We should learn
to love ourselves.
We are each free
to set our own limitations.
We should respect
and give comfort to, our nation.
We are all responsible
for everything, live green or die warm.
We should clean our own
porches before going to visit our neighbors.
We should practice justice as
satisfaction instead of satisfaction as justice.
We should respect the mother and
the child and respect the skies and the earth.
We don't have to accept anything until
we are old enough to understand the meanings.
We are born as individuals. We are great
because of this fact. We are equal because of this fact.

From where me and Sam sit taking in the morning sun a carpet of lawn stretches from the deck down a hilly pasture to a grove of pawpaws and blueberries bordered by blackberries and salmonberries and the first ranks of pines, maples and firs.

Off to the north and the east lie three mountain peaks that greet me through my window. I climbed all three last summer as well as four more downstate you just can’t see from here.

It was a busy summer, but not nearly as busy as this morning was shaping up to be. Sam started laying up a ruckus and shot off the deck toward the hollow, down there where nobody ever goes.

I figured it was Darral, the neighbor on the other side. His property butts up to mine in the maple grove, where he has a stand of cherry trees, carved out of the maples after years of hard labor.

Sam wouldn’t let Darral be, and sure enough, he was leaning on his rake by the fence “a-hopin’ I’d show up” as he likes to say.

He always had a story for me, and this day wasn’t shaping up to be any different.

“You know, Colonel, it’s funny how you meet people in your life you never think much about at the time, but later on they creeps back into your memory like they was always there.”

Darral pushed his hat way back on his head.

Instinctively, Sam curled up at my feet, as though he was in for the long run, ready for a jawburner.

“This ol’ guy showed up on the job one day, we called him Pickaxe man. Never paid no attention to him at first…”

Darral poked a toe into the straw at his feet, as though he couldn’t figure out why it was there.

“But I noticed he was always smokin’ cigrits.” Again with the toe-poking business, odd for even Darral.

“You know how it is, well soon I was borrowin’, that is, me an’ the guys was bummin’ cigrits from Pickaxe man.”

Darral stared at the ground for a minute, collecting both his thoughts at once.

“Pickaxe was older then the rest of us, an’ at first that didn’t set too well. Nobody could figger out why a guy his age’d wanna work so hard t’make a livin’.”

Darral pulled out a Lucky Strike and lit it up.

“The young guys, they was the ones always talkin’ about the women folk and drinkin’, an’ as they worked the trenches they sang their songs about drinkin’ and wimmin’ and broken lives and pain.”

Darral wiped his brow for emphasis, more than a result of any sort of perceived effort.

“But they wasn’t none of them guys could work as hard, not near’s hard as Pickaxe man.”

Sam rolled onto his back, his tongue lolled out of his mouth as he began to snore. A real, unapologetitic rumbler.

“Most guys show up on the job are ‘spected to do just about anything is throwed they ways. An’ some guys is always able to do more then others…some guys, say, will put in pipe, some guys go on to do other things.”

This profound observation finally rapt my attention.

“When Pickaxe man showed up on the job ever morn’ at seven, he lit a cigrit, picked up his pickaxe and settled hisself in front of a mark. Soon there would be a trench, an’ nobody could do it faster.”

Darral focused his good eye on mine.

“You’d walk along Pickaxe man’s trenches and see his cigrit butts still a-smokin’ in the dirt. The only time he stop swingin’ his pickaxe or a-haulin’ his shovel was when he stopped to light another cigrit with the wooden matches he carried in his pocket.”

Darral hovered around his shovel as though he carried a map of untold treasures stuffed in his coat pocket.

“Guys on the job is always foolin’ roun’…you know how it goes. It’s hard work, as hard a work as a white man can do. We joke about what we’d like to do to the boss, or to the boss’s girl.”

Darral broke a leer on his bearded, smoky face.

“I said we should tear the boss apart, cook his body parts over a slow fire and eat him with salt. Young Bart chimes in with a ‘Fuck no! Let me fuck em’ first. Har Har.”

The old farmer and retired sea merchant swelled at his storytelling, proud to spin a yard as best he could.

“Bart makes us all sick. He smokes cigrits ‘cuz he know pickaxe is never without a fat pack. He don’t mind sharin’ if’n you’ll leave him alone. Anyway, sometimes when we was all makin’ stupid jokes, Pickaxe man will sort of look up from his trench and smile. It was the sort of smile that made you glad you were kind of a friend.”

His voice grew quiet, an earnest monotone…

“One day the boss’s girl came out to the job. Now, you kind of had to wonder what made a gal come so far to bring her man lunch. It wasn’t like they was married or nuthin’. But, there she was one day.

