A Sharpened Blade

It all started with an explosion. I was making my way through the middle of town, and there was a single engine plane droning overhead in the placid blue sky, and suddenly everyone on the street was looking up at the spreading burst of black smoke where the plane had been shot down. There was a long interval of silence where everything seemed to hold quiet and still, and then the silence broke with everyone screaming and scattering and trying to run from the falling pieces of wreckage and debris. No one could afford the risk of stopping to look to see what had shot the plane down, but as we all scrambled for safety, there was an overwhelming sense that something was coming, like the unheard sound of a thousand boots approaching in perfect lockstep.

The attack went on into the next day with random percussions heard throughout the night on the outskirts of town. The invaders started rounding people up as they marched through the streets. I was taken prisoner and brought to a bombed out Spanish church where they were holding several people. The ceiling had been broken open, exposing it to the sky, and there were large chunks of stone and tile scattered around. I was sitting on the floor against a wall with the other prisoners, all of us with our heads hung and the sweat and dirt and soot covering our faces. There was a metal grate just beneath my feet, and I could hear the sounds of people screaming out in pain coming from somewhere below, along with pleas for mercy that were abruptly cut short by the sharp pop of a pistol.

And yet, there was a strange benevolence about our conquerors, as though all of this were being done for our benefit, trimming the weak from our population and honing us like a sharpened blade. A rosy blonde secretary smiled as she handed out blankets to the prisoners that were herded past her in a line, and the officer overseeing the distribution of the blankets patted each prisoner warmly on the back and leaned close to whisper smooth words of comfort to them as they took their blankets and nodded their feeble and terrified thanks before being ushered away to whatever awaited them off somewhere in the dark.

When the moment came for me to step up and take my blanket and this coarse lump of folded brown fabric was laid across my hands and I felt that tender thump against my shoulder, I was determined not to play the part of the pathetic supplicant that the situation seemed deliberately engineered to compel me to accept. I stopped and raised my head and held my glare on the officer, my teeth grit and my jaw quivering. The smile slowly faded from the officer's face as he stared past the sweat and the dirt and saw the anger in my eyes. And then his eyes shifted away from mine as he made a gesture to someone behind me, and I felt the sharp crack of the butt of a rifle against my back, shoving me forward with my blanket to join the other prisoners who'd gone on ahead.

Little Blue Suit

I was at a backyard picnic, and a toddler in a dark blue suit and striped tie came toddling over to me with a smile beaming on his chubby round face, exclaiming that I was his "best friend" and reaching his arms out wide for me to catch him. I knew that this was my son, a son that I had never had, as though he had toddled his way out of some other life that I had never lived. Everyone turned in surprise as he called out to me, and they chuckled over what he had said. I scooped him up as he came to me, and I hoisted him up by my shoulder so that he could see over everyone's heads to a spot in the shade of the house where the hosts of the party were releasing dozens of red and yellow balloons into the air. As the balloons sailed up into the clear blue sky, the boy tapped me on the back of the head with his little hand to get my attention, and he pointed towards the balloons with his stubby finger, and he nudged my chin trying to get me to look, and I turned and squinted as the balloons sailed past the glaring afternoon sun.

There was something in these gestures, this tapping on the back of the head, this nudging of my chin, that gave me a glimpse of the man he would become. I knew that over time, he'd get bigger and older and come to match me in height and stature, and there would be those grudges between us, as there tends to be with fathers and sons, something distant and awkward. But I also knew that this moment would stay with me, that open-hearted declaration of friendship, that gentle nudging of the chin, and despite anything else, it would always be between us. So we both beamed and grinned with the sunlight in our eyes, and we watched as the balloons sailed off over the tops of the trees and the roofs of the houses.