Born on the 4th of July

Born on the 4th July

 

 

Johnny has signed up to join the military. He’s leaving in the morning. And this is after his big brother was killed in an F-14 Tomcat incident. Two weeks in. 
 

    There’ve been rows with his mom. Do you want to kill me just like your brother killed your pop?

 

    She says he died of a broken heart but we all know Johnny’s pop fell in the car crusher down at the wrecker’s yard where he worked. That sounds like an industrial accident to me but I’m saying nothing. Except it’s the only funeral I’ve been where they carried the body into the church in a matchbox. Shudda been a glovebox, said K. We got thrown out for laughing then and later my pop whipped me.  

 

    We’re up in the treehouse. Johnny’s last night. Benji’s bought bourbon. Frank a set of highball glasses they give away in the Texaco gas station where he works part-time. The Coca-Cola is from me and K. From the 7-Eleven. I faked a heart attack and while Baxter was on the phone to 9-1-1 K was out the door with two huge bottles shoved down his pants. 

 

    Johnny’s mom’s been shouting up at us off and on all night. If we didn’t come down, let her spend the last night with her son, she was going to come right up, pull the whole treehouse down. But with just the one leg what was she gunna do? Attacked last Spring break in Florida by an alligator. There’s luck and there’s luck. It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. Jerry, her late husband’s insurance money and all.

 

    You know what I’m most ascared of? says Johnny. 

 

    This was a guy whose brother had been vaporised by eleven and a half thousand litres of pure jet fuel. We all looked down at our feet. No one wanted to say it. History repeating itself. 

 

    It’s performing my ablutions, says Johnny, in front of other guys. Then he starts telling us about some Fort Jackson documentary they made us watch at school when Mr Phillips got suspended for groping Pitts and the stand-in totalled his car drunk. We don’t know what he’s talking about until Johnny turns white and whispers, All those toilet pedestals lined up like tic-tac-toe. No walls or doors. Nut-in. 

 

    Now he says it it’s obvious. Johnny’s kinda shy.

 

    Whenever we have a pissing competition off the side of the treehouse Johnny never joins in. Not even when Emmerstein, who got caught that time fondling Frank’s baby brother Cyrus in the sandpit went by and Frank said there was two bucks in it for whoever got him in the eye.

 

    It’s just in your head, says K, nothing to it, see, and, pushing down his pants and shorts, right in front of us, he squats and takes this shit right there on the treehouse floor. 

 

    Jesus. Twenty-five years later it’s still the biggest shit I’ve ever seen. Coil upon coil upon coil. Custer’s last stand of shits.

 

    But he isn’t even finished. For an encore K takes out one of these little flags he always has about his person these days, since quitting the drug dealing he’s been working in Ace Burgers and they use these flags on toothpicks to hold the burger and buns all together, and he sticks the flag right in. 

 

    And so now we’ve got a shit with the Stars and Stripes poking out of it, K crouching with his pecker hanging out looking around for something to wipe his ass on, and from down below Johnny’s mom starts her hollering again, You come on down here or I’m coming up there one leg or not.

 

    I’d say we’ve got a situation on our hands but that’s when Johnny stands to attention, gives it the full salute, and starts to sing. 

 

 

Say, can you see

By the dawn’s early light. 

 

 

And we all stand, one by one, kinda mesmerised, picking up the words.

 

 

What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming?

 

 

Even K, giving up on his ass, straightens, dick still out, salutes.

 

 

Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly, yeah, streaming?

 

 

Building and building. Our heads back. Mouths open. We sing.

 

 

And the rockets' red glare

The bombs bursting in air

Gave proof through the night

That our flag was still there

 

 

And I don’t know. I really don’t know. They tell us this old crap. About our country. The U. S. of A. And I don’t know. About what we should feel. What our hearts should feel. And I don’t know. I don’t know if my heart does feel. If it’s in my veins. But standing there. Johnny who’d I’d known all my life. Going off. Giving up his life. Possibly. For this country. Of ours. And I don’t know. But it’s the most patriotic and proud I’d ever felt. Still ever felt. Ever will feel. And so I sing. Loudly. Boldly.

 

 

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave.

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.