The Prophet

His hair was flat with grease, His clothes smelled of sweat, earth, motor oil, and perhaps a trace of urine. People avoided or ignored the man. In his hands he clutched doomsday, he held Revelations. The man gave all his strength into showing what was to come. He was used to being tired and kicked, ssoldiers had carried him out of the area around the Minutemen  a month ago. Two nights ago he had to leave the parking lot of St. Mary’s as headlights near where he slept for the night. But today, today he slept in a bed. Well, a pad really. He had found a small room in a field. He was able to get in easily. People buy good locks, but no one ever spends money on hinges. They get the cheap hinges. With no windows it was hard to tell when it was morning, the man left the room in the middle of the morning. He set out into town, he had a message to send. Out of the corner of his eye he was four men on horseback in a distant field. Realizing the man was a stranger, the horsemen rode near. The man ran, vindicated at last, desperate to share the news. 

Multi-Dimensional Peanuts

Bill Rife went out onto his drive and picked up his news paper. The walk from his door to the end of his drive was not a straight line as he would have preferred. Bill’s house sat at an awkward angle as a result of the building restrictions near the Minutemen. Thumbing through the paper he barely caught the names of articles. Khrushchev calls arsenal “nuclear deterrence”, Dr. No topped by sequel, protest held over evolution in… Bill stopped when he reached the page with the comics. Glancing down, he read Peanuts. Bill liked comics. You can’t read them the same way as you read a book. You have to look at the whole picture, reading the words alone won’t tell the whole story. Each panel had to be read separately then viewed as a whole for it to make sense. Scenery, characters, and text all had to be taken into account. Stereographics. He would ask Sue if she had read the strip over the weekend, it was a good one. Just in case he decided to fold the page up and bring it along on Monday.

Croppie

Samuel Fox back his Ford slowly into the water.  The boat behind it began to float in the slosh of the lake. With a grunt, Samuel climbed out of his truck and half waded half climbed over to his boat, unlatching it from the car and its carrier.  With a jerk he pulled a rope through around, across, and under fastening the boat to the small dock.  Samuel then walked back to his truck and parked.  In five minutes he was passed the no wake zones and nearing a small island in the lake.  He wanted relatively shallow waters.  With a flick of the wrist, a line was cast and Samuel waited for a bite. It probably wouldn’t take too long, summer months were good for Crappie out on Truman. He could see the dam behind him, and somewhere near that was the museum where children would go on field trips where they would see everything and learn nothing. There were too many barricades in museums. It was not like that on the lake. Sometimes you just have to poke things. How are you supposed to understand something unless you can experience it with all your senses? We have five for a reason, they are supposed to work at the same time. To see men on TV, to hear their voices, was not to know them.

Truman Lake

MAD NUTS

Two new theories dominated the debates within the political science department. With the concept of Brinkmanship securely ingrained, students were left arguing over the proper balance of MAD and NUTS. There were basically two camps, pro NUTS and anti NUTS. The pro NUTSgroup was lead by Bobby Beddit. The anti NUTS group was lead by Kevin… I can’t recall his last name. Anyhow Kevin was a total tool. MAD was bad, both groups agreed on that the question was NUTS, how much NUTS should be put in the American system? Too strong an emphasis on NUTS would likely push Russia to attack, but ignoring NUTS entirely would leave America wide open to MAD. Because of the debate, Dr. Irving decided an essay should be written to fully explain each student’s full opinion on the subject. There was a game tonight, MU against KU the game of the season. Of course he would pick today to assign something. Do professors even watch sports?

War Games

The Americans took aim at the Russians on the field below the barn, they slowly cocked their Red Riders and looked down the steel barrel over the open sites.  Three Russians stood oblivious to the attack above them.  The Americans had them out numbered two to one. Drawing their breaths in and slowly releasing them, the Americans picked targets and prepared to fire. Now! A voice from below called. From behind the Americans in the barn a volley of BBs flew their way. Two men were hit, the Russians in the field had retreated to behind a stack of fire wood. The Americans were pinned down. A pincer attack one American screamed. They had been out maneuvered. Popping up to fire, four Americans covered the wounded two as they scrambled for cover. Jimmy and Tommy had been hit.  The BB had bounced off Jimm’y jacket, Tomy’s was stuck in his skin and would need to be popped out with a pocket knife later on. Racking the levers on their Red Riders the Americans fired again.  The Russians won in the end. After the war Russians and Americans alike went back to Jim’s house for dinner. 

