by Owen Thomas
Kent State?! Those kids were… Wolf, this is outrageous coming from an elected official. Those kids were gunned down. Shot dead for speaking their conscience. For protesting the…
“Christ, Susan, you’re not in college. What do I have to do to make you understand what year it is? This is 2006, not 1969. Law enforcement does not kid around on the drug issue. They send people to prison.”
“Look. I get it okay? I get that you feel accused right now and that you’ve just stumbled over a way to make yourself feel better at my expense….”
“What? At your exp…”
“… by… yes, by accusing me of being a drug addict or something, but what I choose to do is none of your concern and if I want to smoke a joint or two in my advanced years, then I am …”
“Yes, that’s exactly right. Your advanced years. Have you considered, for one tiny second, what the health impact might be of you smoking marijuana? Have you suddenly decided to just completely abandon all respect for your health?”
“Me? What about you?”
Hollis lifted his new Pack Mule workout bag with a self-evident shrug.
“Oh, please. I don’t care that you’ve been exercising for the last five minutes of your life. I’m talking about several decades of pickling your liver, Hollis. Don’t lecture me about abandoning respect for health.”
“You are not going to use drugs in my house, Susan.”
“I’m not your child, Hollis, and it’s my house too.”
“Yes, which means that you have an equal right to forbid me from using drugs.”
“Fine. No more alcohol.”
“That’s not a drug. That’s not an illegal substance.”
“I don’t care. Give up the wine and I’ll give up the pot. And no pornography. No more Spice Channel. No more Playboy.”
“You can stand there and be ridiculous if you want, Susan, but I will repeat myself until you understand. You cannot use…”
“I’m not a child.”
“Then stop acting like a child. Stop acting like you’re still a barefoot college girl with no responsibilities, living a life without consequences, reveling in your … your contrived moral superiority.”
“You actually think I’m…that I think that I’m superior? Me?”
“Yes. Susan. You. You always have. And you do now. You’ve fooled yourself into thinking that this anti-war nonsense is evidence of some greater calling. That you’re exercising a refined conscience. But what you’re really doing is the same thing you were doing thirty-five years ago.”
“Oh, great, which is what?”
“Excluding me. That’s what. Doing something that you know I can’t condone … that I can’t be a part of, and then judging me for not being a part of it.”
…Wolf, Ms. Donnelly’s mock outrage is not helpful. Kent State was tragic and wrong. No one, especially me, is asserting otherwise. My point was simply that protesting in a time of war, when the nation should be unified against a common enemy, is far more likely to lead to tragedy than any sort of constructive dialogue.
“What on earth are you talking about? I’m not judging you.”
“The hell you aren’t. You always have. I was never part of your merry little band of … of… flower children. I was never…”
“I included you.”
“Oh, I hung around. You sure kept me in orbit. But I was never one of you.”
“And that was my fault? You didn’t even want to be a… we never called ourselves flower children.”
“You knew I would never... that I couldn’t do the things you did. The whole hippie, dope smoking, drugging, barefoot, orgy thing.”
“I wasn’t drugging. Orgies? You think I was into…”
“It was all part of the culture. You wanted me to believe all of that was in you and that you were into all of that. And now you’re doing it all over again. You built up this whole lifestyle just so you could keep me at a distance. You lived upside-down just to make me feel uncomfortable about living right side up. Because that’s the Holy Grail, isn’t it? Making me change? See if I’ll follow you away from my true nature? That’s how you measure love. And now you’re doing it all over again.”
“I can’t… Hollis, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Let me see if I have this straight. You think… that my lifestyle… in college… was an insincere fabrication… that I… that I… that I contrived… in order to make you feel excluded and to make me feel superior… and to force you to… to prove your love by… by… this is so ridiculous… by changing yourself? Do I have that right? So it was really all about you? I mean, is that what you’re really trying to tell me here?”
“And you’re doing it all over again.”
“Hollis, why would I do such a thing? We… we…”
“Because you were immature. Because that’s the kind of stupid mindset young college girls have. When you’re a nineteen year-old college girl, that’s how you get guys to like you; you make yourself mysterious and a little… inaccessible. You want to be chased. You cordon off some part of you that the guy can’t touch. Even if you have to manufacture it; create it out of thin air. That one part of you is off limits – there has to be something the guy can’t participate in. Right? Something he can’t touch. And that’s how you preserve some semblance of virginity even if you’re giving everything else away for free…”
“So I was a slut?”
“It keeps you feeling safe and superior.”
“Hollis…”
… There are plenty of more responsible avenues in a time of war.
Such as?
