Disaster Among the Heavens - Don E Peavy Sr (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

as if they had been in a fire. Unable to make sense of the morning, Diggs and Fredda went into the bathrooms carrying candles, showered and got dressed.
They were concerned and near terror. Each hoped the shower would help. It did not. Once dressed, they met again at the bed and tried to understand what had happened. They both agreed that Hammer Head must have forgotten about the explosives which they had sat to prevent a breach of the bunker and in his rage, had set it off. However, they could not understand why the radio and telephone were dead and their lights off. So they decided, again together, that the military was taking advantage of the situation and was trying to get to them.
“What if Hammer Head did not forget about the bomb?” Diggs asked as he and Fredda sat at a nearby table across from each other. “What if he thought he had disarmed it?”
“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” said Fredda. “He wasn’t all that bright to begin with and his anger probably got the best of him.”
Diggs took hold of her outstretched hand. “No, that’s not what I mean. What if the assistant didn’t intend for us to ever leave this place? What if he set the bomb to explode no matter what happened?”
“I don’t think so. You never burn a bridge you might have to cross. That door is the only way out of here. Blow the shaft and this bunker becomes a grave,” reasoned Fredda.
“You blow the bridge if you want to discourage retreat. We may have misjudged the Assistant.” Diggs let go of Fredda’s hand. They both pondered this latest development. Terror took hold of them.
Exhausted, their well of faith evaporated, they decided to fire the missiles. In their flickering candle light, these two people who only minutes earlier had deplored violence, decided to commit an act most violent. They were preparing to type in the last line of command when the monitors came on again. How swiftly does the human species metamorphose at the least provocation?
Yet, we should not rush so soon to judgement. For what else could they have done? Had not Malcolm X hit the proverbial nail on the head when he called for the ballot or the bullet? Once Blacks were given the vote, had not a persistently evil nation responded with all types of electoral reforms: poll taxes, literacy tests, political parties, and the like?
What is there left to do in a democracy when an entire people are disenfranchised merely on the basis of their skin color but resort to violence? Even if there is no way that they can win? Is not there a point at which victory becomes too costly? Surely guerrilla warfare thrives on the notion that not every society is willing to achieve a pyrrhic victory – that there are some prices which are too high to pay for victory.
Of what value is it to win a city that lay in ruins? Even if one cannot win a violent confrontation, one can exact such a price on one’s opponents as to win some degree of concessions. Or, one can go gracefully down with the ship knowing that one has had a hand in the sinking.
Perhaps that is what motivated the Assistant. It may be that there was in fact some order to his chaos. That he reasoned that if he took the roar of destruction beyond the borders of the ghetto, where most riots had been contained, then he could exact some concessions from America for his people – even if he did not know what those concessions might be. After all, he had struck at the military power of America and had assaulted the very thing which lies at the heart of a democracy – freedom.
People were no longer free to move about the country as they desired. Social functions and family gatherings had been cancelled for fear of violence. He had even forced Wall Street to close for three days. The assistant created an atmosphere of fear that swarmed across the land like a horde of locusts across the good earth. Why not seal his own death?
No doubt the assistant knew his death was imminent; perhaps he wanted his closest associates to die with him for some reason unknown to us. Did he consider himself in need of companions to accompany him in moving from this world to the next? Had he judged the earth and found it ripe for destruction and appointed himself to execute the sentence? Was the assistant capable of such idolatry?
Diggs and Fredda had more questions than answers. We can only surmise. Granted, these ideals and the questions they engender are beyond the competency of our actors. Nevertheless, the reality of truth depends not on the recognition of humans. The old adage that what you don’t know won’t hurt you is a fraud. A blind man walking and not aware of the pit before him will surely perish when he steps into it. That he is not aware of the danger in his path is not a shield to his imminent death. The obverse is also true. People may be moved by ideals and act accordingly even if they are unaware of the path those ideals will take them.
Thus, as Diggs and Fredda struggled in the darkness which was pierced here and there by the flickering candles, they were moved by high ideals to first salvage then destroy an unrepentant nation. Until the lights went out, they lacked the resolve, perhaps even the courage, to fire the missiles. Desperate times demand desperate measures. They were desperate. How desperate they were!
