"I picked this up on the radio."

  The details were messenger'd up and down the line we were manning. 

  "It's one of us."  A barely graduated from high school kid said to a middle ager.  An agent brought a case file that was rapidly evolving from initial situation into developments.  "But it's still an impasse on some of these rulings," a consultant still studying State-to-State v. Federal Law broke out another folder. 

  "Sure it's not a drill?" A Commander asked a Commander.  "I'll try and find out." 

  Teams called together.  "How could we get there without disrespecting jurisdiction?" 

  "We've got a couple tanks we used in Tennessee." 

  "We could go in as us." 

  "Us?" 

  "Professionals." 

  "Let me think about that." 

  Like a couple decades before there'd been a snarl of road traffic and drug trafficking in West Knoxville.  It seemed a siege in many ways at the point that somebody had to step up.  The Services put service over petty arguments about credit and navigated the Branches' jurisprudence to at least clear paths and treat the wounded.  Back then, narcoterrorism was more of a concept than a foundation word for Americans to rally around and support. 

"What are you doing

  in here soldier?" The administrator started to back out of the broom closet with the quickly grabbed copy paper.  The man didn't answer just squished up his eyes harder and his face turned bright red.  The woman put the paper on a desk in the corner of the office room.  Slipped back into the little space while popping a piece of chewing gum in her mouth.  "Is there something in your eye, Sir?" His head rolled into a no and a yes. 

  "Let's step into more light since you have a firearm.  Okay?" 

  He followed her.  "Is it a sliver or something? I mean I saw you working on the outbuilding earlier." 

  Hands went up to rub the eyes. 

  "Did you get it?" 

  Again the headroll.  "It's not a sliver," he said after a big deep breath. 

  "What else could it be? Did you sleep in poison ivy?" 

  The man chuckled.  "Not last night." 

  "What then?" She looked closely at his eyes.  He ducked his. 

  "Missed my kid's birthday." 

  The administrator gently sighed. 

  "So I feel like I failed everyone." He focused on a cinderblock. 

  "Do they live close by?" 

  "Isn't that like aiding the enemy?" 

  "The Courts wouldn't do that." 

  "What are you kids thinking about for dinner?" 

  "Not hungry." 

  "What if I'm paying?" 

  "Is ending tariffs on enemies 'aiding' them?" 

  "Whoa.  Other people actually think about this stuff too?!" 

  A rifle through a purse for a highlighter and TO DO list. 

  "What do you think?" 

  "Above my pay grade to think that hard...But 

  "What?" 

  "A lot of things are a matter of timing." 

  "Like deciding what to do with war booty?" 

  "War BOOTY?? Are we up to all that paperwork already?!" 

  "Maybe we should eat in."

"What's this for?"

  The photographer snapped a photo of the writer holding up the cash.  "Clean underwear," the airman grinned.  The money pressed back to chest.  "Buy yourself a cheeseburger!" 

  "Remember those?" The photographer snatched up the money that fell to the ground.  "Not since pandemic days, so barely a memory.  'Sides, head's full of all those gorgeous women at the cafè last night." 

  "Bit of a headache too I bet." 

  "It's routine to get these recharged," an officer walking past explained to a newbie, "There where you'll turn in scheduling wish list.  Any questions so far?" 

  Half a world away the sun sank lower in an endless sky.  Not much glinted in ports readied for the steady flow of diplomacy and enforcement of policy.  The buzzword of the day had been whispered, then pried from some vet corrs...undermining.

"What is that smell?"

  "I don't smell anything?" The driving mom said to the mom standing beside the car. 

  "Oh, there's a smell." 

  "Have you guys been eating okay?" The driving mom looked in the rearview and asked.  "Kinda sorta," the young soldier replied.  "So here.  I want you to use these up." She handed him a six inch thick stack of plastic.  "Whaddya do mom? Knock off a credit card factory?" 

  "Most of them only have a few points left."  

  He patted his now bulging pocket and grinned.  "Sorry I had to give you my laundry.  Ours is broke." 

  "It's okay.  Need me to call someone?" To no answer.  "I shouldn't have said that." 

  "Just temporary there anyway." 

  "Well, I brought these!" She reached to the passenger side floor for a giftbag of DVD's.  "Sorry, no porn." 

  "MOM." The guy blushed. 

  Outside a rain shower started to lift lighter.

"Son, how do you plan to win the war if

  they are calling you the belligerent?" The man called out to a called up in the last thirty-seconds.  A really loud belch was the first response from a young gunner drove around all night because of the dogs.  At that point it wasn't only North Korean, patented, robo-dogs, traitors to nation had been stealing kids toys and having them sniffed by erzast "trainers".  We'd been sold yet another bill of goods packaged as U.S. Government property once the bill of lading was signed. 

  The only people that could save us was ourselves and locals were tied up and dog-mauled and half crazed about threats against loved ones. 

  Damn straight people drove to the outskirts of D.C., Virginia to protect this nation.

"Are they stalking us or

  are we just in their way?" 

  She'd asked the question in the jungle as boots and barefeet walked over and over what had been a person. 

  She'd asked a wounded camera person and then a freaking out soldier who'd fallen to knee.  The camera person was probably bleeding out yet her hands stuffed a can top size hole through the body with big soft leaves.  The soldier's hands tied in front of him with a muddy gray silk scarf. 

  It was a long time before the cicada picked up where they'd left off, the cadence of us and them.  

  In the morning the sun could not find it's way through the soupy milk sky.  Someone had tied newspaper plastic wrappers to many of the branches of trees surrounding the yard.  The three people that had been in the jungle were asked to recreate the scenario.  

  The store smoldering sent a long whisp of dirty cloud into the air.  An offshore wind jagged it's middle.  It somehow spoke of what's happening to us.

  "Make the foot work," to "I can't there's no more pulse." 

  A child imagined flexible.  Slithered under the driver's seat, reeeeached, and couldn't quite jam the foot on the gas.  A man hand shimmied a butt-end of a 2x4 up his arm, around the driver's seat. Putchitsh. The tangled mass of bodies shivered.  Marker smell filled the air.

  The candy-striper wiped hands on pink and wipe stripes.  Tucked a wool lap blanket more tightly under the legs of a man in a wheelchair.  Pushed the contrapshun into the vestibule.  Picked up a black medical bag from behind a glory statue and hurried. 

  The posterboard sign smashed up against the passenger side glass read 

     Iwe need you

"Is that an idea," the tourist

  asked while flash bulbs rang out, "Or is it trademarked?" A little humanoid finished the sentence. 

  "WTF?! What's in this room?" 

  We'd run with the bulls in Gatlinburg and skipped a tour of "wine country".  Roads were blocked and "shooters" of tire-deflating harpoons were on the rocks outside Oakridge. 

  Checking out a quasi-public/private gathering of entrepreneurs had brought to head great debates about community. 

  "And you are?" 

  "With 

  "Where's 

  "Mrs. Botox has left the building." 

  "Smoking.  Why?" 

  "That's not a possible antidote." 

  "Lemme see the list." 

  "Did any of you see this person?" 

  "Said she didn't mind.  Likes dogs." 

  "Yeah, but 

  "Those were 

  "The North Korean ones." 

The plane didn't even land but

we'd gotten all the pets in their "cozy" clothing and a bunch of veterinarians met us where we could get low enough to transport the precious cargo. 

