They-the ubiquitous, always brutish They-had turned the flag into something
else long ago, not an ode to the Confederate dead but something with which
to taunt the innocent living. They'd made it a bogeyman to scare some folks
with, make others swagger, and embitter everybody.
They could never leave the holy alone, could they? They always wanted to lay
hands on on it, use it for their own purposes, make some kind of a political
statement out of what should be beyond politics. But nothing is any more.
Just now he felt like the old soldier in Stonewall Jackson's famous foot
cavalry. The general had found the old boy straggling along in the rear, and
asked if he was all right. All the old soldier would say was, "Oh, I'm all
right, Gen'l-but I'll be damned if I ever love another country!"
Emptiness would be a relief. He was already thinking of retirement. He'd
gone driving along the Gulf Coast last summer, looking for the right spot.
He knew just what he wanted: A perfectly empty beach. So there would be
nothing to catch the eye, and then the emotions. That's how they trap you.
All he really wanted was some hurricane-ravaged stretch of beach you would
hurry by in a car on the way to Mobile or Pensacola or Santa Rosa Island. A
no-place with no name. It would have nothing that you would get attached to,
or sacrifice for, or care about. He yearned for anonymity the way others do
for fame or power or talent.
He could picture it now: Just the tide and the sand. The kind of sand you
could shift with a garden rake and find nothing, nothing at all. No seaweed,
no driftwood, not a seashell, not a clue to who he was. No view, no picnic
tables, no palm trees. No pink flamingos or painted starfish. No identifying
marks at all, just an emptiness nobody'd pay any mind to.
The place he was looking for would be just another bend in the road. You'd
zoom past it at 75 mph and never see it. That was the sine qua non for a
retirement spot, that no one would notice it. That it would have no
distinguishing characteristics. Because you could never tell what you might
get attached to. |