The man landed

   on his feet.  Plain as day he'd come out of one of our training planes.  Framed by a radiation-strong sun, funhouse mirror fuels in the air, and an overpass.  The rest of us were in look-normal positions and the girlfriend made moves to join the man with scarved bucket 'neath a mess of doily'd handkerchief frill. 

  The rest of us resumed faux filmmaker places everyone everyone apprentices especially, if you can't hear the snap, do this, the assistant made an umpire sign.  Heads glanced and eyes rolled, eyes to eyes, we waited to find out if we'd moved the chronometer a micrometer here, an inch there.  "After scale are you?" A director spoke into a tiny interference "wind" created by a fire stoker and a piece of graded tin roof patch.

  A thumb up appeared from behind a devil's wind rock.

  He usually smokes right away "in this scene," his voice grew louder as he kept eyes on the lander, two fingers on a leap frogger in front of him, and he came uncrouched.  "Let me see." He spoke loud enough to satisfy the ring of censors, also placed as it were like traffic cones along the smooth edges of an at-rest megaphone.

  Opinion?

  I don't like it for him.

  And the dance move makes the decision between choices.  A throat cleared on an open air speaker system.  "Gentlemen."

  No one answered Yes Sir or Ma'am right out loud.  "How should I phrase it?" could be heard.  "Ask how many more 'takes' or something Sir" came the suggestion.

  It had been less than twenty-four hours, a meet-up, young people and some mentors.  Whereas we'd been girls and boys divided, then age-funneled, and mix-n-match we'd had to renormalize.  That put the professions in a sore spot in terms of supplies enough.  And let Republicans the world over know:  It's a slow crawl from here on out.  "No hurry"s at an airman's campout that sold BBQ and beer only that final night together confirmed eyes only now.

  "Am I in possession of State secrets or anything like that?" Everyone's favorite pick (not vote) tapped the bill of the boy's cap down over his forehead.  "What kind of question is that for a bouncer?"

  "Oh!  Is he called that in you peoples' generation?"

  He kissed a cheek and reminded her to be kind to Boy Scouts and said in his best Crooning voice, "Don't bring up stuff like weights."

  "With boys too?!"

  He put his forehead in one hand and tried to suppress the laughable memories.  The day's activities had included boys and girls, men and women hanging on crane hooks--counterbalancing.

  Then he sighed tired.  "Only one beer for me tonight."

  "Okay."

  "Unless I'm sitting like this," and he crossed one leg over t'other, said Tolliver, then he ran through all the 'ceptions while she just kept saying, "one".  It had been a few nights since the younger crowd had had to turn in the weapons, in the form of pills and powders and flasks and daggers.  It had meant in or out.  And even the kind-hearted leaders who coulda booted fuck ups to the moon and left them there had spent two days of their time and resources explaining it as not surrender but, "it shows you care about yourself now.  And caring about yourself, is caring about us."

  "All of us?" A young kid asked.  "Even dreamers?"

  "Yes Sir Capt'n."

  Just then about half the people in the restaurant hit the deck because there was a beep, beep, beeping.  "Is it going to explode?"

  "Or sail off like a cloudboat?"

  Hello.  Yes, yes, hold on I'll see if he's available.  No one moved a muscle except for a stifled sneezing into someone else's sleeve by a gothic woman.  The cellphone was relayed to a young person up front who held it up and towards our commander.  "Are you available?"

  "Oh Lord.  Honey no.  I'm never an available man." He took the device and asked, WHO IS THIS? at it.

  Still holding it like a stinky dog toy and away from his head he tried to look into it.  He held it up, and put it down, and passed it to some knees under a table.  The knees made room and he sat down.  His face was part orange and part skin-damaged pink, almost crew cut smashed flat on one side and all of his halfa haircut head smushed under a fish net stocking cap.  He looked awed for a second then asked one of the "lugs", "Is it really her?"

