The Calm Days

                                                                           

                                                             The Calm Days

                                                                       

                                                                                  By John Rogan

            I could see the solid sheet of clouds start moving with the breeze. Olympia in the dawn was cold and misty. Movement had to be had before Tech cops saw. This slant-eyed, yak-faced guy from the Big Bank Country kept squawking. I usually don’t associate with Charlie, gang-up and go after Sinos when I can, but we were jonesing bad. His body all stick-like, question after question, that’s why they get got at. He was new, just off an ocean liner. He had a little bit of money so I showed him around hoping he’d break me apiece when we got it.

            Mac cops saw us. The metal car like the Bat-mobile I used to remember when there was still t.v. Big halo lights driving down on us. I hid the slant -eyed man, his face all wonder. The two Mac cops got out with their flashlights, best flashlights around, and went through the vacated property. One guy yelled when a bunch of rats and moles came running out of the building across from where we were. Sino starts laughing. Before I can bug my eyes out to hit him the halo lights are in our eyes and using Sino like a shield, so the cameras don’t get my face, and battering screaming slanty-eyed up against the two big Iraq-Syrian war veterans. One of the Mac cops grabs my shoulder and his big, bulging bald head surging with AgAnt 015 hormone goes cracking right into Charlie. Something on Sino’s face cracks and he starts squeaking in Big Bank Country talk, ying-wow-wow or something, but the Mac cops beady little AgAnt 015 night adjusted vision follows me over Charlie, whose down, and I’ve forgot about him. Right then the other Mac cop grabs me by the neck squeezes until tightness goes to not breathing and I mouth “OK”.

            The Mac plants are nicer. At Apple they realize a dead worker is no good. Even on a smash and run I remember only darts and fellas falling over sleeping. So I say “yup,yup” and put the pills down my throat all happy like they’re candy. They have a kid with me. When I was his age I was watching Batman cartoons and waiting for Mom and Dad to come home from their jobs. Back in the Calm Days. The kid was screaming and twisting and they had Two Pfizer guys shoving the little yellow and blue pills into his mouth and the kid coughing the yellow and blue chalk back all spitty. It was lucky I was jonesing so bad one of the Pfizer guys I knew from either the Samsung or Intel plant had a broad smile when he saw me shaking like San Francisco did during the artificial rapture when Graham-ites pulsed through the seismic plates with little bangs of Uranium four years back.

            So I took me a Percocet, nice fast soft edge, along with a Dilauid, for that soft long jam; They had Oxycontin not Oxypotane so I took the OC remembering calm floating down over from my youth. Followed with my favorite mood stabilizer Zyprexa, a Ritalian extended release, to keep me awake and focused and a new Thorazine and Valium combo pill I had not seen before. My eyes heavy, dumb smile coming across. The Pfizer guy nudged me out after I don’t know how long, I guess only a couple seconds. The Ritalin was not doing enough to keep me awake, so I took the Aderall and Seroquel combo pill and he took my blood  then nodded to the Pfizer guy at the door and they took me. An Apple guy with sweatpants and a lab coat warmly welcomed me to the company. I slapped his hand around and then drooled on him even though I was acting more messed up then I was. It was really just spit I let slip out of the back of my tongue. I was trying to look as cotton-mouthed, white-lipped, and by-bye druggo as possible.

            It didn’t come off when I threw up blood at lunch and they too k me to Quality-Control and there they got me on Morphine, Librum and it feels like Concerta, but I’ve never seen it in big liquid vials like that. It would have come off, but I couldn’t hold my pills down. They told us how lucky we were over and over. A big map of Cascadia hung in Quality-Control. Cascadia broke off from the U.S. when I was in high school, about Northern California up to Alaska all wanted out after the Russians were in Alaska and Texas and the Syrians and Iranians  bursting out of Florida. I remember my Dad crying in front of the television. An old U.S. flag waved on the screen and people sang an old song together, before the signal went out. They came and grabbed all the t.v. s made them into cell-phones for rich, snotty, fashionable teens flying through warm Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan nights. The son and daughters of our occupation spent their families disposable incomes on flashy cell phone cameras, fashion accessories shown off through Social Media posts in exclusive, late-night opium Dens, and unrealistic Musical Movies with sexy, dark-skinned actresses and shirtless, brawny Arab men. The youth of our enemies grew fat on Cheddar Naan bread, ate Opium brownies, and played immersive and complicated three-dimensional video games with holographic cameos from their favorite celebrity in New Persia. I saw a way-life-is show on Istanbul on a Blackberry that had service close to a decade ago. It was all these beautiful dark girls driving Colonized-Area quality Teslas and sleeping all day and going out all night to Opium-infused drinks at shiny clubs and screaming into magnificent cellphones at their never-present boyfriend. A Persian pop song would kick on and the girl would cry on the couch amongst a pile of clothes, and I guess we as viewers were supposed to feel bad for her. But all I could think about were the people who barley ate, were drugged into working 20 hours a day .Defeated Americans, not even one white person on the show. The Turkish boyfriend ended up fighting with the other Armenian and Saudi roommates over the girl in a Penthouse in Downton Istanbul in fine designer suits and cute brand name designer dresses they had put together and shipped out of what was then Arkansas. I watched the show must be ten years ago now, but it ended with them throwing plates, food and cake at each other which at the time made me hungry, disgusted and very mad.

            Cascadia  wa’ not taking this stuff. Guys like my Dad went off to the plants real easy and  got labored-out then eliminated in under a month. I worked over in Portland what was then Oregon. Cascadia held out against The Allies, but once China came in with Russia and Iran it was all over. I am not saying we became part of the CA. Liz Cheney that old white war-bird wooped the Allies good over Butte back in 2027. We might as well become part of The Colonized – Area. We had farms and places so people could eat, and plan. The Sinos radiated the soil and the good pills started doing more destruction than the sanctions, the raids, and the crop burnings. But nostalgic Americans still hoped the U.S. would rise again, each year it seemed less possible, each year we had to steal more from the companies to survive. But Cascadia still cool. We just got nothing. If you want a place to go and do nothing, that is not be told to do this way or that that way, and definitely not labor. I been working out of Olympia knocking over Syria-Iraq hormone veterans as they try to creep in through Montana. I go deep into the CA. I hit an IBM truck once in what was Denver.

            I walked out of Quality-Control higher than before lunch and they thought I was Pablo from Mexico. Just so you know I am Theodore Tecumseh. I am from a lot of places. My real name is Theodore Tsechitz, but when I set out from home after the Plants labored-out my Old Dad and Arthritic Mom, with anybody ethnic getting killed, so I went with a truly native-America name, just so American National Guard irregulars did not get confused and hang me. My old parents screaming about their joint pains while hormone veterans shoved us in vans to go to the IBM Plant. I go after IBM trucks and staff in particular, cruel motherfuckers. My paretns were so caught off guard. A look of outrage and fear hung on their faces as they got thinner, sicker, malnourished, and I never saw them again. My parents probably burned for Energy like most other Colonized-Area citizens after they labored-out. I guess I was outside Chicago, but all I remember is fire and walking to where there was no smoke.

            So now I’m lots of names from lots of places but Cascadia know me as Tecumseh. I don’t let the Allies go for what happened. They call it Globalization, American- capitalism, but people are getting killed for laptops and designer jeans. There is a demand.  Persian markets flush with war-time oppurtunities experienced a population boom around the beginning of the 20’s. They had access to foreign super-cheap, therefore super profitable CA manufacturing markets through Alliances with the Russians and the Chinese.

Tia Atari, a bosomy, curvy, leather clad Pop star from Mongolia stared back at me from a poster on the wall as I walked out of Quality Control. Her single “I Gotta Go Buy-Bye” played on a constant loop and a digital download was available for sale at every door. I was back at my coding station. My eyes felt like salt rocks and I could smell my teeth rotting but I was so high and so happy. I just copied down 0a1110101a010d110f001e110100h etc.  until it was on some part of the hard drive or something. I hadn’t seen a computer since I was a kid. I loved playing video games, computer games. Now seeing a smart phone with a signal in the CA or Cascadia is a miracle. I had a Nokia I played an awesome snake game on, but Syria-Iraq Hormone Veterans lifted that off me last time I got taken to a plant.

