Part 3: Not Too Swift

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand between their lov'd home and the war's desolation! Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto - "In God is our trust,” and the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Francis Scott Key

The earliest American diplomatic courier was a man by the name of Peter Parker, commissioned by the Continental Congress on July 10, 1776 to deliver confidential dispatches to one Samuel Delap in Bordeaux, France.  The letters, relating to obtaining urgently needed military supplies from our liberty-loving ally across the Atlantic, were weighed so that they could be thrown overboard in the event of capture by a British patrol frigate. 

It wasn’t until many years later when the U.S. Department of State began hiring couriers on a regular basis for duty during World War I that they were given the title “Bearer of Dispatches.” 

The U.S. Embassies in London and Paris became the first outposts to hire full-time couriers with American citizenship.  They were even given a special passport to certify the importance of their tasks in order to pass freely across foreign borders.  As the U.S. Courier Service grew, so too did those of other industrialized countries and it became widely accepted that sealed courier pouches were not to be opened by foreign Customs officials for any reason – like embassies abroad are considered U.S. sovereign soil, so too diplomatic pouches are considered sacrosanct.

In order to cut government expenses during the Great Depression, the Courier Service was briefly disbanded in 1933, but President Roosevelt reactivated it again a year later. By the end of World War II, every embassy and consulate served by the State Department employed men of the Courier Service.  The U.S. Diplomatic Courier Service’s emblem is a golden eagle in flight and its motto is taken from Herodotus’ description of Persian couriers 2,500 years ago: None Is Swifter Than These.

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Despite his lack of promotions and dead-end career, Samuel Lee Noble nonetheless took great pride in coming to work every day, displaying proudly his U.S. State Department ID tag hung around his neck for fellow drones riding the Metro twice a day with him to see.  And he still carried a valid black diplomatic passport, which made him feel important whenever he flashed it in airports. 

He was part of the 30,000 federal employees officially on the Department’s payroll as full-time salaried personnel, but like every other department of the Executive Branch (and the two other branches of government for that matter), there were thousands more sucking on the government teat but registered “off the books” to avoid being considered official headcount, e.g. contractors, part-time workers, political appointees, and interns. 

And like every other department of government in Washington, the State Department had to rent additional space since the people they employed didn’t fit in the building’s occupancy capacity as originally designed; Washington was busting at the seams with more bureaucrats than ever so federal agencies ran shuttle buses between their various annexes all day long.

Sam didn’t work at State’s headquarters in the Harry S. Truman Building on “C” Street of the District, but rather at an annex in Rosslyn on the other side of the Potomac River in Virginia, the one that housed the Foreign Service Institute language school. 

He worked only a few blocks from the famous Marine Corps War Memorial and strolled there on occasion, staring up at the huge statue of those brave boys on Iwo Jima hoisting Old Glory back in February ‘45.   Government buses ran every twenty minutes to shuttle people back and forth from Rosslyn to “C” Street, and Sam used them to ride over to the Mall and walk down to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial during his lunch break. 

Then he’d take a long stroll past the Vietnam Memorial, the Three Soldiers Statue, all the way down to the World War II Memorial, past the Korean War Memorial, and back up the hill to the Truman building to catch a bus back to Rosslyn again.  If he was gone two hours from work, it didn’t matter; nobody really missed him anyway.

Sam’s Rosslyn office location actually worked out to his advantage, he figured, since working there meant not taking the Metro line one further stop to Foggy Bottom, and having to put up with all those annoying security checks as he made his way inside Truman in what had become during these trying times, an impregnable fortress – and the Secretary of State’s office on the seventh floor was like Fort Knox. 

#

As it was, Sam had a long ride into work every morning from Vienna on the Orange Line since he had to live as far out of town as possible just to afford a place to live.  This was the case with most government bureaucrats since the closer to D.C.’s center one lived, the more expensive the real estate got, and driving into town was well neigh impossible what with the traffic congestion and astronomical cost of parking. 

The less money you made, the further out you lived and even those bureaucrats in senior levels pulling down fat government paychecks – Senior Foreign or Executive Service Officers – lived for the most part in Virginia or Maryland. 

