1:00 PM
Mama said, I was born too late to be in any war worth a damn, that the last war worth fighting had already passed, that I was born at the end of the end of the end. Papa died in his third tour, they said things always come in three, the beginning, the middle, the end. Past, present, future. It was real unlucky the way he went, not a bomb or a bullet or anything worth saluting, a cigarette dipped in napalm, as a joke, ‘cause he was the base’s official hardass, always telling people he’d been in wars since before you were a twinkle in your daddy’s eye. He lit it up, started a fire like crazy, spread from his face to his clothes until he was burned down so bad there was barely any skin left. Mama told me that the last thing he said was Dewie. I guess he was thinking what kind of man I’d grow up to be without him around, maybe he was hoping it’d all be good, that I’d be on the moon one day. They kept him alive with machines that buzzed and hurt, and it’s only ‘cause a CO of his gave him a lethal dose of morphine. I didn’t learn that part until the court case, real army men do the kind of things that spy stories get written about, while the rest of us are playing with plastic cap guns. I tried to join the army then, I was 14 but I looked like a fat 17 year old, and it almost went alright, but the uncle who said he’d fill in my stuff and make it look real was in a cold bath getting hit with adrenaline, and by then, they figured out who I was and kept me from it. Four years of waiting, my mama worked as a waitress to take care of the three of us, that’s when they started showing those hanna barbera cartoons on the tv every saturday, sundays they’d play tom and jerry. I’d always tell Tommy, they’re made by different guys. Every third sunday and fourth saturday this fella who broke his back in the korean war would get me and Jimboy to kill the rodents out back and bury their guts underneath the topsoil. He’d give us 2.50 each. I saved up to get a pair of those x-ray glasses, I wasn’t gonna try and look underneath girl’s skirts or anything. I just wanted to make sure everyone was the same inside, ‘cause if it’s true then there’s no reason there ought to be any trouble in this world. The pair came in the mail with the lenses punched out so I never learned for sure, though I suspected it to be true. One saturday outside of our neighbor’s place Jimboy told me, between breaths of a pall mall menthol he stole from his stepdad Stan’s cup-holder, that when no one’s around he puts on his mama’s lipstick, gets in her pantyhose and takes pictures of himself, he asked me, pushing a bit of jet black hair from his olive oil skin greek featured face, if that was weird to me, to only feel like you’re a boy sometimes? He handed me the cigarette and I took a drag, and I saw the bruise forming over his left eye, purple and blue. I said, I never feel like anything lately. He asked me if I wanted to see a photo. I nodded my head but said nothing, an old volkswagen passed us by, you used to not be allowed to drive those, not toyota neither. He put a hand in his pocket and handed me a picture. One of his hands holding the camera, he cut off and styled the head of a mop, making it look almost like curly-hair, the panty-hose going up his legs a sort of chocolate brown, he had legs just like his mom, and with the red lipstick they looked just alike. I put it in my wallet, and we never talked about it again. This guy came in the house after mom came in after a late shift, and he thought he was alone with her, put his hands on her neck, and squeezed until she started to go blue, if I hadn’t heard her squeal she would’ve died. I jumped over on top of him, and by now I was too big for anyone to do anything when I used all of my strength, so I sat on him, and I started throwing fists into his face, his nose dribbled out real fresh blood, and I kept doing it until my hands were cut up, everything he said sounded like it was a million miles away, mama couldn’t get any words out herself, his face looked like a mashed up pile of black, red and blue and I got off of him, sitting up close to the tv screen again. Some cops came by but I didn’t pay any attention to ‘em. The living room was a crime scene for the next few days and when they weren’t looking I stole the guy’s wallet, he had a 20 dollar bill in the front, tucked right in between an id card and a condom, I slipped all three into my wallet, and started buying bottles of thunderbird for me and the boys. When I graduated no one was surprised to find out I wasn’t going to college, who’d pay for it anyways? Near the end of senior year I started betting on myself in underground fights, not just to win, but to win in the fifth round every time, then the last one before graduation I bet on myself to lose in the first round. I was set for a while but I needed a job, somewhere to go, someone to be. I opened a newspaper and saw some advertisement for the national guard, how they needed someone at Remora State. I ripped it out and smiled. I think those boys’ll be coming by soon, better get ready.