This is when I always did it. I blew it during lunch. I have been lucky. Shuffling out to the night quarters, going past Tia Atari’s incredible brown, shady cleavage and resisting the urge to start saving for a cellphone that I could eventually see images of her on in my own private time. Maybe I would not get labored-out. Maybe thye’d keep me at code so when my eyes wore out I’d still be able to move, hear, and taste.  I could listen to Tia sing “Go Buy-Bye, Buy-Bye, Buy-Bye” and maybe they would promote me to something like a Tech cop or Narcotic Administrator, something I could stay alive at. I knew they gave one this illusion, but buy into it and they got you. You’d be lucky to make it a month after you had saved up enough to buy a clunky Nokia they used 50 years ago. Emaciated, empty eyed men typed in the digital code for the Tia Atari album. The Pfizer guy I knew from intake saw me again after the Tia Atari kiosk, maybe he did not recognize me not pilled out and un-fed and on the clock at intake, but now he said out loud “Tecumseh?”

I went down the line and shattered the kness of three guys who looked labored-out. The Pfizer guys and Tech cops are confused and freaking out about so many destroyed laborers, as they try to figure out what’s going on I have around 2 seconds to freely move and get as good of a jump start as I can. I hit the fence with electric tazers sticking out and animal tranquilizers making me sleepy and content. Hitting the ground on the other side and the Tech Cop metal cars weren’t even out. I knew I was golden. I could outrun these guys. I escaped out of these places about once a week.

The drugs were wearing off so I needed food. I crossed back over into Cascadia through dense pine woods. I guess the plant I had escaped from was somewhere up in Old Alberta. I would spread the word at Mabel’s that the Techs were up there.

I stood in front of an abandoned restaurant on the outskirts of Vancouver and went around back and knocked nine times. A fat, nervous, but pretty face opened the door and then cracked into a full smile “Tecumseh!” Me and Mabel talked about when I met her as kid coming off the road from Chicago and how the ash had rained down like snow for years. I recollected watching my father get punched in the mouth by a Syrian soldier when he asked a question and they asked me if I was his son and I said no. I was overtired and telling my guilty Syrian soldier story from 2019, so Mabel knew I was not doing all right.

“You doing all right Ted?” Mabel said as she had me sit at the kitchen table, now hidden in her own basement, gave me a glass of bourbon and told me she would get some eggs ready. Mabel was a Sober one. Sitting in her basement drawing or reading books or whatever Sober Ones did, but she always had food. Mable never went out robbing for pills, but she had been a major participant in Cascadia becoming independent. She would organize rag-tag homeless boys like myself into well-fed, disciplined workers, farmers, defenders and raiders when the revolution had really got started at the beginning of the 20’s. I would probably be dead if it was not for meeting Mabel and becoming a Captain in the Cascadian Defense Corps back when the real killing started in 21’.

Mabel had bad news. Cascadia was shrinking. We had suffered some recent losses. We held out for ten years, but as Mabel puts it “They have more resources, even if we are right, they have more resources.” She showed me a hand drawn map labeled Spring Advances in Pacific Northwest 2032. “Calgary fell I exclaimed!” Mabel sadly nodded. I was getting upset by the map and I was not used to this much food in my stomach. I had sucked the animal tranquilizer out of the darts I had pulled from my back, so I could look normal in front of Mabel, but now I was shaking and mad. Money, Money and it was worth killing my parents over.  It is easy to get mad at one person, but a greedy ideal, an omnipotent, systematic standard of degradation, marginalization and death was something I could never really deal with in a nice, constructive way like Mable with all her maps and planning. Mabel knew, like most of her soldiers at the end of The Cascadian Independence war knew, that the only thing left to do was escape or destroy, so for fellas like me it was drugs and raiding. Sure we won and there was always optimism and hope in the victory parades and collective farms, but after a few years of fighting to keep Cascadia independent we all felt like little people fighting against machine much bigger than we could ever imagine. I think sometimes of how it could be better, different, but honestly cannot come up with another a better way to behave with the chips being laid as they are.

 I thanked Mabel. She nodded with her full-face, softly-smiling, knowing everything but not saying it. Mabel had become resigned to things she cared deeply about being pulled away and out of her control. She told me to take care of myself as she closed the basement door. Standing upright with my hands pressed against the small of my back I looked up at the clouds and thought of a guy I knew in downtown Vancouver I could get some Iranian quality heroin from.

There was a thin layer of ice crunching in the pine needles. We had a full moon. The first truck was on fire and all the tech cops and workers were laying face down along the road. We had waited until the convoy snaked along the supply highway out of Winnipeg unimpeded through Calgary now, until the convoy had reached this clearing at the top of Mount Hood, before it replenished border guards in Old Idaho. “You ain’t never going to see Idaho.” I screamed into a Chinese soldiers face.

Earlier at Elliot’s after mainlining some of the whitest heroin I have seen since The Calm Days , me, his brother Leonard and some of his cousins got word of a Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and IBM convoy that was moving out of Winnipeg lightly guarded. I heard IBM. Elliot offered me what he called the war vial. Elliot was junked out of his mind. I watched a drop of my blood pull back into the glass vial in the soft brown liquid. PCP, Methamphetamine and Heroin slid into my body as my thumb pushed the plunger down.

Elliot and Leonard were trying to get me to calm down. They said I was being unreasonable. It would cause too much attention. One of the Tech workers talking Chinese got up and ran and I let a rifle round go square in his back. The rest laying face down started to chatter. The Big Bank. When they came in with the Russians and the Iranians the war was all over. I thought of my parents telling me how proud they were of me with ash raining down like snow not melting, but suspended in their hair. The Chinese set up the camps then the plants. Big Bank Country foreclosed on America and turned it into a market. People into machines, and so people become less human. The angelic white of the moon; whenever I scratched it felt good ; I was itchy all over; Sinos begging in wing-wong; I went down the line. I was a very nice, young man. I came from a good family. Elliot, Leonard and their cousins decided to leave me. Leonard was furious at Elliot over letting me have too much, but it was the perfect amount for me. The air set against the pine trees rippled. Somebody once thought I was a good boy and would grow up to be great man. “Teddy,” my Mom intoned. Mixed and embedded experiences of suffering took on the feeling of survival, and of the power I had to survive it all. Going out to ice cream with my Dad after a baseball game; Arab girls pulling their hair extensions out in Damascus clubs over celebrity sex trysts and designer handbags. I kept walking away from the line of bodies face down; Asiatic eyes in tears pleading no; wing-wong; the rifle barrel at the back of the black haired head and the silent flash. It was all over. Nineteen aid-workers dead and executed it would say in news zines all over the Big Bank Country tomorrow. I stood panting at the end of the line of bodies. The blood pooled down into a channel on the slope. I thought how many parts of families I had just destroyed then could not count. I found the truck with all the Pfizer stuff, Elliot and Leonard had been nice and left me with a bag of Hydrocodone, Avinza extended release morphine pills and some Depakote mood stabilizers. Chewing on the pills and sitting in the back of the truck I looked over to the now silent Big Bank Country soldiers and workers with their unnaturally, craned, lifeless necks. The gory row seeped brown blood against the thin ice covering the ground. I wondered how things had got this way. 

John Brown

                                                                             

                                                            John Brown

                                                                

                                                                        By John Rogan

            

             “They just burnt Lawrence. Killed folks.”

 Spindly Oak branches whipped through the wind up high. John ducked beneath the earth-works as bullets clipped over. Men roared.

            “Lawrence, wh…what happened? Wasn’t Kirby going to get us word?”

            “Kirby didn’t, his son came by, one who came with him before, kids all shook up, had scratches, soot, and blood all over. It’s bad John.”

