threatening to kill anyone who deserted.

Of course, Karim’s nationality made no difference to the team of Afghan military policemen who, the following morning, chased the gang in and out of the bazaar’s lining the Kandahar streets before running them into a well-conceived trap.  With no place to hide, hungry and dehydrated, they surrendered, were shackled and shoved in separate, rectangular wire cages like hen-layers in a backyard.  Karim consoled himself.  At least the food and accommodations are an improvement over the Mississippi jails, and the morons didn’t use no noose.  And no more beatings.  Thus far, all Karim had to show for his sacrifice was a dried blood stain on his clothing—that of a young soldier from Trenton, an American treasure, a sacrificial Lamb.

Three days from retirement, the white-haired postie rolled the Grumman off the pavement and applied the brakes.  Angie Wickham leaned out the side window and with a thumb and forefinger unlatched the weathered lid.  She then lifted an official government envelope from a reinforced plastic bin with the same demur as one would a dead black widow.  After camouflaging the envelope within a folded Target add, Angie hastily slipped it into the mailbox and snapped the lid shut.  No one heard her whisper:  “When you care enough to send the very best, this is what you get back–in spades.”

Gemma stood at the living room window and waved.  “Angie never waves.  I wonder if its a regulation.” The Grumman  motored from the shade of the scarred sycamore and backfired.   Like the government, it needed a tune-up.

Official  DOD policy bulletin:  In place of in-person notifications, the Pentagon has determined that high casualty rates temporarily necessitate  the mailing of  condolences to bereaved families. Our apologies.

Once read from top to bottom, the  harbinger of bad tidings lay on Gemma’s aproned lap.  She clicked on, muted the television, and sat alone for hours watching nothing.

“Can I change channels, Ma?” asked Lance, as he charged in from the bus stop and let  the screen door slam behind him. Gemma looked comatose. “Mama, what’s wrong?”  As Lance reached for the tuner he saw the official correspondence; one sorry phrase leaped off the page and grabbed him by the throat. ‘We regret to inform you that Captain Conor O’Dwyer was killed in  Herat, Afghanistan,  on . .  .’  Now he knew.  Gemma pushed the quilt aside, arose, and shut off the television.

“I’m going to bed, son.  Isabelle is sleeping over at Kaitlin’s tonight. You’ll find leftovers in the fridge.”

Lance watched his mother shuffle into her bedroom and close the door.  Tears welled up in his eyes.  I’m glad Isabelle isn’t home.   He locked the front door, checked the windows, and shuffled to the screened-in back porch where he stood and listened to the night.  Turning back toward the kitchen he stopped again and held his breath.  Something heavy was being dragged across the snow.

Lance wiped his eyes, unlocked the door, flipped on the floodlight, and peaked into the yard.  “Uncle Albert!”

“Land sakes!  You startled me, boy.”

“I startled you? Why are you out here wandering around in the dark?  Where’s your torch? And did you hear about . . . ”

Albert snarled, “Wasn’t out for a moonlight stroll, if that’s what you’re getting at. Shut off the durn light, will you? I run out of potatoes, so I’m borrowing this bag from your root cellar.”

“Let me help you.  It looks too heavy to get over the stile.”

Albert bristled.  “No, no!  I got it, boy.  It’s cold out here.  You go on in and get to bed.”   Dragging the bag behind him he added, “Thanks anyhow, Conor.”

“Conor?”

Every seat lining Concourse L was occupied by restlessness.  Chorused commotion rose and fell like an artificial soundtrack dubbed into a TV sitcom. Every soldier appeared to have a cell-phone.  For those crowded together, roaming charges didn’t apply, but soon they would.   Families and friends screened through a military check-point nested around their camouflaged heroes, soon to fly away, perhaps forever.  Some held children in their arms or on their laps; others laughed nervously; some cried; others whispered encouragement; some stared into an ethereal fog; others slept. All but the sleepers were anxious, even Jinny, whose stomach churned audibly.  She occupied one of many padded seats hobbled together for life and profiled loiterers of all shapes and sizes who sat the floor, hugged walls, wrapped the corners, or trickled one by one through tiled restroom portals.

Jinny profiled no one, not even brown-skinned men with beards, women wearing abayas, or other clothing foreign to someone from Kansas.  Soon she  enjoined her eyes to follow the news ticker across the overhead TV monitor.

This C-Span Program originally aired November 2nd. . .. ‘The Chair recognizes Mr. Abernathy, of Kansas.”

“As do I, Mr. Abernathy,” Jinny mused, “but you won’t get my vote come next November.”

