Category: flash

Duty, Honor and Commitment

On By Jerry BrothertonIn flash, Short Stories12 Comments

“Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.”                                        Robert E Lee

Perhaps, Serving in the military myself has helped me to understand a little of the struggle that every defender of our ‘nations rights’ goes through. The vast majority of us do not wake up one morning and say, “Today, I willingly take another souls life.” It goes against the grain of all decency and morality. But, we took an oath to defend, protect and serve the people. A pledge that we would honor our duty even though it conflicts with our personal beliefs. Today, more than others, I am reminded that we must draw from the well of compassion for those who were so tormented by the choice between duty and personal philosophy.

It is the anniversary of the birth of Robert E Lee (January 19, 1807 to October 12, 1870) and we celebrate the symbol of individual commitment to duty over all else during a time of great strife in our American history. Thousands of men, young and old, had to make that choice during those years of the civil war and millions of men and women in the years that followed, So, as we celebrate Robert E. Lee Day, we are not just honoring his sense of duty, but those millions of unheard voices that faced equal moral turmoil.

In a letter from Robert E Lee to George Washington Custis in January, 1861 Lee writes, …As an American citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for “perpetual union,” so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled.

It’s easy to stand at our pulpit and look back upon our past and condemn people for the choices they made. But we should not be too quick to judge. How would you react today, if  faced with the choice of defending your state or defending your country? Even though that might mean defending your country against your brother.

 

 

 

 

 

A Visit to the Doctor

On By Jerry BrothertonIn flash, Short Stories20 Comments

The lobby of the Mountain View Family Healthcare was clean and well lit. There was music playing in the background and a vase of brightly colored flowers sat on a small wood table just to the left of the entryway. The room was warm, inviting, and smelled a little like Magnolias; it reminded me more of a boutique than a doctor’s office. I smiled and thought what a nice touch. But I bet it cost them a pretty penny to keep fresh flowers here in the dead of winter in the middle of Montana.

At the counter, the receptionist, a very cute little blond of about twenty with a very large smile and a name tag that read Nancy asked, “How may I help you today?” Her voice was pleasant and it at least seemed to me that she genuinely cared about my welfare. I immediately decided that I liked her and I would make a point of telling Dr. Johansen so.

“Brotherton,” I replied. “10:00”

She quickly flashed her fingers across the keyboard in front of her and looked up to make eye contact with me, that huge smile still spread across her face. “Why yes, Jerry. It looks like we have all the information we need. Please have a seat and someone will be out in a moment.”

     Everybody is so friendly here. I thought.

After a bit of small talk with her, bordering on flirting, I turned and stepped through the archway and into the waiting room. Holy crap what the…, it looks like every sick person in town is in here. More than a dozen people nearly filled all the chairs along one wall. They stared into space, with oozing red eyes half closed from God knows what kind of diseases. They looked like some kind of zombies from a sci-fi channel horror movie. They had their hands stuffed with wadded up tissues and I could almost see the millions of germs flying around the room from all the coughing, sneezing, and hacking going on. A middle aged redheaded woman with too much makeup was struggling to keep a child on her lap. The kid was screaming and she looked like she was just too worn out to even care. In the corner under the television, several toddlers were playing with a small plastic box filled with toys. Small bubbles of mucus puffed from their noses as they breathed. They wiped their green slime onto everything in sight.

I was limited as to the seating arrangements but I managed to squeeze into a seat between an elderly man with an oxygen tank and a teenage boy with his left arm in a cast. It was as far away from the zombies as I could get and I figured these two were the least likely to be spreading influenza, or cholera, or the black plague. I sat there staring at my shoes and making a conscious effort not to breathe too deeply.

     What a giant waste of time, they could’ve just sent me an email with my results. I guess that would be too easy though. If they did that, they wouldn’t be able to bill the insurance for another office visit.

After what seemed like an eternity of reading ‘Field and Stream’, ‘National Geographic’, and ‘Clifford, The Big Red Dog’, all the while a constant exposure to a myriad of life threatening diseases that have no cure and could turn my mind into mush; a short, black haired nurse finally stuck her head through the doorway of the waiting room.

“Jerry,” she said in a lifeless tone not even bothering to look up from her clipboard.

     About freakin’ time.

“Here!” I said, so relieved to be rid of my germ-infested neighbors I nearly knocked over a table as I all but ran toward the door.

“Follow me please,” She said, still staring at the chart in her hands. She walked briskly down the brightly lit hallway and nodded her head toward an open door. “Please remove your shoes and step onto the scale.”

     I sure hope my feet don’t stink too bad.

“Okeydokey, are you having a good day?” I asked, trying to engage her in some friendly banter.

     What a real sour puss. Would it hurt you to smile once in a while?

