T.H.E.i.
Page 6
Chapter 6
He was there. I was there. One of us was inside the other. I couldn’t tell which, but I knew what he knew. It was again as if we were merged, two, each a part of one. Our consciousness was whole. Rivers of sweat ran down our forehead and pooled at the armpits. We were in a big hall, some sort of arena packed with thousands of other people. The smell of living bodies crammed into too small a space permeated the air and threatened to become a stink. Most of them were standing in front of folding chairs, heads bobbing, some swaying, some clapping hands or tapping feet. They were in a trance-like state, standing on a plane between the folds of reality and an ecstasy that smacked of heaven and hell.
A man sat in a wooden ladder-back chair on a stage several feet above us. His hair was thick and curly, the color of dirty cement. It was highlighted in a host of many colored lights that danced around him. He wore a loose fitting denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and faded bell bottom jeans with scuffed boots poking from the ends. His fingers were long and the knuckles boney. The flat, blond face of an acoustic guitar sat on his lap and picked up the light with bolts of brilliance. He spoke softly into a silver microphone on a bent chrome stand.
I couldn’t understand much of what he said. His voice was like a rasp being drawn over crude metal. Then he began to strum with a steady --- almost deadening --- but melodic beat. Somehow I know it is 1962, almost seventy years ago.
“Where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Where have you been, my darling young one?”
I don’t know why, but I recognized it as a call and answer mode adopted from a traditional folk song that was hundreds of years old, “Lord Randall”. His mother asks and he answers and thus the story is told with all of its emotion, beauty, insight, and sometimes social commentary that bordered on horror.
“I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard.”
Suddenly the scene froze, as though the film had been paused momentarily. The swaying bodies stopped. The musician’s hand was motionless. The air, itself, ceased to move. I tried to turn my head, but my eyes were fixated on an image above the troubadour’s head. It flickered into focus like the Vid that dominated the room in my unit.
Somehow I knew it was Africa. A black man stood over a cowering woman. She held a child to her breast, her face a horrible mask framing tears and terror. She was begging. The blood ran from between her legs. In his hand was a stained machete. “Die, Tutsi bitch,” he snarled. Then the blade came down and split the woman’s shoulder, nearly severing it from her body. She dropped the child and the man kicked it across the dirt floor into a cinder block wall. The child whimpered, but only for a moment. The floor ran red as the assassin brought the machete down again and again, then moved on to the next victim. Suddenly the year 1994 flashed across the screen. One million dead. Fade to black.
The crowd began to move again and the stale scent of the bodies assaulted my nose. But the music was back. The young player was pounding at the guitar and his voice cut the night like a muffled chainsaw.
“And what did you see, my blue-eyed son? And what did you see, my darling young one?”
“I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.”
Again the pulsing trance was a freeze frame. The flickering again and the focus.
A newspaper headline: Two Boys Kill 13 in Columbine. Then the sub-head: 12 Children and One Teacher Dead. 21 Injured. Beneath the screaming type were two photos of boys on the edge of their teens, one smiling like an apprentice to an angel and the other sullen, but seemingly harmless. Then the year 1999.
The music stirred. The words flowed. What had the young son heard?
A flash of fire and the sound of shrapnel pummeling concrete and flesh. A homemade bomb on a Boston street. It had killed three and injured 264, several with legs or arms that had been blown from their bodies. An image. Dark haired brothers in arms, filling a pressure cooker with nails and other bits of metal. The year 2013.
And who did he meet? A 21 year old man who worshipped the Confederate Flag firing a tarnished pistol at a crowd of black worshippers attending a prayer meeting in a historic church in Charleston. Nine dead. The year 2015.
And what will he do now? “Go to a place where the executioner’s face is always well hidden.” The image of a man dressed completely in black wearing a black ski mask. Only the eyes and the mouth are visible. He clutches a long glistening blade. Behind him is a banner that proclaims a new Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East. He grabs the hair of a journalist, yanks his head back, and saws through his neck until that lifeless head leaves the body. The time is now.
After each call and response the singer reminds us, perhaps even admonishing, that “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”. Will it be a baptismal that will wash us of our sins? A beginning, an end, some sort of cataclysm that destroys the world as we know it? He and I listen. Perhaps it has already happened. We do not know, but we do know that any merciful God cannot be pleased . . . and there will be retribution. Is this the advent of the Apocalypse?
The minstrel finishes his prophecy. He stands and bows as the crowd thunders its applause and showers its adulation. The poet of a generation has spoken, but no one can possibly fathom the hideous truths that lie ahead. He ambles off of the stage and the arena is dark. The crowd moves and air is charged, but there is an eerie stillness, a dark emptiness within the flood of humanity.
Then a new image is transposed over the old one.
The question and the final solution.
The Leader wears a gray tunic with a collar that sits stiffly just below his chin. His body is rigid and unforgiving, but his voice is soothing. It booms and lingers in the ears. He speaks slowly, as if the fate of the entire world depends on our reply.
“Is this what you want? . . . Surrender and be blessed in our paradise.” Then he is gone.
Now the crowd bumps towards the exits. A reverential whisper lies below the surface of their voices. A sense of dread, but the hope of a resurrection. He and I are enveloped by this giant amoeba. We pulse toward the open metal doors.
I woke when I heard the Vid flicker. Suzy was at my side stroking my forehead and running her warm hands through my damp hair. She kissed me lightly and her silent smile entered me like a soothing balm. I placed my good hand on the soft skin of her creamy thigh. My mind and my soul grew quiet.