They'd put me on a Sat Phone to tell someone why they'd almost got their heads blown off by a missile.
As the shut down wore on people in the human chain that really makes up the U.S. started falling down like dominos.
Elders were too weak to work for feeding their children. People were bandaiding situation while they picked up a Mr. or a Mrs.
"A gap?"
"In coverage kind of, see..."
"Just keep talking to me baby girl. It doesn't matter what you say."
the sun came out. By brunchtime we'd salved and shaved our legs, stitched up an eyebrow, and assigned one apiece of a sixer.
The woman unrolled the newspaper again, and peeked at it like it was an umbilical cord. Flipped over the stuck together pages. Pronounced, "It's drier."
Blonde curly came out a path with two big bass on a stick. "I can do anything I put my mind to," she quietly spoke the mantra.
The man had a twelve pack of his own to last the week. And was down to four. "Then what are you gonna do?" The woman would like to know. His belly hanging out of his tee-shirt 'cuz he was sliding down the slope of the fishing hole shook with laughter. "Oh she does does she?"
"I think I should be the one," the mama tweezed the tweezers in the air. The man made like he was running away. The soggy papers were sunbathing on the picnic table. The man stuttered, "Don't know what your plans might be," he blushed and looked at the water, "But it's bigger than that." She put the tweezers in her jacket pocket. "Let's not go in that direction," she said.
The man perused the table. Ate two spoonfuls of baked beans. Then asked, "What's a two-spirit person?"
"It's a sacred Native American thing."
"Never heard of it."
"Whaddya do that for?" Trading punches.
"It's hard to describe," the woman stared at the blank piece of paper.
"Not today," the man said about (i)turning this around(i).
(i)Like a frog(i), one said on "the downlow" (until we couldn't say that word anymore because somebody explained what it meant). "Launched."
All of us were tangled hair and muddy, scratched and bruising, licking wounds without talking to each other when (i)a real mama(i) who'd volunteered "to help" through "the church" arrived. She tried to get back in the truck depositing her when she realized (i)teenage girls(i). But curly blonde had spit on one hand and smacked it into her other hand and rubbed her hands together and cussed and told her man, "I gotta new best friend." He looked at her like he was pregnant and standing on the scaffolding of a high rise and jammed his foot on the gas. The wheels spun and spun for a full half a minute and the gravel and sand and dirt flew. Covered the mama who was going to go back to town.
She stood there after the truck bounced on down the road and curly blonde was still yelling whatever she could think of. "I ain't a fiddle," she said low and hard at the mama. Then stomped back to a tent.
The mama didn't really march right into situation. She brushed herself off. Patted her old jean jacket which seemed to have a cloud of settled dust on it. Dug out a piece of gum from the front pocket, mumbled, that's where I left that, and picked up the grocery bag like it was an old-timey suitcase. She looked both ways, realized she was kind of in the middle of the road, and hurried to get out of it.
The man and woman at the picnic table were a mix of laughter and stifling. A fish caught before anybody our age was up was rolled out of a newspaper and they ripped off wet pages to get to dry ones. They put the clump of soaked wet binder pages into the newspaper.
The mama looked around at the bottim of the camp stairs. She daintily put the grocery bag on the picnic table. "What's in there?" The man had a gravely voice. The woman offered her the pen. "What just happened here?"
"I need to know who's fightin' who?"
"So you can screw us?"
"So I can duck when it gets going again."
"I'm supposed to be writing what it was like to be their age and at war," the woman let the pen stay in the air. The mama crossed her arms.
It was about four days after our men left. Some of the girls found ways to come from Tennessee. A woman who'd been all over the Country helping recruit all levels of "soldier" and apprentice came walking down the dirt path to camp. She had the pail of "genitals" AKA gummy worms. "That's my pay," she handed it to one of us. "No one ever said we were ever gonna get rich." She guffawed. Shoulders sloped a bit. "Don't eat all of those at once!" She said. And gently clapped a hand on a jeaned knee. She turned to go.
"Wait," one of us called.