            John rose out of his tent, haggard, dirty, old, he had survived a long time, only by the grace of God. Moses camped among his people, Sara, all the boys, the cold, low valleys of the desert at night, searching for water and lost for 40 years. John’s face did not comprehend the news. Evil. Darkness crept under John’s eyes. Doc, Elisha to Elijah            stood chewing a nub of tobacco, holding the back of his belt, waiting for John to get dressed and come out of the tent. Tears welled up, a tightness in John’s stomach, he told Doc to wait prayed and felt he had to read Judges. The man had a dream the Midianites were to be given over to Gideon, all that was needed was horns to be blown and clay pots to burst, men would scream in terror of the Justice reigning down over this prairie. Fire reigning down on the strong conquering the meek and their faces twisted out of their positions of power, before a flaming sky, their churches crumbling, burning, a skyline of the rich and powerful slave owning class running from the smoke and ruin. Elijah consumed by fire rising up into the heaven. John steeped out of his tent dressed and began walking with Doc.

            “Boys over here. Real upset, it’s awful, keeps stuttering can’t say real words.” The people camp before the milk and honey, all the sacrifice, wandering in a desert, a grouping of people on God’s bear earth. Them men from Missouri had been at it. John walked past Will and his family, Border Ruffians shot all the sheep at Will’s farm because he wanted a Free Kansas. Fire burned in John’s walk, Abraham prepared kindling for Isaac. Will’s family crying amongst all the dead wooly carcasses. John saw Trumpets blare over the flat mud of the land. Clay pot after clay pot exploded as the wicked roared out of their cities, chased down, and fearing the fiery judgment all the comfort evil had brought, their New Orleans slave pens, Atlanta churches, fine French things soaked out by fire and blood.

            “What happened John? Lawrence?” Will asked. All the evil John had to comprehend swirled in his eyes. John walked gravely past, “The truth will come out, brother Will.” John’s walk calmed, became serene, a leader, calling the men in the churches sinners, welcoming back the lost sheep turned away, lost, thinking the right way was good, a Shepard. The boy was wrapped in a blanket he stuttered and cried into John’s face, the long aged black beneath John’s eyes.  

            “Let’s get over to Lawrence, wake up the boys. Send the rifles along the creek and tell every family, make sure everyone hears.” Evil unchecked grows stronger, like Jezebel’s priests of Baal bleeding in piles from cut, twisted throats. Is there  no God? Has there faith wavered so much they adhere to earthly riches of flesh and money? And to kill for all the  money, the flesh, the negro family in bondage. John saw true evil in the air, Satan. Bare trees buzzed and stung at the end of the branches while pale brown, orange, and yellow leaves carpeted the bottom of the creek, Baal priests blood trickling into a small river. John and Doc sent riders out to every family along Pottawatomie Creek. As John was saddling his horse the awe-struck faces came streaming onto John’s place, the circle of tents a stacked log shack, mouths open in an O, eyes uncertain, trying to comprehend all the Evil. John was up on his horse, Ezekiel stared at bones on a valley floor and a voice told him how they could become a nation.

            They rode over night, Doc, John. Flat cold land. Fall ending and the light getting low. Artic Air coming out of Canada down hard driving to the Kansas territory. Land foreign to John at first, the wilderness cast out of Canaan, but so much work to be done, the tension and violence in the air, good and evil so clearly opposed. The territory became home, dangerous for the boys, Sarah, but they had to see it, everyone would eventually and make the choice of what to do when faced with what the light shows. Back East academic groups, fake, self-styled abolitionists called John crazy. Insane. Like Joseph, thrown down a well by his brothers, betrayed, and cast out to the dessert to build his kingdom. By the grace of God. Swirling complexities.  Stars crossed the sky patched and whitened blue and black hues. All the promises to Abraham. John’s youngest son was coughing blood. All the uncertainty.

            It was just before dawn when they came on Lawrence.

            “They hit Barber’s place, burnt his press, all his papers, beat him real bad in front of his wife, kid, they were asleep upstairs when they called him out, shot dead in his doorway. This is too much John. Then they came by Dow’s place called him out, shot it up. Dow’s down at the doctor’s sweating real high. Morphine, he’s hallucinating, got it in the leg, Maggie, his wife, crying, all the kids, just awful. It could have been a lot worse, they was drinking, there was a lot of them, a lot, I’d say over a thousand.”

            “Really, what was leadership, Quantrill, Anderson, The Littles?”

            “Everyone, John all them dirty son of a bitches.”

            “Please, brother.”

            “Sorry, John. It was so scary everyone’s real shook up. Barber’s place all burnt up. Women’s eyes all puffed out.”

            “We’ve got The Rifles all of us along Pottawatomie are with you.”

            “What are we going to do? You said you all would protect us, those fellas ain’t scared. They could come back anytime. We need something out here.”

            “Could I see the Barbers.”

            The new widow was crying, loud huff, gasps. The house burnt only at the front they could still sleep there. Dow screaming about the burning in his body. Back East the meek crumbled under cane blows. The story circled all along Pottawatomie for weeks and weeks before this, the senator unconscious with the cane reigning down and sharp red blood gushing out. No shame in their evil. Evil circled below John’s eyes in the ruins of the Barber’s fallen house. Job must have been mad, angry, possessed by evil, angry enough to kill, John thought. Good people rising out of their bed to be killed, terrorized. Job’s boils, John tried to imagine the pain, erupting like singed flesh from a fire inside. Tested again and again. John wanted to cry. Lucifer swirling around below his eyes, cast out, falling from grace. A veined pumped by John’s temple so he could hear it, his hair hurt, and he could not stop walking and speaking below his breath.  Job stared up at the stars and was told he would not know. Lost tribes wandering the land. Lonely lost, poor men. The tribe of Benjamin raped a woman to death then took up arms against their brothers, the 12 other tribes of Israel. Late into candlelight John had to read, his legs and arms moving while laying for sleep. Judah led the Benjaminites away from Gibeah. On the plain of Geba, flat land, no one could escape. The Benjaminites saw their city behind their backs, Gibeah go up in flames,  surrounded, routed they scattered and Judah chased down, 25,100 men, piles of slit throats, all the blood pooling, slowing streaming down, as the white, salt plane rose to Rimmon, city after city burned. 600 made it to the Rock of Rimmon were found, tracked, bludgeoned and hacked. Blood purified the tribe. The twelve tribes, the nation remained, pure, for the grace of God. The dawn came up, blue, and cold. Before Kansas, back East John spent his whole day tanning leather, fine saddles, long days in the shop, drying, stretching, carving, day after day, he watched the sunlight shift in the room he always stood in. 

            “Let’s get back to Pottawatomie.” John woke Doc up. Sleeping with is clothes on and inflicted with fear Doc was up quick. Ready to go.

            “Alright let’s go. You, You alright John, John, John! You Alright.” It was a day’s ride back to Pottawatomie. A long, encompassing wind, cold, late fall rain drove into their faces the way home. Thick mud turned to brown water up to the horse’s knees. Noah was a madman for building his boat.

Black, deep in November night, cold drilling out from the North. Fog glowed low above thick mud and pussy willows. Up to each of the houses, the small family camps.

            “Where are you taking them! Oh lord no, no, please, nooo!”

            It had been discussed. Small meetings of The Rifles confirmed the choices, the date, the need. Families picked out, the men, the worst slave profiteers, slave catchers. The ones trusted carried it out, John’s sons. Abraham set up kindling, bound Isaac. John had prayed and prayed for a better answer, prayed for the answer to go away, for there never to be an answer, to not be the messenger, to not take part, his existence, celestial bodies rotated powder blue and black above and he saw Revelation falling from the sky, the sinful looking up in horror, Georgia Chapels, brimstone sizzling off melted rock streaming down on Soddom and Gomorah. The heat building in humid, Southern churches, the priest telling all his landed parishioners, “We have to get out.”

