Review of “Still the Monkey” by Alivia C. Tagliaferri

   Ryan D. Beardsley

The impact of war is something that, when experienced first-hand, will leave a lasting impression forever on the mind of a soldier.

Those who do not personally witness the horrors of war will never fully comprehend the impact that such an emotional time has on a soldier’s psyche.

Williamsport native and author Alivia C. Tagliaferri is attempting to help civilians understand the impact of war on soldiers and the issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in her first novel, “Still the Monkey: What Happens to Warriors after War.”

Tagliaferri, a history major and a 1999 graduate of Penn State University, said she began writing the historical fiction novel in November 2003 as her way of supporting the troops the best way that she knew how — by writing.

“My goal was, and still is, to help friends and families of veterans better understand how their loved ones may change physically, mentally and spiritually after the traumatic experience of war,” Tagliaferri said. “I’m trying to help society understand the mental anguishes and the awareness I’ve discovered through researching PTSD.”

“Still the Monkey” tells the story of a Vietnam War veteran, Dennis Michaels, who has been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for the past 25 years following the war. Michaels visits the Walter Reed’s Mologne House and walks into the life of Andrew Taylor, a casualty of the War in Iraq from a IED explosion that claimed both of his legs.

Together the warriors spend 10 days exploring the consequences of living with PTSD, the realities of survivor’s guilt, the morbid detachment of the “Body Bag Syndrome,” the nightmares and the pain that never seems to go away, according to the novel’s profile.

Tagliaferri didn’t start out to write a novel on PTSD, but actually began writing “Still the Monkey” as a screenplay.

After watching a television program on Vietnam vets reaching out and mentoring young wounded vets at Walter Reed and across the country, she found that she could better incorporate the present-day conflict, psyche of her characters and reach out to the young warriors of today and their friends and families as well as the older generation of combat veterans by writing the story as a novel.

Tagliaferri said that her passion for the novel began after visiting Walter Reed Hospital and seeing first-hand the reality and consequences of shrapnel and IED wounds.

“Reading reports in newspapers — black words on a white page — could not compare with what I saw at the hospital,” she said. “I will never forget that far-off look on the faces of the amputees who sat out on the hospital porch in their wheelchairs.”

Tagliaferri then took inspiration after she met a former Marine and Vietnam veteran who had been battling PTSD for many years. Although she took actual accounts from the veteran, the novel and its characters are still a work of historical fiction.

“The novel was partially inspired by a former marine who shared his stories of fighting for his country in Vietnam and of his 40-year battle against PTSD,” Tagliaferri said. “While the chronology of events in Vietnam historically accurate and the Vietnam veterans’ experiences whom I interviewed are recounted, many characters and scenes were created or dramatized wholly out of my imagination, as was the character of Andrew Taylor.”

Tagliaferri interviewed the former Marine and Vietnam veteran over a period of three months, developing a better understanding of the psyche of warriors and the life-long implications of PTSD.

According to Tagliaferri, the novel’s title comes from an Eastern philosophy that the mind is like a monkey, and that left unchecked or untrained, will swing from branch to branch, from the past to the future, never staying still long enough to live in the present moment.

“So the monkey is a metaphor for PTSD, as I’ve come to understand it,” she said.

She also uses the common phrase, “the monkey on your back” as a metaphor for PTSD as well as the Vietnamese zodiac symbol of the monkey representing great transformation and change.

Writing the novel took a toll on Tagliaferri’s emotional state as well, and she admitted that she had her share of sleepless nights while writing the novel.

“It was a cathartic experience,” she said. “I would wake up with nightmares. Writing the scenes that were very gritty, sad and dark, those are always the hardest to write. I would try and procrastinate those scenes throughout the day, but at night when I couldn’t sleep was when those chapters would get finished. Once I got it out and down on paper I was able to remove myself emotionally and get back to sleep.”

The finished product is now set to be published March 16. Although Tagliaferri hasn’t had any official feedback from critics yet, she has received positive responses from friends and families of veterans who requested an advance copy.

“I don’t know what type of commercial success it will receive,” she said. “But having those type of personal reviews really meant a lot to me. I also had a lot of love and support from my family and friends who enabled me to do this.”

Tagliaferri will do a book signing from 5 to 8 p.m. March 16 at Otto Book Store. She is currently working on her next project, “Understanding PTSD,” a manual that discusses how friends and families can best support returning vets deal with PTSD in a positive manner.

She also is looking forward to beginning her next book, which she said will be “a lot more light-hearted.”

“Still the Monkey” is published by Ironcutter Media and retails at $18.95.

Review of David Corbett’s “Blood of Paradise”

   Patrick Anderson

This is, in part, a political novel. Corbett believes that, despite the long and bloody civil warand the 1992 peace accords, El Salvador is still ruled by a few rich families who use rigged elections, corrupt police and unrelenting violence to maintain their power, and who are supported by the U.S. military-intelligence complex. His characters see El Salvador as an eventual staging ground for a U.S. invasion of Venezuela to oust President Hugo Chavez and seize the oil resources there. If these notions offend you, if you prefer to see El Salvador as a glowing example of how our nation exports democracy, you won’t like “Blood of Paradise.”

Nielsen and Film Profile

   Paul Liberatore 

“Congress is trying to decide how to leave Iraq and undo this mess that cannot be undone,” she said, her voice inflected with a faint Danish accent. “It’s incredibly important for everyone to try to find out what’s going on over there as much as possible. I think our movie is trying to give as wide open a portrait of the situation there as we possibly can.”

Director Philip Haas (“Angels and Insects,” “Up at the Villa”) shot “The Situation” in 2004 on location in Morocco on a minuscule budget of $1.4 million, which would just about cover the catering bill for a Hollywood blockbuster.

It’s clear that this film was a labor of love for him, Nielsen and the crew, many of whom were volunteers – technical people who were shooting the studio picture “Babel” in another part of Morocco at the same time that Haas was filming “The Situation,” donating their services to him.

…

Sean Penn, who has been to Iraq twice and reported on what he saw there, spoke at a special screening of “The Situation” at the Rafael Film Center for members of the San Francisco Film Institute. He pronounced it “very authentic.”

“What struck me is how real it is,” he said. “It brings the Iraq that I saw to the screen.”

…

Nielsen has another politically charged movie, “Battle in Seattle,” again an independent film, this one about the World Trade Organization protests, set to come out in the spring or summer. Coincidentally, she plays another journalist, this time a cynical TV reporter spinning “a corporate kind of truth.”

