Monday, February 19, 2007

"Bringing 'Em Home"

"Crazy days, don't you think?"

"How do you figure, Jesse?" I flicked a tiny hunk of meat from a toothpick while Jesse talked at me. I knew from long experience that when we set on the bench in front of Sam's place, we weren't so likely to have a conversation as much as I was going to be the straight man for a soliloquy. I shifted in my seat as to make myself more comfortable and took a pull of cream soda from the bottle.

"How do you not figure, Augie? You got your troops out there in that desert place..."

"Ee-rock."

"Yeah. Eye-rak. What are we doing there?"

"That's what a lot of people are asking these days, Jesse."

"Well, I'll tell you what we're doing there. We're there because the folks in Washington want us to take our eye off the ball, if you know what I'm saying."

"I'm not sure I do, Jesse. Maybe you better help me out." As I talked, I couldn't help but to smile. I took out my notepad and started to sketching a picture of him, just for fun, sitting there in his John Deere cap and overalls, even though he'd never done a lick of farming in all his years, which must have been more than 70 or so.

"What I'm saying is...and maybe you'd better take notes here, Augie...what I'm saying here is that we're over there so the terrorists won't go bother us over here. What I'm saying here is that the longer we're over there, the terrorists will be happy to kill as many of us over there as they can, while the folks here are safe in their comfy beds."

"Well, maybe we'll get 'em home soon, Jesse."

"Get 'em home? Why would we do that? Hell, at least out there, it's a fair fight. Our boys have got guns and tanks and air support and the Green Zone and all that. What have we got here? Nothing! Those Al Qaeda guys ..." He made the name of the terrorist group sound like a fellow that lived down the street. "Those guys can just slip in here and 'boom'! We'll never know what hit us!"

"Pretty damn scary, that is."

"So you want to keep our boys out there? Hell, see that's the problem. We don't want 'em to stay out there -- it's just not right. But mark my words, soon as they come home, all that stuff that's happening there? It's going to be happening here."

"You think so?" I said, scuffling my pencil on my notepad to darken the shadows under Jesse's cap.

"Mark my words, son. Mark my words. We're taking our eyes off the ball."

"So you said. You ought to explain that part."

"Look, Augie. Those boys...and the girls, too... they're the best America has to offer out there, right?"

"Sure."

"Wrong! They're great people, don't get me wrong. I've been there, you know that right? Army, 1953."

"Sure, Jesse."

"What I'm saying is, we've got to show these people the real America. The America that's about folks helping other folks. About letting people be who they want to be, and be ruled by who they want to be ruled by. The America that when we invade a country and screw up, we leave 'em better than when we found them. If it was me, I'd kill 'em with kindness, that's what I'd do. Get every last one of us thinking and working about how to make that country better, and then make it our mission to help those terrorists see that we're here to help. Make sure people know that we're the good guys. Stop at nothing. That's what I'd do.

"Sounds a little Pollyanna to me, Jesse. Maybe those folks just plain hate us, you know?"

"Ah, Augie, I thought you were smarter than that."

"I am what I am, Jesse."

"What are you scribbling at there, anyway?" Jesse asked peering over to my side of the bench. I showed him. A not-half-bad sketch of an old man in a John Deere cap, standing at attention, arm raised in a stiff salute, flag waving in the background.

Jesse chuckled, clapped me on the shoulder, and stood up.

"You're all right, Augie."

"You, too. You take care now."

"Oh I will."

And I watched him go, on his proud, creaky legs, marching home.

----------------------------------
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Thursday, February 08, 2007

"A Bold, New Direction"

If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.
- Lewis Carroll

And they were off!

It was a tight-knit, unusual crew, trooping through the forest trail, single file. Young Harry took the point, 10 years old and full of spirit. "If we run into a bear, boys, just stay behind me!"

Harry had read in his parents' National Geographic (or thought he did) that bears smell fear and have terrible eyesight. Before they set out on their journey, he practiced in the mirror, raising his arms over his head and growling. They'd think you were bigger if you did that.

Behind Harry was Samir, the youngest and smallest of the troop at the age of 8. Samir, skinny and short with a mop of curly black hair, walked in great loping strides to keep up with Harry, whom he idolized. Samir wore a backpack, carried a walking stick he'd borrowed from his visiting Grandpa, and had a purple felt cape tied loosely around his neck.

Then there was Grant, at a burly 10 and a half, who looked as if he was ready for a rest mere moments into the journey. Grant enviously eyed Samir's Grandpa's walking stick and regretted his own knapsack, with its thin black string that cut into his shoulder as he lumbered along behind his fellows.

Pushing up the rear was dreamy Roslyn, a slim girl of nine, and Grant's little sister, whose curly brown hair spilled in shiny ringlets about her face and shoulders. Roslyn insisted on joining the boys, and no one dared argue with Roslyn. They knew better than to take a stand when her turned fiery red and her fingers curled up into cute little fists. She wore a t-shirt that sparkled with comets and stars and a pink knapsack festooned with dangling streamers and trinkets.

And it came to pass that after a long journey through the forest the little crew stopped in a clearing under the trees and unwrapped the plastic from their hummus-on-wheat sandwiches and sipped from tiny straws that punctured their juice boxes that he fell from tree into the little clearing, starting the children so that even brave Harry scurried behind a fallen tree with the rest and peered through the branches as the man carefully stood and dusted off his leafy green jacket.

"Are you lost?" the man said in the general direction of the little crew.

