Call Me a Communist, But...

So another weekend skiffles along full-pat, a stomach full of shepherd's pie and a mug of wimpy tea to salve a crampy cold I've succumbed to.  Uncharacteristically of me, for the first time in perhaps a week I've finally looked at the online news stories - Times Square and various city spaces around the world have been occupied by protesters decrying wealth disparity and a perceived lack of representation in government direction, Steve Jobs has suddenly passed on, Sonic Youth fronts Moore and Gordon separate (marriage now, band soon?), and the Treasury has delayed its final ruling on the fairness of China's currency valuation.

And then in lighter news, there's an interview with presidential-candidacy-hopeful Herman Cain on the NPR.  When asked by interviewer Scott Simon about the economic ramifications of Cain's proposed 9-9-9 tax scheme - in this case, instancing the proposed nine-percent sales tax on the price of bread paid by both prince and pauper - the Godfather's Pizza magnate responded:

On a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread, Bill Gates and every rich person is going to pay the same tax as someone who's on the lower end of the spectrum. But Scott, I'm not going to play the class warfare card. You have to compare the taxes they pay today. If you pick a certain income level — and I'll pick one and walk you through it, OK?  (Simon: "Sure.")  I'm going to use $50,000 a year, since that's approximately what the median income is for a family in this country. [For a] family of four, $50,000 a year. Under the current system, based upon standard deductions and standard exemptions, they're going to pay $10,200 in taxes. Under the 9-9-9 plan, the middle 9, they're going to pay $4,500. That leaves $5,700 to apply to that milk and bread in terms of the taxes. You have to go through the numbers of each individual situation.

Golf clap, Mr. Cain.  As suggested, going through the numbers every rich person will pay the same tax, in dollar amounts rather than proportionally.  The $5,700 that average family may save still has to go towards the mundane (and now more expensive) task of paying for the groceries, the wares, the thingamajigs.  That average American family spends nearly all its cash on (you guessed it) these expenditures, with little by way of money to save.  An overall raising of the levy on purchased goods will really do little by way of a tax break for the Jones', and in many cases will end up being a tax hike.

Believe it or not, but beyond the investment of assets and grandiose luxury purchases, the very wealthy consume roughly the same by way of living necessities as their less-than-wealthy peers.  Check out this informative graph.  The top fifth of American earners spend roughly $65K a year of their average $145K income, proportionally less than the middle fifth's $35K/$45K or the bottom fifth's deficitous $18K/<$10K.  There's only so much money a family can really spend on consumer goods before the rest of that money simply piles up to multiple zeros on a banking ledger.  Rather than further improving the affluent's quality of life any, beyond a certain point the money apparently makes no difference.

Not that I'm a commie!  But I'm simply saying that a consumptive-based tax plan is a bad shake for the majority of Americans.  9-9-9 - basically a flat tax scheme - is just another thinly veiled proposal to make the wealthy wealthier at the spending class' heavy expense.  You (dearest reader) and I are essentially indentured servants in this life, scraping together the dough (by serving the proverbial Man) to buy the essentials, enjoy/discard/replace the baubles, and live in the apartments of (or pay the mortgages to, if You are a home-owner) said loosely-defined and still very metaphorical Man.  Mind you, that's just one way to look at it.  Negative lens, mayhap.

But that's largely what the Occupy Your-City-Here movements are so miffed about, for those who've until now not 'got it'.

The Tao of Ba-gel

Halloa, my fingle-dingle friends! Another weekday morning in the Land of Dan, swilling a lukish kinda cuppa and prepping for a bit of work this aff.  Another day, another dollar. Yet somehow I feel vaguely energized and upbeat, settled stomach and the lot.

The cause isn't a hard recollect: morning bagels make my day. Normally not wont to eat breakfast, for the past few months I've begun getting back into the habit. Grits and eggs, single-servings of fruity Greek yoghurt, the odd bit of fruit, and most recently the insert-Spam-here breakfast sandwich. English muffs at first, topped with fresh tomato, cheese, egg, and Vegemite. But I've stumbled onto the hard stuff now, the things good bagels are made from.

Salmon cream cheese spread, fresh red onion, soon to be capers and sweet red peppers and a varietal blend of other things. The best part of this comestible gospel I'm spouting is that anyone can do it, if'n they have ten minutes. One minute of prep, four to cook, and a civil five to enjoy. And most anything'll work; to wit, I topped my egg salmon bagel with five thin slices of fresh fried sweet potato! Sweet potato! Magical stuff that'll leave one feeling warm and good-humoured and not at all peckish til the after-work pub crawl.

Give it a go sometime.

"The Roughest Farewell" pt. IV

IV.