3:00 PM
When I opened my eyes it was like looking into the halogen bulb that keeps you from crashing while driving late at night on a rhino’s dose of no-doze. Something metal bound my hands close together, and I put a hand on my right cheek, the skin felt bruised and it hurt like a son of a bitch. Once my eyes adjusted to the light I looked through a set of bars, it hadn’t been since Officer Malone found out I was selling dimebags of dirt weed that I’d been looking through the opposite end. Just like then it seemed every time an officer walked by they wouldn’t tell me the time, apparently that’s a rule in some districts, that you can’t give someone arrested for a crime the time because they might figure out how long they’ve been there and ask a bunch more questions you can’t answer neither. Everything was a jumble in my head, I remember seeing shadows at the edge of my vision, something cold around the back of my neck grasping me tight, everything seemed far away, far far away. Eventually, a plainclothes detective who looked just like Fatty Arbuckle, in a khaki white suit, toothpick in between his teeth, taking sips from a metal flask with an engraving of a seal with an eye-patch on it. He coughed a bit and looked me up and down, he was so big he made me feel small, that wasn’t common. He croaked out a few words, said he knew my daddy, they’d served in korea together, said I was in some big trouble, that the government sent out an army man lawyer for me. I said, why’d they need to do that? He said, you and me on different sides of the coin, boy, and slung the door open wide, it creaked like an old metal hinge that needed some wd-40. I nodded my head but I didn’t say nothing, I guess I sort of had the feeling I’d done something wrong maybe, things weren’t piecing together right in my head so I couldn’t say for sure, but I’d learned so far, that when you’re in trouble with the law, even if it’s temporary, you don’t say nothing without a lawyer ‘round. I moved down the halls and into the front hall where a skinny man in a beige trenchcoat with black leather strips lining the pockets and sleeves, he had buzzed red hair starting to grow back past the original buzzing, big square-framed glasses made of thick black plastic and metal, a brown cow briefcase held aloft in the left hand and in the right a little cup of coffee in a styrofoam container, two little creamers on the seat beside him. He didn’t shake my hand, he didn’t say nothing except his name was Murdoch and he had some things to discuss with me. In the car drive over to Jimbo’s Burgers and Fries he fiddled with the radio and they were playing a CCR song, I can’t remember which. He lit up a cigarette, winstons, that red package with white font text and the little softpack, but they started filtering them these days, it became the predominant style by then. He didn’t say nothing, but when a Black Sabbath song started playing he switched it off, and all I could hear was the hum of the chevy and the inhales and exhales as he puffed on the winston. I asked him if he liked being a lawyer. He said, he didn’t like much these days, but business is business. I asked him, if he’s good, he shrugged his shoulders, and tossed the cigarette butt out the window off the side of the road. Car pulled in and he got out, I got out too, and we ordered our food, him with a second cup of coffee, and me with a soft drink, think it was mr. brown’s? One latch unfastened against the leather clip, then another, then one after that and one more, and the briefcase filled to the brim with manila folders marked with red ink and loose papers with pen marks crossing out impertinent details. He said my name out loud, and what I did for work, where I was born, who my parents were, there was a set of likes and dislikes based upon extensive research of one sort or the other, and a psychological profile. By the time he finished reading it, re-shuffling the papers in his folder, I wasn’t really hearing words anymore, just sounds and vague shapes of ideas, like the outline of a body, it give you an idea of what it is but it’s missing what’s inside, missing some kind of wholeness. I sorta felt like that too, and I looked upon myself from the ceiling looking down at the tile floor, like a camera had been placed above and behind me, and I saw myself, receiving the information, nodding my head, saying yes every now and again, like it’s me, but it’s me on autopilot, doing what I’m supposed to. By the time he finished his long spiel about the case and what I was supposed to do, I was only half sure of what had happened, and if any of it was real, so when he told me, the only thing that I was supposed to do is tell the truth. Between bites of a double patty deluxe with no pickles and those little short french fries, I ask him what’s the truth. He said, finishing his cup of coffee, that there are these two pillars of cognition. One’s what you think happened, one’s what really happened, the thing about these pillars is neither is actually true, it’s what’s in the middle, you take what you approximate, and you take what people say happened and you find somewhere in the middle. You say you got in a crash because there was a glare in your eye, and someone else says it’s ‘cause you were getting sucked dry by a girl in the passenger seat, they can’t prove what they saw is the real truth, just like you can’t prove what you saw is the real truth, so the middle point is where these two lines intersect, when you crashed your car they saw a shadow in your passenger seat because the glare was coming from the opposite direction, which looked just like a person bent over. It doesn’t deny other perspectives; it merely sees where they align and meets it there. That’s the truth, and that’s all you tell from now on, Murdoch said, shoveling the last few fries into his mouth, wiping his lips with a napkin and closing up the briefcase. Last thing he said before dropping me off is that he doesn’t care what I did, who I’ve screwed, or where I’ve been, all that matters is that we’re both company men and we look out for each other. Something’ll be in the mail in three days exactly, open it up, read it and go to where it says. I say, yes sir. He narrowed his eyes, and lit up another winston, plume of smoke covering his face, and out of it came a voice much lower and disappointed, it was a shame ‘bout your daddy. I didn’t know what to say so I just shrugged my shoulders and closed the door behind me, and put my hands in my pockets, wondering what’d be on tv that night, mama brought me some leftovers the other night so dinner’s figured out too. I defer myself to the counter-balance of things.
