ran 3.4 miles
Chapter19
Torture. Humiliation. Atonement. Recantation. Dissolution. Death.
Now for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rolling stone,
But that’s not how it used to be.
When the jester sang for the King and Queen,
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me…
Jonas opened his left eye as much as the swelling would allow him. His right eye was matted shut with bruising and blood. He grinned, painfully, for the simple sake of defying the guard who was watching him in his cell. The guard took no notice. He couldn’t. Jonas’ face was too bludgeoned to identify any facial expressions.
Oh, and while the King was looking down,
The jester stole his thorny crown.
The courtroom was adjourned;
No verdict was returned.
And while Lenin read a book on Marx,
The quartet practiced in the park,
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died.
Erica stood in a cell with her hands gripping the bars before her. She thought of Thomas and Mason, how easily they were disposed of. They were treated like hunted serial killers or fugitive terrorists. “How?” she had thought to herself, “Could millions upon millions of people in this forgotten country sit so quietly and idly over the loss of America. The sacrifices people like Thomas and Mason had made affected hundreds of millions of lives in what used to be America. Nobody cares. Nobody cares.”
She said it again out loud this time “Nobody cares. Nobody cares.”
“Nobody cares!”
Everything was quiet again. The guard struck Erica with the butt of his rifle through the bars of her cell. She fell back and slammed the rear of her head into a concrete and urine slab of sleep. North Americanadexico was now a step closer to scaring all of its people to sleep.
We were singing,
“Bye-Bye, Miss American Pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye
And singin’, “This’ll be the day that I die.”
“This’ll be the day that I die.”
1,030.9 miles to go.
