Spring melted away the white winter revealing yellow grass fields in southern Ohio that felt more upstate New York than suburban Cincinnati. The air zesty fresh same clean without the winter zing; I sat high in a morning tree like a large ugly outcast bird breathing in the sun. All night spent fucking a cute skinny red head sharing a bottle of Daniel’s on the roof of the local restaurant. She went home; I climbed a tree that bordered an open field of grass in front of the elementary school house. I took a seat on a thick branch near the connection with the trunk, my head still aglow in sharp ecstatic pure silence. I watched the community waking up coming to work, coming to breakfast, opening the bank, opening the library, opening “the new” CVS, turning on the same lights connected to the same roof of the same store, just a new red CVS sign. Everything a town needs is right here in this one story shopping center, including the local bar with a dance floor, lights and D.J, a mechanic shop for your auto repair, library and toys r’us. It was truly the perfect town for the perfect morning. The sun grew for all to celebrate, it could have turned a hundred and ninety and the townsfolk would still be smiling. On the open grass field under the towering American flagpole in front of the school men began to gather. I say men because these guys were out of high school, held full time jobs, some had children and some had wives. They all had problems. The kind of problems that if I had stayed in this town I had grown up in I would know all about those problems but I traded in this knowledge for the world and so I am sitting in the tree and not being picked on a team for a huge ultimate Frisbee game. We can definitely call these guys’ young men, college age but not college bound, I knew most of them. The game began as the morning dew turned to morning sweat, morning humidity, the town folk became aware that it just might turn 190 degrees today and hurried home from the library or restaurant running to shade their young spinach and bean sprouts and open up the cold frames. I sat in the tree watching the match with an arm around the main trunk. Swinging my feet happily thinking I am unseen when suddenly that arm wasn’t mine. Alas, my eyes were not mine, suddenly my body was a fifty something’s body wearing a top hat and a Mr. Monopoly power tuxedo shiny black dress shoes and all swinging from a branch. I transformed so quickly I did not have time for shock but completely became an incantation of Mr. Rockerfella. Smiling with bright eyes wide, I removed a non-existent cigar from between my teeth. I looked on the match and saw instead my friends but a platoon of troops. I saw extra men, extra workers that were a surplus to be utilized, untapped power potential. This field beneath the flagpole where the men played in peace had been empty for generations; the town wouldn’t even notice if we took their extra surplus. Shore up our global supplies; enact global dominance, enhance productivity in the Middle East….
I blinked hard, coming out of the crazy rich man schizophrenic seizure, I stroked my beard and remembered my marine corp grandpa’s words as he would come too after an Alzheimer spell “Figure It” he would say. Like that was “some crazy shit” figure that. I tried to figure it as best I could. “War, with whom, why?” I climbed down out of the tree jumping out the last six feet I took off my shirt and used it to wipe the now pouring sweat off my skin. My face probably looks odd, a little off, more like full blown holy shit. I walked away from the field, away from the family restaurant away from the school trying to figure it. A war? With whom? The Serbs just had horrible genocide, Christians killing Muslim folk, we didn’t lose anyone there; hell we didn’t even set feet in their country. I walked under the flagpole and stopped. At its base a huge gray rock wore a plaque which read “In Loving Memory Of Our Brothers Lost In WW2”. About 25 names listed in two columns read strangely below, the names of the young men who never returned from Korea, Germany, and Japan. In this small town 25 is a whole generation, a whole graduating class! Once again synchronicity kicked my ass and I was headed for the shower, I was done for the night. War?