…

An Activist Returns to the Novel

   Randeep Ramesh

This is a good article about Arundhati Roy’s literary and political thoughts. Of note:

Sitting in her Delhi rooftop flat, whose dark tiled and light wood-lined interior the former architecture student designed, Roy says she has already begun writing the new novel but has no idea when it will be finished. The whisper was that it would be about Kashmir, the revolt-scarred Himalayan state, but Roy shakes her head sending ripples through her grey-flecked curls. “It is not true. My fiction is never about an issue. I don’t set myself some political task and weave a story around it. I might as well write a straightforward nonfiction piece if that is what I wanted to do.”

Of course, some novelists and other artists do create both accomplished and effective works that “set…some political task and weave a story around it” — e.g., Jonathan Swift in A Modest Proposal, etc, and Victor Hugo in Les Miserables.

Doing so may simply not be Roy’s talent or interest. But obviously it has been and continues to be well done — in myriad ways that function as “intervention,” to use Roy’s word.

Interview with Martin Espada

Demetria Martínez

La Bloga

Iraq in Books

   Michael Rubin 

The Iraq war has pumped adrenaline into the publishing industry. Whereas five years ago, few bookstores included any selections on Iraq, today dozens of Iraq books line the shelves.

That’s strange — no news of the anti Iraq War novel, Homefront. Or of any other such novel. I haven’t the faintest idea why. Maybe James Petras knows?

I think someone needs to propose A Practical Policy for the ever-vigilant publishing industry, both liberal and conservative, as well as for the liberal engaged novel award, the Bellwether Prize — which gave its most recent prize to a novel about the French and Indian, I mean WWII.

Oh, and we need a PP for Hollywood, as usual.

Iraq War novels — have they been banned? No. No need to.

Ah, well, what’s the point?

MAINSTAY PRESS

Iraq War Films: Fact of Fiction?
   Felicia Feaster

America’s most significant 20th century conflicts, from World War I through the Vietnam War, have been defined in cinematic form by narrative films, from All Quiet on the Western Front and The Best Years of Our Lives to The Deer Hunter. (These more complicated films, as opposed to more propagandist works, have come after the war.)

By comparison, narrative films about Iraq have been scarce. Perhaps this dearth of narrative films about Iraq may be that because the conflict is still so fresh, the documentary genre – with its trademark immediacy – somehow is more suitable. It also may be that in the face of the Bush administration’s once successful efforts to shape public opinion about and support for the war, filmmakers feel a greater onus in exploring the complexities of a war that the mainstream media has until recently tiptoed around.

This weekend marks the release of films from both genres, exploring the war’s impact: Philip Haas’ narrative feature The Situation and James Longley’s Oscar-nominated documentary Iraq in Fragments. Viewed side by side, these two films deal with similar content: daily violence, ethnic division, and the Iraqis’ uneasy relationship with American occupiers.

Yasmin Hernandez

Donna Hernandez     Colorlines

What is the role of the artist in changing the political landscape? How does your work do this?

For the artists who choose this path, our role is to expose injustice. A single painting cannot save anyone but can serve as a catalyst to evoke a change in someone to begin the work that can indeed save us.With my own work, I seek to fill voids with innovative methods of presenting the images we don’t usually see, but should. I paint brown goddesses because young women of color often have trouble viewing themselves as sacred. I paint mothers as saints because the everyday woman is worthy of praise. I paint freedom fighters because today we are taught that to resist is to be a troublemaker and that to go against the powers that be when we are in disagreement is to be ungrateful. I paint the harsh realities in a world that masks truth behind a bling-bling generation.

 Killing Our Troops Slowly: Deja Vu All Over Again

   Michael O’McCarthy

Twenty-five years ago, March 14, 1981 Jim Hopkins, Marine veteran of Vietnam, born on the Marine Corps birthday of November 10, drove his army Jeep through the glass doors and into the lobby of the multi-million dollar, showcase edifice of Wadsworth VA hospital, at Los Angeles, California. He did so to protest the gross, willfully negligent treatment given US veterans within the VA system. In specific, those veterans of the US war in South East Asia, aka, the Vietnam War. 

He fired rounds from his AR 14 into the official pictures of then Republican President Ronald Reagan and Ex-President Jimmy Carter. For emphasis he then fired his .45 caliber handgun and a shotgun screaming that he was not receiving the medical attention needed. Hauled from the hospital by law enforcement, he screamed into the cameras that his brain was “being destroyed by Agent Orange.” That sent both a shock wave and a wake up call through the US and became a clarion call to thousands of veterans who felt the very same as did
Hopkins.

…

In 1989 Oliver Stone made Kovic’s book into a movie starring a remarkable Oscar winning performance with Tom Cruise playing Kovic. But neither the Congress nor the Presidency changed the continuing ill treatment given veterans. Then under Reagan’s pet Republican successor George Herbert Walker Bush, the US launched Operation Desert Storm and its use of depleted uranium nuclear weapons. Vets came home from that US victory complaining of various kinds of poisoning, both from the depleted uranium and the suspected effects of chemical warfare allegedly used by Sadam Hussein’s forces. It’s called Gulf War Syndrome and the military and the VA immediately began denying any causal relationship to the vet’s complaints and those weapons. Thus, little changed. When we look at the scandal of Bldg 18 where the Washington Post reported that “part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses…” we know that nothing has changed. Today it is undeniable that those who mastermind those callous, destructive wars against the poor people of the world have the very same callous disregard for the health and welfare our working and poor people sent to fight their wars. In a nation where profit rules over healthcare how can one avoid the reality that this government cares not for it people but only the power of profit? It no longer can. The war against the people of South East Asia was a war based on a President’s lie: an attack on the US in the Gulf of Tonkin that never occurred. It is in that way akin to that of the current President; based on the lies of an obviously mentally incompetent madman far more concerned with the false righteousness of his crusader’s mission and as it suits his petroleum industry masters than concern for the American people. 

As the great anti-war movies All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, Johnny Got His Gun, Coming Home, and Born On The Fourth of July has proved time and time again: governments use poor and working people as their cannon fodder, discarding those that survive as they do their junk military weaponry, while the manufacturing engines of war, profit and outlive war. 

