"Thief!!" The woman snatched the

  Field & Stream.  Our two others passed the pillowcase of stuff back, back.  "Then we'll run." 

  Sun was starting to sink to Midway by the time we made it way out the farmer's road.  We'd returned most of the stolen-not-by-us stuff so re-stolen by us to the rightful owners. 

  "Just hobos," and that's what it looked like with our earnings and treasures in bandanas on sticks over our shoulders.  "Why'd ya tell 'em?" One girl just taller knocked the stick off the boy's shoulder.  "Bully!" The boy's treasures came out of his kerchief a little bit.  He bent to pick them up.  A foot stomped on his hand.  "I want that," was ordered.  He handed the lighter up.  "Anything else Sis?" 

  She lit a smoke and clamped the lighter shut.  Coughed a lil'.  "You sayin' I'm a sissy?" 

  "Not while I'm down here on the ground." 

  Crows lit off from sitting on a scarecrow.  "Look!  Those things work."  The boy jumped up and looked.  A saluting hand followed the black birds arcing up and over still tall corn stalks.  The pack of cigarettes hit his back.  "We weren't done talking." 

  "Just saying," he pretended to take binoculars from the other girl and look far, far into the future.  "That was a cowardly, sissy, thing to do.  I was having the perfect day." 

  "I wasn't."  The shorter girl went over and looked her up and down like penguins do.  Careful close looking.  "I don't see nuthin' wrong with her." More looking around back and lifting jean bottoms.  "THERE'S BLOOD!" The boy put his smoke behind his ear as he came right over.  He covered his eyes with a hansome hand and asked, "WHERE?" Then made blinds of his fingers and peeked at the pointing to tore up heels.  The boy sighed.  "You got underwear on?" 

  The girl jujitzoo'd her whole body around in one turn.  "What you askin' for?"  The boy's hands went into karate chop mode.  "She's not a cinderblock!" 

  "Just do it!" The shorter girl threw down the quilt patch and stepped back.  "Like bison!" The two walked away from each other like duelers, then he screamwhooped and they crashed into each other as they ran at each other.  The wrestle drew blood and lasted a good thirteen minutes before the bison crawled off to opposite sides of the road panting and clearing lungs.

  "They're testing." 

  "WHAAAT?" 

  The woman with the empty typewriter bag let a suited man take the little styrofoam cup from her steady-tremble-steadied hand.  She wouldn't let go of the bag and snarled at a man the came close for a kiss, I'll bite it off.  His big nose smelled her anyway. 

  "We can't speak about it," one told another.  Hand gestures moved the camera crews to a different gate.

  "Transvestite!" 

  "Towel head!" 

  "Get to work." 

  Foots on seven shovels then.  Overturned a whole new row to plant.

  "I don't think he's that." 

  "Just let think so." 

  "Do it!"  The handled cup was dipped in the barrel of water and thrown in the air.  Little ones shivered and shimmied.

"Why did you bring

  all these war criminals here?" An older man hissed at the lady.  She grabbed the marker set from a kid and put it in "the carpetbag".  Turned on heel, whispered to some other women, then came back towards the Tag Sale table in the Parish Hall.  "You did not just hear that." Was said to a gang of children.  One boy in dyed black (me mum got sick of doing our laundry) coveralls said just as sternly, "Oh I did tweed pants." 

  A girl smacked at him.  He ducked backwards but his hands were stuck in the straps so when he lost his balance he crashed into the old man's table.  People sort of tried to come and help, but once up from the sitting tables, mostly took their families home.  The man pointed at the lady.  "It's her!  She's the curse!  Worse even than Our Greek Curse.". He threw some of the items in the pile into a box then went outside to smoke. 

  "I can't have this happening here," one nun said really loudly to the others.  They moved together towards the table.  Uprighted it and started putting things back on the table. 

  "I need you to take me there." 

  "Okay, get in." The rather tall woman looked down at the kids and at the wagon.  "Do the people who live on the Island all travel this way?" 

  "Well, a quid might getcha an answer to yer troubles." The boy said.  "The answer is no.  Us and the wheelbarrow crew, we just pick up the dead ones.  Before the early birds get the worms!" 

  "Oh, I see.  May I walk beside?" 

  "If you insist.  But stay unseen." 

"Sit down please."

  A well-articulated whisper said, You are forbidden to ask questions in this room.  A pause then a tug.  "But isn't this a lecture?" A ssssssh finger gesture.

  "Look at these casualty figures." 

  People looked at their own paperwork at the follow-along information each had been presented. 

