Fecklessness
Quibble loves the sound of glass bottles shattering after a good throw. He revels in rubbish fires as much as any citizen. A fearsome chant takes his soul to a comforting place, angular and primal. He has been known to scream bellicose nothings into the air surrounding a crowd. He is as committed and feverish as a boy in rut chasing prey he can never merit. His problem lies in tying all these stray pleasures to an enviable cause. His comrades, co-conspirators, fellow defenders, do so easily enough. Why does he have difficulty picking a flag for his joyful release?
Finding a Cause
Willard painted a swastika on the grave of Old Meir. Thole’s is missing a can of spray paint, and Willard stocks there part-time. Stuck in his parents’ back bedroom, he has been a burden of some sort for most of his twenty-seven years. He goes from job to job, thinking he deserves grander, fails to merit the job he has. Natalie dated him once, says he tried to go from stop to race too quickly, and could not get out of idle. No one knew he hated Jews, nor that Old Meir was Jewish. I don’t think either trap matters.
Gathering Children
We must find the children. Everyone in town turns out. Thinking, at start, the children might be all in one place, the crowd searches the largest buildings first: the church, the movie theatre, a selection of barns, the drab school. Quibble suggests we break up into teams. Heretofore, we had all been running en masse structure to structure – it would be easy for the children to get behind us, revisit a gathering place previously eliminated. The children might have broken into undetectable groups. A vote is held on the new method. Hands are raised and counted, even the children’s hands.
Heuristics
The current fad is spray painting women. At first, quite a few women did not survive. Then we tried non-toxic paint, and still there were casualties. Eventually, it was explained that filling in so many pores with paint would inevitably prove fatal. So, the question became: how much of a woman can you paint and have her still be about to display? There are artists exploring the edge. Successful one attempt, apply a bit more, not so successful the next. It seems the woman herself can be a factor. Judging how much paint for which women is perhaps the art.
Improvising
Nearly finished with building the theatre fire, we ran out of fire. We stood about pondering how to proceed when someone asked, “Why don’t we break into Martin’s stash?” Martin was there at the edge of the crowd, looking to purloin a smattering of fire, when everyone was distracted, for his collection. He thought no one knew about his trove of fire. Everyone had kept secret from him the knowledge of his secret. Leaving half of us to manage the applied flames, the other half set out for Martin’s place. Martin’s wife will be surprised her husband’s penchant turned useful.
DoubleSpeak 