Justice: A Civil Wars Tale
A crowd had gathered on the west side of the park to see the results of the night’s goings-on. A small crowd at first, it grew steadily as cars pulled in all along the park’s boundaries. There were old people and young people, single people and families, all races and creeds appeared to be represented in some form or fashion as the numbers of the people in the crowd began to swell. Many in the crowd had their cellphones out, snapping pictures, filming videos. Shouts rang out, shouts of joy, shouts claiming justice had been done, shouts that were met here and there with a smattering of applause and with a celebratory cheer or whistle.
At the southern end of the crowd whoops and hollers went up as someone set fire to a red hat with white lettering and started waving it about, smoke rising from the hat’s crown and twisting up past the last of the bodies in the trees. A flag went up next, an American flag, the Stars and Stripes, with big bold navy blue lettering across it reading MAGA, this time up on the north side of the crowd. All about kids ran here and there, kicking balls, chasing each other, shouting and screaming, occasionally stopping to stare at the trees but mostly just using the day as an excuse to get out in the park and play. All the while, six bodies swayed from four trees, each rocking gently in the morning breeze like a Christmas ornament attached by a string except these trees were full of leaves and as green as green could be it being the middle of summer, after all.
The morning was cool but the day promised to be a hot one according to the weather forecasts. Pushing through the crowd to get close to the center of attention, one could see the facial expressions on the bodies, final feelings experienced before all sense of feeling went away. As diverse as the crowd was, the bodies were sharply contrasted in that they were all the same skin tone. The way they were staggered, hanging from different heights on the four different trees resembled bars on a bar graph, lower here, higher there. People of all colors and possible gender identities smiled and walked under the bodies posing for selfies, some individually, some in groups, some pointing up to the bodies above them, others striking various celebratory poses.
As already mentioned, the bodies were all male, men of varying ages, varying sizes and varying builds. The faded jeans of the second body, as they hung from north to south, were stained from where his bladder had let go, creating a long dark stain running down the length of the inside of his left pant leg. The fourth body had a white gym sock that hung precariously onto his right foot, a pristine perfectly white gym sock with an almost perfectly round hole at the tip of it before the big toe, the hi-top sneaker of that foot having fallen down to the ground below him. The sixth dead man, the skinniest of the bunch, appeared to still jerk about as the branch he hung on caught the slight wind and bounced him up and down causing his corpse to flit about like a marionette in some sort of dance, perhaps to celebrate the occasion.
A shout went out in the crowd as the fifth body, a tall corpulent man, a man with a shaved head and bushy grey beard was set alight. A short woman wearing a dark black, oversized t-shirt with white lettering that shouted out in all capital letters that “BLACK LIVES MATTER” had jumped up on the shoulders of her taller, broad-shouldered male friend and struggled with the lighter that another woman, a tall heavy-set woman in pink flip-flops, had given her. As shouts of encouragement rang out the woman, a non-smoker apparently, sought to get the hang of the lighter, flicking at it several times before getting even the hint of a spark. She laughed at all the comments of encouragement and criticisms of her lighter technique and shook her long braided hair from side to side as someone suggested she let them do the honors. Finally, she got the lighter lit and held it above her head towards the torn khaki pants of the dead man above her. His pants caught flame immediately and cheers went out all around as the fire took hold and progressed, reaching from one pant leg to the other, its flames devouring the body’s clothes and then biting into its flesh. Other people paired up excitedly to follow the example. The sixth body was next, then the second, soon all six of the dead men were not only hanging but burning, sending up streams of smoke trough the upper branches of the trees, branches with green leaves that glistened in the light of the rising morning sun. If one stood close enough to the fires, one could hear the pop-sizzle of the flames as they ate through flesh and fat. Off in the far distance, out to the east, the first sirens could be heard, their sound faint and far off at first, a sound that competed with the sounds of cheers, claps and shouts of approval.
Across the street to the south of the park was an elementary school, a so-called magnet school, a school dedicated to a focus on science and technology. As the parking spaces around the park had filled up some had taken to parking there and crossing the street to join the crowd. It was a Sunday morning so there were no classes at the school but, in reality, no classes had been in session there for quite some time. The school had a sign that was missing most of its letters but if one were good at crossword puzzles one could make it out: Closed Until Further Notice. Across the street from the school, to the northwest, was the burnt shell of a Baptist church, the smoke-free white walls of parts of the church contrasting sharply with the charred black remains of its other parts.