  "Now look up here.  Used to be a chalkboard for me." Person fumbled with a clicker.  Looked at watch.  Looked at clockwall and back at watch.  "Anyway," tried to toss the clicker away but it had been glued to hand.  "Comparing data from the Great War and the Second World War with Vietnam..." Looked at personal notes.  "With Our Services in command, here and there, MOST of the most seriously wounded and actual deaths took place in the first battles." 

  A medical technician neared the desk behind which the person was standing and lecturing.  Tapped on his watch.  "That time already? And I was," person cleared throat, "Just starting to learn something new." Person snatch-grabbed a fitted-to-arm crutch, shifted weight off a leg, leaned after thinking about it, and exited the room. 

"OKAY OKAY HYPOTHETICALLY THEN"

  No one had expected enemy forces to be where they actually were. 

  All the "fives" wanted answers.  To reasonable, non-strategy questions, like, WHY IS THERE A CHILD ON THE BATTLEFIELD?  WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?  WHO TOLD THEM TO SURGE?  WAS HE "SCHIZOPHRENIC" BEFORE JUST NOW?  

  The young commanders were circled by other commanders.  Each took the stance and posture of being attacked by a pack of wolves. 

  "What the fuck just happened out there?" A field surgeon snapping a right-angled-the-wrong-way leg back into "normal" position calmly asked.  He asked the exact question every thirty seconds until someone who could hear and was close enough to respond somehow could start the piecing together. 

  Impact.

  Impact.

  Impact.  An AI voice reported while people scrambled for pens, papers, maps, anything that was not somebody else's.  

  Through the powdery dust mounting like snowfall went the team still up and running.  "Body under a tank 

  "Partially in the mud 

  "Photograph," handed a laminated number card, "Everything with this marker thrown at it." 

  "Done." 

  "On MY count.  LIFT.  

  "HEAVE

"The departments haven't gone away."

  That was the man's baseline defense.  It was up against a maelstrom of What are they going to do to us?! and the twin towers of the driving questions:  What is going to happen to us? 

  What IS happening to us?

  "Well, culturally we've obviously gone to hell in a handbasket to quote my father." Another man said.  And, "I hate it when he's right."  He skipped a flat stone across the pond that had re-stilled after everyone had a group rebellion against wearing the uniform.  We were a mix of service people on a "weekend retreat".

  "Would you like to see the Brig, Sir?" 

  The president swallowed his swig of hot coffee just as a swell ran below the ship and unbeknownst to people on deck lifted and chucked anything not nailed down.  His "I would," seemed to come out of him in slow motion.  "Were you a surfer, Sir?" 

  "'Scuse me son?!" The wind was whipping rope against mast. 

  "You're a natural at this," the person didn't overly look at the coffee drenching the man's clothes.  "Least I held onto the thermos." 

  "Let's go below first and get warm." 

  "K." 

  The guy came up for air, smacked his hands against the pool's surface water which made a loud slaaaaap.  He checked the timer to see how long he'd held his breath that time.  A woman with a kitchen knife wetfoot paddled to the side of the pool.  "Tell me again," the guy had his eyes squished together as he shook his half-shaved hair side to side.  "I LOVE YOU." Then she pointed the knife in the direction of the little group of people who'd come to observe "leisure time".  And warned, "Stay away from my husband's butt." 

  Someone dramatically gasped and ducked and theatrically said, "I'm not gay." People looked around.  The guy opened his eyes and asked, "Who said that?" Looked at his wife, who was showing off an aluminum foil engagement ring on the hand not wielding the knife.  "Anymore," the ducked person finished his sentence.  People theatrically ha-ha-ha'd.  "Okay, and CUT." The director of a training video had finished a segment as another film person arrived.  All were gunning to get practice for what was being called real time working methods. 

"I TOLD YOU," one woman said

  loudly.  This prompted another woman to grab the throat of a guy's tee-shirt and furiously growl-say, How long was I asleep for?!? While two people were pulling her behind some junk in a yard and carefully, but frantically, re-wrapping "the wound that never happened."  Even though, it had.  A clip fell on the ground which the louder woman stepped on without knowing.  "To call me if and when you needed me, not cut a body part off," her totally sunburned face said as it popped up over the junk and dialed down on us. 

  "I neither cut off a body part, nor put one back on.  Don't know what kind of reports you're getting these days." 

  "Well, they don't Airmail something like that Missy, but I FIND OUT." 

