WHITE PICKET FENCES

— Homeland Security ... in a small town

by Mike Palecek

with

art by Monty Borror

Monty Borror

[Tommy Michael Moskowitz, a kid]

Well, I’ve got to hurry.

They’re building a new fence.

This one’s over behind Foos Foods.

It’s me, Tommy. How you doing?

I’m peddling as fast as I can. Somebody said there’s negroes on the construction crew.

And girls.

They’ve been building fences all summer.

They have to, it’s the law.

There goes The Swarm, ‘bout a million little kids, a whole bunch. Cars are backed up for three blocks. It’s worse than the train my mom says.

“Hey, Cleo. Hey, Cleopatra.”

Those two are brother and sister. One’s a cat. Cleopatra’s a dog. They’re always together. Maybe they don’t have anybody else.

I’m following The Swarm. They’re going over yards, fences, down alleys.

The fences most people have around their yards by now don’t stop The Swarm. It goes under, around, over, through anything — right through a house sometimes, back door to front, taking all the food inside, like locusts.

“Moon Walking!”

She doesn’t see me. I’m going too fast. Nobody can probably see me. I’m flyin’.

She’s the head librarian.

She’s arguing with Don the cop. He’s got a corner post under his arm.

“Hey, Don!”

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

Well, it’s true.

Everyone is putting up fences.

Christopher, or Cristoph, as I believe he has asked his parents to refer to him, our high school student state legislator, was instrumental in getting a bill passed that mandates personal fences.

To go along with the national north and south border fences, the fence now being constructed around the state, and those that will soon be separating counties.

It’s all part of Homeland Security.

Fences around towns.

Keeps us safe.

I feel pretty safe.

I guess.

Safe as the next guy.

I do have the bedroom window open a crack all winter, though. I’m not sure how that all works, but they say they’ve heard of some folks going to sleep at night and never waking up. I’m not quite ready for that, just yet.

Christopher says that if we’re going to all that trouble to keep people out of the country and then we just let them traipse around wherever they want, that just defeats the purpose, I suppose.

I’m not going to watch the fence building.

I’ve seen lots.

[Nona, the waitress]

[A waitress]

Last winter the highway department put up snow fence out by the highway like they always do. It keeps snow from Canada or Russia or wherever from blocking the road.

This time they put razor wire on top.

I guess it’s permanent.

Everybody in the café, oh, hello, I’m Nona, everyone in here these days is talking about the fences, fences, fences.

Everybody likes them.

They love ‘em.

They don’t have any choice.

If you don’t put up a fence around your property you go to jail.

But if it keeps everyone safe, that’s what they want.

Safe from what?

Wind from Russia, maybe. I dunno. Let me think about it.

They paint the fences, put up lights, wreaths, paint pictures on them.

They just love ‘em. Just love ‘em.

Can’t imagine how we ever got along without them.

“Commies!”

Oops, that just came out.

Now everyone is looking out the windows and under their tables.

But that’s something the fences might keep us safe from.

Do they still have commies?

[Tommy]

I’m going fast now, really fast.

I can just barely still see The Swarm. I hear sirens.

It’s got to be Don. The new National Guard trucks don’t have sirens. He must have spotted The Swarm.

I’m gonna stop. It’s no use.

I like the new stop signs.

My mom says there are big bees coming up from Mexico to get us. I was just headed out the door and she was still talking when the screen slammed.

I’m pretty sure she wasn’t talking about The Swarm, something different.

Fences STOP Terror. That’s what the signs say.

See?

All they had to do was put the two stickers above and below the STOP.

Gutner had to do that. I rode along on a whole Saturday in the back of the city pickup, keeping the papers from the sticker things from flying out.

Well, seeya.

Hey! Hey-Don! Don!

[Robert S. Thompson]

It’s been a long, hot summer.

Many dark and stormy nights.

There’s now a palpable chill in the air.

When I sit out here on my bench I wear a wool top coat on some days. Other days the sun shines bright, but still the warmth it provides does not match its luster.

Some trees are already golden, some others still green.

The children are back in school, for what reason I have no idea.

I have my fence around my home. Got that done just this past week, finally.

I have not been out to see Abu Iowa.

Some have said it’s lovely.

Some say it’s just a prison. Like all the others.

You do not see drug dealers around here, that’s for sure.

There were none before the prison was constructed, either, but you cannot deny there are none here ever since as well.

Most people feel even safer, knowing it’s there.

Some have seen white vans pulling in there with individuals inside in turbans and towels and sombrero’s. I doubt this account, but an associate of mine said some of those inside the vans have heads shaped like human excrement. Aliens, perhaps.

Or not, but still, it’s odd.

It is much safer here since the controlled movement ordinance was passed by the council.

You find that you really don’t need to be out and about at all hours. You budget your time.

Yet get used to it.

After awhile you don’t notice it.

