All Greek To Me

interrupted, as they slowed for a yellow light that marked the outer limits of a small town. “Two minutes to target. Do you know where your hats are?”

  In response, John resettled the deerstalker cap on his head so that the grey-streaked beard and unkempt hair attached to it covered his face. Vinnie’s artificial ponytail hung down from an Oilers baseball cap. They were driving along the main drag of the town, with its old timey storefronts and ghost town feel. Up the side streets you might see a truck or two parked, but the sidewalks were empty and nothing anywhere was moving.

  “Got tumbleweeds?” Vinnie joshed.

  “Yeah, don’t blink,” John said. “Going Out of Business” and “Closed” signs were pasted across many of the shop windows. “Except there’s nothing to miss. There’s nothing left.”

  They turned at the water tower and headed past the school, with its boarded up windows and hoopless basketball court. The curb and the sidewalks continued on a little way and the houses were a little better kept and a little bigger for a minute before dwindling away to shotgun shacks and doublewides. They were headed for a two-story brick house that looked like it had been built in the wrong place. It was surrounded on three sides by a picket fence in need of a paint job. In the hard-packed yard, crocuses were popping through a fringe of strawberry plants and a Chickasaw plum was shyly in bloom A black Crown Vic was parked across the street and a small knot of strangers were waving signs and chanting by the front gate.

  “As we make our approach,” Julio intoned, like a pilot in a bad movie, “I’d like to point out that per prior reconnaissance we have canned spooks at three o’clock. In addition, we seem to have accumulated an unidentified squad of COB. Repeat, we have citizens on the battlefield. And drop will commence in 4-3-2-”

  Julio stopped the van beside the protesters while John and Vinnie bailed out, masses of flowers further camouflaging their flimsy disguises. The protesters formed a gauntlet of verbal assault through which they passed as rapidly as possible. Julio, bearing a giant American flag made of red, white, and blue-dyed carnations, brought up the rear.

  “You’re going to hell, all of you. The Lord will see to it.”

  “God hates you the way he hates all fags and everyone who serves in our faggot military.”

  One of the women, fat and rabid, tried to spit on John, but she missed. Vinnie managed to tread on somebody’s foot in passing and a howl went up. So Vinnie came back to apologize.

  “Did I step on you? I’m so sorry,” he said in complete insincerity, and managed to rack the guy as he was helping him to straighten up. Julio grabbed Vinnie under one arm to make sure he made it to the front porch, where John was ringing the doorbell.

  An elderly gentleman with a mild handsome face and a shock of white hair pulled back a lace curtain to ascertain whether or not the door should be opened. Seeing Julio, he held up a hand in greeting and hastened to let them in. When the door closed on the obnoxious noise of the protesters, it was like stepping back in time. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, they could make out a coat tree, high ceilings, and polished wood floors. Directly in front of them a woman was descending a staircase with stern and measured tread. She was winsome in a worn sort of way, but with plenty of fight left in her. She smelled the flowers before any of them said a word. And was not pleased.

  “Now Julio, you went and did what I asked you not to. ‘In lieu of flowers,’ I said and you promised me, you promised you wouldn’t come hauling a whole bunch of funeral posies I will just have to turn right around and compost. I mean look at that,” she scolded, following Julio and his flag of flowers into the Victorian parlor, with its well-worn settee and matching chairs. “Were you trying to get my dander up? You know what Sinclair Lewis said, don’t you?”

  John and his father knew. From the hallway they recited together like obedient children: “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.” Her face went paper white and she walked to where John was standing, still mostly hidden behind his bowl of American Beauties. She snapped at Vinnie. “Young man, you will do me the favor of opening the front door.” While to John she said in a low tone, eyes narrowed in rage, “And you - give me those damn roses.” He did, and stood aside as she flounced out of the house and down the front steps, where the Eastboro Baptist crazies greeted her with the screams of the damned. The window of the Crown Vic scrolled smoothly down, the better to hear and record, my dear.

  “That would be Mom,” Vinnie hazarded, pulling out an audio jammer and sticking it to the nearest wall to disable any listening devices in the immediate vicinity. “OK, the cone of silence has been activated.”

