"If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Fear Filled Interludes
They held the memorial service for Nann at home in Shipslide, Connecticut. Nann’s parents and Jim had wanted it to be quiet and personal, but Nann had always been popular and now, with the Towers and death constantly in the minds of everyone, a small funeral would have been impossible. America needed to mourn and the victims and their families belonged to everyone.
On the train up Dave found himself staring out the window. He was dreading the next few days. He had promised his mother to spend some time at home, and since Gramp’s death it had become increasingly uncomfortable to spend time with his father.
Grimacing, Dave thought about the angry scenes with his father. At first delighted with the generous trust account, he had become sullen when he realized that it was a spendthrift trust and he would never be able to control the capital. He couldn’t even control the whole thing; each month a check arrived separately for him and Dave’s mother. Dave’s mother had set up her own banking account. The house, which Dave had learned only then was in Gramp’s name, had been left to Dave’s mother. Dad did not know the full extent of what Gramps had left; the old man had put in a contingency in his will ending Dad’s income from the trust account if he sued. Gramps had made sure of every particular; he had been great with details.
It had come to threats of legal action, but Dad had never been one to take risks. He was essentially lazy. When he was not working, which was often, he spent time away from home with his buddies. It had always been Gramps who fixed things around the house; odd, since it was Dad who was the contractor.
Looking back over his childhood Dave wondered now at how much he had not really seen. Looking out the window, for a strange moment Dave felt as if he was traveling back in time, seeing things with eyes that provided a different perspective.
Now he had given some thought to the substance of relationships, about fatherhood, and about just how self-indulgent some people could be and get away with it. Fatherhood, Dave thought, is more about being there than it is about biology.
Gramps had been his father figure far more than his Dad. Dad had been too busy to attend Dave’s 10th grade school play, although Dave had had the lead, or nearly. He had played Captain Hook. Dave’s mom kept a picture of him brandishing his saber while singing at the top of his lungs on her dresser. Later, Dave had discovered that Dad had not been working, like his mother had said. He had been off on a weekend of fishing with his buddies. Mom and Gramps had showed up to applaud. Mom had sewed his costume and it had been Mom who told the lie about Dad having to work. Gramps did not lie; he just didn’t say anything about it.
Slowly Dave’s head came to rest on the glass of the window. It felt cold, although it was a beautiful autumn day out there.
The funeral service took place in the same church, two blocks from the house, where Dave had attended Sunday school and where Gramps had been buried. If Dave craned his neck walking down the low swell of hills he could see the cemetery. The simple plot, its memorial stone bearing only Gramp’s name and date of birth and death, was just out of sight. Now he was lying next to his Darling. Sometimes when he was little, Gramps had taken him there to put flowers on her grave. On their anniversary, Dave suddenly realized, having now familiarized himself with the personal files on the computer.
When they visited the grave, he remembered that Gramps always brushed the stone clean with his hands, touching the marble tenderly with the surface of his fingers. Kids could be so dense; people could be so dense, he amended. Dave was amazed at himself looking back now.
The church was again filled. He had turned down a ride with his mother; Dad was not going to be there, as usual. Dave had told her he wanted to do some thinking. She gave him a hug, smiling one of those little smiles that meant she hoped the ouchie would go away soon.
As Dave walked through a year fast descending into autumn, through tiny flurries of the first leaves to dry and flutter from the trees, he realized that the advice Gramps had given him still held good. He had said to question what he thought he knew. Dave’s pace slowed. The enormity of that was breath taking, even when considering just his own family.
The funeral was impressive. Since there was no body, Nann’s family had placed a huge photo of her on the table in front of the altar flanked with other photos of her growing up. Dave smiled sadly. There was a blow up of the one taken at their prom. Jim and he had talked several times, once for a long time and then touching bases every so often. The force that had brought them together was Nann, and it was unlikely that the relationship would endure now. Jim had a lot to process.
Dave managed not to actually cry until the end. When the vocalist began to pour out the strains of Amazing Grace the tears started to come, and he couldn’t stop them. He was not alone. He could hear others crying all around him.
While all of them were crying for Nann, many were crying for what had happened to their country, too. The week before President Branch had announced his War for a Forever Peace and begun bombing Afghanistan. Dave hated the terrorists who had taken down the Towers and ended so many lives, but when and where would the killing stop?
