Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

Ryan R. Migeed
Aug 25, 2017 · 6 min read

Promptly at 10 a.m. the tanks rolled into position.

Traffic was allowed to pass because it was assumed that anyone who chose to drive instead of watch the ceremonies was not a true friend of the Nation.

And that was how George and Leanne, and their two grandchildren Anna and Robbie, found themselves on the road that day, in their wide Buick on their way to the little beach house Papa George had saved and saved for and Mamie Leanne had picked out.

Neither George nor Leanne could remember who had forgotten about the day’s festivities — “I thought I had told you not to plan the drive for August 12,” Mamie said, once they had seen the tanks; “I don’t think you did, Leanne, and if you remembered, why did you let us leave today anyway?” — but it didn’t matter to Anna and Robbie anyway.

They were on their way to the beach. And now they had a show to watch.

“Isn’t this exciting, kids?” Mamie said after she and Papa had finished their deliberations.

But what Leanne knew, and the children could not know, was that this was not exciting, and the excitement in Leanne’s voice was too falsetto to be sincere.

At 10:15 the bands began to play. Neither George nor Leanne nor Anna nor Robbie could see them, but their sounds were amplified throughout the city, perhaps by loudspeaker. The flares of the trumpets and the trills of the flutes set the blood aflame — and then the voices began to sing:

MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD;
HE IS TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE WHERE THE GRAPES OF WRATH ARE STORED;
HE HATH LOOSED THE FATEFUL LIGHTNING OF HIS TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD;
HIS TRUTH IS MARCHING ON.

And as soon as the final verse was sung, before the notes drifted beyond what the ear could hear, the crash of the tanks split the universe.

The reenactment of the siege of the city had begun.

A mighty roar arose from a crowd no one in the car could see, though there was the odd spectator poking out of an upper-story window or on a rooftop, waving a flag.

The windows of the Buick rattled as a mortar struck a building nearby. George swerved to avoid the falling debris — “Goodness, they’re getting quite zealous this year,” Papa said; “They do this every year, dear,” Mamie replied — and the children squealed in delight.


To give herself something to do, and to explain to the kids what they were seeing, Mamie did her best to relate the story of the war commemoration.

Fifty years prior, bands of militias had swelled into columns of troops and begun marching upon the cities they said had once been their roost. At first it was chaotic; no one knew who the troops’ leader was, or if there was one at all. Residents abandoned the cities en masse, leaving empty homes fully stocked with food—rations for the troops who now stormed through.

Their old dominion, they claimed, was theirs—and it was time they took it back.

There had been a war fought long before, between the South and North. And the State had since reunited, electing leaders who held sacred the reunified State. Any one of them would have resisted this show of force with equal fire and fury—but not President Trampuld, of course.

Jon D. Trampuld stood dumbfounded at first, and then defiant: “If it was theirs to begin with,” he reasoned, “then it is theirs to take back.”

Trampuld had come, originally, from the city the troops first began to seize and so it was widely believed he was sympathetic to their creed.

“And besides,” he told an adviser, “they’re the ones who supported me, who helped me win my election. To turn on them now would be a dereliction.”

This did not have the reaction he expected and his generals became frightened in a way he did not know soldiers to be scared. They called on him to resign.

At first Trampuld refused, and then he complied—but only because he had another offer in line: the troops, having repossessed their first city, called on him to come and rule them instead. So he flew to the South, leaving his vice-president in charge of the North. He took up residence in the house of the Nation, and commanded the war effort to its fatal conclusion.

Now this had not happened in the war last time; the State had not split in such a way, to have two equal leaders at the same time.

The advantage, of course, was on the South’s side since they had already emptied the cities they occupied. The war was fought to a stalemate: the South won, and now two countries stood where there had been one.

Each year on August 12, the army commemorated the North’s defeat: Trampuld had ordered a complete reenactment on the first anniversary, and the ceremony became a tradition of the Nation.


Leanne tried to recall the details of the siege from the remnants of her memories of attending over the years. After the tanks came the—

Fighter jets streaked through the sky, stealing sound from the car for a moment before it returned like cotton balls in their ears. Anna and Robbie gazed out the windows with glassy eyes.

Far off, they heard the rumbling of bombs dropped and making impact, cutting off one or more of the bridges out of the city.

“Do you think we’ll be able to get out, George?” Mamie said.

“I sure hope so,” Papa replied.

The jets made another pass; the earth tilted like a see-saw; and a building standing about a half-mile behind the car crumbled into the street.

A dust-cloud wrapped itself around the Buick and George stepped on the gas. Once they all could see again, they yelped in shock—a streetlamp, decapitated, veered downward and only narrowly missed the car, thanks to George’s quick steering.

“I’ll be happy once we’re out of this city,” he grunted.

Anna and Robbie were finally silent; they were no longer entertained by what they now realized was destruction all around them. They finally understood, somewhere deep inside their beings, that it was a threat to their safety; they were too young to understand humankind’s will to survive, but they could feel it as surely as they felt the goosebumps on their hides.

At long last, they caught sight of the bridge—perhaps the last bridge out of the city that was still standing.

“Almost there, kids,” Papa said.

But as they started out across the bridge, the screech of the fighter jets returned overhead, and suddenly the bridge began disintegrating before their eyes. A car on the other side of the bridge was flung into the water below, descending like a diver from the board to the pool. And then the Buick was next.

Unable to stop the forward momentum, the Buick teetered on the edge of the world, then lost its battle with gravity—“Help! Help!” Mamie cried; “It’s going to be alright,” Papa said—and the children screamed in terror.

The Buick hit the water with a thud, bobbed for a moment, and began drinking in water as if it were thirsty.

And in those fast, fragmented seconds, both George and Leanne, and Anna and Robbie, were transported in time: they felt the same fear, breathed the same fleeting breaths, as the Nation’s enemies did fifty years before.

They should have stayed and watched the ceremonies.


Postscript

After every commemoration, once the city was virtually destroyed again — buildings demolished, bridges collapsed — the miners would be put to work in the quarry, or reclaiming the stones of the buildings; the engineers would be called upon to redesign workable bridges; and construction workers would return to their backhoes and pavers to repair the roads.

It was the long-promised Infrastructure Plan workers awaited eagerly each year.


Ryan R. Migeed is a freelance foreign policy reporter and fiction writer. This is a work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of his current or former employer, or any organization(s) of which he is a member.

You might also like my previously published short story, “The Art of the Subtle Wink.” Like my Facebook page for writing prompts and other musings.

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Ryan R. Migeed

Written by

Writer. I want my words to move people. Also want a cappuccino. Freelance writer. 1L at GW Law. AU and LSE alum. Thoughts here are my own.

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