"Most are not."

  To a question about "re-joining".  

  The young man had been grown up to not lose his perma-smile, since it's a dead giveaway on feelings like "disappointment".  In fluid situation such feelings can have groups losing part of themselves and/or individuals "mess up".  Not that anyone's perfect, but minimizing what's coming up for me, while a line of workers is going for timing, efficiency, quality, productivity, and "a big finish" even on tiny tasks, well, we'd been learning as we grew professionally.  

  There were qualifications, equivalencies, criteria, and challenges to be wrestled with in an interim.  That we'd lost workforce to an infiltrated "Federal" wasn't putting a fire under our collective American ass because, clearly, it's going to be better if we "safeguard" and "heal up" the parts of our self as a nation that shattered. 

  This was not the first Town Hall type meeting on all matters in the universe the man had attended.  But he was a deep thinker and his "back burner" was bubbling alongside listening.  

     The [airquotes] "special" people, er, ah, professionals will have further meetings for more details.

     "Because it took them so long to, I dunno, come to grips with all that has happened so far," a special friend had traversed the gulf between man and woman, husband and wife, to begin a third-party-involved conversation.  The man had been excited about "the news" even at the prospect of "it might be twins".  But, later he told, as the new reality of war took over "the new normal", it was like being on a bridge like the Golden Gate as a hurricane built, wrastled with, and demolished the infrastructure.  "Everything has to be weighed in considerations and re-considerations." He looked down at his feet.  Way before decision-making, when possible.

  Some of us were in awe at how much stuff teenagers had already gone through in just preparing for (and hopefully warding off) world war.

  A press conference type word from NATO.  Recent but clearly aimed at piecing military action into the puzzle of the future.

  Some important points:

  Europe and Canada will send 4-5 billion in monies for American weapons and air defense to Ukraine in July.

  Some countries are figuring out conscriptions.  

  China is doing a lot of build up without much transparency.

°°°°°°°°°°°°

  Taiwan is trying to work through civilians working with military. 

  Saw it on WION

°°°°°°°°°°°°°

  The U.S. is navigating where lines between the Services sometimes merge, sometimes chain, sometimes combination in situation like Venezuela and Border Patrol/ICE strategy.

The two trainers looked alike,

  so people formed two lines.  The bravest amongst us took up position up front.  Some people tucked younger siblings into hopefully protected spots.  Some middle agers kept falling back in line, some clustered.

  One trainer explained she was going to toss us the "medicine ball".  The other shook her head, yeah.  The one showed us how to "plant feet" and what zone our arms should be in.  The other bounced the medicine ball off her knee higher and higher into the air.  The one asked, "Ready?!?" The other hucked it into a person's stomach.  The person doubled over.  The one trainer put the ball down and went over to the person. 

  Everybody else got in her line.

The man was dusty,

  but not too many days from clean.  He'd been given a vehicle after winding up in Oklahoma on a bus from a midwest airport.  "Not a fun visit," he pre-warned youth that he had worked with as he waited to talk to ranking military.  

  "What's he doing here?" An injured contractor asked his wife.  She found out from the neighbors-who-know-everything.  Her sundress was torn on the bottom edge where it had gotten stuck on a nail.  She held the edge up like it might drag in a puddle now that it was torn.  "It's about the war," she popped open the cooler and popped the top off a longneck and handed it to her husband.  "But we're not at war," the man said.  He took a gulp of the beer.  Of the several people just hanging out, no one said anything. 

  The smell of bacon and eggs was coming from a little apartment above the General Store.  "They want you to come up Zetty." The teenage girl in red clay'd Keds had stopped about a dozen feet from the dusty man.  One foot smoothing a line on the ground.  Hands behind her back like an ice skater.  "Thankya lil miss." 

  Feet heavy on wooden stairs.  A small deck with fading stain, gray even in the sunshine.  A woman had cooked for the men.  She picked up her keys and pocketbook, kissed the dusty man on the cheek, and left.  

  The dusty man zipped up a zipper on the side of his pants and extracted a rolled and folded map of Europe which his dusty hands smoothed out on a small dining table.  The other men looked too big for the room.  Too not fragile to the fragile knick knacks.  Too tough for off-white rug and off-white loveseat.  But they were perfectly calm.  "Tell," one of them ordered the dusty man.  "It was a long bus ride, just kidding."  One guy looked at a taller, broader guy like, Is this a jokester?  Taller held up a hand like a crossing guard.  The dusty man pointed to spots on the map.  Maybe eight places.  His other hand outlined rivers.  "Flood prone.  No surprise, not choice land." He held up two fingers, and said, "Watch.  I will show you where the chaos will collapse into frontline."

  "You must leave," the dusty man was told.  "My love to your family Zetty."  Some were putting on glasses, one was taking off glasses, and one crossed his arms and focused on the faces of the others while glancing at the map.

  Outside, no people.  Just a four-pack of glass Pepsi bottles and some Honeybuns.

"I DON'T hate her."

