Backpack

The reasons for doing military service are many.

The vast majority choose it out of duty,

love of country, sincere conviction to defend

and protect the nation and its people from harm.

Some few, however, have other, less noble reasons,

among which is a taste for violence that can

find itself at home with guns and bombs,

sanctioned by a culture of toughness and harsh treatment

of the nation’s enemies and foreign conspirators seeking

to destroy our values, our government, our souls.

Those few, leaving service without correction,

can take their proclivities back to civilian life,

treating those they dislike as “enemies”

and showing disdain for those who strike them as different,

people they don’t know at all. It’s sad to see

those who did real service to the nation

do it disservice in their later life.

But we cannot look away from this or pretend

that everyone who wore or wears the uniform

is a paragon of virtue. It isn’t so,

unfortunate as that is, and sad, and depressing,

but reality demands attention, or it bites.

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Every moment you look down is a moment you can’t look up.

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Backpack

The bus stop was crowded. Children jostled, knocking their backpacks against others’ knees and ribs. Parents stood in a loose semicircle, sipping coffee. The yellow curb marks, scraped for years by waiting feet, were chipped and faded.

A man in desert camouflage stood apart. His boots were scuffed, but the right toe gleamed. He grumbled something, then barked into the cold air: “They take our streets, our voices, piece by piece. Invaders in our own town.”

A girl turned her head. Small, hair pinned back, her backpack sagging from one shoulder. She flinched, then lifted her chin, gripping the strap tighter.

The motion drew him. His eyes fixed on her. His lip curled. “That’s right. You know what I mean.”

Her knuckles whitened. She stood still.

He hawked in his throat, a wet, guttural rasp that cut through the shuffle of feet and rustle of bags. He leaned toward the curb, shoulders rolling forward, one boot edging across the yellow line.

Parents moved. A boy in a red jacket edged back. A woman yanked her daughter by the backpack straps. A man dropped his coffee cup as he stepped off the curb across the street.

The girl stayed at the line. Her eyes met his.

“Want me to show you what I think of your kind?”

A woman barked, “There are children here.”

He spat. Choking on his own fury, he launched the glob too soon. It dropped almost straight down, striking his boot, square on the polished toe, where it spread like an oil stain. Sunlight hit the smear, making it glisten.

For a moment he stared. His fingers twitched, but he did nothing.

The girl’s hand tightened even more on her strap. She clasped her friend’s fingers but kept her gaze steady on the man in camo.

The bus groaned to a halt. Its doors opened with a hiss. Parents guided children inside, making sure to stand between them and the spitter.

The bus pulled away. A few parents lingered. No one spoke.

The man who had dropped his coffee stepped forward. He stopped in front of the spitter, looked him in the eye, and shook his head once. Then he walked off, his boots striking the pavement.

The other parents followed, leaving the man in camo alone under the harsh November light. The smear on his boot refused to dry.