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- Author: Reed Blitzerman
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Book online «Revolt of the Rats by Reed Blitzerman (ap literature book list .TXT) 📖». Author Reed Blitzerman
He needed to get out. Distraction. On automatic, he put on his coat and descended the stairs, climbed in his car and drove away from the lake. The dodgy looking movie theater he’d passed coming into town appeared to his right and he pulled into the parking lot.
Up close, it had a battered charm. The façade was clean, hand-painted in shades of red and gold. Old and new movies declaimed from the handbills, stapled just so in a glass-covered case.
He stepped to the ticket booth and asked what was showing.
The man behind the glass tore a stub from a reel of tickets. “Only showing one. That’ll be seven dollars.”
He picked a middle seat before the lights went down for “The Last Samurai”. Tom Cruise strutted across the screen.
As Captain Nathan Aubrey, looking the part in blue coat with gold buttons. He even got the stance right. He’d lost his honor by following orders and compensated by remaining perpetually drunk. The performance was too real.To watch shame disembowel a soldier, a Medal of Honor winner, felt awkward.
Aubrey’s mission was to help General Hasegawa defeat the samurai army and their leader, Katsumoto. They had served together and now Hasegawa refused to oppose him. Kahle and his fellow officers had been loyal, like these men. And now they were gone. Well, he was gone and just as well.
The talk of honor left a lump in his throat, made his face feel hot. Honor was wearing the uniform. He recalled the pride he felt when putting it on, and the sensation taking it off that there was no one underneath; that the man in the uniform was somebody else, and the man without it was nothing at all.
Active duty had jaded him. His eyes tracked the retired Sergeant Major or Army Colonel, shrunken in their non-military jobs, scattered around bases that served as their refuge. Uniforms that still fit hung pressed and unworn, standing watch in bedroom closets. Let the process run its course and you’ll end up like them, he told himself, adrift without morning cadence calls and the bugle of evening taps.
But still. The Army exerted a gravitational pull akin to a dwarf star. He scanned crowds for the olive drab pattern of a battle dress uniform. His eyes lingered on passing recruitment office signs. Salvation lay within.
He could go back. The letter was in his glove box. He’d recognized the seal on the envelope before he even read the words, traveling the three pages with shaking hands. If he came back in, the Army would promote him to Major. Kahle was disgusted at his own weakness. He could make coffee for a Colonel this time.
His missing peers ached in his mind like a phantom limb. For all he knew, they were dying in some third world shithole, covering for Kahle who was on the dole, paying his share along with theirs. His throat constricted. A pressure on his chest made it hard to breathe. Regret flared behind his eyes like the tongues of infection.
On the screen, Katsumoto led hundreds of samurai armed with swords, bows, and arrows in preparations to attack thousands of soldiers bristling with rifles. He led the rebellion out of loyalty to the emperor, to help him choose his own way, by forcing him to lead.
Kahle memorized their expressions; invigorated before a death most certain. As the profession demanded, they accepted their destiny without fear and made peace with it. They would live or die together.
He'd left his brethren over selfish need; for personal happiness, to become his own man. He’d left his brethren alone and unprotected. He’d done what he’d been trained to do. He’d run, betraying them all for a flexible bullet.
He had rebelled. And rebellion was always punished. No matter how miserable army life had been, he yearned for it now with a breathless ardor. He had no honor left. He was fallen. He was masterless. He was Ronin. He was lost.
He dreamt that night of crossing the bridge into Frampton. The air smelled faintly of gasoline. A low wail filled his ears from the holes in the floorboards. The headlights sliced through growing darkness, illuminating fat snowflakes that sizzled against the windshield. The wheels crunched forward making a whump-whump-whump on the wooden crossbeams. He eased up on the gas at the sign for Frampton, expecting the rest of the trip to be light. The steering wheel spun at the touch of his hand.
Careless, he’d missed black ice that had coated the bridge. In the skip of two heartbeats the rear tires caught the ice. The back end of the car fishtailed. Don’t panic. He pumped the brakes. No response. He wrenched the wheel, turning into the skid like he’d been taught-but the car resisted. It slid across the ice into the oncoming lane until he was staring off the bridge out over the river. Momentum carried the car forward. It punched through the railing, and the roadbed was replaced by a series of choppy greycaps. He held tight to the steering wheel though his body grew weightless. He howled a wordless scream as he fell without ever meeting the water.
A Traveling Salesman, Spring, 1932
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“WHAT IS FAITH, EVERETT?” Father was bent at the waist, looking Everett in the eye.
