The Sky Conducting (The Mercenary)
The Sky Conducting (The Mercenary) Lyrics
THE MERCENARY
The father and the daughter envisioned the wide-open road as bait and being caught but there was nobody there to suggest being followed. Even so they took to the roads smaller but cleaner roads looking less like roads and more like artistic carvings.
Twists and turns these roads these carvings weren’t made for safe travel. They were made for muttering for private residences and private parties.
In silence the car swerves around the vehicular husks of Barry Lane. The father wants to say something but is holding back.
The daughter wants to say something but has nothing to say.
*
Barry Lane turns into Gatlin Rd turns to Holly turns to Chase.
The daughter breaks the silence asking, Why are all the street signs still standing?
The signs point people into directions of the past. Drivers are the would-be warned and cautious.
The father appears confused by the question and there’s nothing else to do but keep driving keep turning to the angle of the carve.
Road signs and billboards and graffiti and mailboxes are in perfect condition.
The daughter takes out a letter pad and scribbles a few lines.
The father narrowly avoids debris in the road having been distracted with trying to figure out what the daughter’s writing down. The daughter looks at the father and bluntly tells him, the signs will be worth a lot someday.
The father and the daughter envisioned the wide-open road as bait and being caught but there was nobody there to suggest being followed. Even so they took to the roads smaller but cleaner roads looking less like roads and more like artistic carvings.
Twists and turns these roads these carvings weren’t made for safe travel. They were made for muttering for private residences and private parties.
In silence the car swerves around the vehicular husks of Barry Lane. The father wants to say something but is holding back.
The daughter wants to say something but has nothing to say.
*
Barry Lane turns into Gatlin Rd turns to Holly turns to Chase.
The daughter breaks the silence asking, Why are all the street signs still standing?
The signs point people into directions of the past. Drivers are the would-be warned and cautious.
The father appears confused by the question and there’s nothing else to do but keep driving keep turning to the angle of the carve.
Road signs and billboards and graffiti and mailboxes are in perfect condition.
The daughter takes out a letter pad and scribbles a few lines.
The father narrowly avoids debris in the road having been distracted with trying to figure out what the daughter’s writing down. The daughter looks at the father and bluntly tells him, the signs will be worth a lot someday.
*
The daughter asks, Where are we going?
The father responds, Wherever there still might be life. To which he means they’re going downtown. The only problem is in order to go downtown you need to take a specific road.
That specific road is blocked by debris. To pass the father and the daughter will have to walk the road.
The daughter points to the road, Right over there.
*
The father wants to go back home.
There’s no longer a home left home but instead broken. Do you want to go home broken to be broken some more?
*
Bodies become infected if given enough time in the ash.
It rains ash but the father and the daughter set out on foot the daughter leading the way.
The father scans the horizon. The father stole one of the mother’s mirrors and uses it to look behind him.
An overcast mid-afternoon plays with the shadows cast and the father’s eyes.
The daughter asks, Where are we going?
The father responds, Wherever there still might be life. To which he means they’re going downtown. The only problem is in order to go downtown you need to take a specific road.
That specific road is blocked by debris. To pass the father and the daughter will have to walk the road.
The daughter points to the road, Right over there.
*
The father wants to go back home.
There’s no longer a home left home but instead broken. Do you want to go home broken to be broken some more?
*
Bodies become infected if given enough time in the ash.
It rains ash but the father and the daughter set out on foot the daughter leading the way.
The father scans the horizon. The father stole one of the mother’s mirrors and uses it to look behind him.
An overcast mid-afternoon plays with the shadows cast and the father’s eyes.
Shadows wave to the father and the father wants to wave in reply but the daughter is calling to the father, What are you doing?
The daughter adds, Don’t get delusional this early out!
*
The road was blocked off by wreckage.
This was a nine-car pileup.
There are bodies now merely familiar arrangements of bones in the wreckage. Care to look? The father might have known the man leading the pileup.
The roads are littered with desperation glimpses of the pilgrimage that inevitably fell in the wrong.