  Administrative people in all the Services had spent some "overlap" time with Commanders' support teams.  And had also diligently guard rail'd every conversation between Allies while "the whole" Force pivoted and pinwheeled.  That way "Internationals" could keep abreast of select topics with eachother. 

  "Did you get to be an International?" 

  Ooooowah, "I did." She tweezed.  "What's up with this box of curling irons?" People looked at each other.  A stronger-that-day picked up a tangle of cords.  "That's where that went.  Well, this one's a straightening curler." 

  "How can it be a straightening anything AND be a curler?  She meant rod." One person had gone to a store.  Deftly put a pack of cigarettes and gum on the vanity table.  "Anyone else want anything?"  A car went by outside.  People patted pockets and felt for essential items on their persons.  "All good here." 

  "I'd take a pack of gum if," person cruised past to see the smell, "There's not that." 

  "The nicotine part or the flavoring?" 

  "Personally, I don't tend to buy fruity.  I eat it too fast." 

  "You're not supposed to eat gum brown noser.  And anyway, who asked you for your opinion or whatever that piece of speech just was?!" A person snapped a bubblegum bubble really harsh and asked.  Then pulled a wad into a long string and nibbled it back into her mouth.  "It's gonna be a long night," someone said. 

  Excerpt, War of Attrition (Philpott) 

     "Five weeks after enlisting in the Foreign Legion, Alan Seeger wrote to his mother from barrack at Toulouse, on the eve of his departure for the front: 'we are entirely equipped down to our three days' ration and 120 rounds of cartridges.  The wagons are all laden and the horses requisitioned.  The suspense is exciting, for no one has any idea where we shall be sent.'  After six weeks of hard drilling -- twelve hours a day, seven days a week -- he claimed to 'have learned in six weeks what the ordinary recruit in times of peace takes all his two years at', and all for the modest sum of one sou a day.  Seeger could drill, march and shoot, but he was not yet ready to fight: he would go through a few weeks of tactical training on the old Marne battlefield, within the sound of guns, before going into the trenches in Champagne in late October....

     "Like many thousands of others in 1914 and afterwards, his transition from civilian to soldier would be rapid and intense, as the battles raging across France demanded fighting men at an unprecedented rate" (113, WoA).

Bummed.

  Some of the oldest girlfriends were sitting for a minute, God.  It was a warmer day of late, late winter.  Even in New York there was that sense about "the old man" that you've worn us out, but we're not dead yet.  Ever able to dig the deepest into the reserves of count your blessings our mom had spent her allowance on beach buckets from the toystore.  These were in a stack by the rounded up snow shovels in front of the brick flower box. 

  "You seem something," one older girl flicked a bunched up chocolate wrapper at another.  This seemed to slow an ugly brain churn.  "Not thrilled with her," a head shove in the direction of our mom. 

  "Moi?" Sherry vaguely disguised looking somewhat scared.  "What'd I do now?" A sleepy child shoved her elbows off her lap to make room for self. 

  "Ever since you and yours established 'the budget' pattern 

  "Challenge 

  "My sense of reality kind of sucks frankly." 

  Little moans of agreement from some of the other women.  A chuckle from a woman who's other half always spent their budget on drink.  More sleepy kids, some with milk mustaches, invaded the fairly quiet morning with the MOM, MOMs and the can I too's. 

  The early bird sleepy kid abandoned the lap.  Cupped hand, whispered, I know what to do.  "Okay." 

  "There's an alternative reality." 

  "Does it involve drugs?" 

  "What?! How dare you!" 

  "I only ask 'cuz I'm kinda drugged out." 

  One of them stood like a bouncer at a bar so another reluctantly put coffee mug up on a piece of four by four and stood up too.  "Jesus." 

  "What about him?" 

  "God." 

  Silence all the way around. 

  "We worked all night." Everyone was staring at the waitress.  "Didn't know it was a brothel." The heavy framed woman sat back down and planted her face in her coffee mug. 

  The little boy came back outside in a still creased and smelling like starch karati outfit and barefeet.  Told, "I made it from there to here.  No pain." He did some moves.  Pulled his hands into a praying mantiss position and bowed to our mom. 

  "Well, the Master has spoken.  I guess this day has officially begun." One other little boy said with the pomp of a parent saying not another word.  

  "We'd like anyone in a bullymood TO LEAVE." A sister announced.  Suddenly all the kids had shaken off sleepy. 

  People considered this and themselves.  Sherry stood up, undid her robe, and revealed a karate outfit.  "Actually, all bullies can confront us." 

  "We will help you." 

  "Help us what?" 

