"Why is there a photo of a pile of pineapple cans?"

  The voiced boomed. 

  "Why don't you get your foot off our negatives?" A girl asked.

  "A pile of pineapple juice cans, say that ten times fast." A boy said. 

  Many hands grabbed at the suitpant leg and fancy shoe grinding the visual evidence into the sidewalk. 

  "We're not paying your fucking tribute," one face said as it was being pulled on by hands desperate to save the negatives. 

  "CHILDREN!!!  GET AWAY FROM THAT MAN!!!" One of the neighborhood mothers stood many feet away from the squirming pile of kids outside the drugstore.  A couple girls immediately got up, brushing dirt from their school uniforms.  Thinking the man distracted a boy tried to fold the man's knee from behind. 

  "I see who you are," the man pointed at the boy. 

  "THERE ARE MANY SETS OF THOSE PHOTOS." The lady said calmly but loudly. 

  "There are?" Asked a kid on the bottom of the pile nearest the shoe. 

  "OH YES." 

  "GET OFFAH ME NUMBNUTS." 

  The pile of sweaty, grimey kids broke and scattered. 

  "You know the drill.  (i)Give the man his due(i)." A BLACK POWER tee shirt was tight over a militant uniform.  People in ski masks with night sticks stepped closer to the woman in the doorway.  Handed the short spry woman a megaphone.  She pressed the button which amplified her voice.  Started chanting, (i)Give the man his due, give the man his due(i).  Pasty white, bleary eyed, crying, terrorized children in the house had hastily collected up candlesticks and other shiney objects.  They dragged a bulging pillowcase past the woman with the racing heart.  Pushed it over the threshold.  Pushed the woman backward. 

  Closed the door. 

  The months wore on. 

  At school Officer Friendly had taught kids, (i)If you see something, say something(i).  "That must be why," a kid explained to a sunken-eyed mother.  "Why what?" 

  "Why the good black neighbors had to leave the neighborhood and left a sign in the window that reads, (i)Follow the bloody axe(i)."  The mom got on her knees and pulled the children to her.  "Let's say our prayers." 

  "But it's not bedtime." 

  A person behind a curtain in a yard of a house spoke barely in a whisper.  Explaining that a lot of the people who'd taken over abandoned houses were friends in jail.  (i)And,(i) she explained, "A lot of them have relatives all over the world.  (i)And,(i) those are here now because everybody wants to be American." 

  "Seizing someone else's property without a sales transaction is (i)not(i) American," a man with a broad moustache said aloud. 

  "Your curtain is NOT invisible," said a kid missing front teeth. 

  "Let's all go get pizza," the man said. 

"Is this (i)transparent(i)?" The

  man held up a Mylar balloon and made a fish face. 

  "It is," said the woman changing bandages and charting the intensity of the liquid oozes. 

  From the other room came voices used to booming orders, not listening to (i)sorry ass excuses for men(i) "blubbering" about lost loves of their lives and debts that only working would resolve. 

  "So (i)let them(i).  Let them (i)investigate(i) us until the cows come home.  We got nothing to hide.  Some buttcrack smelling foreign bills that aren't even real money left at a golf course?! That is not (i)corruption(i)." 

  The man made deeply sucking for air fish faces at the baby.  The baby smiled.  The mom said, "He has gas.  The kids only smile when I make the fish faces." 

  "We have to go find some people.  These photographs," everyone could hear a heavy finger tapping on the table, "These tell me, uh, us (i)something(i), but I'm not sure what yet." 

  "Cute kid," someone remarked as the pack of muscled military men exited. 

  A photojournalist and a writer stayed at the dining table.  "Can we come in if we don't talk politics?" Someone asked.  The pair nodded.  People filed into the room and sat around the table. 

"Keep that heart beating," a nurse calmly ordered.

  Her calmness was the counterweight on the frantic, out of whack scales of America. 

  "Watch out!  That apparatus shoves palettes out of the plane." 

  A needle jammed into a thigh with dead aim for the artery and a weak try-to-smile "my pleasure" brought the frozen man into a rigor-mortis-like sitting-standing-up position.  "Do the other guy," the nurse unrolled a paintbrush holder of glass needles full of "the stuff"...an antidote to death for some people. 