  It would be a short ground-drop in and maybe getting out. 

  The dangling clothing rope dragged across the garbage dump. 

  "Has anyone seen my writer?" 

  Only two other people spoke English where we'd dropped. 

  Someone poked a long stick into a heap of foul-smelling rubbish.  The baking sun hit it like it hits tar or asphalt birthing the air into a shimmering. 

  "Carolina de Jesus.  Do you know where to find her?" 

  "Sì, sì pero un problemo." 

  "Que?" 

  The stick caught a black sock and hurled it as the person pointed with the stick to a broadly swinging cargo plane with the clothing rope on fire. 

"They're not self-organizing."

  The barrel fire still smelled horribly electronic.  "Are they self-reporting?" Boots brushed against a noggin squirmed up sleeping in a tent. 

  Embattled.  No one had seen them advance in a weather system to connect commandos with contained. 

  A slept-hard lip smacking.  One hand on a breast, the other shushing on eye open.  Lips moving to tell. 

  In fact, some of ours had been stripped to underwear again and tied to a flammable and potentially  explosive weight that was by-passed by pick up. 

  Someone did a quick headcount.  Silently made way to another campsite. 

  "Two," fingers told. 

  "Are the AWOL still in their uniforms?" A clerk-type turned to ask.

The jeep door slamming added

to the pound in the head.  Chores and contracting the swing door to the saloon-style prepping for settle down.  

  "WHY CAN'T YOU GIVE ME, US, THE retroactive pay?" 

  "It's complicated soldier's mom." 

  A swipe of a cleaning rag off a countertop.  A sigh.  "May I ask another question?" 

  "Shoot." 

  "Was this unit cleaned up well enough for a temporary barrack?" 

  "I'm not the judge.  And I really am endangering others having a plain old conversation with a civilian." 

  Back in the jeep.  "Just go." 

  "Okay.  But I can't make it all the way to there," pointing at a hand drawn cartoon of a map.  A phone call.  "Yeah.  I want you to come back and give me like ten bucks." 

  "For what?!?" 

  "Cleaning like a dozen peoples' tonsil stones off maybe my sister's mirror!" 

  "The realtor's in town?" 

  "She's married." 

  Click.  

  "Why would that be 'complicated'?" 

  Cigarette smoking irritated eyes tearing.  "Manpower on the move.  Dislocation of taxable money from physical address.  And this other thing." 

  "What other thing?" Was asked like, how could you possibly tell me something about my family, my self, that I don't already know.  "Okay, well I've been helping with some historical documentaries.  In real war displaced people and ownership of place 

  "Yeah 

  "Well, there's all this stuff about fluid situation and process.  Especially when places get occupied and people get detained.  Am I making your headache worse?" 

  "No, I think understanding stuff makes headaches better." 

  "See, something like payroll is one of those quasi things, uh, stuff of life.  It is and isn't material substance." 

  "Is that philosophical?" 

  "Everything is 'cuz humans think shit up.  But it also has to do with the part of this prep for war time in our lives." 

  "How?" 

  "We wouldn't even be having this conversation right now had we not bumped into each other, right?" 

  "I guess.  Don't go off on a tangent." 

  "The whole big thing was stalled, then lurching forward.  For people in my vocation, there's a ton of paperwork and documentation.  Which we can then look at for anahmolies." 

  "Drifting

  "So, if a red flag like a retroactive pay goes to budget arena, that calls attention to whatever time period 

  A rapping on the window startled both people.  No jumping but eyes wide open.  Window cracked open.  Some cash stuffed in.  People driving off. 

  "Plus, it's painfully slow to microscope a place, situation in the past when the whole thing is being forced forward.  We often wish we could see, for instance, where the terrorists were watching from when we were just visiting, or 

  "Let's go get gas."

"Thief!!" The woman snatched the

  Field & Stream.  Our two others passed the pillowcase of stuff back, back.  "Then we'll run." 

  Sun was starting to sink to Midway by the time we made it way out the farmer's road.  We'd returned most of the stolen-not-by-us stuff so re-stolen by us to the rightful owners. 

  "Just hobos," and that's what it looked like with our earnings and treasures in bandanas on sticks over our shoulders.  "Why'd ya tell 'em?" One girl just taller knocked the stick off the boy's shoulder.  "Bully!" The boy's treasures came out of his kerchief a little bit.  He bent to pick them up.  A foot stomped on his hand.  "I want that," was ordered.  He handed the lighter up.  "Anything else Sis?" 

  She lit a smoke and clamped the lighter shut.  Coughed a lil'.  "You sayin' I'm a sissy?" 

  "Not while I'm down here on the ground." 

  Crows lit off from sitting on a scarecrow.  "Look!  Those things work."  The boy jumped up and looked.  A saluting hand followed the black birds arcing up and over still tall corn stalks.  The pack of cigarettes hit his back.  "We weren't done talking." 

  "Just saying," he pretended to take binoculars from the other girl and look far, far into the future.  "That was a cowardly, sissy, thing to do.  I was having the perfect day." 

  "I wasn't."  The shorter girl went over and looked her up and down like penguins do.  Careful close looking.  "I don't see nuthin' wrong with her." More looking around back and lifting jean bottoms.  "THERE'S BLOOD!" The boy put his smoke behind his ear as he came right over.  He covered his eyes with a hansome hand and asked, "WHERE?" Then made blinds of his fingers and peeked at the pointing to tore up heels.  The boy sighed.  "You got underwear on?" 

  The girl jujitzoo'd her whole body around in one turn.  "What you askin' for?"  The boy's hands went into karate chop mode.  "She's not a cinderblock!" 

  "Just do it!" The shorter girl threw down the quilt patch and stepped back.  "Like bison!" The two walked away from each other like duelers, then he screamwhooped and they crashed into each other as they ran at each other.  The wrestle drew blood and lasted a good thirteen minutes before the bison crawled off to opposite sides of the road panting and clearing lungs.

  "They're testing." 

  "WHAAAT?" 

  The woman with the empty typewriter bag let a suited man take the little styrofoam cup from her steady-tremble-steadied hand.  She wouldn't let go of the bag and snarled at a man the came close for a kiss, I'll bite it off.  His big nose smelled her anyway. 

  "We can't speak about it," one told another.  Hand gestures moved the camera crews to a different gate.

  "Transvestite!" 

  "Towel head!" 

  "Get to work." 

  Foots on seven shovels then.  Overturned a whole new row to plant.

  "I don't think he's that." 

  "Just let think so." 

  "Do it!"  The handled cup was dipped in the barrel of water and thrown in the air.  Little ones shivered and shimmied.

"Why did you bring

  all these war criminals here?" An older man hissed at the lady.  She grabbed the marker set from a kid and put it in "the carpetbag".  Turned on heel, whispered to some other women, then came back towards the Tag Sale table in the Parish Hall.  "You did not just hear that." Was said to a gang of children.  One boy in dyed black (me mum got sick of doing our laundry) coveralls said just as sternly, "Oh I did tweed pants." 

  A girl smacked at him.  He ducked backwards but his hands were stuck in the straps so when he lost his balance he crashed into the old man's table.  People sort of tried to come and help, but once up from the sitting tables, mostly took their families home.  The man pointed at the lady.  "It's her!  She's the curse!  Worse even than Our Greek Curse.". He threw some of the items in the pile into a box then went outside to smoke. 

