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Order this writing in the collection book Revealing All Your Dirty Little Secrets available for only $1995 |
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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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Dead Reds
Clinton Cloud
“That kid’s a soviet; I know it.”
Mr. Tom Upright’s son Jimmy was a precocious eight year old. While he excelled in school he had a tendency to get himself into trouble by slipping out of class without permission. Why he did this was unclear. His father had a theory. The kid was a red.
“A communist eight year old?” Miss Petunia inquired. It was one of the rarer charges she had heard a parent lay against their child. “Mr. Upright, I doubt this has to do with political philosophy.”
“The hell it does. When I take him to the library I see him reading up on Russian history. Why does an eight year old care about Russian history? The only thing you need to know about Russian history is to not invade Russia when winter is approaching.”
“James is a very good student. For the most part he’s an angel, but these unexcused absences have to stop.”
Jimmy’s legs swung back and forth in restlessness. His fair brown hair hung over his lowered head, a veil to hide him from the insanity of the adult world.
When Jimmy got home he ran back to his room and shut the door. His father sighed and walked into the living room to find his wife Mabel waiting for him.
“How was the conference?”
“It was fine.”
“Then why did James just run back to his room?”
“You’ll have to ask him that.”
Tom didn’t have to answer to her. Though he had been married to Mabel since he left the forces ten years prior he was becoming increasingly disenchanted with her. The boy was driving a wedge between them. She couldn’t accept the fact that her son is a communist. As a matter of fact, she didn’t seem willing to accept the fact that communist forces were operating within the United States at all.
The next day at Backwater University after teaching his introduction to political science class Tom headed over to the faculty lounge. He poured a cup of coffee and looked out the window towards the foliage accumulating on the quad. Fall was turning the whole campus red with these damn leaves.
He could feel the death spreading throughout the campus. The change in daylight prepping the campus for a soviet invasion.
“I hate this time of year.”
One of Tom’s colleagues, John Ackron, was preparing a test for his next class. He tried to pretend that he didn’t hear Tom. In general the faculty tended to think Tom was nuts. His expertise in Russian policy seemed to have little relevance to the students they would be teaching in a post cold war world. Best to ship this anachronistic old crank back to the private sector.
“John?”
“Yes, Tom,” John said, attempting to provide a minimal level of social grace.
“How are your students?”
“They’re fine. Is there any reason they shouldn’t be?”
“I suppose not. My students seem to be different. They’ve changed. It’s not the same as things were before. All these kids are big government liberals. They’ve lost touch with American values. I can’t talk about the concept of self government without some space case balling me out over the ‘need to help our fellow man.’ You’d think they would have taught them in high school the tragedies governments have committed under the guise of compassion.”
“They’re just kids. Don’t be so concerned about their political philosophy, if they even have one, besides what are the odds they vote?”
“It’s not just the kids. All around us people are revising history. After the reds supposedly fell in the early nineties we’ve seen views of the CCCP change. Pre-glasnost Russia is portrayed as some sort of socialist paradise. The media concentrates on current Russians problems, never mentioning the roots of them being the legacy of an overarching command economy.”
“I can’t help you, Tom. I’m sorry. I think you may have a distorted sense of global affairs coming from your background.” John excused himself and slipped out the door.
Tom knew about how his colleagues felt. He had encountered skepticism before, and not just from home. After twenty years in the navy as a submariner he had seen things that these ivory tower types would never believe.
Four years before the iron curtain came down he was on a tour of duty in the arctic. His submarine surfaced from below the ice and came to a full stop. There had been rumors of Russian activity in the region. Though these rumors were so far unsubstantiated there was enough anecdotal evidence to merit an investigation. Peering though a spyglass he surveyed the landscape. There was nothing on the radar. There didn’t appear to be any ships within the vicinity. Unless polar bears were in cahoots with the reds things looked to be in fine condition. Then something caught his attention, in the far distance there was a feint gray object. It hadn’t been there a moment before. He checked the radar and found nothing. When he looked back through his spyglass the object was still there. Alerting the captain, he caused somewhat of a commotion on board. For a few minutes everyone was on edge, but the captain couldn’t find Tom’s phantom ship in the spyglass. “Besides,” the captain said, “the radar would have picked up on it.” Tom looked back through the glass to find nothing but ice and gray skies. He had seen something, no matter what the radar insisted. Three days later another naval vessel was in the same area. It sank without warning.
“If people knew how close we had came to full scale war they wouldn’t take things so lightly,” Tom muttered to himself.