Intervention

The tune was familiar though she could not place the name without the words.  Sarah knelt at the edge of a row looking up at the cross on the wall. She had not been to a church in a while, and she was not Catholic, but as she drove by Sarah had felt compelled to stop.  She had been certain that she would know a course of action once she was in the thick of things.  Now, with her knees on the wooden floors, she was unsure of what to do. She wasn’t unstuck she was no Billy Pilgrim, she had no idea of what was supposed to happen next. The wood all around her was polished to a high sheen, candles lined the wall to her left. Why did Catholics laqueur everything  and surround themselves with candles… isn’t that a bad combination? An accelerant for the fire is not what the world needs these days. Sarah prayed for intervention. Intervention from what she did not know. The tune again caught her attention and Sarah began to hum along to the mysterious song.  The tune drew her attention to a speaker near a depiction of Mary. Sarah reached out to the painting, stopped as the tune ended, retracted her arm, and sat again on the floor.

The Blue Note

I poured him another round as he stared vacantly as his paper.  The top line read Si vis pacem, para bellum. The student glanced up at me and then back down at this paper.  Behind him, Truman danced on screen as another shot was made.  Again the student glanced up at me.  I want peace, we are prepared, now what?  He said Vegetius didn’t elaborate. Occationally I get a drunken prophet. I pickd up a glass and wiped the inside with a white towel.  It really didn’t do anything by that is what they did on TV.  The student raised his hand to signal another round.  Three measures of Gordon’s, one of Vodka, half a measure Kina Lillet, and shake.  A Vesper.  Apparently my client had expensive taste. He either had money or a desire to go broke. His shirt was ruffled and unbuttoned his hair disheveled from running thing fingers through it, and the outside of his right thumb was red from drumming it on the table in front of him.  This was a man who felt slighted. I had seen it before. Confounded by something that went outside what he knew.

Shift 0000-0600

David yawned and stretched as he stared out at the monitors in front of him.  His guards were patrolling with robotic perfection along the fence line.  David had stayed in the military after WWII. He thought those days were hell on earth.  He had fought for the men in his platoon more than anything else.  In his first year, his brother died in a plane crash.  David was told it was technical error, but he blamed the Japs.  David fought for his brother and for his pride of country “belief of justice perverted to revenge and spite.”  Part of him missed those days.  WWII was hell, but it was not the mind screw that this was turning out to be.  Plus in WWII at least you knew who you are supposed to shoot at, today there were commies every where.  Their were even commies in the damn streets of college towns, but those were ones you couldn’t shoot.  Truman said that once that it was communism that destroyed its own citizens.  Well, David thought it was taking too long he was ready of launch one of the Minutemen and end this thing now.  Truman was right, why wait for communism to spread, shouldn’t they do something now, wasn’t that his duty as a soldier?

Holes

Sue watched as the big trucks dug through her yard.  They were digging a hole, a big and deep one.  Sue sat on the bench by her mother’s flowers.  They were red and purple and blue.  She did not know their rel names, but she did know the ones she gave them.  Sue waved at the men by the truck, they smiled and waved back. One of the men by the truck, Bill Rife, always read the comics on his breaks. His favorite was Snoopy, so was Sue’s. She liked Mr. Rife.  Dad was standing by the opening of the hole, he was arguing with another worker.  Dad wanted to put a door on the hole, the kind with the foam on the doors.  Sue could not hear Dad, but she saw him mouth an ugly word.  Mom would have had him if she knew, but she was out back swinging a chicken for dinner.

Reflections of a Home Owner

The theory of MAD tells us that if two powers of equal capabilities attack one another, they will both be destroyed.  Physics tells us that a body in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by a equal or greater force.  Cain tells us that “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” And my own experiences tell me that if you take a swing at a man, you had better be ready for him to hit back. This is our predicament. The Minutemen slumber in their beds, but for how long? Everything I have ever learned through schooling, church, and life in general tells me the same thing.  If one of the rockets behind me go off, we all die.  yet, with my neck on the block, the government won’t even let me see what they are building.  The won’t even allow my house to be built so that it faces East over their forty acre plot.  What are they afraid I will see?  What is my own government hiding from me?