Gardener
by
Will Mayo
He mows the lawn, rakes the leaves, places the flowers by the old
man’s house, as the orders come swift and sure. A shadow upon his back, he
minds not the uneasy temper of the foreman at his back. It is all in keeping
with his soul.
Some say he killed a man a long time ago; others speak of almost
forgotten tales of rape and sordid details of the flesh. As for him, he speaks
not of the devil. Rather, he plants the flowers in the dirt the way another man
might hang his life on a cross. His breaths come slow and easy; he speaks
little of anything at all.
Finally, the old man’s wife calls them to dinner. He hesitates
just a little, pats the dirt around the thorny roses just a bit more with his
broad, dirty hands, then walks away.
When night comes at his shack a mile away, he dreams once more of
the rose, the tips of its thorns just barely touching his heart. After that,
there is only silence.
The President, The Boy, And The Senator
by
Will Mayo
And then there was that time back
in the summer of 1972 that Barry Goldwater, that old warhorse, announced in the
Senate chambers his support for the reelection of President Richard Milhous
Nixon, saying that he, Goldwater, would not seek the presidency this time.
Nixon was, of course, grateful for any support that he might receive what with
protests against his Vietnam War and the Kent State shootings roiling the
nation and having just set into motion the Watergate burglary as fueled by his
own paranoid fantasies. The president in those days, it goes without saying,
had an uneasy mind quite unlike any other.
Suddenly, there
came a loud staccato clapping from the gallery above. Nixon and Goldwater both
raised their heads. A child peeked out from between the rails of the view
above. Upset at this interruption to his plans, the president would let nothing
interfere, not even a small child, whose family had been granted an audience to
the proceedings by their own Senator who in a moment of charm and patience had
granted them tickets to the whole affair, so Nixon had them all escorted from
the chambers on the grounds that the child had "violated the decorum of
the United States Senate" by his supposedly well intentioned applause.
Perhaps he thought the child was making fun of him? It's hard to say. Needless
to say, Nixon's was a troubled mind unfit for the grace and professional
behavior of his office. This is not news to historians. Nor is it news that in
just two years the President would be forced to resign from the White House
under fire because of the aforementioned burglary. All of this is well known.
The child,
however, is another matter entirely. He would never look at the world in quite
the same way again. Forever, its shine would be tarnished by its own inner
turmoil. I know, you see. I was that child and I am now the man writing these
words to you and I see things differently then as well as now.
On The Lookout
by
Will Mayo
But then I remember how it was back in '78 - or was it '79? I'm not sure - that my family and I drove up to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to see the battlefield of our nation's now long ago Civil War. We sampled a grave here, a memorial there before ascending an observation tower that overlooked the battleground from dozens of feet aboveground in a vast panorama with windows looking out at all sides. There, at the vantage point in the sky, my father pointed out to us, his finger prodding the glass, where, here, a regiment fought and, there, the Confederates lost the ground that they had heretofore gained. As I watched with eager eyes, my mother, sister, and brother seemed to make sense of it all but I, for the life, of me, could not.
"I can't see," I said. So then I climbed up to the roof while my family continued to prod the glass. I climbed up out of the hatchway and then stepped to the edge, my sneakers toe to toe with the tower's edge. There, I looked out at the battleground and - oh! - just for a minute there, it seemed I saw it all; the troops trudging through orchard and field and wood; Sickles over there on one hilltop disobeying an order and moving an entire division to another quarter (an act of disobedience that would earn him not a court marshal but a generalship); over there, too, Pickens's force breaking through the Yankee ranks to plunge through and through before turning back in an act that would cost the entire war; and, yes, too, I saw men lying bloodied and disemboweled by the thousands in field and lane, the vast stinking mass of them sending up a miasma to the heavens that would send the Devil himself crying out for mercy. Oh, yes, I saw it all before spinning round, one foot on tiptoe on roof's edge, the other turning round scores of feet above the earth, until then I faced the hatchway whereupon I went inside and met my family below. They never knew the sights I beheld.
I understand that a few years ago that tower was torn down. It was said by preservationists to be an eyesore. I could never figure out why.
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