For over 4 years news stories have addressed the Bush-Republican cuts in the VA budget. Simultaneously, the dollar amount spent by Bush-Republicans has risen to an extent beyond any war ever fought, including WWII. At the same time the profits of the military-industrial-media complex have grown exponentially with the war budget increases. Simultaneously the number of injured veterans has outgrown the VA’s negligently conceived plan of treatment and as a result. This is in keeping with the malevolent attitude of Bush-Cheney…the two are married in purpose.

…

Fast Food Nation
   Daniel Fienberg

It was late September, and there was shit in our spinach.

That’s what the media was saying, spinning elaborate tales of improper cleaning and an entire crop of untraceable green leafy veggies corrupted with E. coli. There aren’t many conversations in which misplaced fecal matter is an appropriate segue, but in the context of Richard Linklater’s new film Fast Food Nation, it makes perfect sense. Eric Schlosser’s exhaustively researched and disgustingly detailed report into the way Americans eat and live didn’t seem an obvious cinematic target–it’s more statistics and footnotes than overarching narrative and sympathetic characters–but Linklater has become a man prone to unexpected choices.

In the past three years, Texas’ Slacker Bard has made a kid-friendly story about rock music in public schools, an Oscar-nominated sequel to one of his most beloved movies, a remake of a profane ’70s baseball classic and an animated version of a supposedly unfilmable sci-fi classic. Given that Linklater has succeeded more often than he’s failed, it’s no wonder that his low-budget saga of immigration, factory safety and not-so-humane cattle slaughter was still able to attract a cast that includes Bruce Willis, Patricia Arquette, Kris Kristofferson, Avril Lavigne, Wilmer Valderrama and Oscar nominees Greg Kinnear, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Ethan Hawke.

The result is Slacker meets Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a loosely structured piece of agitprop that demands a powerful and visceral reaction. Some people will lament the plight of cows and minimum wage workers, but folks on the other side of the political spectrum may take umbrage at what could certainly be read as an attack on capitalism and at the state of contemporary American culture. It’s an intricately told sociology lesson that concludes with a sure-to-be-notorious killing room floor sequence with enough sloughed off fat, bulging intestines and arterial spray to cause even the most carnivorous of diners to give a second thought to that Whopper.

They’re coming after John Doe Dimslow Junior at school. Now with the deaths of Iraqi guerillas and civilians and U.S. soldiers and private mercenaries mounting every day, U.S. military recruiters are having trouble recruiting soldiers into the “all-volunteer” forces. So they have to make it more and more a mercenary military of Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine troops to go along with the private mercenaries. They have to offer cash to kill: “$20,000 bonus for enlisting, $9,000 more if enlistees ship out in the next 30 days, and even better, $70,000 for college.” 

The big bucks tempted J Junior so much that he gave the recruiters the a-okay to come over to our home for a home visit. Except he never cleared it with Daddy-O, one John Doe Dimslow. So when those recruiters climbed out of their shiny SUV and came striding across the lawn and up the walk I met them on the porch with a twelve gauge double barrel sawed-off, and I ordered them to stop, to halt, to cease and desist. And then I asked them if they recognized what I held in my hands. They did. And then I stepped off the porch and pointed up at the sky over the empty field and woods and gave it a shooting off. And I don’t know if they were impressed none but at least now I had their attention. “Come on in, boys,” I told them. “Let’s have us a little talk. And I’ll just keep my friend here by my side.”  

Well them boys ain’t soldiers for nothing, I suppose, so they came on in, and we sat around the kitchen table with J Junior and his mother Jane Doe Dimslow and I had them boys go over the dollars again, and then I asked, “And how much does J Junior here get for a blown off arm and a blown off leg? I mean, does he get paid an arm and a leg for an arm and a leg that’s been blown off? And how many arms and legs is he going to have to blow off himself to get them bucks? And how much more of that oil money is he going to get?” And then I turned to J Junior and I asked, “How much of that oil money do you want, son? I figure now’s the time to ask for all the world and all to hear. Name your price to these gentlemen and see just how much you can get.”

And J Junior said, “Well, I don’t know anything about oil money.” 

And I said, “Well, these boys do. They get their share. Now you’ve got to get yours, if that’s what you want. Is that what you want? Oil money? And blood spilt to get it? You better get what you can now, I tell you what, because it’s going to be like trying to pull teeth trying to get any later. Them fat cats are going to lap it all up, quicker than you can pull any trigger.” 

J Junior said he didn’t want any oil money. 

And I turned to the recruiters and I said, “You heard the young man.” And smiled. And we all just sort of ignored any guns that had been brought to the table and the blood and the oil, and the recruiters went out onto the porch and strode down the walk and crossed the yard and climbed in their SUV and drove away. 

After I locked the gun in the cabinet, J Junior and I stood on the porch gazing out over the fields and forest, and J Junior said, “The money makes you think.” 

And I said, “Is that what it does?” 

And J Junior said, “It makes you think their way.”  

And I said, “And what kind of way is that?”  And J Junior said, “It’s the way of the killer.” “The killer thief,” I said, and I turned around as Jane Doe Dimslow came out onto the porch. 

And J Junior said, “And that’s no way. It’s no way at all.”

And it’s all over the dim-damned TV. All these phony political dee-bates that get me all riled up under the skin the way them warhawks get going and all. It isn’t nothing how they look, it’s what they say. They all say we got to destroy Iraq to save it. More or less. And to hell with anything else. To hell with riling up them mad bombers, which is what it does more and more. To hell with everything – they say, we got to up the firepower on Iraq to have peace. We got to break it to fix it. We got to smash it to restore it.

Maybe I’m missing the candle for the wick, being a John Doe Dimslow and all, but these guys are nuts gone mad, warhawks all, blowing up Iraq, blowing up Iraqis and using our boys and girls, men and women as the cannon and the cannon fodder both. Pouring gasoline on a bonfire, all so that we, but not me and you, can own the oil and threaten to cut if off from other folks, rather than just keep buying it like everyone else. The troops ain’t dying and killing for nothing, of course. There’s oil there! And power! And a WMD hornet’s nest is what we’re a-makin’, by a-killin’ and by a-stayin’. And somebody not no way related to John Doe Dimslow is getting rich. That’s what them troops are dying and killing for, as the place goes to the hell it’s being made into. And more than a few of them troops know it and are angry about it. And for starters we can thank the big dollar folks and politicians and big media types like the ones we see all over the damn place for making it so. 

But what do I know, old Dimslow?