Kids dragged out kicking, screaming and pleading. Sons saying good bye to their fathers screaming to not die. Unnatural sounds, young men, consumed by evil, goodness emitting out of their cries, whelps. When the broadsword hit rock it was through. They tossed the bodies in the creek. Throats and spinal columns still loosely and thinly attached to some. John threw up when they boys were too busy. His vomit coming like waves of relief, the outrage driven out of his body, hack after hack. Blood flowed down into the creek. They washed the broadswords and any blood out in the slow, shallow water. A cold, moonless walk back, John was barely able to see the hand in front of his face.

Weeks turned to months and John read about his name in the New York papers. A young boy was waiting with his wife when he emerged out of his room from prayer one August day.

“They shot Frederick.” John got on his horse and rode straight for Osawatomie.

Spindly Oak branches whipped through the wind up high. John ducked beneath the earth-works as bullets clipped over. Men roared.

“My son, Frederick. Is he okay?”

“I don’t know. We’re trying to get word. He’s a good kid him and about 40 other Rifles held em off for a bit outside town. Reverend White and Jack Reed are trying to move on Lawrence then Topeka. They raided an armory and seem to be determined, John. I wouldn’t have called you out here.” Job’s house fell on his family. The threats. Word spread fast “Old Man Brown.” John could not be seen, he would draw an ambush, even going to church. He stayed in his hut reading scripture. His sons like Aaaron speaking for him. Walking along paths he thought of dirty young men rising out of the grasss, shot for the sins of others. John the Baptist’s head was on a platter. Jesus was beaten, tormented, humiliated and crucified.

“They’re turning our flank, they got too many guns, their burning the feed store along Forest Street. We gotta pull back.”

Once Lawrence was safely secured, defenses built, John had sent Judah, his son, on an organizing trip to Topeka, to check up on defenses and the morale of the free-state factions there. Today, John had switched too quickly between old and New testaments, having to reread each passage, thinking about his wife smiling and his sons and his grandsons growing older he finished a sentence and did not discern its meaning. He prayed again for guidance, strength to make the right choice and the knowledge to know what was right. Every day after prayer he walked along a thin deer path behind the family’s encampment. He could not organize and participate, he was well known, “Old Man Brown”. Following the path he saw a smaller path branch off and followed it lost in thought. The promise to Abraham, Israel and its twelve tribes, turning away from God, killing God’s son, then back to tribes roaming in the dessert, Jesus being mocked as king of the Jews, slaves storming out of Egypt, a blind man lowered through a hole in the roof. Not remembering what direction he came from John heard a leaf rustle resonate, he stopped  stiff, scared into awareness of the green undergrowth, he slowly craned his neck and looked completely around him, he heard another leaf rustle and then another, John felt a wetness hit the back of his head, he watched a rain drop plop off a leaf in front of him and then rain fell in sheets turning the forest to chaos. John watched stilled, calm, and peering up he let his clothes get wet.

Shock and Awe

                                                                                                   

                                                                Shock and Awe

                                                                              by John Rogan

            

       James cooked the grenade. He watched the meter go into the red. Automatic fire was coming from the balcony above. James got cover behind a stone pillar after tossing the grenade. Leaning out from the pillar James emptied his gun into the automatic muzzle flashes coming off the balcony. Reloading behind the pillar, he heard his grenade go off, and turned to fire. There was a wounded guy who shot him with a pistol on the ground. James shrugged off the shot and beat the guy dead with his rifle. More fire starts coming from the balcony and James empties two clips into the cement the shooters are hiding behind.  He picks up the RPG. The first rocket sails deep through the sky above the balcony followed by a disappearing white smoke. The guys on the balcony are out from cover. James is trying to get his RPG reloaded. It takes so long. He is taking heavy fire. He forgets the RPG and switches to his rifle. Firing around the pillar he sees one of the guys on the balcony exposed and steps out from cover. For a half second James has the uneasy anxiety of a metal clunk around him. Maybe a grenade? James flies across the street his rifle falling in front of him and his vison blurs to a black screen that says: Mission Failed When an enemy grenade is close by hit R1 to throw it back, Loading…. If James could get out from those pillars and fire form a different angle. The screen loads, James runs forward, and his Mom tells him to shut off the t.v. his father will be home soon and he wants to watch the News. James ignores her. She shuts off the t.v. and James makes a big stink like he is defeated. He waits for his mother to leave and turns back on the t.v. and begins trying to kill the guys on the balcony. His Mom walks in the room at the same time Dad is coming through the door.     

            “All he does is play video games. Turn this crap off. I told you not all afternoon. It’s almost dinner and the kids glued to the set like a zombie.”

            “I turned it off. He must of turned it back on.”

            “Ya, look he doesn’t even say hi. He just stares. Hi its Dad! ” James mouth twisted and he was getting upset. James realized Dad was yelling and did not realize it. “The guy who gives you this lifestyle!”  The water in James’ eyes spilled over onto his cheek. And Mom was scolding Dad. And Dad was mad at Mom for taking James’ side like she always does. Dad did not understand why he was always the bad guy. James did not think his Dad was a bad guy he liked his Dad. His head hurt and his parents started arguing over money and a job and things he did not know. “Don’t order something, make something!” James’ Dad yelled pulling onto the couch. “Hey little buddy, don’t listen to your mother.” But James liked his Mom too. James was relieved as his Dad fumbled for the remote and a child-like playful smile ran across his face. “Here we go little buddy.” His Dad was actually excited hitting power on the t.v. It was black and said INPUT 2 in green letters. His Dad got all upset again, “mother****er! God Damnit!”

“Sorry!” James exclaimed in a girly whine he was surprised to hear leave his mouth.

            “I’m going to put that thing in the trash.” His Dad said slowly with that scary darkness under his eyes. James’ palms were sweating and his hand started to shake as he was hitting the buttons on the t.v. James held his wrist to steady his hand. Finally it clicked on to cable and like nothing had happened James’ Dad’s tongue slipped up to the corner of his mouth. His Dad instantly was fixed on the t.v. James watched as he slowly walked back from the television set to the couch. A huge explosion ignited yellow and white in a big, dark city. Smoke mushroomed into the air and James could see a row of tiny little palm trees super-imposed against the enormous rising cloud of smoke from the explosion. Tracer rounds filtered into the sky like lighting bugs. Three explosions went off next to each other each pluming, mushrooming, and illuminating the darkened city. James looked over at his Dad smiling, wide-grinned, and lost in thought. Noticing James was staring at him his father turned to James and said slowly, quietly: “Shock and Awe.”

            Nimr had been playing soccer all day. The people came through Fallujah at a trickle at first. Tired looking people. Then a whole flood all in one day. Tons of  kids. Nimr had played a soccer game with two teams and as more kids came into the city during the day they would just jump on one team, so by night fall there were more kids than he could count running up and down, kicking, stealing the ball, and getting confused over what goal was theirs and who was on who’s team. Nimr felt tired and drained in a good way returning to his parent’s apartment. His mother laid out Fasoulia soup and some rice and Nimr ate it in under ten seconds. Looking up from his plate he saw his mother speaking to herself, wringing her hands, and pacing up and down their small kitchen. “Where’s Dad?” Nimr asked. Nimr’s mother looked shocked when he spoke, her big empty eyes fluttered uncertain over the scared O shape to her mouth. Nimr heard a jet screech overhead and looked at the ceiling annoyed, furrowing his brow. “Why are there so many kids to play soccer with?” Nimr asked. “People are just getting out of the city.” His mother winced “Your father…is meeting…I don’t know where your father is.” Nimr moved into the next room and the small t.v. showed Al-Jazeera and the yellow, white explosions mushrooming into the air. Nimr saw explosions all the time in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon but these explosions caused his mother to stare out the window and talk to herself. These explosions filled their town up with people. These explosions made Nimr’s Dad have to meet with people during dinner. The explosions looked the same as the ones In Israel or the Golan Heights or the Gaza Strip. These explosions were different. Nimr felt static in the air and his body began to get hot, dinner turned uncomfortably in his stomach. He looked over at the walls. He heard his mother muttering in the kitchen. His father was not here. The room was darkened and empty except for the blue glow of the television. Nimr’s Dad always watched the News with him at night. His eyes followed the wall up to the darkened ceiling of the t.v. room as he heard jets screeching distantly above. He turned fixed to the television and his stomach began to hurt. Quietly pulling his legs up on the couch he curled up. Explosions radiated thought the darkness of the t.v. room and Nimr wondered how a soccer game would look tomorrow.

