Popguns & Pacemakers

art by MONTY BORROR

[Robert S. Thompson, a gentleman on a bench on Main Street]

To the editor,

On November 11 we honor the veterans of our nation's wars.

Why?

Why honor the killing, the stealing of other nations' resources, not to mention the starving of our own people, for the military.

And our military does not protect our freedom with all this killing.

The members of the United States military are thugs, enforcers for the empire.

If we really wish to honor those who have given us the good life, look to those who fought and died and suffered prison to win for us the eight-hour day, minimum wage, to end to the Vietnam War.

In fact, America is enslaved by its military.

If it were not for the billions of dollars that go to the Armed Forces, for no good reason, we would have health care, a thriving economy, good schools, good roads.

If America survives the tyranny of the Bush-Obama era it will be because of those who are now fighting for our freedom, here, in the streets of America.

If America continues down its current path toward fascism, it will be at the will of the rich, by way of the hands of the enforcers — the police and the military.

If you are enjoying your freedom today — thank a protester.

- Robert S. Thompson

Well, hello and good morning.

I did not used to ever write about war in my letters to the editor. I much preferred sidewalks and curb and gutters.

But Thomas Moskowitz’ brother is coming home today, in a bag inside a box, and I am past tired of all this shit.

Tommy stopped by the other day and told me. He sat here on my bench with me for over an hour. We even took time to go into the café and Nona gave us free Coke and refills.

I really must tell you, before it is too late.

I couldn’t care less about your soybeans, your corn.

I could give a shit whether the hail destroys your new car, how much your gas costs.

Don’t talk to me about your football team, your hunting, your grass, your fucking kids.

Go watch your TV.

Eat your hamburgers, your donuts.

Your fries.

And die.

There are three-headed babies being born in Fallujah today because of the chemicals we used to kill. The United States won’t support the world court because we would be the first ones in the dock.

And you.

You talk about rain, about rhubarb, about the game, your lawn, your house, your damn kids.

Guess what?

There is a world out there.

And nobody gives a flying rat’s behind about your grass.

There are real things out there, bullets, war, poor families.

Your children are not real, not really, and your grass and your home and whatever else you have hanging neatly in your garage, are illusions, someone’s fantasy, and we really have no time for all that nonsense, not anymore.

I’m so sorry, but you will have to excuse me. I need to go home.

I need to lie down.

Goodbye.

[Tommy Michael Moskowitz, a kid on his bike]

H’llo.

I’m sitting on my bike on the sidewalk.

My brother is over there, inside that house.

Setting the world on fire.

That’s what Billy told me he was gonna do when he got big.

He’s big now, but he’s dead.

He’s in a box here inside Frog’s Funeral Home. Frog’s a kid in my class, not my class, he’s one year older.

It’s in their house, the funeral home.

I’m going to go ride my bike and remember my brother, and maybe to the park, but I don’t know yet.

“Billy Moskowitz, number 44.”

And then Billy runs out onto the field with the rest of the starting defense.

“Billy, have you washed your hands for supper?”

“Billy, could you please come up to the board and complete problem fifteen for us?”

“Billy, why do you do this to your mother and I?”

“William Maurice Moskowitz.”

That was when my brother graduated. They said his name and he turned when he was walking across the stage and he looked right at me and smiled.

I smiled back and we each gave the thumbs-up.

He looked right at me, out of that whole crowd.

He was already going to be a soldier by then. Because of that one day me and him was at the mall.

I wanted to get a Transformers action figure. If it wasn’t for me and those Deceptacons.

We went to the mall. We walked. It’s not that far.

The recruiter Army man came out by the pop machine and started talking to us about Mountain Dew and baseball.

He wanted to see my new toys.

Billy asked a couple of questions and then we went in to the recruiter offices to sit down and read sports magazines and eat little Snickers and Milky Way from a plastic Jack-o-Lantern.

Billy went to basic training in Georgia in the summer before school started.

He wrote a letter to Mom telling her everything was fine, all the guys  were great, and they were playing football in the barracks, using a bunch of rolled up green socks for the ball.

The letter he wrote to me told me to not tell Mom. It had teardrop stains is what it looked like. He said he wanted to go home. He was scared. He said the recruiter told him they don’t get in your face anymore, but that’s all they do is get in your face and call you faggot and pussy.

He said they march and march and sing songs about killing people and they … Oh, God. He said his bunkmate tried to commit suicide by hanging off their bed, and he said two guys from his unit raped a kid from another unit and now they’re in the base jail, stockade.

We all went there, Mom’s brother Rick drove, to his graduation.

Billy was supposed to have a free day before graduation but he got in trouble and had to clean something with a toothbrush. We sat in the motel room, all of us, watching golf on TV and going to the bathroom and listening to car doors open and shut in the parking lot.

But Billy marched past and he looked at me and smiled. I don’t think he was s’posed to. He supposed to look tough.

Then we got to take him home with us. We stopped at the first KFC. Everyone else got the buffet. Billy and I got a bucket of original recipe and got our own table and we didn’t look up until it was gone.

Billy went back to school for his senior year the next week, but he was already too old for school.

My brother went to World Cultures and Chem II and Spanish III.

He sat there and spoke when called on, but he was thinking the whole time about war, about war movies and war songs and him the one charging through the line or running away, him the one rushing into the surf or pushing his way to the back of the landing craft.

It was him lying on the floor of the jungle screaming in pain and his crotch a sticky bloody mess, and all he really really wants is to take a hot bath and put on new Christmas pajamas and drink hot cocoa and be warm.

He thought all the time about war.

And then he left.

Me and Mom drove him and then we waved at him and the others on the buses leaving town. We followed in the car for almost an hour. We stopped and Mom cried by the side of the road. Then we came home and she made us grilled cheese sandwiches.

Billy wrote lots of letters, especially when he was still here, over here in this country.

He told us about the more training he was doing and the guys he knew and he smoked a cigarette once. “Never again,” he said. Mom said she hoped he sticks to that, they’re not good for you.

Then he took a big plane over the ocean.

It was so big, he said.

It was hot there and he smoked cigarettes. He said, don’t tell Mom. I didn’t.

There were teachers at our school who patted me on the shoulder, the head. They smiled. They knew my brother had started smoking. I didn’t tell them. Somehow they knew.