Maybe I can find a horror film on TV to watch tonight or something like that, something a little less chilling than them warhawks I see on TV chirping and pounding away at each other like they are cannons come to life, each one eager to be a bigger cannon than the other. 

If only them warhawks could be confined there on the tube – but now I hear Iran is next for the blasting and smashing – and soon. It’s the whole planet and everyone in it that I get worried about, that I got to speak out about, that them two warhawks seem eager to set about destroying. They act like they’ll destroy almost anything to get elected or stay in power. And the thing is, it don’t, in any way, seem like no act.

 

 ————————————————————————

 (Warhawk Guns For Hire, by Tony Christini)

“Images of Tehran, Iran you don’t see everyday”
Video set to Cat Stevens’ Peace Train — by Lucas Gray

Why Commerce Is Killing the True Spirit of Hip-Hop
   Davey D

Academic Hip-Hop? Yes, Yes Y’all…
   Reyhan Harmanci

Political and Lyrical — The Politics of Hip Hop
   Walter D. Greason

Johnny Gets His Gun Again: Walter Reed Reveals Right’s Bloody Secret

by Steve Young

Author Dalton Trumbo once wrote of a horribly-wounded veteran in his 1939 book “Johnnie Got His Gun.” The story spoke of a WWI infantryman whose bomb-inflicted injury left him a deaf and blind quadruple-amputee who with his face blown off – no eyes, no ears, no mouth – had no seeming manner of communication.
 
He spent years of grueling despair, confined to a bed, where he struggled to develop a body-vibration communication with his nurse.  He was finally able to convey the message expressing a reason to live.  He wished to be taken from town to town, showing himself to the American public in effect, the true cost of war.  That  it is not enough to be willing to die for your country.  That if you choose to enter a war, you must be willing to become a living, thinking, vegetable for your country.

When the military and governmental leaders were told of Johnny’s wish, they turned it down….

John Sinno
Academy Award Nominee, Iraq In Fragments 

I would like to point out that there was no mention of the Iraq War during the Oscar telecast, though it was on the minds of many in the theatre and of millions of viewers. It is wonderful to see the Academy support the protection of the environment. Unfortunately there is more than just one inconvenient truth in this world. Having mention of the Iraq War avoided altogether was a painful reminder for many of us that our country is living in a state of denial. As filmmakers, it is the greatest professional crime we can commit not to speak out with the truth. We owe it to the public. I hope what I have said is taken to heart. It comes from my concern for the cinematic art and its crucial role in the times we’re living in.

“Behind the Curtain”

U.S. lit

Banks

Hudson

“A Trio of Post-9/11 Novels”

Addicted to War: A Review of “War Fix”
by Hueso Taveras

First-hand accounts of historical events – like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Joe Sacco’s Palestine and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis – established comics as a viable art form capable of addressing complicated issues with genuine insight and scholarly merit. In light of this, War Fix (written by David Axe and illustrated by Steve Olexa) comes in as a disappointment.

Lawrence Hill

The Other Hollywood Oscar Ceremony

Laura Veirs

“It is a long-time tradition in the folk tradition, probably in any artistic tradition, to borrow things from people and you feel like you’re connected with your forefathers and foremothers in music and that’s a good feeling for an artist… It’s really sad when people don’t feel that they are part of a tradition. And I think that’s particularly true in America,” she says. “We want to feel innovative and independent, brilliant and original and100 per cent on your own. To a degree I think there’s something about that that’s healthy, that spirit of pioneering still in music and art, and I think that’s why we are still influential around the world. But I don’t think you can make something very good unless you’re coming from being influenced by something, from roots.”

José Saramago

Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Slaughter City, U.S.A.”

By Andy O’Connor

The human toll of the fast-food industry has been a hot topic lately, especially with the success of the book “Fast Food Nation” and its cinematic companion. The UT drama department will do its part to inform people about unsavory fast-food practices by putting on Namoi Wallace’s “Slaughter City” at the B. Iden Payne Theatre March 2-4 and 6-9.

“Slaughter City” deals with the brutality inflicted upon workers in two settings: the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1911 and a modern-day meatpacking plant in “Slaughter City, U.S.A.” Laborers Roach (Gina Houston, a St. Edwards University graduate), Maggot (theater and dance senior Molly Evensky) and Brandon (theater and dance junior Philip Olsen) are caught in the middle of the brutal working environment and the hopes for better conditions promised by their union, Local 229. A worker named Cod (theater and dance junior Kim Adams) complicates matters by crossing the picket line – becoming a “scab” – and wanting to join the union.

In contrast to the grim realism of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” – which “Slaughter City” is often compared to – the play incorporates scenes of beautiful snowfalls and Sunday fishing trips, all enslaved behind the walls of the grimy factory. The factory is a bleak place with reinforced iron walls, little lighting and floors stained with blood. As the workers labor and labor, their bodies create an ominous rhythm. There are also many scene changes to emphasize the hectic nature of the plant. Sarah Davidson designed the set, and her interpretations strengthen the grit and magical realism of the play. “Slaughter City” will also intrigue the senses by having a simulated assembly line and a real fire to depict the Shirtwaist Company inferno.

“We sought to create space that could be expanded and contracted and convey a sense of the ongoing labor that sustains this country,” Davidson said.

The play was just as intense to the actors as it will be to the audience.

“From the actor’s point of view, working on Naomi Wallace can be very challenging, because her language is just as poetic as it is rugged and visceral,” Adams said….

Comments by William Drenttel

via Maud Newton

Also see The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

 

Then it was time. Mike lifted his gun, sighted, and fired. Aaron crumpled.   

And then everyone else opened up on the crumpled form of his younger brother. Nothing exploded off Aaron, no blood or gore, no bits of bone and flesh. Instead Aaron was ripped and cut like a rag doll with an infinite capacity to absorb bullets and be shot clean through. It got to be hard work, killing Private Aaron.  

 

One night, a few months after a rocket propelled grenade killed his brother Aaron in southern Iraq, Mike Thompson returned again to the Little League ball field where he and Aaron used to play.   

