"It's too starched," one woman

  said to another.  "Poor thing." 

  "It's a be nice to each other phase, (i)remember(i)?" 

  "Yeah.  You're neck's all red." 

  "Almost a redneck." 

  The Quartermaster began signing allotment paperwork.  Clearly came to an issue and motioned specific people over to the field desk. 

  "Pick it up," one citizen said to another.  The citizen crossed his arms.  "PICK IT UP," a soldier barked.  The citizen kept his arms crossed.  A woman soldier bent and stabbed the piece of paper with a paperclip fish hook.  It had blown across the parking lot a little ways away from the field desk.  Since it wasn't butting in, the woman soldier had decided to act.  "What is it?" A journalist called out.  Of course the woman soldier wouldn't say.  Gave the paper back to the others at the folding table. 

  A voice exploded the still early morning soundscape.  A man.  "I PUT IT THERE!" 

  People looked at the man, minds trying to comprehend on top of higher fuel costs and then, higher food costs. 

  "YOU COULDN'T HAVE.  THAT STUFF WAS IN THE BRIEFCASE," a voice shouted. 

  "THE BRIEFCASE HAS BEEN COMPROMISED.  SECURITY, (i)SECURITY!!(i) 

  Some soldiers rushed towards the briefcase only to move everyone and themselves away from it. 

  The military had moved off and left the drawing of a hockey stick where the table had been with an ARMY keychain on it. 

  "What would be the point?" 

  A man reached for the piece of paper.  Took up the keychain and the drawing.  Contemplated. 

  "I think this has more to do with lazy assholes." Another man said. 

  "Did I ask you?" 

  "We're in a parking lot.  In America." 

  "How so?" Yet another man asked. 

  "Resource wars amongst lazy assholes who don't want to work." 

  "What about all the people who DO WORK and can't eat?" Asked a woman. 

  "We don't count in any of this," a kid with abundant bangs hanging over eyes looked up at the hockey stick drawing still being held up in the air. 

"He's NOT DEAD!" a girl yelled

  at the guy who'd knocked the books out of a girl's arms. 

The box had been switched out with bigger

  and bigger boxes until the hat collection was really blocking the mudroom door.  So people stopping by for mini-meetings started using the front door. 

  "God Mom, you're gonna blow our cover." 

  "What's our cover?" 

  "We're the normal family." 

  The mom and some of the kids were in the backyard looking at a variety of people (i)not giving up(i) in the picture window of the dining room.  "I think the times are not normal," the mom said, "But we are." 

  "Dick, you're wearing too many hats at once to stay." A bossy but very skilled at being a lady woman said as she finished her coffee. 

  "What do you mean?" He grinned and turned his head with the seven hats on it so everyone could take a mental mugshot. 

  "Okay, I'm game," a radioman said as he entered the room.  He put three wrinkled and damp dollar bills onto the vinyl tablecloth. 

  Dick said, "I'm trying to express myself.  I'm having brain block because of being in so many piles of (i)working on it(i) cases." 

  "Piles of crap?" A kid asked. 

  "In for the lasagna.  Not sure I want to hear anything that guy has to say." He kept his hands in his pockets. 

  Two kids came in with hat brims pulled low.  "Offload.  Release all weight.  What's on your minds gangstahs?!" 

  "We're not gangsters," said the boy who took off his hat. 

  "You should take yours off too," the girl was told.  A hand reached and took it off when the girl didn't comply.  (i)Black eye, split lip(i). 

  "Your mother do that to you?" 

  Mouths dropped. 

  "Oh sure keep blaming everything on the mothers." 

  "How long've (i)they(i) been doing that?" Another woman had joined the getting dusky room. 

  Nobody answered. 

  After long enough for people to say the Serenity prayer, the girl said, "Have I got a story for you." 

  "They're ALL liars," said a boy. 

  "Girls?" Asked the radioman. 

  "Grownups?" Asked a girl. 

  "Drunks?" Asked the mom. 

  "What happened?" Asked a woman with a pile of papers to edit as she put them all into a manila folder. 

"I said creative, not pornographic!" A uniformed stood

  and covered his wife with a politician's blazer.  The nipple covers kept spinning. 

  "I don't understand." 

  "Sit down.  Understand what?" 

  An elbow sitting down in a (i)hummmph(i) rattled the martini glasses.  "Sorry." The woman said. 