  "I can't have this happening here," one nun said really loudly to the others.  They moved together towards the table.  Uprighted it and started putting things back on the table. 

  "I need you to take me there." 

  "Okay, get in." The rather tall woman looked down at the kids and at the wagon.  "Do the people who live on the Island all travel this way?" 

  "Well, a quid might getcha an answer to yer troubles." The boy said.  "The answer is no.  Us and the wheelbarrow crew, we just pick up the dead ones.  Before the early birds get the worms!" 

  "Oh, I see.  May I walk beside?" 

  "If you insist.  But stay unseen." 

"Sit down please."

  A well-articulated whisper said, You are forbidden to ask questions in this room.  A pause then a tug.  "But isn't this a lecture?" A ssssssh finger gesture.

  "Look at these casualty figures." 

  People looked at their own paperwork at the follow-along information each had been presented. 

  "Now look up here.  Used to be a chalkboard for me." Person fumbled with a clicker.  Looked at watch.  Looked at clockwall and back at watch.  "Anyway," tried to toss the clicker away but it had been glued to hand.  "Comparing data from the Great War and the Second World War with Vietnam..." Looked at personal notes.  "With Our Services in command, here and there, MOST of the most seriously wounded and actual deaths took place in the first battles." 

  A medical technician neared the desk behind which the person was standing and lecturing.  Tapped on his watch.  "That time already? And I was," person cleared throat, "Just starting to learn something new." Person snatch-grabbed a fitted-to-arm crutch, shifted weight off a leg, leaned after thinking about it, and exited the room. 

"OKAY OKAY HYPOTHETICALLY THEN"

  No one had expected enemy forces to be where they actually were. 

  All the "fives" wanted answers.  To reasonable, non-strategy questions, like, WHY IS THERE A CHILD ON THE BATTLEFIELD?  WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?  WHO TOLD THEM TO SURGE?  WAS HE "SCHIZOPHRENIC" BEFORE JUST NOW?  

  The young commanders were circled by other commanders.  Each took the stance and posture of being attacked by a pack of wolves. 

  "What the fuck just happened out there?" A field surgeon snapping a right-angled-the-wrong-way leg back into "normal" position calmly asked.  He asked the exact question every thirty seconds until someone who could hear and was close enough to respond somehow could start the piecing together. 

  Impact.

  Impact.

  Impact.  An AI voice reported while people scrambled for pens, papers, maps, anything that was not somebody else's.  

  Through the powdery dust mounting like snowfall went the team still up and running.  "Body under a tank 

  "Partially in the mud 

  "Photograph," handed a laminated number card, "Everything with this marker thrown at it." 

  "Done." 

  "On MY count.  LIFT.  

  "HEAVE

"The departments haven't gone away."

  That was the man's baseline defense.  It was up against a maelstrom of What are they going to do to us?! and the twin towers of the driving questions:  What is going to happen to us? 

  What IS happening to us?

  "Well, culturally we've obviously gone to hell in a handbasket to quote my father." Another man said.  And, "I hate it when he's right."  He skipped a flat stone across the pond that had re-stilled after everyone had a group rebellion against wearing the uniform.  We were a mix of service people on a "weekend retreat".

  "Would you like to see the Brig, Sir?" 

  The president swallowed his swig of hot coffee just as a swell ran below the ship and unbeknownst to people on deck lifted and chucked anything not nailed down.  His "I would," seemed to come out of him in slow motion.  "Were you a surfer, Sir?" 

  "'Scuse me son?!" The wind was whipping rope against mast. 

  "You're a natural at this," the person didn't overly look at the coffee drenching the man's clothes.  "Least I held onto the thermos." 

  "Let's go below first and get warm." 

  "K." 

  The guy came up for air, smacked his hands against the pool's surface water which made a loud slaaaaap.  He checked the timer to see how long he'd held his breath that time.  A woman with a kitchen knife wetfoot paddled to the side of the pool.  "Tell me again," the guy had his eyes squished together as he shook his half-shaved hair side to side.  "I LOVE YOU." Then she pointed the knife in the direction of the little group of people who'd come to observe "leisure time".  And warned, "Stay away from my husband's butt." 

  Someone dramatically gasped and ducked and theatrically said, "I'm not gay." People looked around.  The guy opened his eyes and asked, "Who said that?" Looked at his wife, who was showing off an aluminum foil engagement ring on the hand not wielding the knife.  "Anymore," the ducked person finished his sentence.  People theatrically ha-ha-ha'd.  "Okay, and CUT." The director of a training video had finished a segment as another film person arrived.  All were gunning to get practice for what was being called real time working methods. 

"I TOLD YOU," one woman said

  loudly.  This prompted another woman to grab the throat of a guy's tee-shirt and furiously growl-say, How long was I asleep for?!? While two people were pulling her behind some junk in a yard and carefully, but frantically, re-wrapping "the wound that never happened."  Even though, it had.  A clip fell on the ground which the louder woman stepped on without knowing.  "To call me if and when you needed me, not cut a body part off," her totally sunburned face said as it popped up over the junk and dialed down on us. 

  "I neither cut off a body part, nor put one back on.  Don't know what kind of reports you're getting these days." 

  "Well, they don't Airmail something like that Missy, but I FIND OUT." 

  Administrative people in all the Services had spent some "overlap" time with Commanders' support teams.  And had also diligently guard rail'd every conversation between Allies while "the whole" Force pivoted and pinwheeled.  That way "Internationals" could keep abreast of select topics with eachother. 

  "Did you get to be an International?" 

  Ooooowah, "I did." She tweezed.  "What's up with this box of curling irons?" People looked at each other.  A stronger-that-day picked up a tangle of cords.  "That's where that went.  Well, this one's a straightening curler." 

  "How can it be a straightening anything AND be a curler?  She meant rod." One person had gone to a store.  Deftly put a pack of cigarettes and gum on the vanity table.  "Anyone else want anything?"  A car went by outside.  People patted pockets and felt for essential items on their persons.  "All good here." 

  "I'd take a pack of gum if," person cruised past to see the smell, "There's not that." 

  "The nicotine part or the flavoring?" 

  "Personally, I don't tend to buy fruity.  I eat it too fast." 

  "You're not supposed to eat gum brown noser.  And anyway, who asked you for your opinion or whatever that piece of speech just was?!" A person snapped a bubblegum bubble really harsh and asked.  Then pulled a wad into a long string and nibbled it back into her mouth.  "It's gonna be a long night," someone said. 

  Excerpt, War of Attrition (Philpott) 

     "Five weeks after enlisting in the Foreign Legion, Alan Seeger wrote to his mother from barrack at Toulouse, on the eve of his departure for the front: 'we are entirely equipped down to our three days' ration and 120 rounds of cartridges.  The wagons are all laden and the horses requisitioned.  The suspense is exciting, for no one has any idea where we shall be sent.'  After six weeks of hard drilling -- twelve hours a day, seven days a week -- he claimed to 'have learned in six weeks what the ordinary recruit in times of peace takes all his two years at', and all for the modest sum of one sou a day.  Seeger could drill, march and shoot, but he was not yet ready to fight: he would go through a few weeks of tactical training on the old Marne battlefield, within the sound of guns, before going into the trenches in Champagne in late October....