The priest said Billy’s name once from the altar. Not the altar, the … thing … the stand, the thing there where he stands.

Anyway, I don’t know. We didn’t use to ever to go, but now Mom says I have to.

Well, maybe not anymore now.

I don’t even know if Mom will go outside anymore, now.

I dug the paper out of the trash.  There was a big headline with Billy’s picture. It was different, not his senior one or the football one, just different.

There were some men here in soldier’s uniforms. That’s kind of why I left.

They had my brother’s stuff in a box.

Mom sat down on the couch and pulled out the stuff.

There was some letters, and pictures, a key ring, and a jacket. On the back it said something about terrorists and kill them and Mom laid down on the couch and the men left and I waited until she fell asleep.

Nobody’s out.

Everybody’s home.

I don’t want to go home.

[Nona, the waitress]

These people. These people have everything on their minds but public service.

My impression is they have power and the keeping of that power on their minds. We imagine that people who seek public office want to work for the social welfare and would naturally want to know the truth, but so often and for so many years we have been disappointed by putting our faith in our political leaders.

We have a semblance of representation, but not in reality.

Nobody asks you if you want to build more prisons. Nobody asks you if you want to bomb children in Iraq. Nobody asks you if you want your money to go to the poor, to schools, to roads.

Nobody ever asks.

So sometimes, sometimes you just have to tell them.

Every year we are asked to pay our taxes, send in our forms, pay for the bullets, the bombs that kill the children, the men and women.

We are given no choice.

Just as we were given no choice as children whether or not to rise before class and say the pledge of allegiance to America's wars.

We're not children anymore.

Our acquiescance has real consequence.

We pay to have people killed so that America and America's businesses may expand influence and market area.

I don't want to believe that.

I want to rather believe in the America I believed in when I walked alone into Mrs. Steele's kindergarten class and saw written across the giant blackboard in gigantic white chalk letters: President John F. Kennedy.

But.

They killed Kennedy and America has never been the same since.

But the ideal remains.

The dream of a good and just America remains.

We may never get there, but we must try.

We must try.

[Robert S. Thompson]

There are quite a few letters in the papers these days.

Mostly they are popguns and pacemaker patriots as I call them, but there are a few.

There are a few.

Here, let me read two of them to you.

Please, sit down.

If you have time?

Oh, that’s marvelous, thank you, it will take just a moment.

Okay, uh, here, here is the first one.

Dear Editor:

I have a neighbor across the street.

We have watched each other out our front windows for forty years.

Their son played ball in our yard.

Last week that son's boy came home in a body bag in a box in the belly of a big Boeing, back from Baghdad.

That is nothing to "b" joking about.

I am not.

But I will not "b" quiet, either.

I have talked to my neighbors since then, on the sidewalk in front of the house, and again on the side steps of St. Mark's after Mass.

They say Billy died because he loved freedom.

That's nonsense. He loved basketball.

They say he had his head blown off his shoulders, his legs cut off at the knees, lost his hands, to make us free.

Of course, that's not true. But what else do a heart-broken grandmother and grandfather have to hold on to?

Someone needs to speak for Billy, perhaps speak to him, to tell him the truth, because we lied to him his whole life.

Billy died because of us.

Me. You.

We told him it was good to go.

Fr. Cyril, either by his legendary silence, or the flag next to the altar, said it was good to go kill children and call that fighting for freedom.

She never met Billy, but Cindy Sampson, our new editor from Iowa State, told him the same by the stories she ran, and the headlines and the photos and editorials, so patriotic, so deceptive, so self-serving.

We all told him, go, go, it's a good thing to do.

We whispered, go kill, go shoot, go murder and steal, and we'll all call it "fighting for freedom."

And when we hear in the big city newspapers and TV after thousands and thousands have died that there was no reason to die — we'll dig our heels in the front lawn grass and still call it fighting for freedom.

And when our grandchildren hit the ball into the graveyard and come back and ask us about the headstone with the flag on it and the same last name as theirs — who was that?

We'll bite our tongues and clench our fists and look anywhere but into their trusting eyes, and we'll tell them Billy died fighting for our freedom.

Just one more. I don’t believe I know this person either.

And I Laugh

There's a photo on the Internet that makes me laugh.

A little brown boy holding a silent scream forever in four-color.

Ha.

The horrified little fellow now has no arms or legs, or brothers, sisters or parents, and I laugh out loud.

I laugh at the Marines, being all they could possibly be in God's creation, at their tough-man commercials. The Army of One. What a hoot.

The rough-guy coaches and players who let this boy die — what comedy watching them feel strong while letting the real battles be fought by little guys with sticks and bicycles.

The boy has a bandaged head.

He looks so scared his hair might turn white, as in a Hitchcock film, and it sort of makes me chuckle.

I laugh at the ministers here in town and here on this TV saying bless our troops as they defend our freedom.

I laugh at the ministers here in town and here on this TV saying bless our troops as they defend our freedom.

I laugh at the well-schooled and coifed newspaper columnists with their earnest close-cropped photos in four hundred papers read by forty million people in forty million cities.

And I laugh.

The boy is flat on his back on dirty cement, with his stubs hastily wrapped in Ace bandages, surrounded by the world trying to get a look, by photographers and people on their way to work and out to dinner.

We are nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing!

Because this boy now has no arms.

No legs.

Nothing we will do today will mean a thing because we have ripped the arms and legs from this boy as if he were a fly and we are us.

This boy who could be my boy, lying there at the feet of the world and the world looking the other way.

Goddamn us.

Please.

Give us what we deserve.

If you are a just God, rain down fire and hell upon our heads. Lightning bolts upon our backyard decks and rivers of excrement down our smooth, well-scrubbed streets.

Please, dear God we pray.

When I awoke this morning I thought it essential to the world order and being right, and a good person, that I shave, help out with the dishes, be on time, and drive on the right side of the road.

Do a good job. Be pleasant.

Smile.

But now I just can't stop laughing.

The world thinks it still matters, and that's kind of funny in a way.

There, the flag flying over the Catholic elementary school and the yellow ribbons tied to the light poles on both sides of Main Street.

Stray cats wearing yellow ribbons around their necks, roaming the night, looking both ways before crossing the street, as if it mattered.

You are never so wrong as when you damage a young boy.

