Political and Socially Conscious Writing - A Literary e-zine: The Fear of Monkeys: Issue Twenty-Five

XXV

_PEGGY

A day or so finds Weldon’s son preparing to leave to return to his life—airport, Mary-beth, Vandenberg—turning to look at colors and sounds existing now only as a memory. He locks the door clutching, at once, the security of his things-to-do-list: moving company, household inventory, apartment mgr. , keys, rental adjustment, rent-a-car keys, his set of keys to his father’s car, the movers’ set and a thirteen gallon trash bag holding the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket and assorted fast food ware Greg and he used. As he locks the door he is confident his father’s soul rests somewhere in the peace their reunion at Seymour Johnson brought, more than just a thought or wish—but, real, a table or chair. His father’s Last Will and Testament and other documents he has reduced to files uploaded to his house at Vandenberg. Steve turns one final time to see in an act he thinks sentimental, movie star like, but, nonetheless reassuring. He then gets in his rent-a-car and drives away, a little lump in his throat, the thought somewhere, “ God will take care of the details” lending a positive to all the negatives that only more and more seem distant expressions of the time he’ll take to get back home to California.

The airport is busy as always, taxi-cabs and hotel buses, his rent-a-car making its way to the remote parking facility where he returns it to the man and pays. On the terminal tram he rests his luggage near a young musician’s guitar case, then, looking out the window at the jets climbing into the sky, feeling the loss still, but, comprising plans nevertheless for his own family and his own future. Whatever his mother knew had to be balanced now, he thinks, against…Steve starts to call but instead clicks his cell-phone, off, in preparation for the flight, by now, the tram bus veering back into the traffic of the airline terminal’s parking garage; and, Steve, standing next on the sidewalk near the curb noticing again like a flashback the guitar case by a time zone parking sign, the man it belongs to checking his ticket for the right gate, Steve prompted to do the same and then vanishing into the terminal and onto the escalator, pausing at once to get “in step” with the fast moving steel steps. At the flight gate lobby the lieutenant checks his ticket information time, his security pass and his cell-phone. Secure in their status, he begins the ‘wait’ until boarding—the corner of his eye reviewing the various signs of restaurant fast-food outlets that line the terminal hallway, one a KFC, his eye stopping and slight smile finding its way to his face. He looks as well for the guitar case of the fellow, he could by now identify, seeing, instead, like some interruption, an elderly Mexican security guard, both entities—case and guard—by the lobby restrooms where Steve reasons the owner must have gone in. ‘How guilty was the government of furthering the problems his mother and father had’ Steve continues to think in a kind of reverie looking absent-mindedly about and playing with his cell-phone ,and then, as the old Mexican guard takes an apparent tip from the young musician, waving the phone at both of them as though an instant message, obscure and meaning nothing, as now, both men, Mexican and guitar owner enter the KFC, the ever present case poised by the colonel’s pant’s leg of where the huge celebrity stands as a neon symbol of “finger-licking” goodness. No sooner are the two men seated, independently, than the guard’s walkie-talkie (its frequency and band acceptable in the airport) aims at Steve who, looking at his ‘dead’ cell-phone, like an empty six-shooter and back at the men, begins to feel the aggression of hunger. Down the hall, and, certainly, less obtrusive is a pastry, coffee French place. At the same time realizing he might lose his seat, he gets up anyway and is drawn into the distant setting like some kind of moth around a light. With less than an hour of waiting to go, he points to an apple pastry and orders coffee with an after thought, saying, “…ah, ‘French coffee’…please.”

A gas truck lumbers up to the belly of the plane Steve supposes he’ll be in, the man attaching its hose to a panel open with gauges to indicate amounts, and , no doubt, pressure, then, like a ditto, the Mexican, Steve taken aback, appears in the hallway, the muffled sound of a walkie-talkie communication generated and, then, at once, moving on back towards the lobby restrooms. As the lieutenant finishes his coffee, in review of the airport operation as it were, the boarding call is made, the lobby crowd of ‘California’ people lining up quickly , Steve relegated to almost the end of the line. As though at attention, the Mexican guard now waves his walkie-talkie madly like a sword, the antenna “biting” the air and, rather inadvertently claiming “10-4,…all clear…” just as the line begins to be consumed onto the plane.

