Tough Day for the Army

by John Warner

  And when going downtown, Walter says, gesturing with his hands, take the #9, except late at night, when you should take the #2 and transfer to the #4. And sometimes, short catnaps can be just as good as long, uninterrupted sleep…

  At the hospital, in the hallway, doctors and nurses hold their stethoscopes to their chests to keep them from bouncing as they rush toward an emergency. On the television, a man gets yet another pie in the face.

  The Visiting Dignitary half-sleeps crookedly in his easy chair, muttering, But I want I want I want…

  The crow lay on its side and flexed its talons. Already crying, the Zoo Director scooped the crow from the ground and ran into the house, screaming.

  What have I done? he cried as he held the stiffening crow out to his mother. She took the crow and placed it on the table and told her son to touch the crow and give it ease as it passed.

  We are defined by our mercy, she told her son.

  As the crow died, the Zoo Director stroked its black wing while his mother wiped the tears from his eyes with a dishtowel.

  It would be wrong to say, necessarily, that the Zoo Director thinks of this incident as the 10:21 moves toward him, because it happened so long ago, but even so, as a soft beep indicates the target is in range, the Zoo Director drops the launcher from his shoulder and moves the safety back to on.

  Before doing anything, turn off the circuit-breaker and attach the ground, Jane tells the penguin. Beware of compound interest loans and strangers bearing gifts. Measure twice to cut once.

  To all this, Walter nods as his love reaches forth and seals the three of them—Jane, the penguin, himself—in its grip. He signals the waitress for another round of cocoa, and perhaps they could share just a taste of the cream pie too.

  Finished with, the Zoo Custodian looks both ways before raising his arms and jogging toward the uncut red ribbon. As he runs through the tape, the Zoo Custodian blows kisses to the imaginary crowd. His ears ring with cheering.

  At the hospital, the child shifts in sleep and groans softly from the pain of the broken arm. Tomorrow he will have surgery; they will insert screws and pins for the bones to grow around to repair the damage. At school, he will show his arm to the other children and chop the air and claim superpowers. But for now the child turns and drapes his good arm across his mother and touches his fingers at her forehead in a gesture of blessing.

  What I Am, What I Found, What I Did

  (Attachments Enclosed)

  It is important that certain things be cleared up. What I did was not a protest, and I am not nor ever have been affiliated with any anti-government, citizen militia group. I am not an Islamist or anything like that. I’m not entirely sure what an Islamist is. What I did should not—and I cannot emphasize this enough—be compared to the tragedy at Oklahoma City or, God forbid, the attacks on 9/11. I am not a gun-and-explosive-toting madman seeking to overthrow Western civilization. What I am is an economist.

  I have a B.A. from Rice and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. My studies surrounding what I did were sound in concept and executed with the utmost thoroughness, as befits my background and experience. I have been cataloguing the economic health of Lake Charles, Louisiana, for close to eleven years now, which is to say I did what I did only after much difficult deliberation. Economics is a science, and it was with this in mind that I finally decided to do what I did. If there were another way to achieve the desired result, I would have found it. But there was no other way; the numbers simply don’t lie. And while a few casualties were necessary for the ultimate success of the project, I deeply regret there were so many.

  Six hundred forty-two people injured is a most unfortunate number, but I think it’s important to remember—now that the forensic report on Mr. James T. May indicates that he had suffered a fatal myocardial infarction prior to the first explosion—that my actions resulted in no deaths. I also maintain that many of these injuries could have been avoided if the crew did not panic. Let’s face it, the boat was sinking very, very slowly. Because of the crew’s slipshod service, I have drafted a letter to Congress (Attachment 1), urging them to examine the training programs, if indeed there are any in place for these people. Yes, their primary jobs are to deal blackjack and schlep watered-down drinks to customers flushing their final pennies down a bottomless well of stupidity, but let’s remember, this is all happening upon a ship in navigable waters. Rather than training their attention on the engine of capitalism, our financial services industry, perhaps our government regulators should look this-a-ways. In addition, contrary to published reports, my actions were not predicated on a grudge against Mr. Merv Griffin or his legacy. I did, in fact, very much enjoy his television show when it was a daytime staple. And while I am a Christian and believe gambling to be a sin, I am also a pragmatist; therefore I am the first to acknowledge the beneficial effect that Mr. Merv Griffin and his consortium have had on the greater Lake Charles area with the introduction of their riverboat casinos.