People living in luxury in the Watergate Apartments, in some pricey townhouse up in Georgetown, or other fancy neighborhood in the District, more than likely had at one time or another, affiliations with the private sector or had old family trust money supporting them. 

So much money changed hands inside the Beltway, fueled by the out-of-control federal budget, that D.C.’s cost of living spiked higher every year over the national average inflation rate, so federal employees, in addition to their normal salaries, got a special cost of living allowance to defray the marginally higher cost; as lobbyists and think-tanks forever bid up Washington’s cost to govern, a cozy symbiosis had developed; all paid for by American taxpayers.  

Sam went to work very early in the morning when the Metro still wasn’t very crowded with passengers; the day’s dawn, that was his favorite time of day and he couldn’t sleep anyway because his enlarged prostrate caused him to piss frequently.  Morning was a rebirth and all sins were washed away during the previous night. 

He loved to see the bright red sun on the horizon knowing that at that precise moment, everything began afresh, everything was young and new again – wasn’t rejuvenation really just another version of immortality? 

With each new day you began the first day of the rest of your life, that is, until your last day but you weren’t privy to that detail in advance.  Hope, that’s what it was all about, the chance to do better with your life today and let bygones be bygones.  But if dawn was springtime, then noon was summer, and that gave way to fall at dusk, and then came winter – Sam always hated the night, even as a kid he instinctively felt it was an evil and sinister period; the coldness of it, so compassionless. 

No wonder bears slept through the dark times, why couldn’t he hibernate during winter and lose weight like the grizzlies?  Well, soon enough the big sleep would be coming for him, and then it’d be darkness, permanent darkness.  A stress-free healthy retirement was only two years away now, summer of 2010, and he looked forward to living in the raw outback of Brazil where nature was still clean and pure in his last years. 

Also, hopefully by then his crude first novel, the one he had already started, will have been completed and he´ll have time to polish it and maybe even have it published, making a folk hero out of its protagonist Duke Mitchum and some extra money for himself.

           Sam would just stare at his own reflection in the giant window of the Metro car as semi- blackness rushed by in a blur on the way to work, punctuated by stops for more passengers in dimly lit, ghostly way stations, and then the monotonous rocking of the carriage would start anew. 

           He’d think to himself, hear voices he thought he heard in his head, and sometimes mumble out-loud without realizing it like his grandfather used to do, actual words like, “Who’s that wrinkled old bastard staring at me from the window’s reflection, from that other world, that mockful mirror world – can it really be the young man I used to be?”  The few people in his Metro car would move farther away from him very slowly and uneasily at that point.  

#

           He’d occasionally cut the cheese and wonder how many farts passed over his seat in an average year, broken down demographically by gender, race, age group, religion, and ethnic background, and pause to recall an old Chinese proverb: Man who fart in church sit in own pew.

           Maybe he wasn’t wealthy, but he had a wonderful wife, and a handful of good friends like Archie and the guys from the old platoon, true blue friends that would stick with him through thick and thin.  What was it that his favorite Beatle, John Lennon, once wrote: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.  How Sam missed his mother’s orange-colored rutabaga soup and dancing the Macarena with his wife Nellie like they did in Jamaica back in the old days.

Sam often joked with his best friend, Archie Jefferson, about where he, the ex-courier, stood in the hierarchy of chain of command inside the federal government.  Besides the Vice President and his Chief-of-Staff, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States had a shit load of people reporting to him, at least on paper anyway, anywhere from thirty to fifty bodies depending on how it was counted (independent establishments and “government corporations” included – a real oxymoronic alphabet soup). 

If a private-sector corporation CEO had that many direct reports, the business couldn’t function, which explained at least one reason why government was so screwed up. Of course, the President ignored most of these people reporting to him anyway, even some closer insiders on his cabinet, and let things run pretty much out of control under friends he made political appointments of, until they screw up and he had to fire them. 

Running the State Department is a Secretary, and like every other department head up and down government, there is built-in redundancy since everybody has an assistant, officially called a “deputy.”  And they have Chiefs-of-Staff and Executive Secretariats, and the next layer of bureaucrats under those guys called Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Directors, Ambassadors, and the list went on and on. 

