369. Poetic Justice

Well, he was a pretty good imitation of the kid Anthony in the famous Twilight Zone episode called It’s a good life. Only he had orange hair for some reason. It was going to be a long morning. As the sky lightened, I thought of all the sunrise services that folks were attending this Easter morning, at least the true believers among the Christians. But I had to deal with Anthony, or C.W. if you prefer.

He was reading from a book and taking notes. Oh, and he was muttering to himself. He looked up as I walked in, pointed his pen at me, and said, “I don’t like poetry. Poetry is a bad thing and I don’t like it.”

“Oh,” I said. “What don’t you like about it?”

”I don’t like things that make no sense to me.” He pointed to a section of his book. “What does this mean when it says, ‘April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the barren sterile land,’ for goodness sake?”

“I think it says breeding lilacs out of the dead land.”

“That’s what I said. I don’t like it when people disagree with me. I can read for myself.”

I started to say something catty in return but a feeling came over me. “It’s good,” I said, “that you can read for yourself.”

“So, tell me what it means.”

“I think,” I said, “the author is referring to the ancient belief that the earth died in the winter, and had to be coaxed back to life in order to be reborn in the spring, reborn by the shedding of blood, human sacrifices in fact, hence the reference to cruelty. The poem was also written not long after a world war in which over 17 million people died. Quite a shedding of blood in order to renew the earth.”

“I don’t like it when your species sheds blood for no reason,” he said.

“It’s good that you don’t like it,” I said.

“How did they do it? This shedding of blood to make the earth come alive?” He paused. “That’s a pretty silly idea, isn’t it?”

“Very,” I said. “It probably seemed less silly to those who weren’t shedding the blood. But, to answer your question, there were countless ways. Sometimes they sacrificed a beautiful young virgin girl, sometimes a virile, handsome young man. Sometimes they had men fight to the death, and the winner was king until a younger man came along and dispatched him.”

“That’s stupid,” he said. “I don’t like that at all.”

“It’s good that you don’t like it,” I said.

“Are you making fun of me? I don’t like it when people make fun of me.” He pointed a small finger at me. “You’re a bad man, a very bad man, and your species is very bad.”

Seeking to divert his attention, I said, “Well, we don’t sacrifice virgins these days. We’re much too sophisticated for that. We don’t make men fight to the death, either. Why don’t you quit reading poetry for a while? Go talk to my wife about something.”

“She won’t talk to me,” he said. “She’s watching something on her television set about very young girls in something called a ‘beauty pageant,’ and she’s upset and angry. She said something about sending me to a place called 'the cornfield' if I bothered her.”

 

People who enjoy killing other
people are bad, very bad. - C.W.

See also www.wattensawpress.com
www.allhatnocattle.net
and click some ads, C.W. needs books.

“Oh,” I said. “Then maybe you can watch the one in here.”

“Good,” he said, “Let’s watch that show about wrestling.”

“I don’t like shows about wrestling.”

He turned on me and pointed. “I don’t like it when you won’t watch wrestling with me.”

“It’s good that we watch wrestling,” I said.

212. War

“Tell me about war.” Oh no. I hate it when C.W. gets like this. He assumes the form of a 12-year old boy and starts asking questions for which I don’t have good answers.

I said, “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know why.”

“I don’t think there is a good answer,” I said.

“Good people die in wars,” he said.

“That they do.”

“Then why do some of your species love it so much, including many in your country?”

“I wish I knew,” I said.

“You’re celebrating the beginning of one a hundred years ago,” he said. “Why?”

“I don’t think we celebrate it,” I said, “I think we simply observe it.”

“The delicately complex and understated inferences of your language confuse me.”

“The ‘subtleties’ of our language cause much confusion,” I said.

“Could that be one of the reasons you love war so much?”

“I don’t love war.”

“Do you hate it?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you protest it?”

“Don’t you have something you could be doing? Have you reported to the Falloonian Elders lately?”

“This War of the Entire World Number One,” he said. “Why did it start?”

“Someone assassinated an archduke.”

“He must have been an important one.”

“Not too important, but it set two countries at one another.”

“For revenge? Couldn’t the guilty country simply have paid the other what the man was worth?”

“The country wasn’t guilty,” I said. “just one person.”

“A corporation person?”

“No,” I said, “the other kind. Corporation persons don’t go to war.”

“Why not?” he said. “They stand to make lots of money from them.”

“Hey,” I said, “why don’t we go fishing?” He has taken up this activity lately and it has become one of his favorites, as long as I bait his hook for him.”

“So all the countries of the world chose sides and went to war because one archduke was killed?”

“Not exactly.”

“Why exactly?”

“Only two went to war.”

“That’s not the whole world.”

“Only two at first. Then there were treaties and alliances.”

He thought for a moment, “Things written on paper?”

“Yes.”

“The entire world went to war because of things written on paper?”

I thought for a moment.“I’m afraid so. Those dragged the other countries into the conflict.”

“Things written on paper?”

“Yes.”

“What was written on your country’s?”

“Uh …,” I struggled. “Our country didn’t have one.”

“But it entered in anyway?”

“Late in the conflict,” I said, “but yes, we entered the fray.”

At times like this, when he struggles to assimilate illogic, I swear I can smell electrodes frying.”

“I’m beginning to understand,” he said.

I was relieved. “Now,” I said, “let’s dig us some worms and go fishing.”

He ignored me. “Other countries go to war over things written on paper and your country joins in because it seems like fun.”