The last, haunting sounds of the hymn that was written to speak the rapture of a man realizing his divine spirit slowly faded. The minister raised his hands in blessing and to the subdued sound of voices the assembly started to file out. Dave’s mom patted him on the shoulder and then quietly told him she would meet him downstairs. The family had prepared a memorial meal down there; just off the room where Dave had colored and recited Bible verses. As the crowd filed out, Dave slowly walked up to the table. His own flowers were sitting just under the prom picture. The florist had made up the bouquet of mauve roses and baby’s breath, just like he had asked.
Nann’s mother was drawn and resigned. She smiled and thanked everyone who had come out, but the smile did not reach her eyes. Her eyes were a lot like Nann’s; like Nann’s would have been, too, with little wrinkles at the corners after a life time of raising children and living.
As Dave turned away, letting others in to share a moment with Nann’s parents and Jim, he was shocked to see Lindsey – and doubly shocked to see her looking so alone and lost. She was sitting at one of the tables that had been set up on the side of the room, a cup of coffee sitting untouched in front of her. Dave went over and sat down next to her. She looked up at him and tried hard to smile but it didn’t even make it all the way to her lips. She gulped and tears started to ooze out of her eyes.
“Hey,” Dave reached over and hugged her, rocking her back and forth like a little girl. “Let’s take the fountain over here, OK? I’ll show you where I used to copy the answers in Sunday school.” That worked. It made her smile a little bit. Dave pulled her to her feet and walked her into the 1st Grade Sunday School room and closed the door. They sat on the table. It was sturdy enough to support twenty rioting 1st graders and the chairs wouldn’t even work for Lindsey who was thin and fragile.
Dave had come prepared. He handed Lindsey the big, soft handkerchief he carried and she buried her nose.
“Did you really go to Sunday School here?”
“Yes. Every Sunday. I got a perfect attendance award, actually.” Dave could see she was recovering a little bit.
“Did Nann..?” “No. Her family moved to town when we were both in eighth grade.” Dave got up. He didn’t know what else to say, or what else he should say.
Lindsey seemed to be searching for a thought. “I didn’t go to Sunday School. Not once. I wondered what it was like. There was a church right down the street from where I grew up. Grandma and Grandpa never went to church when I was little.” She glanced up at him.
“I really enjoyed it, actually.” Dave smiled, remembering. “It was a good time for me.”
Lindsey got up. “Sorry for turning into a fountain out there. Thanks.”
Dave looked at her face. The tears had smudged her makeup a little, but curiously this only made her more attractive to him. He very much wished that she viewed him as more than just a friend. Again he wondered about Tom Dicks.
Dave introduced Lindsey to his mother, who was obviously looking for him when they came out of the 1st Grade Room. She looked both surprised and pleased, shaking hands warmly with Lindsey and looking at him as if he was a cat that had finally been clever enough to bring home a mouse.
Lindsey’s train back to Manhattan was scheduled for 6, and Dave’s Mom cheerfully consented to let Dave drop her off so he could drive Lindsey to the station.
“Your mom’s just wonderful.” Lindsey and she had hit it off sitting around the kitchen table back at the house. Lindsey had examined Mom’s collection of magnets on the refrigerator, laughing and comparing them to her own. As she was leaving, Dave’s mom had made Lindsey promise to keep in touch. Their common interests included cookie baking and Agatha Christie. This had come as a surprise to Dave.
Dave waited with Lindsey for her train, still trying to think of a way to introduce the subject of her relationship with Dicks. He was still wondering what to say as he watched her train disappear into the distance.
The funeral for Dan Hightower had taken place twice. The service in North Carolina for his friends and family had filled the church there in late September, soon after his body had been identified. Then the family had decided to have another service at their church home in Manhattan where the family worshiped since moving up there from North Carolina. Dave attended the service at the Christian Science Church at 9 E 43rd Street.
That one had taken place the week before Nann’s service. Since Dan’s body had already been interred in North Carolina, there were pictures of him in a collage in the anteroom of the church as well as a large photo on the altar surrounded with mementos his friends and family had assembled. Sandy had gotten out their wedding album and as Dave walked in, he saw Bernard leafing through it. Bernard’s mom was not up to doing it again, she was in her eighties now, but she had sent along, carefully and lovingly packed into a box, the Eagle Scout memorabilia that had hung in place of pride in their living room for so many years.