  “She was a cruel woman,” John said, watching as his mother spoke briefly to the protesters, extending the bowl to one of the women, who seemed for a moment nonplussed by the gesture. When no one would accept the peace offering, John’s mother placed the bowl on the ground and strode purposefully back to the house. Behind her back someone kicked the bowl over and there was a free-for-all to see who could grind the roses most thoroughly to a pulp. “But fair.”

  She stomped up the porch stairs and slammed the door closed behind her for good measure. She zeroed in on John and flew right into his face, seething with fury. “I suppose you think you’re clever, showing up like Tom Sawyer on the day of your own burial.” John looked a little sheepish and doffed his deerstalker. His father did not try to intervene, but meekly took the hat, along with the plaid jacket John had already stripped off. “And I’m supposed to pull an Aunt Polly and hug your neck, when nobody ever bothered to tell me that you weren’t dead, though obviously your father knew. And Andrew if you think I won’t divorce you for this after almost fifty years, you don’t know me.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, my dear, you’re always right,” John’s father said soothingly, patting the false beard into some semblance of order. He buttoned up the plaid jacket and accepted the stack of bills John pulled from his hip pocket.

  “Don’t you patronize me, you old coot,” she raged.

  “My darling, I wouldn’t dare,” John’s father assured her, and reached for the doorknob.

  “Just where does your father thinks he’s going?” John’s mother rounded on John.

  “To save the homestead from the evil scheming bankers?”

  You could have heard a pin drop. If they still made pins in this country. John’s mother sniffed. Her nose was bright red. “Well he’s put it off this long, I reckon he can put it off a little longer. I have a fresh baked pecan pie in the kitchen.”

  “Pecan pie,” Vinnie ventured to say, looking from John to his mom and back again, “is probably the best pie in the whole world.”

  “It is certainly one of my all time favorites,” Julio volunteered.

  “Now, these boys are tempting fate just to be here -“ John’s father felt obliged to point out.

  “I have vanilla ice cream.” Her voice quavered. “The pie is still warm. I was just about to take some to those two idiots in the car. They’ve been out there every day. For two years now. I keep thinking any day now they’ll go home.”

  “You might want to wait on that. At least until we’re gone, Mom,” John suggested gently.

  She shook her head, eyes tightly closed so the tears could not get out. “I hope I’m not that kind of old fool. And I hope you know if I had it to do over, I’d sell my soul before I’d let you sell yourself to the army.”

  “But then I couldn’t stand here and agree with Dad. You were right, Mom. About all of it. And I’m sorry. And - at least one of us still has a soul.”

  “Pie a la mode,” Vinnie interjected, with forced enthusiasm. Attempting to lighten the mood. “What could be better?”

  Nobody answered him. John’s mother was too busy hugging John’s neck.

  7 This Charming Man

  They were booked on separate flights. “You don’t want to travel with me,” the Kid joked.
“I always get yanked out of line. I’m on their fucking watch list. I’m always the last guy they let on the plane. When I’m allowed to get on.”

  But they weren’t letting anybody on any plane at the moment, even though the strike had ended promptly at 4:00 p.m. There were lines into the Metro, lines out of the Metro, lines to enter the airport, lines to get into lines to check-in. Jane waited in line for over an hour to get to a departure kiosk, alternately staring up at the flight board (on which the word ‘CANCELLED’ figured prominently) and checking her cell for some new word from John. She had texted him before showering, again before changing, before checking out, before anything and everything. “Phone dead since 2/15. En route D/MI. Truce?” But so far no reply.

  And so far no glitches. Arriving in a crush of irate travelers provided an extra layer of protection, as harassed airport personnel struggled to handle the logistics of too many passengers for too few planes. Once past the initial security checkpoint it occurred to Jane that she couldn’t remember her last meal, but there were lines outside all the food stalls. “Departure lounge it is,” she told her stomach, which was making mutinous noises. “A little deferred gratification never hurt anybody.”

  Yet even as she chided her anatomy, Jane caught sight of a person for whom