  Bringing gambling to Lake Charles lowered unemployment, increased the tax base, raised the number of housing starts, and stimulated the regeneration of a downtown nearly destroyed by the invasion of the Walmart out on Highway 14 (Attachments 2–5. Also, see my article in the June issue of the Journal of Business and Economics, “Here Comes Walmart, There Goes the Neighborhood”).

  However, as has been well established, we are in the midst of a historically bad economic downturn, and the numbers make it clear that we are in dire need of additional economic stimulus in order to maintain a viable and at least semi-prosperous community (Attachment 6). If you’ll pardon the metaphor, in the current competition for the discretionary dollar, Lake Charles is armed with a slingshot in an automatic-weapons world.

  As a staunch believer that free markets make free people, I felt it was both impractical and immoral to turn to government to bail us out. If loving Ayn Rand is wrong, I don’t want to be right, and so I resolved to go Galt on behalf of the Interstate 10 corridor between Vinton and Lafayette.

  The key to meeting the challenges of a twenty-first-century economy was to transition Lake Charles from a semi-failed postindustrial city known for its chemical processing plants into a tourist paradise. After some initial investigations, it became clear that Hawaii was the perfect model.

  I have never been to Hawaii, though I have seen it on TV shows such as Magnum P.I., and that one episode of The Brady Bunch, as well as in films such as Blue Crush and Lilo and Stitch. By all accounts it is a lovely place. And while I have not been to Hawaii, many others have, which is reflected in the fact that Hawaii derives more of its income from tourism than any other state in the union (Attachment 7). There are, in fact, many, many things to do in Hawaii (Attachment 8): swim, surf, helicopter rides, parasailing, hiking, volcano tours, luaus, along with all kinds of other things I can’t think of right now, and with all these different activities, you would think no solid, single theory as to the incredible lure of Hawaii could be formulated, but my findings were most surprising and quite conclusive.

  What I found was that people simply love shipwrecks. Even with the countless numbers of tourist activities available on the five Hawaiian islands, the number-eleven-most favorite attraction is the memorial to the USS Arizona (Attachment 9). Thanks to the cooperation of Witherspoon Travel Partners Worldwide (Attachment 10), I was able to interview, by phone, nearly one dozen people who had taken recent trips to Hawaii, and time and again I found the Arizona popping up as a highlight (Attachment 11). Even though most of the people had only a limited understanding of the history surrounding the Arizona, across the board the respondents thought the experience of visiting a shipwreck was “pretty neat,” and the idea that people had died there, on that very spot, “cool,” or “creepy, but still totally cool” (Attachment 12). If we need further proof than this, all I have to say is that I trust that I’m not the only one here who remembers a little something called the Titanic.

  Thus it became clear to me that what Lake Charles neede
d was a shipwreck of its own, so this is what I did: I decided to sink the Star riverboat casino owned by Merv Griffin Enterprises and its consortium of investors. I chose the Star because of two factors: (1) It was the oldest of the three riverboats operating on Lake Charles, making it most likely the first to be replaced anyway, and (2) since Merv Griffin Enterprises and his consortium also operate the Players riverboat casino, I figured it was only fair, rather than sinking the competing Isle of Capri’s only casino riverboat and therefore putting them out of business and reducing competition.

  On April 16, I officially hired Mitchell Patchett for the sum of three thousand dollars after contacting him at the number included in his advertisement in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine (Attachment 13). He told me he was an ex–Navy Seal, skilled in underwater operations and explosives. This, as we all know now, was most definitely true. Indeed, it was clear that Mitchell Patchett was skilled in all manner of “field ops,” and the things he could do with a serrated-edge “kill” knife were simply amazing. However, at no time did he tell me about his psychiatric discharge from the military, or his subsequent three-year hospital stay. If I regret any of my actions, it is that I did not check Mitchell Patchett’s background more thoroughly.