  The other guy wasn't frozen but he was stiff and standing.  Looked like he'd seen a ghost, shocked, and baked lobster red.  A field surgeon hung a bloody carpenter's short apron on the man's hands held up and fingers stretched out.  "Hold that for me.  I'd call you Sir, but not unless you're breathing.  Nurse is this man breathing?  Have a pulse?" 

  A nurse fell out of a line of nine or ten in a little aisle of a few back seats.  Came forward holding up the stethoscope. 

The handpainted sign was big.

  A most of a sheet of plywood.  The lettering a little drippy like the blood coming out of peoples' ears and noses and one man's eyes. 

     Jews be warned THEY are blaming all of this money problems on you because you voted demokrat. 

  Pages of stories were nailed to the bottom part of the plywood. 

  The neighborhood had been blitzed again.  Bat-wielding angry animal people.  Smashing, grabbing, destroying in the smog of planes sinking low on the horizon only when they got near land. 

  One civilian soldier in half business clothes, half army greens sat slump-propped against a brick wall.  His one barefoot twitching.  A child clinging to the booted leg.  Another clinging to that child. 

  Broken bloody glass on the sidewalk. 

  "Hey.  We need an ambulance over there," a middle-aged woman in a shawl with a vigil candle tapped on the man with the filming camera's shoulder and told.  "So do they," the man pointed a finger in the direction of the twitching foot, but missed (i)dead on aim(i).  He was leather belted to a wagon so his arms could push his lame legs down the sidewalk.  Off he went into the sparks of a lightpole a helicopter had run into. 

"Nobody knew."

  The woman threw another frying pan through the hole in the screen door.  "THAT'S A LOAD OF HORSESHIT.  YOU PEOPLE KNOW EVERYTHING." She hurled the spaghetti pot at the man.  A small boy went and retrieved it, brought it around to the clubhouse.  "AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT YOU PRETEND!!!  (i)PRETENDERS!!!!!(i) THAT'S ALL YOU PEOPLE ARE WHILE THE REST OF US SUFFER YOUR CONSEQUENCES AND SACRIFICE OUR CHILDREN!!!!" The woman hurled the contents of a drawer out the hole in the screen door.  "YOU RUIN EVERYTHING GOOD! EVERYTHING GOD GAVE US." She slammed the heavy door in behind the ruined screen door. 

  "You better get out of here Dick." 

  "You threatening me?" The man asked the kids standing around a runned-over bicycle. 

  "So you're saying he has his own political psychosis?" One woman asked another woman.  A girl child shivered and squealed at the word.  The woman nodded. 

  "That's a (i)strong(i) word Mrs. (i)what did you say your name is(i)?" 

  "Call me Julia.  But you can't call me on the phone.  At least not until we get through this phase." 

  "Does the phase have a name?" 

  "Why do you ask?" 

  "The children and I are working on words and expressing our feelings." 

  "That's interesting." 

  "It's helping us get through all this stuff.  Especially," the woman looked at a child's drawing in her lap, "Being (i)neglected(i)." 

  "Your husband?" 

  "Oh NO.  Not him, he's actually," the woman teared up, "Wonderful.  I'm very lucky.  I know that." 

  "There's been a lot of people just crushed by the war stuff." 

  "Mine's not military.  He's religious." 

  "And a (i)businessman(i)," said a boy in a suit with a briefcase. 

  "He works in the City." 

  Another helicopter flew down the main road to the Sound. 

"Put them on." The man's hand opened the flap

  of a box of hospital gowns. 

  "But I'm not (i)dirty(i)," a kid said. 

  "We can't leave here until you do."  The man further smoothed a dress hanging on a dry cleaner hanger beneath preserving plastic.  Then he contemplated the plastic and the dress.  Then he took the plastic off, folded it, put it in a fliptop garbage can.  He looked at everyone putting the hospital gowns over their clothing.  "If one of us is down, we're all down." 

  "For the count?" 

  "For the count." 

  "Let's beat the count." 

  "Beat the count." 

  "Let's let some air into this bell jar." 

  "Air into the jar." 

  "Let's figure out (i)what's wrong(i) with us." 

  "Let's do this." 

Bubbles burst. Begin grind.

  One kid had put his red tie in the paper shredder.  Another had so many knots in his, around his neck, that his face was turning purple.  A woman took extra relax pills and looked like she had a broken leg at the bottom of a staircase.  A little snore revealed (i)not dead(i).  "We need help," someone told a maid.  The maid and the someone afraid to be accused of anything went to a neighbor's place. 