            I awake from my nap after what seems like weeks, the sun by now just passed the sky's highest point and beginning its way toward the western horizon.  I sit up and stretch the stiffness from my shoulders and lower back, a hearty yawn on my lips- stifled, when I see the distant clouds of dust kicked up on the southern road.  Four horsemen, maybe five approaching our Skokie Pines.  Five horsemen.  Trouble.

            I leap to my feet, a chill in the pit of me as I begin to leg it back to town.  Five horsemen, doubtless after Ned.  Would they be state marshals?  Pinkertons?  Federals?  Unrelated?  How much did they know; could they know what horrors transpired the night before?  A chill in the pit of me, as cold and horrible and lifeless as they come.  What could I say?  What should I say to the townsfolk?

            On the rocky path back, sprinting and bounding over odd stones and dusty ruts as the little township draws sluggishly nearer.  I can’t run fast enough, it feels.  Legs of iron, knocking hardened heels on stagnant earth.  Kicking up a dust trail of my own.  I’m finally running past the First Church – mounds of flesh in the yard behind – past the tailor, the smithy, to the office.  Dead empty and lifeless, the lot of them.  Heat of the day, it comes as no surprise.  Were it not for the icy pit in my stomach I might succumb to the stroke.

            I burst through the heavy wooden door, surprising Angus and little Cousin Clara playing the tarot on the great wooden desk.  “Ye gods!  Men approaching town- fetch Horus,” I tell to her, surprisingly out of breath now that I’ve reached my purpose.  I falter on towards the gun cab as the two remain standing on, watching me with ignorant fishes’ eyes.  “Now, dammit!” I wheeze as I pull out a brace of Winchesters.  I hurl one blindly at Angus and grab up a box of cartridges.  Gods, but my hands quiver.  I drop them, one-two, as I make to load up.

            “Man Jesus, Sheriff!  What’s got you all huff n’ puff?” Angus gawps with the rifle hanging in his arms.

            “Men!” I cry breathlessly.  “Five men approaching town on horseback.  Moving fast.”

            “God Zeus,” he whispers, at last understanding.  He scrambles for the cabinet, changing out the rifle for the double-barrel ten gauge and a box of shells.  I’m still struggling to load, still dropping cartridges on the floor 6-7-8.  Hands everywhere as I stumble towards the door.  At last I’ve got the thing locked and ready and I’m stepping back out onto the porch as Horace walks briskly up with Clara close behind.

            “I hear there’s trouble approaching, Cousin Spur?  To do with the outsider?”  Despite the raised eyebrows and the gapen mouth of concern, Horace seems excited; positively excited.  I nod and he raises clenched fists towards heaven.  “If the government wants trouble, then they shall have it!” he exclaims.  “I’ll alert the folk.  We shall meet them prepared.”  Horace rushes off shouting, “Invaders!  Marauders!  Arm yon selves!”  Skipping, dammit.  Skipping down the street and shouting.

            “Mind you do nothing drastic, Our Horace!” I cry after.  “Let me talk to them!  Mayhap it’s nothing!”  But there’s a sickly foreboding about the words as I say them.  “Mayhap it’s nothing.”  I stand there with my rifle in the shade of the porch, Angus poking out his head through the doorway.  We both stand, taut and unnerved for one minute, three minutes, on to ten.  Finally with a hissing sigh I relax my whitened grip on the wooden stock.  I tell to Angus, “Just sit back tight in there.  If’n there’s trouble to say, come out blasting.”

            He nods and largely closes the heavy door, and I take a seat in the creaky rocker with the Winchester in my lap.  There is movement in the buildings across the street; I can hear the creaking of the floorboards grind away to stillness, an awful sort of stillness that precedes a thunderbolt before it tears the sky apart.  And then…  hoofpats from the east.  Clolloping calmy round the last upward bend into town.  I set my rifle to one side against the office wall and make to light my pipe.  I can’t for the quavering hands, so I simply hold it in my lap and wait.

            The five horsemen ride up the main drag, two to the front with the others hanging behind.  The laggers seem awful nervy, the fat man up front right on edge.  But the slender fella with the drooping moustaches rides with a buoyant calm – though he also seems eye the place with a keen regard.  It is him I fear, my instinct tells me.  I raise a hand to them in halloa.

            “Greetings, y’all,” I chirrup in a slightly crackling voice.  I make to stand on warbled legs, pressing an arm nonchalantly against the roof beam for support as I lean to one side, pipe still in the other hand.

            “Greetings, Sheriff,” the thin man replies in a robust, haughty sort of voice that sends shivers down my spindly spine.  His is a look of triumph, the cat that caught the canary.  “I suppose you would be the one to know what became of a friend of ours, what passed through here yesterday morning?  He was about on business, specifically to see your office.”