  The little boy thought hard.  His mom said, "Confront your problems." 

  Another really cool mom took a mirror on a handle out of a huge pocketbook.  Handed it to the waitress.  "I'd start with myself.  But I'm late for work." 

"I know." She'd found her sister.

  "No, you don't." 

  "And anyWHOooo," the clone started to say before someone ripped the charging cord out of the outlet.  "It looks peaceful when you do that." It did look at rest. 

  "It took us four or five days to get there," a grimey, bloodied, staunch finger pointed sternly at a hand-drawn so good people had kept it for generations.  Another hand held up the hand.  "I'm on my monthly." 

  "So am I," a man's voice entered the room before he did bodily.  "And we've no beans left." He scrubbed at his shock of hair with a handtowel and olive oil. 

  "And did anyone have anything to tell you?" Yet another woman asked. 

  There'd been no formal interviews.  No proper toiletry.  Only a crossroads between arid tundra of places with some ghetti trees. 

  "The nurse asked about the photographs." 

  "Which ones?  Let me see them." 

  "I've left them.  For Cairo.  And London if I'd had two sets matching.  That's the issooo down here.  I can't find two of anything the same." 

  The trunks had been opened while the small plane operator had been aloof on a day jaunt.  And though the people from another Continent were mostly piecing memory together with instance, stuff was missing.

"Please tell me this is not a rebellion."

  "Okay.  It's not a rebellion." 

  The mostly young people were standing around on the lawn but not close together.  More like eggs in a crate.  "What are they stoned or something?" 

  "I mean I can't speak for everyone, but on the whole, no." 

  "Are they watching for something?" 

  One woman cracked a shell and ate a peanut.  "Are we afraid?" 

  "They have ideas." The Indian Princess lifted her head from a feather pillow, unplucked her thumb from her mouth, and told. 

  "How was New York?" 

  "Lame.  How was here?" 

  A frump face.  "About the same.  It's like something's gotta give." 

  "Did those people ever unchain themselves from that big old tree?" 

  "We fed 'em for like a week." 

  "Then what happened?" 

  "Mad Max whistled like he was calling the dogs and a bunch of equipment came and they used lock cutters to move the people." 

  "Tree's gone." 

  "What are we gonna do?" 

  "About the tree?" 

  "Tree's gone." 

  "Naw man.  About getting in or out?" 

  "Didn't know you guys were a couple." 

  "Fuck you." 

  "Can we not ruin the nature walk please." 

  "Sorry." 

  "Now there's a word so seldom heard anymore." 

  The sound of pine beetles screw-milling the inside of logs never hauled off louder than the people then. 

  "I DON'T WANNA 

  A young woman with a foldable shovel poked it through the pine and asked, "What is she trying to make you do?" Then she came around the nine year old tree.  The Walkman was put on pause.  "Did you hear it?" 

  "Not sure." 

  "Sounded like jet engines or massive chain saws." 

  "Not sure.  Lemme listen again.  Mostly all I can hear is JUST BREATHE...." 

  "Where in the hell are we?" 

  "Angry motherfucker upon waking I see." 

  That roused the other passenger who'd dozed off.  "Why West Virginia by God?" 

  "Why not?" 

  "Friend of mine said needs help." Another fruit rollup wrapper thrown in the pile of three-days-either-side, expired.  Everybody has their quirks. 

  "Must've been one hell of a bonfire!" 

  "Yeah, and I got a maggot in my eye." 

  "What!?!" A throwdown of camera stalk and a rush over.  "In your actual eyeball?" A get outta my face mosquito swat of hands.  "Can't stand people coming at me like that." 

  "Can I kiss it?" 

  The cycadas vaulted their voice just then.  "My eyeball?  Freak."  Picking up equipment.  "Good thing I keep it in a tumble bag, this." 

  "Glad you chose to bring it." 

  "Eccentric.  Not freak." 

  "See where the cornfield is broken." 

  "Yeah." 

  Some of it was hacked with implements.  "They'd hidden their women there," a head point above crossed arms at a depression long like a trench in the not yet mudding soil.  "Only one 'guy,'" the arms made air quotes, "Was trying to save his woman's, you know, feeling down there." 

  Camera onto tripod.  "Can I come near you?" 

  "No kissing.  My heart's turned cold as ice." 

  "Just saying." 

  "I'm not sure what the fuck went on here and in this region, but it's adding up tah, 

  "Give me one." 

  "Whaddaya mean 'bout down there?" 