We sit down here like the Who's in Whoville celebrating the coming of War Season while this boy lies on the cold floor.

Tee. Hee-hee.

DUMB GUYS

Hunting ... in a small town

art by Monty Borror

Robert S. Thompson here.

Nice day.

Getting on toward fall.

Time to wind down, hunker in, relax.

For most.

For some it's the time to die.

You might not see it right away just looking at me, but I'm not much of a hunter.

I've told this story before, maybe not to you, but it bears repeating. It's not really even my story. I've heard it told by others, maybe I read it somewhere. I'm surprised you haven't heard it before.

In any case.

You have a good day.

Get those leaves raked. Put on your storm windows. Or is it take 'em down now? My wife would have known, for sure. She's gone. I'm still here, but for how long?

Hey! No gloomy Gus. The Wife could not stand it when I got that way after the leaves started to drop.

I'm tryin' to do better, Mary, I'm trying ...

“Ever see a cock-pheasant, all stiff and beautiful ever' feather drawed and painted, an' even his eyes drawed in pretty? An' bang! You pick him up, bloody and twisted, an' you spoiled somepin better'n you.”

— John Steinbeck, “The Grapes of Wrath”

The Ten-Point Norwegian

Recently six hunters were killed in Wisconsin and another is now headed off to prison for life.

Well, that's a start.

I don't like hunters. They kill when they do not need to. When I see a bunch out in a field in their bright orange dunce caps, I try to honk and then flip them the bird while they raise their shotguns in salute.

I used to be a hunter. My dad took me pheasant hunting in northeast Nebraska back in the '60s. He was from South Dakota and had hunting in his blood. I bought an Ithaca 12-gauge with a ribbed site, with my own money.

And then I really got hooked on duck hunting somewhere in the '70s. Ducks and geese fascinated me. I think because they came from somewhere else. They were migrating, passing through, when the pheasants and me had only been just here.

Then one day I downed a hen mallard in a slough, cornered her and tried to kill her off by holding her head under water.

I thought to myself, how stupid is this, for one, trying to drown a duck, we could be here all day, and secondly, trying to kill this bird, for what damned reason?

So I let her up. She swam away, to die some day, some way. I walked away, headed toward the same. Threw the Ithaca in the swamp, or sold it, or left it in the trunk of my car. I forget.

I heard that later my high school group of friends would joke about "pre-duck Robert" and "post-duck Robert" as later I went on to seminary and civil disobedience, etc. I don't see them anymore, they were so pre-duck.

I was a dumb guy once, probably still am. Dumb guys are the last to know.

I've seen deer hung up in the front yard of somebody's home, in town, while little kids walk past on their way to school. I've seen hunters gloating over dead deer in the field, big brain-dead grins on their faces. I've heard measured defenses of hunting from guys who really should know better.

And I've seen the hunting channel, really big, really-really dumb guys whispering, pointing toward the bear or deer they are about to kill for no reason. Then later going up and petting the dead animal like they just loved it so much they had to kill it.

There is some sick psychology to hunting, harvesting they call it.

You see something beautiful, majestic, but just beyond your reach, so you kill it and there it is, you own it, put it on your wall and it is yours, like the Silver Hummer in the drive, or Mary Jane from the cheerleading squad upstairs boiling bologna.

And you bath in the afterglow in your new basement den, your feet propped up in just your orange socks, watching football on a screen the size of Vermont.

No wonder this country will not last much longer. That's probably a good thing.

It's like when God handed out brains, the line was much longer than he had anticipated, and after a point, he still had the whole midwestern United States to do.

So he said, "Hey, guys, all I've got left are these orange mittens and these camouflaged socks, sorry. But they're pretty cool, right? See, you put them on, I can't see you! Here. Yeah, that looks great. No, really."

And the dumb guys scooped up the orange and camouflaged hats and pants and coats and said, "Let's git 'r done," with no idea what that meant.

Over Thanksgiving, my wife, son, daughter, and mother-in-law, and I slumped toward east-central South Dakota to my brother-in-law-the-banker's place.

On the way I spotted this enlightened billboard: "SD Rejects Animal Activists. Fur, Fish, Livestock Are Are Economy."

Down the road a bit, like Burma-Shave on a mental hospital front lawn: "The United States Rejects Human Life Advocates. Bullets, Bombs, Caskets Are Are Economy."

I am so proud to be an American.

No, I'm kidding.

A while back there was a photo in the paper of another Wisconsin hunter, this one still kickin', who had bagged a 28-point buck.

Remember the song about the turty-point buck? No relation.

Well, the hunter says in the article as he holds the animal's antlers for the photographer as the deer's eyes hang half-closed and the tongue lolls out the side of the mouth, that he really, seriously feels kind of bad about taking such a beautiful creature from the woods.

No, really.

Don't believe it folks.

He is a dumb guy wearing orange clothes with a deer head in his hands.

He'll say anything to stay out of prison.

An' eatin' him don't never make it up to you, 'cause you spoiled somepin in yaself, an' you can't never fix it up.

___________

Next Week:

Patriotism ... in a small town

Holy Crap!

RELIGION … in a small town

art by Monty Borror

[Tommy Michael Moskowitz, a kid]

Well, I was over on my bike the other day by the church.

It was freezing cold, but I ride my bike all year.

If you go fast you can fly over all the front steps.

Johnny and me were resting, sitting on our bikes.

He says to me, “That’s God’s house.”

“It’s church,” I said.

“He’s in there,” he said. “My gramma goes there to talk to God.”

My eyes must have been huge ‘cause Johnny said, “No, really!”

He said, “Go in there and see. See God.”

I shook my head.

“I dare you. Go!” Johnny said.

So I said, “You can’t,” ‘cause I didn’t want to. It’s huge and there’s statues that don’t move or talk and there’s a little thing with a dead guy on the front above the door, and I’ve never really been to church.

“Go on! God is in there! It’s His house!”

Johnny didn’t understand that I didn’t need to be convinced. I just wanted to stay outside on my bike and blow breath smoke.

“He’s got to always be in there in case my gramma comes to visit,” Johnny said. “God doesn’t have nowhere to go. He doesn’t have to mow the lawn. Mr. and Mrs. Pierce does that.

“He doesn’t eat, so he doesn’t have to go buy milk or Cheerios or anything like that.

“He’s got nowhere else to go.”