  The man's eyes misted.  His face went slack.  "Then why'd you just backhand her?" People were streaming to and from getting hotdogs and beer from concessions.  

  The little woman had gone into shock and was against a wall, bent over looking like she was looking for something.  She dabbed at the drops of blood from her split lip on the concrete and was trying to put them back into her lip.  The other people from our never really parting as a unit caught up from the stadium seats. 

  "It's not about hate.  It's not about hate."  The technically "attacker" was with his arms blocking his face and blubbering.  This made some of us see him as he had been, pulled from the bottom of a latrine-house with face so swollen from boot kicks and fist punching he didn't look like our friend or anyone but a captured "terrorist".  

  Oh my God

  Oy vey 

  "We're a mess, but we'll catch up," a woman leader pecked a kiss onto the cheek of a newly with work "returned".  "You sure?" 

  "I can't promise."

  "It's been swell having a fifth honeymoon here on the outskirts of Beirut.  But it seems there are flights, south of here, south of the no fly zone." One woman started to cry.  She'd been robbed by the very man in the corner of the room.  The man with the gun out in the open.  All the singing had made him drowsy but not really sleeping.  He roused.  "Which piece of shit did you marry?"  Minds registered New York accent.  I looked at my feast friends.  Before I could pin it on anyone, my years of travel training kicked up my sense of humor.  But my quip was overshadowed by the hostage holder waving the revolver around at each potential "loved one" and him saying, "Darkie, right?!" 

  "Well, the rest of us are women so that would be the logical conclusion.  However," the women began cleaning up supper, moving about the room, casually standing in front of one another and "the black man".  He wants to get away with the money, so stay cool, an experienced cave dweller had intimated before going to a village for a "leg of salami".  

  I was memorizing all this on a bus in California when it got stopped and people in plain green jump suits held us up.  Separated from the bus had us seeking shelter in a common area vaguely attached to a "clinic".  Some elderly people gave us the skinny as they stretched and shook numb body parts.  Entire neighborhoods hostage to Commies.  Who'd apparently teamed up with all these Godforsaken liberals.  An elderly person knocked into a passing cart and took the granola bars that fell off.  "It's not stealing," he explained, "I paid taxes my whole life.  They took over our hang-out shelter."  

     "What fracas?" A woman with a very Long Island accent was on a big cellphone outside a plate-glass window looking in at five elderly people in paper gowns.  The Asian worker was still in a Communist uniform.  "Excuse me," the woman tried to grab the attention of a passing black woman in scrubs by grabbing her arm.  Her ripped acrylic fingernail scratched the medical person.  The medical person whipped medical scissors from her pocket, cut open gauze and a piece of tape, covered her scratch then looked at the woman.  "You need help?"  The woman pointed the woman's eyes in the direction of the windowed room.  "Why are they in there like that?" 

  "Which center is this?" 

  The woman threw the phone into a big bag and pulled out a crumpled up map.  She showed the woman where they were.  "Hmmmmm-hmmmm...then that's," she pulled a folded and laminated re-positioning chart/diagram from one of her pockets.  Pointed at the diagram, "Unclaimed Property." Both women looked at each other like getting something. 

 

  Just do one little thing at a time.  That was the advice.  "Yeah.  That's how the Colonials built America!" 

  Someone spit out good, dark Turkish coffee, laughing so hard and fast that someone would think of Colonials.  "Didn't anyone else?" 

  "No honey.  In this you are unique." 

  "I don't know why I do that.  I'm always thinking of them.  And frontierspeople!" 

  "History buff?" A man asked as two people helped him get the bomb-proof boots off.  "Don't look at my duff," he said when he went to put jeans on over his longjohns.

  "Not really a buff but it's like I feel connected to people through time." 

  One woman unrolled a nub of cheese in fabric.  Another boiled water.  Someone cut a crusty baguette into strips to dip in oil.  "It just doesn't matter the time period 

  or culture 

  people have challenges." 

  "Human condition."  Someone pulled a jar of olives from a knapsack.  Someone else looked in there for more food.  Tipped it over.  Bits of sand came out on the worn plaster tiles that were covered in dust so people had wet-fingered smiley faces and hearts.  "Huuuh, you went to the Sea?" 

  "Well, I am a mermaid when I'm not reattaching bits of body and transporting the barely living no matter where they get stored." 

  "Remember self-storing in AMERICA?"  Two girls got wide eyes and nodded.  People were taking slow bites and chewing and chewing.  "I just love a good olive." 

  "As opposed to a bad olive?" 

  "Like one bad apple?" 

  "No."  More chewing.  "Olives are different!" 

  "How so?" 

  "When they rot, they just rot.  They wither.  They fall.  They are rot." 

  "Like game over." 

  "Anybody been kissing anyone?" Someone asked before passing a canteen.  A few eewwws and an I wish.  "Not like stupid apples rotting other apples." 

  "Whooo would you kiss?" 

  Imagining and telling stories as dusk melted into darkness.