[Nona]

Hey, good morning!

The special today is, oh, let me check again.

I’m putting out these new Open Your Eyes posters, one for the front window and these little ones at the tables.

It’s bacon and eggs, and you get toast and coffee with that.

Moon Walking, she comes in here, doesn’t want a fence around the library.

She’s been fighting it.

She and some of the wing nuts who come in there to read.

She doesn’t have one at her house either, I guess. Her mother must be kind of weird, too.

The ones who don’t put up a fence get visited.

There’s guys from the Legion and VFW and the Tuesday Night Bowling League, the Roy Scouts, that come to the house, sometimes it’s after midnight.

I heard once it was five in the morning.

After that they put up the fence.

Somebody said something about Moon Walking.

They reported her, I guess. That’s what I heard ‘em say at breakfast a couple days ago.

They said it’s the name.

She can’t be from around here.

Which is all well and good, but then why don’t you just leave then, if she’s not from here.

Anyway, that’s what everybody says.

My parents came from Germany and Ireland, well, my grandparents, and that would really be Germany and Ireland and Norway and Netherlands.

They came here fair and square. They didn’t tunnel under a fence, or go over a fence, or around a fence.

They walked right in through the front door.

They didn’t have to sneak and they didn’t need to hide.

They held their heads high.

[Tommy]

Hey, it’s me.

Me.

Tom-my!

You know.

Know what’s on tonight?

Umm …. Watch People Mow, How Big Is Your House, Big Hamburgers, and Mom Fixed The Bathroom.

Everybody’s watching.

Somebody said they saw The List.

Somebody had it and they saw it.

It’s called Christopher’s List, named after the high school kid legislator who lives in the house with the hoop with the glass backboard on Ninth Street.

Some people are on it.

They said Moon Walking is on it.

On the top.

Robert S. Thompson here.

At your service, as it were.

Well, now that’s a new one.

It says here in the Past-Bugle that the fences are an excellent idea and that there is a brand new ingenious idea about putting up a giant mosquito net over the whole country to keep out aliens.

Some of the citizens’ patrol, the Roy Scouts — all the members are named Roy, or change their name to Roy in order to be admitted, or get deputized as Roys.

Well, they are starting to wear bee tender masks, head gear.

Individual fences.

Ingenious.

They say it makes them proud to be an American.

I can see how it might.

The giant universal mosquito netting is kind of an Eisenhower Interstate Highway Project Thing, on that scope and scale.

Should be quite the deal.

There is also some plan in the works to do something about the wackos who sit in the library reading the magazines and newspapers.

Oh, I used to go there myself, but I haven’t been there in years.

I can assure you.

[Nona]

Some people don’t like the fence project.

They talk, not at breakfast so much.

They’re probably all on The List.

In fact, I thought I saw The List in here the other day on somebody’s table.

I think it was Tulip Booth, three pancakes, coffee, juice. No syrup.

Fifteen-cent tip.

I might have seen some of who was on there.

Ummm.

Sullivan Oh, that one farmer.

The Mexicans.

Linda the fat lifeguard.

I'd call that fat, wouldn't you?

And my hairdresser, what was her name?

There’s others too.

I suppose.

I didn’t really want to see, but I sure wanted to see if I was on there.

I couldn’t be, I don’t say anything. I don’t talk to anybody. I don’t know anybody.

The lifeguard, I’ve heard about her.

And Jeannie, that's her name. I was in there the other day. I always go Tuesday morning.

She’s a Vietnam Era Veteran, has an MIA flag tacked to the wall.

The other day she says she saw things over there she doesn’t want to talk about.

Delores says, “You didn’t go to Vietnam, Jeannie. You went to Alabama.”

Jeannie says, “It’s too soon, too soon.”

And Sherman the mail carrier, his hair’s about to his butt by now.

Well, little miss Moon Walking was at the city council meeting last night …

Oh, I’m on break now, seeya later.

You smoke?

[Tommy]

Well, Moon Walking went to city council last night.

She had a physics mid-term the next day so she took her book with.

She’s trying to fight the fences. She said she might get some T-shirts made like the one she made for herself. She wore it to the ol’ meeting.

Fuck The Fences.

I can’t say the “F” word.

When it was her turn she went up to the podium. She left her book on her seat.

She told them why she doesn’t want a fence around the library.

“Even if there is a gate, it’s still the idea of looking like we want to keep people out, or that we want to keep our books in.”

“Sit down.”

“High school kid.”

She said she doesn’t know what the big deal is.

She said that one thousand people get killed every year from lightning and nobody from terrorists, so why the fences and why don’t we make everyone wear antenna hats to deflect the lighting bolts.

One thousand people. Every year, she said, as she sat down.

You could get the shop class to make them and sell them to make money to go woods camp in the summer or whatever.

If it saves one thousand lives every year, isn’t that worth it? she said.

“Lock her up.”