“Poor guy,” I thought.

“Okay,” I said.

I said I’d go visit God then.

I looked around for something to take to God. Johnny said his gramma takes money. I dug into my front pockets and then my back.

“C’mon,” says I to Johnnny.

He just shook his head and sat on his bike, nodding me up toward the church.

I thought about taking my bike in for God, then I just handed the handlebars to Johnny since my kickstand doesn’t work, then I walked up toward the big steps and the big door.

I walked up the steps, grabbed the big, gold door handle and looked back.

Johnny waved at me to go on, go on. Just go.

I yanked on the door. It wouldn’t move. I looked back at Johnny.

He waved again, again.

I yanked and leaned back and grunted like grandpa pooping.

It opened a bit. I dived inside and landed on the rug and the big door thudded shut behind me.

And I was sure I would die in church. I could never get that door open again, that’s for sure.

Well, so I went in. I would need big help to get that door open.

Maybe I could ask God.

It was cold and quiet.

I heard echoes. It was my shoes.

I walked down the middle lane.

It was mostly dark.

I stopped.

“God?” I said.

I didn’t hear anything except a clock ticking somewhere. I felt my heart beating and I leaned my head down to try to hear my heart, but my neck wouldn’t bend low enough so I stopped.

I walked all the way to the front fence thing.

“Hellooo!

“God?”

I looked way up to the balcony in back.

I walked over with big sneaky steps to two little boxes with red curtains and looked inside. They had doors. I opened them.

“God?”

I guessed God wasn’t home.

Maybe God went bowling.

I don’t know. That sounds stupid, but where was God.

God wasn’t there.

“Gooo-oooooddd!”

“How’s God?” said Johnny. “What’s He like?”

“He’s not in there,” I said.

“Has to be,” he said. “My gramma talks to Him.”

“I know, you said,” I said.

We both went in there together.

We looked under every bench, in the two boxes again, up on the stage thing, even up in the balcony and we hollered out.

“God! Goo-ood! Anybo-ody home?”

But there was no God.

[Robert S. Thompson, older man on bench on Main Street]

Johnny and Tommy decided they would try to find God.

They sat together in Tommy’s bedroom on the floor eating movie theater candy, making big plans.

They wrote down a list in Johnny’s school notebook about places the could look: the library, the nursing home, the park, the bowling alley, all the old people boring places that God would like.

And they would go back to church and sit in there and try to see God and then ask him where he was, before, and ever since, and where he was going to be, from now on, all the time, forever and ever, past Tuesday.

Amen.

[Nona, the waitress]

The Burning Bush.

People ascending into heaven and back.

What that sounds like to me is people without the Internet thing to figure out UFOs.

What would you call it if you were the first person ever to see a flying saucer come down and sit in your yard?

You’d kneel down and jump up and down and write it all down and start a club and then make up special things to say and stuff to wear and extra special days and all sorts of backyard treehouse club shit.

That’s exactly what you’d do.

The kids on the football team kneel down in the locker room just as Pastor Martin walks in and helps them pray for victory.

They pray for victory.

Why? Why do they do that?

Who’s listening? Who cares?

If they win the football game — some God who has always been and knows everything — he cares whether they win?

What if the other team prays too?

Uh-oh.

And he says when he hears their prayers — you are my people, my faithful little football player people who carry the football over the white line and it is good and holy and right that you carry the ball over the line more times than the little football guys in the other locker room and yes, I grant that you shall win and be happy, for a while, until you have other tiny little shit to worry about and whine about, and … you are my people.

My little football player people.

And the same thing happens in baseball when the player steps on home plate and then points up to the sky to say, thank you, God, leading me around the bases.

God leaves ten thousand million babies and young kids to die every day from starvation even though their mothers and fathers cry out in prayer and yet he took time to … he cared whether this rich man baseball player somehow got around the bases.

And people will ask God to help them win in war, too. Help me not get hurt or killed. Help me to see my children again.

Help me to kill them, even though they have children, too.

Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Amen.

And God does just that. Or not.

It kinda depends.

You know, when I found out in a magazine that everyone was lying for a long time about who killed the president John F. Kennedy, I thought about God, about whether there was a God.

Because before that I didn’t think people lied, but then I knew they lied about everything, so maybe they were lying about the biggest thing of all.

Hmmm.

What if we just made up God to make us feel better?

It does feel better, like our mom and dads and grandparents and sisters didn’t really die, that we will see them again.

That sounds better than the other thing, that there’s nothing.

Maybe we made up heaven and angels and alleluia and golden sidewalks.

That sounds pretty good.

[Robert S. Thompson]

Tommy and Johnny sat in the bowling alley drinking pop and peeing one whole Saturday afternoon.

They saw an old guy sitting by himself.

“Hi,” Tommy said.

They sat there for a while.

“Are you God?” said Johnny.

The man flicked the ash from his cigarette and said, “I might be.”

They sat with the man at his little round table as he drank his drink and smoked.

They watched the bowlers and smelled the cigarettes and the beer and the peanuts and listened to the crash of the pins and the ding-ding-ding of the one pinball machine.

They got up and walked away after the man left without saying goodbye.

“He wasn’t God,” said Johnny.

“He said he might be,” said Tommy.

“He wasn’t,” said Johnny.

“How do you know?” said Tommy.

“He just wasn’t,” said Johnny. “Trust me.”

They sat in the library and got shooshed at least two or three times.

They saw three or four old guys who could be God.

One fell asleep in his chair, and they watched him sleep for a while, and one was reading The Christian Reformer, and they watched him do that, and then they got on their bikes and followed one guy walking home, but he took forever, and they gave up.

They sat in the lobby of the nursing home and smelled pee for as long as they could take it, and then coasted across the highway to the park to see if any old guys were sitting on benches.

Tommy sat at the very top of the slide and yelled over at Johnny on the busted rocking horse.

“What if he’s a girl?”

“What?”

“What if God is a girl, you know, a woman? And maybe we walked right past him about a hundred times?”

Johnny got off the horse shaking his head.

He stomped up the slide without slipping, right up to Tommy, grabbing the sides.

Only some kids could do that. Tommy was impressed and a little scared.

“What?”

So Tommy said it again.

“God can’t be a woman,” said Johnny. And he turned and slid down.

“Why?”

