Encounters
by George Gauthier
Chapter 6
Trouble Magnets
The next day Paolo came over to my apartment on the fourth storey of our spooky old mansion. Joining us was Kyle who lived directly below me on the third floor. Our units were connected in two ways none of which the other residents was aware. Only Kyle and I used the dumbwaiter to lift groceries to our kitchens or to send garbage down to the pickup point. The other way was through the now walled up servants' runs and the spiral stairway connecting all four storeys. Cat doors which we ourselves had installed allowed access to both apartments for Kyle's personable calico cat Esmeralda. Technically she belonged to his brother Corwin who was out of the country on a two year rotation to Europe.
Kyle showed off his new mitt gloves which were used in Boxing, Kickboxing, and MMA Mixed Martial Arts. Smaller and lighter than boxing gloves they protected his hands so well they he could punch even harder than he had done while earning the title of middle-weight boxing champion in college.
"From now on, as long as I am hanging around my trouble-magnet upstairs neighbor, I'm keeping my fighting gear handy, both gloves and sticks. This tote now goes with me everywhere. I can carry it on a strap or clip it to my belt."
Paolo nodded. "That makes a lot of sense, Kyle. Even off duty and in civvies I carry my off-duty Glock plus an ankle gun which holds seven twenty-five caliber rounds. So I myself am always ready for trouble, and I am never more on the alert off duty than when in the company of a certain blonde friend of ours who seems to attract more trouble than any other three people I know."
"Hey! You two make me sound like a trouble magnet or a jinx."
"Not at all. Anyone can see that you don't go looking for trouble -- just the opposite. You are soft-spoken, even tempered, and slow to anger. When trouble looms you try to talk your way out of it. Call it karma or kismet, but there it is. Suddenly danger looms and you and we are caught up in it. No offense Troy."
"None taken. I can see where you are coming from, guys. It beats me why trouble comes my way so often. Sometimes I am just in the wrong place at the wrong time, as at Dyson's estate during the assassination attempt. At other times trouble seems to go out of its way to find me like with those murderous archers in the woods, also the lumberjacks we had to fight off, and just yesterday those four drunks in the SUV."
"Or maybe it's not just me. Maybe yesterday the jinx was on that car I was driving..."
Paolo snorted.
"If my car was jinxed yesterday it isn't any more. It's a total write-off. The shop is cannibalizing it for spare parts which they will keep in storage for contingencies. I am buying this year's version of the same model, so they will fit just fine. Meanwhile I am driving a rental."
A few days later I went to lunch with my new friend Sean Danaher, he of the shillelagh.
"So Sean, shillelaghs are solid wood, so its length is not adjustable like with so many other canes and walking sticks. How did you get it sized to fit your height?"
"That's quite a perceptive question, Troy. I wish I had a clever answer but the truth is that it is sheer luck that I stand just under six feet so the standard length is exactly right. Otherwise I would have had to take a saw to it."
"You don't lean heavily on it as you walk. In fact you step out rather smartly."
"I use it mostly for balance, especially on uneven ground, though when my knee buckles and I feel that sharp jolt of pain I am glad for the support. The trick with a cane is to move it forward in step with the opposite foot. Keep that in mind if you ever have to nurse a leg injury."
"You know Troy, I didn't make the connection the day we met, but the newspapers sure did. They rehashed some of your adventures over the last three years. There was your fight with combative radicals on campus, assassins, and serial killers armed with bows."
"Don't remind me. My boyfriends are starting to think I am a jinx because of how often trouble seeks me out. The thing is, I never go looking for trouble, just the opposite. I am never belligerent. I mean, can you see me as a bully?"
"Not hardly, not for someone of your er...unprepossessing appearance."
"You mean because I am an obvious gay twink. I certainly fit the stereotype, young, androgynous if not actually effeminate, slender, blonde, and prettier than a boy rightly ought to be. Don't worry. I am not the least bit offended that you would think so. It's only natural."
"Standing five foot three and weighing one hundred eight, I know that I fall far short of normal male standards in height and muscular development not to mention secondary sexual characteristics like beard, body hair, and voice register. I don't look like I could fight my way out of the proverbial paper bag, but I can do better than that, as I have shown in the recent past when forced no choice but to fight. Anyway I like my physique just the way it is, and I am not in the least bit interested in "manning up".
"You are perfect just the way you are, Troy. Indeed you are only the second boy in all my years who has made me do a double take as I did the other day when I spotted you even before the dogs started fighting. I could hardly believe that anyone could be that good-looking."
"Thank you for your sincere compliment." I said with a bow of my head, after which I returned to making my point.