            James lived with his Mom now. Mom and Dad split up at the end of his Junior year of High School. James wished they had done it earlier and felt guilty about being relieved the fights would be over. He was glad he would no longer be a part of their fights, but he cried when no one was around because his family fell apart. He was not sure if since he was happy, if it was his fault or it was just all his parents’ fault, so he should just hate them. James did not want it to be his fault or his parents’ fault, but everything fell apart. James hated his Dad’s stupid, young, little girlfriend. James had just graduated from High school and the guy his mom was dating was a contractor and offered James a job he did not want. The guy his Mom was dating told James what to do one day and he exploded kicking the guy out of “his house.” There were kids he knew from his high school baseball team who all joined up. James’ uncle Teri, who had been a Marine in Vietnam, came by now and then when Dad moved out to help Mom. He would tell James stories about shooting fish in rivers with Ak-47s, smoking dope with prostitutes, and how scared he was during a Viet Cong mortar attack. Although his uncle Teri never held a job for long and his Mom would scold him all the time, James thought Teri was the toughest guy he ever knew. Not a yellow belly coward - that’s a Teri phrase - like James’ father had been abandoning the family; abandoning James like he did. James was just sitting around the house and his Mom was getting anxious for James to start working for her new boyfriend so they would get along, so James left early one morning and went to the Marine Corps recruiting station in the strip mall down the street and enlisted.

            The people came into Nimr’s house and took everything.   Nimr and his mother hung to each other on the street watching their television, their carpets, and their furniture be carried away by strangers. His mother gasped when she saw her grandmother’s afghan disappear into a crowd of young men grappling and fighting over it. His father and a couple of the Sunni and Baathists showed up with guns and the looters went away. His father was able to locate and punish those who had stolen things. Nimr’s father was a commander in the Baathist Popular Army and had been defending the Sunni community from retributive violence. Nimr, his mother and father were Sunni. Word from Baghdad was the Americans had the Shia in power. They were all very afraid. Nimr’s father organized the militia to stop the looting and stop the revenge attacks against Sunnis. Saddam, their Sunni ruler, was missing. The Americans just declared Shia government in Iraq. Nimr’s father spoke with a worried look about Dujail. Saddam had massaced  hundreds of Shia after an unsuccesfull assassination attempt in the Shia city of Dujail a couple of years before Nimr was born. Saddam continued to massacre the Shia when they tried to rise up after the Invasion of Kuwait in 1991.  Saddam was weakened by the loss of Kuwait to the Americans, but he kept Baathist-Sunni control through terror, murder, and torture, killing tens of thousands of Shia.  Nimr could remember his father being an important man in the community. His father, long ago, had returned from prayer with men who admired him and the apartment would fill with talk of Pan-Arabism, Politics, Israel, Sunni-Shia relations, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Faith and Iran as his mother laid out Klecha and cool tea.

            Now things got worse. There was spray paint across their apartment when Nimr’s father left in the morning. “Leave or Die Sunni” Nimr’s father spent the day hunting for Intel on the men who had done it. Men under his father’s command started leaving for Syria saying it was not safe for Sunnis here. The Americans were in control now and they put the Shia in control. Nimr’ father called these men defeatists, cowards, and reminded them this was their home before never seeing them again.

            Nimr’s mother had trouble sleeping and had aged considerably since the invasion. All the windows in their apartment had been broken by stones or bricks, so bricks and stones would come through the empty window bounce around inside the apartment as they all turned and heard a Sunni slur being yelled. Her mother and father began to fight. Something Nimr had never seen before. Whether they should go to Syria or stay. Nimr’s mother wanted to go to Syria. Nimr’s father wanted to stay. Al-jazeera told how Bagdhad was under America control, few car bombings anymore and a big area called The Green Zone where the artillery fired and helicopters took off to help Shia kill Sunnis. Nimr’s father said Saddam would be back. We could regroup in Syria and come back. Nimr and his parents began packing. Nimr did not want to leave his room. He had his great grandfather’s Quran, his desk, his bed, and the window he had looked out of over the city from, where he had thought and contemplated from for his whole life. Nimr did not sleep. His stomach hurt and he cried at random times. They would leave tomorrow. Nimr got out of bed to get a glass of water. His mother sat in the kitchen staring at the wall. She had stopped talking to herself. She had stopped speaking after her and Nimr’s father fought. She just softly said “Nimr” whenever Nimr was visible, no other signs she knew he was there. Nimr was worried his mother was having a nervous breakdown. His mother had always been a good cook and cared for Nimr and her father, but ever since the invasion and all the looting she has just been absent. Nimr’s father quietly began to bring home troop rations from the Baathist Guard since there was no more dinner being made.

            Nimr slowly sipped on the glass of water leaning up against the counter. His father was asleep after a long, chaotic day. He watched his mother stare at the wall. He sipped on the water hoping the stomach acid climbing up his throat would stop burning. He had lost weight relying on the old Baathist Guard troop rations for food. Then Nimr heard voices. A crowd. This late at night? Nimr’s stomach plummeted and acid felt like it rode onto his tongue. There was a smash that jarred even Nimr’s mother away from staring at the wall. Nimr’s father was up and confused holding a luger pistol and looking down the stairs with messy hair form just being asleep. There were more crashes. Nimr’s Dad yelled “God is great! And Mohammed is his prophet!”and began firing the Luger. The people were all in the kitchen fast hitting Nimr’s father over the head. They pulled Nimr’s mother out of the kitchen and several men grabbed Nimr. Nimr saw his father and almost as an afterthought, his father, beat, bloodied, held, hands tied behind his back, and heckled by his captors told Nimr “be brave.” Nimr was wrestled away from speaking to his father and watched his bruised face being painfully pulled up, and pushed out the door. Nimr’s mother was screaming the whole time before being silenced and carried out. Nimr remembers it was like a siren, a sustained high pitch in his mother’s voice before being punched, muffled unnatural into a gurgle. As they got out on the street so many men were yelling and celebrating and firing guns into the air. They held Nimr’s father up scolding, beating him, and mocking him as they carried him towards the Fallujah city center. Men grabbed Nimr’s mother and took her another direction. In all the confusion Nimr ducked under the adults. Hands tried to grab him and several began shouting at him, but they were confused who it was to grab. Nimr got away from the angry adults and ran and ran and ran until he was in a part of Fallujah he did not recognize. The next day he heard of the public execution of his father. He never found his mother again.

            James was afraid he would miss the war. By the time he went through boot camp and received his specialization in Infantry it was the end of 2003, Saddam had been captured and the war was basically over. On the first day he was in the green zone in Baghdad a car bomb went off and killed 22 people outside Iraq’s UN building. Orders were they were going North and West. There were bomb factories, block after block in Saddam’s old stronghold of Tikrit. In Fallujah four Black Water contractors had been pulled from their cars burned alive, dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge. James’ platoon replaced an Army unit that had been hiding behind a sand dune for 4 days returning fire against militants who jumped from window to window in the buildings on the outskirts of Fallujah. James’s unit traded fire with the men in the buildings for close to twelve hours. James launched a grenade at one of the buildings but it hit a palm tree in front of the building instead. Danny, the nice kid from Texas was grazed in the jugular and medics took him away not sure if he would be okay. After Danny they called in airstrikes. Day after day James’ unit watched as bombing run after bombing run destroyed everything in the city. James thought it was like watching a thunder storm. White phosphorous fires burned all over the sandy city.