*
I am not a good person. The father says aloud. The daughter hears the father’s words but doesn’t say anything.
The daughter doesn’t want to say anything because she believes him. She agrees the father is a horrible person.
There are horrible people here.
The daughter is one of them. The father maybe wants someone to console him. The father gets nothing in return.
It is not time for these kinds of consolations.
The daughter adds, Don’t get delusional this early out!
*
The road was blocked off by wreckage.
This was a nine-car pileup.
There are bodies now merely familiar arrangements of bones in the wreckage. Care to look? The father might have known the man leading the pileup.
The roads are littered with desperation glimpses of the pilgrimage that inevitably fell in the wrong.
*
I am not a good person. The father says aloud. The daughter hears the father’s words but doesn’t say anything.
The daughter doesn’t want to say anything because she believes him. She agrees the father is a horrible person.
There are horrible people here.
The daughter is one of them. The father maybe wants someone to console him. The father gets nothing in return.
It is not time for these kinds of consolations.
*
The father and the daughter pass by a series of skewered bodies.
Each body has a pike has a price.
Each body is being sold in replacement for a proper burial.
Crossed out on their signs burial written in replacement for passage. They were once people once looking to bargain their way off this rock.
Now they are bodies of the free exchange.
The father and the daughter slow to inspect but continue they pass on with no intentions of asking for safe passage.
*
There’s something out there, the father says.
The daughter frowns, No there isn’t. That’s why you’re so scared. No one cares. Nothing’s left. It’s a flea market.
The father and the daughter together walk side by side into the downtown area.
*
When they arrive, it’s a flea market.
People from all around the world stand around loose accommodations and offerings.
There’s music coming from their right. The father takes the daughter by the hand and they walk in the direction of the music.
On a concrete slab a group of four plays songs using electrified instruments. It doesn’t sound like anything the father has heard. The father asks the daughter and she shakes her head, No idea.
*
Down an aisle it is clear to the father these aren’t people.
Things are being sold, living, dead, and inanimate.
The daughter speaks, They don’t seem to be bothered with the state of the nation.
The father responds, This is their holiday. They don’t live here.
Facial features and dialects in use and common among these people these venders it’s clear the father is correct.
*
The father takes out some rope and at both ends ties intricate knots. When the daughter isn’t looking, the father wraps the rope around her wrist and his.
He fixes it on tight enough to constrict blood flow.
Hey! The daughter shouts, You’re tying it way too tight!
The father doesn’t listen. This is for your safety.
*
The father lacks any maternal instinct but he makes up for it with the American father’s best: grade-A paranoia and self-centricism.
The father leads the way dragging the daughter behind him into the downtown shanty town.
The father is here on a mission.
*
The father isn’t here to shop for something. He is looking specifically for a service. These maybe-vendors sell whatever they’ve found and items include dead parts of animals and man, wrappers, unused merchandise seemingly plundered from a nearby market or store.
The market’s inventory is almost exclusively domestic.
Upon closer inspection the father notices that these aren’t vendors. They are simply people from other places trading what they don’t want for something on their lists.
Downtown is spill-over from somewhere else.
*
As expected, the city’s landmarks are missing being sold by vendors and dragged away by the lucky immigrant scavengers who got to them first.
They aren’t immigrants. They are picking through a land that is just land. Soiled and spoiled land.
No one owns this land.
It’s just land.
The father hears gunfire in the distance and heads in that direction.
The daughter asks the father if he’s looking for someone to kill them because she can do it for free.
The father simply says, Shut up.
The father is on a mission.
He has to get the facts straight first.
*
No one buys without bartering something of their own.
The father needs something to sell.
*
The first vendor offering the service he requires can’t stop looking at the daughter. The father stares never breaking eye contact with the vendor while asking for the man’s life story.
The man doesn’t speak English very well and states that it’s the father’s problem. English dead language for dead country dead people.
The man wants the daughter in return for the service.
The father moves on but the man is persistent and follows them around the shanty town and market.