Heads raised from an actual pile of lonesome and full faith and confidence in them, but
"Shouldn't we invite her?"
"To WHAT?" One of us disgustedly threw down the dogleash pulling a branch with a stuck lure hanging on it.
"Looks like a sad tea party I attended once."
"It's sad alright, pathetic," she tossed the dogleash on top of a tent not finished being scrubbed on the picnic table and made like a soccer player kicking a half field goal, but brakef it into a gentle shove of sleeping legs. One of us sat up like a wrapped mummy and closed eyes against the sunlight. Looked at the bombshell, put together, slightly older woman, then shut them again. A big burp. "She the one who busted us?"
"We din't get busted. Go back to sleep."
"You sure?"
"We din't do nothin' yet today. Lay down."
"Just ignore Larry and Mo there," the lure-free'r extended a hand to shake. "Not sure what we're shaking on," the guest said. "Just a hello. Welcome to home."
"Regular isle of misfits," a South of the Border blanket hurled.
"Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?"
"I would," one of us got up stretching and yawning. Jeans, tank, and barefeet. Tall. "Nice to wake up not smelling chicken shit."
"Shut up. If it ain't noon, I'm dead to the world."
"We're not the world idjiot."
"Where's Curly?"
"Gone off singing."
Dead to the world shot up. "She did?"
"Oh yes," the blonde curly air guitared.
"Dan threw open the door to a wet wind and a sea of slippery, icy English mud. 'Let's get to Group Ops,' he said. 'Briefing's in ten minutes.'
"'Jeez,' said Billy, pushing his way out past Henry. 'It musta poured last night.'
"'Isn't it always raining in England?' muttered Dan. 'Let's hope the weather officer knows what he's doing.'
"They all looked up at the black sky, trying to assess the clouds. No stars visible and no sunrise yet. The only lights were on the distant airfield. Out there, the ground crews were loading bombs and fueling the aircraft. If it wasn't mechanically perfect, a B-24 loaded with 2000 pounds of bombs and glutted with gasoline was a flying deathtrap. 'God bless the ground crew,' murmured Henry aloud, without thinking."
--excerpt, Under A War-Torn Sky by L.M. Elliott
Author's blog: https://lmelliott.com/lauras-blog
in a tee like I had the cooties or something. "A bunch of us have to get back, now." The kid behind me ducked like she'd thrown a dish.
"What were you listening to?"
"Nina Simone." Me, afraid to let the silence linger. Her, knowing a silence lingering gets filled with not just noise. That's why I like her singing. She's from these parts you know.
"No, I didn't know that."
"Why'd you come?" Sponge-self feeling like a stamp licker, I blinked a few times to steady fluid.
"There's a lot we can't talk about here."
Mmmmmmm-hmmmmm.
"But,
"But what? Spit it out. We're all late."
"This is deep and I should just write a book like everybody else..."
We sat on the edge of a camp bed and looked at our hands. Outside, voices. The corklike quality of youth and vigor and uncertainty.
"I was there."
"Where?"
"In our Country. When they,"
"Who they?"
"The they, I don't like to call any people evil, but, so..." She got up and fiddled with a skeleton key in the thin door's lock. "But, it was one of those times, when the bad guys," my eyes rambled on the floorboards. "Did you know those motherf'ers hung the black flag in D.C. when everybody bailed?"
"No, I didn't."
"Did you know that it was no accident that, that a fire that burned up part of the Supreme Court building, didn't kill anyone that day."
"Why didn't it?"
"Because us Americans pulled ourselves together and at least stopped killing each other, mostly."
She looked at a spot on the wall where the sun had changed a square of paint coloring. "There was something hanging there," she considered the fact of something missing.
"And, it was me." She looked at me kind of cocking her head. "You?"
"I had your back. Well, at least until you got blown backwards down the stairs."
"Stupid shoes." She said it, but then confessed she didn't know why she just said that, so determinedly. "She doesn't always remember everything," the suit had warned. "It's like clues. We only get clues to the whole story..."
"As the stories get tangled and twisted and..."
"Layered up."
A soft knock. Door wide open. Here we go again.
