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      WHAT YOU WISH FOR by Bob Robert Wolfe

    With each passing year, with each new election, America’s valued and vaunted Rights disappear just a little at a time. With each new school shooting or faked attack on our Republic’s Soil, the Senate and Congress protect America more.
    But the school shootings are produced, as was the September Eleventh ‘Attack’ by some of America’s finest minds, minds that seek to quietly enslave all but the most wealthy and powerful of America’s future generation.
    So it is with a Division known as the Center for Disease Control. Few people remember the CDC announcing that firearms must be controlled, treated as a disease, and that death by firearms was America’s greatest Health hazard. That was done shortly after the FBI released their statistics: An American citizen is one hundred eighty times more likely to be injured or killed by a doctor than by a firearm.
    Let’s imagine the powers at the CDC had followed the attack of September Eleventh with one of their own: Antrhrax, weapons grade and now in the hands of Middle Easteners. One employee outside the power loop knows. And knowing kills his entire family just before the products of a dalliance kill him.
    How many nuclear weapons, how much weapons grade bio/chemical and fussionable material is missing from America’s stores? How many children will die in staged assaults on schools? Which president will it be that subverts forever the Second Amendment that protects the entire Constitution of the United States of America?

     “I swear…sometimes it jus’ seem like de Gods got a hard-on fer dat boy.” The remark was made as a man passed by on the street side below where the two older men sat in the waning sunlight of a late autumn day.
    The speaker, an old black man with stark white hair above a wizened dark face, his wrinkled nervous hands shredding a red-gold Maple leaf, one of hundreds flooring the porch where the two men spent so many days, shook his head in sadness.
    “Firs’, it he Momma, ya know. Poor ol’ Jessie, she done been a good ol’ white woman an’ all, but she daid now. Den he wife…what was dat? Las’ year? Come November? Yeah, it was las’ year she go. Back a couple a months it his kids, bof’ of ‘em…in a damn car fire, fuck the luck. It ain’ hardly seemin’ fair, ain’ it? De damn Gods jus’ gots a hard-on fer dat boy.”
    The “boy” was hardly a boy any longer. John Stewart was almost fifty, owned a small printing company left to him by a deceased father, lived in the house left him by his father. John even drove his father’s old Oldsmobile coupe, a nineteen sixty-six, still in mighty fine condition.
    Now John Stewart walked, head bowed into the still-cooling late afternoon breeze of October, into falling leaves that would burst from the nearly bare colorful trees with each gust of wind, would skate and fly on the currents, surround him like children playing…and in their myriad colors seemingly speak to him somehow.
    The other old man nodded and rolled his tongue along his upper front teeth, moving his upper lip with a bulge that ran back and forth, back and forth. It wasn’t a nervous gesture as much as something he thought felt damned fine, a thing he enjoyed, and, by The Holy Turd, he would continue to do it, even though it drove his daytime companion half apeshit most days.
    Mister Elijah frowned and looked away, down to the street side walk again, to where John Stewart was walking into another storm of swirling color and fading light. “Yep, I bet dat boy ain’ got but a few mo’ months his damn se’f, now he gots de Gods so pissed at ‘im. I wonder what he ever do what got him in de shitter with dem Gods, anyways? He must a fucked up good, I bet. You gots any ideas what he done, Avalon Jackson? Or is you jus’ gonna run dat damn tongue aroun’ in dat damn lip till ya gits me all sexed up t’inkin’ a when my ol’ woman used a pull out ‘er teef an’ give me blowjobs?”
    Not waiting a reply, the old man sighed, closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “Ah, dem was good days, dem was. Dat ol’ woman had a wonderful talent dere, I tell ya, she had some talent. Wisht she wasn’t daid herself. I miss dat damn tongue, ya know it? She weren’t one a dem damn whores, no. She a God fearin’ ol’ nigger woman, yeah.”
    Another long wistful sigh escaped him and the old black man raised his eyebrows, further wrinkling a forehead that could stand no more wrinkling and still appear human. “I guess I kind a miss a lot of ‘er stuff, ya know it? I ain’ guess she a bad ol’ woman no how. Give me a coupla useless damn kids a raise…she raise…an’ we got some squabbles ‘bout me an’ dat woman down ta Nightingale’s, but we was okay together, we was. I liked ‘er ‘nough. Guess she liked me, too. After more ‘n twenny years a puttin’ up wi’ me, guess she must a liked me a lot.” And with that came the tears that Ron Elijah knew would sting and blur and cause him to wipe at his wide flat nose. “Oh, Lordy, I miss dat ol’ woman so.”
    Ron Elijah hated it when he broke down and cried, and he desperately tried to find a place for his mind to go, maybe chase the whores of his past down in New Orleans. Back then he had worked a crib joint for the Frenchman, keeping the whores and the johns in line, whoopin’ up on those who got out of line, disposing of unfortunate bodies when bodies unfortunately occurred.
    It had been a good line of work for Ron Elijah who’d grown up fighting along Canal Street and had been trained by some of the best to fight in the rings of the South. But the legal fighting hadn’t gone anywhere. He’d lost some teeth and many brain cells to the “sport” before he sold his abilities to the Frenchman down along the Bourbon Street scene and really made some jack, before he met his Caroline.
