Shoot (6 page)

“I would prefer not to say, Shepherd.”

I was done but the day wasn’t done with me yet. I tried to goof off but it didn’t work. Back at Jane’s place, I grabbed a beer. Jane’s refrigerator only contained designer beers. I wondered if she was gently trying to steer me away from my high-octane arak liquor and onto an unending series of fancy pumpkin ales and wheat stouts or whatever overpriced brew the Manhattan suds snobs were pushing this month. I was channel surfing the fifty-inch on her living room couch and sipping something called Honey Meade Malt when my father’s face appeared on CNN.

“Holy crap!”

I turned the sound up. The banner underneath his image read
POLITICAL SCIENTIST
P
ROF
. J
AMES
B. S
HEPHERD
. He looked good, kind of like Santa Claus gone corporate. His silver hair and beard were as long as ever, the chin whiskers almost covering the top of his blue silk tie, Kansas cornflower blue eyes sparkling, his mouth crinkled in amusement. On the table in front of him was his latest book, with a picture of the Statue of Liberty being auctioned off in what looked like a slave market for green goddesses.

SOLD! Wall Street’s Coup d’
É
tat.

My dad was doing what he always did—railing against the powers that be. He was calmly saying something about the Tea Party being neo-secessionists intent on imposing neo-slavery. He had no clue that most people had no idea what coup d’état or neo meant. He was rudely interrupted by a nasty voice.

“Shut up!” said the voice, as the camera switched to the famous hawk face of TV pundit Bob O’Malley. “Keep your commie crap to yourself!”

O’Malley routinely invited liberals onto his show,
Free Speech Zone
, to prove how even-handed he was, but usually cut off their mikes and called them names. The show should be called
The Bully Zone
.

“America’s economy is run by predatory capitalism but our sacred government is based upon one person, one vote— until now!” my father fought back. “You and your corporate-owned supreme court have officially switched our form of government from democracy to capitalism—we are now a cash-based oligarchy, with a stock market and an army.”

“Cut off this clown’s mike,” O’Malley shouted. “My audience doesn’t have to hear this Marxist malarkey.”

“Between buying elections and suppressing minority voters, that is the only way you can win the…” My father’s measured voice was cut off.

“Go back to Moscow!” O’Malley sneered.

“I’m from Kansas!” my father said in an even but very loud voice, still audible over the air.

My father was polite, soft-spoken and quoted Emerson, about a gentleman not making any noise. But he was from the Planet 1960s and you couldn’t silence him.

“I said cut off his mike!” O’Malley yelled again, panic rising in his voice.

“You cannot silence the voice of an informed electorate, no matter how many lies you tell,” my father continued calmly—at the top of his lungs.

He sat quite still, the color rising in his round face. His voice was so loud it was picked up by O’Malley’s microphone. The host looked like this had never happened before. It must have been the practice my dad got from all those anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. O’Malley was going berserk. He called for security.

“Only in gun-crazy, money-mad America could activist judges label cash as free speech and certify that a corporation is a human being—but with
more
rights than a person. Americans have lost their voice, just as I have on this show— because a millionaire shut me up. Wake up! There is no free speech on this show or in the country—unless you’re rich!”

“Shut the BEEP up!” O’Malley screeched, his obscenity bleeped out. “Cut off my mike, too. Go to BEEP-ing commercial.”

Uniformed security guards dragged my smiling dad off-screen. O’Malley threw one of my father’s books at him, just before the image froze.

“That was the wild scene last night on FAX TV’s Bob O’Malley’s
Free Speech Zone
. O’Malley didn’t like what his liberal guest was saying, so he cut off his mike and then had him dragged off camera,” a gorgeous blonde CNN host said. “CNN has learned that the TV host with the famously short temper had political science professor and author James Shepherd ejected from the studio—and also from the luxury hotel where he had been put up by the show. I guess O’Malley forgot that he named his show the
Free Speech Zone
,” the anchor chuckled.