     "Like many thousands of others in 1914 and afterwards, his transition from civilian to soldier would be rapid and intense, as the battles raging across France demanded fighting men at an unprecedented rate" (113, WoA).

Bummed.

  Some of the oldest girlfriends were sitting for a minute, God.  It was a warmer day of late, late winter.  Even in New York there was that sense about "the old man" that you've worn us out, but we're not dead yet.  Ever able to dig the deepest into the reserves of count your blessings our mom had spent her allowance on beach buckets from the toystore.  These were in a stack by the rounded up snow shovels in front of the brick flower box. 

  "You seem something," one older girl flicked a bunched up chocolate wrapper at another.  This seemed to slow an ugly brain churn.  "Not thrilled with her," a head shove in the direction of our mom. 

  "Moi?" Sherry vaguely disguised looking somewhat scared.  "What'd I do now?" A sleepy child shoved her elbows off her lap to make room for self. 

  "Ever since you and yours established 'the budget' pattern 

  "Challenge 

  "My sense of reality kind of sucks frankly." 

  Little moans of agreement from some of the other women.  A chuckle from a woman who's other half always spent their budget on drink.  More sleepy kids, some with milk mustaches, invaded the fairly quiet morning with the MOM, MOMs and the can I too's. 

  The early bird sleepy kid abandoned the lap.  Cupped hand, whispered, I know what to do.  "Okay." 

  "There's an alternative reality." 

  "Does it involve drugs?" 

  "What?! How dare you!" 

  "I only ask 'cuz I'm kinda drugged out." 

  One of them stood like a bouncer at a bar so another reluctantly put coffee mug up on a piece of four by four and stood up too.  "Jesus." 

  "What about him?" 

  "God." 

  Silence all the way around. 

  "We worked all night." Everyone was staring at the waitress.  "Didn't know it was a brothel." The heavy framed woman sat back down and planted her face in her coffee mug. 

  The little boy came back outside in a still creased and smelling like starch karati outfit and barefeet.  Told, "I made it from there to here.  No pain." He did some moves.  Pulled his hands into a praying mantiss position and bowed to our mom. 

  "Well, the Master has spoken.  I guess this day has officially begun." One other little boy said with the pomp of a parent saying not another word.  

  "We'd like anyone in a bullymood TO LEAVE." A sister announced.  Suddenly all the kids had shaken off sleepy. 

  People considered this and themselves.  Sherry stood up, undid her robe, and revealed a karate outfit.  "Actually, all bullies can confront us." 

  "We will help you." 

  "Help us what?" 

  The little boy thought hard.  His mom said, "Confront your problems." 

  Another really cool mom took a mirror on a handle out of a huge pocketbook.  Handed it to the waitress.  "I'd start with myself.  But I'm late for work." 

"I know." She'd found her sister.

  "No, you don't." 

  "And anyWHOooo," the clone started to say before someone ripped the charging cord out of the outlet.  "It looks peaceful when you do that." It did look at rest. 

  "It took us four or five days to get there," a grimey, bloodied, staunch finger pointed sternly at a hand-drawn so good people had kept it for generations.  Another hand held up the hand.  "I'm on my monthly." 

  "So am I," a man's voice entered the room before he did bodily.  "And we've no beans left." He scrubbed at his shock of hair with a handtowel and olive oil. 

  "And did anyone have anything to tell you?" Yet another woman asked. 

  There'd been no formal interviews.  No proper toiletry.  Only a crossroads between arid tundra of places with some ghetti trees. 

  "The nurse asked about the photographs." 

  "Which ones?  Let me see them." 

  "I've left them.  For Cairo.  And London if I'd had two sets matching.  That's the issooo down here.  I can't find two of anything the same." 

  The trunks had been opened while the small plane operator had been aloof on a day jaunt.  And though the people from another Continent were mostly piecing memory together with instance, stuff was missing.

"Please tell me this is not a rebellion."

  "Okay.  It's not a rebellion." 

  The mostly young people were standing around on the lawn but not close together.  More like eggs in a crate.  "What are they stoned or something?" 

  "I mean I can't speak for everyone, but on the whole, no." 

  "Are they watching for something?" 

  One woman cracked a shell and ate a peanut.  "Are we afraid?" 

  "They have ideas." The Indian Princess lifted her head from a feather pillow, unplucked her thumb from her mouth, and told. 

  "How was New York?" 

  "Lame.  How was here?" 

  A frump face.  "About the same.  It's like something's gotta give." 

  "Did those people ever unchain themselves from that big old tree?" 

  "We fed 'em for like a week." 

  "Then what happened?" 

  "Mad Max whistled like he was calling the dogs and a bunch of equipment came and they used lock cutters to move the people." 

  "Tree's gone." 

  "What are we gonna do?" 

  "About the tree?" 

  "Tree's gone." 

  "Naw man.  About getting in or out?" 

  "Didn't know you guys were a couple." 

  "Fuck you." 

  "Can we not ruin the nature walk please." 

  "Sorry." 

  "Now there's a word so seldom heard anymore." 

  The sound of pine beetles screw-milling the inside of logs never hauled off louder than the people then. 

  "I DON'T WANNA 

  A young woman with a foldable shovel poked it through the pine and asked, "What is she trying to make you do?" Then she came around the nine year old tree.  The Walkman was put on pause.  "Did you hear it?" 

  "Not sure." 

  "Sounded like jet engines or massive chain saws." 

  "Not sure.  Lemme listen again.  Mostly all I can hear is JUST BREATHE...." 

  "Where in the hell are we?" 

  "Angry motherfucker upon waking I see." 

  That roused the other passenger who'd dozed off.  "Why West Virginia by God?" 

  "Why not?" 

  "Friend of mine said needs help." Another fruit rollup wrapper thrown in the pile of three-days-either-side, expired.  Everybody has their quirks. 

  "Must've been one hell of a bonfire!" 

  "Yeah, and I got a maggot in my eye." 

  "What!?!" A throwdown of camera stalk and a rush over.  "In your actual eyeball?" A get outta my face mosquito swat of hands.  "Can't stand people coming at me like that." 

  "Can I kiss it?" 

  The cycadas vaulted their voice just then.  "My eyeball?  Freak."  Picking up equipment.  "Good thing I keep it in a tumble bag, this." 

  "Glad you chose to bring it." 

  "Eccentric.  Not freak." 

  "See where the cornfield is broken." 

  "Yeah." 

  Some of it was hacked with implements.  "They'd hidden their women there," a head point above crossed arms at a depression long like a trench in the not yet mudding soil.  "Only one 'guy,'" the arms made air quotes, "Was trying to save his woman's, you know, feeling down there." 

  Camera onto tripod.  "Can I come near you?" 

  "No kissing.  My heart's turned cold as ice." 

  "Just saying." 

  "I'm not sure what the fuck went on here and in this region, but it's adding up tah, 

  "Give me one." 

  "Whaddaya mean 'bout down there?" 

  The cigarette smoke was seen and smelled by others documenting aftermath and weren't long for others appeared from all directions. 

"We're not paying your fucking tribute!"

  The father yelled.  A boy ran up as best he could being lamed by polio and whacked the man on the head with a shovel. 

  Another boy dragged the man to the pile of people who would wake up. 

  A phone rang.

  "Little girl.  Little girl.  Is your mother there?" 