The man seemed impossibly tall, even for a grown-up, and strangely thin and angular, in Samir's assessment. He wore a leafy green jacket that was the color of thick maple leaves in the summer, and knit cap that fit just a little too tight, allowing bursts of blond hair to jut here and there in no certain pattern. His pants were green cloth and his boots were tall and brown, laced almost to his knees.

"What is he, Harry?" Samir whispered.

"Probably a Park Ranger," Harry said, without his usual confidence.

"That's stupid," Grant scowled. "That is no Park Ranger."

"Well what do you think he is, smarty?" Harry shot back.

"Yeah?" Samir said.

"I don't know. But it's no Park Ranger."

"Hmmph," Harry said.

"Yeah, hmmph," said Samir.

Roslyn spat on the ground in front of the boys, and stood up. "I'm going to ask him!"

And amid cries of "No!", and "You can't!" and "Stranger!", Roslyn stamped out of the brush to stand before the tall stranger.

"We're not lost, sir. Are you? My friends and I," and at this point she gestured urgently for the boys to join her, and they reluctantly complied, "are on a journey through these woods. You might call us Explorers."

The man bent down so that his face was nearly level with that of Roslyn, and tilted his head his eyes wide with amusement.

"And what, milady, is it that you seek? Perhaps it is something that I might help you to find?"

"Oh, I'm sure you can't," Roslyn said.

"Oh, you would be surprised at what I know," the main said, smiling.

"If I tell you, you can't tell anyone," Roslyn said, pointing a pink fingernail at the man's rather large nose.

"My word is my bond, milady." Roslyn blushed, thinking that this man speaks like he comes from the land of fairy tales, and the thought crossed her mind that he could well be an elf. That would be silly, she thought, but not impossible.

"Whose word?" Grant blurted.

"Whose? Ah," the man said, understanding. "You may call me Stilt."

"I'll need to talk with my friends, Stilt" Roslyn said. She gathered Harry, Grant and Samir in a huddle.

"Well, he seems nice," Grant said.

"What do you think, Harry?" Samir said.

"'What do you think, Harry,'" Roslyn mocked. "What do you think, Samir?"

"I think we should tell him. He seems, I don't know, magical or something."

"Hmmph," said Harry, and Samir's face turned quickly from pleased to crestfallen. "I think I should get out there and make him go away."

"He's not a bear, Harry," Grant said.

"A Hairy Bear, Harry?" Samir giggled and then stopped at an angry glance from Harry.

"I'm going to tell him," Roslyn finally said. "Sir, we seek the remains of the Last of the Unicorns!"

The man stopped and sat down heavily, head bowed low, arms on his knees, which were about as tall as Harry's nose. Finally, he looked up, gazing deep into Roslyn's green eyes.

"Why do you seek this?" he asked gravely.

"Because it's there!" Harry declared.

"Because it's magic!" Samir shouted.

"Because it's dead!" breathed Grant.

"Because I wasn't going to be left behind," Roslyn said.

Stilt laughed. "That may be the best reason of all, milady." He stood again. "If you must see it, then you must see it. Let us go there now."

Stilt walked into the woods and the children looked at each other and Grant shrugged and Harry nodded and the little troop hurried after him.

It wasn't far. They climbed over a hill, clambered over the rocky, barely visible trail on the other side that led down to bustling little creek. They followed the creek for a little ways till they saw it. The animal lay on its side, its legs limp and bony, its fur a dirty brown and white. As they drew closer, they could see the fuzzy branches of its antlers, and the brown stain in its side...

"Antlers?" Harry shouted.

"Have some respect, young man," Stilt warned.

"But...but..." Harry sputtered. "Unicorns don't have antlers!"

They were close enough to touch the beast now, but no one did. They stood, staring.

"There is no such thing as a unicorn, young man," Stilt said.

"But what about you?" Grant asked, tearing his eyes away from the fallen beast.

"Me?" Stilt asked in mock surprise.

"Yeah. There's no such thing as you, either!" Samir accused, like a prosecutor revealing a witness' lies. Stilt just laughed his long, funny laugh.

"No, you're right. I'm very...magical... is that what you would say? I'd prefer mythological, but to each his own."

"So?" Harry asked, practically shouting.

"So? What?" Stilt paused.

"So how are you here?" Harry shouted, almost in tears.

"Ah. Don't worry, young man. It will be all right, milady," he said to Roslyn, who was wiping away a tear of her own. "You're never too young to learn that some magic isn't real while other magic is very real."

"And how will we know?" Samir asked, smiling, quivering.

"I can't tell you that, my friend," Stilt said, placing a giant hand on the boy's head and tousling his hair. "But I can tell you that every bit of magic lost is a chance to turn this way or that. To choose a bold, new direction. To learn what is knowable and to seek the unknown."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Grant said, spitting.

"You're being rude, Grant," Roslyn said, throwing a handful of dirt at the boy.

"It's OK, Grant, milady. You know what you know now. The poor beast will be here for a long time. But you have places to go, wonders to see, people to be. Go home my friends, go home."

And Stilt doffed his cap and bowed low and Samir bowed low back to him and smiled a happy smile and led the little troop back into the wood trail, back toward home.

# # #

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Monday, February 05, 2007

The Complete "Peter Flak, Big Time Detective"

Now that I've gotten the sordid tale of Peter Flak, Big Time Detective out of my system, here is the whole thrilling tale in one convenient post:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Part XI
Part XII

Thanks for reading... and now, back to our regularly scheduled short bursts of randomness!



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