Sam was buried under a massive organizational structure of boxes stacked on boxes beneath the Assistant Secretary of Diplomatic Security.

           The next level was run by a Deputy Secretary of Information Security, down to the Office of Diplomatic Courier Service, across another dozen direct reports, and down again to a position held by Sam’s boss’s boss – Acting Assistant Deputy Director Larry Atwood, a true asshole in every sense of the word. 

              Under him were half a dozen direct reports including Sam’s boss and friend, Office Chief Kurt U. Rowan, who in turn had a dozen people reporting to him besides Sam. This guy Atwood was a piece of work. 

           He wasn’t career State Department but one of the thousands of professional schmoozer jerk-offs who won political appointments because they worked on a successful election campaign in some backwater place and as payback for services rendered, for a few years anyway, they got to be big shots in Washington, and earn big money (at least by government standards) sucking on the government teat. 

           Sam had been called to the woodshed a few times by the AADD for his petty offenses in the office, usually involving Sam’s off-colored sense of humor in the politically correct, diversity-loving, minority-hugging, touchy-feely bullshit environment he worked in.

#

Then too, Sam didn’t help his cause much either.  Like at the retirement office party, just a week after the July 4th army reunion, at T.G.I. Friday’s where spouses were invited to attend after work and Sam overheard Atwood’s wife Naomi speaking with his wife Nellie.  The department’s Equal Employment Opportunity representative, an honorific title, was retiring after thirty years with the State Department, a real witch-woman that Sam had more than one run in with, but it would have been considered poor form not to attend. 

Still, going through with that goody-two-shoe bullshit charade of fake-kissing womenfolk on the cheek at these affairs turned Sam’s stomach – why not just a quick handshake like with the guys and be done with the plastic phoniness of pretending to be best friends.

“Well Mrs. Noble, I understand from Larry that you’re from Brazil and you’ve been in America a long time.  I’ve never been to Brazil, but I understand it’s a very pretty country and yet quite poor,” Naomi said with a perfectly sincere smile underneath her puffed up and sprayed-stiff big hair, daintily holding a long-stemmed glass of chilled Châteauneuf-du-Bathtub white wine. 

Nellie replied politely in good English, “Yes, I miss my country very much.  We are a very simple people you know – we laugh, we sing, we dance.  Perhaps someday Brazil can be as rich as America.”

Sam couldn’t resist the temptation of injecting himself into the conversation.  “Well hello Mrs. Atwood, how are you this fine evening?  I couldn’t help overhearing about Brazil, yeah, it’s a great country and I’ve been there many a time myself.”

“Do tell Mr. Noble.  And during your frequent trips outside the United States and off into those dark, mysterious third-world countries, what was it you missed the most?”

“Well, that’s a good question ‘cause there’s many a things I missed when I traveled overseas far away from my beloved U.S.A.,” Sam pondered and hesitated for effect and finally replied, “but I’d guess, all things considered, I’d honestly have to say that what I missed the most were pink nipples.”

Sam remembered the impact of his words with glee to this day; it looked like Atwood’s old hag had bitten into the world’s sourest lemon as the phony smile gave way to a pursing of the lips as she swirled around in a huff and was gone into the crowd instantly.  He didn’t need his immediate supervisor to tell him he was in hot water, but he really didn’t care ‘cause the bitch had it coming.

“Sam, what the fuck!” Kurt said in hushed voice just minutes later, “Atwood is really pissed at you this time, what were you thinking, you can’t insult his wife like that.  He wants us in his office bright and early Monday morning.”

Sam’s blunt reply was, “Fuck ‘em if he can’t take a joke; it’s all politics man.”  So Sam had to trudge yet again to the dildo’s office for another ass chewing.

#

“Mr. Noble, your continued poor attitude and insulting posture vis-à-vis colleagues and people in general concerns me.  As this department ramps up (bureaucrats in D.C. adored saying ‘ramp up’) to support the latest round of the war on terror and help pull our economy out of its doldrums, we need to make sure everyone works as a team. 

