A Glimpse Into the Tail End of an Argument and the Big Bang Theory
Posted on August 28, 2011
A Glimpse Into the Tail End of an Argument and the Big Bang Theory
Legion
22Dec07
His coffee sits on the table cooling through indifference. The cafe is crowded this morning. Probably due to the rain slowly saturating the streets outside. His paper, unfolded, waits for him. He couldn’t care less today. It is probably all bad news anyway. Terrorism. The dollar falling. Global warming. War. Etcetera. His mind is preoccupied with the events of that morning. Not sure what even started it, but the fight was monumental. He had called her a “bitch ” as he left. The woman he loves and he had called her a “bitch ” over something stupid. The moment replays in his mind as he notices the man at the table next to him put a dollar tip on the table as he stands and quickly walks out the door into the wet morning.
He mumbles to himself, “I can’t believe I called her a bitch. ” It was the one word she hated the most. He shakes his head and thinks about calling her to apologize. Hopefully, she isn’t still crying.
He pulls his cellphone out of his jacket pocket. As he opens it to dial, he notices that the man who left the tip at the table next to him has left his black briefcase on the floor beside the chair he had been sitting on.
The number quickly comes to mind and he starts to type it in while forming thoughts of his most heart felt apology. “Damn, I can’t believe I called her a bitch. “
As the last button is pushed (the numeral nine to be specific), something clicks within the inconspicuous briefcase on the floor at the empty table next to him. Fire and explosive sound erupts throughout the cafe, shattering windows and everything else while disrupting all the days events of all the lives within as well as the future that many no longer will share with the rest of the world. The cafe becomes the crater. A crater created through the indifference of indiscriminate hatred.
And the last thing he remembers is calling the woman he loved a “bitch “.
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Oh, well. Yep.
Reality is even more strange than this story.
A man I knew found somebody’s radio at a bus stop. They had obviously forgotten it, he thought. In an act of kindness, he picked it up, and took it into his shop, intending to report it as lost. In those days, radios were big and bulky, and they were not cheap. A radio could be somebody’s valued possession.
Later on that day, somebody came into the shop, and said that a bomb had gone off in Belfast. "Really?", said our good Samaritan. "That’s terrible! Here, I’ll switch the news on." He walked over to the radio he was keeping for the rightful owner, and switched it on, to listen to the news.
He instantly became the news, in a microsecond…
I heard a bomb go off one afternoon, in Northern Ireland. An innocuous little place called Warrenpoint. It was a big blast. You could tell by the way the muffled thump went on and on, rolling strangely around the countryside. I was sitting on my motorcycle, chatting with a stranger.
"That was a big one", he said, matter-of-factly. There was no alarm. Everybody knew what it was. It was not a unique sound, never heard before.
We peered into the distance, and saw the smoke, curling lazily into the sky. There was a pause. Maybe, two or three minutes. Silence. A breathless hush.
Then: sirens. Lots and lots of sirens.
My journey lay in that direction, and I continued my travels. Soon I saw the ambulances, the fire trucks, the British Army units, the Police cruisers, the helicopters.
Blue lights, and sirens. And guns. Lots of guns.
Sixteen British Army soldiers dead.
Sixteen sons and fathers, sixteen human beings, sixteen statistics.
Many people said the IRA had taken revenge for the Bloody Sunday massacre.
They said it was a good thing.
Many people said the murdering IRA terrorists had once again shown their cowardice.
They said it was a bad thing.
But I rode on. Quietly, without the same flamboyance.
And another stitch was sewn into my anti-war tunic. My tattered coat of many wars, many trials, tribulations, and searing doubts.
Without taking either side, I know I felt loss.
I was later to write "The Burning Soldier", relating to another incident, that also invaded my mind. A despairing anti-war protest. Anti-hate.
The hatred was… primordial.
Later still, I was to write "Jeremy’s War", an unpublished novel, that also reflects my deep loathing for the glorification of war.
And many more stories lie buried within me. Maybe one day…
Stalin once said that "a single death is a tragedy, a million a statistic."
The task for us scribbler-writers is to maintain the uniqueness of each individual, and to fiercely oppose the grey uniformity collectively (and indiscriminately) bestowed upon "the enemy".
I like your story, Legion. Interesting side issue of unexpressed regrets and promises unkept.