*
The father and the daughter duck behind different wares and in doing so receive a crash course in what’s been pillaged what was once a part of this country.
This guy is searching for three motorcycles and not the import or knockoff versions. This guy wants the real deal. The loud ones that “go across country.”
Two women have collected a respectable wardrobe of the ages but they ask for more and more and more. They like what the daughter’s wearing and they ask for it. They don’t seem to want to give the father and the daughter anything in return.
Some man has one of the better decorated shacks and until the father gets close enough it looks like art. The man has gathered footage, audio, still images, video, and interactive multimedia of this country’s pornography. He is willing to trade for “real thing”
There’s a younger man wandering around who speaks English proficiently who shouts at the top of his lungs: Everything you want I have! It is online! It is online!
A portly woman sits amongst a smell that is too overpowering for the father and the daughter to approach. The shanty town had a stench about it to begin with not to mention a grimy surface and deplorable look but the woman’s shack is filled with droppings, shaved off and partly melted hair. The woman has a thick Italian accent and calls to the father, I like the hair! The father reaches up for his hair. Yes! Yes! Hair! I have and you have! Can I have?
*
The father rushes around the corner to yet another loosely arranged grouping of vendors and people standing around.
An attractive Russian woman stands next to the city’s landmark. At her side stands a rugged Russian man fielding questions.
The father and the daughter stumble into a live auction for the city’s priceless landmark of a great American president.
America’s belongings are being sold and profited on by everyone that outlives it.
*
On the outskirts of the shanty town groups of scavengers rebuild the buildings but it’s clear they don’t know how.
They build in their image of what America would have imagined it to be.
They build a market that doesn’t have a door, a skate park made of ash and bone.
They build and then they break it apart and build again.
They ask people passing by if they want to try. Everyone is having fun but the father and the daughter who watch in dismay.
*
One vendor sells a broken home.
The vendor has gotten eerily close to rebuilding the 2-story idyllic suburb middle class home.
It looks like home and the father when seeing the mockery wants to walk through the front door to gather the mother and the son and leave.
*
There are new dangers on the horizon.
*
The father and the daughter run down the last aisle but discover they’ve mistakably been turned around.
*
All kinds of services available to others are offered to the father and the daughter.
In return they want the daughter. They want the daughter’s clothes. They want the father’s hair. They want any and all jewelry. They want the father’s and the daughter’s clippings and bodily sheddings. They want the daughter’s virginity.
They want the father. They want the father as the father to play the father wherever the father is taken.
They want to sell the daughter into the sex trade “back home.”
They all want to violate and objectify.
*
You want to leave this poor country? It won’t be easy.
The man is decked out in cargo pants, a vest with endless pockets and who knows what he has hidden away in those pockets. He carries a large hiker’s backpack and he sits on what looks to be a hitch and tow, a crate for safe-keeping.
The father waits for the conditions the demands but they never come.
*
The man keeps talking about the father’s demands.
You look smell taste you are American.
Wherever you go you are American. It’ll be hard.
The daughter detects an accent but she can’t figure out where the man comes from.
The father defeated begins walking away from the man.
*
Where are you going? Don’t you want to leave this poor country?
The father asks hesitantly, What do you want from us?
*
Yes, this is a business. My business I can do many things. I can kill. I can defend. I can survive a war. I can find food and cook it. Back home I’m a great cook.
I’ve done a lot but I have never saved anyone. I kill I don’t save.
My first will be to save a whole family.
I like the sound. I am your savior.
*
The father can’t look the man in the eye. What do you want in return?
Not now, I don’t want to talk business now.
*
The daughter remains silent watching the bargaining exchange.
The man jumps to his feet. We’ll go. I have a route. We need to trek a dozen miles before dark.
He leans into the father and looks him straight in the face, No traveling at night.
*
The man reaches down for a long cord. At one end there’s a grip. He wraps the cord around his left wrist all the way down his forearm and over his left shoulder.
He takes a few steps in the opposite direction of the father and the daughter then stops. He doesn’t look back at them but simply shouts, We’re going.