Every night before bed Tom had the same ritual. He would check the oven to make sure it was off, brush his teeth and then play “the tape”. “The tape” was a collection of news reports including the Berlin wall’s falling and Gorbachev’s dissolution of the Soviet Union. Where had he gone wrong?
Despite his years of study he wasn’t able to predict the Soviet Union’s collapse. His wife didn’t mind his late night film fest. He would be sleeping on the couch anyway. As his marriage continued to deteriorate he withdrew further into his obsession. It might be a good idea to watch “the tape” twice tonight. He was past due for an epiphany.
Little Jimmy appeared in the living room with a blanket in tow.
“Can I watch your movie?”
“No. Go to bed.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“But I can’t sleep.”
“Why?”
“Because someone keeps walking past my window.”
Picking his son up and putting Jimmy down on a chair, Tom rushed to the door. Throwing on his slippers he stepped outside and jogged around to the side of the house. No one was there. He worked his way around the house and then checked once more just to be safe.
When he returned to the living room he found Jimmy asleep. He picked Jimmy up and carried him back to his bedroom. Tucking James in Tom sat on the side of the bed. Shivering from the chill of the autumn air he kept his focus on the boy’s window. After an hour of watching he retired to the living room.
“Mr. Upright, sir?”
Tom’s shook off his listless gazing out the window and turned toward the class. His attention was shot from lack of rest and the misery that this time of year brings. Rolling his head back he turned and began writing on the board.
After class he returned to the faculty lounge to drink coffee and gaze at the students passing by. Out in the hall teachers chatting and walking past the lounge distracted his focus. When he returned to the window he saw a man dressed in black pants, boots and a trench coat standing outside the political science building. On his head was a ushanka, an uncommon piece of headwear among the students and faculty. The man’s listlessness and strange attire caught his attention and Tom continued to keep his eyes on the stranger. The man turned around revealing a hammer and sickle on his ushanka. Tom rushed down the stairs and out the door of the political science building. The man wasn’t present. Tom grabbed the arm of a student passing by.
“Hey man, what gives?”
“Where did that man go?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The guy who was here a moment ago. He had an ushanka on.”
“A what? Dude, there was no one here. Are you a professor?”
Tom released his grasp in frustration and jogged around the side of the political science building. Nothing. It was just him and the dead reds falling from the autumn trees in the brisk autumn air.
At home that night, more frustrated than ever, he began replaying “the tape” over and over. When the tape finished he would check the oven to make sure it was still off. Three AM rolled around and he began to feel drowsy. Checking the oven one last time he moved back to the bedrooms to check on his son.
Slowly opening the door he felt an instant rush of cold. The window curtain moved gently back and forth. Jimmy was not present in his bed.
“Jimmy?”
The boy had probably ran away from his crazy old father, he thought.
Attempting to put aside his feelings of guilt he stuck his head out the window and looked for any sign of his son. Towards the back of the house there was a man in black wearing an ushanka. Tom attempted to climb out the window but found the few pounds he had put on since he left the forces made that an impossibility. The man in black caught sight of Tom and began to shout in Russian.
“Damn it,” Tom muttered, thrusting his body out of the window frame. He ran as quickly as his legs would take him outside and around the house, the silhouette of the stranger disappearing behind the dense forest out back. Tom ran back in the forest jogging blindly. He came to a stop as the small amount of light the distant streetlights could provide him faded from view.
“Jimmy!”
He continued on his vain quest stumbling on the roots of nearby trees. He picked himself up and called out for his son. Behind him he heard the sound of rustling leaves. Before he could react he felt a tremendous force come down upon him and lost consciousness.
When he regained consciousness he found himself lying face down on a red carpet. He picked himself up. The carpet seemed to stretch on forever, a thin strip surrounded by blackness, to his right and left were men marching lockstep. They each wore a black uniform with black leather boots, had long thin noses and in general looked virtually identical.
Their hands swung backward and forward mechanically. Looking behind him he saw that there was nothing but blackness, carpet and more men moving in formation. The light that allowed him to see appeared to be coming from nowhere. There were no windows or overhead lights, He could see nothing around him except the ground and the men moving past him. He began to walk forward in the direction the men were heading. After marching for several minutes what at first seemed a speck on the horizon came into focus and he saw his son sitting on a chair on a dais. The men kept marching past the dais never stopping to so much as glance. Jimmy’s chair was made of dark oak and the dais was covered in the same red carpet that Tom was standing on. To the left and right of his son were hanging red drapes. He looked up to see that they appeared to be hanging from nothing at all, or at least nothing within his field of vision.