He scaled the outfield fence and walked through the dark to home plate where he stood in the dirt of the batter’s box, smack in the middle of where he thought they had all failed Aaron – the whole town, the whole country – though no one had forced a gun into Aaron’s hand, not directly. Instead it seemed Aaron had merely been taught, simply been encouraged to be a warrior right there in the middle of town, deep in America – in the shadow of the church and the old school, not far from the supermarket on the first base side, next to the car dealership in foul ground off right field, across the street from a bank, bordering a gas station, and a convenience store behind center field, an auto parts store on the other side, and a car wash and used car lot, across the road from the elderly housing beyond the curving creek behind left field. All these establishments located along the route their school bus had taken each school day, a block from the center of downtown – town surrounding, shaping, enabling the boys, Aaron – the student, ballplayer, young man, soldier, son – Aaron Thompson. That was what happened, as Mike saw it. All the town had raised, molded, recruited Aaron and sent him off with blessings formal and informal to legally fight an illegal, monstrous conflict.  

Did Mike really believe that?  

He saw no reason not to.  

Did he really blame his brother’s death on the town? On baseball?  

Not only. On himself as well. On everything. On everyone. On the media. And the schools. On the weapons manufacturers. The oil men. On the owners and their officials,  representatives, spokespeople, hired hands, hired guns.  

The town and surrounding area. It was its own place, in certain ways special to Mike, and in other ways, he knew, it was a place like many another place. It was America. It was the world. And there were plenty of city blocks not much unlike this small village block, all around the world. This town was an American town like many other American towns and cities. And a town like many other towns in many other countries, even, on every continent, all over the globe. Maybe in Antarctica there were no towns such as this.  

Mike stood in the batter’s box, stared out across the dark field. He was struck by images of the killing of his brother, of all who had killed him.   

Mike imagined a gun in his hands, his very own hands, military issue, automatic, a machine gun. And all the Thompson family came onto the field holding guns. And much of the town. And people from all over the country. And elected officials. And non-elected executives and owners. The bigwigs. The big owners especially pointed their guns at the people in the town.   

Everyone was present, gathered along the foul lines, people from all across America, all gathered in the ball field with their guns and flares and grenades.  

And Private Aaron Thompson stood off in the distance, in shallow center field, in a camouflage uniform.

They shot him again and again but he would not die.  

During breaks in the firing, people wiped sweat, took breaths, looked away, stretched, refocused, glanced at the big owners in the bleachers with the guns pointing down at the people – symbolism, hell, it was reality – and then they all resumed firing as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if their very lives depended on it.   

Aaron was rolled over and flopped around by the force of the impacts. Occasionally he struggled to sit up and any time he did he was blasted down again by bullets and grenade bursts. Once, he nearly got to his feet. Then the priests and preachers fired away, the teachers, supervisors, politicians, mothers and fathers, family and friends, reporters, doctors, lawyers, carpenters, farmers, service workers, schoolchildren, executives, them most of all – bang! bang! bang!   

That was how Aaron died.  

Then, for added theater, some big owners, politicians, corporate executives, and so on, flew over in military planes and dropped bombs on Private Aaron. Uncle Sam leaned out of Air Force One and shouted encouragement through a bullhorn, stamped with a sleek corporate logo. The members of the Supreme Court stood by, nodding sagely. Everyone that mattered was there in official and unofficial capacity both, in all their glory.  

That was how Aaron was killed.  

And the TV cameras zoomed in but not too close and the media crews flooded the field with spotlights but kept the owners offscreen and anyway the images would be edited and otherwise modified until it all came out as a story of noble death, in prime time. They got it on film all right – not that it might ever be shown in public until it had been transformed into the great corporate polemic lie, masquerading as objective reality.

Meanwhile, Mike saw for real, tonight, for real. The story of his time. Life. The bullet game that could only be stopped and not won. The killing of Private Aaron Thompson.  

Mike stood in the batter’s box in one of the darkest parts of the field and he stared at the body of his brother, this vision of the body of his brother, until it moved no more, and then with Aaron dead and motionless, finally, everyone shifted attention to deep center field where stood a group of Iraqis, very many of them.   

It was difficult to see how many Iraqis for sure. No one really knew or much seemed to care. A few of the Iraqis were lined up in military uniform, looking ragged. The rest were civilians.  

It was time. Mike and everyone else opened fire, and the group of Iraqis went down. An incredible barrage. Mike fired steadily, the crumpled image of his brother in one eye, the Iraqis fixed in the other.  

A few people walked up to the foul lines and fired rocket-propelled grenades. Then bombs and missiles struck from invisible planes high overhead, far out of sight, far out of hearing even. Boom! Boom! Boom!   

The Iraqis took it all like Aaron had, like rag dolls torn to shreds, cut down and killed, and killed, and killed again, until they went still at long last, not totally destroyed somehow, their images at least.  

And that was how it was done.  

Afterwards, everyone stacked the weapons in neat piles for use the next time.  

They offered condolences to Aaron’s family for the loss.  

To Mike, that was the reality of Aaron’s killing. And of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and of the economic sanctions and the bombings throughout much of the last decade and a half that have killed, by now, millions, of Iraqis.  

American history. World history. There it was, in the same vein as the slaughtering of the Native Americans, and the Vietnamese, and the many others at home and abroad. What else might be expected of the US, when it currently had military bases and soldiers in one hundred fifty plus nations around the globe and a military budget larger than the military spending of every other nation combined?   

Mike stood in the batter’s box in the dark and remembered a day long ago when his little brother Aaron had been struck twice in consecutive at bats, crumpling to the ground the second time, the twelve year-old pitcher who looked like both the whining commander President George Bush and the exuse-blathering funder and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi walking toward home plate complaining, “He never moved. He didn’t even try to get out of the way.”  

(If only they had not ordered the fighting and fully funded it! These people are the lowest of the low. Our “leaders.”)

Years later, after Aaron had been killed in an ambush and firefight in Iraq, after his parents had been notified, the first image that came to Mike’s mind was not one of Aaron in Iraq but the one of Aaron sprawled in the dirt of the Little League batter’s box.  

And soon came the image of Aaron and Iraqis being gunned down in center field – by whom – that came later.  

Mike stood at home plate. “We might have saved him,” he said aloud. “Saved them all. We might have saved my brother, Aaron Thompson. And everyone.”  

He told it to the night.   

The next thing Mike Thompson knew, a week later, a reporter called up and came by his house – and Mike called the reporter out and he began telling it to the day. 

 

 

 

One day the children went insane. All of them, under age twelve. The youngest refused to wear any clothes. If adults attempted to clothe them, the little ones screamed and thrashed and broke out in hives.

Children aged six to eight refused entirely to speak. Many were brutally spanked for this. Some screamed and cried involuntarily but none spoke.

Children aged nine to eleven reacted in one of two ways – half refused to leave their bedrooms, while the other half ran away. If the runaways were caught and returned, they attempted to escape even if locked up.