It had been moving. After it ended, Dave said goodbye to Sandy and her daughter. They were moving back to North Carolina. There was nothing to hold them here now and down there were family and most of their friends. Bernard was helping them move, driving a van down and flying back up in a week or so.
As Dave glanced back into the sanctuary he saw Bernard, carefully packing up his mother’s mementos of his brother’s life. Those too would be going home now.
Bernard was no longer working for Peace for the Planet; the terrorist attacks and the meeting between Dave and Bernard had changed many things. Bernard’s employment was just one of those things.
Bernard was now working on the Gramps Project, or as they had named it American Revival. Gramps would have liked the sound of that. To Dave, the sound recalled a time with Gramps when they had been walking by a local evangelical church. Out from the open doors was flowing the joyous sound of people experiencing their love of God in their own way. Gramps did not often go to church, but he smiled and looked at Dave, who smiled back. This had begun the first and only discussion Dave and the old man had had on anything religious.
Dave had discovered that while Gramps did not go to church very often, that did not mean he was uninterested in issues of the spirit; he told Dave about his experiences with Quaker Meeting and the reading he had done about early Christianity. Raised a Lutheran, he had left that church while still in college. Later, he had told Dave he was looking for some reason in the world and he had found a book, the Secret Gospels of Thomas, which had touched him deeply. Learning leads to learning and so it had been with him.
From there Gramps had told Dave he had gone on to examine the foundations of the religious beliefs of America’s Founders and come away with insights that had shifted his understanding of many things, including economics and political science.
It had been a long walk that day, taking them far past the store carrying electronics supplies that had been their original destination. Dave was assembling a small computer and Gramps was learning along with him. They had walked out into the countryside completely involved in ideas. Finally, they had sat down on a bench set beside the brook that further down stream, in town, became a culvert. Sitting down, winded from the long walk, Gramps had laughed at their detour but continued to talk and listen.
The music from the church came from the lungs of individuals, speaking their joy in an intimate connection with God. In the church their individual sounds blended into a greater whole. The vision of America was the expression of the very same kind of joy, Gramps said. As each of us senses the intimate connection to the Sacred, so we seek to move towards that vision. America was the first time a people moved in that direction as one people, rejecting the idea of classes and embracing the spirit of individual autonomy as a nation.
Revivals in church and singing out the joy that is its natural expression remind us of that connection, Gramps had said in a voice filled with reverence.
It was after weeks of discussion that Dave and Bernard found the name that encapsulated what they wanted. Bernard had also become fascinated with Gramps, asking if he could read the writings the old man left on the computer for Dave. Pausing as he thought about the Darling letters, Dave finally said yes.
The name came to them one night, sitting on the terrace. Bernard was tired, having spent the day compiling data. Dave told Bernard the story about the singing. Gramps had become a kind of icon to Bernard, the powerful father figure he had not had in his own life. Bernard sat there, looking at the Empire State Building, saying nothing. That was unusual for Bernard, the former petroleum engineer, having revised himself twice now, had lots of opinions about everything, although he also had a humility Dave sensed had been acquired more recently. Their relationship had sprung into existence over arguments that on each side searched for the common ground that the other intuitively knew must exist. With patience and time, they realized how much united them. They hungered for the same vision, disagreeing only on the best way to achieve it through human institutions like politics. And they agreed that politics and parties were simply means that had been created by people to help them achieve the fulfillment of those visions.
The spiritual component had been where they first met. Bernard had told Dave about his own search for connection to God.
“God is such a huge thing to get your mind around,” Bernard had said, sadness resent in his voice.
“Gramps said the idea of God made him feel like a child again. Not as if he was powerless, but knowing that he was truly loved.” Dave searched back in his mind again, remembering. “But it also made him feel connected to those around him, like he was a part of them.”
Bernard sat back against the cushion of the lounge chair. He watched the changing lights glazing the Empire State Building with a tapestry of ever changing colors. From the street you could hear the filtered sounds of life going on around them.
“We are looking for the same thing the Founders wanted when they signed the Declaration of Independence, aren’t we?” Bernard said as he sat up, putting his elbows on his knees. His eyes stayed on the Empire State Building as its light tones changed in oncoming night. “It is more than opportunity; it is a world of opportunity that says yes to doing things right and no to doing them wrong. Because when people do the right thing as individuals, it benefits all of us. I think it makes God’s voice clearer for everyone when that happens.”