Their divergent paths crossed in the person of the assistant and in the process they were changed forever. Each had been forced to face truths from which they had hid all their lives. Now, convinced of the Assistant’s cause, even as they continued to question the methods the assistant chose to further his cause, they were desperate to strike back at this nation which kept slapping them in the face at every turn. They wanted to stop the laughter, the jeers, and the derision they faced each day as they moved about a land which judged people merely on the basis of the color of their skin – a factor over which persons of color had no choice. One does not decide which color or which country one is born into. In fact, despite the Mormons’ persistent declaration to the contrary, one does not even decide to be born.
Our actors knew the reality of their oppression. Each of them had sought to deal with it in a separate way. Fredda by withdrawing from “polite society” and Diggs by embracing it. Fredda hoped that by not competing in the marketplace with whites that they would ignore her, except the night hours when lust knows no prejudice.
Diggs hoped he could demonstrate that he was no threat to whites, and that he was a loyal member of a Black middle class which sought to preserve the color line imposed by whites. Both of them accepted their status as victims and in so doing found themselves in the never ending spiral of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Unfortunate as it was for them, but quite fortunately for future generations, the assistant had breached their comfort zones. The Assistant, like the marauding barbarians that forced Europe out of the Dark Ages into the Renaissance and then the Age of Enlightenment, forced Diggs and Fredda out of their comfort zones and into a direct confrontation with a reality they had each sought to avoid in their own way.
The assistant though was not a conscious catalyst. He did not sit down and design how his forlorn journey would end. Beyond the recruitment of gang members in Chicago and the sacking of several military facilities to secure weapons, the assistant had no master plan – no idea to bring into reality. Though he had done much, he was more acted upon than actor.
Who then is the author of this tale of woe? For there is no grand design – no master script to which we all must pay obedience. There is no director shouting commands at us. We are free to choose and we are the conglomeration of the choices we have made and failed to make.
Again, Diggs and Fredda had no knowledge of these ideals as they tried to comprehend whatever it was Rodney was trying to convey to them. The result of all of this is that they decided not to type in the fifth line. Instead, they agreed to wait and see if America would finally do the right thing.
Rodney looked silly to the uninformed passer-by. Yet, he was the best hope America had at the time to avert a national disaster. As he jumped up and down, he gave Fredda and Diggs pause in their actions and revived in them a hope that they might just live to see another day.
. . .
Shannon hung up the telephone with The President. He exited the hurriedly put together office and summoned the Major General.
“General, I want you to gather every available helicopter from here and Peterson and every available jet engine from here and wherever else. Once you have them, get all available mechanics to mount the engines on top half of the helicopters and on the side of the other half. I need this done within the hour. Then, have those with the engines on top to space out evenly under the cloud and those with the engines on the side to space out evenly around the perimeter of the cloud.”
“What on earth are you planning to do?” questioned the General. He was both bewildered and admiring.
“I intend to blow that damn cloud to high heaven!” exclaimed Shannon.
“I’m not sure we can get and mount those engines and have them operational in so short a time period,” warned the General.
“General, you know what separates a major general from a lieutenant general?”
“A star,” answered the General.
“No sir, a can-do attitude. I’m asking you to have such an attitude now and get your mission accomplished.”
“Yes sir.” The General saluted and left.
Shannon walked over to a table where a group of airmen were huddled around the Brigadier General. He did not wait for a pause in the discussion; instead he pushed his way into the circle and said, “Brigadier General, I want you to put together a detail with protective gear and form a one-hundred mile buffer zone around this base. I want you to search every tree, every dwelling, and every puddle of water for any sign of contamination. Every foul thing must be removed. Understand?”
The Brigadier General looked weary. He was already burdened by the previous task and this most recent task sounded doubly taxing. Still, being bred and trained in the art of obedience, he could only say, “Yes, sir.”
“Does anyone know where I can get some poster boards and Marks-A-Lot?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get it for you right away,” volunteered a young airman first class. He disappeared and returned in a few minutes with the requested items and gave them to Shannon.
Shannon placed a board on the table which the Brigadier General had vacated and hurriedly wrote out a message on it.