  The cigarette smoke was seen and smelled by others documenting aftermath and weren't long for others appeared from all directions. 

"We're not paying your fucking tribute!"

  The father yelled.  A boy ran up as best he could being lamed by polio and whacked the man on the head with a shovel. 

  Another boy dragged the man to the pile of people who would wake up. 

  A phone rang.

  "Little girl.  Little girl.  Is your mother there?" 

  "Which half of her you monster?!" 

  As it had been happening everyday the "new" neighborhood didn't miss a beat of it's routine.  The only difference was that a view-blocking levee had been leveled so the prison guards could view all of the suburban area.

  The people in the pile awoke one by one to the sounds of the scissor bird singing.  They had been bathed, and dressed in pajamas by real nurses who'd returned from the fighting Overseas.  There were the smells of tea and coffee and toasting slices of raisin bread, homemade in a brick oven outside.

"I told you people to lay low."

  "But no.  First one and then the other." 

  The two people not tied up with silk scarves picked up various tools covered in dried blood.  A pile of teeth on a steel table prompted one in a Tyvek suit to comment, We'll know who was taken this time. 

  The day had not started out this way.  Some travel bans had been lifted, some people braved sleet and snow to carry on.  Editors pursed lips together and caved without caving to the more economic-minded.  An editor who'd been a "combat correspondent" (back before debates about "embedding") had holler-hushed through painful coversation after painful conversation regarding do you know what this is going to do to me...to my family.  He'd locked himself in a broom closet at one point so as to not be findable. 

  "We can't." 

  "Can't what?" 

  "Can't bury it." Truths so terrible and tangled up in International Affairs pieces of paper with ink on them would only endanger more general population.  Other editors slid pieces of the stuff, paper, with lists of vanished and still not heard from, unknown location, and using vacation time under the broom closet door. 

  Feet propped on desks and sweaty armpits drenching clothing.  Food in sacks untouched. 

  That can't be that.  But look at these. 

  Military photographs and maps. 

  "How'd you get in here?" A publisher demanded to know.  

  "Oh, there you are and there they are," a nervous assistant followed the publisher to the desk and neatly planted a datebook there.  Pens from a suitcoat pocket offered but declined by way of being shown a breast pocket of those lined up like soldiers.

  She'd said it so many times she finally wrote it in block lettering on a big index card which somebody glued to a tongue depressor.  The little cafè table had become an impromptu fact airing on the fly get-lost launch.  "Worst!?" 

  "Let's not go there sister." 

  An eyeroll.  Really fast mention of having seen or been to and censorship bracket.  A thinking-about-it pause, maybe a hand lingering over both little signs, and a best guess verdict.  

     That can go in a book but not a newspaper

  "At this time," a peddler of newspapers was quick to remind.  Magazine people never sit still.  And look at those sharks.  A cautious glance at people literally acting like sharks.  Sort of circling and bullying and pensive then growling teeth at too close to me.  

  Lockers and lock boxes. 

  Discarded suitcases and purses. 

  Thick rolls of contract and tear sheets. 

  Horses bred for the purpose of starting gate. 

  Not more than a girl really.  Had appeared on the weedy hump between the nothing's moving roads near "le tromphf".  Wearing? 

  "Just a short utility dress." 

  Tanks lined, poised to anchor a boulevard, stopped. 

  A grubby postal/mail sack huffed at the girl.  "I'm going back now." 

  Type, type, type. 

  A long time before a ding.

  "They used to call these, this formation, gin palaces," the old man said it with conviction.  But then his eyes wandered and took in unfamiliar, modern landscape.  "It's a stranded train car.  So what?!?" The unfed man came out of the weeds zipping up his pants.  "Did you shake honey? I don't need you with that condition again."  The man wiped his hands in some oil-spattered dirt.  "Just like home," he scoffed.  Came up to the people on the tracks from aside them like in a parade.  "'Sides, it's like summer today." 

  "Yeah, wild weather in these times." One woman said.  So another asked, "What era are we in now?" A local history tour had gotten driven through by a drunk and some of the people took a dayhike a little farther rural.  The old man came to his senses again.  "Let's let the weaker ones rest in there while we go on ahead a little bit." A head shove and backhand at the little train car.  "Go ahead," a sassy-haired woman told the pisspot.  "Why 'gin palace' Uncle Joey?" 

  All the people but the man with the that's a great idea moved towards the car, still, awkwardly so, parked there.  "See this?" Everybody looked down the uncle's hairy, faded tattoo arm to see what he was pointing at.  Just took turns, then settled into around to hear a tale.