53. Running Away

We were experiencing the “Dog Days of Summer” and I was going for a walk but not venturing far from the condominium. I stopped to watch the construction at the park across Ninth Street when a young boy of five or six years of age walked up to me. Assuming he was from the church school next door, I ignored him until he spoke.


“Mr. can you help me?”

I looked around. It is no longer safe for a grown man to talk publicly to a child he doesn’t know.

“Please,” he said.

“What do you need?”

“I’m running away from home.”

Then I noticed he was carrying a grocery bag filled, I assumed, with his traveling gear. I became suspicious but decided to play along.

“And why are you running away?”

“I’m tired,” he said. “I need some rest.”

“Tired?”

“Yes, Mama has me in two baseball leagues, a soccer league, swimming lessons, and a dance class.”

“All of that?”

It’s worse,” he said. “Now she wants to make me go to Vacation Bible School.”

“I see.”

“She calls it VBS but I know what it is.”

Continuing to play along, I said, “So you think your days are getting pretty full?”

“I’m so tired of doin’ stuff that I can’t sleep,” he said. “And besides …”

“Besides what?”

“My friend Tommy told me about a neat game you can play without any adults around at all.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s called ‘Space Fighters’ and you pretend that you and your friends are

Starship Troopers. All you need is some cardboard boxes and somewhere to play pretend.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yep. Don’t that sound like fun?”

“Indeed,” I said. “And where are you going to play this game?”

“In a place called the ‘One Hundred Acre Wood.”

“Sounds like a fun place to me.”

“And I could rest when we weren’t busy playing.”

“You mean take a nap or something?”

“Heck no,” he said. “I could read a book or something,” he thought for a moment and added, “Have you ever laid on your back and watched the clouds?”

“Once or twice.”

“I try to do that sometimes at baseball practice,” he said. “But the last time I did I got hit in the head by a fly ball.”

He paused and looked at me with this most wistful look. “Then they was going to kick me off the team but my mother and the coach got into an awful fight and they said I could stay on if I paid attention.”

“C.W.,” I said finally. “I get the picture.”

“What?” he said.

“Come on …” I started but just then a car screeched to a halt and a woman jumped out. She gave me a withering look and pushed the screaming child into the back seat. The car sped away.

“Suffer the little children,” a voice said. I turned and realized a priest from the school had been watching the whole affair.

“I was just standing here, Father,” I explained as I turned back toward the condo.

As I did, I heard him say to my back. “You are a most amazing species.”

Victory Over Drugs

Sometimes C.W. tones down his appearance and this was one of those days. He asked me to meet him at a coffee shop in our local library complex.


Arriving, I recognized him straight away. He appeared as … how will I describe him? Well, “Grandpa Walton” would fit as well as anything.

He sat at one of the large tables with newspapers spread in front of him and a large coffee in his hand. He peeked over the top of a pair of reading glasses and motioned for me to sit.

“They don’t have real cups in here,” he said. “They serve coffee in these paper-sorta things.”

“You don’t find real cups much anymore,” I said. It’s best to agree with him just wait for the conversation to unravel. Patrons were stirring about in the shop, some studying the bookshelves lining the area. No one paid us any mind, a fact with probably says more about library patrons than it does about the species in general.

“Says here,” he began. “Let’s see, where is it?” He stirred the stack of newspapers, looking for a specific item. I waited.

“Ah, here it is,” he said, pulling the selection in front of him as he adjusted his spectacles. Then he took a sip of coffee.

“This is one of those “bits from yesteryear” columns—from a county newspaper out in West Virginia. “Says here from 40 years ago,” he looked at me and repeated, “Forty years ago.” The he resumed, “ ‘… the County Sheriff’s department destroyed a ten-acre field of marijuana plants this past Saturday and arrested the owner as it continues the war against drugs in America.’”

He looked at me over his spectacles as if I had been the owner of said crop. I knew how a suspect in a murder case must feel when he takes the witness stand. He sipped his coffee.

