Incompleat Iconoclast » War

Exercise #22: Lead Line: “I was so tired that night, I fell asleep with my clothes on…”

Edward F. Gumnick — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:15:48 +0000

Contrary to every science fiction or horror movie stereotype, they came at about 11:30 in the morning, not in the dead of night. I guess, strictly speaking, it was the dead of night somewhere, because they touched down simultaneously in at least three dozen places around the globe. But it was 11:30 a.m. here, and the last thought I remember having before I heard the shriek of something very large braking in the atmosphere was, “I should think about lunch.”

And then, like everyone else, I raced out of the building to find out what was making that awful noise, and I saw a huge gray cylinder streak across the sky pushing a wave of white heat ahead of it, trailing a stream of white vapor. It slowed noticeably as I watched. The sound of its passage diminished until all that was left was the whoosh of its maneuvering jets as it came to hover over somewhere just west of downtown, then settled toward the ground, where I lost sight of it behind the treeline.

Then silence for a moment, and then a lot more noise of a more chaotic variety—many smaller engines as the tactical craft spewed out of ports on the top of the mother ship. I only know some of these details because Dennis was close enough to see it, and he told me about it later when I met him scavenging in the ruins of a shopping center near my house. I only heard the noise, the rising and falling whines of the small scout ships and fighters whizzing in all directions, criss-crossing the sky and taking out the utility and communications systems with their strange weapons. I hadn’t had a clear moment to try my cell phone, and now that I thought to do so, it showed “No signal.” I thought of Jana, somewhere on the far side of where the big ship had landed, out of contact and alone with the baby.

The nimble flying machines raced back and forth in no discernible pattern, firing staccato pulses of a pale golden light in all directions. Occasionally, a larger craft would emit a pulse that rattled the windows of my office building. I ran back inside. The receptionist had abandoned her desk like everyone else. I picked up the handset of her phone, but the line was dead. The power was out. Even the second hand of the battery-operated clock on the wall behind her desk was stopped. I raced back to my own office and grabbed my car keys, then ran back out to where my car was parked by the curb. I hopped in, shoved the key in the ignition, and turned it, but as I feared, nothing happened.

As I’d been watching the arrival of the invaders and the first wave of their assault, I’d been dimly aware of activity all around me. The other inhabitants of the office suite I shared had been running back and forth in a noisy panic, in and out of the building, back and forth to their cars. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the screams and shouts, but now I suddenly noticed the silence as the assault force moved off in another direction. I was surprised to find I was alone on the street. I suppose that most of my co-workers had gone to find hiding places, or run off to look for help.

I thought for a moment. I went back into the building. Under the sink in the kitchen, there were some empty plastic gallon jugs. I was glad to see that there was still enough water pressure to fill them; with the electricity out, that wouldn’t last for long. I filled all five, but could only reasonably plan to carry two. I left the other three on the counter next to the sink.

To be continued….

Note: Today’s assignment was to use the line “I was so tired that night, I fell asleep with my clothes on….” This story is headed toward a place where that line would fit, but it didn’t make it there before my allotted time for the assignment ran out.

50/50 Exercise #34: Lead Line: “Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking…”

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:49:36 +0000

Tonight his comrades are patrolling up near the logging camp. They haven’t taken Klein along because it’s a dangerous assignment, and he’s still worth too much to them as a hostage, even though they—and he—have long since stopped thinking of him primarily as a hostage.

He stays in the camp and cooks a bland meal of corn cakes and red beans to keep himself busy, and so his captors will have something warm to eat when they return from their reconnaissance mission in the cold, damp hills. He warms the canned beans a little over a propane stove and cooks the corn barely long enough to get rid of the raw taste. They can’t spare the gas for more than one hot meal a day.

The captain has assigned Miguel to guard him tonight. Miguel is the youngest of the fighters, smooth-skinned and timid and, Klein suspects, somewhat mentally challenged as a result of either inbreeding or malnutrition, both of which are common among the mountain tribes. At regular intervals, the teen swaggers into the tent with his rifle gripped tightly in both hands, but when the white man makes eye contact, he sees a mixture of admiration and confusion. When Klein offers him a plate, Miguel leans his gun against a crate, sits cross-legged on the bare dirt, and shovels the food into his mouth with his filthy fingers. Between mouthfuls, the boy grins up at Klein and nods with appreciation.

They hear a muffled shout from the direction of the uphill trail. Miguel jumps to his feet, snatches up his rifle in one hand, and holds the plate of food in the other. As Klein takes the plate from the boy, he notices that the hand that holds it is trembling. He tucks the dirty dish out of sight among the cartons of supplies. Miguel composes himself and pushes aside the flap of the tent.

Note: The assignment was to use as a starting point the line, “Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking…,” which is the first line of the poem “This Hour and What Is Dead” by Li-Young Lee. I didn’t know what to do with that line, but it inspired my own first line and this beginning of a story about a kidnap victim who is coming to sympathize with his captors.

See also Exercise #35 and Exercise #48.

50/50 Exercise #24: Siblings

Edward F. Gumnick — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:26:46 +0000

My brother calls me a collaborator, a traitor—and worse. I ask him what he would do if he were the one responsible for our mother’s care. But he’s not responsible. What good are his principles when she is near starving and I don’t have the money to buy the medicine that might quiet her pain?

I take responsibility for the choices I have made. I accept the rations that they give me, although it is not enough for three of us. My brother lectures me on the subject of sacrifice. When he comes to visit us on a moonless night, he invokes the name of our father. I don’t need to be reminded of what was taken from both of us. I don’t want to hear his stories of heroism.