*
The man pulls the crate which is on wheels with him.
Any normal man it would prove to be a struggle but to the man it seems effortless.
*
Ah you see it’s what you call supply and demand, when the man observes the shanty town and market as they pass.
We’re all just people. Demand is like suffering. Someone will suffer but someone else will profit from that suffering.
I am mercenary where I go because I make money on the problems of others.
*
They leave downtown and head down a clear interstate.
The father speaking to himself asks why the interstate is so clear while the other roads the roads going into the city were so cluttered.
The mercenary hears him and answers, I take the more practical roads. Americans didn’t use practical roads. They used popular roads. It’s much easier to travel if you’re practical.
*
A mile in the mercenary stops. He wraps another cord around the crate some intricate and well-fashioned knotted arrangement and tosses it towards the father.
He says, You’re skinny and thin. Time to build you some muscle.
The mercenary then turns to the daughter. She doesn’t need to build any muscle. He pats the top of the crate, Hop on.
The daughter climbs on top of the crate and sits there.
Good. Girls with muscle are unattractive. A little bit of muscle, okay, but too much. A woman needs to be able to relax.
Girls with too much muscle are men, you know what I am saying?! Laughing, the mercenary playfully elbows the father in the kidneys.
*
The father struggles with the crate but the mercenary enjoys every step. The daughter sits on the crate and observes father and mercenary.
*
The mercenary has a smile on his face.
The daughter asks, Why are you so happy?
The mercenary is quick to respond. I like to live. Living is every new challenge. I don’t like waiting around. I hate waiting in the city, waiting and trading. I am here for one reason and one reason only.
*
You want what everyone else wants right? The daughter asks.
Yes. You are a smart girl.
I am smart, yes, but it’s kind of obvious. So you all came into the country?
We showed up on boats and traded those boats with the people leaving.
You mean everybody?
Yes. Americans leaving to die.
I don’t think they were intending on dying. They wanted a better place to live now that their country died.
*
An American is an American. In other countries, especially now that America is dead, being American is bad. The many that left this place maybe should have stayed instead.
The mercenary stops and then adds, You and your father are first I’ve seen.
*
The daughter continues to observe the mercenary.
The mercenary seems like he’s trying to bond with the father goading him on with comments like, “Keep pulling it’s good exercise!” and then the mercenary laughs but tells no stories.
The daughter watches and eventually declares, My mom and my brother are still home.
The mercenary responds, Yes. You’re father here has told me but we have places to go first.
*
The daughter asks, Where are we going?
The mercenary isn’t one for being indirect. I’ve got another crate and a truck I’ve found. We shall go there first and gather my belongings.
*
What are you going to have us do?
See? That’s what’s going to be hard to get rid of. You Americans are so anxious all the time. So restless and ready to keep going. You can’t just have patience.
I’m just worried that’s all.
Nothing to worry about. This is the land of no value.
*
It doesn’t feel like it’s been very long but the sun begins to set and it’s evident that some time has passed.
*
The mercenary tosses a cellphone over at the daughter and says, Call your mom and tell them you met me.
There isn’t any service.
There’s service.
There’s no electricity and back home we only have a LAN line left.
There’s electricity.
*
The daughter refuses to believe it and continues her inquisitive prodding until the mercenary sets down the crate.
The father doesn’t realize the crate has been set down so completely absorbed and consumed by the exhaustive process of pulling a heavy crate over his shoulder. The father continues pulling, wedging both the front of the crate and his footsteps into the semi-wet mud and grit.
*
The mercenary walks up to the daughter and takes the cellphone from her and asks for the phone number.
The daughter gives the mercenary the phone number.
He calls and says, Yes. Hello. Not going to speak? Isn’t it common to say “Hello” too? Ah but I’m not calling to chat or get to know you. That’s for a later time. I send information that your husband and your daughter are okay. Thank you and goodbye!
The mercenary returns to the crate and saves the father just in time from digging the crate in too deep of a hole.
*
They continue their trek. The father never noticed their temporary stoppage.
The daughter squints her eyes, What are you really doing here?