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The church had been L-shaped and the east to west northern part open to the air, all a ruin now, the roof having collapsed as part of the fire. The north-south part of the L still had most of its roof and, if one didn’t see the rest, one might’ve thought it was fine due to this lack of damage, the lack of smoke stains, the lack of any graffiti. A well-known church in the city’s black community it’s sign still spelled out the times for its Sunday services stating proudly that: “All Are Welcome!”
To the east and north of the park were houses, the park sat partially in a residential neighborhood. At nearly every house, people stood in the yards either singly or in groups, staring, watching the events at the park unfold. In some of the yards people, mostly men but some women, stood armed with shotguns, hunting rifles or assault rifles, watching the crowd and the rapidly burning bodies, eyeing both the park and their neighbors warily. Others, unarmed and seemingly less concerned, stood in their yards drinking coffee, phones out, snapping pictures, hugging one another, jumping up and down, cheering the scene. In either case, children were also out at many of these homes, out in their front yards, imitating the kids across the street in the park, chasing, playing, hooping and hollering. Everywhere, from all directions, dogs barked their disapproval at all the early morning noise.
Above the park, above the homes, a series of drones flew about overhead, some from law enforcement agencies, others from news services and others from places and organizations unknown. Cars honked on the lightly traveled commercial side streets that intersected just to the southwest of the park, the light morning traffic often slowing down as one car or another sought to get a better view of what was happening. Sometimes the car’s occupants shouted out support, encouragement and agreement but sometimes there were angry shouts, threatening shouts, shouts that promised more violence.
At the eastern end of the park mourning doves fluttered about at a safe distance from all the commotion, commingling with pigeons, looking for anything left over from the night before that might serve as breakfast. Most of what was to be had, leftover from the night’s activities, activities that everyone who lived near the park had either heard or watched from behind partially closed curtains or blinds, was still soaked through from the slow-rolling thunderstorms that had passed through over night, the thunderstorms who’s bolts of lightning had illuminated the competing rallies that had clashed beneath a sudden downpour of rain.
A fire truck arrived, followed quickly by a second. The firefighters exited by rote, seeming to be in no particular hurry as they finished putting on their gear and grabbing what they needed. No police cars came, no police officers were anywhere to be seen the sole police presence being found in the several obvious police drones circling overhead. Firefighters with large fire extinguishers parted seams in the crowd to put out the burning bodies, four of which had managed to remain hanging from their branches, the other two having fallen to the damp park grass where they had struggled to keep burning. A collective moan passed over the revelers as the fires went out, one by one, the moan being drowned out by the sound of the fire extinguishers being used in unison until all flames were gone and all that remained were the charred remnants of flesh.
On the edges of the gathering people began to peel away, to head off in their different directions in ones and twos at first, then in larger numbers. An ambulance, it’s lights and sirens off, pulled up to the park’s north side, the first of six such vehicles sent to collect the remnant dead. A man riding a purple electric scooter wearing a blue ball cap waved a red, black and green flag and yelled out over and over, “Justice! Justice!” as his scooter bounced along over the uneven turf of the park, jolting a bit here and there as it rode over exposed roots which served as natural speed bumps, slowing his progress. In all directions the crowd continued to melt away in ones and twos, in threes and fours. The unarmed residents of the houses nearby began to slowly go back in to their homes to get things done, whatever could be done on a day like this one, another day in a period of civil emergency where every day had begun to blend in with the preceding one.
Standing rigidly in their yards the gun-toting residents watched as their red, white and blue flags stirred in the breeze and the crowd, the crowd with its many more colorful flags melted away. Here and there shouts were exchanged, threatening glances, a bottle thrown, a warning shot fired in the air but nothing escalated, nothing went further and soon these residents too began to melt back into their homes, leaving the scene and the park to the firefighters and EMT’s who’d gathered to put out the flames and collect the dead. On the edges of all the human activity, the mourning doves and pigeons continued to strut and coo, pacing this way and that, continuing to look for something to eat to start their day, walking around all the broken glass, over all the discarded red and blue caps from the night before, poking their beaks at the fragments of signs that were scattered all about, just in case anything was edible. A fragment of a sign had landed on its back while many of the fragments around it had fallen face first, hiding what they had to offer. This lone supine fragment peaked up from the mess all around it revealing part of a phrase or slogan that had been printed on it. In bold red letters against a white backdrop the fragment read: Great Again!