9:00 AM
I remember when I first started working at the consulate, no one expected me to work for the embassy, a big dumb american, with football player shoulders and a cigarette slung out of the side of his mouth. The first flight I was on they had to give me two seatbelt extenders which really pissed off the lady beside me who was trying to read an old Flannery O’Connor novel, from then on I vowed if I could I’d only be in economy plus or higher. They sent me over to qatar first to preside over some sort of hostile situation where some of the workers at one of the hotels were holding a senator’s son captive, saying they wanted a few thousand bucks and a plane ride out of here. I talked to them over the phone, the ringleader was malaysian but spoke just like James Dean ‘cause apparently he learned english from american movies and Rebel Without A Cause was one of the ones on some old tv station that got picked up in his hometown. I said, if he’d agree to switch out hostages, I’d take the son’s place, ‘cause he don’t got anything to do with this, and I figured I’m a better kind of guy to talk with while you’re waiting for the cash. He didn’t have anything to say against this, and told me the room number he was in, I told the swat boys I’d be going in to talk to him, but I won’t do anything crazy, and they looked at me like I was crazy but the head sergeant shrugged his shoulders because I suppose if you’d wanna get logistical about it, I outranked him, not by much, but a little, and I’ve always found that sweet spot to be essential. I took the elevator up and knocked twice on the door, and a shaky girl in a powder blue housekeeper's outfit, her hands stuttered as she held the business end of a pair of scissors but let them down seeing I wasn’t armed and closed the door behind us. There were two other workers, one in a sort of food preparation getup, and a janitor. The malaysian man wore a three-piece suit and held a small gun in his left hand, dug into the back of the senator’s son, a mewling little blonde 20 year old. I told him to go call his dad and go back home. He tried to grunt out words, getting close enough to me that I could smell the alcohol on his breath, and the sweat fumigating the rooms straight from his shirt which was darkened around the pits but nothing came out, he just sighed and walked out the door. The man introduced himself as Dang, said he was doing security for the hotel, that he came out to pay off a debt to some gangsters, and he just wants out of here. I humored him, asking what the senator’s son had done to get kidnapped. Dang shrugged his shoulders, said he had gotten way too drunk, and tried to pick up the housekeeper to have his way with her, the scissors in her back pocket helped assuage that situation, and they all came together to hold him until they could get out of there. I felt sympathetic to Dang, and for that matter he seemed pretty competent, and I had never had an assistant before, but I figured a guy like him, that sort of can look like whoever’s living in these sorts of places could be good for easy resolution, I told him he could work for me, and we’d be out of here that afternoon. Dang at first seemed very tied to his fellow kidnappers, wanting them to get something out of it, but as the offer lingered on the air, his defenses were weakened. It would seem that when someone is set against the sureness of their own freedom, and the less sure freedom of all, you would not find a man who would take the second lifeboat, even the most kindly civic minded person in the world. He mouthed sorry and followed me out. I took his gun and disassembled it, placing the parts in my pockets, and told them that the situation had been dealt with. I heard some time later that they executed the other three to make a point, that anyone who steps up against the grinding wheel of commerce, of the travel state, would be filed down and its screws replaced. I’d like to say that that sort of thing troubles me, I think there was a time when my mind was like a ledger that held marks upon it, but as it filled and filled, it seemed to me to be a dry-erase board, if I tried I could hold onto those thoughts, those indecisions and see something greater, something massive, a tableau of the past, but really most of the time I just erased whatever happened last and replaced it afterwards. The next 5 embassy trips all blended together, different locale, different drinks and different people, it all seemed to file together into one place, faces all blended into one