  "Understand what?" The uniformed asked again. 

  "Why this emphasis on creative?!" 

  "Yeah," a kid on the floor with a board game shot a glance at the man.  "We can only make so many potholders." 

  "Did you make one for your father?" 

  The kid kicked the game.  "Wouldn't do any good.  Wouldn't get it anyway." 

  "War is like a chessgame," the man began. 

 

"WHY are you telling me this?"

  The North, South, and both Seaboards had been compromised.  People, on pain of death, had been fighting máno y màno to embody Republic, but the enormity and brutality of Unions and anger over taxes had tipped the scales of justice into mob rule. 

  "We might not make it out of here." 

  Front of the house. 

  Back of the house. 

  Everyone pacing saw the same "box" our Nation was in. 

  Tissues and bandaids. 

  "They're threatening to leave." 

  Hands putting guns raised.  Some to peoples' own heads. 

  "Dick, what are we going to do?" 

  "They're threatening to leave!" 

  "They better not." 

  "We don't talk Christian enough." 

  "We don't just (i)love(i) everybody." 

  "We don't want it to be a free-for-all." 

  The man unscrewed the lid on the can of developer.  Put the recon from around Michigan onto the lightbox.  

  "They're threatening to leave." 

  "They better not.  They'll be the first ones hung on those gigantic crucifixes.  Or have their throats slit." 

  "Dick?" 

  People passed out.  

  "I knew it was a bad idea to tie the religious piece to the State." Said a man with ropes around his wrists. 

  "You can do it." 

  "Just say bye-bye home?" 

  "That's one of their Temples now Sir." 

  "Bye-bye home." 

  "Home is in the heart little one." 

We were eight. "Jawdroppers," a

  three year older boy called us.  "Anything amazes them."  But even the grownups were in awe of having survived the year, and, of the shirt. 

  An old denim shirt.  Found at a tag sale.  It had had a history.  People would talk about it whenever somebody wore it.  "Uncle Joe used to wear that on the tractor." To, "You know, I was wearing that shirt the night your father proposed." Since there was a lot of misery going around, the shirt kind of took on a reputation for being (i)lucky(i).  Though it wasn't a shield. 

  "Bad things can happen to anybody in any shirt," one of the older girlfriends told a slightly younger girl convinced the shirt (i)did it(i).  "And anyway, missy, it wasn't the shirt that got you preggers." 

  "Just use this one!" A boy who'd invested several months of allowance into a floundering tee-shirt shop whipped the shirt out of the closet and hucked it at a woman who worked there. 

  "For what?" Asked a little sister of the woman. 

  "We are (i)considering(i) the purchase of an embroidery machine." 

  That shirt disappeared for quite some time. 

"Did MY JELLO shake?"

  It was the second time the man asked the question.  The phone receiver was grimed in garden dirt plus sweat. 

  "Sir I don't know Sir?" 

  "There is (i)never(i) a question mark near that phraseology." 

  "Sir?" 

  "Why don't you know?" 

  "Everyone fell asleep Sir." 

  "Dagnabbit."  Someone threw a roll of papertowels into the tiny home office. 

  "Sir, I have a lot of questions." 

  "So do I."  (i)click(i). 

  "They're saying it's like a sandhole now." 

  "Sandtrap?" 

  "Yeah, after all those helicopters were swarming there.  The brush or whatever grows down here, (i)gone(i)." 

  "And I bet they want someone to pay the dry cleaning bill." 

  "I don't know 'bout that, but did you know that we all, people my age, lost the chance for a merit badge or whatever because a few of us were late to 'Noogah?!" 

  "How'd they figure that?" 

  "Some of us were (i)technically(i) late!  Which was because nobody's got money for this shit.  You should have seen the dead cars on the routes to there." 

Streams of "young people" were

  making the rounds in cities and megacities the world over.  This was an interstice between modes of State.  Like a regroup, or backstage in a Variety Show.  Many were pissed off, feeling shuffled around though born into existence.  But many had spread the word on taking a break from the "stupid grown ups". 

  A lot of people in a tariff-loaded environment had little or no "cash flow".  Something "organic" was happening though, especially in the ways in which the slow, conservatory-type appreciators of history and time were "coming out of the woodwork" and making effort to somehow join hands in a human chain leaning more towards survival than destruction. 