“I dunno, but He’s a he, so how can he be a girl,” Johnny looked up and shouted.

On Sunday Tommy came over to Johnny’s wearing his church clothes. They were school clothes, but now they were church clothes, too.

Johnny and Tommy walked in with Johnny’s mom and dad, who didn’t know why Tommy was with them.

Johnny said he wanted to show Tommy the upstairs so the two of them ran up to the balcony. They went way up to the front, the edge, The Ledge-Edge where you could lean over and look right down on people’s heads and see everyone coming in.

Tommy poked Johnny to notice their teacher, Miss Tina, taking her seat.

For a while they watched people and fought the urge to jump or fall on their heads, and watched the organ guy work the pedals.

Johnny nudged Tommy and nodded and they both went on the lookout for God like they said they were gonna.

They looked behind them and they looked below, and they looked on the altar and by the ceiling and down Miss Tina’s church clothes for God.

[Nona]

I’ve never actually believed in God.

My parents were jello-blob-theory New Age hippies that had my brother and I searching for our “spirit animals.” It’s all kind of silly.

I’ve always found being an atheist very freeing. Life is enough to deal with. I don’t want to have to worry about an afterlife, too.

My partner’s mom is a fundamentalist Christian.

She spends hours and hours of every day thinking about some poor guy’s brutal execution two millennia ago. She worries that me and her son are going to hell.

She tells me she couldn’t live without a God, because what would be the point? — but I don’t know that living with it is really living.

I actually think it’s kind of insane. No, I know it’s insane. It sure as shit doesn’t seem to make her happy or fulfilled.

I think atheism immensely comforting. And inspiring. And freeing.

It makes me want to do something fun an interesting every day. It also really makes me want to do some good for other people, whatever that means.

‘Cause, ya know, this is all there is.

The good ol’ here and now, being decent to one another, helping each other out, being healthy and happy and safe. Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Isn’t that why the churches try so hard, too?

They want to be happy, to have then figured out and now figured out and the next day figured out, too — and then just say whew! and plop down and be happy.

But are we just pygmies out in the backyard at midnight howling at the moon with all that stuff?

Couldn’t we just take our bowling balls and our gas grills and fire them up and call that church just as easy? If there is a God she would probably just smile and say that’s close enough.

I would think so.

Wouldn’t you?

[Nona, the next day]

There’s been a lot of people over the years who have believed in God.

There’s mom and dad and grandma.

There’s Moses and Jesus.

Jesus even thought he was God.

And there’s been all the church people over the years, and monks and sisters and priests and people who sit n the dark with hoods over their heads their whole lives, talking to God.

We are all pencils in the hands of God. Mother Teresa said that.

Was she just nuts?

Or what?

There’s Thomas Merton for another one, and Teilhard de Chardin.

And Bishop Spellman, St. Augustine, one million million grandma’s, and Henri Nouwen, the liberation theologians in Central America, and one million grandpa’s.

And that’s not all. Not even close.

They all thought about God, talked to God, listened to God, suffered stuff for God.

But if there is no God, what was all that about?

Just all big kids who believed in the Easter Bunny?

Bill Hicks asked why we celebrate Easter with giant rabbits and eggs and chocolate. That shit isn’t in the bible and yet we haul it up from the basement to celebrate some God rising from the dead and our never-ever really dying. Never. Ever. ... Ever.

That’s a pretty big thing to be making up all that weird shit about.

And you know what? If there is no heaven, we will never know.

We will never fucking know.

Sorry, but right?

The only way we know, is if there is a God and is a heaven.

Everybody who dies knows — or they’re just dead — but they can’t tell us.

What about ghosts and the white light of near death experiences?

Ghosts. Did we make them up, too?

You ever dream? Those are weird.

Your own mind makes up all that up on it’s own — all the speaker parts — acting parts, you and everybody else in your dream, all the sets and scenery, the plot, the rewrite, the subtext.

We can make up a lot of stuff, even when we’re not trying.

[Robert S. Thompson]

So, they kept looking, because Johnny said they should, but they didn’t know where else to look, so they went to swing on the swings at the park.

For a while they rocked and kicked and swang together, back and forth, back and forth.

Then they got off rhythm and they swang like that those steel balls on a string or like the legs of a cross-country skier, back and forth, back and forth.

They still talked, but louder and they got to singing about Dinah in the kitchen and then beer on the wall, and all covered on top of old smokey.

They got dizzy and they let their feet drag, scuff, drag, scuff, until they finally stopped, and the world was back to normal. No singing.

One of them got up and began to walk and the other just followed.

They walked together to the school and through the playground, climbing over the monkey bars with their feet pulled up, sweating, faces going red, grunting, because the ground was hot lava.

It was.

They crossed the bridge over the little river, kind of shaking, stopping like businessmen, to throw a few rocks that were there, like a job that needed doing, then moving on to the next thing.

They walked across the big mall parking lot, and it took about a million years to even get to where there were any cars parked.

They went inside and one yawned and then the other.

They followed a smell to the caramel popcorn place, then they began to mosey. One of them started to just walk on his heels, and then they both were.

Johnny and Tommy wandered through the sporting goods store and the candy store.

They stopped to stare in the window of a store with a stuffed purple Easter Bunny and some eggs and Santa Claus reading a long list of names from a long sheet of little paper.

They took a long time in the toy section of Sears, touching the Spiderman, X-Man and Superman, Batman crime fighting team dolls.

Then they each at the same time wondered what time it was and if they were in trouble.

They hurried out of the store, turned one way, then the other, then stopped in front of the store they always stopped at and decided to go inside to take of the glass lids to smell the candles and touch the baby Jesus manger scene with the horses and sheep and the camels, one with two humps, one with one.

And they didn’t touch the one because they couldn’t reach way far in the back.

[Robert S. Thompson, the next day]

Then something happened.

Something big.

Pretty big.

Johnny and Tommy had kind of given up looking for God. Not given up, not like they said they quit, but like they just hadn’t looked for a while.

Instead they played and watched TV and ate popcorn Tommy’s mom made. And I heard for a while they were consumed with throwing whiffle ball curves.

They played on Saturday on the construction site for the new drive-in bank, hiding from each other and Texas Rangers and throwing dirt clods.

Then at school on Monday the whole class and the whole school started praying that a kid in one of the grades who was sick would not die.