            I clear my throat, an idea sprung to mind.  “Yessir, a Mr. Norris it was.  Collecting renders for Caesar.  He came and went by noontime, once he’d seen to his business…”  I’m starting to feel a little more confident, the blood returning to my hands and feet and hopefully face.  But the gangly horseman nods on in that knowing way as he pouches and rolls himself out a cigarette.  It’s unnerving, him sitting there atop his Appaloosa nodding on in silence with that smirk.  Pressing out the lumps and rolling that cigarette between his thumbs and fores.  He places the thing on his lip and produces a match, shooting me a sharp glance as he lights it.

            “Afraid that isn’t possible, friend.”  He inhales deeply and tosses aside the matchstick.  A cloud of smoke explains, “Afraid he was to meet up with us outside of town once he was finished up hereabouts.  Straight up, if you understand me.  We waited til nightfall and a bit through the morning, on the off chance he was enjoying your town’s hospitality.”  He pauses there, taking out his cigarette with two fingers and admiring it at arm’s length a bit.  “We waited.  He didn’t show up.  Now we’re here to figure why, precisely.  So?  Where is Ned?”

            The blood again flees my appendages, my knees feeling like lead weights.  The man is clever, alleys covered and all.  But what is he?  Contract?  Badge?  “I told you what happened,” I tell him, trying to rouse some semblance of authority to my voice.  “Now who are you to question me?  I’m a sheriff, after all.  I’m the law round here.”  I tap my pentangle with a thumb for emphasis, yet can’t rid myself of the nervousness.  I’m playing a losing hand, too far gone to fold with not enough guile to bluff it out.

            “Me?”  He laughs, a husky smirky sort.  “I’m the Lord on High, in these parts.  I’m Marshal Conniff Starks.  And I’m afraid I've heard a few things about ol’ Skokie.  S’why we decided to escort Mr. Norris along.  S’why we’re here now.  S’why I’m asking you what it is you’re doing with that Winchester perched up against the door frame, and why you’re shitting bricks at a simple question.”  His dark-eyed gaze is slicing right through me now, cutting me to the very quick.  He spits out his cigarette and puts a hand on the revolver handle jutting from its holster.  His men are already guns-in-hands, ready to follow suit should the necessity arise.  Never have I been so close to death, I’m feeling through every last strand of myself as I stand there on the open lopsided porch outside the office.  As the man says, shitting bricks.

Starks sucks the spittle off the side of his great moustache.  “So I’ll ask once more-” he begins, cut short by an explosive report from above Weebleman’s.  The five of them are cut short as the first report is followed by a dozen others, horses trying vainly to wheel around as they and their riders drop to earth left and right.  The door swings wide as I scurry over for my rifle, catching me hard atop the head and dropping me flat; Angus comes out a-screaming and empties both barrels.  Catching Starks square in the chest, I believe.  As I roll over on the porch I can see him sprawled out lifeless and bloodying up the dusty earth, his mates all strewn about him.  One of his boys had the horse shot from under him but has managed to sprint off behind our Sheriff’s Office.

“Get the outsider!!” Horace shouts wildly as he comes charging out with a bayonet-tipped Springfield, followed by a dozen screaming fellows brandishing pistols, cleavers, and axes.  A few fall upon the fallen marshals, laying in to chopping and kicking.  The rest run off in pursuit, and after an exchange of shots and a bloodcurdling cry of anguish return with the decapitated head of the last.  I can’t climb onto my feet, legs unwilling to support me – legs made of lard, you might say.  I sit on the porch, shocked at this gratuity opened up upon the road of my town.  Carnage.  Bloody, horrible carnage.

And more yet to come, I realize with added horror.  Starks wouldn’t have been fool enough to come without a plan of contingency.  We could well have the Army sent down upon us!  Carnage tenfold, if that were the case.  Angus strides up, shotgun tipped across his shoulder in a cocky disposition.  “That’ll show’m.  Goddamned federals.”

I shake my head as Horace stands amid the corpses, admiring the scene.  “The day is ours!  The bloody business is finished, and there shall be much feasting the night!”  There’s a general whoop as men, women, and children step out onto the road with their weaponry, exulting with each other in the afternoon’s ambush.  “Prepare the fires!  And prepare a pit to inter the desecrated fallen.”

I still shake my head.  Fearing the worst to come, I suppose.  And perhaps also lamenting our collective action, the rashness of our nearest past.  Uninvolved in the melee, I can see now with outsider’s eyes the town for what it is.  We are outsiders, soon to be given a rough farewell of our own once the world-that-be figures what’s become of its representatives.  “We’ve lost,” I mutter, throwing head into hands.

“But none of’m escaped,” Angus corrects me, perplexed.

“None of them had to.  Now all we can do is wait for the rest.”