After several seconds he spoke. “Forty years, eh?”

“What?”

“Been waging this so-called ‘war on drugs’ for 40 years?”

“Probably longer than that.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Has your species been victorious?”

“Uh, no.”

“Nearly so?”

“Not quite.”

“How about a status report then? He said. “How are we doing … drugs pretty near defeated? Have they requested a truce to talk peace?”

“Not exactly.”

“What, exactly?”

“It gets more hopeless and costly each day.”

He fumbled among the papers again and slid out a handwritten note. “Here’s something,” he said. “This man of your species, Clausewitz, says that war is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”

“I’m sure he said that.”

“So are you compelling ‘drugs’ to your will?”

“I’m afraid it’s the other way around.”

“Still burning crops and arresting people after all these years?”

“Constantly.”

He scattered papers around and produced another note. “Here’s one more,” he said. “Can’t find the exact author but it is widely quoted.”

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

“The definition of ‘insanity’ is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“Far out, man,” I said.

The Return

People had been asking so I left a message that I needed to see the Alien. No, it wasn’t like a plea in some science fiction movie. It was more like an ad in the paper but he showed up as Michael Rennie anyway. Same old C.W., cute as usual.


“You called? he said after I opened the apartment door and registered my surprise.

I ushered him in and motioned for him to have a seat. “People have been asking about you.”

“I’m flattered,” he said. “What did you tell them?”

“That you had been recalled because of that incident with the high-school girl.”

“That was blown all out of proportion,” he said. “Besides, that’s what star football players are supposed to do, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “So … no, that wasn’t it at all.”

“Then where have you been?”

“Making a detailed interim report.”

“To the Falloonian Elders?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“So what?”

So how are we doing?”

“Not too good.”

“Then … are the Fallootians getting ready to wipe us out like in your movie.”

“No. You’re doing a fine job of that yourselves.”

He had me there. I had never seen him more somber. But heck, he was Michael Rennie after all. “So how much time?”

“I don’t think your species would be so obsessed about time if your planet didn’t circle your home star with such precision.”

“Say what?”

“What makes you think things occur sequentially?”

“Uh, gee, don’t they?”

“Why couldn’t they all be occurring at once and your mental state is simply drawn to whatever is shiniest?”

“Is that what happens?”

“Let’s just say for the moment that your species’ consciousness paradigm is closer to that of a blackbird than to a logician. You won’t be able to proceed further with this inquiry as long as you linger on such things as rock stars and inconsequential politicians.”

“Like Michelle Bachman?”

“Precisely, now why don’t we go for a walk and you can convince me that your species would warrant existence?”

“Sure,” I said, grabbing a hat to protect me from the sun.

A while later we stood at my city’s statue of Harriet Tubman leading a child-slave to freedom.

“Better?” I said.

He studied the amazing sculpture, and then turned to me. “She was a great person, wasn’t she?”

“One of the greatest.”

“Indeed. I’ll maybe stick around awhile,” said he

"Don’t you mean you are here, have been here, will be here?” Now I was trying to be cute.

"Klaatu barada nikto," he said.

50. Reality

We hadn’t had much good weather recently so, during one of the rare pleasant interludes I walked to my favorite spot in the park. It was spring and threatening to rain again, so I kept a weather-eye out for clouds. That’s why I didn’t notice someone sitting beside me until I smelled a mixture of body odor and cheap cigar smoke that snapped my head around.

There beside me was a figure as sad as I had seen beyond the movies. He was balding and badly in need of a shave. He was dressed in work pants and a sleeveless undershirt with a large mop of gray-black hair protruding from the top of it. His stomach spilled over his waist like dough overflowing in an oven.

I didn’t have to guess.

“C.W.,” I said. “What the hell are you up to?”

“What business is it of yours?” he said.

“None,” I said. “You are absolutely right. None at all.” I turned to watch the river, now at flood crest.

“If you must know,” he said. “I am waiting for a date.”