  He nodded excitedly.  "Really my wife?" He didn't take the phone but looked out over the restaurant and said real slow, "Really?!  My wife seems able to find me anywhere.". Then he reached for the cellphone but the lug pulled it away and covered the mouthpiece part.  "You really want to take this call right now?"

  "I'll entertain my wife's notions." The man motioned gimme, gimme.  The lug did not.  "Gimme that," he sounded like Dick Van Dyke in the office on TV.  "Whaddoo you want?" 

  "Honey, I can't come home like this." And he closed the phone.  Apparently people couldn't help themselves and started giggling.  The man shook his head for a split-second.  Another man in the booth covered his mouth and whispered something.  He put his hands up to his head and said, "Oh, okay, I get why you precious people are laughing at me."

  Laughing near you Sir, someone called out and toasted with a glass of orange juice.

  "Hear hear," soneone else said.

  After a root beer or two a waitress dressed as a butler approached our spot commander's table.  He got up and offered her a seat which she declined in a heavy accent short word way.  "Any news?" was almost drowned out by the next Act starting up..."Ladies and Gentleman I bring you," the M.C. tried to read the writing in the lighting, "Olivia Neepon John and the Venus Fly Traps."

  "THOSE ARE JUS chillun."

  "Thank you, m'am.  It is m'am right?  Correct?"

  "At home Sir, yes.  But that's," she looked around at all of us in campfire mode, " Far from here." 

  "Well, welcome to here M'am." 

  She hesitated then asked, "Do you know where we are Sir," voice fading as she looked for a surname tag or badge.

  "Not exactly.  But we are safer here, if we stick together, at this point."

  "Sir?"

  "We.  You too."

  "Sir?"

  "M'am?"

  "A woman outside gave my this to give to you." A lugger got up as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a large index card, hand-scrawled note said, "I thought the pancake winds had brought us closer together."

  He blushed.  "I guess my wife must really want me."

  "I would too Sir," and her hand shot up to cover her mouth.  Before it reached her face area (where someone might have a piece of party balloon and use it to produce a razor blade, or blow poison on someone, or make an awful noise) another lugger stood and grabbed her wrist saying, "Just didn't want you to cover up your beautiful teeth.". A knee smacked the bottom of the table so hard it jumped off the floor.  A scarlet-faced pudgy boy said, "He meant SMILE.  Your beautiful smile."

  "Do I have a beautiful smile?"

  Both older and younger guys nodded and the younger said, "You sure do."

  "Bright as the moon."

  For lack of communications and a lapse in information available, civilians and a spate of ruffians fell into a bit of routine.  Never really knowing when Our God might call Armeggedon had people all over the place when it came to describing "now".  Some of the kids took to saying "'pends on the treaty" and kept on clamoring around on adventure and kicking up dust.  "What treaty?" became the group response to quiet too much wondering.

  Above people, on mountain ridges, officials did official things and the Regulars between us all tried to quell feelings of being trapped.  Someone found an old travel club case of maps, so some people started naming different troubles by old-timey names of places like Creeper's Hollow and Sugar Cube Caves.  Days of relative quiet would ensue between jet fight exercises.  And it was a lazy day when a voice crackled on the speakers and we were surrounded by the questions, "What'n the hell?"

  "Is that what I think it is?"

  Nobody could believe it.  An arctic air mass was shoving northbound stuff up there back down cloud streets.

  "That's not ours," a military person told a Canadian Mountie.  The man on the horse looked out in front of him and nodded just once.  The horse lifted knee real high and turned almost perpendicular to the improvised reign holder.

  A shot fired somewhere.

  Within days word came that the Chinese were taking pictures.

  Peoples' hands went to chests and mouths gaped.  "Oh MY

  "GOSH," a mama finished a kids'sentence.  "Now go pack your busy bags up."

  "But I want to see IT."

  "NOW." And she stomped a foot like she might be a charging rhinoceros.