Every few days over the next several months I will be posting installments of a novel about life, death, war and politics in America since 9/11. Through the Darkest of Nights is an intensely personal story of hope, reflection, determination, and redemption. It is a testament to the progressive values we all believe in, have always defended, and always will defend no matter how long this darkness lasts.
All installments are available for reading here on my page, and also here on Docudharma’s Fiction Page, where refuge from politicians, blogging overload, and one BushCo outrage after another can always be found.
A bleak dawn is breaking over New York City as I drive through the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I must finish what began here on that morning of horror when Sarah was taken from me. What still needs to be done can only be done here. What still needs to be said can only be said here. What I need to leave behind can only be left behind here.
There aren’t many cars in the WNYW parking lot as I pull into the parking spot reserved for the General Manager of FOX 5. That corporate media warmonger doesn’t deserve to have a driver’s license, much less his own parking spot, so I’m liberating it. I pour myself a steaming cup of coffee from my thermos and listen to Imus Every Damn Morning as I wait for Fox 5’s Decider to show up for work.
Imus has good news and bad news for New Yorkers this morning. The bad news is another war is coming. The good news is there will be no casualties and the war will pay for itself. That’s a relief. I don’t have a beautiful mind like Barbara Bush has, so until this good news arrived, I’d been concerned that the cold dead corpses of thousands of American soldiers were going to be coming in home in body bags year after year after year.
A few minutes after eight, a shiny black Cadillac Escalade pulled into the lot and headed towards me. I turned the radio off, silencing Imus in mid-mutter, got out, and walked up to the driver’s side. The window rolled down, revealing the exasperated face of the corporate media hack I’ve been waiting for.
“You’re in my parking spot.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that.”
“Look, can you move your vehicle out of my parking spot?”
“Sure.”
His window rolled up again. I stood there a few seconds, waiting for it to roll down again, and sure enough, it did.
“You said you’d move your vehicle out of my parking spot . . . .”
“I’m going to. As soon as you and I have a little talk.”
“How about if you move your vehicle out of my parking spot, and then you can make an appointment with my secretary.” His window rolled up again. It took a little longer this time, but his window rolled down again. “Look, I’m a busy man, either move your vehicle out of my parking spot or I’m calling security. I don’t have time for this nonsense.”
“You don’t have time for nonsense? Since when? Your station broadcasts nonsense all day long. In every time slot.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“A teacher.”
“Yes.
“Shouldn’t you be in a classroom somewhere?
“I’m a teacher in a much larger classroom now.”
“If you’re trying to make a point, make it.”
“I’ll do that. You are a paid killer. You get paid to kill with words. You incite fear and call it patriotism, you broadcast slander and call it political commentary, you fill the airwaves with deceit and call it news. And then the killing starts. And you profit from it.”
“That’s–”
“You told me to make my point, so I’m going to make it and you’re going to shut up and listen. The woman I loved is dead because of corporate media propaganda hacks like you.”
He stared at me.
I stared back. “Go ahead. Reach for that cell phone and see what happens next. You’ll have the most fair and balanced experience of your life, with no commercial interruptions.”
“You’ll be arrested for this, you’re threatening me.”
“A mighty Fox 5 warrior for freedom is afraid of a teacher. Your security people will be laughing about that for the next several years. Go ahead. Call them.”
“Well . . . I don’t appreciate being threatened.”
“Cry me a river. You and your hacks walk into that building behind us and threaten 25 million Iraqis every day. All day long. Your thug president threatens them, your psychotic vice-president threatens them, everyone in that obscene cult you call the Republican Party threatens them. And you broadcast their threats. Over and over again.”
“Saddam Hussein is threatening us, he’s plotting more 9/11’s with al Qaeda, he has WMD and chemical weapons, he’s even used them on his own people. You liberals need to think about that, but you’re not, you’re always too busy blaming America for every problem in the world.”
I was tired from the overnight drive and the parking lot dumpster was too far away, so I didn’t drag him out of his Cadillac Escalade and toss him head first into that dumpster with the rest of the garbage. “Don’t you ever get tired of lying? Or has your unfair, unbalanced career at Fox made you so depraved your lies have become the truth in what’s left of your mind? Is that it?”
“You’re–”
“You’ll get your war, I have no doubt of that. I don’t know why reptile brain wing nuts like you love war so much, but I know you’ll sanitize this war just like you’ve sanitized every other one. You and your flag-waving robots at Fox will never let Americans see the brutality and horror of war, you don’t want them to see the mangled bodies, the carnage, the obscene waste of human lives that war always has been and always will be. If they ever saw what war is really like, there would never be another one.”
“Are you finished?”
“We’ll all be finished soon enough if corporate killers like you aren’t prosecuted and locked up for crimes against humanity. At this rate, if your wars don’t get us all killed, global warming will. Humanity will be finished. Forever. Because of your lies and your hate and your hackery. That fate is heading our way. It will silence the songwriters and the poets and the choirs in the churches. It will silence every mother and father and child, it will silence every Christian and Muslim and Jew. It will silence everyone, even the politicians. It will even silence you.”
“You need to–”
“Roll your window up. Do it now.”
He rolled his window up.
I’ve said what needed to be said. I got back in my car and headed for Lower Manhattan. What needs to be done today can only be done there.
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But our Pony Party bar tabs are getting kind of high, so if you have a dollar or two burning a hole in your pocket, donations will be appreciated.
Keep writing.
It’s so sad … but such a compelling story that I want to know more.
I’m ready for more. 🙂
It’s weird thinking about that time when the whole country seemed full of rabid wild monkeys ripped to the tits on a vengeance cocktail. We endured the eminently predictable mass psychotic episode of everyone’s worst fearful impulses, and I’m amazed that it’s actually dissipated a little.