Sitting quietly for take-off, Steve wishes he could call Mary-Beth; and, then looks out the window of the plane, the little gas truck still parked below and back, closer to the terminal, the French place, and, of course, the Colonel, the guitar case still intact, the young-man owner again nowhere in sight. Steve’s thoughts linger, merging directly into the drone of the engines, then, to the run-way, and, at last, the exhilaration of take-off erasing the past of the scattering and even of Dr. Mierzwiak’s call with the news—DEATH.

_XXVI

_PEGGY

In California, Steve—his step now more confident—is at the wheel of his own car, his own life, his own self, taking to the highway to the road home back to the life he understands and to his children he knows perhaps won’t be so unfortunate as his father. He stops at a gas station waving his Exxon transponder apparently fruitlessly at the Speedpass tiger only to have the prompter say “See Cashier.” Inside the station a huge black woman with ease waves the little black transponder to ignite the tiger into brilliant orange commenting that the outside pump Speedpass is disabled and asking if that will be all.

“Will that be all,” she says, Steve grabbing a pack of gum and then drawing a fountain soda, his mouth still with the aftertaste of French coffee. On the road Steve begins, as though momentarily possessed by some behavioral quirk, to wave the antenna-like- straw of the fountain drink at not just himself, but, giggling kind of crazily, at passing cars. “The road home,” he thinks to himself, maneuvering the car to the ramp sign VANDENBERG AFB, no distance given, no time prescribed, like a random note in huge green, holding the wheel now with one hand and unraveling in all his freedom a stick of gum with the other. “The road home,” “the road home,” a voice seems to say, “THE ROAD HOME,” when, like some dark shadow, a glass-like plastic truck passes on the left with what appears to be a load of guitar cases. Steve bites at his straw and lets the truck get way ahead not really wanting to see whatever it is being revealed. Through Santa Barbara and closer and closer back home the day is now a mere ditto to the Pacific ocean; he fuels again and resumes his journey to the Air Force Base, the white streak of a jet now and then appearing high in the sky and far, far away. When another green sign appears—VANDENBERG AFB 17 MILES—Steve reaches for his cell-phone, then, better, he thinks, he’ll surprise his family, suddenly lodged in time and space, a kind of time traveler, perhaps, or better yet, a stranger, armed and dangerous. He reaches for the fresh fountain soda he got in Santa Barbara and begins to pull furiously on the straw , the soda simultaneously drained past almost the half-way mark. At last in time appears the guard house and entrance to the base. Steve presents his I.D. and on signal drives onto the base towards officer housing. Wondering now, home at last, what a blue U.S. Govt. car is out front he presents himself , at once, extending his cell-phone antenna, as he sees Mary-Beth and, shocked, Steve Rueger and Gary P. They all eventually find themselves in the family room-kitchen area, when Mary-Beth, prompted by Rueger, announces glumly:

“Steve your mother is dead—someone assaulted her in their home in San Juan, raped her and then, …” she breaks into tears, sobbing, while Steve looks at Rueger.

“Steve.”

“Yea,” the lieutenant says.

“They hung her.”

“What,” he replies taken back and beginning to absorb the iinformation at first sitting down and then noticing his cell-phone is turned to ‘off’ , starting to call.

“This is impossible! First, dad ,and now.. When did all this happen?”

“Her husband left for work around 8:00 A.M. and whoever did it gained entry about 8:15 so around, oh, 10:00 o’clock this morning. We tried to call you, then, realizing you were on the plane…”

Steve is in shock still thumping his cell antenna and looking at the ceiling of the room. But she, I, …we have a case, Greg…”

“What!” Rueger looks at him inquisitively.

“Nothing.” Steve says…muttering, “conspiracy,” and, then, significantly, switching his phone to “ON” at once walking outside onto the veranda and looking into the sky as if not to notice anyone except the clouds far away. The children surround Mary-Beth like so many book ends, while Steve Rueger and Gary P. find ways to say the same things Weldon’s son knows already.