Each morning the teachers in all the classrooms asked their children to pray for the poor student who was sick and might die.

This went on for two days and then all the way to Friday.

And then over the weekend everyone forgot about the one who was dying, but on Monday again they wondered and asked each other and then the teacher how the sick kid was.

He died, said the teacher.

But we all prayed that he wouldn’t, they said.

God had his own plan, said another teacher walking past.

Then if God has his one plan anyway, why did we bother asking, said one of the children, who was then shushed by a hand over her mouth by the teacher.

[Tommy]

Hey.

My Mom sang this song to me ‘cause she knew I was pretty worried about God.

Imagine there's no Heaven, she said.

But I don’t really want to. I think heaven would be cool. Somebody said just imagine the best thing you can imagine and that’s what heaven is and that’s what you will get.

The last thing I’m going to imagine is that there’s no such thing as heaven. And I’d like to know that my grandma and grandpa got their heaven. They really wanted it.

I’d hate to have it be that when you die it’s just dark.

That would be the worst thing.

Imagine there is hell.

And it is pitch dark and you can’t see anything and you are stepping carefully with your hands stretched out forever and ever and there is nobody else and no sound and you are always just wondering.

I’m going to puke I know it.

Better watch out.

I want there to be cool stuff and everybody is happy and it’s always fun and there is nothing to be sad about.

And it’s always nice out.

That.

No hell below us.

I’d take that.

Somebody said if you’re bad you burn in hell forever.

Man.

What’s forever like? I get dizzy and sick thinking about that. How does something never end? Try thinking about that for more than one minute. See if you can. I can’t. About nine seconds is all I can do. Nine seconds is enough to make me sick.

Above us only sky.

I’m riding my bike over to the park and I’m going to do one of my heaven things.

I’m going to sit by this one tree and look up at the sky with the sun in my face and I’m going to close my eyes, one, so the sun doesn’t blind me and also cuz … well, that’s just between me and somebody.

Hey, seeya.

Watch me.

Hey watch me.

Watch me!

_______________

Next Week:

Dumb Guys

- HUNTING ... in a small town

WHITE PICKET FENCES

— Homeland Security ... in a small town

Part two/Conclusion

art by Monty Borror

Talkin' at the Texaco
by James McMurtry


well if you're lookin' for a good time
you're a little bit late
we rolled up the sidewalks
at a quarter to eight
it's a small town
we can't sell you no beer
it's a small town, so
may I ask what you're doin' here

hey what you up to
I already know
I heard the boys
talkin' at the Texaco
it's a small town
I know how you feel
it's a small town, son
and the news travels
quicker than wheels

who you lookin' for
what was his name
you can prob'ly find him
at the football game
it's a small town
you know what I mean
it's a small town, son
and we all support the team

the preacher drove by in his Cadillac
I waved at him but he didn't wave back
it's a small town
everybody knows your face
it's a small town, son
and we all must know our place

I woke up feeling foggy
and I called old Mrs. White
I figured she could tell me
what I did last night
it's a small town
she's bound to know
it's a small town, son
I believe that I better go

[Robert S. Thompson]

Day in and day out The Swarm buzzed the jail.

“What’s that noise?” said one of Moon Walking’s jailers.

The Swarm went around and around, over the top and tried to go under.

The Swarm grew larger, and it sounded more like a machine humming, at least during the day. At night it sounded like locusts, or one locust, one big, breathing, loud, buzzing, buzzing, whirring, humming … thinking.

Hmmmm. Hmmm. Hmmmm.

Inside the jail, Moon Walking tried to see in the dark.

She sat in her cell on the cement floor against the wall. She figured it was the north wall. It was far away from the door, where the slot of light shined at meal times.

She often saw eye shine in the light shaft inside the door.

She imagined things like voices or faces and smells and she felt things like falling from a cold mountain top and water skiing and falling to the bottom of a lake, and hanging.

Through the leaked gossip of the jailers over the days she learned that a kindergartner with plastic explosives in his Depends had been caught just prior to blowing the cafeteria to kingdom come.

And that bottled water, shampoo, toothpaste and Sweet Tarts were no longer allowed on any mini-vans anywhere in town, due to inside information obtained regarding their possible use in ruining the carpeting of the vehicles.

I heard that a reporter from the newspaper, just out of college, was driving around, trying to do research for a column on the zeitgeist of the town and was summarily pulled into a garage and stomped nearly to death. Or maybe he did die. How would we ever know?

We now have The Hall Monitors, individuals of all ages who sit at each street corner and check the papers and purpose of passersby.

If you are not going anywhere to kill someone in their sleep, why would you care if you get checked or not?

[Tommy]

The Swarm is everywhere these days.

Even at night. Some people seem them on people’s roofs, sitting in the church after midnight, somebody even saw them riding across the sky.

Wow.

They took William from his store. He’s retarded, but he runs the used movie store anyway.

I saw Christoph on the sidewalk kind of telling the police what to do and he told me that William was a defective.

I want to be a defective when I get older, catch criminals, solve stuff. I think it would be great.

Anyway, William is a defective now. I saw him walk in the police station with Don. I’ll bet he’s got his own office. I’m glad he’s happy. He told me he didn’t think he was going to the Fall Fling ‘cause retards can’t go.

Now I’ll bet he can go.

Hey, ‘jew know we got cameras all over now?

Hey! Hey! I just passed one, now another one! They take your picture and I wave whenever I see ‘em.

Hey!

I stick out my tongue or something sometimes.

Hey!

[Nona]

Hey.

Good afternoon.

It’s morning?

Oh.

I don’t get much sleep.

All night long outside my house this buzzer … buzzes. It’s motion detection equipment or something. They’re trying to catch The Swarm.

I guess The Swarm is trying to break Moon Walking out of the city jail and they might blow up the jail or maybe take hostages.

Don drives fast up and down all the streets in the middle of the night with his siren going and his lights flashing to try to show the people there’s trouble brewing.

Nobody sleeps.

Sometimes I go out for a walk around town ‘cause I can’t sleep and everybody’s lights are on, some porch lights too, backyard lights. You walk down the street and you set off everybody’s motion detection light and it’s just like walking around during the day. It’s okay, kind of different, but then the next day everybody’s tired.

I told you I get to dust around those new Open Your Eyes plastic cards on each table now, plus, plus! Now they’ve got all these other things we are supposed to warn people about, if you’re on The Committee.