Everett shrugged his shoulders and then repeated what he’d heard Father say, so many times before, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen.”
Father’s eyes rolled side to side, watchful of his expression. “So what does that mean to you?”
Everett pushed his hands into his pockets. “I don't really know.”
Father put on his straw hat and stood up straight. “When you know, son, when you know it in your heart, the world will be a different place.”
That had been their first conversation this morning, and then Father had left him to do his chores.
Everett Steiner was born of the earth. Or it seemed he was always covered by dirt. Father said Everett was a Golem, that he’d breathed life into clay by placing the hidden name of God on his tongue. Everett stuck his tongue out in the mirror but saw nothing. He looked it up the next trip to the library.
He was small, short, and thick across the shoulders for a ten-year-old, with a shock of dirty black hair. He’d been able to talk ten months after he was born, and run at two years. Now he did both at once, at full speed.
His mother had laid him out coveralls and a long-sleeved shirt this morning, to hold off the sunburn. Everett had insisted on dressing himself and got red in the face when she helped comb his hair.
He loved the stalks of corn and the sweet smells that came with them. He walked the rows now, enjoying the shade and cool touch of the cobs. He understood the patience necessary to put a seed in the ground and water it for a whole season, hoping for a result. He learned the faith to believe that those seeds would one day sprout and become a harvest.
Once again, he was alone. Father was gone today, helping some stranger, and his mother working on chores. He felt a jealousy for the sick stranger and the needy cows, as they took his parents away. Normally when his father had a call like this, he would take Everett with him. If they got done early enough, they would go by the store for a soda pop. Not today. Today his father had insisted that he go alone.
Father liked helping people even more than he’d liked farming. He and Everett sitting side by side in the dark, listening to some poor farmer with the grippe, a persistent cough, a stiffness in the neck, or occasionally something more.
Dad never had formal medical training, yet he was often asked to nurse the sick. Their spouse would be there as well, the strain evident in their voice. Father would capture their words, soundlessly, his head nodding a rhythm as they reeled out the symptoms. He was a slight man, slow to anger with the clearest brown eyes. Maybe that was why they trusted him.
He would ask a question in a low voice about how long had the fever been going on, had anything changed in their schedule, was there any exposure to wild animals? He would recommend a medicine, or sleep, or a specialist in that same voice. Then he would place his hand on his patient’s forehead if he was confident they would be alright.
They remained in his lap if news was bad. Patient might not survive. Or he was unsure. His prognoses were remarkably accurate. As the news traveled of the farmer healer, many a farm spouse watched his hands to detect the unspoken diagnosis.
If it was a close thing, he might fetch the medicine himself, Everett riding in the car with him, blowing out gusts of words, and then return to his charge remaining with them for hours or days until they recovered or passed on.
His kindness was well known. What he kept to himself and his family were his dreams. Sometimes he woke and dressed, his mouth would be hanging open, his eyes searching blindly for a sunrise that wouldn’t come for several hours. He would put his hand on mom’s side and say, “I just had the most amazing dream.” Everett knew. He could hear them.
In the beginning, she had ignored it, thought it the habit of a romantic, or the side effect of drink, until they started to come true.
It all began with a traveling salesman. Eli had received a message this morning to help a stranger; and as always, he had gone. The man had come to town hoping for a tidy sale but found the farmers here were no different than farmers everywhere else. They had no money.
He’d made a few sales calls the first couple of days and then holed up in his room at the bed and breakfast on Main Street, ordering plates brought up until his money had run out. The owner had gone upstairs to demand he settle his bill and found him listless and sweating, where he lay now, beside a flyblown plate of eggs and toast.
Since the town was too small for a doctor, Anise (“Like the spice,” her husband liked to say, “slightly bitter”), sent her boy to retrieve him and ask him to take a look.
Eli arrived at the failing light and followed Anise up the stairs. “Winston” was in the last room, end of the hall on the left. The shades were drawn, but the windows were wide open, trying to create a breeze to cool the man in the bed, wrapped in a loose cotton nightshirt.
He rolled over at the sound of the opening door. His face revealed a set of eyes near black, the light a gloss on steely pupils. His lips were red like blood lipstick, the skin so dry it cracked. Dehydrated, he’d sweated through the nightshirt and all the sheets.
A Rational Universe
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ANISE OVERCAME THE urge to leave the room. “Said his name is Winston. Came into town selling machine parts.” Her words came out high, and harsh.
Steiner’s back was to
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