Obnoxious compressed air posited to Jinny’s right stopped hissing.  The soldier snorted, opened his eyes, and his  mouth ejected. “What’s up?”

“Senator Abernathy from the great state of Kansas is UP . . . for re-election next November.” Jinny pointed at the monitor. “But I wasn’t speaking to you, soldier.  Oops, what I meant to say is I’m just talking to myself.”

The lance corporal pushed himself upright, yawned, scratched his head, and for the first time laid eyes on his spunky seatmate.  “Wo.  I mean if you’re talking to yourself, I’d say you’re in real good company, sister.”

“That would be Bravo Company.  And yours?”

“Charlie—named after my dog.  Pant, pant. Do that make me a dog-soldier, sister?”

“Hmm, no, but I see why you’d ask.”  Anxious to disengage from this rambling back and forth, Jinny posited a few facts.  “I read someplace that dog soldiers were elite warriors who formed the last line of defense for the Cheyenne tribe.  You may go back to sleep now.”

“No, no, please carry on, I may just hook a ride on that big old air-o-plane after all.” He winked.

Jinny shrugged.  “As you wish, but I’ll make it quick.  If I remember correctly, each dog soldier carried a sacred arrow, dyed red and tied to a ceremonial banner, or perhaps a ribbon.  When the battle got fierce, the warrior staked the ribbon to the ground as a sign that he would not retreat and fought until he conquered his enemy or met death head on. The end.”

“You don’t say?  I’m rightly impressed.  Y’all are quek.  I’m Baggar from Buford.”

“Hi, Baggar from Buford, but I’m not ‘quek’, I’m O’Dwyer from Abilene.”

“O’Dryer from Texas? My oh my.”  The words slipped from his tongue.

“Sure, you’ve heard of Sam O’Houston and George O’Bush, haven’t you?”

“For real?  Naw, your funnin’ me.  Yeah, I see the look.”

Jinny pasted a fake smile over her lips and sighed.  She pointed at her name tag.  “I’m O’Dwyer from Kansas.”  They knuckled one another.

“Got it, O’Dryer.”  Baggar sat up.  His eyebrows danced, his forehead rippled into relaxed wrinkles, and he grinned.  “So, you’re sure you aren’t from Georgia?”

“Georgia?  Now I’m confused.”

“Well you see, O’Dwyer from Kansas, I’m from Georgia, and I was almost sure I’d dosadoed all the cute chicks down there, don’t cha know.  Do you like to square dance?”  Without sounding a warning, Baggar sneezed.  Loud and wet.  When he witnessed Jinny’s reaction he hunkered down, pulled out his phone, and commenced cycling through a gallery of overexposed photos.

Jinny’s eyes narrowed and her pasted smile fell off.   She reached up and toweled her face.  More disheartened than peeved, she snugged her knees against her chest like a roly-poly bug, curled her head forward, and glared at Senator Abernathy, who continued to ignore her plight.  The message-ticker slinked across the base of the screen.

” . . Mr. Oglethorpe, Mr. President, I thank the Senator from the great state of Washington for yielding the balance of her time to me here this morning.  We join hands across the aisle and grieve when one of our own comes home draped with the flag he fought so valiantly to preserve.  And so, I rise on this occasion to honor the life of SPC Kyle Jalon Copitzsky of the U. S. Army and Topeka, Kansas.  Specialist Copitzsky was assigned to F Company, 4th Brigade Support Battalion, and 4th Infantry Division.  He was only 24 years old when he lost his life on February 15 while serving bravely in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in the Arghandab River Valley in Afghanistan. He was only three weeks into his first deployment.”

“Three weeks?!”  For all of thirty seconds, Jinny longed to be home in Abilene, safely tucked in bed next to her baby sister, listening to her breathe.  She felt a nudge.

“Are we okay, O’Dwyer of Abilene?”

“Never better, Corporal, never better.  C’est la vie,” she whispered to herself.  Jinny’s lips quivered imperceptibly.  She buttoned them down for safekeeping.  Brown eyes watered her long lashes, but she blinked them dry.  Tinseled Timex hands pointed to 17 and 3.  No time to surrender.  Jinny unfolded long enough to ply her feet and ankles against the rucksack and dead-end it under the bolted-down airport seat without taking her eyes off the Senator.

“It’s my sad duty to enter the name of SPC Copitzsky into the record of the         United States Senate for his service to our country and for his profound commitment to freedom, democracy, and peace . . .”  Both the Senator and the ticker stopped mid-sentence.  The ticker pulsated.  Abernathy didn’t blink.  He stared at the prepared text then reared back as if someone had taken a swipe at him and missed.  Jinny leaned toward the fray and watched his anxious fingers leaf through papers without a word. The Senator’s zig-zagging lips wirelessly telegraphed his confusion.