  "What kind of restaurant should it be?" A man on a development team looked into a fry pan at a lumpy mass of sauce.  "That was for Tapas," a woman wanting into the kitchen side of team explained.  "Did they eat them all?" The man asked.  She shrugged a (i)dunno(i). "We'll list it as market research," the man said.  He wandered towards a dining area with water damage and bits of acoustic ceiling tile on the floor.  Saw an open bottle of Club Soda and took advantage.  He was rubbing at a stain on his shirt when laughter floated from the far side of the dining area.  He squinted to see. 

  "Who are they?" He asked the woman.  She explained (i)caught between Services(i) which she'd learned about from them.  "One was even ICE, but," she made a winding gesture near her head.  "That one's (i)nuts(i)?  Does the person have weapons?"  The woman took up a dry, fresh napkin from a pile and offered it to the man.  "I didn't finish my sentence," she said. 

  "Why?" The man asked as he took the napkin and put more soda on it.  "To be honest, I'm very afraid right now.  Especially with all the stuff going on." 

  "There's always a lot of stuff going on.  Like in a restaurant." He gave a weak smile.  "Finish your sentence." 

  "I will try.  The government is like a head." 

  "Oooooh.  I get it." 

  "They were saying that because of young people fitting into careers with the Services and the Services becoming màs modern, uh, more modern, there's like mergers." 

  "You speak Spanish too?" 

  She nodded.  "Saving my highlights for actual interview.  Why don't you talk to them?  Stain's gone." He stopped rubbing and looked. 

  (i)Damnit!(i) The man pounded the steering wheel of the towncar.  He'd made it three blocks and got stopped behind other vehicles at a redlight.  "Thees vood be much eassier in Moscow." 

  "Why?" Asked the younger of two women in the backseat.  She pushed the sliding pages of writing back at the elder woman. 

  "Becauss dere dey do have passages for diplomats to smoothly travel." He looked at his big watch and the clock on the dashboard and sighed.  Rapped fingers.  Turned on the radio news.  "Turn it off please," the woman said while running a pen through several lines of a paragraph.  The man did.  "Vee 

  "We 

  "May never gatch up." 

  "TRY.  (i)We've got to try(i)." 

Two different fingers,

  two different hands. 

  "They're calling this one black-on-white violence," the man said to the woman.  The woman smelled like hair wax and had indeed added a layer of lustre.  She'd also developed a rhythm to the task at hand.  She kept her coiffed and braceleted hand from moving past the brief until a photgrapher from the Court's group shot a still of each sheet.  But her eyes were on two Capitol CC monitors and a TV live broadcasting. 

  It had been about four days of cascading "rallies". 

"He's being unreasonable," the woman stood

  full frame in the mirror over the sink.  The Ladies Room was a flurry of activity.  Women changing out of work clothes and into dancing gowns; tampons and pads being exchanged and discreetly (i)tucked(i); knives and guns tucked as well.  Pistols strapped, daggers slid, purses stuffed with tissues and weapons. 

  The aroma of perfumes and hairsprays and starches and ladysweat kept building. 

  "Why you say?" 

  "Now he's set himself up at a table in the hall and won't budge until he's (i)viewed(i) every last prospect."  The woman standing center stage in the mirror silently mouthed the words, (i)unreasonable(i), (i)budge(i), (i)prospect(i). 

  "I mean, what does the guy even need an assistant for?" 

  A third woman, without pushing, took the helm.  The mirror framing way too thin but somehow not frail.  Sinewy.  "I could tellya but I'd have tah killya," she mocked in a gangstah tone. 

  Pearls and silvers and golds being taken out of little jewelry boxes from Department Stores.  Nails and shaky hands fumbling with clasps.  Leaning-ins almost clashing earrings. 

  From behind the tall, tall women adding even more dazzle a small voice, a bookish woman, said, "Guy hasn't moved from that spot because," her voice faltered.  All the women in the bathroom formed almost a cave around the woman.  "Because why honey?" One put a hand gently on a forearm. 

  "He, uh," clearly a struggle, how to word such import.  "Out with it," said a slightly older woman.  The bookish woman looked into each set of eyes looking at her.  Then quickly blurted, "He got stabbed." 

  "Like mugged?" 

  "Who hasn't?" 

  "Girl fights?" 

  "Like he's been defending the Hill against Soviets." 

  A heavy as lead feeling plummeted upon the space and the women stood together not speaking for several minutes.