I am here because of supply and demand.
*
The daughter questions the mercenary’s motives. You are here because you enjoy this.
I enjoy America. Even now I enjoy America. Americans are different. It’s like the movies.
What are you going to do with us?
Americans are always so into questions.
*
What is your name?
The mercenary is incapable of lies. I’m Johan.
The mercenary doesn’t ask for the daughter’s name.
The daughter replies, I’m –
I know your name.
How do you know my name?
I know your name.
What’s my name then?
You’re his daughter am I right?
The daughter doesn’t say anything more.
*
The father between long breaths says, It’s getting dark.
Johan the mercenary says, True my friend. It is getting dark. It’s time to be afraid. Americans are always afraid.
*
The daughter screams, What about mom and my brother?!
Americans are cute. They are so scared of the world. Americans never knew how much the world was afraid of Americans.
Americans were the ones that would have ended the world.
The daughter shouts, America is dead!
Johan smiles.
*
The last rays of sunlight disappear over the stacked rubble of the former theme park.
Johan is watching and comments: I watched videos of the rollercoasters and the cotton candy and the long lines but I never tried it.
The daughter sighs, This is all one big tourist trip for you isn’t it?
Johan smiles.
*
We’re going to die out here Johan!
Johan maintains his smile but replies confidently: I have three guns and enough napalm to blow up anything I don’t like.
*
The daughter looks up to the sky. She can’t see the sky.
The sky disappears and is replaced with a sheet of dark concealing hate.
*
Johan taps the father on the shoulder, We are here. Johan points to the truck. The father and Johan tie the two crates to the truck.
The daughter crossed out Johan off the list she has been composing. He isn’t a part of this.
*
He’s a tourist. Johan talks about supply and demand well he supplies based on the demands we, the sufferers, have created. The daughter doesn’t trust Johan but wants to trust Johan.
By the time the father and Johan are finished with the truck the daughter not only trusts Johan but begins cultivating a healthy little crush for Johan.
*
Johan sits in the driver’s seat. The daughter sits cramped in the back cab and the father sits in the front passenger seat.
Johan grips hold of the steering wheel: I never drove until I came here to America. It is strange to be a driver.
It feels like you’re moving a mountain or a world but you’re not moving at all. Americans love their cars. Americans live in their cars.
Neither the daughter nor the father says anything in response.
*
Johan laughs and turns the ignition.
They drive away.
*
The daughter asks, Where are we going?
Johan hands her a picture and says, The audition.
The father and the daughter pass by a series of skewered bodies.
Each body has a pike has a price.
Each body is being sold in replacement for a proper burial.
Crossed out on their signs burial written in replacement for passage. They were once people once looking to bargain their way off this rock.
Now they are bodies of the free exchange.
The father and the daughter slow to inspect but continue they pass on with no intentions of asking for safe passage.
*
There’s something out there, the father says.
The daughter frowns, No there isn’t. That’s why you’re so scared. No one cares. Nothing’s left. It’s a flea market.
The father and the daughter together walk side by side into the downtown area.
*
When they arrive, it’s a flea market.
People from all around the world stand around loose accommodations and offerings.
There’s music coming from their right. The father takes the daughter by the hand and they walk in the direction of the music.
On a concrete slab a group of four plays songs using electrified instruments. It doesn’t sound like anything the father has heard. The father asks the daughter and she shakes her head, No idea.
*
Down an aisle it is clear to the father these aren’t people.
Things are being sold, living, dead, and inanimate.
The daughter speaks, They don’t seem to be bothered with the state of the nation.
The father responds, This is their holiday. They don’t live here.
Facial features and dialects in use and common among these people these venders it’s clear the father is correct.
*
The father takes out some rope and at both ends ties intricate knots. When the daughter isn’t looking, the father wraps the rope around her wrist and his.
He fixes it on tight enough to constrict blood flow.
Hey! The daughter shouts, You’re tying it way too tight!
The father doesn’t listen. This is for your safety.