            The next day James platoon entered Fallujah. They arrested everyone in the hospital because an RPG had been reported to have been hidden there. James arrested and detained a lot of injured people and a lot of doctors who seemed like they were just being doctors. Stories circulated of mother’s with suicide vests, little kids with hand grenades, a Marine becoming careless, friendly and being shot, blown up or killed. James pointed his gun at anything that moved. Anyone he encountered he intimidated into submission. Casualties were heavy and getting heavier as they moved house to house. Four guys from the platoon were killed when their Humvee rolled and caught fire after getting hit by an IED remade from a bomb that fell from an F-16 but had been a dud. James asked a family to walk slowly out of their front door. The mother and the little girls kept screaming and jabbering with their hands up angrily walking towards him. He told them to stop. He told them to stop so many times. When they got 15 feet away he shot the mother in a quick 3 shot burst and all the little girls had the face of a kid when there ice cream falls off the cone. The little girls wailed and wailed trying to make the lifeless body of their mother lying on the street move, talking to her blank face and screaming out in disbelief at the immovable, dead-weight of the body which shortly before had been so animated. He stuttered into his radio “T-t-tango down! T-t-tang, tango down!” There was no bomb on the mother and his commanding officer said “this is war, rather them than you, right?”

            Nimr transported ready- made car bombs to the capital for the Al-Ahwal Brigades. Nimr knew if they could chase the UN out the Americans would have to stand on their own. Stand on their own in his homeland. When the majority of the U.S. troops left leaving only compound guards and advisors in Fallujah, him and all the other street kids, who were pushed out by the Americans and the Shia, started to attack anyone comfortable-looking, well-dressed and Shia. In order to start eating he started doing jobs for the various organizations that started offering money and food for jobs. The Walid Bin al-Mughirah Brigades declared an open contract to carry out a bombing and allowed Nimr to take it, Nimr made it clear no suicide vest would be used, so they agreed when they recognized his name from his father. Nimr left a back-pack in front of an Iraqi police Station in Kirkuk staffed with well-paid Shia. He climbed the stairs across the street. Then he waited for a police car to pull up to station then took out a cell phone and hit call. He wore earplugs and sunglasses and watched the bomb rip the car apart, shatter the windows to the front of the building, and was relieved when the pools of blood became visible once the smoke drifted off.

Nimr had started doing jobs for the money because he was hungry and homeless. He and a couple of his street friends fired an RPG at a UN convoy then took off on a stolen motorcycle to get the attention of  the Jeish Muhummad organization who they looked up to for the bombing of the U.N. building in Baghdad. News of the bombing of the UN building in Baghdad spread quickly, cheerfully and excitedly amongst the street kids. He ran over a dozen trips back and forth through the long, flat almost-white desert over the Syria and Iraq border for organizations working with Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn bringing them Machine guns, ammo, explosives, RPGs, and later when Iraqi security forces had been scared off pieces of artillery. Nimr shot two men in suits from the Shia government talking in a café in downtown Fallujah because the Mujahideen Shura Council offered money. Nimr’s friend who had a lot of connects in Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura and the al-Ghuraba Brigades asked him to lead driving expeditions out of Turkey with guys from Lebanon, Yemen and all over. Nimr drove them across Syria and arrived in usually a kind of religious brotherhood with the men he traveled with and was greeted with a party in Fallujah when they arrived. He made ties with the powerful Omar Hussein Hadid who was impressed by his work. Nimr could not believe Omar Hussein Hadid had heard of him, he had been a powerful Jihadist, speaker and religious icon in Fallujah for Nimr’s whole life. Nimr remebered Hadid blowing up the only cinema in Fallujah when he was a little kid. Hadid got him in contact with some guys from the Black Banner Organization and he saw off two men blowing themselves up in trucks filled with Chlorine gas and Ammonium Nitrate. They blew themselves up in front of the Fallujah Government Center. Then two suicide bombers ran inside. Nimr along with ten other guys from the Black Banner Organization moved in, took cover across the street, and shot wounded and confused people coming out the smoking doors.

            Fallujah had gotten too hot. Nimr left when he saw the U.S. troops encircling the city. From Syria Nimr heard how the city was being flattened, burned, they found a mass grave full of Sunnis. Nimr felt powerless in Syria. He tried to not let tears invade his prayers, but when he knelt for prayer and faced east towards Mecca he could not help but think his hometown lied east too. White Christians like crusaders had come and destroyed everything. The hatred he felt welled up into tears. He remembered his proud father and his long political rants. He remembered his beautiful mother when he was just a kid. Everything he knew was gone. The sadness of it being gone gave way to the anger of it being taken, to overcome the sadness Nimr put more energy into his anger, organizing militias, transporting arms to the Iraqi border. Nimr joined the Free Syrian Army and began commanding troops to take down the Assad forces. But then Syrian forces under Assad began giving money and arms to Nimr’s unit of about 100 or so men about half of them Nimr knew from western Iraq. Nimr had the idea to not support Assad or support the Free Syrian Army, but do as his Dad had always said in Fallujah: “Got to Syria regroup and return.” Nimr wanted a Pan-Arab Islamic state just like his Dad had talked about when he was a kid. Nimr and his men swooped down onto Al-Tabqah, Syria and took the city so easily it surprised himself. Afterwards Nimr ordered all government officials, proud men, to be publicly executed. Nimr wanted the executions videotaped. Saying to the nervous, young kid with the IPhone: “public executions have a psychological effect on people. I want them to see it. I want them to feel it. Praise be to God.”

            When James got back to the states he never slept. When deep sleep came he was shooting the mother and all her daughters were holding him down to the ground and he could not move. He had a dream one of the little girls was making an IED just for him. She looked at him in his dream like out of a television screen, held out a pipe bomb covered in nails, and said: “this is for you.” James woke up a lot sweating and out of breath. He started drinking at night to calm down and fall asleep. When he woke up he started drinking because he was always nervous and he could not figure out why. It was like anything could explode and he would not have his gun and if he could just be back in combat and not surrounded by all these wussy civilians, who did not get it, he could just have a gun and be safe.

His friend from the Corps had gotten on the local police force. He heard James was having trouble so he talked to him how the Police was just like the Marines just easier, and yes he assured James he could carry a gun anywhere James wanted to.

James got on the force and one his first calls was to respond to a baby with a high fever. James calmed the hysterical mother, got the EMT’s on their way, stayed with the woman until they got there and heard the baby crying the whole time, a little girl. As James left the house and walked back to his cruiser he kept hearing the baby screaming or was it, James could not believe it, but the little girls? It sounded like the little girls in Fallujah. It was constant the screaming and crying mixing with the baby’s voice and the little girls trying to get the lifeless mother to move. James took out his gun and searched underneath the wheels of his cruiser for a while, taking each corner of the car, looking off into the trees, if someone was playing music or using speakers to play a joke on him. Dispatch clicked over the radio asking where he was. His shift had been over. Once he made something up for dispatch he put the radio down and heard complete silence where the screaming had been before.

James came home and turned on the news. There were riots against police officers. Ferguson, Missouri was burning to the ground. American journalists in orange prison suits were having their throats slit on video in regions of Iraq his platoon had captured by something called the Islamic State or ISIS. James could still remember friend’s faces and the sounds of their voices from the Corps, young guys who were dead now, killed around Tikrit or Fallujah during his tour. A cold sweat started in his back. Nervous fear. The little girls would be all grown up now. He thought of protesters saying: “hey pig!” and tossing him a grenade. At work he told himself he would not drink tonight, but he got up off the couch, turned off the news, filled a glass half full of whiskey, shot it back and exhaled.

Nimr entered Fallujah with a personal guard of 20 Islamic state soldiers. The Iraqi security forces crumbled, just like in Syria, but here the new American President had come in and again the American troops tried to leave. Nimr watched CNN, Fox News, CBS, ABC, BBC, and Al-Jazeera, once American troops diminished he pushed the car bombings and was one of the first to command a group of men that crossed over the Syrian border capturing the key city of Sinjar which paved the way for the success at Mosul. He read German books on military tactics and called the last couple months The Prophet’s Blitzkrieg. Nmir gave speeches in every town they conquered and after every fiery speech he had over 30 men in each small town wanting to join his forces. He ordered defiant Christians in Mosul to leave their homes with only the clothes they wore or face “death by sword.” A group of Sunni Soldiers began saying Nimr was too ruthless, crazy,  and strayed from the Prophet. Men under his orders took the mutinous soldiers from their beds late at night and shot them in the street. 600 Shia prisoners were taken to the edge of Mosul and shot in the head, their bodies rolling into a sandy-white ravine. Nimr staged many videotaped beheadings. It told people who was in power.

