Joseph McElroy - Cannonball

And now against this crowd balked by the spaces of the multiuse elevator closing on their faces, accreditation badges somehow not to be seen on their lapels, pullovers, shirt pockets, breasts, ID lockets, though there in their free faces Entitled (but to what?)—“Get ‘em outa the building,” captain said (“Done,” said CEO, his idea practically…“This Hearing!”) — it was jealousy in me not envy of Husky, and even as my sister unsure of what she had entered into gripped my arm, and captain and “CEO,” his cell phone out so quick it might have been up his sleeve, took up formation along the wall opposite us with this peaceable, curiously significant person in front, I must gather what was going on even in an elevator and against this operator Storm to be undone I believed but dangerous to Em, who had met a friend of hers who seemed to be in custody and hardly acknowledged me though he had something remarkable in him to say and would say it.

“Your people,” I said. “My people?” “Come on, that woman working with captain and the black guy acting the wacko?”

Though now Storm points at my chest.

Tradeoff time , he means. A brown business envelope in hand, Storm Nosworthy will cross this room that rose toward our Hearings floor, target what he will use, and, doomed, it came to me, can’t know how my father’s birthday envelope divides me between what random hurt Em hints it held and what really I’d paid twenty dollars for (or was it ten?), Earth Veins you make your own running universally through each of us, rift and river, a hole in the head, a half-completed dive to heal, yet quite parentless (if you could prove it, Em once said); how Umo pronounced him—“Stom’s secret weapon you better get to know.” The humoring muscle of distrust an orphan doubt no less trusting me, asking what meant “brother,” describing grandfather’s plan to come to Mexico, work the mineral mines, sign up with Plutarco Calles, live right; the secret weapon, though, Umo, how do you figure that? The brown envelope, always about to be drawn out for me, delayed, I can feel it, that voice to nail down our understanding quid pro quo as, on the other cheek, Storm’s face shouts our very History et habeas corpus silentem —beside us (for I was right, he has come across to us) he speaks in confidence from his own, base Faith — Umo dead, Chaplain alive (yet Umo come thousands of miles to hook up with me —do I understand that trip, those Umo miles? — while the other guy lives again in a scrolled-down monitoring of those dark and memorial waters) the Scrolls Storm’s baby (!), for holistic proof rests beneath ineetiative, ineetiative beneath democracy, and what shall it profit us near term if we lose the Near and Middle East? — this giant lift inching up retarded by what’s left in return for what was always there; Wick’s morning-after calculus healing more wounds than my dive, more pitfalls than an elevator’s division between waiting silence and, with two adjacent doors, a need to speak before time runs out.

To me a friend and mere miracle, the Chaplain on the other hand matters so much to Storm he’ll flush him even from extinction along old sewerways. Just one of many you’ll silence who might explain the explosion uncharitably for the Administration, for us. He had the Vice President’s ear.

“Citizenship for Silence,” Storm speaks what is in his pocket—“more than a fair trade, kids, and clear as anything”—then (smile grim as a clock face): “ Post humous Citizenship now , your idea, Zach, deeded whether ‘deceased or living,’ I think we can certainly put in writing, with a No Rescind rider guaranteed by some pretty amazing signatures faxed from DC an hour ago.” (The smile weird as words.) “In return for…” the hand gesture suggestive. “Not much to ask from someone and you really are someone, you two .”

“Em,” said her friend Husky in the white kurta (and in custody to all appearances), “Em?” “What could you do to us anyway?” my sister said, in the ceremonial advance of the elevator. “What did we do but be a family of two somewhere?” my sister said, Storm staring at the shared and to-be-revered floor as if he saw it moving. Then to me, “Silence—” he began (my sister by my cheek muttering, “Dead or living ‘posthumous’?”)

“This soldier, Em (?)” said her friend—“said, ‘You can call me Captain.’ ’n’ I’m OK with it. It’s my first commandment right to honor my own ignorance.” “Husky,” Em said. They seemed to laugh. (I was on my own and could tell Husky kind of respected me.) “Tryin’a recruit me, Em.” Elevator moaned. “For what, Husky?” softly. “Cap’n said, ‘Djou read the Scrolls?’ Not rilly.” (The Seals captain in camo combats gripped the hungry shoulder of the man in spiritual dress, breathless too.) “‘Well, it’s not two Lazarus but one,’ did I know that? ‘And he ditn’ need to come back, right? — ‘cause he never died in the first place — and Jesus was best friends with him,’ and did I read the Scrolls? and I said, ‘Not rilly; did you?’”

“Silence agreed on here and now,” Storm commenced, his eyes narrowing the floor — but it was also the exchange with Husky. “‘n y’know what Cap’n said?” said Husky.

The captain spun Husky around to face him, muttering, “Squeeze you out like a sponge.”

“Said, ‘Ditn’ have to read it! Had it from the horse’s mouth, ’ ” Husky said over his shoulder to Em, to me too I was certain, a friendly exchange once jogging with an even then fugitive friend fellow photographer and Chaplain all but resurrected in me now, Lazarus, yes, between me and the Chaplain! The envelope drawn forth for my hand, I have it still, a document, next week when we’ll be on a last junket to locate Umo, Em and I before I leave, tell him the good news — while Storm rapid-fired terms of the deal in intimate undertone now: Explosion unquestioned, it is what it is; authenticity of Scrolls unquestioned; and by same token no leak to media describing a relationship between major principal Zachary and sister (since “ certain Family Values sat not well with the national community that had gotten behind the war, the Scrolls, this Christian President”). The elevator door strained — perhaps against its newness, for the unit was undeniably masking-tape new — and gave way at last upon more light than people where I’d been at noon, and now Storm thought he would charm the Dean tilting his head, finishing with me, he thought — the brown envelope mine now — or sort of addressing both of us: “For backup we got a fantastic film record of the bombing the Scrolls heinously survived, if fragmentarily, to be distributed for spiritual export crediting a cameraman of genius (which brings us to another quick trip for you, Zach, if it’s OK)”—the good news I felt in my blood.

Heinously surviving (?)…to recall, I half recalled, and less than half understood, this same man’s forgotten ! (that palace day): You won’t be forgotten …as your father asked you to . I slipped the envelope into my jacket pocket, and drew out by its torn feel one of two small sheets already there, hearing between us faintly the best of Storm last — unreally weird, yet…yes, Zach, family values, yes, that Storm could just eat up if it was only him himself (“though unlike you I never had so to speak a sibling”). A small sound of…was it pain from my sister, ecstasy? and for my ear only, This citizenship, you know , she hissed while I to her, “That ‘carpenter’ one about the ‘unpretending time’ being our ‘plane,’” I said from the book she had given me the first time around, chagrined to recall so little of it and almost like Lincoln’s someone else’s words at that for some new farewell.