It cut to a catchy musical commercial: a montage of car crashes, ambulances and a blizzard of green cash and dollar signs. A bandaged guy on crutches danced and belted out a happy tune:

“Klaus and Fins, injury attorneys—let us sue to score cash for you!”

I switched to FAX News channel. As usual, former Alaska governor and former vice presidential candidate Miranda Dodge, a right-wing glamor girl, was slamming the president who had defeated her in the last election. Beneath her image, her identification was
FORMER
AK
GOV., AUTHOR OF
W
HITE
S
LAVES
U
NITE
.

“Well, shoot,” Dodge said in her fake folksy tone. “If the election had not been rigged and stolen with voter fraud by all those illegal aliens, I would be in office now—not that mongrel Moslem foreigner. The enemies of our great nation are helped by traitors, who would tear down our precious freedoms, such as the right to bear arms, the right to self-govern and freedom from taxes.”

“Are you referring to Speaker of the House, Percy Chesterfield?” the moderator asked her.

“He is one of many but his treason is more painful because he pretends to be one of us,” said Dodge. “Well, shoot! First he is
with
us, then he is
against
us.”

“That’s right!” piped up another voice.

The camera turned to a husky bearded guy with long scraggly hair, wearing full camouflage shirt, vest and jacket. It did not help him blend into the TV studio. The banner below his long beard said T
EA
P
ARTY BLOGGER
C
LAYTON
L
ITTLETON
. Who the hell was this guy?

“The pretender president is in league with Chesterfield and the other RINOs and false patriots who are unwilling to do what is necessary to bring down this godless, foreign occupation of sacred Christian America,” Littleton said. “It is past time we resorted to Second Amendment measures to take back our country and restore it to one nation under God, so that
real
Americans can rule once more.” Dodge nodded her agreement.

This was interesting. Two people on a major TV network like FAX—run by owner of the
New York Mail
Trevor Todd, openly calling an elected official a traitor and suggesting he be shot because of his political views.

In America.

Iraq and Afghanistan are very different from the US in a lot of ways. But the weird thing about coming home after so long was how similar they had become. It was beginning to look like I couldn’t escape the Cult of the Sacred Gun; ruthless, dedicated madmen who worshipped weapons and ached to kill with a sexual fervor stoked by their mullahs and their own movies and TV shows.

I guzzled the rest of my too-sweet near-beer and poured a glass of arak. My father, and probably my mother, were in New York and had not even called me. Typical. I tried other news channels. My father’s fight with the conservative talk show host was all over the tube but was quickly replaced by
BREAKING NEWS
segments about the senator.

“To recap, for those of you just tuning in,” one anchor intoned. “The
New York Daily Press
website is reporting exclusively that Senator Richard Hard—uh… Hardstein, is dead of an apparent heart attack inside his Manhattan home. We have been unable to confirm that so far but a large number of police and emergency workers have arrived at Hardstein’s home, as you can see from this live shot.”

The scene was chaotic, with a crowd held back by cops and TV cameras and press and, in the middle, one really pissed-off redhead.

Two araks later, my cellphone rang.

I answered without looking for the caller ID—always a mistake.

“Yeah?”

“Francis?”

“Mom?”

My mother was the only one who ever called me that.

“Hi.”

The last time I spoke to my parents was a few weeks earlier, after national stories ran about how I was involved in a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan. They weren’t true. Before that, they hadn’t spoken to me for most of the past decade—ever since I enlisted after the 9-11 attacks. They never called me or responded to my calls. Three could play at that game.

“Nice to hear from you, Mom,” I said casually. “How are you and Dad doing? Enjoying the summer? Any vacation plans?”

“Well, yes, actually, we’re here in New York.”

“Really? You should have called in advance so I could have taken some time off and shown you the town.”

“We would never put you to that trouble, Francis. Um… How are you?”

“You mean other than being a baby-killer and a tool of the corporate-fascist war machine?”

“Your father was upset. When the later stories made it clear that those charges were not true, he regretted saying that.”

“Great. I guess he forgot to call and tell me. Not to mention the TV station.”

After an awkward silence, she mentioned the new TV appearance. I feigned ignorance.

