Beautiful, For Spacious Skies

May 29, 2022

It’s been six months since the last time I wrote an entry in this journal. I realize it is the first entry since the Revolution.

This is the first time that I’ve had a moment to myself to reflect since the putsch. Between losing my job and then being forced to move from the “Freedom Zone” in County, I’ve had to work harder than I ever did in asbestos defense for peanuts. The St. Louis chapter Oathkeepers have allowed me to keep my license thus far, but only as one of thousands of “processing” immigration counsel for the “undesirable" foreigners who must be rounded up for internment in Arizona or New Mexico.

The only thing I could afford on my new “government” salary (they treat us as helots) was a place in the most run-down area of Lemay near the power-station along the River. It is, of course, deep in the “ghetto district” of the City, which is the only place that “snowflakes”/marked dissidents are allowed to live anymore. I can’t write my new address off-hand, because if the Oathkeepers can scan it from my phone then they’ll track me down here and limit me to one trip “outside the wire” a week. It’s all part of the new “protective custody” program. I’d complain but so many have it worse.

I don’t know why I was surprised when it happened, but Annette came to see me at the Repatriation Office on Friday. She was thinner than I remembered, but still beautiful, wearing the red blouse she wore on our first date. She kept the place in Southwest Gardens, but she’s losing it because of the ban on professional licenses for foreigners. The doctor boyfriend she traded me in for evaporated with the race laws the Oathkeepers ramrodded through Congress in February. Annette had to be properly reminded by our government that she was first black, and second Kenyan, and only then a nurse, but definitely not a full human being.

I had to tell her there was little I could do, regardless of our history. Kenyan nationals were on the mandatory deportation list, and I’m barely able to maintain my licenses as it is, because I was married to a black woman, and then dated an African immigrant. The only reason I could even still practice was because Erin, a prior ex-girlfriend, who had now been appointed a commissioner in the new Party-backed St. Louis Bar Association, offered to stay my professional execution if I paid her $1800—the last of my nest egg from the old asbestos defense job.

I want to do something for Annette. Desperation I saw in her eyes. Feeling that came rising back to the surface, thinking about her beautiful face resting on my shoulder, watching tv at her place, two years before.

So many things that hadn’t happened yet, back then.

But who can really help anyone anymore?

July 15, 2022

Yesterday evening, I found out from the remaining youtubers that Rachel Maddow and AOC were both arrested and detained for crimes against the Party and the State. The Party is apparently trying to suppress the news because they’re afraid the coastal states will finally revolt.

Last weekend there was a feminists’ protest downtown over the closure of the last Planned Parenthood Clinic on the Illinois side of the river. The Missouri GOP tried to force the closure of the last clinic here in the City, but they lost the legal fight during the first Corona outbreak in 2020.

The Oathkeepers are so much more efficient with their methods. Both clinics have now been burned and confiscated by the St. Louis City and East St. Louis municipal governments. The only clinics left in the country are now in New York, Florida and California—and again, they’re only still open because the Party fears rebellion.

The Oathkeepers worry about the sheer scale of resistance that the millions of dissidents can put up in New York and California. It’s a scale of resistance that the Party might not be able to suppress from the international press corps. That’s all they actually care about.

That and they also need their clinics in New York and Florida, of course, for the Party members and unaffiliated celebrities and apparatchiks who are still allowed to travel freely, and aren’t part of the evangelical gang.

I watched from Carnahan Courthouse as the women came up Market Street. From the 10th Street garage, an assault detachment of Oathkeepers came charging up to meet them with baseball bats and swagger sticks. They pummeled the women to the ground. The ones that couldn’t run away in time were battered unconscious. They were quickly, ruthlessly tossed in neat stacks into the old City paddy wagons—now painted garish red and blue. Red and blue polka dots against the downtown vista.

But mostly red. All over the ground.

September 2, 2022

Annette came by again, this time to the house—she followed me. This was unsettling, because, of course, if she could track me, that meant that the Oathkeepers could track me. It left me irritable. At the same time, though, I knew I had been waiting for her. I wanted to see her.

I had written her off 18 months ago. But when she came that day, to the office, it left me wondering, all over again. I had become weak with the pangs of regret.

Annette came to tell me that over a third of the Garden had been swept "clean." In a matter of a single weekend, 10,000 Bosnians, Puerto Ricans and a sprinkling of gay couples out of Tower Grove had all been scooped up for repatriation.

Annette came to ask me to hide her. They were really coming for her this time. And this time they were coming to gas her.