Dave nodded. “It reminds me of after the Towers. Everyone just dropped what they were doing and took action. It was a coming together to do the right thing when there was only chaos and death surrounding us. We can all hear God inside us sometimes. When we hear Him, or Her, I suppose, we can choose the right thing for ourselves.”
Bernard looked at Dave. They both laughed a little. Their days spent at the Towers had demonstrated to them just how incompetent government was. It had been the Scientologists who had come in with the most organized and effective operation. While neither of them was going to convert, they gave full credit when due.
Dave smiled a long slow smile that said to Bernard he was remembering something Gramps had said.
“We want people to sing the joy that connects them to God and to each other all of the time, or at least more often. What is going on now mutes God’s voice by substituting power and authority from others.”
“Amen.” Bernard smiled the thin wintery little smile that was most natural to him.
Dave sat up. “So what we want here is an American Revival.”
Bernard laughed, nodding. That was a song that motivated him to learn to carry a tune.
They never had to discuss it again. The spiritual element, the vision of whatever it is that moves you to awe that is always present when you truly love America, was now a tangible presence in every conversation on the subject. Again, Dave sent thanks to Gramps for staying with them when they struggled to find their way.
Hammering it out later, Dave and Bernard agreed that every American had a responsibility to understand the Constitution, the premises set forth in the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. Kids should grow up hearing it like it was a series of baseball cards. The Federalist Papers should be studied by families before kids ever went to school. An ignorant populace was a populace that could be controlled.
That conversation clarified their direction. How to accomplish this was still like trying to drink the mist that settled onto the streets of New York in midwinter. They had stopped talking about what to do; it was too frustrating to consider.
The discussion on the encroaching presence of the NeoCons had eventually led them to create dossiers on each individual they knew was involved. Dave’s experience with some of the individuals involved lead him to believe that their lack of fully informed foresight was feeding the present situation, but it had been literally generations in the making in some cases.
That had to be evaluated very differently. The tendency for humankind to stay neatly within the confines of habit, guided by cultural inertia, was too compelling to be overlooked. Also, those 401Ks had proven to be more seductive than the temptations of gold and diamonds to generations of pirates. Keeping your own little piece of the pie secure blinded most people to what was really going on.
It was decided for their mutual sanity that Bernard would move his living quarters into a recently vacated apartment in the building and use the space adjacent to that on the third floor as the office for the project. Dave had had the building, if only the parts he was using, wired for a T1, so secured access was guaranteed. The original website was now in-house, housed on servers with the capacity to do much more. Other enhanced security was in process.
At first Dave had worried about every step he took. That had changed. Now that he could really see just how far the control of government had slipped from the hands of the people his concerns were what to do about it.
They were facing a conflict of immense proportions and he was still unsure who the enemy was in most cases. He did not know who had cooperated from greed or ignorance. His own ignorance was leagues deep. But at least now he knew it – and having Bernard, with his background in engineering and computers, had given him hope that changing the direction of America’s steadily accelerating movement towards an Imperial State could be changed. An American Revival; it was time for a revival of all of the values that had been so present in the minds of the Founders.
At night when he sank into unconsciousness, listening to the sounds of the city outside he prayed, just like he had when he was coloring pictures in the 1st Grade Room in Sunday School.
When he had time, Dave tried to keep in touch with Lindsey, but she seemed to grow more distant after the funeral. They met once for coffee at ‘their’ Starbucks. It was well into winter now and Lindsey was bundled up in a trench coat that was much too big for her. She and circles under her eyes but chattered on, mostly about the people they had gotten to know in common from the Fabituso Society. Dave still went, mostly to see Lindsey, actually.
After a while Lindsey wound down and abruptly asked how Dave was getting on with the research Gramps wanted him to do. Dave had mentioned the research pretty early, long before he really had any idea where it was going to take him and long before 9/11. During that series of conversations with Lindsey, he had mostly told her about the personal side of Gramps. Lindsey had been raised mostly by her grandparents who had legally adopted her when she was twelve. Her Grandfather had reminded Dave of Gramps in some ways.
Looking at her across the table, it was hard to believe she was living with Dicks and had never mentioned it, or him. Even if he had not known before, the scandals about the relationship erupting all over the Internet meant he would have to have lived in Outer Mongolia or Podunk, Idaho not to have known.