The Committee — I’m on it, not sure how I got elected  — is supposed to talk to people all the time about being afraid of books, because of eye strain and exploding heads. Okay, I can see that.

But sharks? Really, sharks is on the Be Afraid List. That’s not the same as the list of persons to be afraid of. It’s a different list.

And lightning. If it rains or thunders everyone is supposed to run outside and run around as fast as you can because lightning cannot hit you if you are moving. If it’s a long storm everyone gets pretty tired, and wet, but as long as we don’t get hit by lightning I can see why we have to do it.

And Loogies. What if someone was in a plane passing overhead and decided to hack up a big one and let fly? Yeah, I  never thought about it either, but the people on Christopher’s Inner Bunch have thought about it and I’m glad.

That’s the reason for the yellow rain suits that we now have to wear, along with the personal fences, the bee tenders masks that used to be so hard to find, but now every store has ‘em.

6. Meteors

I can see that, too.

That would hurt.

Nicaraguans wearing Colombian sandals.

All I can say is good for the Inner Bunch ‘cause that one goes — zoom — right over my head.

And Giant Jello Blobs Like The Ones Kids Get On Their School Lunch Tray, Only Way Bigger.

I would hate to be out walking some night and run into one of those, and be by myself, all alone, but somebody said they have those more in the city.

Okay, seeya.

Be careful.

I’m serious.

[Tommy]

Hey.

You hear that?

“BE CAREFUL OF THE EVIL-DOERS!”

Hear that?

It’s the radio guy. He has his regular show, but now he’s got speakers all over town, too, for in case somebody doesn’t have a radio or doesn’t have it turned on all the time.

I’m bringing sandwiches to the jail.

Somebody said they won’t give them to her.

I’m gonna try. My mom helped me make them.

I’m going as fast as I can but you have to always slow down ‘cause the fences, you can’t see who’s coming.

I might try going out to Abu Iowa too some time.

Mom says, “forget that,” but I think I should go out. I haven’t seen those guys for a long time.

“Hey, Cleo, Cleopatra.”

They like meow and whoof when you say hi. I don’t know if that’s on purpose or what.

Robert S. Thompson here.

What a beautiful day.

I love fall. Of course, that’s like saying, I like strawberries. It goes without saying, but nevertheless, don’t you?

The Fighting Angus are doing well in football. The volleyball team, not so much.

What with the dissidents all corralled in Abu Iowa and with the jobs that has created, well, it adds a certain gloss to the beautiful red and oranges in the leaves.

I should write a letter to the editor to that effect and maybe I will this time.

There is still the matter of Ms. Moon Walking.

They say now on the radio that she is connected to a network of librarians, a cabal or cadre, web, or something.

That is what happens.

FDR, Carnegie, Murrow.

I could scream but it’s as well that I do not.

All these types all over and even in this country as well.

Some days it’s all a person can do to get up in the morning.

There goes That Swarm.

So full of energy and life.

I envy them in a way, going up and around and over everything. The fences don’t bother them. They bother me, in a way. I like to observe and I can’t see anything.

The Swarm used to be mildly amusing on their bicycles, zipping here, there.

Now they circle the jail like Indians, ride over roofs.

I’m not sure what can be done about them.

Or if we have the collective will to deal with them. No stomach for what needs to be done. Not like it used to be.

I used to bring a transistor radio down here to listen to while I sit, but with the new public blasts, I dare say I don’t require one.

Pretty soon they’ll have Coaches Corner. There’s a game tonight.

[Nona]

We do need to keep our shit straight, I mean safe.

“Right?”

Oh, boy. I should at least let you sit down, I suppose.

Coffee?

Cream?

Pretty soon The Swarm would threaten our jobs, family, cars, TVs, right?

That’s what people are saying anyway.

And they think Moon Walking should be electrocuted, as long as that wouldn’t be added to their municipal bill.

Or, some say, a good spanking.

Or deported to Nebraska.

That would teach her.

And what’s so bad about wanting to be safe?

Huh?

Save room for pie?

No, no key lime.

Lemme check.

Cherry, peach, pear.

Yep, just something we’re trying.

Safe. Sound. Secure.

SSS.

Oops, I better keep my trap shut or there won’t be no room on the tables for plates with all the slogans and cards and signs.

But, really, as long as we can do that, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the world drowns or burns, or what have you.

It really don’t.

Country folk can survive, like the song.

Right?

Can I top that off for you?

Sorry, there ya go.

[Tommy]

The real enemy is the Gestapo itself.

Remember the White Rose.

There is no such thing as The Swarm.

It’s all a hoax to make us afraid.

To let the Gestapo enslave us — even beg them to please enslave us.

Geez, Moon Walking.

She sent me a letter.

One of the jail guards, a big guy from Jason Junction, gave it to somebody who rolled it up and stuck it in my handlebars.

I used to have rubber grips, but they got ripped up and fell off.

Now people can leave messages in there for me about stuff.

Geez.

There’s more in the letter. I’m not sure who all else got one.

I think it’s just me.

Geez. Man.

I wish my dad was here.

I could ask Sheldon the mailman, but he’s out at Abu Iowa.

Geez.

Moon Walking!

Man, oh, man!

[Tommy]

Well, geez, I’m doing what Moon Walking told me.

I’m outside and it’s two.

In the morning.

My Mom will kill me.

I’m dead.

I’m already dead.

I’m only still breathing ‘cause it’s two in the morning.

Tomorrow I will be dead.

Moon Walking said to look up in the sky.

I’m on my bike and I can’t see shit.

I can’t say shit.

I don’t have a light on my bike and if a car comes by it will smoosh me. And I will be dead.

Oooh, cool.

There’s a full moon and because it’s just coming up over the houses it’s really orange and it’s big. It could be a space ship or something.

And there’s people up, sitting on their porches, walking around.

In the morning they will be in big trouble.

They will be dead.

[Robert S. Thompson]

Yes, I have been one of those unable to sleep at night due to The Swarm. They roam the city all day and now all night as well.

I sat in my study window, it’s on the second floor, I have my tea, my books, my radio. I can smoke my cigar and blow it out the window.

Well, there it was, a giant “S” superimposed on the Moon.

And so I decided to have a scotch as well and see what might happen next.