  We trained six weeks for the operation. I became versed in all aspects of commando stealth maneuvers under the direction of Mitchell Patchett, who was especially fond of barking orders. Even though they were not part of our plan, I learned how to field-strip an M-16 rifle and disarm a “hot” Claymore. As an example of the prowess I gained, I now have sufficient grip strength to pop a tennis ball in my hand. If one needs further proof, I suggest s/he review the autopsy report of my former cellmate Lonnie “The Cutter” Watkins (Attachment 14).

  The night of the operation was perfect, moonless and clear with almost no chop. Mitchell Patchett and I thought we had slipped into the water unseen, but postaction, eyewitness reports from Donald and Noreen Taylor (Attachment 15), who were apparently enjoying a lakefront stroll, indicate this was not true. The swim to the Star was not strenuous, but we found the hull grime-covered and slick (a further indication, I believe, of a lax crew), so only after some quick but vigorous scrubbing were we able to attach the C-4 explosive packages and their Herman A-1 detonators to the ship without being detected. Upon finishing this task, Mitchell Patchett thumped his fist on the side of the hull twice before giving me the thumbs up. “It’s gonna be a beaut,” he said. I circled my finger in the air once quickly before pointing down to the water in the appropriate gesture to indicate that we had a “go” mission.

  As planned, Mitchell Patchett and I were back on shore at the time of detonation. When the C-4 exploded, it blew a (“good sized,” according to the NTSB report) hole in the side and the Star began clearly listing to starboard (Attachment 16). A small fire could be seen emanating from the wound, the flames licking over the side. From our position, Mitchell Patchett and I could obviously not see what was happening onboard, but we could hear it. Newspaper reports have described the ensuing scene as “panic,” but this seems to be yet another example of media sensationalism as, quite honestly, it sounded much closer to excitement than panic, an impression borne out by two additional pieces of evidence documented in Appendixes B (Attachment 17) and C (Attachment 18) to the after-action report. First, as Appendix B makes clear, most of the documented injuries are human-inflicted scratches, gouges, and bites. This, combined with the fact that nearly 2.3 million dollars’ worth of casino chips are unaccounted for following the full search and salvage operation, suggests that, postdetonation, the passengers’ attention might have been on something other than mere survival. Let me also note that not a single one of them has so much as hinted at a civil suit against me.

  I couldn’t have asked much more from the actual sinking. The Star’s lighted neon sign exploding like Fourth of July fireworks just prior to the final submerging was an unexpectedly poetic bonus. I suppose I would have preferred a more majestic descent to the bottom— stern first, with bow pointed skyward—but the Star flopping on its side like it was exhausted and needed a rest is perhaps a more appropriate symbol for our times.

  There isn’t much else, I suppose. I remember the sirens, the people bobbing in the water individually and in lifeboats, shouting to each other, “How much ya get?” After a while, I noticed that Mitchell Patchett was cackling. He held his hands at his waist and rocked back and forth and simply laughed and laughed like he wouldn’t stop. I looked into his eyes and saw the final sparks from the exploding sign dancing on his pupils and behind those sparks I saw nothing, absolutely not a single thing, and while I admit that he is most likely deranged, I maintain that he is not insane (as his attorney is making him out to be), that he knew and knows right from wrong like anyone else, and thus I urge the courts to “throw the book at him” (see “Book” as Attachment 19). Once the ship sank entirely beneath the surface, thus extinguishing the orange glow of the fire, the night’s only source of light, I never saw Mitchell Patchett again, though I was relieved to hear of his apprehension. Clearly, he is a most dangerous man.