She had a big basket, and you know it was packed with all kinds of good stuff to eat. And in the hot sun, dressed as she was in thin garments and all, she appeared to be a pretty good thing to eat herself."

Darral’s voice grew in power and resonance.

“It was at this point that Pickaxe man stopped his laborin’ in the trench an’ looked up. See, we was never allowed to take no lunch. Fact is, we never even got no breaks at all. Boss always reckoned that if we worked straight through the day with no time off, well, then we could all go home earlier.”

Darral rolled the equation around in his head:

“He knew, like we did, that none of us could actually put a lunch together anyway, and that none of us had nothin’ to go home to. No home.”

Again, the old farmer poked the moss with his boot.

“Workin’ in the trenches is what we done, asides from drinkin’ n’ sleepin’.”

A pause, pregnant as a heavy wind, stole his breath.

“Anyway, the bosses girl was carryin’ that basket of good stuff over to the boss’s office when pickaxe man was a-starin’ at her, I mean, he could not take his eyes offn’ that gal.

She stopped in her tracks and slowly turned to look at him. Pickaxe done struck another wooden match on his thumbnail…and then lit a cigrit. He took a big draw, threw the match and picked up his tool.”

Darral took a long draw on his ‘Strike.

“Boss come outn’ his office n’ seen the whole thing.”

He exhaled fully.

“It was months later we finally got the job done, and not all of us made it to the last. We all wondered why Pickaxe left so soon. And we sorely missed the job he done.

None of the young guys could work as hard as Pickaxe man.”

Darral turned for a long moment, his shoulders lowered.

“One day we was sittin’ in the dirt. Boss was gone, and we wuz takin’ a little rest. We decided that wherever Pickaxe man was, he was diggin’ a trench, smokin’ a cigrit.”,

Darral shook his head slowly an shuffled away, exhausted by cultivating his imagination with a short-handled hoe his performance had worn him out. His pointy-toe boots lef this trail in the moss and leaves.

Sam sat up, looked at me and shuddered. He shook his furry head and wandered up the hill, leaving me with whatever thoughts I’d had. I was thinking it’s an extraordinary morning, though I can’t for the life of me remember why.

I trundled up the hill in Sam’s wake, the distant ringing of my phone dogging my otherwise silent thoughts. Sam knew I would not hurry my pace. I’ve hurried my pace over six decades, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never been on time for anything, if I were I’d consider myself late.

I’m Bavarian, so I’m always early. Always.

To think of it, I was late once, in Bosnia. I was expected to attend a meeting in a church at precisely eight o’clock. I chose to be late and the building was blown to smithereens, though that's not a precise military term.

They say people who listen to their guts fall prey to their own routines and expectations. My gut always tells me when I’m being lazy. Like in Bosnia.

Right now, it told me I was hungry, whatever message lay await on the phone was going to be held at bay while I made a sangwich. I eat whatever kind of sangwich I want after being shot by a doctor one night in Saigon.

An Army medic saved my life. Haven’t seen a doctor since.

Today it would be toasted whole wheat, some Romaine lettuce and sliced tomatoes from Walla-Walla (the inmates grow some great heritage varieties, and I’m able to provide for some of their needs), some sweet onions from the same place and leftover Dill-roasted lamb, sliced thin and layered with mayo and chipotle-jalapeno sauce, some Vlasic pickle spears assembled along a tray of macaroni salad spiked with Bohemian ground mustard, Alturas horseradish, a tankard of Dutch Pilsener and Christiana Amanpour on CNN.

She could interview Satan and still be the only one making sense.

I put some Tara Vinson on the sound system and took my prize out to the deck. With a few savory biscuits for Sam, I spread the repast before me on the glass table, tossed a biscuit to old faithful dog and settled my bum into a lounger when…the phone rang.

My sangwich filled my hands, from thumb to thumb it spanned both palms mightily, a juicy delicacy backed by a spirited side dish and the crunchy…

The phone rang again and again. Finally:

“Colonel, are you there? Please pick up.” Silence, as though whoever rested on the other end of the signal knew with absolute certainty I was there, and that he/she would be interrupting some valuable moment if I did chose to pick up.

It could only be Cloris. And it could only mean trouble.

I lay my mighty meal on it’s plate and wiped my hands with the napkin I used to cover my lunch, already spied upon by every winged beast, animal, insect, bacteria, mould, virus and needy person in the vicinity.