  "Which half of her you monster?!" 

  As it had been happening everyday the "new" neighborhood didn't miss a beat of it's routine.  The only difference was that a view-blocking levee had been leveled so the prison guards could view all of the suburban area.

  The people in the pile awoke one by one to the sounds of the scissor bird singing.  They had been bathed, and dressed in pajamas by real nurses who'd returned from the fighting Overseas.  There were the smells of tea and coffee and toasting slices of raisin bread, homemade in a brick oven outside.

"I told you people to lay low."

  "But no.  First one and then the other." 

  The two people not tied up with silk scarves picked up various tools covered in dried blood.  A pile of teeth on a steel table prompted one in a Tyvek suit to comment, We'll know who was taken this time. 

  The day had not started out this way.  Some travel bans had been lifted, some people braved sleet and snow to carry on.  Editors pursed lips together and caved without caving to the more economic-minded.  An editor who'd been a "combat correspondent" (back before debates about "embedding") had holler-hushed through painful coversation after painful conversation regarding do you know what this is going to do to me...to my family.  He'd locked himself in a broom closet at one point so as to not be findable. 

  "We can't." 

  "Can't what?" 

  "Can't bury it." Truths so terrible and tangled up in International Affairs pieces of paper with ink on them would only endanger more general population.  Other editors slid pieces of the stuff, paper, with lists of vanished and still not heard from, unknown location, and using vacation time under the broom closet door. 

  Feet propped on desks and sweaty armpits drenching clothing.  Food in sacks untouched. 

  That can't be that.  But look at these. 

  Military photographs and maps. 

  "How'd you get in here?" A publisher demanded to know.  

  "Oh, there you are and there they are," a nervous assistant followed the publisher to the desk and neatly planted a datebook there.  Pens from a suitcoat pocket offered but declined by way of being shown a breast pocket of those lined up like soldiers.

  She'd said it so many times she finally wrote it in block lettering on a big index card which somebody glued to a tongue depressor.  The little cafè table had become an impromptu fact airing on the fly get-lost launch.  "Worst!?" 

  "Let's not go there sister." 

  An eyeroll.  Really fast mention of having seen or been to and censorship bracket.  A thinking-about-it pause, maybe a hand lingering over both little signs, and a best guess verdict.  

     That can go in a book but not a newspaper

  "At this time," a peddler of newspapers was quick to remind.  Magazine people never sit still.  And look at those sharks.  A cautious glance at people literally acting like sharks.  Sort of circling and bullying and pensive then growling teeth at too close to me.  

  Lockers and lock boxes. 

  Discarded suitcases and purses. 

  Thick rolls of contract and tear sheets. 

  Horses bred for the purpose of starting gate. 

  Not more than a girl really.  Had appeared on the weedy hump between the nothing's moving roads near "le tromphf".  Wearing? 

  "Just a short utility dress." 

  Tanks lined, poised to anchor a boulevard, stopped. 

  A grubby postal/mail sack huffed at the girl.  "I'm going back now." 

  Type, type, type. 

  A long time before a ding.

  "They used to call these, this formation, gin palaces," the old man said it with conviction.  But then his eyes wandered and took in unfamiliar, modern landscape.  "It's a stranded train car.  So what?!?" The unfed man came out of the weeds zipping up his pants.  "Did you shake honey? I don't need you with that condition again."  The man wiped his hands in some oil-spattered dirt.  "Just like home," he scoffed.  Came up to the people on the tracks from aside them like in a parade.  "'Sides, it's like summer today." 

  "Yeah, wild weather in these times." One woman said.  So another asked, "What era are we in now?" A local history tour had gotten driven through by a drunk and some of the people took a dayhike a little farther rural.  The old man came to his senses again.  "Let's let the weaker ones rest in there while we go on ahead a little bit." A head shove and backhand at the little train car.  "Go ahead," a sassy-haired woman told the pisspot.  "Why 'gin palace' Uncle Joey?" 

  All the people but the man with the that's a great idea moved towards the car, still, awkwardly so, parked there.  "See this?" Everybody looked down the uncle's hairy, faded tattoo arm to see what he was pointing at.  Just took turns, then settled into around to hear a tale.

In between '75 and '77

  we forced ourselves to celebrate what some people call "silly things".  No more fighting about who is and who is not a Daughter of the Revolution had both sexes wearing clean mop hair and using up leftover World War II paint. 

  Drained it and "scrubbed the moss offah the tiled bottom.  I know because my team scrubbed it." 

  "With what?" A kid asked the janitor-looking man.  "Excellent question!" He smiled even though he was missing some teeth.  "That would've been with these," he skipped over to a garbage can on a wheeled cart and brought it closer since one of us was in a wheelchair.  Every kind of broom.  Some had been cleaned of the slime but still had that flooded river mark.  "Are those binoculars?" Mama asked the man.  "I'll let you peek at 'er, but first, it says here," he held the clipboard upside down, turned it round to show, no outstanding paperwork, we're expecting a special delivery." 

  "We are??" A little girl had donned a foreman's hat.  "But nobody can approach this...what is this? 

  "Fountain area 

  "Until the clean up 

  "Preservation 

  "Right.  Is done." 

  "No worries.  Sources which I cannot reveal have hintimated it'll come through there." 

  "He pointed at a fire hydrant." 

  The littlest girlfriend started to strip down to her bathing suit so a middle sister did too.  Their mother cautioned not yet, we'll get to a beach.  "What's a beeeech?" 

  The janitor man hollered a HEAVE HO, and dropped a small rope with a weight on one end down into the firehydrant which looked to be wearing a WWI helmet.  "Look it's an old hubcap." The man drummed a rhythm on it with tough fingers.  He attached an end of the rope to a little standing bell.  "Hurry up we've got an audience!" He spoke loud in under the helmet.  Two tugs on the rope clanged the bell.  Footsteps on a metal ladder. 

  "Ohmeegodgosh that's my brother!" 

  Our mother looked around at the topside group and suddenly looked shocked and walked towards the hydrant.  She was crouching as she got closer and foot slipped on the last bit of slime so she slid into the thing like a baseball catcher.  "Hi Mom." They pecked kisses.  Then she said, "Not sure that was the best way to get to here." 

  "Why?" 

  "Not exactly sure yet how I'll get you out." 

  "Okay." 

  "PASS THAT FOREMAN BACK TO THE END OF THE LINE!" 

  Clear.

  Clear.

  Welder coming up.

  "Everybody!" 

  "What?" 

  "I fink we should STEP BACK." 

  "GOOD THINK'N LINCOLN!" 

  A bunch of brooms made an initial perimeter.  Then sparks flew.  

  The janitor man fished a teeny hammer out of a bucket on the cart, literally.  His fishing rod had a magnet on it! 

  He let our mama tap on the brackets hilding the helmet on the big pipe.  Then he gave her some small binoculars from his pocket.  "See if they can spy any of the paints up on the lady." 

  "Aye, aye Cap'n," she saluted. 

"But I'll miss Spaghetti night."

  "Honey." 

  The phone was grabbed and a woman's voice said, "I'll feed them.  Spagetts if that's what they vote on." 

  "Uh, put my husband back on." 

  "Right here." 

  "Where?" 

  "Uh, can't say exactly but I teamed up after raquetball and now they suggest we don't go directly home." 