*          *          *      christ! see what transpires next, soon    *          *          *
or check out the previous installments:  I  II  III

"Picket"

            Erik needs work.  Needs work like a body needs air and food, like the human spirit requires open space and an undue sense of importance.  He realizes it one afternoon as he sits down with his first cup of coffee, waiting for his computer to boot.  Deju vu, as though he has done all this once before.  Nausea, as he realizes not once but many times with nigh-on religious repetition.  Awake piss percolate coffee computer email porn porn porn email coffee jobsearch porn and a Hot Pocket.  Every day, burp on cue.  The same old song and mirthless shuffle, the ever present curtain of despair, the weighty metaphor wrapped in a flimsy simile. 

Erik needs work, like the protesters downtown all have for a week.  Longer than that, but for a week now they’ve made a note to air those grievances, blocking traffic and picketing the various offices and establishments of the Man that be.  Tie-wearing champagne-tossing golf-playing gracious-tipping fuckwads, 401k stock options and the golden parachute – In Case of Emergency Break Glass.  The 1% at the top of the totem heap, pressing down the cornerstone 99.  Cornerstone folk like himself, Erik thinks angrily as he leaps into action.  Rummaging through a clothes-heaped closet looking for a flattened box, big black marker and a bit of duct tape on a cricket bat.  It reads-

Erik Needs Work

BS in Accounting, 3.7 GPA

Some Experience, Dependable

Give Erik a Chance!

            A chance.  Entry-level boot licking, extra hours on the weekends.  I’m-not-desperate-but-I’ll-do-anything aim to please can-do spirit.  The sort the market thrives on, the reason the system’s now broken down; not enough chances being taken.  All the fat cats and their connected underlings simmering in a big incestuous pile of corruption and complacency.  Letting the country go to the dogs, letting the dogs get gobbled up by the Chinese.  Metaphors, dammit.  Apt generalizations catching a broader swath of the forest, a broad-thinking Erik thinks to himself as he leaves the apartment with the weighty sign propped up on his shoulder.  Slung like a rifle, ready to fire off a few rounds at the Man.

            He gravitates downtown into the belly of the unblinking city, playground of the elites and self-important and their cringing toadies.  He can hear cars honking and as he follows the sound he can start to hear the roar of his fellows.  The 99%, stopping up a traffic circle as if it were a cork in a bottle.  Diverting bourgeoisie traffic and the slave-ship bus lines, waving signs and drawing honks of support and ire from the detouring cars.  Two cops stand uncomfortably on the corner opposite, watching the swell and talking amongst themselves.

            Erik gravitates across the way toward the human barricade, an unnatural conglomerate of recession.  High school punks and bums and college dropouts, soccer moms and truck drivers; black white and every-color credo under the sun intermingling amicably.  All shouting and chanting and singing in one big harmonious din.  Aging hippies passing the mantle to youthful hipsters who’ll post a picture then scrap it first chance on the Ebay, when it’s lost its luster.  Joe the Plumber rapping with the local Stitch n’ Bitch as tribal tatted ama-bras dick about with a yo-yo.  It's a jam band atmosphere, complete with the frazzle haired groupie woman dancing unconsciously with wild hands.

Dueling speakers blare against each other, both over the top of the ideologues with the megaphones and clipboards and agendas.  They’re trying desperately to organize, to get this thing in order before the police show up with the fire hose and wash it all down the gutter.  Directing the directionless, stand here, more signs there and the occasional nothing inflammatory.  Trying to separate the chaff and chavs from the posterboard 99%, to make a marketable representation of the unpleased whole for the vis-ed student orbiting about with his camera.  Erik gets tussled along towards the front of the north-facing line, hold your sign high like.  Set shoulder to shoulder between a tobacco-chewing Vancouverite and a middle-ager come straight off from Denver Street.

It’s an exhilarating thing, standing there in the face of traffic after spending a lifetime scurrying across roads.  Three lanes of vehicles being dumped off at them, having to jerk off to the right down another one-way sidestreet.  Delayed from the precious, indifferent business of the day.  Erik can see their faces through the windshields:  irritable and awestruck, smiling and fearful and confused.  Some downright upset as they roll down a window and shout something unintelligible as they drive off.  “I oughtta run you bastards down!” one screams.  Others wave and honk supportive blips of their horns as they continue on toward their jobs, affable scabs. 

More police are arriving, hats wrapped in plastic to ward off the gentle mist that collects on their yellow raincoats.  Massing on the corners while a few direct the traffic, a pair approach the crowd and begin arguing with one of the bullhorn-carriers.  But the Body stands resilient, each member a part of a larger defiant clog in the commercial chain.  Everybody doing their bit.  Erik feels an integral part of the group, feels he can really puff out his chest that he is the 99%.  And then he hears his name.

