Guardians of the Secret
copyright © 1998 by Cary Shulman
All Rights Reserved
4.
There were once photographs and memorabilia covering the walls of the study of an antebellum mansion in Columbia, South Carolina. Memorabilia of a family's long involvement in American military history, from Revolutionary War through Desert Storm. For the owner, Richard Coulter, what was passed on was not so much tradition, but that there was a place in this world where honor and fear and passions in the extreme could be expressed and tested and that his family always had a place there.
He had held them in his heart. He began to realize that it required more than the static grip of remembrance. They lived in a world made increasingly distant by the demands of his financial success. He found himself in a another world where the days welded together without a seam, and progressed with their own mundane logic until he was enclosed in them.
His disease in the beginning was fit into the same rhythm of accomplishment, success or failure. It was something to be overcome.
He gradually realized it wasn't going to be like that. It intruded into this seamless moving circle, breaking it. He viewed this with at first shock and then something deeper, richer, a kind of despairing relief, as a space was broken through, in which he could sense another world and he felt their presence once again.
He removed the mementos and sat in the den with the bare walls until the voices of those in the photographs began to speak to him. They urged him to action. But what to do? He called Everett. Everett served in Vietnam with his eldest son. Through his son he knew him well. More in the family mold than his son who was pensive and academic, and who served out of duty.
Everett was born to combat. He found the rhythm of the military frustrating, the long stretches between hostilities, periods of politicking and reconsideration of strategy and just waiting. His thought was tied to action and being with the CIA during the cold war provided ample opportunities with the bonus that everything was at stake. Post cold war conflicts increasingly felt to him like battles of mercantile interests over shelf space in the international emporium.
His career was beginning to uncomfortably parallel that of Colonel Smedley Butler, the repentant policeman for United Fruit. Coulter's call was a great relief.
Now Coulter had to convince others. He began meeting with like-minded people, and his house was often filled as they argued out their positions. His illness with its attendant cough robbed his refined southern accent of its fluency, but gave it the power of urgency.
"I remember my grandfather used to tell this story, just for a laugh it seemed, but now I don't know. Anyway, this fellow was out for a Sunday drive and he stopped in at an auction. He was always looking for old railroad gear. It turned out they didn't have any, but there was an old wheelbarrow that caught his eye. He asked about it. Belonged to Jefferson Davis he was told. The Jefferson Davis. That's right the salesman assured him. It's in awfully fine condition the fellow said. Well the salesman hems and haws and all the hemming and hawing must have improved his memory because he comes up with the fact that the handle finally broke and what could he do but replace it. And now he seems to recollect, the country gentleman who owned it before him replaced the wheel and so on. Turns out they went and called the thing Jefferson Davis' wheelbarrow even though it no longer had a damn bit in common with the original. And come to think of it, they're pulling the same shenanigans when they call this country America even though they've gone and substituted all the institutions that made it so. They may call it America, but it's America in name only."
"Richard, I knew that given long enough you'd accidentally stumble over the point," one of the other men jokingly interrupted.
"Very funny. But look at this, we've got an American army that's American in name only, it belongs to the UN. 'There's no substitute for victory,' MacArthur said. Well, they've found one, it's playing policeman for the UN. We've got an American economy that's being run from Geneva Switzerland. They've perverted the constitution, corrupted our institutions, made a mockery of our schools, a nightmare of our cities, destroyed the middle class. I don't know about you, but I think what we've got going here is starting to look a lot like Brazil."
"Okay, suppose we all agree America is being turned into a third world country. Where are we going with this?"
"We're going to take the country back".
"We're businessmen for God's sake."
"Yeah I know this isn't our stock and trade. It also wasn't the stock and trade of those gentlemen that founded this country."
The men fell silent.
"It comes down to who's going to do it? They're filling the country up with people that give them cheap labor, don't ask questions and wouldn't know an American institution if it bit them. These people will accept whatever substitute they sell them. We know better, but we're getting fewer and fewer, dying out or being bought out, and if we just clip our coupons and shake our heads, we'll lose it. And the worse sin will be, we'll lose it without a fight."
"We're not getting any younger."
"Who knows? Maybe if we didn't put up with this crap, we would."
"What about the election?"
"Politicians? They're all whores, bought and paid for by the same people."
"March isn't."
"He's a union man."
"With the teamsters. Biggest pain in the ass I ever dealt with."
"Didn't he quit them?"
"He's still Mister union now and forever."
"That's the problem, he's left and he's right. Where the hell does he stand?"
"Out in the open, and right beside us on what really counts. You all are going to play single issue politics while the country burns."
"Well us poor Neros would like to hear how you propose to get this man elected. He doesn't have a chance of being President."
"That's Everett's job."
"Everett's military, he fought wars, not elections."
"You obviously haven't been involved in any elections recently."
There was laughter.
"Seriously, this is a war, on the American way of life. We can leave this country in the hands of foreigners and one worlders who have no allegiance to America, only profit. We can sit back and profit with them, but we won't live in the country our fathers and sons died to preserve."
Coulter glanced over at a platoon photograph featuring his highly decorated son in Vietnam.
"I tell you from my heart, I hear my son. I can hear his voice. Saving America is worth any price."
copyright © 1998 by Cary Shulman
All rights Reserved