    Ron had been married eight times, six of them without really taking all the trouble to get a license and such truck, and he’d had his share of women of all colors and attitudes, but he also had found a proclivity for livestock, from very large dogs all the way to mules. He and some other men he’d met after joining a men’s club down on Bourbon Street in Mancy’s back room had exchanged stories…and finally, even sources, both real and imagined…until a loose organization of practitioners was formed, a club even more secretive and selective than the KKK of the Sixties.
    Ron had also, out of boredom, he supposed, experimented with men sexually, but that had not been very satisfying in the end. Most of his punks ended up being whiny little women with dicks who just looked funny painted up and wearing false tits and wigs.
One, he recalled, had been pretty, really pretty, in an Octoroon exotic sort of way, a kid they called The Countess. Ah, yessss, The Countess…biggest asshole he’d ever got into, that kid was. And the tits and hair were real somehow. The kid was a damned freak, Ron guessed, having never known of the special medical helps available to men like Countess.
    Now Ron widened his mouth into a fake yawn to stretch his jaw muscles, and then he closed his eyes for a moment.
    Something sprang from the back of his memory. “Say, Jackson, Man. Cut dat fuckin’ tooth rubbin’ an’ t’ink about dis, y’all. Seem ta me dat John Stewart’s troubles all start when he comed home ‘bout five years back, ‘member? He comes ta home an’ start ta tell ever’body ‘bout how de gov’ment playin’ wit’ peoples? YOU ‘member…he say dey makin’ all sorts a plagues an’ shit up dere in h’Atlanta at dat place for diseases, ‘member it? He leave his fambly wit’ Daddy ‘cause he scared so bad, sayin’ de gov’ment goin’ a kill some a us so’s dey kin pass some gun laws, take all de people’s guns ‘cause nobody done wan’ give up dey guns? ‘Member? I t’inkin’ now he might a got his Daddy an’ fambly kilt. Ol’ man was old, but he was spry. Mama spry, too.”
    Ron Elijah fell into thought a long moment before he spoke again. He inhaled deeply and loudly so as to alert his companion to the coming wisdom. “John Stewart say de gov’ment don’ care nothin’ ‘bout its folks but to own ‘em. I be t’inkin’ he right, Jackson, real right. ‘Member dem mens come ta town de day dat nice wife of his died? I tol’ y’all I di’nt like de look a dem mens, see? Dat one had mean eyes, always lookin’, always measurin’. I knows a killer natural borned when I sees one. Got a little bit a dat myself, too. But dat was one mean pair a jockey shorts, Jackson, one bad cock sucker. I bet young Miz Stewart didn’t had no damn overdose, no. Jus’ ‘cause dey find ‘er in ‘er bed wit’ a buncha pills don’ mean NOTHIN’. Man I knew in Orleans used to put some shit in a little red squirt gun, shoot ya in da face and walk away. Down ya go, lips go blue…you be daid as rat shit in no time, and nobody know nothin’ but de daid man got a heart attack, no.”
    Avalon Jackson snorted loudly, derisively. He knew from hours over months and years of porch conversation at this old house that Ron Elijah had been a street type. He respected Ron for having some intelligence, though Avalon was sure a lot of sense had gotten beaten out of that coconut shaped head in its young days on the streets. “You only fall to a lower level speaking in that manner, Mister Elijah. This government does us no individual harm as long as we behave ourselves. Quit talking such nonsense and hope nobody heard you. I don’t think I’d blame them if they pulled your Social Security checks for talking that trash. Then you’re back on the street, Sir, and YOU no longer have what it takes to survive the mean streets.”
Ron Elijah smiled a crooked smile. What could he expect from an old ‘house nigger’? Avalon Jackson had been head of household staff in a large house in Savannah for many years, though he claimed he wasn’t the ‘property’ of the ‘employers’ he served. Avalon had told him many times of how the woman, Missus Felicia Fairchild, had run the domestic staff, all blacks, through Avalaon’s tight oversight, how Avalon had demanded nothing less than perfection in all tasks the lady set for the staff…and on and on. In Ron’s mind Avalon was a house nigger, a slave who got a little money for being a slave, a slave nonetheless, titles be damned.
    “You jus’ ‘fraid a not havin’ me ta talk to, ain’ dat it?” Ron smiled widely at the idea as he spoke it. “Ain’ nobody else in dis whole damn worl’ wanna sit here jawin’ day after day wit’ no damn house nigger, no. Jus’ me, an’ I ain’ so damn sure I wanna sit here an’ listen ta yo’ slave ass jaws a workin’, Mistuh Avalon Jackson, Suh.” The words were followed by a cackle of mischievous laughter and another huge intake of breath. “You is one fulla shit ol’ nigger man, by God. An’ scaredy-ass ta boot, you is.”