I remember a time when my brother still admired me. He would follow us everywhere, my friends and me—down to the bend in the creek, where we fished for perch from the mud bank. When I brought him home soaked nearly to his waist in muddy water, my mother, her face a mask of fatigue, asked me, “Jesse, what have you done to your brother? I told you to keep Marco out of trouble.”

Or when we rode our bikes under the highway overpass to the abandoned mill, he pedaled as hard as he could, trying to keep pace. I would hang back to give him a chance to catch up. My friends raced ahead to throw rocks at the unbroken windows along the crest of the roof. They had no younger brothers.

I can’t fight my brother’s battles. I can’t fight my brother. I have only so much strength. There is only so far that I can stretch our meager resources.

It is a matter of time until they find the man I have hidden behind the pantry wall. But my brother doesn’t know about our guest. He can’t know that I have sworn to keep this man from harm.

Note: The assignment was to write about siblings, either birth-siblings or chosen-siblings. My last foray into sibling memoir is still a sore spot with the sib in question, so I decided to go with fiction this time.

50/50 Exercise #9: Resistance

Edward F. Gumnick — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:02:50 +0000

When I am 18, I will go up on the surface to fight beside my brothers. My mother says that she needs me too much to let me go sooner. She says that she cannot tend the plot of hydroponics beds by herself. Every day she tells me what a good worker I am. She wants me to believe that she could not produce our quota without my help.

I know what she is afraid of. She knows that most of our people who go out there never come back down below.

I cannot wait until I am 18, so I fight in the ways that I have found to fight. It is not much. But I have read about the ancient wars, when our people lived on the surface, when humans fought against other humans over resources and beliefs and economic systems. Sometimes one faction was so much stronger than another that the only option for the weaker faction was to hide, to break things. I have read that even women and children kept as slaves could steal power in tiny portions.

I want to be like those weak humans who gathered together many little victories. I try to remember that sometimes our ancestors won impossible wars that way.

Yesterday, when I was carrying water from the pump to our plot, I came upon an unattended vehicle loaded with jugs of chemicals. I knew that the foremen account for every bottle. I have seen them looking carefully over the paperwork when they bring us nutrients for the beds. Once I saw them beating the boy who unloads the truck when they thought that the count was wrong.

I knew I would not get away with stealing any chemicals. Where would I hide them? There is nowhere that the foremen are not allowed to go. Two or three times a week, they search the room that my mother and I share with 10 other women.

So when I found the vehicle unattended, I took out the nail that I keep inside the hem of the right leg of my pants. I got down on my knees, and I pressed the point of the nail against the base of the little stick where they put air in the tire. When I heard air hissing out, I pulled out the nail. I leaned close to the tire to make sure that the leak did not stop.

Then I put away the nail. I must be patient until my next battle.

Author’s note: The assignment was to write a story that emerges from consideration of the word “resistance.” My young freedom fighter is living on an Earth that’s fallen to alien invaders. (Is that obvious?)

50/50 Exercise #7: Pick a Card

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:58:17 +0000

Loteria is a traditional Mexican game similar to bingo, played with a tarot-like deck of picture cards. In card number 34, El Soldado, I see M., my “ex‑husband” of eight years and still one of my very closest friends. Long before I knew him, M. was one of the thousands of Mexican-American soldiers from Corpus Christi, a native of the area where his family has probably lived since it was still part of Mexico.

The brown and smoky tones of the card remind me of a photo of M. from his service during the first Gulf War. He served as a specialist in the U.S. Army stationed in Saudi Arabia and worked with communications equipment during the liberation of Kuwait and the advance into Iraq. He’s told me stories of his service in that war—of the Russian tanks used by the Iraqi Army, which became useless piles of molten plastic and metal under American artillery fire. He talks infrequently about one of the few times that he himself was under fire, laughing off the experience.

“We just ran away!” he jokes. I have to imagine the details he leaves out—the noise, the smoke, the omnipresent dust, the thunder of air cover as our Air Force drove back the Iraqi assault with a disproportionate counter-attack. I admire the casual shape his courage takes. I cannot imagine being fired upon. I was never tempted to sign up for military service.

El Soldado’s murky background makes me think of the oil wells that the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, ordered set on fire. Some burned for many months before well-fire experts could put out all the fires and get the Kuwaiti wells back into production. M. has experienced some health issues—worrisome, but so far, not serious—that I’m inclined to blame on smoke from the well fires, or toxic ordnance, or maybe on the experimental vaccines that were tested on Gulf War soldiers. He dismisses my suspicions, preferring to blame his quirky liver on his intemperate youth.

In the photo, M. sits in the back seat of a jeep. He’s wearing desert camouflage, with a floppy camo hat of the style I usually associate with fishermen. His eyes, heavy-lidded and -lashed, always have a sleepy look, but in the photo, they’re squinted even more tightly against the desert sun, which washes all colors in the photo to dull browns, olives, tans, and beiges. His skinny frame accentuates his aquiline nose. His skin is walnut-brown from weeks or months of exposure to relentless Saudi Arabian sunshine. A thin adolescent mustache and the way his uniform hangs off him remind me that he had barely outgrown boyhood when he volunteered for service, received basic and specialist training, and was shipped around the world to fight for our Kuwaiti allies’ freedom—and oil.

Who is El Soldado? What acts of heroism does he shyly dismiss as duty, as cowardice? What horrors of war are preserved behind his stoic expression?

Author’s note: The assignment was to choose a playing card or tarot card and to write a description of the person of whom it reminds you. I like to be different, so I went looking for images of the standard Loteria deck instead. As soon as I saw El Soldado, the choice was obvious.

Even though many of my readers know M.’s identity, I’ve decided to conceal it here to protect his privacy (at least a little) from the general public.