“You there!  Erik!”  A well-groomed head calls from the back of a limo car stopped on the street.  Erik wonders if he’s being addressed.  “Yes, you!  Erik, with the sign!  Do you really have an accounting degree?”  He nods dumbly, remembering what it was he’d written on his picket.  “We’re looking for somebody in our accounting department, entry-level.  Hop on in!”  The door opens up as the well-groomed man scoots over to one side of the seat.

“Man, fuck that Wall Street shitbag,” Vancouverite shouts into Erik’s ear.  Denver puts a hand on his shoulder, reminding him about solidarity.  There are honks coming from behind the limo and the driver looks like he might move along.  Meanwhile sirens are perking up from  the southern side of the protester's circle.  To stay or to go, Erik feels torn.

“You need a job or not?” Well-groomed calls from the car irritably.

Erik needs work.  Needs work like a customer needs satisfaction, like a sports utility vehicle needs a wider place to park.  He breaks free of Denver’s grasp and ignores Vancouverite’s reproaches as he jogs up to the limousine.  Setting down his picket on the damp tarmac he makes to get in.  “No, bring that along,” Well-groomed instructs him.  “You’re going to need a resume.”  Erik and picket slide into the car as the door shuts behind them, driver pressing on the gas and taking them uptown as the police start unpacking their great orange nets from the backs of their vans.

Misplacing My Ire?

So the other (week, was it?) I furrowed a single brow at news that a CIA drone had successfully found and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the charismatic talking head of al-Qaeda.  Not because of who he was or what he stood for, but because of his American citizenship.  I'd been similarly nonplussed back in May when another drone strike targeting al-Awlaki instead killed a couple of others (reputedly al-Qaeda operatives themselves).  I'm not the only one ruffled by this incident:  the ACLU and CCR have launched lawsuits against the United States government, and a slew of literary ire has been pulled from the quivers of bloggers and op/edders.

Citizenship bears with it certain obligations, but it also yields certain unalienable rights- although then I have to second-guess myself when I remember the rationale of Rousseau's Social Contract, that those bonds can be broken.  But then bearing in mind al-Awlaki's location (questionably neutral but neutral Yemen), the lack of due process, the mode of execution-  I don't know!  My opinions are all in a bally muddle in this somewhat singular set of circumstances.  Because the man was undeniably inflammatory and rather possibly linked to the operational doings of al-Qaeda.  But is that worthy of targeting him for assassination?  Is it assassination, in this instance?  Again, a muddle.  Is this a precedent for wantonly targeting American citizens for courtless death, or is al-Awlaki's citizenship merely a side-note in a larger campaign?

In any case, I posed the question on the Facebook (while generally an open invitation for vitriol and disappointment, I have faith enough in the friends I keep that the conversations will be insightful and interesting) for a bit of discussion, citing the instances of Kaczynski and McVeigh as examples of home-spun terrorists caught and tried.  Perhaps a more apt comparison might have been David Karesh, but I received some good responses from a variety of sources, including a professor from my old college days.  Most notable among these was the lengthy and I'd say well thought out series of arguments posed by my friend Nate:

It's a tough call. Kaczynski and McVeigh were caught alone in the U.S., not hiding in a foreign country with a lot of protection. If it is true he was waging war against the U.S., he becomes a combatant. This doesn't forgo his citizenship, but open war against the U.S. does put you a bit beyond normal due process. And as compared to Osama, Al-Awlaki moved around a lot more, preventing a planned raid of the same scope. Unfortunately in the current global threat scenario some information simply won't be fit for public consumption. There is certainly a line in which government can and cannot infringe on a person's rights. It is my opinion that those rights may be infringed upon when that person makes war upon the people that government represents. To try and make a point of paramilitary ignores the forest for the trees. Surely lives are being diddled with on both sides, in the end it mostly washes out. I would agree as a concept a bombing should be avoided when civilians are at risk, but there are things to consider beyond that one angle. There are equally many scenarios in which more civilian lives are lost in other ways of dealing with Al-Awlaki. Take for instance the infamous Blackhawk Down, in which a raid meant to reduce civilian casualties ended up creating tenfold. In a perfect situation Al-Awlaki would have been arrested and brought to trial with full due process. It is not a perfect situation, and I believe the situation warranted the loss of that privilege. I will say that I would have supported the same tactic used were McVeigh hiding in Generic Lawless Christian nation attempting further attacks against the U.S. Or Generic Liberal terrorist in Lawless Socialist state. Unfortunately, many of the people who agreed with the death of Al-Awlaki would have disagreed were he White/Christian. There is definitely an anti-Muslim undercurrent in the public support of the War on Terror.