A key component of effectiveness on the job is good morale, and this same rationale applies to social functions where our spouses are present.  Besides the appalling account of what happened last Friday night from my wife, a number of other people also overheard your off-color comment and were equally shocked by its vulgarity.  Furthermore the 2008 Presidential elections are just a few months away and it’s crucial we all stay focused on our jobs.” 

Atwood was beet red and tried to contain his anger.  And Sam sure as hell didn’t have a clue what this moron was talking about the economy for, if anything, his department just wasted taxpayer money and the biggest waste was this dickhead’s salary.

“That so, Mr. Atwood.  Funny, I don’t recall anyone else standing within earshot of my remarks to Mrs. Atwood except my wife and she was too busy laughing to be appalled.”  Sam said rather innocently.  Kurt just buried his face in his hands and slowly shook his head from side to side. 

While ignoring Atwood’s next ten minutes of preaching on how to work with others and having to be more sensitive in the future to others people’s feelings, Sam eyeballed around the room and was really impressed with how Larry had set up his office.  On the wall hung his undergraduate college diploma from Southern Illinois University in a small cheap frame and next to it in a giant rather ornate frame was a certificate he got from Harvard University for completion of a two-week taxpayer-funded seminar on leadership skills.

There were framed pictures sitting on his credenza with elected public officials from Capitol Hill, and one with him in a large crowd of people standing behind the President at some State Department function alongside Deputy Secretary Clounwissel.  There was a carved engraving on his desk that said, “No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.  H.G. Wells.”

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He also had on his walls framed posters, like the ones advertised on airlines in those magazines placed in pouches in front of passengers, with inspirational messages about teamwork, leadership, excellence, commitment, and achievement. 

Sam couldn’t believe that people actually bought this shit and hung it in their office: There’s no “I” in Team; Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line; An opportunity is never lost, just found by someone else; and Commitment… We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail… peace and freedom will prevail.  Larry Atwood was all about moral virtue, trust, honor, truth, justice, and the American way.

“And then there was the blatant lack of sensitivity you displayed when you hung your obscenely insulting remarks about religions on the bulletin board next to the coffee maker last year.”  Atwood was on a roll now, drudging up all Sam’s past sins. 

Sam had especially liked his dig on religions like Taoism: Shit Happens, Buddhism: If shit happens, it really isn’t shit, Hinduism: This shit happened before, Mormon: This shit is going to happen again, Catholicism: Shit happens because you are bad, Protestantism: Let the shit happen to someone else, Islam: If shit happens it is the will of Allah, Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us, Rastafarianism: Hey mon let’s smoke this shit, and Atheism: Sheee-it.  What strange thing religions are, how did they all start out anyway?

           “And then there was the appalling incident which happened only a couple of months after 9/11 with your mocking of Homeland Security’s very important color-coded threat alert system, more evidence of totally unacceptable behavior, blah, blah, blah.” 

#

Sam hadn’t thought that episode such a big deal; it was only a little on the twisted side humor-wise but apparently not in this bullshit bureaucratic environment.  The color chart he pinned up showed green alert meaning all world evil destroyed; blue meant the occasional suicide bomber got through; yellow was for sweet little old ladies infiltrating airports with blue hair and knitting needles; orange was for terrorists who just wanted to bomb your subway train; and red meant that it was time to bend over and kiss your ass good bye. 

The Department of Homeland Security was a joke and everyone knew it, made up of 22 agencies that were screwed up to begin with, then slammed together to create one huge cluster-fuck of 180,000 people – Rube Goldberg himself couldn’t have created anything crazier. 

By the way, the only thing Sam liked about the USA Patriot Act – Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism – was how intelligent some government hose-job had been in coming up with the catchy acronym; for sure he had gotten a promotion out of it. 

After totally failing to protect its citizens from the 9/11 terrorists, and after spending $60 billion a year in intelligence activities, the best Washington could come up with was a way to take away U.S. Constitutional civil rights from its people “for their own good” and spending even more money on intelligence and security matters than ever before. 

