With His Hammer In His Hand


With His Hammer In His Hand

	A cool, subdued December morning it was, as the men of the minarets called on America to put on your televisions, your radios; the President’s daily address is about to start. The fog seemed oddly foreboding today, the clouds casting their sleet on the streets of the city. Despite this, the White House had lost its innocence  once pure, now blending in, browning, with all the muck of the Washington weather. The United States had been wholly egalitarian, but that was many decades ago. Now it was an authoritarian America, as the fifty states became truly united, as one; now it was a place for propaganda, for forced proselytization, for films recording your every move, in every room, in every corner of the country. First thriving as a democracy, the Land of Opportunity now seemed anything but, only giving chances to those with two faces  if not those who could not think independently at all. A country once free, now imprisoned of its own accord. Citizens were forbidden from expressing any dissent, forbidden from entertaining themselves with means not approved by the government, forbidden even from wearing any colors but the red, white, and blue of their flag. The sky, at least, complied. Today it was a ruddy red, as if to warn Washington of a wound soon to be inflicted on the people of the meltingpot.
	These people of the meltingpot had tuned in to the President’s daily address for the last eighteen years without fail. Calls for education reform had been answered, yes. Yet where once
students learned of the Civil Rights Movement and read the works of Kesey and Salinger and Trumbo, they now learned about the life of their current president, Beck (or at least what he was willing to disclose, one has an image to maintain, after all), and read of his philosophies and ideologies. The federal deficit had been paid off with the help of drastic raises in taxes. But those raises had stayed constant ever since, and now the government dove headfirst into the pool of debt, with a bottom one’s feet could never quite touch. Lavish parties and entertainment were thrown for the leaders  at the expense of the citizens they ‘pledged’ to serve. Even the thing which made America once great, its status as a democracy, had ceased to exist. Power gradually slipped away from the states and cities, instead residing in the grubby hands of the country as a whole, fooling citizens with socalled desires of ‘unity’ and ‘teamwork’. The ruling class kept control from the plebeians, filched freedoms, and ran their right to vote right out of town, until leaders were ‘appointed’ by figureheads who had become gods in the bodies of men. That was the way it was, that was the way it would be.
	That would soon change if John Henry Jackson had his way. Jackson worked for the government as an advisor to Beck, who he secretly despised. A former columnist for the New York Times, he was known for his willingness to get to the bottom of anything, his persistence, and above all, his ability to stir the pot. He was a harsh critic of the government’s authoritarian policies, but claimed to have a “change of heart” as those laws grew stricter. Of course, this was a claim in name only. “I wouldn’t say I enjoy my work,” Jackson would say, “but they don’t notice that.”
	He groaned as he groped around in bed for his glasses. “Wonder what’s for breakfast,” he said, voice weary from the world.
	No matter. Breakfast would wait. He had to put on his television, his radio; the President’s daily address was starting! Grubby fingers flipped the switch; the address had already begun. Dammit, he thought. Hope they won’t correct me for being late again. They’ve already corrected so many... “Today your Leaders have a special announcement to make,” Beck said, his voice cracked and worn with his efforts to fool the public into believing his every lie. “I’ve chosen my advisor, John Henry Jackson, to present an award to the fine folks of Berkeley, California.”
	Oh, God, thought Jackson. What happened in Berkeley? “They’ve played a huge role in our Telling The Truth program, helping to ensure that all government documents, facts, figures, are onehundred percent accurate and honest,” said Beck, answering Jackson’s question without realizing
it. Beck was getting noticeably sweatier, his skin tone gradually moving from a slight tan to a deep red, a red like grandmother’s borscht. In fact, he had choked down those few words with more difficulty than someone actually eating borscht. Ah, well, he thought, they won’t notice.
Jackson tuned out the rest of the address to read the day’s Times. He hadn’t worked for the paper in twentyodd years, but he still read it daily, despite the distance of years that had grown between them. It gave him a sense of continuity in his otherwise offkilter life. “Besides,” as he had told Beck in the past, “it’s really pretty refreshing to know that no matter how bad your day gets, the stuff you read about in the paper is always gonna be worse.” He wondered if that would still hold true today.
	He punched Beck’s number into his phone. “Jackson, if you’re here to complain about your trip to Berkeley, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you,” said Beck. The sharp, shrill voice of the leader of the world, free and unfree, seemed even more pronounced today. So sharp you could pierce your ears if you heard it long enough, Jackson thought. “Beck, you know those ‘fine folks’ of yours only helped you twist the truth instead of telling it like it is,” said Jackson, now seeing more red than Joseph McCarthy. “I know, isn’t it great? It’s like we’re the only two people out of millions who know a big, big secret,” said Beck, gleefully, with all the giddy innocence of a fiveyearold. Beck was a man of many moods. In public he appeared downtoearth, cordial. But once he blinded that public eye, it didn’t take much for those moods to change. “President Beck,” said Jackson, assured, “with all due respect, I think it’s cowardly to lie to your constituents. That goes against everything I stand for. I know they didn’t exactly vote you in, yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can just lie to them all the time. You know that’s what you’ve done to them each year you’ve been in office  hell, each time you step onto that podium to make one of your addresses you do it, you lie to them. You know that’s what you’ve done to them, Beck, you know that’s what you’ve done.”
	There was a pause. Jackson could feel the anger heating up inside Beck as his own confidence, in response, melted away.
	Beck spat the next sentence into the phone  “Well, that doesn’t mean they need to know that”  and hung up.
	That was the way it was, yes, but Jackson didn’t want that to be the way it would be. Either
way (on a government provided plane, no less!), he was headed to Berkeley, home to the most rigid adherents of President Beck and his associated policies. Berkeley was always a radical city, once noted for its liberalism and tolerance of all the raisins in the sun. With shifts in American thought, however, so too were there shifts in Berkeley’s. Where one once could smell the sickly sweet scent of sympathy in the city, there now emanated from it a disgusting odor of absolute obedience.