Since parents and other adults assault children every day and thousands of children die in this way every year in the U.S. alone, perhaps it was to be expected that the day all the children went insane, adult homicides of children skyrocketed further.

Scientists and other experts worldwide met to discuss this phenomenon of child insanity. Leaders from every nation gathered together. “What has happened to our children?” they asked one another in endless repetition (while also finding a moment to deplore the increased child abuse.)

For months, the children remained naked, silent, unmoved or in flight. Few of the children when they reached age twelve seemed inclined to continue their lives in a typical manner. This influenced some of their elders bit by bit – first those closest in age to themselves, and then a number of the elderly, and finally a smattering of people in between.

Eventually, having arrived at no definitive answers let alone solutions, the consulted scientists and experts returned to their pre-crisis work. And the leaders of nations went back to their peoples and proclaimed, “This is how it is now. The children shall remain insane.”

Immediately, all the children gave up their insanity. The runaways came home, the bedroom-bound went out, the silent spoke, the naked got dressed. When any of these youngsters were asked, “Why did you do it? Did you hear voices? Who commanded you to do these things?” children everywhere always gave a single cryptic response, “This is who we are now.”

 

One other unusual day, months later, all the children between ages five and twelve vanished from their homes. They did not show up at the schools and could not be found at any of their usual hangouts.

Mass panic ensued. Searchers went out, and by late in the day the children were discovered in gatherings large and small in abandoned houses and warehouses, in overgrown lots, in secluded forests, fields and caves, and crouched in camouflage amid nearby clumps of trees.

It was learned that the children had collected themselves with the purpose of deciding how to improve their lives. In addition to widespread traditional child abuse, the children had had more than enough of polluted air and polluted water and toxic chemical laden food. They had had enough of unavailable health care, and grotesque TV violence, and stultifying schools. They had had too much. And so they questioned – What do we do about the adults?

Get rid of them. This was the focus of many early suggestions. But soon this notion was put aside when several children pointed out that adults were good for some things. Like washing clothes. And providing food. Also, usually, shelter. Despite all attendant dangers.

Enslave them. This was a widely popular idea, having leapt quickly to the minds of many. Eventually however, adult enslavement as a solution to the world’s many problems was rejected as being impractical, given the current distribution of power. And a few children spoke out against the proposal as being not altogether humane. After much discussion their perspective came to be respected as well.

Punish them. This was perhaps the most heartfelt suggestion put forward for the difficulty of dealing with adults. Dissenting voices were at first few and far between. Then after endless, tearful and often bitter discussion, no consensus or near consensus could be reached, and so the idea of retribution was tabled.

Educate them. As the day stretched on, many of the children began to conclude that adults were simply incorrigible, that there was little or no hope of their ever reaching maturity. Bleak depression engulfed the children. All seemed futile. Soon however determined young voices began to argue that they, the children, must either give education a try or give up altogether. And who wanted to give up? No one. “We need to educate the adults,” a few children declared. “And we need to educate ourselves to be able to educate them better.” Much discussion and tumult followed. The lively day grew late. Children argued and squabbled and philosophized and analyzed. They pouted. Grew excited. Minds wandered. Thoughts sharpened on the issue at hand. They considered and reconsidered, all the children caught in struggle.

Eventually the adults began to discover their presence. Rarely did the children give up their gatherings quietly or easily. Nor did they return home or to the schools completely in the manner the adults wished, if they arrived at all. The children had decided to make their new thoughts and opinions clear to all who would listen, as well as to those who could not help but hear.

A number of groups of children were never found.

The returned children claimed that those who were missing were neither lost nor victims of some secret tragedy but had opted to remain in superbly hidden places of their own choosing. It was said that they had had enough “incarceration” by adults.

Were the children developing a secret government? Or a whole new way of living and thinking? Mounting concern among adults grew widespread, and amid no few shivers they began to mutter among themselves: “All is lost. The young have arisen. The center cannot hold. We are under siege.”

One adult claimed, “The gnomes have gone back into the woods, the faeries are escaped and once again ancient spirits are loosed upon the land,” but mostly he was ignored.

Meanwhile, the returned children continued to dialogue and act anew—the inevitable results of which they hoped adults could not help but come to understand and engage. If not, the children vowed they would again disappear to reopen intense discussion, to review all options, even the most unpleasant ones.

“We will challenge the basis of all things,” the children declared.

 

Months later, the children emptied the schools. Every elementary in the nation shut down for one week while children camped out on lawns and playgrounds or found other more convivial places to congregate. Much fun and good times. Singing, laughing, dancing. Serious talk and planning. Lots of play and purposeful action.

Everywhere the children’s demands were essentially the same: We wish to pursue our own interests. We wish to do what we find important.

The adults seemed baffled. They claimed never to have heard such ideas, certainly not from children. “How can children know what is important?” they asked. “How can children know what is of interest?”

The children reminded the adults of the progressive schools of the past and present in which every student was regarded as “a successful student, where there was no sense of competition, no ranking of students.” The students reminded the adults of the good Deweyite schools, of “education not in the sense of slapping paints on paper, but doing the kind of work and thinking that you were interested in. Schools where interests were encouraged and children were encouraged to pursue their interests working jointly with others or by themselves. Schools with lively atmospheres and the sense that everyone was doing something important.”

“This is what education should be!” the children declared.

“Impossible!” the adults replied. “These are the pipedreams of children!”

“We know it can work because it has! It does!” the children insisted. “We know it!”

There was talk of mobilizing riot police and the National Guard against the children. The captain of one National Guard unit declared, “Even if it means fathers and mothers waging chemical warfare against their own children, even if it means cracking a few unworthy skulls, we stand prepared to do our duty for the sake of our country, so help us God!”

But other security agents were not so eager to use pepper spray, tear gas, and riot batons against their young and so the idea was quietly scrapped, much to the chagrin of the President, and like-minded officials, owners, employers —most all of whom, it must be said, seemed to desire workers and citizens who would simply follow orders rather than exercise minds of their own.

Hawks in Congress called for military air-strikes against the children. Doves thought sanctions, cutting off food to the mouths of the little ones, would be more effective. The national political police—the FBI—attempted to infiltrate the young, but aside from a few exceptionally youthful looking teenage recruits, these agents were quickly identified by their bulk and their inability to fit in and keep up in the games. The children laughed merrily and made no attempt to exclude the spies.