"My policy is that the best way to deal with most any kind of trouble is not to be there when it happens. That is why I strive to maintain situational awareness. If I cannot avoid trouble entirely I try to talk my way out of it by negotiation, bargaining, pleading, or explanation till I can walk away without a fight."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"I leave. I take off. I try get away, run full out if I have to, even climb out of reach with my parkour skills. Dignity be damned. I have nothing to prove, least of all to myself."
"What if you cannot run?" Danaher persisted.
"That is when I fight." I told him simply. "Sure I have skills, and I like to think I can punch above my weight, but even if you win a fight, you can get hurt, maybe hurt bad."
"Good for you Troy. All my life I have tried to do the same, except of course during my wartime service. In the infantry you don't wait for trouble to come to you so much as you go looking for it."
"Meaning?"
"Let me put it this way. I served with a company of mechanized infantry. Sometimes we operated defensively, escorting land clearing operations with giant bulldozers called Rome plows. We also patrolled roads and around base camps. But we mostly we we played offense aiming to force a fight with us but taking the tactical defensive at the moment of contact."
"Like the time we set up our NDP, our night defensive position, on the Cambodian border supposedly to block enemy infiltration. Of course, the enemy could easily bypass our NDP and cross the border a klick away. So we were not there to block anything. We were really there as bait. Higher expected and wanted the NVA to attack our night laager so they could be targeted and killed."
"Drawn up in a wide circle as they were, kind of like a pioneer wagon train, our APCs could deliver heavy machine gun fire radially in all directions. Our mortars would lob bombs at the enemy. The rest of us would fire our personal weapons, whether M-16s or grenade launchers or M-60 medium machine guns. Meanwhile we would call up supporting fires from artillery bases within range and possibly vector attack helicopters or even Tac Air to us. It was like the movie title, fast and furious. "
"Our longest fire fight lasted overnight though we had to brush away preliminary ambushes the afternoon before which held us up long enough to keep us from linking up with the rest of our battalion."
"They kept sending us out on one operation after another with only an occasional stand down at base camp for maintenance. That was our job. The Army Manual put it this way:
"The mission of the infantry company is to seek out, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver or to repel the enemy assault by fire and close combat."
"That's quite a mouthful!"
"Isn't it though? It is what soldiers call the schoolbook solution ... or is it description or prescription?"
"We also carried out night ambushes. We'd pick a spot along a trail or at river ford and wait for a party of the enemy or maybe a single courier to walk into our kill zone then we'd blow them away."
"Just like that?"
"Yes. Just like that. We'd first engage with a couple of Claymore mines each of which blasted eight hundred ball bearings in a cone of fire at the enemy. Then our two machine gunners would cut loose and the rest of us would chime in with rifle fire and grenades to finish them off."
"Eight hundred ball bearings. So the effect of the Claymore was like old time grape shot fired from a canon."
"Exactly right, Troy. Claymores had a curved face with the instruction 'Front Toward Enemy' in raised letters so we could feel them in the dark. Like we were idiots who couldn't figure out which way to set the thing up."
"Did you ever call on the enemy to surrender?"
"Call out and give away our position? Not hardly. On ambush we took no prisoners. An ambush is just your basic slice and dice, as we used to describe it. I hope I have not offended you, Troy. Army slang can be brutally frank. You know what we called enemy corpses burned up by napalm whether from bombs or flame throwers? Crispy Critters."
"Ouch!"
"Were you wounded, Sean?"
"Three times though only one was bad. The first time was when I caught shrapnel from a mortal shell dropped into the center of our position. Most of the shrapnel impacted my flak jacket or pinged off my helmet but some hit me in the ass and legs. Then there was a time I caught a bit of splash from an RPG., a Rocket Propelled Grenade. I was lucky that a wall of sandbags had deflected most of the blast away from me. Nevertheless it burned away some of the tendons on my left arm which is why these last two fingers on my left hand are frozen."
"The third time I caught a bullet in my side, a through and through which just missed anything vital. I have since taken shit from idiots who think the exit wound in my back nearly the size of a fist was from when I got shot from behind while running away, showing me to be a coward."
"Even I know that exit wounds are usually larger than entry wounds because the bullet tumbles as it rips through the body."
"Right. And getting shot in the back is no sign of cowardice. It just means that you were surrounded or got picked off by a sniper, or were diving for cover, or even hit by friendly fire. Civilians!"
"But don't get me started. At least nowadays I am well past the worst of my PTSD induced nightmares. For years I relived some of our worst fights again and again, waking up in a cold sweat shouting and trembling as much from anger as fear. I learned not to go back to sleep for a least an hour. Otherwise I'd be right back in my nightmare which sometimes was a lucid dream meaning that I knew that I was dreaming even while I was trapped in the nightmare. Like Help! Lemme outta here!"
