Wango Tango
It was no shame to be on government assistance. Everyone was on government assistance in Clare, Kentucky since the final withering of corn, alfalfa, and tobacco that hitherto sustained the community for generations. Across the Midwest, the death of the fields coincided with the death of the towns. Clare was no exception: a shuttered Main Street, a darkened traffic light at each end, a palpable ennui in the air as its dwindling citizenry huddled in resale shops and liquor stores. The government finally interceded to aid its desperate millions as their collective plight became quite irreversible.
Rusty’s mom was among the first in Clare to receive their share of government assistance. She beamed as she strolled into town on her Rascal scooter one misty fall morning, gleaming lever-action Winchester rifle strapped in a basket between the handlebars. Peggy Anders shot her through the neck from the doorway of her failed hair salon. Rusty’s mom tumbled dead out of the Rascal, which strolled along of its own accord for a few yards, dragging a wide bloody smear along the cracked asphalt. Rusty’s dad, Kurt, got the Winchester back from a dead Peggy in turn, but the effort earned him a bullet in the back from young Caleb Anders. Kurt spent remainder of his days strapped to his dead wife’s Rascal, watching television. The Winchester rifle lay always within reach.
A lottery advertisement was on when Rusty left the trailer to pick up his government assistance. Through a prevailing haze of infotainment and opioid derms, Kurt’s attention could not be roused to acknowledge his only child of barely fourteen years was going into town. They were giving away an M198 howitzer and two years’ worth of high explosive shells to a lucky contestant. The winner would be announced on the next installment of American Stormtroopers. Rusty sighed at his father, grabbed his ill-fitting Kevlar gear, checked the safety one last time on a dilapidated M1911 sidearm, and latched the ramshackle door behind him.
Plastic tarps that covered the trailer flowed loose in the early summer breeze, and Rusty cursed inwardly at the necessity of having to secure the roof, windows, and door yet again. Before he was shot, maintaining the exterior of their home was largely Kurt’s responsibility. Rusty gingerly picked his way through anti-personnel mines concealed years ago throughout the weed-strewn yard of barely an acre. Most of Rusty’s dog, Bella, was buried just outside of the minefield, an unfortunate first victim. Among the detritus of broken-down cars, derelict household appliances, and non-refundable beverage containers, Rusty side-stepped additional traps while seeking cover from the inevitable sniper. Republican leftists and Freedom Party loyalists alike made no distinction in targets of opportunity.
Belly-crawling his slight frame along the shattered remnants of a concrete drainage pipe, Rusty propped up on his elbows and weighed the scene through a pair of weathered Steiner 7x50 binoculars. A visible hairline crack in a lens was far less of a hindrance than the need to adjust the chinstrap on his helmet every time he needed to use them. Settling in for a moment, Rusty swept one hundred-twenty degrees of his current objective. His government assistance awaited him at the post office, three blocks distant from his current position. An irritated huff escaped the youth as he brushed aside a tangle of unkempt, greasy dark brown curls that spilled out of the front of his clumsy helmet. Elation at the arrival of his initial government assistance thudded Rusty’s heart against an avian ribcage. The minutes counted down his transition to adulthood. Kurt would have to deal with him as an equal from now on, or Rusty was within his rights just to blow the crippled fucker away. The temptation to join the cubs, roving gangs of armed, feral youth that lived off their loot from the countryside and cities, swelled in him again.
The crackle of rifle fire resounded throughout the hills above Clare, punctuated with the occasional staccato of automatics. In lieu of horses, great charred crosses dotted the landscape, remnants of late-night parleys between county chapters of the Freedom Party and the Republicans, empties strewn like chaff amongst moldering equine bones. In a random calm, Rusty crept out from the pipe end and trotted in a half-crouch along a shallow ditch that ran parallel to Main Street, overgrowth affording him limited cover. At its termination into town, Rusty halted, slid onto his abdomen, and hoped he was indistinguishable from the cattails and sedge, mud caking a threadbare Krokus t-shirt that hung from his malnourished torso. He surveyed his path to the post office, just two blocks away.
His objective rested flush against Main Street, surrounded by parking on three sides. Few vehicles occupied the lot; most were burnt-out, melted husks that afforded little viable cover. Adjacent Browning M2 heavy machine gun emplacements were manned by local Three Percenters, ostensibly free of party biases, for the purpose of maintaining relative order and the flow of commerce. Making it to the cover of the Brownings, snug in their sandbags, required a dash in the open from any direction.