	I guess I’ll change that, thought Jackson as he stepped onto the plane, or die trying.
	A short flight later he was off and exploring the sundrenched streets of Berkeley, suitcase and gleaming gold award in hand. The city appeared deserted, with nary a sign of life in sight. Then there were screams. A man rushed towards Jackson, falling over frontwards as he strained to reach him. “Who are you? Where are you from?” asked the man when he did, leaning over, hands on knees, so as to let the sweat drip off his body. He was a clump of a man, endearing, if timid. “Don’t worry, I’m from the government to give your city an award  maybe you’ve heard about it,” said Jackson, voice wavering, blown around as he was by the strong California wind.
	The man’s face, flushed a beaming red from the exertion, all of a sudden perked up, doglike. “Why, yes I have, sir, yes I have. We’ve seen the President’s announcement three times today, actually. Just one of those things we like to do around here. I’m Grant, what did you say your name was?” “It’s Jackson, John Henry Jackson. Do you have a leader, er, a mayor of some sort  that I can present the award to?” he asked, cautiously inquisitive. Grant replied, “Oh, yeah, I’ll get you to the mayor. You know, I can take you to everyone if you want  we don’t have many people living here. Only around fifty or so, they’ll all be in City Hall now.” “That sounds good,” said Jackson. For once he felt an optimist about the situation, as opposed to a fire-and-brimstone-wielding freedom fighter.
Then this self-constructed bubble of hope popped.
	Grant and Jackson stepped into City Hall. At first Jackson only noticed the spaciousness of the place. Its ceilings were high, with a great distance between its walls, furnished with many paintings of the last century or so (Jackson discovered a lone Chuck Close work and remembered how long it had been since Close’s fateful Event  almost one hundred years). Then he saw the mayor walking like greased lightning towards him, ready to strike. “You’re Jackson, aren’t you?” he asked, with a fast talk to go with his fast walk. Jackson nodded, ready to shake hands with the mayor, drop the award, and bolt. “Thank you, Jackson, but there’s only one man we can really shake hands with in the country, and he hasn’t come by yet,” replied the mayor, quickly adding, “And that man is the President himself. But you can call me Lee, alright? Lee.”
	Jackson stepped back to observe Mayor Lee in action. Lee was a stubborn, frenetic little man, darting this way and that, barely pausing to breathe in the air made stale by the presence of antiquated, authoritarian ideas, by an undying devotion to Beck. He was a short man, yes, but he was wellbuilt, and would not let dissent walk all over him as Jackson so badly wanted to. As quickly as the Mayor’s movements, the clocks chimed five o’clock. Jackson remembered he was due to officially present the award at six, so he felt no need to hurry  unlike the fifty or so Berkeleyans, skittering over to an unusually large (say twenty feet long and five feet wide) golden statue. They began bowing down to the statue, chanting something sounding familiar yet foreign to him. Jackson decided, in an act of good will, to bow down alongside them, and he prostrated himself. After a serene twenty seconds or so, he looked up to see what else the citizens did during prostration. Then he saw the statue’s face. It was Beck’s.
	His face glowed, as if someone struck a match against it and let the flame rise. He exploded with his rage, chucking the award at the statue and starting to speak. “How can you people be so dense?” he asked, voice, as bread, rising in intensity. “You people...you  you’ve forgotten how to think, haven’t you? And it’s all because of that man,” said Jackson, flicking his finger out to the statue, denying Beck the dignity of being addressed by a name. “Ever since we lost all freedom of thought in the ‘60s, I’ve been bursting my blood vessels trying to get even a shred of it back. This whole awful, wretched time I’ve had my nose to the goddamn grindstone, working for the benefit of the people. I don’t care who’s in charge, I don’t care what they say. But I know it’s my responsibility to do what’s best for you, and here you are ruining that. You’re America at its worst. You’re dead to me. Your groupthink, my independence; your idols, my ideas; the death of your mind versus the life of mine! My life!”
	Jackson, in a fuming fit of frenzy, charged the statue like a raging bull. Its golden state was a red flag in his eyes. Yet Jackson waved a red flag of a different sort to Lee. Their lids flipped, Lee met Jackson headon with his friends  a frantic flurry of fury by fists. Jackson, a fierce, fearless fighter, fought back, driving his hammers into Lee’s face. They tumbled on the tiles, giving great gashes to the other, until Lee took the quickfix route and finally slit his knife into Jackson’s spinal cord  paralyzing him, dooming him to die. In the spirit of John Henry, Jackson begged for a cool drink of water, but his begs, too, were brushed away.
	At last Jackson’s ghost was given up, his body limp and numb, devoid of its former strength. The one thing that stayed with him, however, was his glare. It glowered, it blazed, it drilled holes into whoever’s gaze it met. Beck had taught this to him well. The one thing Jackson had learned of from Beck was the enormous power of silence  you can say mountains with a sinister stare, a little glare. Yet Jackson only remembered Beck’s Rule of Order until it was too late. Here now could these three be compared  Lee cut with his knife; Jackson, with his words, Beck, with his eyes.
	So John Henry Jackson, yes, was dead. Even with the Grim Reaper were his philosophies unchanged, his values uncompromised  his wishes ungranted. For America would only continue its descent into countrywide conformity. Everything would blend together, would integrate. Everything would merge, become one  these socalled desires of ‘unity’ and ‘teamwork’ worming their way into the United State’s consciousness at last. John Henry may have won the battle against that locomotive, pitchblack from the smoke and steam, drilling into the mountain, but the train had won the war. That was the way it was, that was the way it would be.