She still hadn’t looked up from her clipboard and made no indication she’d heard me or was even willing to give a reply if she had.

     I could have three eyes and a horn coming out of the top of my head and I bet she wouldn’t even notice.

She quickly flipped the blocks across the scale and jotted a few notes on that precious chart of hers.

     265 pounds! What the hell… man this thing isn’t even close.

She moved the slide up and took a quick measurement of my height. “Five feet, nine inches,” she mumbled to her all-knowing clipboard.

     Well, at least she got that one right.

She led the way to another room farther down the hallway. Her white shoes made no noise on the brightly polished floor. My shoes however seemed to echo through the building like a tap dancing elephant on steroids, playing with a squeaky toy.

     I have to remember next time to wear tennis shoes.

She motioned with that damn clipboard of hers for me to have a seat on the edge of the examination table. She checked my heartbeat with a stethoscope that she’d obviously stored in the freezer. She proceeded to take my blood pressure, nearly squeezing my arm in half and jotted some more notes in that damn top-secret chart.

“Can you supply a urine sample?” she asked.

     Actually, I had to piss like a racehorse.

“I guess so,” I said, “but I just gave one last week. I’m only here for the results of my physical.” By now I’d given up all hope of trying to engage her in any type of friendly conversation.

“It’s just routine…nothing to worry about,” she said, finally looking up from her precious clipboard. “Please come this way.”

     Something smells a little fishy in the steak house, if you know what I mean.

“No problem.” I said.

     Sure, let’s just bleed me for some more money. Maybe they should put in one of those rides like at the carnival, you know, one of those that turn you upside down to shake the coins from your pockets. At least I could have a little fun while going broke. Maybe that way, they could afford to get a scale that actually worked.

I followed her down another hallway to a bathroom where she pulled a cup from the cabinet and opened a sliding door in the wall. “When you’re finished just place the cup in here and shut the door. Return to your room and the doctor will be there shortly.” She opened the door to leave but suddenly turned. “And you have a nice day, Mr. Brotherton.”

     Hey, maybe she’s not so bad after all.

I made my way back down the hallway and I heard a familiar voice drift out from a half opened doorway, “Please remove your shoes and step onto the scale.”

I laughed.

     I wonder how many more of those poor, three-horned creatures are going to be squeezed, prodded, and herded into their little stalls, with their information hidden from them on other little secret charts.

Economy

On By Jerry BrothertonIn flash, Short Stories17 Comments

Several things in the news today caught my attention. Although, there seems to be too many things the Orange Man does these days to keep up with. The one thing I am sure is going to create the loudest buzz is the announcement that K-mart/Sears is closing 100 more stores. I have already seen the comments flow and fingers being pointed.

Anyone who has stood within earshot of me knows of my intense dislike for the Orange Man and his buffoonery. So get out your pens faithful followers of the Chump. This will probably be the only time you will hear this from me. “Donald Trump has nothing to do with the closing of retail stores.”

Retail stores (also referred to as ‘Big Box’ stores) have outlived their usefulness in American culture. Like it or not, we now live in a digital world.

It is possible for me to stay hidden in the security of my own home and have the world come to me with everything that I need. Hell, companies like Amazon and Wal~Mart are even working on delivery robots (Drones) to bring my goods to me so I don’t even need to interact with the delivery boy.

So before we get all high and mighty and start pointing the finger at other people, we should look at ourselves first. We are the ones killing brick and mortar stores. We stopped going to the ‘Mom and Pop’ stores on main street because we could drive out to the new Wal~Mart and get it for pennies cheaper. Now we will go online and buy it for the same reason.

This is definitely not the first, nor will it be the last, of our victims. So where were the cries of outrage when we lost Circuit City, Blockbuster, Woolworth’s, Chi-Chi’s, Steak and Ale, Crown Books, Borders, Sharper Image, Kids “r” Us, A&P, or Tower Records.

Yes dear friends, place the blame where it is due. We are the ones that quit going to drive-in theatres, riding trains, renting videos and subscribing to those Columbia House record of the month deals. We quit buying vinyl albums, going to the shopping malls, using our answering machines or even land lines for that matter. We no longer need AOL instant messenger, cable, tape recorder, CD players, paper maps, dial up modems, pagers, record stores, Kodak film cameras. We live in a changing world and in such a world, there will be victors and there will be the defeated.

But if you like blaming Trump, there are thousands of worse things he has done and many thousands more he is capable of doing. But the implosion of retail stores yet to come will not be his fault.