Sam was sure there would be a broad grassroots backlash around the country, but it never came, as citizens too numbed out by the scale of events just accepted whatever the government told them was in their best interest.  Likewise, there was no outcry when the high-level government people paid to protect the average American citizen, those bureaucrats who miserably failed in their job, rather than being fired for incompetence were given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

           What was the Homeland Security Department anyway but just a mega-agency spreading the tentacle of government out even further into its citizens’ day-to-day lives?  Domestic travel anymore on overcrowded airplanes had become shear torture, and Sam was happy he had been grounded a few years ago from courier service. 

           Besides his age – this was the real, but unsaid, reason because age discrimination was expressly forbidden, as much a taboo subject as race and gender discrimination in government circles– he had two fused disks in his back, which meant sitting for long periods was painful.  Not traveling anymore also meant no more meals on airlines, which he actually thought were pretty good, and new-release movies, which he hated to miss.

Sam loved old movies, especially Westerns and action flicks, and he was an avid reader on long flights. He figured he’d read hundreds and hundreds of books over his many years as a courier.  His favorite books usually involved patriotism because despite everything, he adored America and American history, and acts of courage. 

And this backwoods lad had seen the world at taxpayer expense – visiting over a hundred and twenty countries during his career (more now if you count all the splitting up of old countries into smaller newer ones), but only really living overseas in two foreign lands and for short stints of a few months at that – Brazil and Jamaica. 

They were sweet TDYs, or temporary duties as they say, and he lived just like real-life Foreign Service Officers, the royalty of the State Department, with all their perks, and got to hobnob with ambassadors and other important people at cocktail parties and what not.

#

Eternal Father bless our land, guard us with thy mighty hand, keep us free from evil powers, be our light through countless hours.  To our leaders Great Defender, grant true wisdom from above.  Jamaica, truth be ours forever; Jamaica land we love. 

The first time Sam got a TDY had been shortly after he joined the courier service – shit, when was that, back in January 1972?  He was assigned to work out of Brasília for a few months, covering South America, and that’s when he met a very young dark-haired, black-eyed beauty from the hinterlands of Brazil that became his wife later that same year when she was only nineteen, and she gave him darling little Sarah the following year. 

After Sarah’s kidnapping, his career stalled and he never did get to join the Foreign Service full time, but he was still able to get one more TDY in Kingston, Jamaica during the mid-90s, and he and Nellie had loved it. 

The Ambassador was an African-American lady, who dressed regularly in garish South African attire, and had done a stint in Brazil as a young counselor officer working in Rio de Janeiro, so took an instant liking to Nellie. 

Her name was Iffy Bootla, addressed as Madam Ambassador, who had stopped using the hyphenated form of her last name Bootla-Queener when she got divorced from Mr. Queener (married women using hyphenated last names are considered sophisticated in the State Department). 

Many a day after work the office staff would adjourn to its favorite watering hole, where conversation and jokes would flow – along with copious amounts of Red Stripe and Appleton – and Sam made lasting friendships with Dorna, Sonia, Little Val, Claudia, Valerie, and Mr. Doyle of his department.  Jamaican women were particularly strong willed and witty.

Nellie and Sam drove around the entire island, and were amazed by the beauty of places like Bamboo Alley, Black River, Negril, Montego Bay, Duncan, Ocho Rios, and Port Antonio.  Their two favorite places were on the outskirts of Port Antonio – the unforgettable Frenchman’s Cove and Boston Bay’s roadside shack that served the best jerk chicken on the island.

           Sam took up cigar smoking and wished his old first sergeant was still alive so he could send him a box of Macanudos he purchased duty-free at the Kingston factory.  He also took lessons at the Constant Springs Golf Club and experienced one of the great delicacies of the club – the lime squash – prepared by world-renown barkeep Sixfinger Clem.  It was Clem that taught Sam what “irie” and “big-up” meant, and how to make a shandy by pouring Red Stripe and Ting over crushed ice. 

           Monkey see, money do, monkey jump in da hot calaloo.  Another big plus to living in Jamaica at the time, besides the spectacular tropical setting and great people, was the fact that the national soccer team had a new Brazilian coach, the superb René Simões, and he took the Reggae Boyz for the first time in the history of the country to the World Cup; the country went delirious with pride and joy.  