While I can't argue with many of his points- well, precisely because I cannot fully argue with many of his points without that vague sense of doubt, I wonder if this may be a waste of time on my part.  Another panic worth abandoning, like so many others cast aside in this decade-old War on Terror being waged.  Besides, there may well be more important things afoot, like the Occupy (Your City Here) movement sweeping the nation or the impending reelection of Vladimir Putin.  Or ending the death penalty.  Yet as I move on I cannot help but wonder in what ways this undermines the value of citizenship, or if (like patriotic buzzspeak 'liberty' and 'freedom' and 'democracy') it really hasn't any intrinsic value at all.

What strange and odious things does this abandoned panic portend?

"The Roughest Farewell" pt. III

III.

            Morning next.  Sitting in the dark and smoke-filled office with my boots propped up on the pinewood desk, throat raw and dry from a night’s sit.  Like pemmican, I suppose.  Heavy lids dip low upon my tired eyes as I take another sip from the earthen triple-x jug set beside me on the floor.  It’s been a long night, a real hoo-haw of a thing.  My stomach muscles ache, my back hurts, my knees are scuffed, and the piles are acting up again.  But worst of all are the memories.

            “Lest we forget,” I prost myself as I tipple back anew.  Another facet of the First Church plot, another little hump of earth to forget, more water in that vast well of souls.  Lest we forget.

            “Man Jesus!” Angus whoops as he swings open the office door.  A blinding blade of light cuts in behind him before the door swings back to.  He plants his bony ass on the desk and motions over for the jug.  “That was a real hoo-haw, last night was.  Hell if they send any more tax agents round these parts!”  He swigs a taste and croaks, “Gods-blasted government.”

            “Yeah,” I sort of sigh tiredly.  Or is it wistfully?  Lest we forget.  “Those damned federals.”

            Angus hums his approval as he idles over the jug, neither drinking nor passing with the dad-gun thing set in his lap.  “Yeah, poking their noses where they dun’t belong.  Upsetting the general will, you know?  Greater good,” he mutters, quite definitely in wist.  Tottering the bottle in his lap, neither lifting for the swig nor passing it on.  Giving me the ants.  I stand.

            “Gotta get me some air,” I say, I fear with a trickle of the sweats and a shake.  Vomitous uprisings in the bowels, bit of the spleen upacting.  Lest we forget.  Hitching up my belt I decide to holster the shooter I’ve left lying across the desktop. 

            “Specting trouble?” he drawls from beneath the great flat brim of his hat.

            “Nah, just holds my pants up.”  I exit into another blinding swath of sun rising overhead.  Not nearly so high as to leave a shade on the porch, yet well above the spread of town to make it painful to the dank-weakened eye.  “Christ’s cross.”  But sun besides, there’s a mild touch of breeze about the air that seems pleasant and refreshing.  Quelling the troubles below, as it were.

            I saunter, but then there’s nowhere quite to go in town when a body wants to be alone.  I turn toward the hills, past First Church and the mounds of earth in the yard.  Mounds of flesh, sizable cups in the well.  Or maybe mere thimbles.  It’s beyond me to speculate at present.  Looking onward, the ancient shaggy Scarsdales hump along the sky’s bottom edge, a sort of earthen corrugate cut out.  Two silky plumes of smoke trickle upwards, mining camps in the hills’ midst.  No doubt still reeking of the morning’s bacon and saltpork and burnt coffee and distant shit.

            I walk along and off the dusty trail, hoofing it down a grassy knoll.  To someplace secluded and lonesome and scrubby-green.  Mayhap to laze about the junipers and sage and withered pines and ponder, or even to thoughtlessly gaze at the unending skies above.  In either case, to mull alone for a spell.  To lie upon Mother Earth and under our most distant relative, the Sun.  Among birds and mule deer and dozy bugs, to stretch out and reflect – lest we forget.  Because Ned’s world won’t forget where he’s got, and a hard rain’s bound to fall after him.

            I sometimes wish I could just up and ride away with the sun, to travel on like the unending day and ceaseless night.  But then, I don’t much like horses.  Sarta dee, sarta dum…  I find an inviting little spot overlooking the south plain and drop down in a grassy patch.  Tossing aside my hat and cradling head in hands I watch the azure skies above, clear and pure as a church pane.  Lazy clouds off to the east, drifting southward to Mexico, or the Gulf.  Hard to say for sure.

            Peaceful repose, badly needed serenity.  Lest we – and with a mighty mid-morning yawn – string ourselves up ado over nothing.  I close my eyes and it feels good, real good.  I can feel the breeze picking up, gusting the soft and pleasant scents of fresh sage to my nostrils.  Warm sun on my face, rather quickly I find myself drifting off…

*          *     is this the end? find out in our next installment     *          *

"The Roughest Farewell" pt. II

II.

