Sunshine on an Open Tomb. Tim Kinsella

that they wanted to avoid war at all costs, knowing that their navy was inferior to The Homelan’s.

      But Ruckafella, along with Harryman, made zillions on The Spanish Homelan War, The Homelan’s first war that wasn’t in self-defense.

      In Cuba’s revolution of ’59, The Homelan and The Mob both supported the overthrown dictator, Batista.

      As far back as the 19-teens we’d diminished Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Nicaragua basically into colonies for our investment banks; Wall Street and Capital City fudging together each other’s policies, The Marines on call to intervene when needed.

      And this itsy-bitsy little island Cuba sat only 90 miles off The Homelan’s coast.

      Homelan companies controlled 80-100% of Cuba’s utilities, mines, cattle ranches, and oil refineries; 40% of its sugar industry; and 50% of its public railways.

      And Cuba was the primary operating base for The Mob’s casinos.

      Three years to the day before 11/22/63, The NYT reported that Castro had booted Foreign Oil.

      And by the spring of ’61, King Arthur had just taken office, and The CIA already had 1,400 exiles armed and trained.

      King Arthur told a press conference: There’ll be no military intervention in Cuba.

      And four days later, CIA forces landed on Cuba’s south shore for The Bay of Pigs Thing.

      Castro’s army crushed these CIA forces in three days.

      One Cuban Intel official named Pops as the organizer of funding to assassinate Castro.

      Official resignation is the most common first step a CIA agent takes upon embarking on a delicate mission.

      It creates deniability.

      The more sensitive your work, the more unlikely you acknowledge even working there.

      But on 11/22/63, Hovver wrote Pops at The CIA.

      Thirteen years before Pops would be appointed commander there, he saw to it that another man with his same name got hired as a gofer in a position so lowly that he wasn’t even allowed to talk on the phone.

      But the mere presence of his name on the records was all the cover that Pops, the secret employee, needed.

      The CIA probably first recruited Pops to use him as leverage against Grandfather.

      But Grandfather’s predominance as a senator was anchored beyond budging.

      Grandfather never forgave King Arthur for The Bay of Pigs Thing and firing whichever Dullis Bro.

      Grandmother said about King Arthur: “(He) is a very ambitious young man who has neglected his work not only to fill his ambition, but the ambition of his father as well . . . It is fearful to think that a man of wealth can set out to gain an office and let it be bought for him.”

       CHAPTER 17 Feeling Free

      The Family’s comprehensive access to alien technologies notwithstanding, no one makes Jell-o as scrumptious as a Barbarian salad bar.

      I cannot imagine what they do: substitute water with heavy cream?

      I go thru a bucket every night watching my tapes.

      I hold it on my tongue an extra second, and the flavor shifts, sharpens, then I melt it with a slurp of my mudslide, and it tingles.

      O’Malley and The Greek used to pick it up for me, but I started to get suspicious of my change thanks to their snickering deliveries.

      But Jell-o is dense and, with salad bar prices, a bucket does end up about a hundred bucks.

      Aaron, even with all his profound training to hone his god-given propensity for flat affect, still struggled to repress his sneer from the end of the aisle when I’d stoop to scoop up a bucket.

      I’d usually be scraped up and dragged out of The Other Greek Place, sprawled on my couch, gumming my Jell-o by 9 o’clock, reflected sirens always throwing a flashing projection of the bank across the street up onto the silence of my window.

      And stationed by the door, Aaron’s gaze would lock on ze Tube’s static while I knocked at my stacks of tapes to cram one into the machine, the click of plastic against plastic, before the magickal collisions of my chance editing.

      I’d watched 2/22/80 a thousand times and my thrill never quelled.

      Homelan college hockey players trumped a Red team of professional players improbably designated as students, engineers, and soldiers to qualify for the Olympics.

      The Sports Personality compared it to a Canadian college all-star team beating the Pittsburgh Steelers, who’d just won their fourth Super Bowl in six years.

      He said, “That may be the greatest upset in sports history.”

      It wasn’t the gold medal game, but tickets with a face value of $67.20 cost as much as $600 and Jamie Farr, Klinger from MASH, attended.

      The Homelan team forgot the words and hummed thru the middle of the national anthem.

      And I get goosebumps every time when the Sports Personality shouts in the final seconds, “Do you believe in miracles?”

      I swat any girl aside for that part every time, doesn’t matter how asymmetrical she is, dancing her lazy sexy-dance in the middle of the room.

      I always pay her and send her home, climb into bed and light a cigarette soon as The Game ends.

      Pops liked to pontificate that The Red Union would crumble all at once at any minute.

      And however much he liked the idea of letting it collapse and even giggled about the forgotten cosmonauts abandoned to their endless orbits, the potential danger of space junk necessitated this collapse’s gentle steering.

      Pops insisted that when The Red Union collapses, what happens next will shock everyone.

      Police, firemen, bus drivers, all the civil servants won’t be paid.

      For years they won’t be paid.

      And still they’ll all continue to go to work each morning.

      Society will continue to function exactly the same.

      Cuz it will need to, of course!

      Ground-level corruption will increase, but it’s already rampant.

      Dentists won’t be able to afford soap, but most are already too hurried to get to their hands between patients.

      And even more corpses will be left to spoil.

      And me and Aaron, same as The Collapsed Red union, dutifully saw thru my daily routine, carrying on as we always had cuz we wouldn’t know how not to.

      We got creative with new ways to never address each other directly and pretend not to see each other.

      My best friend growing up got yanked unexpectedly from his office to The Vatican one day and was made Argentinean dictator.

      I think of him and appreciate how good I got it being forgotten about.

      Exceptional athletes, maybe a song-and-dance man, know that destiny of feeling set apart.

      Of course endless alligator games is the inevitable primitive response.

      With shelter and sustenance decisively not issues, tolerances accrue and thrill-seeking becomes an endless chase to keep ahead of numbness.

      And meanwhile, shuttled cradle to grave like confused students marched dreary thru a museum, beer and The Act of Love are as close as most Barbarians will ever get to feeling free.

       CHAPTER 18 Introducing Ozzy

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