Well, Wolf, this forum is entirely appropriate. A frank and spirited exchange of views. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, the media, the Fourth Estate as its called, is vital to a thriving democracy precisely because it can bring to light fringe or unpopular…
“And, hey, look, that’s okay. That’s okay. I don’t care about any of that stuff. That’s kid stuff. That’s the way the game is played when you’re nineteen. But you’re not a college girl anymore, Susan. You’re almost sixty. These games you’re playing are… are… they demean you. They demean us both. You’re not stopping any wars. You’re not changing the world. You’re not changing me. I’m going to be right here where I have always been. Same as the day you met me. I’m not going to grovel and clamor to be part of your new, old identity as leader of the flower children. Playing with your sexual preference and disappearing into the woods and doing drugs in our home…”
“Hollis, for Pete’s sake…”
…The media? The media has been a part of the problem. The media, at least up until Katrina, has done nothing to call this administration to task. The Fourth Estate, as you put it, has been reduced to a mob of fawning sycophants competing with each other for the approval of the White House. This president, with his winks and his arsenal of nicknames and his hokey folksiness and his child-like estrangement from the English language has seduced all of the watchdogs off into the woods. Wolf, no offense intended, but the media is still out in the middle of the woods with its pants down around its ankles wondering what in the heck has been happening for the last six years...
“No, no… Susan. Just wait. Playing with your sexual preference and disappearing into the woods and doing drugs in our home… will not make you some… some… avatar of the next social revolution. It will not succeed in making me feel unworthy about who I am. It will not make me cringe in fear of false judgment or so much as wince at the misdirected… childish… baseless… insulting accusations that I have become a philandering husband or an alcoholic or junk-food addict or a subscriber of Playboy Magazine or a father with no love or compassion for his own children. None of your pretending, Susan – nothing of the new, old you and your little war games – will make me want to chase you into cannon fire to prove my love. I saved you from all of that long ago. I’ve proven my love. So… stop… pretending.”
“I am not pretending, Hollis. You may think this is all phony-baloney. You may think
that this is all some elaborate scheme I cooked up to get your attention, but it isn’t. Not that I haven’t needed attention. I don’t get any attention from you at all. I don’t. I may as well be a widow. And that’s a real emptiness. For years.”
Susan looked away for a moment, swallowing hard, packing something in, holding something back. But Hollis missed it, rolling his eyes in irritation.
“And that emptiness has let other interests… other passions…”
“Other passions. Like who?”
“Not who, Hollis. What. The war. I promised…”
“The war. Susan. Give it a rest. Just…”
“That awful war… I promised them. I owe it to my … to my friends …”
“Friends? Who? Gayle? Gayle, the tattooed homosexual? These aren’t your friends, Susan. You don’t care about these people. These people are… they’re tools to you. Means to an end. They help you escape. They help you pretend. They give you drugs to use in our home. And that’s all.”
“I loved them. Do you understand what I’m saying? I … loved … them. We were working on it together… I planned it.”
“What are you talking…”
“I promised, Hollis! I promised!”
It was close to a full volume scream that erupted from his wife and hit Hollis in the absolute center of his chest like a sledgehammer. Her face belonged to a wild, tortured animal, keening in its own darkness. Hollis took an involuntary step back towards the kitchen. Susan stepped forward, closing the gap again.
“Do you get that?! Do you?! I promised! I promised them that I would be there! I helped to stir up that hornets’ nest. I was a goddamned organizer!”
“Susan… I didn’t mean… Christ.”
“Such a horrible, horrible war. I organized. I rallied everyone. And then I didn’t show. I just… bailed, Hollis. I bailed!”
“It wasn’t your fault. We’ve been through this.”
“It was my fault! Don’t you tell me that! You of all people! You don’t have a damn thing to say about it! It was my fault! They would have listened to me. I could have talked to them.”
“It could have been you along with them, Susan. You could be…”
“It should have been me! It should have been me! It could have been no one! No one had to die, Hollis! It would have been different. It …”
“You don’t know that, Susan. Christ… you didn’t ask for…”
“Bill was just walking to class! Minding his business and getting an education. Did he ask for it? Sandra too. You think she asked for it?! I asked for it. Me. I did. I helped set it all in motion because … goddamned it, Hollis… because I wasn’t pretending. Because it actually meant something to me. That war actually meant something. Something profoundly terrible. But I wasn’t there. I was with you. I followed you out into the… the goddamned woods. I was all the way out at… at… at Buckeye Lake having sex with you in your stupid little boat while my friends …”
She broke off, choking, taking in more air in one gasp than she could handle and still speak words. Susan blinked and swallowed and for the first time the tears he had hoped for spilled over her cheeks onto the table, spattering off the petal-strewn notebook. But Hollis knew, in the way he knew anything else he did not understand, that these tears contained no promise of reconciliation.
“Susan,” he said, half incredulous, half pleading. “It was so long ago…”
“And they were my friends, Hollis.” She pointed at him angrily, spitting her words like bullets. “They were… my… friends! All of them! I loved those people!”
“I know they were. I know you did.”
Susan counted angrily on her fingers. “Allison… Jeff… Sandra… Bill.”