Meanwhile, there proved to be no greater enemies of the young ones than fathers, mothers, and administrators. Teachers mostly sat in their empty classrooms, took roll, and did nothing. But the parents and administrators would not let up, hounding the children day and night, night and day. An occasional teacher, perhaps missing old times, came forth and joined in the harangue.

Finally at the end of a week, the children had had enough of this action. All across the nation, they stormed the schools and turned everything upside down. If it could be moved, it got up-ended—tables, desks, chairs, bookshelves, and—very carefully—TVs, computers, and VCRs. Nothing was dumped, spilled, or destroyed; the items were simply rearranged bottom-side up—a point to be made.

Then the children re-inhabited the schools and carried out plans they had made in previous weeks. They ran the schools their own way. Some of the young ones were surprised that most of the teachers, after a period of time and tutoring, seemed willing to assist in one way or another. But such progress was not to be sustained. The President called upon the military to reinforce the schools’ regular guards. Heavily armed soldiers moved in and patrolled every hall and classroom in every school.

“We will not be intimidated by strong-arm tactics,” the President declared in a televised nationwide address. He further noted, “This country celebrates Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, not Children’s Day, for a reason.” He did not elaborate on what that reason might be.

“Long live the resistance!” the children shouted. Then they were overpowered and restrained in traditional fashion within the school cells.

The media applauded “the appropriate stern treatment of subversive elements” in countless articles and programs and celebrated the President’s “expert handling of this treacherous situation.”

In this manner, order was restored to the schools and to the nation. The children were subdued. For the moment.

 

 

Just off hand, the guy could not exactly remember which fraternity house he was at or who had put him on the list. He was twenty-three years old, beginning his sixth year of college and hoping to graduate soon, but that was nothing new. Neither was his present state, jammed in a corner of the packed dance floor opposite the DJ and a row of speakers, clutching a beer as warm as his breath. It was time to make his move. 

The girl had red hair and stood catty-corner to him against the wall. A freshman, he decided. Classes began tomorrow, and she looked fresh out of her parents’ station wagon. She had the girl-next-door look he found so approachable. Her friends, the crowd she had come with, were shaking it up on the dance floor, while she drank steadily, watching them mostly, occasionally laughing when they looked her way after some crazy sequence of dance pyrotechnics. They were first-years, too.

She had danced some but mostly clung to her beer by the wall where she had been approached a few times and seemed uncomfortable around a few of the fraternity brothers who moved on. She tried holding a conversation with a skinny kid, a freshman not quite as tall as she whose replies were monosyllabic. The guy eyed the boy, wondering how he had gotten on the list to get in—must’ve known someone. The kid had a bad slouch and left the party entirely after he finished his beer. Other than that, she had slow-danced once, awkwardly holding her beer behind some guy’s neck, then blowing him off afterwards. Small town girl, he guessed. They could be tough. Or easy.  She had drunk a lot, slipping away from the wall, returning with a full cup every so often. At one point she had two cups, but somehow he did not see what had happened to the second one.

Now his own cup was empty. He felt dizzy and giddy, as usual, like he could burst out laughing anytime at anything or nothing. The driving dance music fell over him like a distant rain compared to the jam session taking place in his skull. It’s time, he thought, trying to slip into the “natural” mode that usually worked so well. He threaded through the crowd toward her as the DJ began a series of slow songs.

She was out of beer, which seemed to bother her for a moment, but then she said yes, she would dance some. Her hands went lightly against his neck, and her perfume was drop dead sweet. She had that smooth, silky-soft feel of girls that drugged him every time. By the second slow song she pressed sweaty and warm against him. She began looking for her friends. A thousand drunken soldiers seemed to march out of step in his skull. He needed to make his move.

Yes, she said, but her eyes told him no, and she was scared. Girls were often scared. It seemed natural enough to him now; even the eager ones, you could see how they bluffed themselves, trying to block it out, that fear.

She had brought a jacket. They looked and found it (blue denim ordinary as he had guessed) in a closet that they got hollered at for opening. She was lucky. He told her never to bring her jacket to a fraternity house again. She nodded. Could she get a beer before they left? He told her no and explained the open container law.

They left the campus district and walked past blocks of apartment buildings. The street lights at intersections dazzled his eyes and he had to go slow, taking her by the arm. She stopped him once and said she wouldn’t be able to find her way back. He would walk her, he assured. In a few minutes, she stopped him again.

I feel sick, she told him.

You don’t have to come, he said.

Lost and chilled now, away from the crowd and heat of the fraternity, Heather did not know what she wanted. It seemed they had come a long way. The darkened windows of brick houses lining the street frightened her when they left the lighted area of town. You don’t have to come, he said, but he meant something else, she thought. He held her arm almost like her father would, a bit stiffly. His apartment was just a little ways ahead, he insisted.

She had been intimidated by the throng of beautiful girls, women, she supposed. There were so many, and they were so attractive, dressed to kill, while the boys, men, maybe, were somewhat less made up. She did not like guys who looked too primped. She had almost been able to smell the sex that would happen later that night. She could see it in the eyes of the guys who came on to her, but this one had seemed different, even though he had come up to her during a slow song. At least he had not constantly offered to get her more beer. Heather liked that he was older and thought he probably knew she was a freshman, a first year student, they called it now. She couldn’t believe herself, classes hadn’t even started yet, and here she was practically wasted the last night of orientation. When they had danced he held her close but not tight, and he smelled like soap, which was nice somehow. He had not seemed as loud or so sure of himself like the fraternity brothers who had approached her earlier. He had just felt so good against her.

She went with him, shivering, despite her jacket.

An apartment building loomed up out of the dark, and he unlocked the main door, escorting her through. The lobby was well lit, and now that she finally got a good look at him, she thought he seemed tired. In the elevator he mostly stared at the numbers of the floors lighting up in ascending order and would not quite meet her eyes. In the hall, he stumbled once on the carpet, and she began trying to come up with an excuse to leave. At his door she almost said flat out, No, but then went in. He turned on a dim lamp on an end table next to the couch. Beyond that, all she could see was the shadow of a walk-in kitchen and the coffee table.

Where are your roommates? she asked.

Out, he said.

She looked around. Do you have any beer?

No, he said. Didn’t you have enough already? Do you want some water?

No, she said. He took her to the couch and unbuttoned her blouse before kissing her. It was something he always did, but then she pushed him away, her voice quick and stumbling. She wanted water now.              