Sam chewed his biscuits as I vacated my chair. Cloris was not happy to tell me our fearless leader Major General Phineas Poaster was deceased, victim of a roadside bombing outside Baghdad. He was 95, for God’s sake. Still on a mission. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

I went back to the deck and sat down with Sam. I scratched him behind the ear and he seemed perfectly, predictably content. My mind was spinning as I recounted the years I’d spent with Poaster and Cloris.

Poaster was there after I’d bottomed out. I was fighting malaria I’d picked up in some nasty places somewhere in Africa and a souvenir bullet in my leg, removed by a drunken witch doctor who looked and sounded like my ex.

By the time I found Poaster’s flat in Chelsea my career was about shot. Retired, he had more pull than many active brass. He put me up in a room down the hall from his, gave me cover and sanctuary, and talked to me frankly about my obsession with Tara Vinson, grown less managible since my disease and injuries seemed to take hold of my life.

He no longer carried himself like I remembered…the huge man I recall seemed smaller than me. But he had the fire in his eyes, and as he welcomed me into his apartment I felt immediately at ease, despite our often fiery past.

He fumbled about for a moment, I suspected he didn’t know whether to offer me whiskey or tea…or coffee. The sun was slowly drifting away, so he decided to light a candle instead.

Gazing at him fondly now, it’s so hard to believe what he had seen in his life, every hot corner of the world for fifty years.

He and his friend Augustine Tocolat, that is, because Tocolot was always there with Poaster. Always on mission, always on point: Poaster and Tocalot. They even wrote a military manual together, but later it seemed a bit of a high-spirited albatross not mentioned among even close friends.

I watched the Kronely chase the gray from the table by the wall. Poaster would have a bit of something he would only throw away. Poaster’s got enough on the edge of his plate to trade for a little taste of glory.

Ah! The stories we could share if only he remembered.

Poaster’s joint seemed eclectic, even for a war-ravaged, shellshocked old soldier who hadn’t lived anywhere very long for decades. Steamer trunks lined a windowless wall hung with backpacks, rucksacks and frames, coils of climbing rope and shelves of assorted boots, tents, stoves and field gear.

Another wall displayed a lifetime of war mementos: photos, medals, plaques, books, maps and military gear: an AK-47 hung from a hook by its strap, a ceremonial cap from the 101st Airborne, three purple hearts in brass and heavy glass, a ream of ceremonial documents signed by three presidents, a Queen and two Prime Ministers, some University Presidents, several military academies and the Pope.

Poaster always kidded about that one. He had a friend in Manila fix up a document signed by the Pope. Who reads Latin, anyway? I can. It says “if you can read this you have too much education.”

Thing about Poaster is he’s wily. He doesn’t shoot from the gut like me, he works from a matrix he developed as a kid. He’d sit in a 100 year-old elm tree on his family’s dairy farm south of Devonshire and think about stuff. From his aerie it appeared the world was a green patchwork, orderly in it’s chaos of shifting hues, seasons, moods of the day.

War would change all that many times over. The only place the decrepit buzzard could roost now was in his flat on Flood Street, a stone’s throw from the Thames. Now, the old goat thinks the inside of his dreary premises is as real as the sky outside, which he probably hasn’t seen in years.

He tried to tell me about his secret visit with His Holiness as he stuffed a napkin into his collar and waved me to a seat at the end of a fine English black walnut table commandeered from a bombed-out castle (evidently his own proud work) on the Rhine during the Big One.

Poaster waved a shard of forked sausage in the air:

“I’ve been thinking about you lately, Colonel!”

A hairy white eyebrow lifted into an arch its serpentine mate coiled in residence, ready to spring for emphasis at the sign of a threat.

“And you’ve nothing to hide.”

Poaster knew things about me I barely knew myself. He knew of my growing obsession with Tara Vinson, probably had pictures of me wandering around Haiphong Harbor with my headphones on, listening to Her. Somethings are hard to explain, other things are even harder.

Poaster also knew I’d divined, by most scurrilous methods, a copy of he and Tocalot’s manuscript: ”Men in the Field.” It sure discussed men a lot…and men in the field. Now, I’m pretty far from a literary critic, Hell, I’m a fighting man. But I know a yarn when I hear one. As much as Poaster and Tocolat’s “manual” talks about men, and men in the field, the only men they had in mind were each other.

Poaster lost his buddy in a firefight in Kabul.

“Mrs. Neck has made such a nice supper for us, we can have some Merlot and discuss your recovery.”

He poured a delicate, saucy, vintage Cabernet.

“I think you’ll like this splashy little Sirah.

I began to feel as though Alice had invited me to dine at the rabbit hole.

As we sipped, Mrs. Neck came into Poaster’s apartment with a plate of shrimps and cheese on toothpicks. Mrs. Neck kept an eye on the ancient warhorse for many years.