            Grim dusk yawns upon us, the darkness of the sky pushing away the sun as another day meets its end.  Or at least, as another day in Skokie Pines ends.  I’ve been told the sun moves along, shining upon other lands west of us and far beyond and around until it crops up again in the east the morning next.  There really are no days, by that logic.  More like one endless day and an endless night, skulking about in an unending push and chase around our fair little firmament.

            The whole township is gathered in a great omega, facing myself, Angus, and a whimpering Ned between at the nadir of this celestial congregation on the steps of First Church.  Cousin Horace stands ahead, enrobed in the full regalia of his high office.  He prays upon this ritual in the old tongue, our denuded townsfolk bowed down over Mother Earth and saying their piece in response.  I say nothing.  I am the instrument of the body, nothing more.

            Ned is sniveling quietly, mouth agape and eyes a-popping at these proceedings.  “Easy on,” I whisper to him.  “Mussn’t heap further sacrilege upon your crimes.  Be worse if’n you do.”

            “Sheriff, this is madness,” he starts saying, and I’ve got to jerk him quiet by the collar.  Ned whispers on, “I mean, this is madness.  How can such heathenry exist in our day and age?”  And he looks at me imploringly for an answer, manacled and sweaty-browed.

            “Supposed to help the crops,” I shrug, thinking of the reasons laid down by the forefathers and yon.  “Harvest your spiritual energy for the township, in a manner of speaking.  Anyway, you shouldn’t’ve done what you did.” 

            “Hell’s bells, Sheriff… you can’t let them do this.  You’re a justice of the peace!”

            “Quit raising your voice during the ritual, dammit.”  I tap the tin pentangle pinned to my vest.  “And that’s your world, not ours.  Mine is a local office.  Anyway, it’s more or less like a hanging in other parts.  Only more meaningful.  You aren’t just dying… consider yourself becoming part of something bigger.”  Just tipping the earthen cup into the greater well, fluid and free and all-enveloping.  So we say.  It’s all one big communion by the endless day’s close.  But my counsel doesn’t comfort our prisoner any.  He mutters and shakes a right mess, I dare say beginning to go faint and fluttery as Horace ends the dedication.

            Arms upraised in a theatrical gesture, Our Horace addresses the very cosmos.  “We are now gathered before the First Church of the Aeon, to dedicate the life of an erstwhile unworthy individual – an outsider – guilty of trespassing upon the collected wills of our humble people of Skokie Pines.  Seni peikoks.  Have you anything to say before the bonding ritual is carried out, Brother Nedward Norris?”

            Angus gives Ned a shake, but it’s no good; Nedward is unresponsive.

            “Very well,” Horace continues.  “Place him in the well.”  Our cue, Angus and I drag Ned forward as the drums begin tattooing their primal thunder and the people become animated, exuberant.  Betsie locks each arm around the necks of her neighbors as they go to ground, while Anna Weebleman begins her siren song that sends shivers down my spine.  Many’s the night I awake from the sound of those drums, and that song.  Many a weary pipe I smoke ‘til our resumption of the dawn.

            Suddenly Ned leaps to life, the torso trying to tear itself from its very arms.  “Nooo!!  Nooooooo!!!”  Angus bats him in the eye with an elbow, but he rolls right with it as we drag him onward towards the center.  “You people are monsters!!  Pigs!  To Hell with the lot of you!!”

            “My my, but he’s a feisty one!” Angus squeals, baring his ugly chompers in a donkey bray.  The thundering drums pound on, a downpour upon my ears as we reach the hole.  With some pushing and kicking we get Ned’s legs in and push him down, him screaming and biting and vacillating as Angus begins pushing in the dusty red soil.  I’ve got to keep his shoulders pressed down, a hard feat considering.  Horace looms above us with outstretched hands and an upturned chin, chanting loudly away-

Mares away a fodder’s chum

Da prey ta bon num spake

In ta da erith bon num hest

Ayardi nigh da leaf.

            Sarta dee, sarta dum comes the refrain from all sides and I feel as though my very bones will jump free of my body, the pressure on my head explode in a shot of red.  Sarta dee sarta dum, sarta dee sarta dum and on and on.  Finally Angus presses the earth over Ned’s shoulders and I release them, rising to help pack it in with my spurless boot.

"GOD!!" Ned wails.

            “GOD!!” Ned wails.  “Oh Jesus Christ, Our Father who art in Heaven,” and so on, a parrying chant of his own against so many unburied others.  Horace hands me the burlap sack with the seventeen stars and I crouch down.

            “Sorry Neddy, sorry you have to experience this roughest of farewells.”  With a muffled shout the bag is placed over his head and I step away.  The drums, the thundering drums and Our Horace rising upon their rhythm with the wildest of ululations.  The mob goes mad.  Sarta dee!  Sarta dum!  They rise from their throng with stones held high overhead as the last ray of sun disappears behind the westward horizon.  All that’s left to us is darkness, darkness and a couple sundry stars as a kind of justice rains down.