  The phone calls established a perimeter.  Men groggily went out walking to locate everyone. 

  "It's in shambles." 

  "Not really any one person's (i)fault(i)." 

  "That's good messaging." 

  "That's reality." 

"Because we're in control of ours," came the

  response to a question that didn't have to be answered. 

  To be sure, a lot of things had fallen away from that unique blend of military and political party functioning together, but a streamer attached to a flag balloon had served as an anchor chain for signing onto mission. 

  Out past fear as a kind of harbor, the United States of America knows the Sea, knows themselves, and knows each other, at least well enough to function on however many cylinders battles leave a nation with in any given moment.  Land and Sky as well.  

  Though there is some fakery involved in towing a pure Victory line, there is no fakery in our Country's capability to act in its best interest.  

  "We didn't start it, but you can be damned sure," a woman took the cup of tea from the grizzled man.  "Slavery?" Someone asked. 

  "The war," the woman said.  "Can we please separate the talking groups now?  We are late to do so." 

  "I'll start that," said a Story Corps person. 

  "Thank you." 

  "LET'S LADEEDAH SOMEWHERE ELSE," a loud political upstart-type burst into a room full of civil servants and dying Veterans.  People who'd somehow kept the calm in an America losing the Greatest Generation.  People financialy tossed like flotsam as policy was upended and the mix of new wealth and Corporate power bulldozed a path through the White House.  "Oh (i)no(i)," someone said loudly, and, not being able to redirect the disturbance, started shuffling the Veterans out of the room. 

  "Where are you taking my father?" A woman demanded to know.  Other people with the woman started collecting themselves.  "Let's all go to the cafeteria!" 

  A smartly dressed casual man held up a hand as he was handed a clipboard, "Ah, let's not.  I've got the Mexicans in there." 

  "WHAT DO YOU MEAN MR.?" 

  "Mr. Brown Miss.  I've been tasked with coordinating the whole VFW thing, uh, piece of this day here on the, uh, grounds where all this, um, transition is happening." The man didn't speak very loudly so people getting coats back on dragged some chairs nearer the man to find out more real information. 

Podhoretz.

  Nobody had ever even heard of him let alone read him at college.  Of course, this was brought up in the cafeteria, amongst eighteen and nineteen year olds, unsure about a world exploding out of canon and institution, unsure if there even would be a future. 

  "Was it good?" One girl asked out of an abundance of caution to not alienate anyone. 

  "Thanks for talking to me.  I found it fascinating but thick.  But what was fascinating was that it tied a lot of the literary stuff together like over time like how (i)literary(i) is a thing." The girl had fallen asleep, literally.  People kept eating.  Like ten minutes later she came too.  "Did I fall asleep?" 

  "Seemed like it." A guy said. 

  "I have narcolepsy." 

  "What's (i)that(i)?" 

  "My body just falls asleep wherever, whenever." 

  "Bet that's a challenge," someone said. 

  "Definitely," the girl said and hurriedly ate her food. 

  A timelapse of the cafeteria would show hundreds of people gathering for food and pretty random conversation.  Tradition of eating like a Republic.  The various sharing of talk like democracy.  

At first, there was no one not to thank

  for those who survived.  And Americans everywhere swore off revolution.  Injuries healed, flags were sewn, people moved forward in life with renewed purpose. 

"He tried not to kill them, but,"

  the woman's eyes were bulging and pulsing, her asthma completely out of control; "But, but, but, it's always buts with these people," a regular housewife on a regular day didn't turn around from cutting celery.  "But what?" A man tied to a chair with extension cord asked the heaving chested woman. 

  "They, they, sobs, airsucks,"a kid punched her in the stomach.  She looked dazed unto death and started to fall backwards.  Another kid made a bench of himself for her butt to land on.  A girl kid plunked down a LeSportsac full of inhalers.  And yet another kid forced one into the woman's mouth.  SPRAYED! 

  The inhaler keeper massaged her stomach. Nothing normal for a minute or so.  Then the woman stood like at Church for the Gospel.  But her voice was squeaky and whispery.  Her hands shot up and she proclaimed, (i)THEY GAVE THAT ORDER!!!!!!(i) 

  "Jihad," said the tied up man who began to cry. 

  "MOTHERFUCKERS," said a Vietnam soldier coming to from being funneled at a "party".