“I know, Susan. I knew them too…”
“They were never your friends! They were mine! And I was out in a goddamned boat… tending to your… needs. Trying to convince you that I loved you. Trying to deal with your sulking tantrum and your… and your… your paranoid delusion that I had been screwing Duncan Simms. Trying to convince you that it wasn’t true; to convince you to keep me. Oh, Hollis, please, don’t leave me! I’ll do anything! I’ll go fishing! I’ll take off my clothes. I’ll screw you in the boat. You’re more important to me than the war. Please Hollis, please don’t be mad. Please! ”
“That’s not fair. I…”
“And what better way to convince you of that than to abandon Duncan and all of my other friends that day… God, that day of all days, leaving them to manage for themselves… leaving them to manage what I had helped to start, and to disappear with you to go fishing. Fishing! I hate fishing, Hollis. You knew that! But I made the sacrifice to prove my loyalty! To show you my fucking priorities! And you stand there and thump your chest about proving your love for me? For me?! That day had been really important to me, Hollis. And you knew that. And then the next day… coming back to school… walking across the Commons. Taylor Hall? That was the darkest day of my life. That was the last day of a life I loved. And it was the first day of another life. And I have a lot of mixed feelings, Hollis. A lot of mixed feelings. I deal with them as best I can. But when you stand there and accuse me of pretending that my life is not all about you…”
“That’s not what I was…”
“…when you treat me like…”
She stopped and choked on another sob. Hollis stopped trying to interject, watching silently as she fought for control. She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. He took a slow, careful step in. Susan thrust out her hand, fingers spread, glaring up at him with eyes shot through with blood and pain.
“I don’t give a damn any more, Hollis… I don’t give a damn what you do with yourself, or who you do it with, or what you choose to read, or how much you drink. You do whatever you want to do. But you stay the hell out of my way.”
…The Sixties and all that they stood for are gone. The country has matured and moved on. We should conduct ourselves like responsible and patriotic adults.
So, like, by spending huge sums of money to purchase polite television airtime.
Yes, if possible…
Susan grabbed her notebook, purple lilac petals scattering, and pushed forward, charting a course through the chair in order to avoid physical contact with him. The chair yielded, toppling to the floor. She blazed through the living room and disappeared around the corner into the foyer. She pounded up the stairs and out of his hearing.
…sponsor debates. Send letters to your local newspaper. And here’s a good one, Wolf: phone or write your elected representatives. That’s how a democracy works…
Still, he listened. He heard only his heart beating in his chest and in his face and his wounded head.
...Yes, you can scoff, Ms. Donnelly, but believe it or not, the men and women of the United States Congress really do care what the people of this country think. If we’re wrong, tell us we’re wrong.
You’re wrong. Will you stop this horrid war now?
Send me a letter with your reasoning and…
[beep] you…you sanctimonious [beeeeeeep]…
And then the unmistakable slamming of his bedroom door rang through the house like a gunshot.
…Well, you see Wolf, this is just the type of unwillingness to have a reasonable dialogue that I was talking about at the start of the show…
CHAPTER 45 – Angus
The Lion Tree, by Angus Mann
Lieutenant Miller took a last deep draw on his snapper and let the butt roll back on his tongue. He crushed it in his teeth and let the small but sharp explosion of mint leaf aerate his mouth. The cleaning sensation chased the residue down his throat like smoke from a falling torch. And then it was done.
He wanted another. Desperately. He needed it for flotation. For stability. For a handhold in the sirocco.
But he could not ask her again. She would certainly deny him. Worse, she might consent. She might arrange her lips in a smile that was not hers. She might hand him a snapper from her pocket as sh
e tucked her hair behind her ear and looked at him with eyes that told him she was lost to him forever. He didn’t want it that badly.
The third sun of the triad was already slipping past its zenith, starting its short slide down the face of the dome. The long night was coming. But they would be gone by then. He would watch his last sunset from the deck of the Santa Maria. From the gunnels of the Pazienza and the Coraggio. Just as they had seen the first sun, strongest of the three, rising from behind the planet on their approach.
The difference, of course, was that they had been in each other’s arms then, watching the dome slowly take the gathering stellar light like a kind of amber syrup, coating it in great elongating tongues until the entire planet had looked like a ball of flame set alight to welcome them to a new life.
He thought of holding her in that sunrise. He held the feeling of it in his mind. The blaze of warmth and color amid the black downpour of space.
The ride home would be … different. Colder for the hope shrinking like a dying sun at their backs. Longer for the absence of her affection. Shorter for the criminal’s welcome that awaited him.
He would have to hold the sunrise in his mind. He would have to hold the thought of holding her. That would have to do.
“She overdosed,” he said. “Why can’t you accept that?”
“I have no problem accepting that, Lieutenant.”
“Apparently you have big problem accepting it. Or UNIX does. Or you wouldn’t have this thing in my neck.” He touched the small protuberance at the point of injection. A dull throbbing now; all the way to the base of his skull. “If you accepted that it was an accident, we wouldn’t be up here on the surface talking about murder.”
“No,” she said, her voice like a locked iron gate. “I never said that I accepted it was an accident. I said I could accept that she overdosed.”
“Elle… we’re talking about my life. While everyone else is scurrying around a kilometer beneath this table, getting ready to leave, getting ready to take me back for a lethal injection, you want to play word games.”