Fishing

On By Jerry BrothertonIn flash, Short Stories19 Comments

The days of summer are really only made for one thing…fishing. I recall that at thirteen I would have rather been fishing than pretty much anything else I could think of to do. Of course that was a time before I discovered that girls were placed upon the earth for something more than to just to annoy me. The Wakenda creek wasn’t good for anything more than gars and the occasional soft shelled turtle. You might catch a few Bullhead catfish or even a descent sized carp on a good day but that never mattered. It gave me all the peace and quiet I needed to try to make some sense of the raging hormones that were part of being a teenager.  Most days you could usually find me lying on the bank staring into the clear sky and wondering if I wasn’t really adopted. There were even times when my line would be in the water without any bait on it.

In most places the Wakenda creek normally ran very shallow and narrow. However in my secluded, and I thought secret, spot the water backed up into a pool of deep green. A large cottonwood tree stood at the water’s edge just off a nice sandy beach. The breeze would dance among its leaves and pluck the soft tufts from the branches and send them drifting slowly to the water below. On this particular day as I rounded the cottonwood I saw a familiar figure leaning against the tree. It was my dad.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, more than a little puzzled. You see there was more than a little age difference between me and my father so we usually didn’t have a lot to talk about.

“Today…I’m going to show you everything that is important about life.”

So I thought that this was the talk that I have heard so much about from my brothers. So I prepared myself to absorb this information. I was going to learn about girls, sex, money…you know what I mean… real life and death stuff.  It was going to be the kind of stuff that you can only learn through years and years of trial and error. The knowledge of a lifetime given to me from the one person I knew to be the wisest man on earth.

My dad placed his hand firmly on my shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze. For the first time in my life I noticed his hands.  They were strong and tanned but calloused from way too many years of manual labor. His fingers were twisted from age. His touch was rough and his grip firm. But I could feel there was a gentleness that lay underneath the surface of his touch. It was a tenderness learned from a lifetime of love and caring. With the other hand he pulled a red checked handkerchief from his bib overalls and wiped his brow. His face was wrinkled and leathery but his eyes were still full of light.

I watched intently as his knurled hands threaded a large gumbo earthworm onto his hook. His tongue stuck out from between tight lips and curled slightly on the end. He held the work only a few inches from his face trying to see through squinted eyes in the dim early morning light.

“Always take your time to do it right. It’s gotta be perfect in order to get the big ones,” he said. “Leave just the right amount wiggling to lure them in…but not too much or the smart ones would just pull it right off and leave you with nothing.”

After an extensive examination of his work he nodded his head in satisfaction. Then he spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the squirming worm. A small trail of dark liquid trickled down his grizzled gray beard.

“Just so they’ll know it’s me.” He said, with a crooked grin and a quick wink. Then with one fluid motion he cast the line of his cane pole into the water of the creek. There was barely a splash as it landed within inches of a fallen tree that jutted out from the surface.

“Always know exactly where to place your bait,” he said.

After resting his pole on a forked stick protruding from the soft earth, he removed his sweat stained ball cap, ran his twisted fingers through his thin silver hair and took a long swig from his bottle of wine. He leaned back against the old cottonwood tree…wriggled his body a little in search of the most comfort. Then he spat out another stream of tobacco juice and went to sleep.

I wanted to give him the time to provide the answers at his own pace. So for several minutes I watched him lying there in the warm sunshine. The only sound was the sough of the wind in the willow trees and the long mournful whistle of the distant Burlington Northern making its way east with a load of grain. I waited patiently, eagerly anticipating the wisdom that he was going to share with me. I had so many questions that needed answers. I wasn’t sure where to begin.

“What the hell?” I asked myself. “Is this all there is? Where are all the answers about women, sex, work, politics, war and money?”

Now, nearly half a century later, I understand one thing, that no matter how paramount my problems may seem to be at the time, I always look back to that day and realize. He had told me everything I needed to know

Happy Holidays

On By Jerry BrothertonIn flash, Short Stories11 Comments

There seems to be a controversy among many of you, demanding that we put ‘Christ’ back in Christmas. I would like to attempt to explain difference between “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays”.

Christmas is the act of honoring God and the birth of our Savior. It is about helping our fellow man in their time of need. If it is your intent to donate your purchases to charity or volunteering at your local shelter or even helping the elderly by providing some friendship, then I say to you, “Merry Christmas and May God Bless you.”

However, when you come through the checkout lane with your cart filled with decorations, candy and ornaments or you push and shove your fellow shoppers just to get to that one toy so you can give it to someone that doesn’t really need it, just so you can have some self-gratification on December 25th; then you my friend are celebrating the man-made HOLIDAY created for the soul purpose of profit. Quite the opposite of the Christmas spirit.

So please do not proclaim to the world that the people of retail are Devil worshippers or anti-American when they say to you, “Happy Holidays”.

Words are just words; it’s our actions that will bring Christ back to Christmas and it’s up to each of us to keep him in our hearts.