Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 4
Yo
Thom, did you get my letter yet? Write
back when you do, and make sure to sign it “Respectfully, Thom Shanker” (and then the whole title) to impress Mrs. May
again. That was a nice touch,
buddy. Well, I went down to the
In any case, the
I talked to a Jewish brother (a staffer, don’t know his name) I met down there for a few minutes and handed him my two op-eds (April 3 and July 8) predicting the mess we’d be in if we went to war…
Know what, I think I’ll put ‘em on my email list. Shucks, you’d think they’d all like to see what’s coming, and I’ve made a lot better predictions since the Chronicle was brave enough to publish ‘em. They should talk to Ted Estess, the dean of the University of Houston Honors College, who is (or used to be) on their board of directors, or some such tripe. Yep, ol’ Ted (and his sidekick, Bill Monroe, ass. dean) know a lot more than they’d like to, and I’ll bet they don’t even like being in national circulation via the bcc’s of our mail. Someone ought to ask Ted if I told him back in April that I was Martin the Beadle from Elie Wiesel’s Night.
No one knows who Martin the Beadle is? Nope? Has everyone forgotten, when everyone swore to remember? Too bad. The Hungarian Jews of Wiesel’s circle whispered among themselves that he was deranged and dangerous. Best that we don’t talk of him.
Last thing: Could you call me and leave another message on my voice mail?. The last one (October 20) is getting stale, Thom. Shucks, I can’t even win a cup of coffee by letting folks listen to it anymore. Would you give me another call when you get my letter? I’d brush you up on your geopolitics if I had time, but Mr. Coleman is alone at the hospital, and I’m going to sit with him a while. If you really wanted to be a mensch, sometime you’d call him. Shit man, he’s a general in the infowar.
Regards, Captain May
PS: I’ll attach the letter I wrote to you about
the
Yo, Thom, how many good stories you heard lately about the day they killed JFK? I’ll bet you’ve heard lots, being in the infobiz and all, ‘cause you folks get paid by the dollar for turning on the emotion at the right time. It’s part of the craft, little buddy, I understand… Shucks, if all of y’all could just turn on the emotion like Geraldo, ratings (oops, circulation) would go up.
I’m glad I got out of the infobiz myself, because corporate compromises grated on my nerves too much, and to tell the truth from the other side, I grated on corporation nerves right back. And don’t talk back at me by saying I’m in the infobiz again because I’m writing a book about it. Wrong, Thom. I’m writing a book against it. So far I have to admit that I’ve been impressed by your earthworks of ignorance and your batteries of bad information, but I’ll keep charging until the infowalls are breeched, or until you journalists have sense enough to remember that you’re supposed to be fighting for – not against – the public’s right to know. [Editor’s emphasis, in all cases] Yeah, I dig, this all sounds rather dangerous, little buddy. Just come out and help me do your job when it’s safe again, O.K.?
I figure that the best thing in life is either to be a Spartan or an Athenian, Thom, truly disciplined or truly creative. I’ve spent my life fighting the Peloponnesian War in my head and heart, always trying to be both, seldom accomplishing either. I’ve never been lukewarm though, and that’s a comfort to my pride. You folks are Sybarites, though, turning on the heat or the cold of your souls to suit your bosses. Yep, it’s a pity, but y’all have to sell yourselves like courtesans just to get anywhere professionally. Along the course of compromise y’all date professionals of the opposite (or same) gender who have courtesan characters like you when it comes to kissing up or getting down. Y’all tell each other the lines you’ve learned from your respective self-oriented magazines and call it a meaningful relationship, one day even a marriage.
Hey man, don’t feel insulted personally, because you’re right that I don’t know the real you, and I’m not describing you personally; I’m describing your genus, tovarisch pisatel. So are you a generic journalist, Mr. Shanker, or are you sui generis, like your captain? I hope the latter, because I do work so to educate you. Heck, since Dr. Kelly (R.I.P.) and I got in touch with you back in July I’ll bet we’ve taught you a lot – especially about being scared.
Seeing Mr. Coleman fight it out with Mr. Death at the hospital, day after day, pain after pain, indignity after indignity, makes me think that heroic death, if quickly inflicted, isn’t the worst of things though. So why are y’all so afraid of it? Shucks, a chance for heroic journalism only comes around every once in a long while, and y’all are standing-by afraid to peek at the gal, let alone ask her for a dance. Y’all say it’s because y’all ain’t interested, but Captain May sez it’s ‘cause y’all are scared. Man, come down to the veterans’ hospital and take a good long look at straw death. Now there’s something to fear.
“Of all the wonders I have seen it seems most strange to me that men should fear.” Who said that, and why am I saying it to you, mascot?
One day in the summer, I called a boy in this book a weasel, because I was in a pissed-off mood on the phone and he was hemming and hawing instead of talking truth. And do you know what that weasel said back to me, Thom? He didn’t say a damn thing. Smart weasel, ‘cause he could respect the truth of things even when they weren’t to his credit. His silence was a bit of humility, and maybe even the start of humanity. Anyhow, God willing, Captain May is going to accomplish one minor miracle before the infowar is over: I’m going to teach that weasel to get up off all fours and walk like a man! As much time as he spends on his hands and knees you’d think he’d been reared by Catholic priests…
Just kidding, little buddy, just kidding. Shakespearean pun, though – get it? Nice touch, good writing – try it sometime. Speaking of the Bard, do you like sonnets, Thom? I’ll bet you can manage the literary leap if I give you a warning that one’s coming. Ready for a sonnet, little buddy? Here goes one I wrote for the 3rd ID boys who fought the Battle of Baghdad:
Novae
know that spirits
gather here, though the wail
of war is gone
and the reasons of its start
are lost. Give honor, you who read our tale.