Jinny blurted out, “Mr. Abernathy, did you lose your place?” Without looking up from his phone, Lance Corporal Baggar shook his head and continued scrolling, pausing, and scrolling some more, oblivious to the Senator’s sad missive.

“Every enlisted man and woman deserves our respect, gratitude, and, may I add, our commitment the passage of SB 242.  Service to God and country is . . . let’s see, it’s here somewhere . . .”  He pivoted to his right where his aid—a gorgeous, petite young blonde, dressed in a blue suit covered with white polka-dots—peppily popped up like a lawn sprinkler pressured into service.  Stepping to the base of the dais, she slipped the speech from the Senator’s tremored hands, reshuffled the pages, handed them back, tapped a line on the top page, smiled, and without a word sat and pretended to be invisible.     Senator Abernathy smoothed his thinning hair back from his forehead and plodded on. “Hum, hum, yes, yes, as I was about to say–before the interruption—I am proud to co-sponsor SB 242 with Mr. Galbraith from the great . . . what’s wrong now?”  Teased by the touch and whisper of his pretty assistant, he leaned, listened, cleared his throat, and blushed.  “Excuse me, I misspoke.   I meant to say, Ms. Galbraith, Senator from the great state of Washington.  I do know the difference, Ms. Galbraith and Mr. President.”

“HOGWASH, it just isn’t so.”

Jinny and Baggar came to attention like witnesses to a head-on collision between a sixteen-wheeler and a Volkswagen.  Two soldiers—one, short, rotund and animated, the other, tall, lean, and sedate—realized they had attracted unwanted attention and turned toward the window overlooking the tarmac.  “Them two chili peppers wouldn’t calm my gut.  Do you know them, O’Dwyer?”    “No, Lance Corporal, but they remind me of somebody.” “And who might that be?”   “They remind me of my Papa and his brother-in-law.”

When measured alongside Albert, Caleb stood tall as a Sequoia bent on reaching heaven, resistant to infectious behavior, and ever productive—admired by all.  Albert came up short—short on vision, short on patience, and short on productivity—an antonym of admiration. Jinny had long ago christened Albert, Chief Leaky Boat, but had never wished him out to sea.   Leaky or not, he drooled small talk, smugness, and self-adulation.  Albert was a “something for nothing” kind of guy.  He’d labor vigorously on the farm for a few days, and then, without giving notice, he’d jump in his car and drive away—sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a week—with Blondie stretched out near the rear window, perhaps wondering what they were running from this time.  Caleb thanked God for the rain; Albert cursed until a bow painted the horizon, then he’d go in search of the pot of gold.  Caleb basked in the satisfaction of a job well done; Albert poked his head from behind the curtain, always happy to upstage Caleb and take the spotlight.

The shorter man left the window and sat down. Jinny leaned back, laced her fingers behind her head, and stretched at her seams, fully aware that her thoughts had left no one in stitches.  The Senator smiled.

“Our bill passed through committee without amendment last month, but to my chagrin it was hotly debated on this Senate floor until last Friday.  Before the vote is taken, I wish to say that the passage of SB 242 will cut in half the red-tape between our veterans and . . ..“

Jinny released her stretch and, like a pheasant kicked out of the weeds by a poacher at sunset, bounded to her feet. “YIKES.  Uncle Al-b-e-r-t.  You startled me.”  She backpedaled a step or two to stake out some breathing room and gazed into her Uncle’s narrowed, bloodshot eyes.  Nose hairs, although much shorter than his well-groomed goatee, needed clipping.  He wore a stylish, tasseled, tan-colored fedora, pulled down far enough to fan his large ears to the sides; his graying hair had been tightly clipped.  A gold stud adorned his left earlobe; a braided leather lanyard, hidden beneath a starched collar and clasped by a silver woggle topped with turquoise, came together on his chest; his darted cowboy shirt and relaxed-fit jeans—still bearing the folds—looked like they just been stolen from Neiman Marcus.   A wide, studded, black belt—sporting a shiny buckle engraved with a long-horn’s head—appeared under considerable tension around his belly.  By contrast, Albert’s diamond-studded silver ring twisted loosely when aggravated by his thumb and chubby forefinger.

“So, THERE you are.” Albert’s all but flamboyant appearance was overshadowed by a deeply lined scowl which, over man years, had cost him nothing but friends.  Jinny inhaled deeply and—tempered like a sniper, defensive and still—she let co2 escape from her lungs a little at a time.   On the other hand, Albert fidgeted.  He had the well-tended ability to suck the oxygen out of most any room, if he kept at it long enough.  And like the Hindenburg dirigible, he was highly volatile.