People behind her talked while she was talking.

“The whole idea of fences is so wrong,” she shouted from her seat.

“Skinny bitch,” someone said.

“Dead Moon walking.”

[Robert S. Thompson]

Oh, Jan.

Yes, when they came she was at the vacant homeless shelter, cleaning.

Jeannie was at her shop, working on Mrs. Jones’ hair.

Michael Sullivan Oh was walking toward his machine shed at four-thirty in the morning.

Linda the lifeguard had just pulled her car in to the parking lot at the swimming pool to shut everything down for the winter. She was sitting in the front seat lighting a cigarette when they appeared at both windows.

And Seymour the movie theater proprietor was perched precariously on a new ladder setting up the marquee for the showing of  “How High Were My Fences,” when the white van went by taking them all to Abu Iowa.

And The Swarm. Good God.

There’s a lot of talk about them these days.

Little shits.

There’s ads now for a new head lifeguard, and the beauty salon is for sale. And the lonely people’s shelter is going to be a Taco Bell, I heard, if they can get the TIF approved.

Lots of opportunity, things happening.

Shows a vibrant economy.

Some at the UU Church said they’ve had a few new people in church these past weeks. Prison guards, fence construction types, individual netting developers.

That’s encouraging as well.

[Nona]

Hi.

The Swarm never comes in here.

No money.

But they go past the windows all the time, across the lot.

The boss says it looks like an amoeba on a slide, or a group of black birds, forming, swooping, re-forming.

Nobody can catch ‘em.

I heard someone say yesterday —I had my hands and arms filled with Denver Omellete Special plates — why try?

Why try to catch them?

I stopped and stared.

It was Brigitte, Jeannie the hairdresser’s sister.

Jeannie! That’s her name.

I stared right at her. She didn’t notice me, just puffed and flicked her ash.

I didn’t say anything, ‘cause I was too busy.

Brigitte. I wonder where she’s from. Hmmm. Brigitte … that sound Nebraskan to you?

And they all think I don’t hear, but I hear everything ... but what I thought the whole rest of the morning was ... why?

What’s The Swarm hurt by going over fences, around fences, under fences.

At the end of the day it’s all the same.

Everyone’s sitting in their houses watching their TV’s, staring out the windows, wiggling their toes.

What’s the dif?

Moon Walking and her mom were in here a couple hours ago.

Saturday, no school.

Her mother’s name is Regina. She ‘s not so bad.

They asked me to sit down and smoke and drink coffee and eat pie.

It was still morning menu, but they wanted pie, so we had banana crème pie, Marlboros and mocha Java.

We sat in Blueberry Booth, next to the gumball machine and the shopper’s guide rack.

Moon Walking thinks they will make her put up a fence at the library, and her mother thinks she’ll probably wake up one morning and there will be twelve big guys in her front yard putting up a fence around her home.

I didn’t say, but I thought they might want to think about a lot more than that.

The Roy Scouts have coffee in here every afternoon. We have to close the place down for an hour. I put out coffee, rolls, not supposed to hang around, but I’m not going to go all the way home, get all comfortable, just to have to come back here by four.

So, I do dishes, I smoke in the kitchen. I’ve got my book.

There’s a new billboard up right outside.

It’s a big one.

It’s the Open Your Eyes campaign by the Roy Scouts.

The signs are all over town, billboards, house windows, church bulletin stuffers.

The kids bring ‘em home from school, too.

[Robert S. Thompson]

Ms. Moon Walking was headed to the library, walking from school.

Don pulled up in the cruiser on the curb.

He called M.W. over.

Then the new bicycle cops came up behind her and behind them was a black undercover SUV with clouded windows.

Two black helicopters appeared overhead, hovering, shaking down leaves, making everything smell like helicopter oil and leaf dust.

They took Moon Walking to the jail.

Nobody could talk to her or see her.

They told her mother that she wasn’t even in there, but she was ‘cause Tommy that kid on the bike saw them take her.

Tommy told me just a few minutes ago that The Swarm saw it happen as well and followed the officer's car all the way to the jail.

The Swarm comprises dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of Jimmy’s, Judy’s, Reynaldo’s, Achmad’s, Wayne’s. No one really knows.

They seem like an “it” because that’s what they’re called, The Swarm, and it’s seen as one thing, a thing.

However, The Swarm is really a bunch of who’s and if it were possible to catch it, stop it, put it under a microscope in Mr. Blueberry’s botany lab you would see about a million different faces, some smiling, some angry, some ugly as hell, some too beautiful to behold.

And so that’s why it is possible to imagine, not just possible, but wholly inevitable, that The Swarm had a heart.

It cared. About something. Everyone cares about something.

Right?

And, as it turns out ... The Swarm cared about Moon Walking.

NEXT WEEK:

Moon Walking in Jail.

... The Swarm all over that Jail like sweet on honey.