  "Is she ugly?" 

  "Very." 

  "Okay then.  Be careful." 

  "Love you." 

  "Love you more." 

  The silence after hanging up was most unusual.  Unusual times, a man had explained about ordinary citizens being pulled in so many directions, to get the boat uprighted, another man supported. 

  A neighbor woman's face appeared in the window.  She held up a lumpy pillowcase and mouthed look what I found.  Mother mouthed back, What is it?  The two waved eachother to the back door. 

"I will give you a taste

  of what this is like for me.  Us." The women and children neared the men who'd somehow survived another workday.  They'd been blindfolded with their ties, that day.  And ransomed back to their families.  The men could only smell what had happened to their loved ones.  And those were the lucky people in a Continental drift of turn of the new Century warring over money and resources like food and water.  Of course, the dominating question of the men was Who did this to you? 

  A slight bend at the knees and a whiff of magazine perfume, rubbing noses and a tender kiss on the lips.  "Oh my God.  Do I taste blood?" The necktie blindfold was removed.  "I bit my lip on the bump in the road near the pay tolls." 

  Stunned to see each other as the ties came off.  One man had several ties choking, over his mouth, broken nose, and lopsided over his eyes.  Handcuffed with a raw fish stuffed into his hands. 

  Nobody move.  The photographers obliterated existing light in the room with the flashbulbs.  The men were moved from rescue, through crisis/impact, and into survivor status rooms. 

  "Oddly, if you can stand and walk on your own, you're free to leave." 

  Each drove by pre-planning from the epicenter of "the pie" outward through an economic zone. 

The fact is...

  "Some of the facts are in competition with some of the facts." The woman's eyemakeup was awry for she had cried like Veronica not just for herself that night. 

  "Facts like what?" 

  "Like..." A final brush of tears like accepting skinned knees.  "Like, our gang of girlfriends.  We can be awesomely close but we can't get married or be romantic." 

  People, young and driven by raging against time, came and went from cabanas and closets snorting powder off trays and furniture.  "They'll get away with whatever they can," another woman maybe a decade out from teenager plopped a pillowcase of cheap cameras on the stone and cement slant siding the staircase.  "And I've brought these." Hands removed a box of condoms and a bag of film from big pockets.  "Yeah, that'll help.  We'll just give every female condoms and film as security."  

  "Wait a minute, you were there the other night," a young girl came over from peeing in the bushes.  "IT WORKED!  WE, 

  Ssssssh, shuush

  "had almost no fatalities." 

  "People have been dying?" 

  "Yah.  Happens everyday.  Don't they even teach you that in schools here?" 

  "We call it a fatality when some asshole makes a girl do anything against her will." Crossed her arms over well endowed only with breasteses. 

  "And we're the party crashers," one guy said as a few joined the talking. 

  One ripped open a can of beer and drank it in one gulp.  "Belch, TO THE ISLAND." 

By then everything had been gridded.

  Up, down, forward, and backwards.  Artists had done ballets and installations and games on such imposition on free will, freedom, and homesoil. 

  It wasn't that people weren't believing each other and evidence (as well as destroyed evidence), it became matters of Affairs.  Each topic and bracket of information was put through human and machine tests to press the "minds" to coordinate and generate possible outcomes.  Trajectories and impacts were routinely discovered.  As well, moods and discernible characteristics of people about to use certain equipment and hardware and software.

  Tensions around greatly debated stuff eased and tightened, waxed and waned.  A lot of matters that had been tabled and shelved reappeared on the scene with many more pairs of eyes and sounding boards for ideas. 

  There were known hot spots of fighting and fighting's consequences.  And the list of unknowns dwindled into sources of power for some.  Just loss for others. 

  The work of getting un-infiltrated from farm to big city politics sort of resettled as old Continent impressionistic work.  More "moderates" and defending the "grind" that at least keeps it from being anarchy. 

  "Last one," a group of Surveyors allowed some people hungry for hiking to have some insight into how does it work.  How can computering need human observation?  How can a phone be a map? 

  A person already hot and bothered walked into the center of a square.  There happened to be a shade spot there, so person just sat.  Gadgets whirred to work, so to speak, and wallah, like magicians people had real time coordinates of the gridsquare.  Even directions to get there.  Person fell asleep.  Day moved on. 

  Sometime in the middle of the night, people who analyze data and meaning realized...something up above is not ours.  And that something was using the information to at least try and manipulate geographic, political, and cultural doings.

"I would neither like nor dislike this recommendation,"

  was furiously being typed as a father was trying to explain to a daughter about Colonials.  About how the trained and paid mercenaries outdid farmland militia by killing eldests and 

  Shit, shit the daughter looked at the countdown timer she had been given by a thug in a costume.  "Okay Daddy, you know I love you and all my moms, relatives, she took off a high heeled boot to reveal barefoot. 

  "That had to be the footprint in the dust back there," three counselors got shocked and awed looks.  "The one on the seventeenth floor?" A slow, painful nod.  "Where the Ibeams were sticking out?" 

  Aha, that building, another person said into a sat phone, then waved.  A red laser beam waivered onto the rooftop.  "Next one stings," the radios somewhere said. 

  The daughter was unzipping the back of a fancy black pantsuit.  "But nobody in your generation is taking this seriously." She back-stepped up onto the ledge.  "And I have to.  This is about the last hair of defense between the people I love and REAL EVIL.  DEFENDING" she untangled a push button wand from the sleeve of the pantsuit, "Our COUNTRY 

  "HeLLO!  REMEMBER US?  SHE WAS showing us some real estate." Dazed tourist-looking people wandered out of an arch covering over a steel ladder chute. 

  "It was always going to be between the movies and politics," she pressed the button but nothing happened.  She told her watch, "I'm coming down." The father's face blanched and he gripped his chest.  She almost went towards him, but stood ground.  Ripped off the pantsuit and little wings seemed to pop out of her armpits or the pit area of a secondary suit-type outfit.  She looked at the watch, took it off, as well as pulling the wand-tube from the inflator hole of the suit. Beckoned a person over, instructed, hold these

  And stepped off the ledge into a breeze that spun her.

  A cell-phone rang.  "I need to speak to...this is she...jumped off the top of the building in a flying squirrel suit...okay...not really.  Inventor's last words were, guy who showed up to test it got taken."

We'd made it to the barricades like

  fish in a fishbowl.  

  Breathe.  Breathe.  You're the last person I need dead right this minute, whack translated into a thud way down under a vest.  A cracking sound in the earpiece.  Dead, dead reverberated with the echoes of machine gun fire.

  Then total silence.  Everybody slightly on the move stiffened into a nest of coral.  The amplified soundscape blared a cigarette being crushed out by a foot atop pulverized building materials.  We wait.

  Like a magazine centerfold the seperatists had turned the whole scene inside out.

"This is very different," one envoy

  said to another envoy.  "How different?" The one opened a rolling suitcase and took out a stack of reports a foot and a half thick, put it on the man's lap.  "And that's just since the disruptions in budget cycle." 

  "I can't even read.  Don't know why you just put all that there." 

  "Our time assessing is over." 

  "What will you do now?" 