Rusty observed a trio of pedestrians, laden with shabby, mismatched compositions of body armor and small arms cautiously pick their way down Main towards the post office, undoubtedly to pick up some government assistance of their own. Shots resounded along Main Street, and two of them hunkered down and manned a light machine gun in response. Rusty instinctively determined from its report that it was definitely an M249 SAW. The third pedestrian, whom he recognized as a cafeteria worker before the last county school closed back in second grade, simultaneously dropped and rolled. Hands interlinked on top of her helmet, she flattened herself against the decrepit remains of a looted CVS, directly under a charred NRA “Thoughts & Prayers” charity poster. It stubbornly clung to a bullet-webbed window; a torn corner flopped into empty darkness beyond.
The veteran SAW jammed, and the old woman that fed it belt ammo began to futilely hammer the feed-tray cover with her bare fists. Its gunner, a middle aged man in faded TACAMs and a black flak jacket covered with myriad NASCAR patches, a bolt-action rifle slung over his shoulder, unleashed a torrent of curses and fumbled for a sidearm. Rusty flinched for a second as the Brownings opened up on the general direction of the incoming fire against the huddled trio, and suddenly bolted in a rabbit-like evasive jig to the post office. The beleaguered pedestrians finally abandoned the light machine gun and followed suit, stumbling after Rusty’s lead. The south side of Main Street rained down fragments of wood and brick, drywall exploding in tiny puffs of chalk-white.
The silent pause in the wake of the M2s’ choppy thunder was superseded by whoops and high-fives among the Three Percenters. Tall boys were cracked open and passed around out of an ammo can converted into a beer cooler. Low music resumed and twanged from somebody’s phone. The Three Percenter that handed out beers to the machine gunners, a red-bearded skinny man in torn jeans and a Gadsden flag poncho, handed one to Rusty. Parched from his sprint under fire, the astonished and grateful youth hesitantly reached out for the shining Coors tall boy. The man’s bloodshot, electric blue eyes widened as he snatched back the beer and instantly slammed it down. “Too slow!” he belched.
A momentarily humiliated Rusty shuffled into the US Post Office, its Amazon logo barely visible through sandbags that caked the impromptu hardened structure. Its interior was lined with canned goods, MREs, candy, energy drinks, cases of alcohol, and jerry cans full of water for sale, all emblazoned with pictures of their contents and the distinctively familiar shapes and colors of their respective brands. The trio was already in line. Rusty noticed the woman from the cafeteria clearly scowling at the supply displays while the old woman and the man in the NASCAR flak jacket bickered in low tones with the desk clerk. She had removed her helmet, and he observed that she was once pretty, when there was still school. The years since the second grade faded her long auburn hair at the crown, and her face and hands had begun to turn leathery. She would be like the old woman soon, if she lived. Her ballistic vest no longer showed off her curves, hanging off her like Rusty’s own tattered Krokus shirt.
She detected Rusty’s overt adolescent gawking in her periphery, and turned to scowl at him, too. He unstrapped his oversized, wobbly helmet and his mess of dark tangles remained in a partial bunch, gathered in places corresponding with the threadbare helmet liner. “I’m getting my government assistance today,” a beaming Rusty declared, hand resting on his sidearm holster, tiny hollow chest thrust out.
The woman politely nodded and turned away from Rusty’s ungainly attempt at adult conversation. Her father and aunt were not having progress with the desk clerk, Myra. A fixture of Clare, she manned the counter at the post office even prior to its transition as an Amazon affiliate, two decades past. Unyielding as Black Mountain, Myra’s stern presence and singular adherence to procedure served as Clare’s de facto remaining civil infrastructure. “Ain’t no ammo going out of here unless I see it on a bill of lading,” she asserted, leaning her meaty fists on the counter near a glowing POS device on a swivel. “Y’all are approved for a whole mess of 5.56mm, but I don’t have a requisition for .223 Remington. Lookee here.”