           Sam remembered one bright and shiny morning in particular driving into work, when he took a wrong turn down the oncoming lane on Waterworks Close that a police officer stopped him – driving on the left side was proving trickier than Sam thought.  And in Jamaica, roads didn’t have potholes – potholes had little bits of road spaced in between. 

           The officer asked to see his driver’s license so Sam handed him his wallet where it was displayed just inside under plastic, but slightly hidden by a bit of paper.  When the officer removed the slip of paper, there had been printed on it the first stanza of the country’s national anthem, so the constable told Sam jokingly that if he could recite it, he would be released no questions asked.  Sam did.  Respect mon. 

           A broad grin came over the constable’s face as he waved Sam on his way, and the Kentuckian even recalled the great quantity of small yellow butterflies that seemed to gently guide him and his Jeep Wrangler all the way into work at the embassy that morning.  It was late afternoon of the same day that Sam was called into the Ambassador’s office and told by her that his mother had just passed away from a heart attack.  So he and Nellie packed up and left Jamaica, never to return, and that was that. 

#

           “Sam, Sam…,” Kurt murmured as he jabbed Sam in the ribs with his elbow to get him to focus.

 “Larry, Sam understands your concerns and let me say that I’ll work with him on his attitude problems.  I think you know he’s nearing retirement age and so we all want this to go smoothly for another couple of years, lest any of us look callous.”  Kurt knew appealing to Atwood’s political sensitivities regarding personnel problems would get Sam off the hook one more time.

“Well, I sure as heck hope so.”  Atwood wasn’t red anymore, and a hint of compassion had entered the tone of his voice.  “Gentlemen, let’s see to it that we don’t have any more of these unfortunate situations arise; it makes us all look bad.”  With that, the underlings were dismissed and headed back to Kurt’s office down the hall.

“Jesus Christ Sam, you weren’t evening paying attention back there; you were off into another Never-Never Land daydream sitting right in front of the department head.”  Kurt wasn’t so much furious with Sam as he was concerned with the old timer’s increasingly lack of ability to focus on even mundane office matters. 

He had even arranged for Sam to have an easy job working on putting together new policy binders for the courier department, which in itself proved challenging because except for churning out emails, Sam was computer illiterate and needed a college intern to do most of the digital publication work.

“Sorry Kurt, I must be getting senile or something, it won’t happen again and I’ll keep my nose clean in the future. By the way, did it ever occur to you that Atwood’s wife’s name Naomi spelled backwards says, ‘I moan?’” 

Sam’s boss was only a few years younger but he thought of him as a kid nevertheless – and he also had great respect for his professionalism during the three years they had been working together.  Kurt Ulric Rowan was the real deal, an officer in the Senior Foreign Service of the U.S. State Department, the best of the best and he deserved it. 

He worked long hours, spoke three languages besides English fluently, and had lived overseas over twenty years from shit holes like Haiti to plum assignments like Madrid, yet he was a down to earth, easy going person.  And smart as a whip – he had a master’s degree from Georgetown University, but was working on his Ph.D., and even taught American history classes there part-time.  Word had it his ancestors were bigwigs with the university back in the day, the Dahlgrens.

           “Sam, this guy Atwood, he’s a dangerous prick.  He could care less about your forty-something years in government service.  If enough complaints are filed charging you with insulting, discriminatory behavior to women and minorities, they’ll furlough you with a medical discharge. 

#

            You don’t want it to come to that, do you?  You’re a white, middle-aged, pudgy dinosaur just like me and we’re an endangered species.  With this economy going to hell, they’re talking about reductions-in-force up and down and across the federal government, regardless of seniority or tenure status.  This RIF will go deep.  Just hang on, do your time, and get the fuck out, okay?”

“Okay, but Atwood’s ass is so tight that if he swallowed coal he’d shit diamonds,” was the best Sam could do.

            After a quiet pause, Kurt added good-naturedly, “And when the hell are we going to go out and hit some balls again for money?  The kids need new shoes.”  Sam had first taken up golf back in Jamaica at a rather advanced age but rarely played; to keep his back limber and get some physical exercise Nellie encouraged him to get out more, even though he sucked at the sport.  Kurt’s handicap was single digit and Sam’s was off the charts.