“Sorry, Uncle. I recognized Senator Abernathy’s face and got lost in his message.  Did you just get here?” she asked, her arms outstretched awaiting a hug.  Albert didn’t budge, except to fold his arms. He cocked back his head and triggered a few rounds of contempt from below his barrel-shaped nose.

“I bumped through that maze of camouflaged insanity and was shown less respect than I’d give a calf in a slaughter-chute. I was ready to call it quits and skedaddle, but la-de-da, low and behold, here you are, sitting off to the side watching TV.”

“Oh, that. Yes, Senator Abernathy was honoring a fallen soldier from . . . “

“Don’t pay him no mind, kiddo; with them silver-tongued Washingtonites it’s always the same ole same ole.”  Sullen and red-faced, Albert stuck his thumbs in his front pockets, leaned forward, and tried to stretch up tall.  “I thought you was supposed to fly outta here an hour ago, kiddo.”  Jinny inhaled a whiff of his breath.

“Alcohol? Albert, did you drive yourself down here drunk?”  He scowled. His eyes darted self-consciously  left and right, then narrowed like a gangster’s.  Jinny didn’t blink.   Albert’s head drooped while he attempted to snuff out an illusory cigarette, stare at his new Justin boots and twist the carpet fibers with his foot.  His chin came forward, his eyebrows arched, and his steely grey eyes glowered at his niece. Before answering, he snorted, cranked his head to the side, popped his neck, and then snap-lashed his tongue like a bullwhip.

“Just who do you think you’re talkin’ to, Miss Temperance?”

“But, Uncle Albert, I . . .”

Albert struck again.  “I asked you a question, Missy.  How come your flight’s an hour late?”  His shoulders coiled sideways so he could relocate what was ordinarily a deaf ear and paused for Jinny’s pained reply.

“They haven’t told us, Uncle Al.”  Jinny ordered her eyes to search for a foxhole. Four inches taller than her mother’s only brother, she gazed wistfully beyond his spiffy fedora through the plate-glass window and down at the rain-soaked tarmac.  Three C-5 Galaxy transports—each one 240 feet long—sat wing-tip to wing-tip, their mouths wide open, their tongues flat, and their pallets piled high with the armaments of war.

Albert caught up with Jinny’s line of sight and stopped where hers did. “It’s nearly six o’clock, Jinn.  You sure they can git them things off the ground?”  He grumbled.

Jinny nodded. “Yes, but I see they’re still up-loading tanks and Humvees.   I’m sorry for the delay Uncle Albert but thank you for coming to see me off.”  Her discomfort overshadowed an attempt to smile.  Both Albert and Jinny twitched nervously as they stood side by side like two lonely prairie dogs in the middle of an air-conditioned desert.  Neither knew what to say next.  They hadn’t been close for years, but now they were too close—too close for comfort.   Still composed, Jinny spoke softly. “How are Mama, Lance, and Isabelle?”

The nap on the back of Albert’s neck sprang to attention.  “Them youngins?  They got the measles; don’t you know it?  And they’re suckin’ the life out of my little sister.  You shoulda seed her last week, she was all paled out and done in.  She’s not as spry as she used to be, don’t you know it?  Conor’s gone, and here you are, traipsin’ off on a trip paid for by my hard-earned tax dollars.  It just don’t add up, your Ma needin’ you, and you flyin’ off to who knows where . . . just like Conor.”

Jinny winced as if someone had slapped her across the mouth and challenged her to a duel.  She wanted to slap back.  Hard. But not here.  Not now.  Uncle Albert’s rawhide tongue wagged over the top of three gold fillings.

“I tell ya girl, if I catch the measles, them kids are gonna have hell to pay.”

“Albert.  What do you mean by that?”  Albert threw up a forearm defensively, unaware that Baggar had clapped his phone shut and was poised ready to jump up, knock down, hogtie, and gag the old bugger with his own army-issue shoelaces, if necessary.  Albert didn’t back off.

“Okay, okay, now I git it.  What you shoulda asked was, “When did the manure hit the fan?”  Albert was in a lather.  Jinny felt as if a hot towel were being wrapped around her face while her uncle madly honed his tongue on its hinged strop.  “I’ll tell you when the manure hit the fan.  It was the day your Pa died without even havin’ the decency to tell me he’d been ailing.  And now, since you and Conor have gone AWOL, I’m the only one left to do all the heavy liftin.’   Excuse me for saying so, but its high time it come out of the closet. I should have been emancipated from runnin’ that farm a year ago.”   Jinny wanted to be emancipated, break, and run.