Myra turned the display to face the frustrated trio. The man in the NASCAR flak jacket put his hands on his hips, looked at the ceiling and exhaled, unable to read. The old woman discerned only a blurred mush. The former cafeteria worker leaned in between them and carefully perused the electronic document. Roughly seventy pounds of 5.56mm ammunition for a broken light machine gun, abandoned in the street. No indication whatsoever of the .223 Remington for the bolt-action rifle her uncle painstakingly restored to working order. It remained dangled from his shoulder, empty and for the immediate future, useless.
“Just take the 5.56mm and I’ll give y’all a holler if the .223 comes in.” Myra leaned down behind the counter and came up with two ammo boxes, strength defying her apparent age. The man retrieved them, thanked Myra, and dejectedly ushered his daughter and aunt towards the exit. They stopped near the threshold to habitually check their sidearms and gear.
“What’ll it be, Rusty?” A feline smile affected Myra as the youth approached the counter, barely clearing it by a head.
Rusty trembled and grinned uncontrollably, “I’m here for my government assistance!”
Myra checked off receipt boxes on the POS with a worn plastic stylus. She spun the device around to face Rusty and handed him the nub. “Sign on the line if you can sign your name, or just check the big box near the line.”
He shakily scrawled his mark, and in his excitement Rusty dropped the stylus. He sheepinshly retrieved and presented it to Myra, who tucked the nub behind her ear and waddled back to the receiving area of the post office.
The red-bearded Three Percenter in the Gadsden flag poncho appeared in the doorway, cradling the hopelessly jammed M249 SAW in both arms. Presenting the broken weapon to the man in the NASCAR flak jacket, he said solemnly, “The boys rounded this up for ya.”
The recipients gushed with thanks until the Three Percenter interjected with a demand for twenty dollars in scrip. Although the ammunition and the useless weapons would slow them down in terms of their long walk home, if they arrived safely the middle-aged man could possibly affect repairs to the light machine gun. In what constituted the long term, it was a fighting chance. The family acquiesced and rummaged through their pockets for the scrip.
The Three Percenter and the trio observed Myra return from the back, to hoots of excitement from Rusty. She set an oblong, naked wooden crate down on the counter and carefully pushed it towards the bouncing youth. “Here’s your very first government assistance, honey!”
Rusty fumbled with the crate, and lay it down reverently in the middle of the post office. Cheap imitation brass hasps were mounted at either end of a sloppily red stenciled “US GOV’T SURPLUS”. The boy popped them open and greedily thrust his tiny hands into a bush of excelsior. He triumphantly emerged with a weathered AR-15 assault rifle. The little audience of townsfolk applauded. The ex-cafeteria worker’s claps were practiced, robotic, but she nevertheless sincerely appreciated that Rusty had just become an adult.
The young man, rifle held aloft, howled in the glory of his transition. The moment flooded his being with an infantile emotive state equivalent to the artifice and perfection of Christmas mornings on TV. Then the post office exploded.
Shortly after the dull thud of a mortar round resounded from town, Kurt’s fugue state as he awaited the lottery drawing was partially interrupted by a routine News Alert scrolling along the bottom of the screen. The sidebars of the display, normally choked with targeted advertising for pharmaceuticals and weapons, sprang a set of talking heads long familiar with InfoWars247 viewers. Ronald Reagan’s avatar verbally ushered his colleagues to cease their ongoing deliberations of the day and focus on the current outrage perpetrated against their fellow Americans. John Wayne put a hand to the brim of his Stetson and nodded once in compliance, his reverence for The Great Communicator clearly evident. Charlton Heston grimaced impatiently as the Nuge and Yosemite Sam unholstered their weapons and traded insults. It perpetually disgusted Heston that the Nuge provided news analysis completely naked, clad only in coordinated zebra-striped harness and cartridge belts. It was disrespectful to the flag. Their dynamic was comedy gold. Strapped to the Rascal, Kurt snored on.
InfoWars247’s celebrity anchors were united in their condemnation of the horrendous treatment accorded to the citizenry of Clare, Kentucky by the continued negligence of the federal government. They bellowed over one another in unanimous agreement as the audio feed echoed a subtle disturbance from outside the trailer. On the television a weather-beaten V22 Osprey, emblazoned with garishly airbrushed letters that spelled “Freedom Express” in an orgy of stars and stripes, had landed on the outskirts of town near the First Baptist Church. A dozen commandos emerged, clad in black tactical gear and balaclavas, and established a perimeter with practiced shoves and brandishing of automatic weapons. They were followed by a gaggle of compact news drones and aides-de-camp that flittered about the last person to exit the aircraft, an extraordinarily tall old white man in an oversized stars-and-bars Stetson and cream seersucker suit.