He got her a glassful, and she took a big gulp, then sipped it, hunching her shoulders together, trying to close her blouse a bit. When he leaned forward and brushed her hair back behind an ear, she brought the glass up between them and took another long drink, so he pulled away and went to use the bathroom. She filled the glass a second time before he came back out. The kitchen seemed very clean and neat, she thought, like a stage.

I need to go, too, she said, standing up and moving to the bathroom.

 

When he sat down again, he stared at her glass of water. Something was wrong, he thought, wondering where he had slipped up. She reminded him of the girl who had gotten a nosebleed when he kissed her. Now he picked up her denim jacket, crumpled it and threw it back down.

 

The first thing Heather did in the bathroom was refasten her bra, then her blouse.  The light in the tiny room was blinding, it fed her headache. Back home, if you ever got drunk you just sat around the bonfire with your girlfriends and told the boys to go to hell. But at the fraternity there had not even been a place to sit, much less reliable friends to sit with. And there were so many boys, men, she guessed, so close. (Sometime during orientation, it had been suggested that they, the entering class, should consider themselves women and men now. Of course she had not considered herself a girl, but it felt awkward calling her girlfriends, women. And were these boys truly now men?) At home she had gone out with a few boys, but these college fraternity guys were not the familiar handful she thought she could deal with, coming onto her and ignoring her in waves (she suspected she had a sort of naive look that was as attractive to some as it was a turn-off to others). And the fraternity brothers were so sure of themselves as hosts.

Most of the other girls, women, maybe, seemed more savvy than her. They moved along the edges of the crowd and on the dance floor as if they knew secrets to some game she was not sure she knew was even being played, let alone knew all the rules and opportunities or how to keep score. She could dance all right but had not wanted to try it in the sudden sea of fashion, amid the alluring looks and layered perfumes, among the good-timing guys and circling sharks. Where had she heard the phrase, meat market? She had tried not to look at it that way pressed against the wall with her beer.

When—she didn’t even know his name yet—when he came over, he had seemed a little quieter, older, and not put-on.

Dance? he asked, shrugging his shoulders as if it did not appeal to him all that much either. By the second slow song, they were tight. Her whole body, drunk and heavy like her eyes sagged and hummed against him. He held her in a way that didn’t really press. He felt so warm and good and even smelled familiar, like someone she could trust. She looked around, but her friends, or at least, the people she had known a few days and come out with, had disappeared.

Heather used the toilet, then closed the lid and sat down on top of it. She waited and hoped he would fall asleep. The thought of him going at her blouse again made her nauseous. Maybe he would have been okay, she thought, if they both weren’t so out of it. She didn’t know. She didn’t know him, and she wished she were back in her lousy little dorm room now so hard it hurt.

 

She was taking forever in the bathroom, it seemed to the guy, and he had nearly dozed off, which was probably what she was trying for, he guessed. Eventually, she came out sneaking furtive glances at him. She stayed so close to the wall he thought at any moment she might slip back into the bathroom. Her blouse was buttoned, her face blank. That first-year face. She was scared. Sometimes it was so obvious it was obnoxious.

 

Heather moved slowly toward the hallway door. She wondered what he was thinking. She did not exactly want to have to race him.

Did you fall in? he asked.

I want to go, she said. I’m sorry.

He held her with his gaze. You don’t have to stay, he said.

That line again, that guilt trick, she thought, that insinuation that ran in so many directions. She said, You don’t have to take me back.

You’re lost, he reminded her.

I’ll be okay, Heather said and sneaked a glance at the door. She would leave without her jacket if she had to—if, she worried now, she could.

 

He rubbed his eyes. He picked up her glass of water and drank half of it. She really did have pretty hair, a pretty face, he thought, and it occurred to him that not many girls had seemed all that attractive recently, though probably it had just been his mood. When the girl glanced at her denim jacket, again, on the couch beside him, he set down her water and picked up the jacket. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to take her picture, escort her to a movie. He wanted to be seen with her, give her things he could not afford.

He wanted to take her to bed.

He looked at her jacket lying rumpled on his lap. KLHS Forever was marked on one of the sleeves. He couldn’t get over how obnoxious this seemed. It was obnoxious to come to college and still be such a girl.

 Goddamn, he thought. Let’s go, he said. She was like so many of them, more and more now—afraid to give in to what she really wanted. He gave her the jacket. She went immediately into the hall.

I’m sorry, she told him in the elevator.

He said nothing and watched the numbers of each floor light up in descending order not caring if his silence intimidated her. Enjoying it now, if anything.

 

In the street, Heather watched the guy stare at the sidewalk, and she followed blindly. The air felt cool and fresh against her face as it had when she left the fraternity, when they had walked down a street lined with rows of apartment buildings. Scents of perfume even stronger than the smell of beer, she remembered now, had spilled out the doorways and windows and poured down from balconies. Much of it still hung in the air. A gust of perfume thick and spicy had caught in her throat and almost made her cough as a group of girls, women, she corrected herself again, had walked by. They had been made up like Christmas presents, their hair, like bows, curled and tumbling loose and their tight skirts as sleek and smooth as wrapping paper, ready to be opened. Now she imagined their dresses and blouses being ripped off by the boys, men, she meant.  That was what you did with packages, wasn’t it, tear them open? She shuddered and tightened her jacket and concentrated on getting back.

 

The night was still a blur to the guy. He moved slowly, counting the cracks in the sidewalk, as the girl whose name he did not know walked an arm-length apart from him. He thought she relaxed when she finally recognized the campus district and saw a few students laughing and moving back to the dorms.

I can make it from here, she told him.

He watched the students going by in the distance and moving out of sight. He walked her to an intersection and stopped by a bench beneath a streetlight.

The area seemed deserted now and spookily lit, she thought, but she was almost back.

Happy now? he said, evenly, not loud.

Okay, she said, and then the guy pushed her and she tripped and pitched hard into a pole supporting a streetlight, the top of her head ramming steel.

 

After being released from the health clinic, Heather spent a few weeks at home, and when she returned to college, with special arrangements allowed by the university, she decided to take just a couple classes, one she had originally scheduled and a new one, a women’s studies class. For this she wrote an extra paper, a non-fiction narrative, to make up for the time she had missed. She hoped she did not mistake too many crucial details or overlook others. She titled the narrative “Orientation.” She turned it in during finals. That was all. Heather was glad to complete her first semester of college, and she looked forward to the next year.