 Nimr went to his old neighborhood when he got back in Fallujah. He navigated the streets that had the same names but looked all different. Almost the entire city had been destroyed. Most people lived in tents. The place he had lived as a child was a nice building and was still partially standing. Gutted poppy addicts lay about the bullet holes and blasted out walls. Stepping over a passed out addict he climbed the mangled, crumbling stairs to his old apartment. He remembered seeing his bludgeoned and disgraced father in the apartment the last time. Nimr stood alone looking around his old home. The walls, the corners, the floor and the doorways were basically the same, white sunlight came through the bare windows, but it was empty.

The Lunch Break Three Days Before Halloween I Just Needed to Talk With Our Son Jacob Because I Miss You

The Lunch Break

Three Days 

Before Halloween

I Just Needed to Talk

With Our Son Jacob 

Because I Miss You

By John Rogan

Leila put down the receiver and said that would be the last call. Walking into Mr. Aferton’s office she said she would have to leave for her late lunch to go to the bank. Paychecks had just been issued for the week, so Mr. Aferton did not find the request suspicious. Leila was really not doing anything wrong, just odd. The endless ringing phones and shifting appointment times had seemed more unbearable than most days. She had just had her two days off and Leila had spent them sitting around the house with Jacob watching Pixar movies while he was awake. When Jacob was in bed she fell asleep to old romantic movies that were free with her Netflix subscription. She could not afford to rent movies. On-demand things were tight this month. So she had just sat around for the two days instead of spending money and going somewhere nice.

Truth be told her husband, Jake, and more his sudden departure from the living world was wearing on her. And the weight, the wear seemed so oppressive like Leila had some pulsing throb running in circles in her forehead and the tingling restlessness all through her shoulders, arms and fingers made her jumpy and easily startled. Jake’s death had occurred 7 years ago at the end of the week, Friday. Today was Monday and the week looked as bleak as her weekend. Leila sniffled a yelp gathering her purse, slipping on her jacket, briefly clutching her head with both hands. She really wanted to see, to hold her little boy Jacob. Jacob had gone off to school this morning, but as the school bus pulled away and she went back into the house to get ready for work, it was like a darkness, alone now, silence, fear, the family she created no longer together. Splintered like her memories, moods, and thoughts. Just a quick shopping trip with Jacob. She felt disconnected. It would anchor her. If maybe she just started crying, maybe everyone would feel bad for her, and tell her to take it easy, have a break, but she knew they would just laugh at her. Jake had called it being thin-skinned.

*

Stepping out of the office she headed for her car. With her heels clicking on the concrete she felt completely cosmically alone. Like there would never be anyone again. It had all been so well laid out. Built with such care. How could anything with such grandeur and emotional nuance ever be put together by two people again? Her car choked on to the high pitch whine it always made and she headed for her son’s school.

Jake had been a contractor. He mostly did electrical work and would have guys from his company over after work or on the weekends. Leila would sit out on the porch, smiling as they drank beers and the men acted like little boys. Jake had always been very active and gregarious since Leila had met him. Jake and Leila’s small little one floor house became the meet-up for multiple barbecues and Sunday get-togethers. It was her own little family and community that grew as the years went by. Jake became one of the Senior electricians at his company and the house would be the setting for dinners and big circles of men standing and drinking beer before the game started. Leila would be friends with their wives and she had a whole network Sarah Haymont, who she learned to golf from, Emily Gordon, who would take Jacob on play dates with their little girl, Celia Hent, who would go shopping with Leila at the Local Farmer’s market, and Anna Aranna who introduced her to hot yoga and talking romance novels over coffee.

When Jacob came along it was like something that was impossible, but had to occur, and it did. Jake and Leila were parents, proudly holding the little boy outside their house for photos of the little blue bundle. Guys Jake worked with came by to congratulate him and smoke and drink. The women would tear off and talk to Leila about the sleepless nights, the color of his room, but overall the tired joy that burst through every moment Leila had with Jacob. Jake would smile like Leila had  never seen before as he bellowed in his thick accent unbelievingly at some new devious smile, a stumbling run for the couch cushions, or an attempted word from the fastly growing Jacob. Jake started calling him Jake jr.

                              *

The whining was going full-pitched and flashes of light flashed cross Leila’s vision. The light was not turning and she was behind over 30 cars. When the light did change it was green for only four seconds, so only five or six cars could get through. Leila started to get hot behind her neck, then she started to smell the sweat and heat coming off of her. A couple months after Jake died she went to the hospital for an asthma attack. The doctors said there was nothing wrong and that it was her nerves most likely a panic attack. Psychosomatic the doctors had said. Which means basically all in your head just like Jake was now. In the center console was a small Xanax pill Leila took and bit a small flake off of.  She thought of the brother, drunk, and dead-eyed smashing through the side window and coming into the house. The dingy little table in the basement where the guys sat and played cards and drank, snorted coke, and ate Percocet. Leila upstairs with the girls. They always knew about the drugs, Sara liked coke a lot herself, but they always just rolled their eyes and went with the boys will be boys disposition and never mentioned it. On the next tired morning Leila had put Jacob in the car seat and had said goodbye to Jake. She asked him about work this week and how things had gone with the guys last night. Jake said everything was fine, just hungover and Leila wished him a good day.

While Jake was at work Leila got a call from Emily saying Jim Hent had a heart attack last night and died. Celia Hent then called Leila and blamed Jake and the coke he had for Jim dying. Celia screamed like something inhuman into the phone. Words Leila could not even decipher. When Jake got home from work Jim Hent’s brother was waiting outside. Leila was hiding in the bedroom texting Jake about a big, drunk guy pacing around the front of the house. Jake came home quick and began screaming at him in that scary way then he quickly came into the house. Jim Hent’s big drunk brother then smashed through the side door before Jake landed a baseball bat into his forehead. Leila was crying, huddling over Jacob to keep the sounds from reaching him. The Sirens came down the street and they all had to answer questions. Sarah, Emily, Celia and Anna were all questioned along with their husbands. Jake ended up taking the blame because he was in charge and everyone but Leila blamed him anyways. Leila knew this could break him. Jake always cared about the people around him as family and after Jim Hent’s funeral Celia vindictively went after Jake and got other wives to dislike Leila. A friend of Jim Hent’s made up a fake claim that got Jake to lose his Electrician’s license and so his job at the company. He was working side jobs. But everything had turned sour. The fighting, the gossip, the attacks had run their course over Jake’s psyche. Jake had wanted everyone to be a happy family. Leila had to start working as a cashier at Tj Maxx. One day after Jake had been out of work for over a month she got off her cashier job, picked up Jacob at daycare and walked into the house calling Jake.  After Jim’s death Leila and Jake had been fighting about the drugs. Leila was hoping he was not in one of his midday stupors, so she did not have to spend the night feeling icy, alienated, alone, and angry. The in-fighting after Jim’s death had been vicious among the wives. People took sides and factions kept splitting and fighting until no one talked to anyone. Leila was having trouble finding play dates. She could not find parents who had not heard the rumors about Jake and her. Leila bounced Jacob in her arms against her chest calling Jake’s name. It was silent.

*

The radio in the car turned to an obnoxiously loud commercial and Leila flipped the radio off annoyed. A line of pine trees created a shaded area along the street where other Parents waited in their cars for school to get out. The radio being silenced Leila heard the high pitched whining of the engine. Turning off the engine she stared into the shade and the yellow pine needles outside the passenger seat window. Fixing her eyes on the green branches and the shade her eyes went out of focus, then focused back on the shade, stilled, hearing herself breathe softly, she thought it was all a mess. And How, she asked herself, had she gotten this far away from everybody.