“That’s a gross generalization,” I said.

“And this current conflict in what they call your planet’s ‘Middle East’ that threatens to start War of the Entire World Number Three is being generated by things written on paper over two thousand years ago.”

Wouldn't it be nice if your corporation people said their
religion prohibited them from supporting war? - C.W.

I stopped in my tracks and thought, but I didn’t have a ready answer.

“The world may see a conflict,” he said, “involving the most modern technology, including nuclear weapons, because of words written on paper by bronze-age scribblers who didn’t even know that the earth orbits around the sun?”

I struggled hopelessly. “Well it may have been papyrus.”

He looked at me with true sadness in his eyes. “You really are a big dope,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, “I’m not the one who wants to go to war. I’d rather go fishing.”

 

Be sure to click some ads. I need that computer.

And check out www.wattensawpress.com
Your Pal - C.W.

98. Memorials

It was Memorial Day weekend and I looked forward to a peaceful time at the farm. My wife was off baling hay and I wandered into the back yard to enjoy the shade and a rum and tonic. As I rounded the giant fig tree, I stopped.

There, under a drooping catalpa tree sat C.W. in the form of a Prussian private of the World War I era. He sat tall and straight in a garden chair, his blond hair trembling in the breeze. He held a pointed helmet covered with heavy cloth. He saw me, drew in the late spring smells, and nodded.

“Herr Großer Dope,” he said.

“C.W.,” I said. “What’s up?” I couldn’t wait to hear. “You making a movie?”

“I am your distant cousin Gustav,” he said. “From Bremen.”

“Gustav from Bremen?” I said, playing along.

“I appear briefly on your family tree,” he said. ‘Geb. 1900, Gest. 1918.’ No kinder.”

I had nothing better to do than pretend. “Died young?”

“In my bloom,” he said. “I had the misfortune to be the last soldier in our company killed in the Great War.”

“On the last day?”

“November 11th, at the 11th hour,” he said. He turned and looked quietly across the field and into the trees beyond. “Reminds me of the French countryside, before the bombs came down and the trenches went up.”

“Tough break,” I said. “Buying it on the last day.”

“A dubious honor,” he said. “But far from the saddest.”

“Oh?”

“No, there were worse. On the American side. Our armies had ceased warring two days earlier,” he said. “We settled in our bunkers along the Meuse River and thought we were safe. We had no casualties for two days straight.”

“What happened?”

“Your General Pershing didn’t follow the lead of the other commanders. He wished that my country would suffer as much as possible. So he kept attacking until the 11th hour.”

“After everyone else had stopped?”

“Charge after charge,” he said. “We had translators on loudspeakers yelling to them to stop. That the war was over.” He shook his head. “But they kept coming. The Americans suffered 3,500 casualties the last day.”

“Sad,” I said.

“Some were Schwarzen, from the Black 92nd Division,” he said. “We thought perhaps your side deemed them dispensable. But then a white soldier from the 313th Infantry, I learned later his name was Henry N. Gunther, came through the fog firing at us.”

“What did you do?”

“We had no choice,” he said. “He was the last on your side.”

“And on yours?”

“They sent me out to retrieve the body of a dead comrade,” he said. “A lone sniper from the American trenches took his revenge as the clock struck 11:00.”

I didn’t say anything, just imagined the scene.

“Know how many American generals died on that last day?” he asked.

“No, how many?”

“None,” he said. “Know how many colonels?” Without waiting, he answered, “None. Lieutenant Colonels?”

“None?” I guessed.

“Same for majors,” he said, his voice rising.

We sat in silence for a moment as he subdued his anger.

“I suppose …,” he said. “I suppose it was worth it.” He stopped and composed himself again. “After all, our sacrifice did, as they say, ‘end all wars.’”

I turned. “Are you making some sort of joke?” I said.

He moved toward me. I looked into his eyes and, as I did, they grew larger and became two black orbs, large and empty. Then I saw movement. My eyes remained transfixed as scenes moved across like gray horses passing through the mist.

I saw a hospital room in Manila filled with Japanese soldiers laughing and playing baseball, using infants as bats.

I saw a field of frozen soldiers at Stalingrad, their arms bent at grotesque angles and with questioning looks on their faces.

I saw Marines dead on the beach at Tarawa, a picture withheld from publication for fear it would spoil the public’s appetite for war.

I saw a line of skeletal faces peering through a fence at Dachau.

I saw a line of soldiers being calmly machine-gunned in the wasteland around the Chosin Reservoir.

I saw a group off teenagers hugging the jungle floor in terror as mortar rounds fell into them in a lonely piece of Hell near DaNang.

I saw a mob of young Iranian boys, holding plastic “keys to heaven” and screaming “Allah is great,” as they charged through a minefield to clear it for their soldiers.

I saw the murdered inhabitants of an entire village in Bosnia piled like cordwood, awaiting burial.



Hans Leip, a lonely German soldier,
wrote a romantic poem during WWI that
was destined to become a popular song that
would endure for decades, Lili Marleen
Enjoy! - C.W.

 I saw a father running for cover, carrying a young son who was soiling himself from fear as the bombs began dropping on Baghdad.

I saw an Afghan bride and her groom explode into a bloody mess, spraying their ghastly remains among their guests, as a drone-bomb exploded in their midst.

These went away and the eyes became blank again. He turned back toward the green fields of home.

“Please don’t tell me,” he said. “That my species is the one making the jokes.”