  My capture and arrest are a matter of public record, personal humiliation, and extreme vilification at the hands of the news media. I can only urge the people of America to take into account what I have to say here when it comes to making up their minds about me. While others have dithered, I acted, and for that, it’s hard to apologize.

  However, because my lawyer says I should, I would also like to take this opportunity to personally express regret to each and every injured passenger (Attachments 20–670), even if they don’t necessarily deserve it, and lastly, try to get a message to my wife, Betty, since the phone is always busy and for some reason my letters (Attachments 671–819) have all been returned unopened. To Betty I say: I love you, honey, and I know we’ll beat this.

  Finally, a word of caution to other economists. As I was running from the police pursuit as fast as my flippered feet would allow, their shouts of “get the FUCK DOWN you GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKER!” ringing in my ears as the shots fired just over my head whistled past, I remembered something I’d learned in Economics 101, something that maybe I’d forgotten, but something I hope all economists will forever keep in mind from now on. While economics may be the most beautiful, the most wondrous, of our theoretical sciences, it is important to remember that the application of any theory, no matter how sound its base, can be considerably more complex than one might have thought.

  Poet Farmers

  Ruthie saw them first. She shaded her eyes with a hand and pointed at a group kicking up dust along the drive. Capes flapped behind as they walked, and each one of them clutched a wire notebook and pen. “Shit damn,” Ruthie said to Roy. “Looks like we got poets.”

  The leader, pale and pointy-nosed, scooped up a handful of dirt and breathed it in deeply before dumping it inside the folds of his cape. “Show us your world; there is poetry here,” he said as the others muttered and surrounded Ruthie, gauging her thighs.

  “Like oak,” one said.

  “No, granite,” offered another, and it looked like there was going to be a dust-up over which word was right, until one got too close and Ruthie slapped a grabbing hand from the hem of her dress.

  “Well, Roy, I guess you should show ’em what they’re after,” she said.

  The poets’ capes gently swayed, windless and limp, as they stalked the new John Deere. One frowned as he picked at the hard enamel paint while others climbed into the cab and shuddered from the blare of Hank Jr. on the CD player. Roy showed them the cool ease of the power steering, the air-conditioning, and the fully electronic, adjustable seat. When Roy cranked the engine, the poets scattered from the pistons’ howl.

  “Bunch o’ hens,” Roy spat. He thought for a moment that he might’ve gotten rid of those poets, but as he headed back toward the house, he heard the murmur of their capes as they regrouped behind him.

  Ruthie sat them around the kitchen for some of her countywide-famous black-raspb
erry tarts and naturally sweetened ice tea, but there was nary a nibble or sip, and it looked for a while like those poets were about ready to move on until one of them spied the weathered planks of the old barn.

  “Over there!” he shouted.

  As they ran toward the barn they bellowed, “Show us the cracked hide of old mule straps and the blunted blade of the once-keen plow! Show us the toil and the drought, the struggle against soil! Show us poetry!” Ruthie looked at Roy and Roy looked at Ruthie and they both shrugged, but they were glad for their once again empty kitchen, and so they let the poets pore over those rusty things.

  After a couple months some left, notebooks bulging, but still more came seeking their muse. They were, for sure, a nuisance. Ruthie and Roy considered their alternatives: a good herbicide, the National Guard, or some local toughs brought round after one too many, maybe, but nothing seemed quite right until one night, Ruthie and Roy had this conversation:

  “Roy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You remember our dream, Roy?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “The Princess Royal Ultra Luxury Cruise Line, twelve days and eleven nights, nights that are preceded by dazzling sunsets and end with us exhausted from dancing, drinking, and good cheer. You remember that, right, Roy?”

  “Twenty-four-hour-a-day cabin boys named Hector or Lars, honey.”

  “You remember what it said the poolside drinks tasted like, Roy?”

  “I believe it was nectar. Sun-drenched nectar, topped with honey, honey.”

  At this point Ruthie paused for a moment as she ran her hand down Roy’s arm and made every single hair on his whole body stand straight up. Roy marveled at how Ruthie could do that even after their many years of marriage.