We are the lilies of the battlefield,
cut down by hands
much-feared but not unkind:
Loud-roaring death, when it came to seize
its yield,
became a guileless
girl, with blameless mind.
She walked with aimless grace and we, her
claim,
she gathered in
her skirts and thus addressed:
“My tiger lilies, the sun’s all-giving
flame
was your last vision, come, my dead, my
blessed,
my heroes! In boldest act and manly rage,
you conquered
winter’s gloom, the twin of age!”
Captain May
It tears me up to see Mr.
Coleman in the veterans’ hospital. Most
of the staff couldn’t care less about him.
To them he’s an indigent colored man with a bad liver, and he’s in the
general metabolic meltdown that makes a battle fought for his health a waste of
resources. Well, at least they pop a
pain pill into him when I come over so that he can settle down and talk war
with the white man he calls Captain May, who listens to his comments about
“What’s he talking about?” asks one of a trio of white med students wandering around in search of interesting pathology.
“Is he demented?” queries another, hoping that he has the right word.
“Right, dementia, symptomatic…” chimes in a third, clearly destined for a higher six-figure salary than the others.
I’m tempted to shake ‘em up by asking ‘em just what their diagnosis of his condition is – cause I’m suffering from the same dementia. But I don’t have to. A black non-com of a nurse wanders-by and they ask her if Mr. Coleman is demented.
“De man Ted?” she replies, rolling her eyes with blackfolk contempt. “Who Ted? There ain’t no man Ted in this ward, baby, he must be down the hall,” she lies like a mammy, shooing the white children away for us.
Mr. Coleman got one good
break this trip to the hospital: They
put him in a room with Mexican folks.
They’re hurt but healing men (most speak no English), still in their
recuperative years, and they listen patiently to my broken Spanish when I
explain to them that Mr. Coleman is a caballero,
a gentleman who has served his country in war, and muy intelegente, pero los gringos doctores creen que el esta
loco! They laugh. They are attendant on him, hobbling across
the room to give him comforts that the frazzled staff don’t. I take care of him while I’m there, dumb as
my Mexican brothers, failing to grasp that
When you start your
military career, the first government person to screw you is your recruiter,
because he had your dumb-ass thinking that you were on top of Team
“You’re already a hero, boy,” he tells you when he buys you burgers and charms you, “‘cause everyone who wears the uniform knows he or she could get the call to fight a war – not that anything like that will happen while you’re serving,” he says with a self-satisfied smile, sitting back contentedly and slurping the last of his soda through a straw.
After that gentleman finishes with you, it’s the soldiers’ acronym from then on: BOHICA (Bend over, here it comes again.) – again and again and again.
Yep, in
Well, I’ll keep watch with Mr. Coleman for the duration, catching him up with the news by skimming the headlines between the attacks of pain. He listens to me as if he were in a foxhole, trying to pretend that he isn’t afraid of the bombs of un-being impacting around him, and that he doesn’t know what it means that they are impacting closer and closer.
I’ll have to fast a bit and intensify my martial arts training, because I figure that soon I’ll need to be in my Army uniform again, for his funeral. He has asked for a veteran’s rites, and I shall command his honor guard at the graveside.
Fairly morbid letter, and
I apologize, my friend. The anniversary
of JFK’s death always affects me that way. It was my first memory. I was born in on January 9th, 1960
– 1-9-60, get it? Yep, I was a true
child of the Sixties, and got awakened just in time to savor the decade. On November 22, 1963 I was sitting on the
wood floor in a musty rent-house in
Yep, Thom, the first memory of my life is an assassination.
So why tell you this in a letter intended for publication in my book, April Fools, Captain May? Because there’s a punch line coming, Thom. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I showed my parents a poem I’d written about the event. They smiled sadly to recall that Uncle Don had been a Republican and a Kennedy hater. He hadn’t come over to see mama and mourn the president; he had come over to gloat to dad that the bastard was dead.
Want another joke? The only time I cast a vote was straight-Republican, for Ronnie Reagan and the Republicans in 1980, my first year out of the 1st Cavalry Division and into college. I agreed with the Gipper’s hard-charging approach to the Cold War – back in the days when I read Bill Buckley’s National Review like the holy gospel. The college crowd knew that I couldn’t talk enough about the great days ahead because patriots were in charge…
Bang! Reagan gets capped by Hinkley
(another autumn afternoon, as I recall).
I remember it well because a black buddy of mine came skipping into Oberhaltzer Hall at the
Hope I don’t end up causing any excitement, Thom. I was talking on the cell phone to Mike the Moslem a couple of days ago when I received a call from some TV folks… It was important enough that I forgot about my young friend and didn’t click back to him to tell him I’d get back with him. He called back several minutes later, agitated because he had feared that the termination of the call might have been the termination of the captain. Mr. Coleman tells me to be careful every time he sees me, but he knows I’m going to keep writing until it’s over, one way or the other.
Hey Thom, how about you
and I start commemorating everything from the cover-up of JFK to the cover-up
of the Battle of Baghdad every November 22?
We’ll have us a private “Conspiracy Day” party (in
Cheers and ciao! Captain May
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