“Okay, but I need strokes, and I get to keep score and fluff the ball to improve my lie.”  Sam magically scored better when he wrote down his own number of strokes, but Kurt still took his money most of the time except for putting – that’s where Sam could take Kurt in “snake” over eighteen holes.  Three putts or more per hole buys a round of drinks in the clubhouse, that was the snake.

As Sam got up to leave, Kurt said, “By the way, how’re the ideas for the book coming?”  Sam told Kurt about his book writing project after the reunion with his army buddies, who collectively had badgered and belittled him into getting it done before he dropped dead.  “I’m still mulling shit around in my head, I’ve got lots of ideas but I can’t figure out how to, you know, connect everything together.  Any words of wisdom?” 

“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us.  The greatest university of all is a collection of books, or so said the Scotsman Thomas Carlyle a couple of hundred years ago.”  Kurt’s quotation forced a grin across Sam’s face.

“Gee, that’s really boring Kurt, what else you got that’d help an uneducated retard like me?”

“Well, Sam, funny you should ask.  As a matter of fact, I was thinking about writing a book someday myself, about American history, something I have a passion for.  Of course, the center piece of any such book has to involve the Civil War since that conflict made us what we are today.

#

            There was a letter written during the Civil War, which Sam always found some solace in, and he recalled it to himself often whenever he got the blues thinking of his little Sarah.  Lincoln had been sad too when his older sister Sarah died at only 19, after taking care of him when he was ill as a child.  Just before the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, a Rhode Island officer by the name of Sullivan Ballou had a premonition that he was going to be killed; as it turned out, he was right. 

            Before dying, he wrote a letter to this wife, also named Sarah, as poignant and beautiful piece of literature if there ever was one, in which he lamented his imminent death, but added that if his death preserved what the forefathers fought and died for during the Revolution, then he would gladly pay the ultimate price even if that meant never seeing his beloved wife and two little sons again. 

            Sullivan begs Sarah’s forgiveness for his transgressions in life and says that with his last dying breath, he will whisper her name. 

            In the last paragraph of his letter he talks of afterlife, when they will once again meet in heaven: But, O Sarah!  If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights, always, always.  And if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, and as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.  Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

            How often Sam had thought of these words, and that it was his little Sarah who had gone ahead and was waiting for mommy and daddy, and every time a soft breeze touched his cheek, it came from his darling daughter.  He still missed her terribly.

#

            Kurt continued, “Earth to Sam, are you listening?”  Sam had been off in dreamland yet again.  “Here’s a good tip I heard the other day in the teachers’ lounge at Georgetown, which by the way is a campus you should visit sometime.  They have a great library and I can get you inside with my alumni pass. 

            Stroll around the campus grounds and check out the Dahlgren Chapel and Healy Hall, the place is beautiful and has a mysterious quality to it – you know, the Jesuits.”  Normally, Kurt would have recommended Sam use the Internet and Google to find research material on any topic under the sun, but he knew Sam didn’t even own a home computer.

“Thanks for the offer dude.  I’ve always liked that musical tune from the Hoya alma mater, but right now I’m using the Vienna public library for research; so what’s the writing tip?”

“Oh yeah,” was Kurt’s reply to Sam, “These were two English professors talking, so they knew their shit, and one’s advice to the other went something like this.  You can’t look at the book writing process in its entirety or it seems overwhelming.  It’s more like picking up a handful of pebbles and throwing them into a quiet pond. 

As they strike the calm surface, each one begins as a tiny point then spreads outward making multiple ripples.  Eventually all the waves intersect forming a concert of movement on the water’s surface transitioning via segues at the points of intersection into the fabric of a book.”

Sam replied, “Sounds really Zen to me, what does all that mean kemosabe?”

“It means just sit down and start writing about anything that strikes your fancy for which you have a keen passion in – don’t think you have to write a chapter at a time in any chronological sequence necessarily because that’ll just stifle your creativity.  Just tell the story by writing it.  Later on you can go back and stitch chapters together like when editors cut and paste movie scenes together – you know movies are filmed in any old sequence, sometimes ending first and beginning last, very random.”