“A date?”

“A date. Is that so unbelievable?”

“Well,” I struggled for politeness and chose honesty instead. “Who would date you looking like that?”

“You would be surprised,” he said. “Some women look at the ‘inner-man’ and beyond superficial appearances.”

I nodded and turned back to the river as my lunch began to roil.

“I just may have found a soul-mate,” he said, brushing some cigar ashes off his stomach.’

“A soul-mate.”

“Yes, a soul-mate.”

And how did you happen to find this soul-mate?”

“On the internet,” he said. “They have sites where you can find a date.”

“You matched a date on the internet?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“No,” I said. “But didn’t you have to submit a photo?”

“The Falloonian Elders don’t allow me to publicize my own photo,” he said. “So I used one of yours.”

Now he had my attention. “You used my photo?”

“Yep,” he said. “And it took a long time, as you could imagine, but I finally got a hit.”

“And what was the attraction?”

As close as I could get to reality

“This, he said reaching into a pants pocket and retrieving a soiled paper containing print. He handed it to me and I read.

“Attractive SWF wants man who is comfortable within himself, loves casual dress and good food, and isn’t hung up on physical appearances—who loves to share a smoke and then take long, romantic walks in the spring rain.”

“Don’t I look the part?” he asked.

I was already up and moving away.

“Don’t you want to see her happy face when she meets me?”

He yelled something else but I was already out of hearing range.

49. War

They were having a literary festival in our town and I was walking to it when a figure fell along side me from a side street. At first I thought it was a street hustler since the man was shabbily dressed and smelled like a boatload of used cigars. I pretended not to notice until I heard a clanking sound. From the corner of my eye I saw the slouch hat and faded jacket of a civil war general. I looked closer. Hell, it was U.S. Grant himself, easily recognizable from period photographs.

“Hello Sailor, what’s up?” he said.

Of course it was C.W. I hadn’t seen him in weeks and thought perhaps he had left for good.

“Where on earth have you been?” I asked.

“Nowhere on earth,” he said. “I was called back to an intergalactic conference on intra-species hostilities. Your little planet was the subject of much of the discussion, by the way.”

“My planet?”

“Yes. Tell me—what is it about war that you find so appealing? Hell, I hated it and I got paid for it.” He was General Grant now.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You seem to forget that it cost me four good years as well.”

“I thought that at least your Christians found ‘The Peacemakers’ blessed.”

“Used to. The ‘Peacemakers’ were replaced by the ‘Moneymakers.’”

“Funny,” he said. “And all those comedians out of work.” He pulled a cigar from a pocket and, as we walked along, lit it and blew some smoke my way. For once, people didn’t stare as I assume they though he was just part of the literary festival.

“Tell me something else,” he said after we had walked on a ways.

“What?”

“What is this fascination your region seems to have with that greatest of warmongers, old Bobby Lee?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you even honor his birthday. Why don’t you honor the 25,000 of his men he massacred in his insane little venture up in Pennsylvania?”

“You mean Gettysburg?”

“I mean ‘Lee’s Folly.’ Hell he lost more troops there than they say I did in The Wilderness. And I said I was sorry and came down in history as a butcher. He is the national symbol of the noble warrior. Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I’ll tell you,” he said.

“Tell, me.”

“Because the goddam Virginians, who lost about 7,000 in that war, compared to more than 20,000 from North Carolina, wrote the history of that miserable little affair.”

Hey Barack and Hillary - war isn't really that great. - C.W.

He began to cough, so I didn’t say anything.

“Then they blamed the fact that George Mead whipped Bobby’s ass on everyone from poor Pete Longstreet to Heth’s Division.” He drew on his cigar and inhaled. “And all because General Lee didn’t want to send any of his troops to help out at Vicksburg.”

I walked on. He exhaled some cigar smoke and turned to me.

“I always like what little Georgie Pickett himself had to say about who caused the defeat of his ill-ordered charge,” he said.

“What?”

“He said: I always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.”