shape, one big shape, it was all pleasant and horrid and everything in between, like putting all the paints together and making some greyish brown sludge. I liked it this way, it wasn’t until I went to laos that there was a great change in the way I felt about things. Being there like any other place, I would usually find a bar as near to the embassy as I could, so I could catch a few drinks, stumble back to my hotel, sleep it off and do the same thing the next day, but there was a particularly interesting person beside me at one of the stools. He wore a white collared shirt, a black suit and shoes that merged somewhere between dress shoes and sneakers, functional things. I’d met enough people dressed like this to notice the bulge in the right side of his suit right above his gut where a holster for a pistol was, which indicated to me he was an OTG sort of fellow, OTGS as the name suggests were on the ground agents who do the actual intelligence work, and who are the ones to know before any embassy fellows are contacted, but this one was particular. He drank gin and tonics out of rocks glasses, and no matter how many he drank he never appeared inebriated. His white haired bangs covered his eyes, and his nose had a white bandage around the bridge with specks of blood at the edges of it, and a choppy small. He would be considered movie star handsome in this time, though a bit pretty for my generation. On the third night, I saw him, I asked him for his name, assuming he’d give something fake, like a codename, but instead smiled again, sipping his drink, saying his name was Rebinski. I asked if that was russian, he said it was czech, I said isn’t it all the same. He laughed loud, roaring his head back, wiping away fake tears from his eyes, saying most of his countrymen would consider that highly offensive, taking a beat for a moment, but he is not like most of his countrymen. I asked him how he meant, taking a sip of my jack and coke. I’m one of the good guys, he whispered surreptitiously. I sort of chuckled, told him he looked a bit like a soviet. He smiles and finishes his drink, hands a little white card with an old looking typewriter print, says if you’re ever having trouble in the soviet states hand them this and there’ll be no trouble. Seeing him I imagined a hero of sorts, a free-wheeling, fast-drinking, spy who fought on the side of justice, something simple in a world that has become so complex. I struggle with complexity, I have always been governed by rulesets and delineated zones.
12:00 PM
It had been an uncertain number of days and weeks and months from the time of enlistment, to my placement at Remora State, I had followed a sort of grueling ritualization of the body and mind, I ate three meals a day, of differing types of gruel and vegetable slurries, the kind of thing meant to break your spirit, then a 10 mile walk around the field beside the old barracks, there was nothing to do in arkansas except for run, you’d make a game of it, you’d try to run until you puked, which if you were over the expected weight as I was played well in your favor, I lived at a calorie deficit for the weeks of training, I lost 75 pounds over those few months, I went down 10 pants sizes, and my arms swimmed in the sleeves of my olive green jacket. Other than upkeep and maintenance, I mostly read a lot in those times. I didn’t like books much before but I got into all sorts of things. I read Marcus Aurelius, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, anything about war or strategy or how to be a better soldier. I wondered what it would’ve been like to be a soldier in ancient times, to work my way up through the centurion, or go from being a chinese footsoldier all the way up to a general. All the other guys thought I was an egghead but it didn’t bother me much, books were how I felt like I was making myself better, I just wanted to do something to get beyond where I was, something to escape the me I had been. Sometimes I’d look at that old picture of Jimboy and I’d get this weird feeling in my chest, like there was some part of me missing, some part of me ripped out from an early age. Papa could’ve made things right I think, even if I couldn’t have been a real soldier we could’ve gone hunting more, or fishing, or just going to the movies. I don’t even know what his favorite movie was. I know his favorite actor was a tie between John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. I know he liked Dean Martin even though he was a no good commie, his words not mine. I didn’t