            “That’s damn good advice, Kurt.  I’ll have to give you credit if I ever get done and have my book published.”

“No problem, Sam. Just do me a favor and please keep us both the hell out of trouble in the meantime.”

As Sam left his boss’ office and shuffled back to his tiny cubbyhole, the thought occurred to him that when morons started outnumbering good guys, it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.  Walking back to his cubicle, Sam couldn’t help but hum a tune from one of his favorite action movies of all time. 

Sam loved to watch the Georgetown Hoyas play basketball on television and always enjoyed the band’s rendition of the school’s alma mater even more, not because it had anything to do with the school, but because the tune evoked the memory of the movie Zulu.  The lyrics of the alma mater were written in 1894 by Robert Collier, but the tune, it was much, much older.

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The British film premier of Zulu was held on January 23, 1964, the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Battles of Rorke’s Drift, staring Stanley Baker as Lieutenant John Chard, Officer of Royal Engineers commanding, and introducing a very young Michael Caine as Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, second in command of Company B, Second Battalion, Twenty-fourth Regiment of Foot. 

Only 1,354 Victoria Crosses have been awarded in the history of the British Empire, its highest military decoration for valor way above and beyond the call of duty; including Chard and Bromhead, 11 soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift.

There’s a particular scene from the movie that was Sam’s favorite, with the exhausted and bloodied 140 heroic British troops still at the barricades after two days, throats scorched that afternoon of seemingly hopeless despair of January 23, 1879 when the entire Zulu army of 4,000 warriors appeared on the horizon, apparently ready to swoop down and strike the final coup de grâce against the British troops.  

As the enemy began slowly advancing, the Zulus began singing, prompting Chard to ask the Welshman standing next to him at the barricade, a tenor in the regimental choir, “Do you think the Welsh can do better than that, Owen?”

Welshmen have always been able to relieve their despair when they united in song; this was their heritage since the days of the Tylwyth Teg, the fairies and wee people of the forest.  Around the year 1400 A. D., the Welsh nobleman and great hero Owain Glyndwr defended his home, Castle Harlech in Cambria, against English invaders, but alas, his castle and family were taken prisoner and himself severely wounded; he fled to the hills never to be seen again.  In his honor, a song was written that every Welshmen at Rork’s Drift, including Owens, knew by heart so all sang the words:

 Men of Harlech stop your dreaming, can’t you see their spear points gleaming, see their warrior’s pennants streaming, to this battlefield.  Men of Harlech stand ye steady, it cannot be ever said ye, for the battle were not ready, stand, and never yield.  From the hills rebounding, let this war cry sounding, summon all at Cambria’s call the mighty force surrounding.  Men of Harlech onto glory, this shall ever be your story, keep these fighting words before ye… Welshmen will not yield!

            After Owens and his comrades had finished their song, ready now for the end, a strange thing happened – the Zulus began backing away because their singing had nothing to do with an impending attack; instead they were paying homage to the brave men who despite overwhelming odds displayed tenacity and courage defending Rorke’s Drift.  Theirs’ was an honor bestowed, from warriors to fellow warriors and such was Zulu nobleness that they could not take the lives of their valiant enemy.

            “Why,” Sam frequently asked himself, “couldn’t conflicts be resolved that way in real life in the modern world, warriors obeying a noble code of conduct, and then having their exploits penned to verse and set to song.” 

            Who would not trade all their remaining days, from this day forth, in exchange for a noble cause, to live on as heroic myth in folklore for all time, after their brief time here on Earth and inevitable mere-mortal death.  “Yeah,” Sam thought, “It’s time for me to get to work and finish my damn book while I still can and for Duke Mitchum to make a name for himself.”  And what Archie had blurted out in his drunken rant at the army reunion was something he had already thought long and hard about for some time, “It’s always been about gold and it’ll always be about gold.”

(This is a work of fiction.  Although some real-world names, organizations, historical settings, and situations are used to enhance the authenticity of the story, any similarities to actual persons, organizations, or situations are coincidental and all portrayals are purely the product of the author’s imagination.  This is the second edition abridged version 2019.  First edition Copyright © 2006.  All rights reserved)