I still loved her, on some level. But I had to get my pound of flesh. I had to achieve some catharsis.

Why now? I asked her? Why should I risk my life, in turn, by hiding an undesirable in contravention of a national emergency order of the Restored President?

From behind a crease in the pencil-thin fold of her waist-band, she pulled out a box that looked like one of the boxes you’d fit an engagement ring in. I recognized it immediately. She reached inside the box, pulled out something and deposited her hand in mind. Silently staring back at me, she opened her fingers and slowly withdrew her hand from my closed fist.

I looked down and there was the faux white-gold band, the silver, heart-shaped locket.

October 23, 2022

Dear Dad,

This email is to inform you that I have failed, and you should not expect us home for Thanksgiving.

Last night, I spent my 37th birthday in containment. I don’t believe that I will see you ever again.

We left on the 30th. I had no choice, Pop. The money was running out, and I couldn’t leave her. They did away with my job at the Repatriation Office because at the end of the day I couldn’t spit out the loyalty oath.

Being a combat veteran wasn’t enough anymore. They needed a price in dignity I just wasn’t strong enough to pay.

I couldn’t do it. And now she’s going to die for my ego.

They got us coming off an exit ramp from the 70 in Avon, Colorado yesterday afternoon. I stole a gas can from a Party guy, clearly still allowed to drive without a pass, at a hotel off the interchange. He must have reported me because they singled me out even with the altered dealer plates.

I don’t know how much time I have left. This isn’t my phone. It’s hard to tell but I might be bleeding internally. They have to make a special example of Afghan veterans turned protesters, and blonde-haired, blue-eyed men who shack with African immigrants, in case anyone else gets those bright ideas.

Please tell Mom that I’m sorry, but she was wrong. They control the stages. They control the presses. Not even the imagination has hope of escape.

October 25, 2022

Dear Mrs. Karesa,

You don’t know me. We spoke once on the phone. I dated your daughter two years ago. It was a whirlwind romance, and just as quickly it petered out. But that’s not why I’m writing you.

For once, I tried to do something constructive. I tried to save your daughter, the way she once saved me.

I have no idea what you’re hearing; I have no idea what you know at this point. Everything they’re telling you in the press about the country your daughter moved to is likely true. It’s all true. We have no idea how many are dead; we have no idea how many are imprisoned. But I already know too much.

As punishment for my sins of indifference and inaction, my captors informed me this morning that Annette has been processed. She’s gone.

She’s gone, because I didn’t stop it.

She’s gone; and very soon, so I’m informed, so shall I.

One day, not too far off in the future, they will have excised all evidence that a woman as magnificent as her once lived. There will be no headstones; we will be memories on fading ink. Epitaph to the oppressed.

I’ve bribed a janitor with my last $100 to get this package to you. Enclosed is a necklace I bought your daughter in the Fall of 2020.

I send it to you now, because in the locket is a picture of her. I took it in Branson, Missouri. It was our last trip together, and the last picture I have of her. Short of the clothes on my back, it is my last earthly possession. It is all I have to offer as I beg your forgiveness.

On behalf of 350 million Americans: I offer you this small token that cannot possibly justify your sacrifice, because I beg your forgiveness.

I beg forgiveness for 350 million Americans who discarded a generation of their youngest, finest men on the altar of 20 years of useless wars for empire while haranguing them about the millennial generation’s waning sense of patriotism.

I beg forgiveness for 350 million Americans who hid behind the rock-throwing of racism and partisanship while their political leaders defrauded elections and violated the Constitution.

I beg forgiveness for the 75 million Americans complicit in the Revolution. I beg forgiveness for the 84 million Americans who let it happen.

I most especially pray for mercy for the children, and untold generations to come, who have yet to pay for my inaction.

I pray for the realization of the 60 million Germans left alive in May of 1945. No consolation in not taking part. No consolation in the small, desperate acts of resistance we tell ourselves are meaningful. Only the guilt of having let it happen. We are guilty, so far as we can still complain. But I won't be feeling guilty much longer.

They are ushering me to the gallows. Let me go with more dignity than the former Vice-President. I will not go on my knees. I will not go quietly.

With a flick of my finger I upload this letter to the cloud. With any luck, it will be picked up by the Underground. Let the Allies know, let the People’s Republic know, let the world know what we have endured.

Before I go, Mrs. Karesa, I want your daughter’s death to burn these people like the bomb they dropped on Seattle.

Brighter than a thousand suns.

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies; swept away, like amber waves of grain.