quite understand why we weren’t supposed to like commies, after all they helped us win the second world war, without ‘em Hitler would’ve won. My bunkmate at the barracks, Daniel, told me, late at night, reading a little red book, that in China they were doing something called the Cultural Revolution. They were reshaping the country, from landlords and people who own it all, to land going back to the people who work, it’s like he says, workers run the world, and I suppose he’s right about it. My daddy worked all his life, mama worked her whole life too, one way or another we are all made and unmade by our labor. Command placed about a dozen of us at Remora State, we’d take shifts, on 3, off 2, on 2, off 1, the weeks sort of blend all up together. And it’s a lot of sitting and standing, a rifle slung by your side, they said every day the student strikes were getting more dangerous, on some campuses guards had been put in the hospital, but that we weren’t supposed to be the first to act, we’re just the ones there to keep things from spiraling more out of control. But every day more stuff started happening, first a couple cars getting set on fire, then some cops got bottles broken over their heads and soon enough it was dozens upon dozens of students, and they were all mad. Way I heard it, the war was extending out to other parts of asia, and they had g-men types doing the sorts of things you read about in novels and see in old movies, real sneaky stuff, and it’s sort of awful what happened but it didn’t change a thing about where we were. We were thousands miles away from anywhere that was happening, the peoples whose villages were burned to the ground, didn’t get em back because of some kids on a campus, at the end of the day it was more for themselves than it was for anyone. It seemed to come from this sort of thought that you hold the responsibility of those who act in your country’s name, but you ain’t firing the gun, charging up the flamethrower, tossing frags around corners and into huts. That’s them, you’re you, but kids can’t make it square in their mind. They go to college, they learn all sorts of things, like how they’d done something wrong just being born into this world, and then they go and try to do something about it. Sometimes I wanted to drop my gun and hold hands with ‘em, do some kumbaya, pray for the people who are hurting all over, but I don’t think they extended that same honor to me. I think they thought of me as an evil machine, something designed just to hurt. We were both locked into our roles, and so when they came after me, the rest froze up, I don’t think they were ready to squeeze the trigger, they were busy thinking about how they’d look, what people’d think about them, and I just simply didn’t see things that way. I saw it as my life or theirs, and while I didn’t want them to die or get hurt, I was a kid too, christ, I was the same age as them and they acted like I was a man, just cause I was old enough to know how to put together an m16, know how to fire it, and reload. They pounced on me, like an amalgamated python several of them jumped on me, and I unloaded shots, trying to go for legs and non-vital regions, they hadn’t cleared us for any of it, I lost something of myself in it, I don’t know if they really planned to hurt me, maybe they’d just knock me out and take my shit, send me on my way, maybe they’d have put a bullet in my brain. I watched five of em go down, smell of iron in the air, it was all I smelled, so thick I tasted it on my tongue, reminded me what it smelled like when me and Jimboy would take out those squirrels and stuff their guts beneath the topsoil, it makes me sick, I still don’t like bloody steaks ‘cause of it, medium well is how I have them. Their hands formed one body, and they tackled after me, knocking the gun to the ground, forming a pile on top of me, some guy about as big as me, a black kid, with a gap in his two front teeth, he knocked his elbow into my chest, felt like I couldn’t breathe, then he slammed his fist into my face, until I couldn’t see anything. I swimmed in a pool of black void, I looked to the pathway lit by illuminated torches, and I walked it, until I found my way back to where the real world was, the faultline between worlds, then something shaking me by the shoulders, and words screamed into my ears, take that you fucking good for nothing pig. Maybe I was a pig, maybe I was filth, maybe I still am, I feel it some nights when I look in the mirror, and look past me, into the gaps between.
