Charles Sheehan-Miles

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Republic: Chapter One (continued)

Republic

Charles Sheehan-Miles

Chapter One (continued)

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Chapter One (continued)

Sally’s Diner in Highview was as busy as Murphy had ever seen it. The usual lunch crowd was there of course, but the place was packed with an extra twenty people or so: folks like him, who would have normally been down at the plant. The old building, with its rundown interior and flaking paint, was a favorite meeting spot in Highview. On the corner of Main and Tipple streets, it was a small standalone building, a wood frame with peeling white clapboards.

Murphy had a seat at the scuffed counter, a cup of coffee set before him and an unread Washington Post next to it. The coffee had been sitting, getting cold. He absently rubbed the joint between his knee and the prosthetic left leg he’d worn for more than a decade. He needed to get some new liners; it had been irritating him lately.

Walter Haggett’s teenage great-grandson Frank frantically washed dishes behind the counter, slinging the trays of dishes and glasses around with a crash. Frank was sixteen, and should have been in school; he’d dropped out earlier in the school year. It was hard for Murphy to see the gangly, greasy-haired teenager with acne and rings in his ears and nose: he’d been a confused young kid at Haggett’s funeral three years earlier. Walter had been laid to rest during a closed-coffin service the day after Martha’s.

“Hey, Colonel Murphy, look at the tube—isn’t that your daughter?”

Murphy looked up at the aging television, tuned to CNN. Someone turned it up. Congressman Al Clark stood in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Directly behind him was Murphy’s daughter Valerie, Clark’s assistant. At the bottom of the screen the words “Welfare Reform Bill” flashed.

Clark spoke, a lopsided grin on his face.     “The wisdom—no, the celestial guidance—behind this proposal is almost too stellar for me to see clearly. Applaud, I tell you. Applaud! I have only one suggestion, one little morsel—an amendment to offer to Mr. Skaggs’s wise proposal. Let us send a mission to the moon to carve up the cheese and give it to our senior citizens. Let us send it back in huge rockets to land in the ocean, not only providing for our dear sainted grandmothers, but at the same time revitalizing the shipping and dairy industries.”

The diners in the restaurant broke into laughter as the screen switched to Representative Mark Skaggs from Kentucky, his face flushed. It appeared the other representatives onscreen were also gripped with hysterical laughter.

“My suggestion will have just as much opportunity to help our country as the one proposed by the gentleman from Kentucky,” Clark said. “Gentlemen, Ladies: this proposal will likely bring revolution down on our heads. Our people are bleeding, fellow members of the House. Bleeding. Yet there he is, the gentleman from Kentucky who wants to take away their last bandages so the wealthy can use them as fancy headdresses.”

Voices rose in the diner again, as if by common consent, and someone turned the volume back down on the television as the screen shifted back to the anchors. The goings-on in Washington had little to do with them, anyway. If it hadn’t been for the brief view of Valerie Murphy, the news would have attracted little interest.

Murphy’s waitress poured him a cup of coffee and said, “That Clark, he sure is a card, isn’t he? How’s Valerie doing working for him?”

“She loves the job, got promoted again last year; she’s running his whole office now,” Murphy said.

“Well, isn’t that something. I remember when she was nothing more than a toddler, thought she owned everything.”

“Well, some things never change,” he said, grinning.
She laughed and walked away, and Murphy returned to the newspaper. Depressing stuff. Unemployment. War in the Middle East. Someone had poisoned the reservoir in Milwaukee.

Murphy looked away from the paper for a moment and his eyes landed on a couple he knew, holding hands over the table as they talked. He jerked his eyes away and returned to the bad news in the paper. Of course it was always bad news—at least what they chose to print. All the same, lately things just seemed to be getting worse.

“This seat taken?”

Murphy looked up at the words. Karen stood to his left, still in the jeans and flannel shirt she’d worn to the plant earlier in the morning.

“Sit down,” he said.

She did, apparently unaware of the appreciative glances from the men across the room. Karen didn’t socialize in town very often.

“What are you planning to do, Colonel?”

“Well, first I’m going to ask you to stop calling me that when we’re not on drill status.”

She smiled. “Seriously.”

Murphy shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ll get a job somewhere. Kenny can’t go without health insurance. But I’ll be damned if I know what to do. I’ve been making chips at that plant for twenty years.”

She nodded, her expression serious. “Yeah. I’m at a loss. It’s for sure there’s no other decent jobs around here.”

Murphy tossed back the rest of his cold coffee, then waved to the waitress for a refill. “Maybe you should think about applying for active duty status.”

She grunted. “Maybe. But they’d probably make me switch branches, be a nurse or finance officer or something.”

She was probably right. President Price’s predecessor had signed an executive order integrating women who applied into the combat arms, and Karen had received her Armor commission as a result. Then Price had rescinded the order; consequently, only a small number of women were grandfathered into Infantry and Armor.

“You’re probably right,” he said, “But they’d be fools to do it. Don’t repeat this, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re the most capable company commander I have.”

“Why thank you, Colonel. I don’t have any illusions though.”

“Maybe I could talk to my brother. He might be able to swing something.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Tommy’s taking command of a brigade down at Fort Campbell.”

“Infantry?”

“That’s right. West Point.” He grinned. “I never thought my little brother would outrank me.”

“Do you believe them about the severance pay?”

“I imagine so. If only to avoid lawsuits, they’ll be scrupulously fair. But six weeks pay won’t go very far. Not for most of these folks.”

“Yes. Definitely not for me. I’m still paying off my damn student loans.”

“You went to Bowling Green, right?”

“That’s right. And this all has a familiar feeling. I grew up in Kentucky coal country. When the mine closed down for good, it seemed like the town was going to dry up and blow away. A lot of folks never recovered.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I never thought I’d be facing a layoff at this age. Happened to me once, a lifetime ago it seems. I got laid off from the GM plant in Atlanta twenty-five years ago.”

“What’d you do?”

He laughed. “Joined the Army. All I had was a high school diploma, Martha, and a new baby to feed.”

He looked around the crowded diner, and said, “This sure is going to hit Highview hard. Eight hundred families… I guess more than half the town worked at that plant.”

He didn’t finish the thought aloud. Desperate people tended to do desperate things.

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