"Yikes! And here I am thought to be a trouble magnet. I'm just an amateur. You guys did it professionally."
"And yet, looking back over my eighty years, I see my war, perhaps perversely, as the great adventure of a lifetime. I was never more alive than I was then, when my young life might have ended in an instant."
"I only wish the Army had warned us at discharge about PTSD so that we didn't think we were weaklings or cowards or crazy having to deal with nightmares, hyper-vigilance, jumpiness, and especially undirected anger. Just knowing that in civilian life I could expect to be half-crazy would have been better than fearing that I was all out crazy or a weak sister."
Shaking his head, Danaher added:
"Too bad Vietnam was the first of our wars of choice which we should have stayed out of entirely. I mean, we were destined to win the Cold War anyway in less than fifteen years after our defeat in Vietnam. God, we tried so hard and spent so much blood and treasure, all for nothing. Same deal with Iraq and Afghanistan. For a country which likes to think of itself as peace-loving, we sure get into a lot of wars we do not need to fight."
"Amen."
Founding Fathers
Tuesday was free movie night in the neighborhood. Sponsored by local businessmen, our neighborhood business improvement district (BID) set up a Jumbotron in the park and put up flyers announcing the event. The back of the flyer featured a convenient map showing the location of their premises on neighboring streets and what they sold. The website of the BID was highlighted in bold type.
It was an open air showing, like an old style drive in, only without cars. Under twinkling stars, the audience sat on lawn chairs or blankets. Paolo was on duty and Will out of the country so it was just Kyle and I. We retrieved a pair of portable Adirondack chairs from storage. Low slung and without arms, they would keep us close to the ground so that we did not block anyone's view and let us easily reach snacks and beverages set beside us.
Refreshments were available at reasonable prices. You paid just you would pay in a store for a Coke or a snack, not the inflated prices typical of refreshment stands at the movies where prices are inflated because drinks and snack were where movie houses made money. Ticket sales barely covered movie rentals.
The feature this time was "Dances With Wolves" an Academy Award winning western starring Kevin Costner who was one of my favorite actors. It was well worth watching for the third time.
Unfortunately, some Indian activists saw this as an occasion for political action. They showed up uninvited and passed out leaflets and engaged movie goers in unwanted political debates about white injustices: the Indian Wars, atrocities, European diseases, land grabs, Wounded Knee, and Indian massacres, though only those where the Indians were the victims. No one was in the mood for politics of any kind It was a movie night, for crying out loud.
One earnest young activist braced us, Kyle and me, and went into his harangue. He told us that we were living on stolen land. In fact the whole US of A was land stolen from their rightful owners.
I tried to set him straight.
"Actually a lot of the country was not stolen from anybody but bought from the Indians, including the single most valuable parcel of all, the island of Manhattan, bought from the Lenape for sixty guilders. Much of the rest was acquired by purchase or by treaty with the Indian nations or were empty lands depopulated by European diseases. In one notable instance, in 1692 the Pilgrims found the Indian settlement at Plymouth a ghost town, with corn ripening in the fields. So they harvested the crop for their own use and settled in."
"Whatever the sins of the whites, Indians stole lands back and forth among themselves in their inter-tribal conflicts. The Indian Wars were as often Red on Red as White on Red, more often actually since they had gone on for centuries longer."
"So just who are or were the rightful owners is largely conjecture. The Indians were illiterate, their traditions passed down orally, so the history of which people lived where and when is wholly legendary."
He shook his head vehemently
"None of that matters. The white men stole this entire continent, two continents really. To add insult to injury, whites seized the Black Hills which had been sacred to the Sioux for a thousand years and dared to carve their idols into Mt Rushmore, sixty foot images of their founding fathers. The real founding fathers of America were Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, Sitting Bull and Red Cloud of the Dakota, and Geronimo of the Apache Nation. Under our own leadership, before the whites came, we Indians lived in harmony with one another."
I disagreed vehemently.
"Wrong in every respect. First of all Mt. Rushmore does not depict our Founding Fathers. Only Washington and Jefferson were among the Revolutionary generation. Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were not. The real founding fathers number far more than four. Besides Washington and Jefferson, you had both Adamses, John and Sam, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Tom Paine, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Roger Sherman, Gouverneur Morris, and George Mason."
"As for the sacred Black Hills, they belonged to the Arikara till the Sioux made war on that tribe and seized the hills, ironically in 1776. It say ironic because it was the year of American Independence and exactly a century before the Sioux lost the Black Hills following their Pyrrhic victory at the Little Bighorn. So if the Black Hills were sacred to the Sioux it was for less than a century."