*          *          *     to be continued yet     *          *          *

"The Roughest Farewell"

I.

            “Sweet Je-zus, Sheriff!  Can’t you,” and here the wormy little profligate falls into a mumbling bit of whimper.  “Can’t you just flog me, send me off and all?  I won’t come back!”

            Miserable little weed.

            “Nah, Ned, you won’t be coming back any time soon,” I tells him matter o’ fact like, rummaging through the chest o’ drawers next to the gun cabby.  “I do declare-” and I pause to relight my pipe as my thoughts hurry about the office.  Where, o where, have our black hoods gone….  They’re normally kept in the second drawer, next to the manacles.

            It’s hard to think, what with Ned yammering on from the town cell.  Not really a cell even, more an elaborate cattle pen hemmed with barbed wire and glass fragments.  Iron bars don’t grow on trees in Skokie Pines.  He stands as close to the slats as he can, pleading for his useless life with such gibbering despair.

            “Gawd- I’ll fly right off, Sheriff, it doesn’t haftabethiswayouknowIdon’t- deservetodielikethat please Sheriff, pleASE!!!”  Bawling and slobbering and snotting on, shaking like a leaf in an autumn breeze. 

            I head for the door.  “No need to shout, Ned, keep your pants on.  I’m over to Betsie’s, see if she can fix you up a proper hood and all.”  And I look back, a grin on my face.  “Wouldn’t want the townfolk have to watch your perfidious mug die, right-right?”  And I shut the door as he begins a-wailing again.

            It’s a beautiful day out the day, bright enough to blind a fella.  Course, the office doesn’t have any windows.  Very stoutly built, if simply so.  Angus idles in a rocker on the porch, hat pushed over his eyes.  “Lotsa noise he’s making in there, Sheriff.  Want me to shut’m up?”  And he gives one of those sour rotten smiles Angus and his braars are known throughout the county for.  Teeth’re the first to go in that fam.

'...more an elaborate cattle pen...'

            “Nah, none too necessary.  Gorgeous day out, though!  My word, I’m nigh on blinded by it.”  Angus hums assent and lifts his brim a bit with a thumb.  He makes another ghastly smile and lowers the hat back as he settles into his nap.  “Keep up the good work, hoss.”

            I walk on, boots scuffling along the rough dusty stretch of road that cuts through town.  Hard on the heels mostly, but a gluey morass at the first sign of rain.  Old Milo once suggested we lay down some broken stones from the mining op uphill.  A grand idea, if anyone wanted to shift them down here.  I think Milo really just wanted the township to pay him something extra, proposing it in that roundabout way of his.  In any case, it in't as though it comes as any detriment to the regular pace of things.  Old Skokie is a small sort of place, eleven buildings thrown up at the foot of the Scarsdales and the little mines and paltry claims that operate there.  

            I saunter across to Weebleman’s, a sort of one-stop for dry goods and much-about everything.  Uncle Weeb is dead now, stuck in the dusty ground behind First Church.  The store lives on via my brother Paul and his wife Betsie, formerly our Weeb’s eldest.  Course, Betsie’s sort of the family facet.  A harbringer, our stagecoach regular Emmitt once called her.  She’s outlived three husbands now; two of our cousins and another of my brothers, Geoff.  Now facets themselves behind the First Church.

            I push open the only screen door in town and step inside to the murky cool of the shop.  “Mornin’ Spur,” Betsie pipes up from behind the far counter.  That’s me by the way, Spur; called so because I don’t wear spurs, on account of my piles.  Horses and I aren’t the best of friends, let’s say.  “Ned still due for dusk?”

            “Yup, I do believe he is.  Course, do you think you can fix up a hood for him before then?  Can’t seem to find any in the office.”

            “Hrmmm,” she thinks audibly back in the coquettish, playful sort of way she does.  Everybody has a way, I suppose.  But she scrunches her face and puts a finger on those lips, amber eyes upturned off and away presumably finding the answer somewhere among the pressed tin ceiling tiles.  “You know, I think I can solve that problem right now.  We could use one of these barley bags instead.”

            She rummages one out from a pile of cloths and hands it to me, smelling of gal-musk and sassafras.  I roll the bag around in my hands; seems a proper fit for a head.  We can affix the appropriate stars and signs later.  “I dare say you’re a clever devil, Miss Betsie.  What might the township owe for this generosity of yourn?”

            She pulls the pipe from my teeth.  “Paul is away yet, 'til sometime later this afternoon.  I don’t suppose the township could part with a sheriff, at least for a little bit?”  And I hafta say, there’s nothing like a little anarchy now and then to make a community stronger.

*          *          *     to be continued     *          *          *