excerpt
when he was stationed in San Diego. He was a young marine at the time; they
dated for a while and she indicated an intention of becoming his mate for life, yet
Bevan never got over his fear of commitment. This prevented him from enjoying
the life of a married man, as most of his classmates had done.
He only has time for the service and Bevan knows there is no space for a
woman in his life. The service makes him puke every time he sees the results of
his work on the TV screen. The results of his work have become the subject of the
daily news and the subject of anchors and commentators on every TV and radio
station. His work has been a routine. If, for some reason it stops, he will be like a
fish out of water, thrashing about before collapsing. He’s seen this before; he has
seen other colleagues collapse and die soon after retirement. The regulation of
the system and the black book of the army has dug so deep into their psyches that
even after retirement they keep following some form of order, usually from the
wife. If they’re single, they follow their own form of order until suddenly they fall
and leave behind all the regulation and protocol of the black book, which even
Death doesn’t care to look into. Sometimes he wonders if he has become softer
now that he has aged, as Jerry told him the other day. But then he realizes he has
always been soft; he was always able to set a balance between the harshness of the
book and the feelings of a human being.
Now, the only thing left to him is the agency and the urgent thought that he
has to do something: something dramatic that will shake the foundations of the
whole apparatus, something that will shake the base of those who pull the trigger
first and then ask the question. Bevan Longhorn knows that pulling the trigger is
the easiest part of all; the rest of it is the problem.
He hasn’t spoken to his sister Evelyn for at least a year. Evelyn doesn’t like
talking to him very often because she is a very strong opponent of the war in Iraq.
She’s an aging hippy living a simple life away from the hustle and bustle of the
city. She has lived in California with her husband, William, for twenty-five years
or so. Bevan has seen his sister only once in the past two years. She lives in a small
suburban house outside San Francisco with little to do with others. Evelyn and
William Smith don’t even pay much attention to their neighbors.
He looks at his clock and sees it is 10:30 a.m. already; he feels hungry, yet it is
too early for lunch. He calls Dorothy from the front desk into his office.
“Dorothy, please get me a muffin and a fresh cup of coffee. We have fresh
coffee, I suppose?”
“Of course, Admiral. Yes, we have fresh coffee.”
He suddenly feels like calling his sister and dials her number. What prompts
him to call Evelyn today he doesn’t know. Yet, he feels good when he hears her
voice like a single sunray peeking between clouds.
Libros Libertad 