                               *

Jake was blue in the bathroom, not moving. She called the paramedics to revive him but they said he had been dead for hours already, nothing they could do. Someone grabbed Jacob from her and Leila fell away from the ambulances, her house, her street, and when she woke up in a hospital the doctors had to inform her again because it just could not be. She would never see him again, so the future stretched out lonely and full of things that she could not understand enough to love.

*

Leila saw Jacob’s fuzzy head step out of the school doors. It was a half day. He needed a haircut she thought. Halloween was in 3 days. She hated Halloween because it was around when Jake died. The way he innocently stared up and comprehended his world made all the tightness in Leila drain away. “Jacob!” She playfully yelled to him approaching the school. “Mom!” he exclaimed the lost comprehension of the swirling schoolyard giving way to light, recognition, and love.

“Ok, Buster”

“My name’s not Buster!” She smiled as he scolded his mom “it’s Jacob.”

“You are right Mr. Jacob. Did Misses Tellington teach you your name.”

“No, you taught me my name. Misses Tellington says it’s not nice to call people names.”

Leila’s feelings of Isolation had been heightened by the fact that Jacob seemed to not remember his father. Jacob was in 2nd grade now so only knew his father until he was 3 years old. Jake did teach Jacob how to walk, say his own name, as well as saying mom and dad’s, but just like a lot of moments Jake seemed to be cruelly absent from Jacob’s memory. Like it had all never happened.

Smiling entertained, but also thinking about Jake She said. “You are right calling people  names is bad, but Buster is just like a nick name. Nick names are okay. Okay?”

“Okay!” Jacob’s big green eyes, messy, thick, brown hair, and his tiny mouth shouted with more enthusiasm than Leila had previously imagined existed. “You’re a Buster!” He smiled and Leila gave him a big kiss on the cheek and said “ Mommy loves you.” Buckling him in to the back seat she said: “Do you know what we’re going to go do now?” She watched his mouth open with anticipation at what she would say. “What did you want to be for Halloween this year?”

“ Samurai Jack!” He said with a big smile. Then he started swinging his arms in the backseat. Leila softly smiled at the halted exclamations he would yell and then swing his arms around in a fury of what Leila assumed was supposed to be some type of Martial Arts.

“Ok, well we are going to go to the Halloween store and get your costume!” Some days it just felt like her and Jacob and no one else. Jake was there somewhere in the ether that Leila wanted to touch so bad, but there never was any indication of anything towards his existence. No hints, suggestions on how to re-connect, absence upon silence, with thoughts and memories pounding through the nights and mornings of her mind. She heard his thick accented voice holding Jacob in his arms in front of him. Jake and Jacob face to face “Dada, Dada, Dada”

*

Pulling into the Marsahalls parking lot Leila thought if she saw something on sale she might get it. She had about 20 minutes before she had to drop Jacob off at Daycare and be back at the office.  Jake would ask her to buy socks for him at this Marshalls and once she had surprised him with a big Carhart sweatshirt that was on sale right before the winter. Jake wore the sweatshirt on most days he worked and the sweatshirt was cut off his corpse when Leila had to identify it.

Leila walked through the parking lot next to Jacob. She took smaller steps as his small legs tried to keep pace with her. Many times Leila imagined seeing things through Jacob’s eyes, fresh, not-nearsighted, but most importantly unencumbered by loss, time passing, or emotional attachments leaving. It must be a whole new amazing world. Jacob was so excited going through the automatic doors that funneled customers into the Seasonal Halloween section at the front. Jacob grew visibly excited at the Witch’s hats, Scream masks, and Jack ‘ O ‘ Lantern decorations. Leila saw the same old dusty clothes store, the fluorescent lights with the same geriatric employees it always had. Now Jacob was doing Karate in the aisles. The Halloween displays had gotten him pumped up. A wave of exhaustion hit Leila as she thought about her remaining day at work. A smile lilted up the side of her cheek as she took note of Jacob  saying what he thought was some sort of Asian Martial arts commands before spinning into a frenzy of  swinging arms and jumping. To calm him down she thought they would go to the less stimulating Women’s section so Leila could see if any Summer stuff was on sale. “Okay Jacob, honey, Jacob, watch out for the Lady, excuse us. Jacob we’ll get Samaurai Jack in just a minute just come with mommy.”  Jacob paused like something important was happening, poked a grimacing Jack’ o ‘ Lantern in the nose and followed his mother in the direction of the Women’s section. Leila could not help but laugh to herself as this twirling pseudo-Chinese speaking child trailed behind her.

*

At the Women’s section Leila told Jacob to stay close. She wondered why she was even trying to buy clothes. She wanted to date again and had tried some online dates but politely trailed off because they were not like Jake. No one was. She felt she was being unfaithful to him on those dates. The strange men with Jawlines not like Jake’s, voices not like Jake’s, and none of the personality, energy or sheer determination Jake imbibed into his physical presence. Other people made her feel flat and underwhelmed but at the same time overwhelmed if that makes sense. There were millions, billions of them to comprehend. She was out-numbered in this world and the only person who understood enough to protect her had left. She stared up at the speakers with soft retail music coming out. It was Prince. Who had also recently died of a drug overdose. Jake hated Prince. Back when Prince was popular. Leila and Jake were just dating and Jake would call Prince gay and Leila would correct him and say how Prince was dating Carmen Electra and Jake would say no way. And it was not like today where you could just check on the computer. So Leila saw a tabloid in the grocery store with Prince and Carmen on it then ran home and called Jake right away.

Prince’s voice and the music flattened into static. The fluorescent lights spun around Leila’s head like planets. She was calling from the house phone to tell Jake he was wrong. She would do it cute when he answered the phone. So his voice would go that way when he appraised something he liked. But Leila looked onto the Linoleum floor and over the rubber bumpers where the carpeting began and racks of clothes started. Where was Jacob? The thought stabbed and she looked around her in a circle. She had no idea where he was. In the parking lot? Like that guy on America's Most Wanted's son, dead in a pervert's trunk? "The mother was not watching". Long years of loss creating themselves before her. The fear like waves. It was just a dial tone, ringing, ringing, and she was waiting for Jake to pick up on the other end. She could not see or hear Jacob. The racks of clothes dropped away and light squeezed into her eyes as she started to scream “Jacob!!!” The dial tone kept pulsing. Leila held the phone up to her ear and waited patiently. “Jacob!!” She screamed and employees were running towards her and now other customers. The dial tone got louder and kept pulsing in the receiver next to her ear “ Jaccobb!!” No one had seen a little boy with brown hair. No one knew where he was. She screamed tears coming out hard and violently flinging down her purse and pushing an employee and a customer out of her way she tossed her hair back over her forehead marching forward “Jaaccobb!!” crying, tears streaming down her face and the dial tone over and over going unanswered. Just racks of clothes and no one can find Jacob. She was choking. Leila could not breathe. “Jaccoob!!” She choked, tried to inhale, then cried. She could not breathe. Her doctor told her it was psychosomatic. It was all in her head. She flung her coat off onto the ground smelling the heat and body odor emanating off her face, neck and shoulders. Red, crying, and heaving to breathe she approached the security desk that had already put out a call for a lost child over the intercom. The security officer pushed the button to speak over the intercom again and Leila heard the dial tone and her head collapsed into her hands where the dial tone monotonously continued repeating and making no connection. Paramedics came and told Leila to sit down, she was in shock, she was shaking and crying, and muttering Jacob and she was breathing very heavily. The paramedic asked her to sit down again. “Jacob” she croaked “where is he?” She remembers asking the paramedic before him, the paramedics, Jake jr. and the dial tone stretching out long. The fluorescent lights twirled off the white ceiling and it was dark. Security had Jacob crying coming out of the Women's dressing room.

“Hey, Jake! Jake, it’s Leila.”

“Leila! Hey, It’s good to hear your voice.”