    Avalon felt a surge in his chest and a tightness come to his jaws. His old bony hands clenched into fists that had never struck another human being, and he lifted his right foot an couple of inches and slammed it down onto the boards of the old porch. “I swear, Mister Elijah, if I were but a couple of years younger…”
    Ron cackled again. “If’n y’all was a coupla years younger, y’all ain’ goin’ a do nothin’ neither, ‘cept maybe git yer ol’ ass slapped aroun’ real good.” Ron whacked the arm of his old rocking chair and cackled again. “When y’all git ta feelin’ real froggy, I let ya hit me two, t’ree times fo’ I lay a couple on yer ol’nappy haid, coupla what ya ain’ never goin’ a ferget if’n ya even lives t’rough ‘em, no.”
    One in silent and debilitating anger, the other in arrogant lordliness of past strength and ferocity, the two old black men fell to quiet contemplation of autumn in Franklin, North Carolina, as leaves blew from trees to tumble and helicopter around them, onto their laps with the touch of nothing and the colors only God could create.
    Soon, as the sun fell behind the peaks to the west, they would rise and go inside the old rooming house to supper and warmth from the fireplace, would drink their after dinner Geritol mixed with Bourbon, retire to their rooms where memories waited to take them…where finally they would sleep, maybe wake again and make it through another day.

    John Stewart opened the front door of the house and stepped silently inside. The place welcomed him somehow, in a way he’d never figured out. All through his growing up here, when he’d gone off to college and then into the Army for three years…whenever he stepped into this quiet place with its hundred year old front room carpet and hand-carved walnut and oak moldings and mantel, its fireplace fashioned from the stones his grandfather had taken from the wash just half a mile west…it seemed to flow around him, feeling like the arms of his mother one time, his father the next.
    John smiled every time he set foot into this house, every time, no matter what had been on his mind just before, no matter what awaited him, even the prepared body of his grandparents in his youth, his parents later, the closed caskets of his children and finally his wife…God rest their poor souls.
    No matter the trials, the old house would gather him into its embrace for a few moments, and he would stand here, the door knob in his left hand, cold or hot air chasing in the open doorway around him, his smile coming as he felt the goodness come and ease him, if only for an instant.
    Today a few gold and red leaves blew from the wood porch floor past his legs and shoulders to land on the old carpet, and his suit jacket sleeve fluttered with a gust of now chill air.
    He stood a moment longer, sucking in the charm, the warmth and protection, and then he turned, pushed the door to, locked it even though it had not been locked while he was away. He walked to the fireplace and looked at the pictures lining the mantle, grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, wife, children, he and the wife and children…
    John let the hotness flow so that his eyes would not ache so from trying to stop the tears. God, he missed Steph and the kids. God, he hated the people he was sure had killed Stephanie…and maybe even his father.
    After a little while he bent and tossed a couple of logs onto the grate in the fireplace, thinking he would want a fire tonight when Jennie came by. Jennie loved to curl on the old carpet and fuck his brains to jelly in front of a cozy fire.
    In a way he loved Jennie and what Jennie could do for him that his wife never had quite done. And another smile came, one wrapped around the picture of Jennie that swam in his mind, Jennie standing by that little fountain in Atlanta the day she’d winked at him, in those days when he’d worked for the Center for Disease Control. His family had been healthy then, all of them unsuspecting and happy.
    Over some months back then he and Jennie had developed a fiery relationship in secret, using his car, her car, her apartment, motels on some occasions, closets in the CDC, blankets in the parks… It seemed they had screwed in the most exotic and exciting places. She was great, and she seemed to enjoy him, though he was ten years her elder, immensely.
    He was sure Jennie saw no one but him, somehow KNEW she did not, and he often told her, “I wish something would happen one day…not something bad, really…but something so that you and I didn’t have to worry about being seen together.”
    Now it seemed that, with the tragedies of the past few months, his wife’s death, the deaths of his teenaged children in the car/truck crash on Highway 64 just this side of Highlands… Stay away from that, he ordered his mind. Don’t go back there, not now. Think about Jennie…Jennie’s breast, her black pussy hair, the wonderful…ah, that’s it, Johnny, that’s better.
    John picked up the errant leaves and tossed them onto the logs, balled up some newspaper, unused copies of the IGA market flyer he printed for the store down at his print shop…struck one of the large kitchen matches from the box on the mantel and started the fire. He glanced to his left…there was plenty of oak logs, split and dry…
    Yes, it would be a good night, a satisfying night. He shed his suit jacket as he went into the hallway and up the winding stairway to the right to take a shower and shave in preparation for Jennie’s visit in a couple of hours.
    John hummed to himself as he tossed his socks, underwear and shirt into the clothes hamper, smiled into the mirror. In his mind’s eye he already saw Jennie’s naked form…
But the smile faded like a moon behind black clouds as his dead wife’s image, on their bed, her welcome smile, her wonderful body opened to him… Son of a BITCH! Why now? Why did she have to come to mind NOW, for Christ’s sake?
    Some days it was so hard not to think of her. Thinking of her ruined his sex with Jennie. Thinking of Stephanie ruined his composure, too. Maybe a hot shower, a nap, maybe some music on the stereo…something to make Jennie’s body come back to his inner eyes.