8:00 AM
It was one of these mornings, on an off week from the consulate, I had started to form the character that was placed in my head after meeting Rebinski. A spy, with floppy ears from the nation state of Verdana, formerly born in the country of Sandice, a double agent who seems to be able to find his way out of any situation. I thought of the name Rence Havago, and modeled him after Rebinski in my mind, though I figured that by anthropomorphizing him into a rabbit, helped dull the edge of what was a sort of dark premise. An agent with the permission to kill, who would do anything to keep the tenuous relationship of peace between these nations from boiling over, I thought that it would only appeal to the kind of people who obsess over spy stories, and the children of those types of people. But I showed it to a few friends of mine in the embassy and Jean, the secretary, who loved crime and mystery novels said she couldn’t put it down. It took a long time but eventually I got a publisher interested, Santino House, a small publisher from the PNW, they agreed to give me a high royalty percentage in exchange for a pretty paltry advance, and I didn’t think much of it. On off weeks and the summers I would write the Rence books, it wasn’t until I started working on the 11th book, when people had grown an interest in them, all sorts of people, I would get letters from people in japan, sweden, pakistan, even prague. I eventually sent a copy of the first book to Rabinski, who I’d been friendly with, and told him he was the inspiration, he sent a letter back, finding it funny that I thought of him as a bunny rabbit. Eventually a set of letters came from a group out in dallas, they called themselves The Reformers. They had developed a very intricate set of beliefs that they insisted they had found from my books. That Rence was a harkening back to an america where tradition and reason reigned supreme, that the tightrope of the nation is held in peace by those willing to make the difficult decisions, and the letters seemed to always come from a fellow by the name of Enigma who signed a little symbol that I remember describing as belonging to the organization Rence had worked under. I was surprised at first, I didn’t think I had put anything worth talking about in those books, that my writing was meant to inspire political action. Politics is dreadful business, the kind of business that has defined my life, but the kind I like to avoid as much as I can. I would respond kindly to Enigma, and he would send longer and longer letters, asking me questions, about what I believed, what I think could be done about the current state of affairs, the uneasy balance between the soviets and the americans, how nuclear war is possible. I told Enigma that I don’t think of myself as a politically minded individual, that I simply write and do what makes sense to me, it’s been like that since papa died, I didn’t want to live a life that ended like his. Enigma sent a photo attached to another letter, of a man beside a toyota pickup truck, with the arms of a farmer, holding a child whose face is crossed out with sharpie black ink. They said it was them and their father before he passed away too. It was an accident with a thresher. Enigma remembers the open chest cavity of his father, that they put their hand up to his heartbeat, and felt it go limp as his body gave out, holding his warmth until it went cold. The image horrified me on one level, but on another hand, I understand it grimly. That death is a locust that follows decay, that it will wrap its hands under your throat, and choke it out of you. I said that I remember the first time I killed a person, like I remember the first burger of my life, and just like I will remember the last sunset I ever see. Enigma asks if they can come and see me, with a couple of their friends. I agree to it, and Enigma pulls up in a black face mask, and with two in the truckbed dressed the same, driving the same car their father once had. They want to drive me around places, asking me about the places I spend my time, what I remember from before the decay, when I still dreamed free. I say that I never remember dreaming free, but I do remember the boys I grew up with, and how many of them are gone now, and how we are the youngest generation of old men, and the ashes line the fields. Enigma asks, if I ever thought about doing something to change the world. I tell them that I once considered it, and when I did, I felt fists brought about into my face, knocking some sort of sense into me. One of Enigma’s compatriots says something about how the simulation of life is so consuming because every action taken within it, helps perpetuate the cycle. I say that sounds like an arcade game, one you’d play for a quarter. The other compatriot says they cost two quarters these days because the euro is fucking us in the ass. I nod but I don’t say anything, it feels like the trio is not there so much to get my answers but to get confirmation for something that is to come, for my validation of their choices. But this validation is said not with words but with presence. It is my presence that brings them comfort.
2:00 PM
I remember the first day of court, during a recess, I put in a quarter to get a shasta cola, the fridge inside the machine must’ve been on the fritz because it was lukewarm but it tasted good, better than anything had those past few weeks. The lawyer told me not to read the news, but something told me I had to. Turns out two of those kids died, one was in the hospital on a tube, and another’s in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, I never heard what happened to the fifth kid, even as I tried to look over and over again, maybe they made it out, just didn’t want to publicize what had happened to them, I hope so. The weeks following it in and out of court felt empty, I found that I was not so integral to the case after all. I only was ever called up to the stand once, and my stammering words and hazy recollection of what caused it to take place served as an example of my honesty, that a man who was looking to serve up ad-hoc justifications for his actions would have performed his lies. Throughout the time in court, Murdoch pointed out that before I had opened fire on the crowd, multiple protestors were running