*
The father lacks any maternal instinct but he makes up for it with the American father’s best: grade-A paranoia and self-centricism.
The father leads the way dragging the daughter behind him into the downtown shanty town.
The father is here on a mission.
*
The father isn’t here to shop for something. He is looking specifically for a service. These maybe-vendors sell whatever they’ve found and items include dead parts of animals and man, wrappers, unused merchandise seemingly plundered from a nearby market or store.
The market’s inventory is almost exclusively domestic.
Upon closer inspection the father notices that these aren’t vendors. They are simply people from other places trading what they don’t want for something on their lists.
Downtown is spill-over from somewhere else.
*
As expected, the city’s landmarks are missing being sold by vendors and dragged away by the lucky immigrant scavengers who got to them first.
They aren’t immigrants. They are picking through a land that is just land. Soiled and spoiled land.
No one owns this land.
It’s just land.
The father hears gunfire in the distance and heads in that direction.
The daughter asks the father if he’s looking for someone to kill them because she can do it for free.
The father simply says, Shut up.
The father is on a mission.
He has to get the facts straight first.
*
No one buys without bartering something of their own.
The father needs something to sell.
*
The first vendor offering the service he requires can’t stop looking at the daughter. The father stares never breaking eye contact with the vendor while asking for the man’s life story.
The man doesn’t speak English very well and states that it’s the father’s problem. English dead language for dead country dead people.
The man wants the daughter in return for the service.
The father moves on but the man is persistent and follows them around the shanty town and market.
*
The father and the daughter duck behind different wares and in doing so receive a crash course in what’s been pillaged what was once a part of this country.
This guy is searching for three motorcycles and not the import or knockoff versions. This guy wants the real deal. The loud ones that “go across country.”
Two women have collected a respectable wardrobe of the ages but they ask for more and more and more. They like what the daughter’s wearing and they ask for it. They don’t seem to want to give the father and the daughter anything in return.
Some man has one of the better decorated shacks and until the father gets close enough it looks like art. The man has gathered footage, audio, still images, video, and interactive multimedia of this country’s pornography. He is willing to trade for “real thing”
There’s a younger man wandering around who speaks English proficiently who shouts at the top of his lungs: Everything you want I have! It is online! It is online!
A portly woman sits amongst a smell that is too overpowering for the father and the daughter to approach. The shanty town had a stench about it to begin with not to mention a grimy surface and deplorable look but the woman’s shack is filled with droppings, shaved off and partly melted hair. The woman has a thick Italian accent and calls to the father, I like the hair! The father reaches up for his hair. Yes! Yes! Hair! I have and you have! Can I have?
*
The father rushes around the corner to yet another loosely arranged grouping of vendors and people standing around.
An attractive Russian woman stands next to the city’s landmark. At her side stands a rugged Russian man fielding questions.
The father and the daughter stumble into a live auction for the city’s priceless landmark of a great American president.
America’s belongings are being sold and profited on by everyone that outlives it.
*
On the outskirts of the shanty town groups of scavengers rebuild the buildings but it’s clear they don’t know how.
They build in their image of what America would have imagined it to be.
They build a market that doesn’t have a door, a skate park made of ash and bone.
They build and then they break it apart and build again.
They ask people passing by if they want to try. Everyone is having fun but the father and the daughter who watch in dismay.
*
One vendor sells a broken home.
The vendor has gotten eerily close to rebuilding the 2-story idyllic suburb middle class home.
It looks like home and the father when seeing the mockery wants to walk through the front door to gather the mother and the son and leave.
*
There are new dangers on the horizon.
*
The father and the daughter run down the last aisle but discover they’ve mistakably been turned around.
*
All kinds of services available to others are offered to the father and the daughter.
In return they want the daughter. They want the daughter’s clothes. They want the father’s hair. They want any and all jewelry. They want the father’s and the daughter’s clippings and bodily sheddings. They want the daughter’s virginity.
They want the father. They want the father as the father to play the father wherever the father is taken.
They want to sell the daughter into the sex trade “back home.”
They all want to violate and objectify.