“Albert, please,” she whispered, her skin tinted with embarrassment.  She had no place to run; no place to hide; no place to scream.  Albert continued to spray vitriol like lethal gas from red canister.

“I keep telling your Ma she needs to sell that gol-darn farm and move into town, but she won’t hear of it.   And here this, she’ll have a damned poor next-door neighbor if I come down with the . . .”

“Hey mister,” drawled the aggravated Georgian, “if you don’t shut your trap and climb down off your high-horse, I’m gonna drop you like a bag of rotten onions from the third floor.”  Barrel-chested Lance Corporal Baggar, uptight, red-faced, and neck arteries pulsing, had smoke pouring out of both ears—so to speak.  Albert swung around, ready to incinerate the interloper.

“Why don’t you just mind . . .?  His eyes widened; his tongue got a cramp.  He almost choked trying to swallow his own venom.  Albert shuddered, his knees knocked once, and he shuttled silently into Jinny’s chair where he rewound his watch and mumbled under his breath, “I’m gonna sit a spell.  Plane’s late. Blondie needs walking.”  He swatted at an imaginary fly and missed.

Jinny mouthed in Baggar’s direction, E-n-o-u-g-h, but thanks.  “Did she make the trip with you?”

“No.  Your Ma’s home with the kids, don’t ya know it?”

“I meant, is Blondie with you?”

Albert shrugged off the question.  He looked up at his niece and in a muffled, mean-spirited tone snapped, “Why don’t you go find out what’s holdin’ up the show?  You owe me that much now I’ve come all this way just to see you off.”

Jinny hid her feelings under a thin skin.  “Those who could answer your question are either not in this concourse or they are too busy to be in this concourse, Uncle Albert.  I haven’t . . .”

“Right, that’s just what I expected you to say.”

“But Uncle . . . wo?”

Baggar unfolded like an inflatable superhero.  Much taller than Albert, he looked down, his arms riveted to his sides and his fists clenched.  “Five-four-three-two-three-two-three-two.”

Albert closed his eyes and braced for the worst.

Baggar double-tapped his own palm hard, quelled his emotions, relaxed his fists, indicated that Jinny could have his seat, then turned and walked away popping his knuckles. Jinny took Baggar’s seat.  It was warm.

Albert leaned over, scoured her cheek with hot breath, and said, “Don’t tell me you know that fella.”  He didn’t wait for an answer. “Your Ma told me you was to board an hour ago.”  Jinny’s eyes flashed back and forth across the congested airport concourse hoping to spot and hail down a friend—heck, even an enemy would do.

“Yes, we are late, but if you need to go, please go, Uncle Albert.”

“No sirree, I mean, miss,” he quipped sarcastically as he decompressed at bit. “I promised your mother I’d see you off, and that’s what aim to do.  Besides, it’s good to get away from the farm for a few hours.” Unbeknownst to Albert, Gemma had texted Jinny twice—the second time was to inform her that Albert had been AWOL for a week.  “Don’t expect him to arrive before you leave, if he gets there at all. Honestly, Jinny, I don’t know what’s happened to the man that used to be my brother.”

Albert pulled out a clean, monogrammed handkerchief and imitated an elk sorting during the rut by blowing his nose.  Two startled female soldiers abandoned their seats across the aisle and pranced gracefully away.  Albert followed them with his eyes until his neck would swivel no further; then he stood up and followed them up the concourse.  Jinny closed her eyes.  “He’s gone. What a day this has . . .”

She smelled alcohol and hoped this time it was coming from someone else’s uncle.  Her hope was ill-founded.  Jinny opened her eyes and there he was, seated again on her right. “Tell me, what did them Federal boys want with you?”

“Do you mean the F. B. I.”

“Yes, them.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“You’re my kin, don’t ya know it?  If you’re in a jam I want to help.”

“If I were in a jam, I’d also be in federal custody; and do you really think this is the time and place for me to spill my guts to you?  You are embarrassing me in front of strangers.” Jinny tried to avert his gaze, but to no avail.

“Now you’re bein’ rude to your old uncle, don’t you know it?   I’ve been treated poor by your family for twenty years, and I’m about done with the lot of you.  And after all the blood, sweat and tears I’ve put into making that farm successful.  Your Pa, God rest his soul, treated me like a hired hand.  ‘Go do this.  Go do that.’  The only person that didn’t order me around was Blondie, and if it twarnt for her I’d be all alone every night; besides, who could find a love-life with all them hours I’ve had to spend tillin’, plantin’, and harvestin’.  I’m not getting’ younger, don’t ya know it?  I need a break.”  He briskly turned his head away and chewed on his tongue.  “Thank the Lord that by scrimpin’ and savin’ I’ve got a little laid away.  NO sir, what I meant to say is thanks to MY OWN thriftfulness I have a made myself a little nest egg, and I want to go hatch it somewhere.  The Lord helps them who helps themselves, don’t ya know it?’”