towards me, and while unarmed, a group of them were clearly strong enough to knock me out and disarm me, meaning that if they had wished they could’ve killed me. The prosecution argued that the fact that they were unarmed and that I was armed proves that my firing was not justified. This triggered something of a stalemate in the case, where the defense was unwilling to position me as culpable for the protestors deaths, and the prosecution was unwilling to admit that the protestors had acted offensively towards me, behind closed doors, with words I didn’t understand or had any interest to understand it was agreed that while my actions had been beyond the scope of my permission, but that it was not inherently unlawful. The judge found me and by proxy the national guard, not guilty in the case which itself triggered another set of protests leading to more destruction, though things seemed to right themselves again eventually. After the case was officially decided, Murdoch walked me out to my car, and lit up a pall mall, offering me one. I took it as he brought up his zippo to the end of it, lighting it. I took a drag, and so did he, blowing up smoke above the two of us. He asked me, cigarette between his lips, bracing his glasses up against the bridge of his nose, what I was going to do after all of this. I shrugged my shoulders and said, sort of disaffectedly, that I’d just do what I’ve always done, get by. We sat in silence for a few minutes both smoking down our cigarettes to the filter. Murdoch popped another one in his mouth and for the first and last time I ever saw it sort of grinned, and said to me, try and find something you actually like doing one of these days if you can. Makes the days go by easier, he followed it up with, before opening the car door, and wheeling out of the place. I think I needed to hear that advice then, even if I wasn’t able to follow it for some time. I spent a few more years in the guard, it paid well, and I even went up a few ranks because of how well I’d handled myself at Remora State, they’d say. But eventually I got sick of it, it had become something like the smell of iron and the taste of it in my mouth on that day, and in the backyard burying squirrel guts, playing pretend soldier just wasn’t for me, no matter how hard I tried to place myself into the position. Even by then I would still consider what dad would’ve thought, but it was more or less the last time I ever made a decision considering that, because I’d come to realize I had lived about as long with dad as without him, I don’t think he would know the kind of person I became without him, or particularly find himself caring about it all that much. I made the decision to give up on my toy soldier life because I knew it simply wasn’t for me anymore. Everyone understood, after all, I’d more or less been made into a guy sitting in an office all day, people’d have to keep themselves from beaming smiles when they saw me, if the world all over hated me for what I had done, people in the service loved me for it, I didn’t like either feeling. Among the extremes of love and hate, I’d much rather just be the person I’ve always been.
5:00 PM
The letters and the visits stopped from Enigma and his friends, it had been a couple weeks since anything had been sent in, I found myself watching the news in the middle of the day, and at one point or another I found myself asleep, waking up to a loud announcement on the tv, a plane hijacking out of DFW Airport. A jetliner with over 350 people aboard, somehow a group of masked people got together and held a plane up headed for DC, and forced it to fly into the pentagon. The trio kept the pilot from sending out any emergency transmissions until it was too late to do anything about it. A deep sort of monotone voice repeated out a final transmission to the control radio tower: Rence Havago, Save Us All. From the report, it appears that they pushed the pilot too hard, who in defiance turned sharply to the left of the government building only clipping the side and crashing directly into the ground. All 350 died on sudden impact, there were under 10 injuries related to the damage done to the building, nothing more than minor scrapes. It would be forgotten about within a week's time, a paper trail and a manifesto leading to Enigma, whose real name was Eduardo Nijima, a brazilian-japanese american who had been raised by a farmer who had adopted him while overseas. At the time I didn’t know what to do or say or think, the only idea that I had was to go visit Mama and Papa, and so I got in the car, drove the hour or so, I didn’t play the radio or put a cd in or nothing, my mind just emptied itself of everything that had been in it. I was there and not there all at once, and when I got out of the car, my feet walking across soft wet green grass, the smell of spring on the air, I rounded the corner, down the cobblestone walkway leading to mama and papa. I kneeled beside their graves, I stopped somewhere along the way dropping a bottle of jack daniels beside papa’s grave and a thing of gum beside mama’s. I got real close, putting my hand on each of their graves, trying to get as close to touching them as I could. I asked ‘em, why things never seemed to work out for me. They didn’t answer me. I asked ‘em what I could do to make things right, to keep everything from following me throughout my whole life. Even if they could’ve answered I don’t think anyone would’ve been able to answer that question. I just sat there for a while, wrapping my arms around their graves, eventually laying back against them, as the sun set. I look out at the walkway, and towards the corner beside one of the big mausoleums, and I see shadows, those same shadows I see everywhere, behind people, underneath cars, in bathrooms and bars and diners and cafes. I see them where nothing seems to make sense. I suppose it’s true what I remember mama saying to me once, on her deathbed, with a smile on her face, on the precipice between life and death, everywhere you’ve been is everything you are. When she shut her eyes for good, I saw a shadow looming over her, that’s death, he took over, and he’s a good friend of mine.
-- Kai Johansen is a writer located in Portland working on the great American visual novel and going to school the rest of the time.