*
You want to leave this poor country? It won’t be easy.
The man is decked out in cargo pants, a vest with endless pockets and who knows what he has hidden away in those pockets. He carries a large hiker’s backpack and he sits on what looks to be a hitch and tow, a crate for safe-keeping.
The father waits for the conditions the demands but they never come.
*
The man keeps talking about the father’s demands.
You look smell taste you are American.
Wherever you go you are American. It’ll be hard.
The daughter detects an accent but she can’t figure out where the man comes from.
The father defeated begins walking away from the man.
*
Where are you going? Don’t you want to leave this poor country?
The father asks hesitantly, What do you want from us?
*
Yes, this is a business. My business I can do many things. I can kill. I can defend. I can survive a war. I can find food and cook it. Back home I’m a great cook.
I’ve done a lot but I have never saved anyone. I kill I don’t save.
My first will be to save a whole family.
I like the sound. I am your savior.
*
The father can’t look the man in the eye. What do you want in return?
Not now, I don’t want to talk business now.
*
The daughter remains silent watching the bargaining exchange.
The man jumps to his feet. We’ll go. I have a route. We need to trek a dozen miles before dark.
He leans into the father and looks him straight in the face, No traveling at night.
*
The man reaches down for a long cord. At one end there’s a grip. He wraps the cord around his left wrist all the way down his forearm and over his left shoulder.
He takes a few steps in the opposite direction of the father and the daughter then stops. He doesn’t look back at them but simply shouts, We’re going.
*
The man pulls the crate which is on wheels with him.
Any normal man it would prove to be a struggle but to the man it seems effortless.
*
Ah you see it’s what you call supply and demand, when the man observes the shanty town and market as they pass.
We’re all just people. Demand is like suffering. Someone will suffer but someone else will profit from that suffering.
I am mercenary where I go because I make money on the problems of others.
*
They leave downtown and head down a clear interstate.
The father speaking to himself asks why the interstate is so clear while the other roads the roads going into the city were so cluttered.
The mercenary hears him and answers, I take the more practical roads. Americans didn’t use practical roads. They used popular roads. It’s much easier to travel if you’re practical.
*
A mile in the mercenary stops. He wraps another cord around the crate some intricate and well-fashioned knotted arrangement and tosses it towards the father.
He says, You’re skinny and thin. Time to build you some muscle.
The mercenary then turns to the daughter. She doesn’t need to build any muscle. He pats the top of the crate, Hop on.
The daughter climbs on top of the crate and sits there.
Good. Girls with muscle are unattractive. A little bit of muscle, okay, but too much. A woman needs to be able to relax.
Girls with too much muscle are men, you know what I am saying?! Laughing, the mercenary playfully elbows the father in the kidneys.
*
The father struggles with the crate but the mercenary enjoys every step. The daughter sits on the crate and observes father and mercenary.
*
The mercenary has a smile on his face.
The daughter asks, Why are you so happy?
The mercenary is quick to respond. I like to live. Living is every new challenge. I don’t like waiting around. I hate waiting in the city, waiting and trading. I am here for one reason and one reason only.
*
You want what everyone else wants right? The daughter asks.
Yes. You are a smart girl.
I am smart, yes, but it’s kind of obvious. So you all came into the country?
We showed up on boats and traded those boats with the people leaving.
You mean everybody?
Yes. Americans leaving to die.
I don’t think they were intending on dying. They wanted a better place to live now that their country died.
*
An American is an American. In other countries, especially now that America is dead, being American is bad. The many that left this place maybe should have stayed instead.
The mercenary stops and then adds, You and your father are first I’ve seen.
*
The daughter continues to observe the mercenary.
The mercenary seems like he’s trying to bond with the father goading him on with comments like, “Keep pulling it’s good exercise!” and then the mercenary laughs but tells no stories.
The daughter watches and eventually declares, My mom and my brother are still home.
The mercenary responds, Yes. You’re father here has told me but we have places to go first.
*
The daughter asks, Where are we going?