The “S” was replaced by The Swarm.

They flew across the moon, up and down the church roof, across the school parking lot.

I watched until past three, went downstairs, read some old letters from my wife when we were separated that one summer while she was taking the calligraphy course in Minneapolis.

I looked out the window once more when I went upstairs.  The lights appeared to be gone.

I pulled the window down and went to bed.

As far as I can tell I was asleep within seconds.

[Tommy]

Hey.

Cleo’s dead.

Cleopatra’s dead.

Somebody ran them over.

They were on the sidewalk.

There were bike tire tracks over them and Swarm T-shirts and Swarm buttons and Swarm leaflets all around them.

It looks like it was The Swarm.

I loved those two.

I was the one who found them. There were guts spilling out of Cleo’s stomach. I tried to push them back in. You can’t not really.

I called 9/11, then Sherry the vet.

She was nice. She came and had a big box and she said she would take care of them.

There’s nobody to talk to.

I wish I could talk to Moon Walking.

The Swarm doesn’t have leaflets.

Sheriff Don answered my 9/11 call on a bicycle I didn’t even know he had.

I’m staying up all night tonight.

I’m out here in the dark.

It’s dark out here.

Well, I’m in Mrs. Cartwright’s cabbage.

I’m not sure why.

I just thought I should maybe hide.

It’s two, probably more.

I heard what they said about the moon and The Swarm and all that. Robert S. Thompson told me and he told Nona and so everyone pretty much knows now.

How first the “S” comes out across the sky at night and then The Swarm appears.

They’re saying The Swarm is being called by Moon Walking and her followers to come ride all over the sidewalks and roofs and churches and the moon.

People are really scared now.

They’re calling the city offices asking for more surveillance cameras and for the radio station to turn up the volume on their blasts.

Just need to see for myself.

Mom knows I’m out here. She said, go ahead, she’ll stay up.  She’s making cookies. We’re gonna dunk ‘em.

You ever see that one Charlie Brown show?

Not the Christmas one the … the football-no … Halloween one. The Great Pumpkin, that’s me, looking for the Great Pumpkin.

I don’t know but it’s kind of cold.

I wouldn’t mind having a blanket.

Maybe I’ll just lean back against the garage for a sec’.

Hey.

Did I fall asleep?

Hey!

… There! …

You see that?

There it is again!

See!

Right there! See?

It’s The Swarm.

They are everywhere.

Wow!

Even on the moon.

Night must be their big thing or something.

I think I’ll just watch them for a while.

It’s pretty cool.

Fall is nice at night, too.

My mom is in the window. She’s waving. I’m not that far away, next door.

I can smell the cookies. Butterscotch honey nut.

My stomach can smell ‘em too.

Hey!

See that?

It’s a light stream going over the houses.

It’s following The Swarm wherever it goes.

I wonder if it’s a UFO.

My uncle said he saw a UFO once in the Navy.

Wow! I should get Mom and let her see.

No no time.

Gotta go.

Follow me, c’mon!

I had to yank my leg free of all the old stuff in the garden, then get over that white picket fence with the sharp edges. Good thing I do this all the time so I can do it in the dark.

I made my way slowly down the alley, ‘cause there’s glass in there sometimes and I still want to dunk cookies, not go to the ‘mergency room.

There’s some people on their porch, see, I told you. Why would they be out this late. Maybe they’re watching The Swarm too or they’re nervous about things.

Hey, let’s go. Go, go, go!

[Robert S. Thompson]

Well, as luck would have it, I was also up that night, looking out my window and I did in fact see that young boy running across the street.

And I have to say that I too saw the light stream, the one that had made the “S” on the moon the other night.

As I have heard it told now, the boy followed the light, which he at first glance thought might have been the UFO his uncle had seen off the coast of San Francisco.

He followed it straight to the City Hall and then blessed with the grace of the young and the bold, he found an open door and charged up the marble steps before they could stash away the equipment.

Young Tommy found the City people and Sheriff Don with the projector sticking out the window.

He asked them what they were doing and said he was going to tell his mom and she is a teller at the bank and so they knew it was no use and they bought him an orange pop with the key so they get it free.

And they just spilled the beans.

The City Hall people and the Sheriff, sitting there at three in the morning, on the top floor of the city building — what a symphony of sight that was to these sore eyes — a silhouette in F-Major.

Of course I did not understand what I was seeing until I was able to inquire the next morning.

I got out much earlier than usual.

It didn’t take long.

[Robert S. Thompson & Nona, sitting on Robert’s bench]

Well, as you have no doubt heard.

Here, dear, let me give you a light.

Ms. Moon Walking is back at her desk in the library, in between classes. She really does an excellent job for a high school student in charge of  a major city institution. We’re lucky to have her. Who else would do it? I doubt anyone else on the city payroll can read.

Nona is shaking her head.

Besides, the city crews are busy 24-7 these days, taking down all the fences.

The citizens are helping, too, big-time, everyone out sawing and ripping and tearing down, hauling away.

It rivals Leaf Burning Week for overall activity and excitement, which we just concluded not that long ago.

The National Guard and the fire department are out in their trucks and ladders removing all the electronic surveillance apparatus.

The radio show has gone back inside, where it belongs, I dare say.

Inside of doors is the only place for such a person as that particular announcer. You would think he might be arrested for indecent exposure, letting such obscene thoughts spoil the freshness of our air.

Speaking of recent arrests, Sheriff Don is now in his own jail, which is interesting in itself, how that all works out in the details.

They say he might soon be transferred to Abu Iowa, which has been shut down in its former capacity and is now being transformed into a mental hospital for former law enforcement personnel.

I would think they might conjure up  a brand name and open branches throughout the country.

It is such a beautiful fall day.

Nona is nodding.

We are waving at everyone going by, on bikes, autos, walking.

And there goes the hero of the day, that Tommy boy, riding his bike as ever, going fast again since he doesn’t have to slow down at corners because of the fencing.

He seems to always have a big smile on his face.

We are all very proud of him, it’s true.

Nona is shrugging her shoulders.

You should have brought out your sweater, dear.

Nona is now heading back after her smoke break.

I’ll see you a bit later, dear.

Please save me a large slice of the apple.

I feel like celebrating.

At last.

At last.

________

Next Week:

Holy Crap!

Religion ... in a small town