A hush fell over the hastily assembled locals already gathered for the impromptu event, smoke from the damaged post office still billowing from the center of town. Senator Harlan “Sandy” Sands cleared his throat and tightened his bolo tie adorned with a gem-encrusted bald eagle clutching a swastika. On Kurt’s TV, Yosemite Sam removed his enormous ten-gallon hat and smartly saluted during the senator’s brief remarks.
Sands lambasted the antics of Republican “obstructionists” currently debating the particulars of a bill permitting additional military-grade surplus to be allotted to the endangered Christian white minority. The practiced rage of the senator, evidenced by throbbing facial veins and hoarse petitioning of the Almighty, was dramatically highlighted by the Gatling nose cannons of the Osprey directly behind him in the shot. He lamented the tragic death of the boy decapitated in the post office attack, whom according to the statements by survivors had only been armed with an antique .45 caliber handgun.
Kurt drifted into semi-consciousness as the senator put a hand to a diamond-studded Bluetooth earpiece, nodded and continued his harangue with updated information. Parts of an M1061 HE fragmentation cartridge found at the scene indicated that a mortar attack was responsible for the day’s mayhem in the heartland. The talking heads on Infowars247 glowingly confirmed Senator Sands’ immediate charge that Mexican and Black terrorists had once again escaped from barrios and labor farms to do evil against perpetually outgunned Americans. The fact that roving bands of cubs, or drunken townsfolk likewise bristling with weaponry, were the actual culprits did not detract from Senator Sands’ on-air demand that Republican leftists unite with Freedom Party patriots to pass the current bill and fulfill its single domestic policy commitment.
“It is the function and purpose of government to arm its citizens. This is enshrined in our Constitution’s sole Amendment. Had this boy access to some real firepower,” the senator vowed, “by God, he could have fought them all off, the soulless bastards!”
He doffed his comically large stars-and-bars Stetson hat and leaned into the closest battery of hovering news drones. Lenses whirred in response. “I lay this American boy’s death at the feet of Republican traitors in Congress! That is all.”
With a flourish, Senator Sands replaced his hat and strode with purpose towards the hatch of the Osprey. As if on cue, twin turboprop rotors whined and clicked, groaning at warm-up until thirty-eight foot rotor spans blended into a low hum which intensified by the second. An aide suddenly emerged from the hatch and handed Sands a bullhorn. Feedback shrieked in rebellion for a brief instant until the senator’s amplified bellow echoed through the heads of the Clare townsfolk and broadcast media drones, “Time for federal government to get off its lazy ass and get some real assistance into the hands of God-fearing white people!”
A raucous whoop ascended from the crowd and the senator’s staff. This was instantly followed by obligatory chants of, “USA! USA! USA!” Weapons leveled at the crowd, the commandos backed into the Osprey after Harlan Sands. The gunship blasted the people of Clare with prop wash as it slowly began its ascent.
Kurt awakened to a peculiar sound coming from outside. Over the blaring television he heard a cacophonous buzzing, distinct from the Osprey’s engines that echoed from town. The din surrounded the house. Kurt reached down for the Winchester leaned up against the Rascal, wiping crust from his eyes with the other hand. Tarps shielding the trailer from the elements danced in the breeze, a multitude of silhouettes floating and darting in the makeshift door and windows.
A rogue gust caught a tarp and flipped it sharply upward, revealing a phalanx of camera drones hovering in the yard. Panic burned through Kurt’s haggard torso and arms, his mildewed bathrobe flung open as he brought up the gun. The crack of the Winchester flooded out the buzzing of the drones and the gibbering of jingoist praise from the avatars of Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, the Nuge, and Yosemite Sam. The thumping of the Osprey, closer now, could not be muffled by the flurry of repeating rifle shots.
A camera drone shattered near the trailer. The sudden adrenalin compelled Kurt to distinguish the familiar shape and colors of the Infowars247 logo amongst its remains. Horrified, his head snapped back to the television between shots. Yosemite Sam jumped furiously up and down, pistolas firing in tandem. Kurt beheld an aerial view of Clare on the screen. The roof of the First Baptist Church was decorated with letters and words of some kind, nonsense which read: “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”.