“It was very amusing,” she giggled. “This O’Malley person is quite a tiresome egomaniac.”

You didn’t have to be a clinical psychologist, like my mother, to figure that out.

“Immature genital fixation. His belief system seems wholly animist.”

“That’s what I’ve always said,” I told her.

“Are you mocking me, Francis?”

“Never, Mom. You need a place to stay, don’t you?”

After a long silence, she responded.

“You saw the show.”

“No, but I saw a clip—they kicked you out of your hotel.”

She didn’t deny it.

My parents are not wealthy. They do not believe in stocks or bonds, although they believe in savings accounts, for some reason. Of course, that was when interest was actually paid by banks. Now the interest rate for the suckers was almost zero—at the vapor-lock point. My parents also do not believe in inflation-causing credit cards. They didn’t owe anybody anything but they didn’t have much, considering that they had been professors for decades. They had been all over the world but always stayed with friends for nothing. That would mean they had a finite amount of cash with them and no credit cards and were having trouble getting an un-booked hotel room in the tourist season.

“Let me guess, Mom. You want to stay with me?”

“Well, no… actually, we thought perhaps some friends of yours might…”

“Let me get this straight, Mom. You hate my guts but you want me to find you a place to stay, so your low-budget vacation won’t be ruined.”

“You know I hate ugly phrases like that,” she said, coolly.

“But you like cold phrases like ‘psychopathy’ and ‘passive-aggressive,’ right?”

“Francis, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… You’re right. This was ill-advised.”

“No, Mom. I know someone who moved into his girlfriend’s place recently. I have the keys. It’s down in TriBeCa. You’re welcome to stay there for the week.”

“Well, thank you, Francis, that’s very considerate of you. Maybe we can get together one night for dinner?”

“That would be nice, Mom.”

As if. Maybe Congress would pass a gun-control law. Or any law.

“Yes, I’ll… check with your father.”

“Great. Get back to me. I’ll send the address and the keys over by messenger. Where are you? Hold on. Let me get a pen.”

I got the
Yellow Pages
and found a messenger service. I called and a guy on a motorbike arrived ten minutes later. I gave him money, my house keys and a note in an envelope and sent him off to my parents. I sat back down, downed my drink and laughed. Only way to deal with it.

By the time Jane got home, it was dark and I was drunk. She seemed upset and I asked her what was wrong. She blew her nose, sat with me and said it was nothing. But I had already figured out that she thought there was something wrong with people who drank alone, especially if they got blasted. She kissed me and gave me a hug, which I returned. Jane thought because I could always tell when she was upset that I was a sensitive person, which was true, and a good listener, which was also accurate. She had also told me she felt I was not a judgmental person. She thought those things meant I was a warm, fuzzy guy and a caring boyfriend. I wasn’t so sure that my hyper-vigilance meant I was such a good guy. I had no idea. We were a new couple and I didn’t want to dispense advice. Especially advice I would not take myself.

If you didn’t care about killing, even as a mercy, you were a killer. I was a killer and I didn’t like it. As my calming Lao Tzu Daily Thought app said: “Caring is an invincible shield from heaven against being dead.” If it was a shield, why did it hurt so much? I said none of this to Jane.

“Why are you drunk?” she asked pleasantly, but with a little edge.

I pointed at the screen and let her watch. I got her a glass and she had a shot of arak with me, even though she hated the stuff. That way, I wouldn’t be drinking alone. We held each other on the couch for a while and watched the news, while Skippy snoozed on the floor, his giant head warming my feet.

“So, when you went out with Skippy this afternoon, you covered that?” Jane asked, pointing at the
Daily Press
website HARDSTEIN HEART ATTACK DEATH headline, displayed on CNN.

“Not really. I saw the girls sneak in and I told Sparky and this other reporter. I tipped them off and they nailed it and ran with it. I left.”

“What girls?”

“They haven’t used that part yet. Hardstein was having sex with two young ladies when he died.”

“Oh, my God! Why isn’t your paper going berserk with that juicy morsel?”