Their scandalous relationship and the fact they were living together had been the subject of exhaustive posts on such internet sites as Poaching the Potomac. What was he doing here with a woman who could not seem to tell him the truth about herself?
Dave looked down at his watch. “Well, I should let you get back to….where are you living now? Are you here in the city?” Dave wondered, hoped and feared this would nudge her into telling him what was going on.
“I’m out in Jersey City….I…don’t really want to talk about that right now.” Lindsey had blushed a deep red. “You’re busy. I really have to get home.” Lindsey looked up at him and gave him the smallest tweak of a smile as she got up and walked out.
North Carolina – In Court
Coop had never been even one day late with any support payment. In fact, he had by his calculations, over paid by around $18,000.00 through fraudulent charges enabled by the corrupt court system. But that had not prevented Trudi and her sister and Trudi’s boy friend from claiming that not only was he in arrears, but that he had battered Trudi.
This outrageous claim had sealed Coop’s determination to stop allowing the law, a sacred instrument that should forge trust in the America’s Institutions, to force the courts to change their ways, adhering to the letter of the law.
After they had arrested him that first time, Trudi had ransacked the house and stolen his emergency fund - $2,500.00. She had taken other things, too. That was a nasty habit she had picked up from her sister, Drusilla. Drusilla disliked working a regular job and had instead decided that with the child support and some shoplifting and other petty crime, none of them really needed to bother working again. Drusilla’s specialty was stealing cigarettes and small animals from pet stores to be resold. She prided herself on her ability to secret small things in her clothing and walk right out. She had passed this fine art on to her children who were shaping to be yet another generation of welfare scumbags.
Of course Coop had not known that. At first he had offered to take Trudi back and she had taken him up on the offer – for a week or so. The last time this had happened was just before Bead’s first birthday. When you love someone, you can be blind to what they are really like, and he had been blind, blind, blind. Even now he loved her, remembering the softness and vulnerability of her when they made love. It ached someplace down inside him when he thought about the good times, the small intimacies and the laughter. But he had a responsibility to his daughter. Bead was not going to grow up seeing the law treated as a means for stealing.
The lack of care and love accorded to Bead by her mother had been one of deciding factors that closed the door to the relationship.
He had let Trudi share custody and, although he had the child over 50% of the time, had not protested paying support. Then they had tried to impose supervision on his ‘visitation.’ That had been the breaking point with his patience.
He had found himself in court staring into the face of The Honorable Griselda Troutville, charged with not paying his support and facing supervised visitation on the charge of domestic violence he had so successfully refuted years before. It was outrageous. But in America today, it happened all too often.
Coop demanded that the judge examine the evidence. Standing there in court, head up and eyes on fire, he recited the law as it was written. The claimed incident of domestic violence was manufactured and the documents already in the possession of the police refuted it utterly. On the date when the abuse supposedly took place, Trudi was still missing, having taken Bead and run off with all of the money in the house.
Coop had filed a missing person’s report after a week. He found out where she was when called. In the background he could hear what sounded like someone kicking in a door. Abruptly, Ginger’s voice was cut off and a brutal fight seemed to be going on, punctuated with screams and cursing. A small child was crying in terror. Coop prayed it was not Bead. Abruptly, someone hung up the phone.
What seemed like a lifetime later the police called. They told him to come and pick up Trudi and Bead and provided the address. It was 1:45 a.m. when he found the disreputable hovel. Coop learned from the police that what he had heard had been the woman who owned the place breaking down the door to batter Trudi. She had come home from work to find Trudi having sex with her boy friend, and Trudi had fled into a room with a lock.
The police were called by the boy friend and then, to keep the peace, the police called Coop to pick them up. Trudi had two black eyes and a split lip. She was bruised everywhere he could see, and clumps of hair had been pulled out of her scalp.
There were no diapers for Bead; on the way back to his place he stopped at an all night store and bought the necessary supplies.
Coop demanded the record be read into the court transcript, itemizing what the police had found when they arrived, as well as the fact that Trudi had asked he be called because he, Coop, could be trusted.
There seemed to be no limits to what Trudi and her sister would do to avoid an honest job. When he had come home from work early the next day he had heard Trudi and Drusilla discussing how they could live on the child support they could extort from Coop. He demanded Drusilla get off his property. He should have made them both leave, he later realized.
