…and panders to the editors-in-briefs!

Here is his second entry into our contest Of Knights and Knaves, the contest that required the writer to use the line or create one that sounds similar to “It was a dark and stormy night.”

All right Sal…No fair pandaring to the editors-in-briefs! It’s not like you’re running for president…

 

 

NEW AMERICA

by

Sal Buttaci

 

Major Lewison with the corporal’s help attached the hefty sweeper to the grill of his 2118 Afford, then Lewison soft-footed in slo-drive while the corporal ran the battery lights.

The major chomped down on a Cuban, thick dark smoke seething out of his clenched teeth. He looked menacing.

“Classified,” Lewison said. “Not for us to know. We’re in a warehouse. That should tell you something. The last history books told about treasures hidden in warehouses. ‘bout as common as New Presidents telling the Army what new war to shove off to.”

From outside the sweeper Moore asked, “History books, Sir?”

Lewison laughed so hard he damn near choked on a rush of cigar steam burning down his throat. Moore waited, his gloved hands directing the strong battery light beams as the sweeper inched forward.

“Corporal, you sure are young! November 2076, long before you was born, New President Huang Saunders declared martial law, then by executive action dismantled Congress. “The American people have grown weary“––Saunder’s words, not mine––“with do-nothing politicos. They want decisive leadership, not spineless vote counters more loyal to pork-barrel barons than to their constituents.”

“Saunders was the first. Years ago when you wasn’t even a dust mote swirling in a world of possibilities. Saunders, grandson of a former Chinese Maoist Leader, replaced Communism here with Runaway Capitalism. In no time China owned America! Goodbye, land of the free and home of the brave. That was the old America you never knew, Son.”

“Sir, what are history books?”

The major shook his head, perhaps wishing away memories, stomped his foot on the brake, and waved his hand over the engine key to kill the sweeper. He motioned for the corporal. Moore hopped in.

“The past,” began the old major, “the past and everything worth telling about it was called ‘history.’ Get it? ‘His story,’ story of mankind. We was the last to see them books, along with every other book that either opposed New America’s big capitalism or was apathetic to it. Them nonpolitical books, them works of fiction so damn entertaining they freed us from new realities and allowed us to live vicariously through made-up characters we come to love. We read them in books and then we sat in theaters watching their stories unfold on the giant silver screen.”

The corporal’s face flashed confusion.

“Hey, this is all over your head, Son. What I’m saying is, Huang Saunders pronounced our democracy, our republic, one more dictatorship for the history books, ‘cept he also ordered an end to the electronic age of computers and phones and  dictated a policy of book burning the world’s never seen. Oh, we had them burnings in the past, but brave word lovers they’d hide books, then when the winds of change blew out the burning cauldrons, them books reappeared and the presses they’d run again. But before Saunders died in ‘06, he handpicked Philip Chang the New President. Nobody, not even the brave, would dare conceal a book from his fiery band of Pyrocrats. One thing to be brave but who’s gonna risk the lives of entire families for this one act of treason?”

Major Lewison lit another Cuban.

“This cigar? You know why it’s called a Cuban?” The corporal shrugged. “Once there was an island named Cuba where cigar makers rolled the best there was, but Saunders  nuked the island, and gave a New American cigar the name “Cuban.” Never was a   dictator without a mean sense of humor!”

In all the sweeps he’d done with the major, Corporal Moore never heard Lewison speak more than a handful of words. Moore ran the battery lights in search of something written. Lewison ran the sweeper with its tactile eye detector and its magnetic bristles that delved down beneath the stone floors of the warehouses where foolhardy concealers might’ve imbedded written words. He liked the major, but what nonsense he talked! Well, he was old. And if what he was telling him was true about history books, it was a sure thing Lewison was not at liberty to discuss it. As for his own job of shedding light, literally, on hidden writings, he had personally never found any. He wondered what they would look like? Writings? On what the major called ‘paper’?

Lewison puffed dark smoke out the window to his left, away from the corporal.

“Let’s get back to work, “ he ordered in a gruff voice Moore was accustomed to. Friendly talk was over. Moore would don his dark goggles again, set the battery lights at high intensity, and resume searching. While he did so, Major Lewison restarted the sweeper and then, minutes later, jammed on the brake when the young corporal all at once cried out so raucously Lewison thought the sharp bristles had stabbed him.

“Major! Major! I found something! Under a stone the sweeper raised up.”

Lewison threw open the driver’s door and, racing towards the grill where the sweeper was whirring down towards silence, he saw the corporal kneeling beside an upturned warehouse stone, a torn sheet of paper in his trembling gloved hands.

“What the hell is it, Son?”

“Major, I don’t know.”

The sheet resembled a winged living thing. It fluttered in the corporal’s hand.

Major Lewison knelt on one knee beside him. He took the paper. Corporal Moore looked from sheet to Lewison’s moving lips. Was it possible? he wondered. An actual piece of writing? And Lewison wondered too. After nearly fifty years since the Book Burnings began, after the first and the present New Presidents declared a “Paper-free America,” we find this?

There wasn’t much left of it. Something perhaps meant to introduce the pages that followed, but still it was real. It had survived the pyrocratic raids of two lifelong administrations.

Lewison had no clue exactly what he should say to the young light bearer who had accompanied him these several years on so many sweeps like this one.

“You were moving your lips. Major. Your eyes shifted from left to right a few times. What is this thing?”

“ ‘It was a Clark and Thorn e-write,’ ” it says here. I can’t figure what the hell that means,” said the major. “Could be the start of a story. Whatever else on the sheet’s worn away and blurry as hell. I can’t make it out.”

“Who’s Clark and Thorn?”

“Damned if I know. Two spinners of history maybe. Two fiction writers entertaining Old America.”

“What do we do with it?” asked Corporal Moore. “Hand it over to the Pyrocrats? To New President Chang? What do we do, Sir?”

The major removed from his blue army coat pocket another of those misnamed cigars. He let his teeth clamp down on it like a vise, made a toothy smile reminiscent of Old America President Teddy he remembered reading about before America lost its Big Stick. From the same pocket Lewison found his book of matches. First he lit the cigar, then set fire to the sheet of paper.

Both watched it dwindle into a curling brown leaf and then, in cinders, blow into the dank warehouse air.

 

 

Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer whose work has appeared widely.  He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award. His poems, stories, articles, and letters have appeared widely in publications that include New York Times, U. S. A. Today, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Cats Magazine, The National Enquirer, Christian Science Monitor, Thinking Ten, Pen 10, and Six Sentences.

 

A former English instructor at a local community college and middle-school teacher in New Jersey, he retired in 2007 to devote himself to full-time writing.

 

Flashing My Shorts and 200 Shorts, published by All Things That Matter Press, are available in book and Kindle editions at

www.kindlegraph.com/authors/sambpoet

 

His new book, If Roosters Don’t Crow, It Is Still Morning: Haiku and Other Poems (Cyber-Wit Publications) is available at

www.amazon.com/roosters-dont-crow-still-morning/dp/8182532698/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1321825150&sr=1-1-catcorr

 

He lives happily ever after with his wife Sharon in West Virginia.