  The man sat in a chair beside the lap-laden man.  "Well, let's see, political shitstorm at homeplate," he ticked off reasons to just get lost for a minute on his fingers.  The fourth finger was made into a hook as he described the pathetic state of neighborhoods the world over.  "That's the bottom of my foodbowl," he stroked the crook of his finger.  "I don't own, don't plan to, and eat on the fly.  Between the drugs and violence more than an okay percent is making even getting lost an impossibility." 

  A woman walked up. 

  "Where you been all my life?" One asked. 

 "I was up at the big Courthouse waiting on decisions when people came and had to rearrange everybody in the building because their Directory made them sitting ducks ever since 

  "Spare me the details." 

  "You want some lunch?" The man put the pounds of paperwork into a briefcase sachel that then looked like it had swallowed a medium sized mammal.

After September 11th happened being

  involved with "governance" at any org was quite different than it had been before that attack.  In Academia and non-profits there was a period of seemingly complete disjointedness as each layer of to-be-addressed was readied for "surgery".  People used the many hats of personality and skill sets to peruse, criticize, discuss, analyze, and fight for how rules and guidance should be expressed.  How to reinforce appropriate-to-situation-behavior. And there was lots of observance of how selves and groups navigate.  

  We were all contending with stationary and moveable parts.  And we were not all interested in doing things the same way. 

  "What's your mission statement?" 

  "How was your reconn different after the Guidelines were updated?" 

  The editors had come out of their lodgings after coffeetime together and peppered everyone around with group questions.  "Not everybody in this group is doing the same thing," said a woman with a tangled beehive of hair on her head.  "Oh?" One editor said.  

  "Looks like you've been in the wind tunnel," the other said. 

  "There's a wind tunnel?" Someone asked. 

  "Would you like a tour? That can be arranged." Several people were enthusiastic.

"There's a high level of shmooze,"

  a guy of our generation had snagged a bowl of nuts and chips.  "We'll stay in here," our Spokesperson announced.  Reaching for snacks turned into a tower of hands USA strong.

  Our parents' generation were on the razor thin sometimes line between deciding their own fates and being swept along in political tide.  

  "She's too moody," ice being rocked side to side in a cranberry and vodka drink. 

  "It won't be that," lawyers assured. 

  "Turn this way," a paparazzi ordered.  Drinks hastily put down.  "Let's have a tour of the grounds, shall we?!" Arm hooks and holding backs.  "Not really associated with them," an inner core of Republicanism.  "Must be lonely," the man with the starting to sag face seemed to look at the drinks left behind and see only a challenge to tying it all together...like people roped together on a plank. 

  Scatter.  Then in their line of fire, with the cameras, freeze.  Team Captain said to if we get caught.  "Why is your leg doing that?" A dismissive look to a surprised look screwing itself into feeling sad.  "It just drags and stops working times." Tallest boy butt-wiggled over.  "Okay, you freeze first." A nod, good plan if I 

  Can make it that far 

  You can, yeah? 

  Yah! Can, can 

  CAN, WE CAHN 

  LIKE TREES WE SCULPT but for the rage

  "Good day Mother," hand gesturing WTF?!  "DON'T" smacking helping hands away "Don't mind us, trees, our 

  "Director, oh director..." 

  It was then we knew something more about poverty's effects and the shape of a pocket 'round bout, where...

  Our tiny ship hadn't moved but we'd been around the world in a minute.  Talk if you can, we'd tell our guests, the lamed and frozen and "Yah ony cover'd in dis,""'Ee shmells," Ah, de winO, ticked off the list if LOST AND FOUND.  "When?" 

  Distractions so a peek at a working watch.  "When the lad's brother camed to claim him for me mother." 

  "Got it.  Children, children." 

  "Go wi daht one.  Wote dis book." 

  "Follow that RAINBOW!"  People closing curtains and tucking treasures away.  "Don't look." 

  The boy had trained.  For weeks.  And the day had arrived.  A nun in engineer boots and a white blazer and skirt blew the whistle.  Running in gunny sacks, the children hurled themselves down and down on the pitch.  Parents whooped and hollered along the sidelines.  Some threw down jackets and athletic bags and yelled to keep going, KEEP GOING.  Kids got out of the gunny sacks and asked about rules then returned and kept going.  Our mom and a brother had a strategy.  The race seemed to be in slow motion, set to the tune of Chariots of Fire.  "Now hop like a bunny!  Three more steps," she fibbed.  The brother had shut his eyes and was veering off course.  Too much excitement, once they shut he couldn't fit in opening them.  "DO OVER! DO OVER!"  Kids started screaming.

  Inside the school building, still no litmus paper.  "What other Science can we do?"  One kid patted down his mother's coat to find, Oh good we've got these! 

  "Maxi PADS!" 

  "Let's look at cotton under the microscope." 

  "Won't you be glad when the teachers return from Overseas?" A substitute-only woman poked her head into a classroom and asked.  "Oh, I will," the mom said politely before turning and growling everyone into their seats. 

  "Why aren't you using your thinking caps?" A short male teacher asked the room of people tasked with a re-set.  A grown up raised his hand, waited to be picked, then told, "Our heads have been all over the place." 

  "Oh, I heard.  Especially this head," he plonked the gelatinous bust still sitting on a Science table with a rubber-tipped chalkboard pointer.  Then he poked it.  He was drawn into "the art as science project" by the immovability of the object.  "Would you like to explain?" He asked a woman in a paint smeared male shirt.  "I can," was all she said.  He sighed.  "How about a presentation?" 

  "Well, I 

  "Sometime next week?" 

  A tweenage kid walked to her desk and got on one knee.  "Willya steel be home mum?" 

  She mumbled that she didn't know what to say before putting blank fresh sketchpads and charcoals in a soap dish into a sachel.  She started for the door.  "Where are you going?" The male teacher asked.  "Did I say something wrong?" The woman didn't turn around and said, "I must go.  I have to get ready." 

"What are they doing?"

  She wiped the lick of mud off his face with a tissue. 

  "Just 'cuz you get to pick which story doesn't mean you can just takeover MINE." 

  "Did you just raise your voice at me?" 

  "No ma'am."  

  She gave everyone who came over little wrapped chocolates. 

  A thwap on the coverall'd arm and chocolate-y grunt.  "Start talking." 

  "Well, since the hurricane and all," one girl started saying.  But she held a hand up.  Took a tape recorder from her greencoat pocket and asked, "You mean to tell me you people have been out here since the hurricane?" 

  People looked around. 

  "Not exactly." 

  "Most of us." 

  "Why?" 

  It really was complicated.  Between the layoffs and housing shortages and people with sick relatives the personal whys went on until she clicked the tape recorder off.  "Now what's the reason for this story?" 

  Nobody said anything. 

  She clicked the recorder back on after checking to see if and how much tape was left.  "This is," stated her name, rank, and serial number, "In a Godforsaken swamp, near some damn dams, and..." Click.  "Okay.  Have a good day.  Good time.  Doing whatever it is you all are doing." She pocketed the tape recorder and started to walk back to the little car.  When she got there she opened the door and shut it.  Then said, "Just know you all are on surveillance." 

  A person hiding out from being a writer went towards the car.  "Her wheel is stuck n the mud guys!" Other people also moved towards the vehicle.  When there were seven or eight people someone said, "We've uncovered peat moss." Hand gestures had people surround the car, pick it up, and move it out of the mud hole.  She ignored that.  "So?" 