They met in London during the Blitz, both were nurses in bomb shelters.
They met again in Tangiers. She was an Army nurse and Poaster an RAF fighter pilot shot down over the strait.

He was a goner, they said, but Mrs. Neck was one of the first medics on scene, and she nursed him back into the war and taught him the tango, the foxtrot, and how to stop a world war long enough to find a little, tiny bit of satisfaction.

The shooting stopped a long time ago, but without Mrs. Neck, the bone-snapping, bridge-bombing, jungle-flaming fury of it all would continue to rage in Poaster’s mind.

She was delivering plasma in Fallujah when a car bomb blew a nurse and two doctors she was riding with to bits, but Mrs. Neck miraculously survived. Hard of hearing and a little slow, she gave up volunteer work to tend to old Poaster.

Cloris, of course, still drops by when she’s in country. More and more though, she spend her time with Raphael(a) on the farm in Bolivia. She still does some mission work.

He filled my plate and delivered his wisdom with a generous touch of sage. He ladled two bowls from a tureen of cucumber soup on a cart.

Mrs. Neck, a stout woman in a mundane shift, battered slippers and a towel around her head, glided into the room in mock admonishment.

“Good Lord, General, let me do that for y’all, please set down.” She pattered around the General. You’d never know this woman was a retired Mossad agent, an ex-Navy SEAL trainer (not the kind with big red balls), climbed Mount Everest and ran in her last marathon a scant four years ago.

Poaster followed her orders, no questions asked.

“Truly fascinating, love and rage. They share the same heart.”

Poaster poached a baguette from the cart and tore it in half, maybe thinking somewhere he was fighting a guerilla, snapping a knife-wielding arm.

Mrs. Neck slid past, pulling the mauled bread from the ancient mariner’s hands and tossed it on a platter. He stared at his hands, a vacant beam in his eyes. He eventually regained himself as the room filled with fragrances: the soup, bread, the coffee brewing in the kitchen, all courtesy of Mrs. Neck.

“Don’t try to make people think. Give them a laugh!”

I thought this odd coming from one who displays the tactical humor of well, a shark. With bread and soup and sausage, his company was rare, and I…the lovestruck beggar with little but stories to share.

I told Poaster I’d discovered an ancient document.

“I’m not going to be a small-time Charley any more.” I said, buttering my baguette like one who owns the joint.

“Let me guess.” He sighed, filled his plate with kraut.

“You found Tocolat’s document.” Poaster aired a fork.

“It’s a running joke around here…how academics think.”
He raised a finger, waved it in the air.

“Mrs. Neck. Put some Tara Vinson on the record player if you would, please. How delightful! Colonel Mars should enjoy this. I know I will.”

He leered like a four-year old.

He crossed his hands in his lap and smiled.

“As far as Tocolat’s fictitious document is concerned, it’s best to put it back and hope no one’s found you out!”

He shifted once or twice in his leather chair.

“I only let him use my name because he was afraid he couldn’t sell his little “manual” without me.” He seethed.

He worked his hairy jaw and sank a watery eye into my face. He freshed my glass. Poaster was the only friend left in the world.

“Try the asparagus, old Cod. It comes from New Brunswick.”

Poaster and I found each other again after all the years, even if for only a moment, and it was over food. After our supper Mrs. Neck brought us Hugo de Grotas and we sipped a slippery, leggy Herez.

He read his Times, I stared out the window at silvery rain falling on the Thames.

“You live in a fantasy world peopled by great minds of literature and Her. But you are, in fact, a soldier of fortune. Aren’t you concerned about your focus or is a life of desperate dissolution suitable you, the great warrior I once knew?”

“She’s my savior and foil,” I explained.

“A cyclonic love that rattles my mortal coil. I’m sustained by vapors, the breathless atmosphere of devotion. I don’t hear a noisy world, and am free of all its commotion.

In Situ Taria, this place where I sit with Tara, the bond is real.I cannot defer to this agony, nor can I begin to mask my zeal. I don’t want to be with anyone, I’ve so much of me to love. I simply want to spin Her disk, that’s all I’m dreaming.”

I gazed beyond the Thames to the murk.

“Just spin ‘round my axis mundi, the ultimate connection. My dreamy head swollen with her sweet confection.”

I remember the old General’s last words to me.
“Fuck, man…you need a shrink.”

I put the phone down and walked out to the deck, where Sam stood guard by my lunch. I pulled out my Osborne and sliced the huge ol’ sangwich in half.
It looks good, but you gotta know your limitations.