“James?”
“Hello, father.”
“What is going on?”
“They’re in training. They’re quite good aren’t they? At this point, if you were to put a gun to one of their heads they wouldn’t so much as flinch. I suppose you’re wondering how you got here. That’s immaterial.”
“I was looking for you in the forest and then-”
“Why couldn’t you mind your own business? You were more than happy to do that before. It was always work, work, work, then watching your precious tape. Do you want to know where you went wrong, why you couldn’t have predicted the Soviet Union’s collapse? It never collapsed. It’s always been here just bubbling below the surface.”
“None of this makes any sense.”
“It does though, doesn’t it? I know somewhere inside you’ve always suspected this. How could a man like you be wrong? It certainly can’t be pride, perish the thought. Your eight year old has proven difficult? Must be in cahoots with the reds. Everyone around you is either plotting against you or loosing faith in you. Isn’t that how you’ve felt? You were right about one thing, father. I’m working for the ‘Ruskies’. Don’t look so shocked.”
“Is this real?”
“Real as anything in your life.”
“What does it mean? Who brought you here?”
“I’m here of my own accord.”
“We need to go. I’m sorry, son. I’ve failed you, I know. I’ll try to make things right but we need to get out of here.”
“How would we leave? Did you see an exit? Besides, as I said, I’m here by choice.”
“There has to be one somewhere.”
Tom began to approach his son, who looked on in a contemptuous glare. As soon as Tom’s foot fell on the dais he was grabbed from behind. Two soldiers stood to his side, each with a steady grip on one of his shoulders.
“Do you control them?”
There was no answer. The austere expression on Jimmy’s face gave no further acknowledgment of his father’s presence. The boy looked past Tom into the infinite void before him.
A cloth bag was thrown over Tom’s head and he was dragged from the dais back in the direction he came. A few seconds later the guards threw him to the ground. He staggered up and pulled the bag from off his head. He found himself in a stone prison cell with iron bars. Across from him was another empty cell. The lines of marching soldiers and his son were no more.
“Hello?”
Besides a faint echo of his voice there was no response. Tom continued to shout in vain. He shook the iron bars of his cell. In exasperation he sat in the corner of his cell, his legs sprawled out on the floor, his limp body being propped up by the cell walls. Overcome with exhaustion he fell asleep.
“Come on, let’s go.”
Tom was jerked from his slumber by two soldiers lifting him up onto his feet. One of the soldiers placed a bag over Tom’s head and they collectively led him out of his cell and down the corridor. At the end of the hall they made a left and dragged Tom unwillingly up a flight of steps. They took the bag off Tom’s head revealing a wooden platform accompanied with thousands of people watching from bellow. Thousands of faceless individuals standing before him surrounded by blackness. They all wore plain brown clothes and stood motionless with their heads directed toward him. As the guards led him to the center of the platform the audiences’ heads moved to track him.
“Where’s my son? What have you done with him?”
Before him was a tall muscular man wearing a black mask with holes in it for his eyes. Above him was a beam with a noose descending from it. The man took the bag from the guards and placed it back over Tom’s head. He tightened the noose around Tom’s neck while the guards tied Tom’s hands behind his back. Tom felt loosing his footing and then falling down through the platform’s trap door.
Mrs. Upright stared through the small glass window into her husband’s room. He was lying on a cot in a white jacket staring at the ceiling. When she had received a visit from the police informing her that her husband had been found in the woods behind her home she wasn’t surprised. She merely thanked the officers and went to Tom’s hospital to say goodbye. She would be filing for divorce in the morning. The psychiatrist assigned Tom’s case assured Mrs. Upright that they were doing everything they could to help him.
“He keeps insisting that communist are around him. Has he exhibited this sort of behavior at home?”
“All the time.”
When Mabel returned home she tried to break the news to little Jimmy as delicately as possible. James didn’t seem upset. He merely nodded and continued playing with his toy soldiers. His mother came by an hour later and tucked him into bed. She said goodnight and closed the door. When she was gone James hopped out out of bed and opened his closet. On a shelf in his closet was a small steel case. He took the case, placed it on the floor and opened it, from it he withdrew a red cloth blanket, at the center of the blanket was a large yellow hammer and sickle. He jumped onto his bed and pulled the blanket over his body. He drifted into a dreamless sleep.