Jinny wanted a break—or to break—but she couldn’t break, not here, not now.  She concluded that surviving her uncle’s tongue lashing prepared her for war, but she didn’t get to finish the thought.

Albert jumped to his feet and without looking, bumped into what he figured was just another soldier.  He heard a crunch, took a step back, and lifted his foot like Jinny had seen him do after stepping in a pile of cow dung.  “What the . . . are those yours?”

Albert’s latest victim flexed muscles concealed beneath her black, long-sleeved shirt, stenciled in bold, white letters, Oorah—Semper Fi.  Get Some.  She stood as if at full attention, her shoulders back and head erect—then bent to stare at the crumpled frames and broken lenses.  Like a phoenix rising from the ashes her head came up ready to blow fire.  An audible slush of co2 mixed with saliva whistled between her vocal cords.

“Old man, you just crushed my driver’s glasses.”  Albert grunted.

The crusty old man reached down and flicked a few shards off the lady’s penny loafers. After scooting a fractured lens to the side with his boot, he picked up the other lens—still whole– and dropped it in her outstretched hand.  “Here’s your moniker, and you’re welcome.”

“The word is monocle.”  The indignant woman—possibly a veteran—was tall and wore no make-up.  A sliver-moon-scar over her left eye signified that she knew when to fight and how to survive.  Her coal-black hair was done up in a bun—minus the butter and honey.  Her dander had gotten up but not her dukes. Thin, lubricated, pursed lips signaled that, like Albert, she burned on a short fuse and needed but a short rule to take a measure of her opponent.

Jinny tensed and sprang between them, fearing the bell announcing round one was about to clang.

“Albert, I’ll handle this.  Ma’am, I am so sorry this happened.  I have to leave soon, but if you’ll give me your name and . . . “

The formidable female’s features softened into a pleasant smile.  She patted Jinny’s arm.  “My name is Nadine Norris, but no need, dear.   Go with God and thank you for serving as referee, because I was about ready to . . .” She turned, iced Albert with her glare, and then walked away, pausing only long enough to drop the battered lens in the trash.

“I will do that, Ma’am,” Jinny called after her.

Albert’s phone rang.  “It’s Sis.”  Jinny brightened.

“Mama?”

“No, not Gemma, its Dorothy.   She wants to tell you goodbye.”  He handed Jinny the phone.

“Hi Aunt Dorothy . . . I love you, too.” . . . “What? Come again, please.”  The public-address system blared—

“THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE.  BOARDING FOR FLIGHTS 206, 207, and 208 COMMENCES IN TWO MINUTES.  GEAR UP AND LISTEN CAREFULLY.  ALPHA COMPANY REPORTS TO GATE 12, BRAVO COMPANY TO 13, AND CHARLIE COMPANY TO GATE 14.  ALL ABOARD.”

Jinny snugged the phone to her ear, wrestled her rucksack from beneath the seat, and straddled it so she could cup her free hand over the other ear.  “Dorothy, are you still there? . . . Yes, we’re boarding now.” Jinny looked pleadingly at Albert, who put his thumbs in his pockets and ignored her plight.  She dead-lifted her bag and followed her mulish uncle as he clip-clopped across the marble floor toward GATE 12.

Soldiers merged like cattle onto a narrow chute, oblivious of the slaughter ahead, but well-aware of family members being cut from the herd.  “No, no.  I still have a few minutes.  The plane?  It’s a Lockheed Galaxy C-5,one of the largest aircraft in the world—nearly as long as a football field and as tall as a six-story building.”  Jinny had no free hand to cup over her ear.

“Come again?”  Jinny paused to breathe and listen.  “And it’s so good of you to call . . .Yes, I promise, I’ll write . . . What? . . . Well, sure, okay.  Hi, Uncle Rudd . . . Let’s see, try to imagine this: Four turbofan engines hanging from pylons under the wings.  Each engine nacelle is one and a half time longer than a Cadillac, the total engine power is that of 800 cars, and the cargo compartment alone is the size of an eight-lane bowling alley. . . Hello, are you still there?  I guess we got disconnected, Uncle Al.  Thanks for sharing your phone.”

“Look Jinn, I may of over spoke a little.”

“Stressful times, Uncle Albert, stressful times.  Don’t worry about it.  Do you want to walk alongside ‘till I reach check-in?

