Glen Tate: 299 Days: The Restoration

Nancy Ringman was wobbly from all the wine, but felt like her legs were encased in concrete. She could barely move them. Each step was a struggle, requiring all her strength and then a long rest. There was nothing physically restraining her; it was all mental. She held the box with the pistol in her hands. She knew that once she got out to the football field, she had to do it — and she really didn’t want to do it. She wondered if it would hurt to shoot herself. She kept wondering if she shot herself in the head, would the brain shut down instantly and prevent it from registering pain. Or, would she feel pain before she died?

Each step was taking longer and longer. During her brief rests, she looked at where she was, the Clover Park Temporary Detention Facility. Remembering the people who used to be there, many of them just a few hours ago. Now they were gone. Everyone was gone. The staff had melted away as the explosions and gunfire got closer and the prisoners… they were… gone.

“Under my feet,” Nancy said softly as she stepped onto the first of the fresh dirt at the football field. “Under my feet,” she repeated. She smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile; it was an ironic and tragic smile. She realized that, throughout her life, she desperately wanted to have people under her — in her job, in her marriage, in everything — and now she had succeeded.

“Success,” she whispered to herself as she took another step on the fresh dirt. “I’ve been so successful,” she said sarcastically. “Look at me! I’m a success,” she said out loud in the empty football field.

She started to feel something under her feet and quickly jumped back onto the grass and away from the dirt. There wasn’t anything physically moving under the dirt; there was a very faint sense of… something… under the dirt. She felt like lots and lots of things were under that dirt. Not bodies, although she knew they were down there, but… lives. Under that dirt were lives. Fathers who would never see their wives and children. Brothers and sisters who would never see their siblings. Weddings that never would happen, lives that never would go on. It had all stopped and those incomplete lives were under the dirt.

And she had done it. She could have stopped it. She could have let them go. She let out that same ironic and tragic laugh as a moment before. “I could have just done a bad job,” she said to no one, except the faint things under her. “I could have failed — for once,” she said, without a laugh this time. “But no,” she said, “I’m Nancy Ringman. I never fail. I get the job done. ‘You can count on me, Linda’,” she said, repeating her answer to her boss, Linda, when she was told to “make room” for the new arrivals at Clover Park by getting rid of the prisoners. “You can count on me,” she mumbled again.

She wondered what Linda was doing right now. Linda was probably in some safe place in Seattle, cheerfully reporting to her superiors that Clover Park was now ready for refugees loyal to the legitimate authorities. Linda had succeeded.

Used. That word kept ringing in Nancy’s mind. She had been used. Linda got all the credit; Nancy had all the things underfoot to haunt her for the rest of her life.

In a rush of emotion, Nancy started to realize how all her “success” was just her being used by her superiors. She made all the sacrifices, she got people mad at her, and she made enemies, just to ‘get the job done’. Their job, the superiors’ job. She was at the end of her life with no friends, no real marriage to speak of, and no kids. Until a few days ago, she only had that thrill when she could tell people what to do or could get favors done because of her connections. That wasn’t a life. That was a power trip masquerading as a life.

Empty. That word replaced “used” as the one running through her mind. An empty life, completely wasted by enjoying being the bitch. “You’re the one who enjoyed it,” she said to herself. “No one made you be this way.” She started to relive the thrill of calling the Governor’s chief of staff on her cell phone and getting a cousin a job, or placing a call and then someone she couldn’t stand magically lost his job at a state agency.

But it didn’t seem fun now; it didn’t seem like a thrill. She felt horrified at the things she’d done. She now realized how… awful she’d been.

“Time to do something about this,” she said aloud again. She looked at the pistol box she was holding. Her hands and arms started to go wobbly. She had to set down the box. She spent the next minute or so staring at the pistol box and imagining that she was picking it up and getting the gun out. After several mental rehearsals, she thought she was finally ready to actually do it.

She slowly bent down to pick up the box and hold it in her hands, just like she’d mentally rehearsed. She felt it. She paused. Then she suddenly picked it up.

“Might as well get this over with,” she said. She recalled a root canal that she had postponed a few years ago and how relieved she had been when she finally got it done. Putting things off can often be worse than actually doing them.

She remembered the pain of the root canal and recalled the dental instruments and how frightening they looked when she saw them at the onset of the procedure. Then she started to wonder if the teabaggers had dental instruments. They would use them to torture her. They probably had things far worse than dental instruments. They would use them, too, because they were haters.

There was only one thing to do. It was in that box.

She opened the box and there it was: a gun. She stared at it. She’d never held a gun before. They were so dangerous. Guns were what rednecks and criminals used. People like her, good people, never touched them.

She closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at the gun. It was too terrifying. Not what she would do with the gun — that part she was fine with — but guns were so evil. It was like looking at a poisonous snake; ugly and evil and painful if you touched it.

She remembered how, just a few moments ago, she had mentally rehearsed picking up the pistol box and then finally doing it for real. She could psych herself into touching the gun. Probably.

She imagined touching the gun with her index finger. She wanted to touch it and see if anything happened. She wondered if it would just go off if she touched it.

She stared at it more and pointed her index finger at it, slowly bringing it down to the handle part of the gun. She got about an inch away from it and jabbed her finger down onto the handle.

Nothing. It didn’t go off. It was just a piece of hard plastic. She thought she’d try touching the metal part now. She psyched herself up again and slowly brought her pointed index finger down and touched the top of the gun.

Nothing. Now that she knew that it wouldn’t go off just by touching it, she slowly touched other parts of the gun, except the trigger. She was very careful not to touch that .

She then decided to take it in her hand, doing so very slowly and carefully. It felt strange in her hand, like nothing she’d ever felt before. “Makes sense,” she said to herself, because she had never had a gun in her hand. O f course it felt like nothing she’d ever held before.