"You're lying!" he screamed. "The Sioux have lived on the Great Plains for centuries, hunting the buffalo just as depicted in the movie."
"Wrong! The Sioux originally were farmers. Defeated in the Beaver Wars of the Seventeenth Century, they were driven from the woodlands east of the Mississippi out onto the plains. At first they continued to cultivate the soil. They didn't start riding horses till the late 1700s. After which, instead of raising crops they became nomads and hunted the buffalo while raiding for grain or forcing settled tribes whom they had reduced to tributary status to supply them with grain."
"As for the Indians living in harmony, they were people just like everyone else. Some tribes were warlike others peaceful or pacified or just plain cowed. The Comanche created an empire in the Southern Plains by driving the Apache into the mountains but only those Apache who escaped the genocidal war which the Comanche waged against them. The century long Beaver Wars were waged by the Iroquois who sought to monopolize the fur trade by forcing tribes far afield to sell their furs through the Iroquois rather than directly to white merchants. The Iroquois enforced their writ as far as the Mississippi. The Ojibway ran the same racket and with the same methods as intermediaries between the fur traders at trading posts on the shores of Hudson's Bay and tribes farther west where the beaver had not yet been hunted out."
"Do you know what an Iroquois town looked liked?" I asked
"Everyone knows that. They lived in long houses made of bark over a frame of sticks."
"That is true as far as it goes, but those long houses were built atop a hill and surrounded by a palisade, not a solid wall like in the western forts in the movies but tree trunks spaced too close for a man to pass through but from behind which a defender might shoot arrows or thrust a spear. Iroquois towns were really hilltop forts."
"Did you know that their neighbors called them mad cannibals and eaters of men? The Iroquois not only indulged in ritual torture, they followed up with a ritual where they ate the flesh of their victims. Admittedly the Aztecs were far worse in that regard. Not having woodlands and plains full of game animals to stock their larders, the Aztecs got much of their meat from human sacrifice."
"The four Indian chiefs you mentioned were active in the late 19th century, long after the American Revolution, so whatever they did was hardly original. All four witnessed the final defeat of the Plains Indians. So they were not founders of anything except living on reservations as wards and prisoners of the US government instead as free men. The only worthy Indians you seem to know about are the Plains Indians featured in Hollywood movies. You ignore the Indians of the Eastern Woodlands, the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest, so yours is a parochial view based on what the white men taught you. You really should read up on the subject."
"You want Founding Fathers, let me suggest four Indians truly worthy of the title. Let's start with the co-founders of the Iroquois Confederacy Hiawatha and the prophet Dekanawida, usually known as the Great Peacemaker.
"For a third founder you could hardly do better than Tecumseh, the great warrior who organized an Indian confederacy to resist American expansion during the War of 1812."
"My fourth nominee is Sequoyah the greatest man of the Cherokee nation, the leader of the Five Civilized Tribes who adopted white institutions like Christianity, town living, markets, literacy, and centralized government with written constitutions. They also intermarried with whites. If only white America had met them halfway."
"Let those four exemplary human beings be your Founding Fathers, not those losers you named earlier."
I had let him have it with both barrels. He slunk away, silent and abashed. Admittedly ours was not a fair debate. I was not only better read in history than any mortal could possibly be, I had lived through most of written history. I hope he was now motivated to read up on the history of this shared continent of ours.
Notes on the above:
By Hiawatha I meant the real one, the Iroquois chief -- not the better known Ojibway warrior who was merely a fictional character from the poem "Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The fictional Hiawatha appeared in two movies. The real Hiawatha has no movie credits.
To show how truly civilized they were, the Five Tribes held Blacks in chattel slavery, a right guaranteed by treaty until 1866 when the US made the tribes sign new treaties banning human bondage. That was the real and final end of slavery in the United States, later even than the final ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865, which ended slavery in Kentucky and Delaware, the last two of five border states which were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation since they had remained loyal to the Union.
Missouri, Maryland, and West Virginia by state law had abolished slavery during the Civil War. Similarly, in 1862 Congress legislatively abolished slavery in the District of Columbia which is why April 16th is a public holiday in our nations's capital. DC was the only jurisdiction where slaveowners were monetarily compensated for the loss of their former property in human beings.
The overhyped incident on Juneteenth in June of 1865 was a local event, the date a proclamation was issued by the newly arrived commander of the Federal garrison in Galveston. Big deal.
Like Emancipation Day in DC, Juneteenth should be no more than a public holiday in Texas. The new Federal holiday is the unfortunate result of divisive identity politics. This country has only one real National Independence Day which does not fall on the nineteenth of June. How dare they claim national independence for themselves.
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