“Well, no . . .  yeah, sure, why not.”

“OH, Lance Corporal Baggar.  What a small world,” Jinny said, smelling his scent but not looking to her left.

“Too small, if you ask me,” grumbled Albert.

Baggar closed in, bared his upper teeth, and sniggered sarcastically, “Sure, Uncle Al, why don’ cha walk with us.   Walkin’, walkin’, keep walkin’.”

“NOW BOARDING FOR BABUR GARDENS AIRPORT, KABUL.  ALL ABOARD.”

Albert did a double take, and snarled at Jinny, “But you told me you didn’t know . . . “

She toothed over her lower lip instead of biting her tongue and drew Albert’s attention to the tarmac.  “I have a question for you, Uncle Al.   Fully loaded the Galaxy C-5 requires runway eighty-three hundred feet long by ninety feet wide.”  She paused long enough for him to latch onto the numbers.  “You’re good at math, so how many football fields, laid end to end, would that require?”

“That’s after ya removed the goal posts,” blurted Baggar.

Albert did a quick calculation in his head.

“Okay, gal. Got it,” he sneered.  “You can’t outfox your favorite uncle.  The answer is twenty-eight football fields.”

“Did ya remember to remove the goal posts?” Baggar goaded.

Albert pulled up.  Seeing he was about to be separated from his niece, he queried, “Will you have enough fuel to get all the way to Afghanistan?”

“The answer is no.  Our 12,000-mile flight is non-stop. You’ve seen movies where a snorkel drops down for in-flight refueling, right?”

“Of course I have, I think.”

“Probe and Drogue, they call it.  It’s very dangerous.”

Hearing one another became more difficult.  Jinny turned and backpedaled so she could keep eye-contact with her shrinking uncle. “I could have learned all that from Google a lot quicker,” he yelled.

“Bye, bye, Uncle Albert.”

“No need to say goodbye, Jin.  I’ll be seeing you, someday.”  Albert stepped back and anxiously fondled his wrist and pants pocket to be sure he still had his watch, wallet, and keys.  “Oh JINNY, I MEANT TO ASK YOU HOW YOUR MEET WITH THE FEDS WENT.  IT’S IMPORTANT, don’t you know it.  Darn, darn, darn,” he mumbled under his breath.

“Some other time, Uncle Al, some other time.”

Corporal Virginia O’Dwyer of Abilene, Kansas, shifted her rucksack, tendered a lame salute, nervously brushed back her short, dark hair, did an about-face, and held back the tears. Relieved, re-energized, and unhobbled from Uncle Albert, she paused at the gate while her orders for travel were reviewed and her ID scanned.

“Next.”

Jinny stretched in an attempt to outpace the rawboned recruit at her side as they traversed the carpeted jet-bridge that would dump them on the tarmac.  “I wonder if this is like the tunnel people go through after they die.  O’Dwyer, I see the light, I see the light,” quipped Lance Corporal Baggar as they emerged onto the tarmac.  Jinny ignored him.

Two platoons, ordered four abreast, heard the load-master’s whistle and walked up the tongue into the belly of the whale without so much as one backward glance.  Lance Corporal Baggar made an unsuccessful attempt to wrest Jinny’s rucksack from her shoulders.  He got an elbow instead.  Jinny’s rebuff slowed Baggar long enough for her to gain separation and seclude herself in a seat between friends.

At the far end of the Econo-Stay parking lot, clouds had unplugged and rain fell in sheets from where it had been bedded up. A cloistered gate attendant had her supervisor on the phone while she stared at a shiny red Caddy—engine still running—detained at the pay-booth for ten minutes.  The driver’s window was down, and rain-soaked clothing clung to the prostrate, unconscious man who lay across the posh front seat with one hand still lapped over the open glove box.   Albert had been feverishly reaching under the seat and patting the floor mat in the dark, searching for his time-stamped ticket, when Jinny’s giant C-5 galaxy suddenly powered up to roll down the runway. Startled, Albert banged his head on the dash and knocked himself out.  A full bottle of rum rolled off the seat, decapitated itself, and glug-glug-glugged its contents on the floor.

Blondie lapped so energetically that her tongue tuckered out and took refuge in her mouth.  She turned, pawed her way up to her spot near the rear window, stretched out, burped, and stared disgustedly at Albert.  The car purred and the cat slept, but residents within a ten-mile radius of the airport plugged their ears and cursed as giant turbofan engines screamed louder than the entire population of nearby Albuquerque.

With Jinny settled in and enjoying the ride, the giant C-4—end to end longer than the Wright brothers’ first flight—lifted off.  For at least ten minutes everyone on board hoped there was a God in heaven.   Jinny knew.