The mercenary isn’t one for being indirect. I’ve got another crate and a truck I’ve found. We shall go there first and gather my belongings.
*
What are you going to have us do?
See? That’s what’s going to be hard to get rid of. You Americans are so anxious all the time. So restless and ready to keep going. You can’t just have patience.
I’m just worried that’s all.
Nothing to worry about. This is the land of no value.
*
It doesn’t feel like it’s been very long but the sun begins to set and it’s evident that some time has passed.
*
The mercenary tosses a cellphone over at the daughter and says, Call your mom and tell them you met me.
There isn’t any service.
There’s service.
There’s no electricity and back home we only have a LAN line left.
There’s electricity.
*
The daughter refuses to believe it and continues her inquisitive prodding until the mercenary sets down the crate.
The father doesn’t realize the crate has been set down so completely absorbed and consumed by the exhaustive process of pulling a heavy crate over his shoulder. The father continues pulling, wedging both the front of the crate and his footsteps into the semi-wet mud and grit.
*
The mercenary walks up to the daughter and takes the cellphone from her and asks for the phone number.
The daughter gives the mercenary the phone number.
He calls and says, Yes. Hello. Not going to speak? Isn’t it common to say “Hello” too? Ah but I’m not calling to chat or get to know you. That’s for a later time. I send information that your husband and your daughter are okay. Thank you and goodbye!
The mercenary returns to the crate and saves the father just in time from digging the crate in too deep of a hole.
*
They continue their trek. The father never noticed their temporary stoppage.
The daughter squints her eyes, What are you really doing here?
I am here because of supply and demand.
*
The daughter questions the mercenary’s motives. You are here because you enjoy this.
I enjoy America. Even now I enjoy America. Americans are different. It’s like the movies.
What are you going to do with us?
Americans are always so into questions.
*
What is your name?
The mercenary is incapable of lies. I’m Johan.
The mercenary doesn’t ask for the daughter’s name.
The daughter replies, I’m –
I know your name.
How do you know my name?
I know your name.
What’s my name then?
You’re his daughter am I right?
The daughter doesn’t say anything more.
*
The father between long breaths says, It’s getting dark.
Johan the mercenary says, True my friend. It is getting dark. It’s time to be afraid. Americans are always afraid.
*
The daughter screams, What about mom and my brother?!
Americans are cute. They are so scared of the world. Americans never knew how much the world was afraid of Americans.
Americans were the ones that would have ended the world.
The daughter shouts, America is dead!
Johan smiles.
*
The last rays of sunlight disappear over the stacked rubble of the former theme park.
Johan is watching and comments: I watched videos of the rollercoasters and the cotton candy and the long lines but I never tried it.
The daughter sighs, This is all one big tourist trip for you isn’t it?
Johan smiles.
*
We’re going to die out here Johan!
Johan maintains his smile but replies confidently: I have three guns and enough napalm to blow up anything I don’t like.
*
The daughter looks up to the sky. She can’t see the sky.
The sky disappears and is replaced with a sheet of dark concealing hate.
*
Johan taps the father on the shoulder, We are here. Johan points to the truck. The father and Johan tie the two crates to the truck.
The daughter crossed out Johan off the list she has been composing. He isn’t a part of this.
*
He’s a tourist. Johan talks about supply and demand well he supplies based on the demands we, the sufferers, have created. The daughter doesn’t trust Johan but wants to trust Johan.
By the time the father and Johan are finished with the truck the daughter not only trusts Johan but begins cultivating a healthy little crush for Johan.
*
Johan sits in the driver’s seat. The daughter sits cramped in the back cab and the father sits in the front passenger seat.
Johan grips hold of the steering wheel: I never drove until I came here to America. It is strange to be a driver.
It feels like you’re moving a mountain or a world but you’re not moving at all. Americans love their cars. Americans live in their cars.
Neither the daughter nor the father says anything in response.
*
Johan laughs and turns the ignition.
They drive away.
*
The daughter asks, Where are we going?
Johan hands her a picture and says, The audition.
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Genius Annotation
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