When it became obvious that the court was losing this round, the judge sent a message to the support attorney to file for a warrant for arrest on a specious demand for payment that amounted to $75.00. They would lie and cheat to try to incarcerate him. But now he knew the law and they could not win.
Washington D.C.
The War was on! Excitement and anticipation were shimmering through the White House and the Executive Office Building. None of them had ever been to war and experiencing it from this remove was doubly exhilarating. Along with the glee and excitement went the heightened awareness of just where this could take them. It was the spark plug event they had hoped for. They were looking not just at a tremendous surge in the promise of figuring in history, but squarely facing the opportunity to finish their government service as potential billionaires.
The body of work now wending its way rapidly over desks, rubber stamped at every turn, had been prepared in hopes of an opportunity to get it passed when the time came was put on rush. Three staffers were now put to work injecting into the text the specific phrases and extensions that would make it look as if it were produced just for this moment in time instead of as a wish list imagined into being by greed. The chief staffer came up with a very clever acronym L. O. Y. A. L T. Y. Act. The President and Vice-President loved it.
Getting it passed, however was presenting some problems. Not that Humstead was worried. He had planned for this eventuality. It was essential that the details of the huge document not be completely examined by those on the Hill. The best way to ensure that did not happen was to deny them access to their offices. Humstead had picked up pointers on this by studying the passage of the Enabling Act, passed over similar objections by the Nazi Party in Germany in 1933. But there were more elegant and less obvious means than outright intimidation. There were better alternatives. This could be accomplished while at the same time heightening the fear and awareness in the general population with relatively few casualties with some well placed injections of Cholera mailed out in envelopes.
They could shut down the Hill for six weeks the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act would be in place. Then they would have what they needed. Getting his hands on the power of the US government had been heady. Doors opened, files appeared on his desk, and the only limitation was how to apply the tools supplied by the armed forces and covert ops to new applications. Sometimes he felt like a kid with a magic lamp.
The next problem was to cut the unnecessary costs of providing services for the overhead of the operation. For this, staff drew heavily from the work of the nonprofits that had become an extension of this administration, chiefly Cicero Institute, New York Institute, Enterprising for America Foundation, Rationality Foundation and several others who had pioneered the work in privatization and deregulation, building these supposedly market driven structures in formulaic and repeatable patterns that allowed accountability to be unstapled from outcome and thus burnish the bottom line for someone.
This had been tried out in California with the energy industry, generating huge profits while transferring costs to the taxpayer. Taxpayers were the lowest common denominator of the system and had the fewest rights and least oversight. In Pennsylvania the same rhetoric had been used to sell a proposal that had allowed power companies to keep their generating plants. This proposal, enacted in 1998, had resulted in a nearly 20% drop in costs to the end user. It had been a rousing success by most accounts, but the balancing bad publicity from the deregulation move in California in the same period of time caused pubic opinion to coast over to the negative side on deregulation and privatization for a time.
The sleight of hand was all in how the power of the market was used. Rhetoric could do amazing things, something think tanks knew and were very able to make use of.
So, under the able oversight of State, arrangements went forward to get the buttressing policy positions and wording from Cicero Institute and the other nonprofits that specialized in cutting costs to government by privatizing, cycling costs through user services back to the tax payer, while the taxes that supposedly went to pay for such expenses continued to creep up.
The target in this case was not the energy market but the supply of such programs as medical services offered to military personnel. The military was used to thinking of these as an extension of their own service. The medical care might not be great, but it was handled by their own doctors, for now. Outsourcing that was also under consideration. However, the idea of outsourcing had lots of different possible applications and the military, as defined by the law, fell into very different categories. Along with that, the supply functions necessitated by the military operating overseas and such publicly assumed benefits as military retirement were other programs very open to reinterpretation. Personnel who might not be covered, for instance those serving through the National Guard, were examined closely as an underutilized resource.
The bright laddie at Cicero who saw this elegant rapprochement to the issue of benefits for the military was suitably rewarded. He took a two-week vacation with his boy friend to a very elegant spa in Southern California. Naturally, he had never served in the military, but he loved the way men looked in uniform with their nice, tight butts.
Public opinion was firmly away from policy at this point in time. The overwhelming human disaster still playing its way out also created an avenue to apply the principles of cost cutting to medical care for the military, a group already under pressure because of the cost cutting of the previous administration.
Everything was falling right into place. Humstead’s baby like face gleamed with satisfaction. The inner circle would be pleased.