Martina Hernandez hugged her youngest son goodbye, but her arms were empty; she bade him vaya con dios, but he didn’t hear; she watched Jinny and the rest of Bravo Company cross the tarmac, ascend the tongue-like ramp by ranks of four and disappear into the aircraft, but her Daniel was not among them. As the ramp lifted from the deck, its lidded portal closed like an eyelid but left the darkness outside.  Martina felt dark inside.

She had come to the airport alone hoping to warm close to coals of familial fragility—quailing companions in huddled bevies—most of them ill-prepared to say goodbye.   Martina knew how to say goodbye.  She stood close enough to fellow congregants to join hands, but she didn’t.  Streaking mascara betrayed her inner cry as she watched pushback tractors prod the last winged lion until it roared and rumbled angrily down the runway.   Martina choked but no words came out.

She watched children unsuction one by one from the windows.  To them, Martina was but a reflection, a shadow.  She turned and smiled at people she didn’t know, but knew, and then—without an invitation—she apportioned Kleenex tissues among those bereft of kin as liberally as a child might scatter gardenia blossoms at a Cuban wake.

“Are we too late?”  A clean-shaven African-American, clutching two small children in his arms, brushed past Martina.  Parishioners curtained aside to permit three crestfallen faces to stare through their own reflections at the candled tarmac—the twins clad in toed pink fleece pajamas, their father in a clean, blue-collared shirt, and striped-denim bib overalls.  His white socks showed over the tops of  engineer boots whose crepe rubber soles audibly signaled his alarm.

The jet engines roared,  the windows rattled, and then, nothing—nothing but disappointment.   “Mammy on her way, li’le sis.  Bid ‘er’ ‘fare ye well’ n’ wave her a gubye . . . You, too, li’le Gloria, blow mammy her kiss.”

“But Poppy, she cain’t see us.”

Out of Kleenex but unable to give away her own misery, Martina—heaven’s probationary proxy–stepped quietly alongside the latecomers, and, while looking through the glass darkly, yearned for the liberation of her limited English lexicon; all she could proffer the twins was a weary smile. Leery of the golden-skinned stranger, one of the children pressed her lips to her father’s ear.  “How wull Mama know we didn’ forget, Poppy?”  The weary railroad foreman knelt so his children could stand.  Touching their fingers to his chest, his reply was barely audible.

“She’ll know in hea’, honeychiles.”  Two curly-headed faces puzzled and sighed.  Each received a father’s gentle caress before, one knee at a time, he jacked himself up from the floor.  He glanced at Martina—who looked away—then gloved the twins’ hands with his own.  Straightaway, the engineer, knowing the tracks to the past had been levered, sidelined, and locked, puffed toward tomorrow.

The slump-shouldered father looked like a defrocked priest—his motherless children in tow—leading his congregation toward a distant cemetery, with Martina, now shrouded in a shawl, bringing up the rear.    Behind her an outcry broke the silence. “Stop it. Let me go-o-o.”  Startled, Martina braked, turned, and looked up to see a wailing woman. “Get your hands off of me.”  A high-angle shot filled every TV monitor in the long, straight concourse and tracked the flailing captive being dragged across the floor of the House Chamber.   When she disappeared between the large paired doors, the camera cut-away and an eye-level shot consumed the screen.  A robust little man, obviously shaken, held a tasseled staff in his left hand which he tapped three times against the floor.

“MR. SPEAKER, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”

“Dónde están mis lentes?” Martina glanced down and pawed her blouse in search of her glasses.  Her bifocals came out of hiding, slipped free of her netted hair, skidded down her forehead, and free-fell into her cupped hands.  “Ahí tienes.”  She hugged them to her breast.  After centering the glasses on the bridge of her nose and tucking them over her ears, she exclaimed, “Mr. President, eres tu! ¿a esta hora?”  It’s you!  At this hour?

The leader of the free world walked briskly across the polished marble floor, stepped up to the podium, and unbuttoned his blazer–all without shaking hands.  His necktie had been wrenched into a small knot.  He adjusted the microphone.  It didn’t need adjusting.  Behind him, the Speaker of the House stood alongside the president pro-tempore of the Senate, whose head was bowed.

Like spent dandelions, drooping faces feigned smiles at the camera, but no one waved.  No one spoke. Collegial Congressmen and women had come to their feet slowly like  children told to turn off the video-game controller and go clean the House.

“Aye caramba??” Indignant at their tardiness, Martina stretched to forty-eight inches and reverently winged a salute to the man who had shaken her trembling hand in a drafty hanger, on a dreary day in Dover, Delaware.