D-Day

6 D-Day Jill McCorkle You have been waiting forever—beached, scorched, weary—white handkerchief in your pocket ready to wave. But the lawyers won’t let you quit. They save you from yourself even though you want to plead guilty—unhappy in the first degree. When you enlisted and they asked Do you take? you thought they said Do you fake? And vowed you did—desire, joy, contentment. Survival in the trenches. You just wanted to surrender. Instead you got a surprise attack: a man in uniform with orders for your court appearance and documentation of your entire tour of duty. Fuck you very much, you said sweetly, and let loose your big dog. If you owned a firearm you might have loaded it. And now you are in court. Low rent district—nasty tile floor, old dried flowers and portraits of dead lawyers. No one resembles Matlock. Perry Mason was never here. The wavy glass door marked Private looks promising until it swings open to reveal humans stuffed into dress shirts and panty hose. They hold your fate in their sticky hands. You feel a weak wash of security that at least they are not distracted by good health or fashion sense. You are in camouflage; pilled up cardigan , threadbare Keds—frumpy deprived housewife sprung from domestic dungeon. Camouflage also protects you from single marksmen as they scope out their next hit. You hiss, cough phlegm, scratch in a way that suggests feminine infections. You carry your rations in a paper sack that rattles when you accidentally drop it—bruised up apple, cheap lipstick, forty-seven cents—pitiful. You scoop it up before they take that, too. Your children—badges of honor—are why you didn’t go AWOL years ago. Innocent lives caught in the crossfire; cold bite of reality as they spin on playgrounds, slouch through high school, sink to nearly grown knees in disillusionment and despair. They weep in anger and frustration, fear and sadness—they beg hope for a better future. And that is why you sit here alone in a shitty outfit, stuffing money into the outstretched hands of those who promise to liberate you. You will 7 7 Jill McCorkle surrender everything for your children’s future. You will eat a bullet, hug a grenade, take a bayonet right through the heart. What you will not do is teach them that it is okay to sacrifice their lives for wars not worth fighting. Why should they live in trenches when beckoned by peaceful shores? ...