  Hand gestures also told, another person in the car, but people had started to go back to dregging the river.  Person sat up and got out.  "We can do the story or I can make a phone call and have you all arrested." 

  "There no signal," someone said. 

  The second person flipped open a phone.  "Did you pay your bill?  Mine's fine." 

  A man rested his butt on the hood of the car.  "Don't get it dirty," the first woman said.  He wiped a finger down a gaiter and scooped mud onto it, then wiggled a muddy line across the hood. "I guess I might could give you some details for your story.  What I won't do is get arrested again because everybody's got their PC panties on too tight." 

  "Okay.  You guys have fun talking.  We're outtah here!" One woman shot a hand into the air and two-snapped.  Some of the people literally formed a line behind her and they started walking towards the main road.  "What about our stuff?" One was heard asking.  "Just donations.  We'll get more." 

  "See this muddy line," the man said.  "This is the river."  He rubbed his temples.  "Got a map?" 

  "Somebody check in the glove box." 

  "Officially Army Corps of Engineers needs to know why some water flowed outwards from this area even before getting to the dam zone." 

"Where's the bus?"

  "Just act like you're in high school." 

  The first shift server slammed the dishwasher tub of mugs down on the bartop. 

  "That's what all the cougars do."  Three shots in a row and not quite "fat" fingers in all three.  A five dollar bill in the one on the far right.  He took it to the server.  She plucked the fiver.  "Maybe you'll get some sleep tonight.  Our gang's clearing out." Both vogued and did their secret handshake before the man walked backwards towards the swinging doors.

 

"Why is she here?"

  The voice was on the speakers up front even though the person asking the question was in a tiny supply closet. 

  "Not because I need to be rehabilitated," one of the Visitors told the speakers.  "It doesn't work that way," a desk person flopped a pencil onto the clipboard'd SUPPLIES LIST.  "Just go talk to her." 

  "Still mad at me?" 

  "Maybe."  She used a broomstick to push a box of toilet paper closer to the edge of a high shelf.  Four hands caught it as it fell. 

  "Remember like two summers ago 

  "No 

  "When you said 

  "No 

  "You said and I know you are always true to your word 

  "What'd I say?" 

  "You said we could call on you when we really needed you." 

  "Not whenever." 

  Three rolls of toilet paper out.  "I'm at work.  Put this back up there."  She exited the closet.

"DON'T SHOOT!!"

  "Someone threw the foot." 

  The foot went sailing through the air and 

  "Give me that.  That is not factual." 

  "Sort of." 

  "We'll meet up with you later," an Army person dubbed Queen of the Female Element pulled the hatch on the transporter closed.  "Do we have to?" Someone asked.  "Log these," she flopped a baggie of bullet casings onto a little metal table.  It clanked an absurd beat seeming to match up with the change in mood.  

  "Not sure why you're surprised Sir." 

  The senior advisor pushed the newspapers away from directly in front of him.  "They said to give them something." 

  "Not sure whoever they are meant actual toys." 

  "What else could we have given them?" 

  "Sir, I'd like you to meet someone." 

  "I'm not ready.  It's too soon." 

  "Not like that.  This person is different.  Has been griping about having been through Vietnam and now not stuck with, but 

  "Stuck with 

  "Feeling like," he looked at a file, then read, "We can't expect things to go exactly as in World War II." 

  The man humphed.  "This is a far cry from that level of conventional and orderly." 

  "See.  That's the start of a conversation I think we all need to have.  Can I bring her in?" 

  He picked up a newspaper and stared at the exploded bag of toys on the street beside dead bodies.

"How did the dame get so bruised?"

  The ice-melting slipped some shrinking cubes out of a sandwich bag.  People dove to clean up the mess.  "That was my last good shirt," an everybody's Dad said of wiping and wiping at the ice water on the gymnasium floor.  "Why is this locker room floor like the court floor?" 

  "They're new.  The lockers." 

  A man with a towel hanging over his shoulders sat on a no-back bench like it was a horse.  "My dad's generation lost this place once."  He sighed like the weight in his body was shifting.  "Oh my God, they did?" A young boy and girl started and finished the question together.  The man raised his obviously tired eyes and looked in each face. 

  "When it's a war, we can lose everything," the mom-in-law-to-be put her arms around the boy and beckoned the girl to come get hugged too.  She sat where her Dad's lap would be but for the bench. 

  "We'll see you at the restaurant," a showered, shaved, and dress-casual clothed man came from the shower area and said to the family. 

  "That's what happened in Germany to the Jews," he got out to scrape the windshield.  "What do you mean?" Blended with the roaring defrosting sound.  "Put the cigarette out before I get back in." 

  "Technically, they lost." 

  "I'd say.  We went to the museum in Philadelphia." 

  "I've been studying." He blew the horn.  "Goats.  At home.  They stand around anything warm." 

  "They lost...their democracy." 

  "Yes.  And then the Republic was up for grabs!" 

  The fog was stranding off and up from freshly plowed slush mounds.  "First, they lost their property rights and then themselves as property." 

  "Did it have to do with taxes?" 

  "In a way.  Tax base."  The curb outside the restaurant was being shoveled.  "We could've walked." 

  "Couldn't leave my property on their property.  Can't afford another ticket." 

  "Thanks," to a door being opened and a hand to help over the garbage in snow ice mounds.

"Because you stole the foot."

  The gigantic swirl of undoing in the midst of having to do sounded, at first, like quiet ambulances and soft shoes giving little squeaks of changing direction. 

  At first the person in the jalaba wimpered.  Then began to laugh maniacally.  "Another gone over the edge," a nurse told two male orderlies.  "I'll put it back sister." The laughing echo'd down the real hospital hallway.  The center where the tents had been joined to form administration suddenly had a rush of people coming in. 

  "Who were you chasing?" A security personnel asked the writer who'd come to help however I can.  Then she'd been accused of breaking the lock on one of the body part freezers.  Had recognized eyes, a faint scar on a hand.  Had answered questions from all nations involved in the decisions to disband as both medical reds.  And withstood accusations of being the thief who should be stoned this minute. 

  The woman dropped her eyes to the floor in front of the real thief. 

  "Is this truth?" A friend-to-all asked.  Another young woman rushed forward and ripped the black garment off.  The foot was tucked into a waistband of pants like a gun. 

  The tallest nurse grabbed the garment, ordered hands up, and yelled for a photographer.  "It needs to be a military photographer," an administrative director advised. 

"Why you huddle widt my Viktor?"

  Everyone jumped up and stretched and scattered themselves around the room.  "I gotta cawl my Chief Correspondent." 

  Outside, someone choking on a hardboiled egg.  A president giving the heimlich.  "I toll you not to pop those like candy!"  Pissed at more setbacks.  So smacking on back harder than necessary once the slimey egg projectiled out. 

  "Because." 

  "Because why?" 

  "Long or short?" 

  "Both.  But quick the Russians are waking up." 

  "We had seventeen frozen urethras. 

  "What's that?" 

  "PENISes!" 

  "Ouch." 

  "That means you girls need to stick with those guys." 

  "Yeah, okay but 

  "No buts, no sorries 

  "But these homefield girls think they own their team captains." 

  "Okay, there she is, let me get her." 

  Thank you everyone.  "Is this you?" 

  "It's me." 

  "What is your temperature there?" 

  The little thermometer blew in the wind as a basic fact reading started the work day.