The only thing we have to fear

A short story

News item: “Kari Lake, who’s running for Senate in Arizona, told a rally this week that it’s time for supporters to ‘put on the armor of God and maybe strap on a Glock just in case’.”

Part One

Doc’s casita looked like every beige bungalow in every retirement community in Arizona, endless suburbs surrounded by high stucco walls hiding the loneliness they fortified, revealing little to outsiders but an endless horizon of Mexican red tile roofs, American flags, satellite dishes and silence.

Every morning Doc, the retired widower, woke at sunrise, drank his black coffee, ate his microwaved oatmeal, doom scrolled his phone for Trump news and then started out for his daily walk down his driveway, following the same path, down the street past his next door neighbor Charlie‘s house, greeting neighbors along the way.

Doc and Charlie spent their days in their dimly lit living rooms watching news and war documentaries while eating microwaved meals, only venturing outside for walks, to rake their gravel and to view the sunset from their porches before returning to their worn recliners to watch their favorite news shows, searching for the daily outrage that would provoke both men to lay awake in their empty beds past midnight, posting on their phones their disgust for their fellow citizens, the idiots who were destroying their country far beyond their walls, beyond the mountains, beneath the vast starry sky they long ago forgot to gaze at in awe.

Unlike Doc, Charlie was hard of head and hard of hearing and happy to blast Fox News through his open front door all day and all night. Charlie assumed every neighbor, including Doc, was a FOX viewer who agreed with him about the persecution of Trump and Kari Lake and the millions of good Christian voters in Arizona who’d been robbed by “Let’s Go Brandon” Biden. Doc who hated FOX but told no one for fear of being shunned by all of his neighbors who were all die-hard MAGA-Republicans. Rather than confront Charlie he simply cursed the “ungracious son of a bitch”, kept his windows and door shut and gave up contemplating his beloved sunsets in peace. Doc’s late wife always said,”You’re too easy going, Doc.”

Neither man ever talked about politics. What was the point? Doc was happy to let them all assume he was one of them. Truth is Doc was afraid to let any of his neighbors know he thought they were “certifiably nuts”. That he feared what might become of his country. The country he’d fought for.

Charlie, living right next door, was their king. Charlie’s Trump bumper stickers, Trump flag, Trump yard signs, Trump banner and “THIS HOME PROTECTED BY SMITH AND WESSON” sign signaled to everyone no one was going to tread on Charlie by God.

Every morning when Doc walked past Charlie raking his gravel, he ached to asked the old man what America had failed to give him. When Charlie first moved in he had bragged to Doc he had a fat 401K and a nice pension and for a guy with a high school education Charlie had enjoyed a lucrative career in sales and not once did Charlie ask Doc anything about his life, his family or his military career. Charlie, the windbag, had a brand new giant pickup, an RV and a paid off casita and Christ, what on earth had Charlie been denied by his country to make him so afraid of gays and blacks and immigrants and good God, Doc always came around to realizing there was no point in challenging Charlie’s onslaught of fatuous wind, because he might as well talk to the high walls surrounding their stucco necropolis.

Doc texted his adult daughter it was like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” here in “Mar-a-Lago West”.

“LOL, dad.”

Doc, the fearless old Marine, was afraid to ever speak his mind. Doc would stand and listen and just smile whenever he got cornered by a neighbor walking their dog who wanted to stop and vent about illegals, Marxists or baby murderers.

All any of his neighbors knew about Doc was that Doc was a pleasant fella, an old veteran who liked fishing and watching Antiques Roadshow.

The day that all changed

Charlie heard Doc had gotten Covid back when Trump was President and, being a good Christian, Charlie knocked on Doc’s door. Doc tugged his mask up over his nose and mouth and opened his door. “Charlie!” Charlie concealed his annoyance at the sight of Doc’s damned mask. Why Doc needed to signal his virtue was beyond Charlie but what the Hell. Doc lied when he saw Charlie’s red MAGA hat. “Nice hat. New?”

“Yes sir. How ya’ doing, Doc?”

“Pretty Good. Sure am glad I got vaccinated.”

Charlie said nothing. What was the point in arguing with sheep. “Good for you, man. Listen, I brought you some Ivermectin. It-”

Doc winced. Ivermectin. What bullshit he thought as he smiled at Charlie’s “thoughtfulness” from behind his mask. “That’s nice of you, but I’m good Charlie.”

In that instant Charlie knew Doc was one of them, one of the haters he’d heard about on talk radio and had only ever seen on FOX news. God almighty. Doc was a “libtard”. An idiot. One of the sheep to be pitied. And feared. That flagpole with our flag on it in Doc’s front yard was a cover.

Doc thanked Charlie again, tugged his face mask tight, said, “Have a good day,” and as soon as Doc shut his front door Charlie turned around and walked down the path to the street and set about warning every neighbor, he encountered from that day forward that Doc was one of them, not one of us. Doc was a hater who hated America and Christians, Jesus, and Donald Trump. Probably a Jew. Definitely a Democrat. A baby killer. Didn’t seem to be a queer. Possibly a pedophile. You can’t be sure with them types. Did you see his electric car?

A year later when Biden because seeing Charlie’s stone-cold contempt before turning away to rake his gravel was chilling. Like the look Doc had seen in Ramadi, Baghdad and Mosul from the Goddam insurgents. The fanatics. What had Doc said or done?

Charlie could not contain his seething hatred for Doc, the liberal living right there under his nose. A traitor willing to support a man who stole the election in their home state, scum happy to open our borders to murderers and to turn our children over to perverts and why in Hell was Doc destroying the country that Charlie loved?

When Trump called the insurrectionists “political prisoners” Doc could no longer laugh off anyone’s blind allegiance to treason. Doc, the old Marine who swore an oath to defend the Constitution, knew treason when he saw it. Doc no longer cared what his “goddamned neighbors” thought. What? Were retired “Proud Boys” going pull up in their golf carts and knock on his door? Was a deranged neighbor off his Prozac going to shoot him through his window? Break in his casita in the middle of the night and take a hammer to his skull like one did to Pelosi’s husband? Nodding off in front of his TV Doc would be startled awake by sounds outside his window. Javelina probably. Sounds down the hall? Was that his cat jumping off a table in the dark? Was that someone breaking in? Doc joked to himself. “Get hold of yourself. Freaking out over sounds that go bump for Trump in the night.”

Was his PTSD from Iraq getting the best of him? When would he get sick of being afraid? When would “grow a pair” and stick a “Biden/Harris 2024” bumper sticker on his car?

Every time he decided it was time to stand up for what he believed he backed down. Why risk the vandalism. The stares. Honks. Tailgating. How long before he'd be rear-ended in traffic? Or shot? That slimy little shit Kyle Rittenhouse got away with it.

Doc thought long and hard over his microwaved oatmeal. He weighed the pros and cons as he scrolled Trump news. What was he afraid of? Why did he hesitate? Was it because he was from OKC and couldn’t believe what he saw when Tim McVeigh, a vet just like himself killed all those people in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in his hometown back in ’95? Doc was sick of cowering before all the loudmouthed mini-McVeigh’s his suburb. Old irrelevant men who believed crazy shit yammering on about a civil war. Shaking their walkers, peddling lies and empty threats.

And no one knew when he lived down in the valley he volunteered with the Giffords campaign. That morning he growled at his bathroom mirror, “God forbid anyone out here should know. Christ, Doc, when did you become such a miserable chickenshit?”

That evening on the news Kari Lake told her supporters to strap on their Glocks.

“Good God.”

The next morning when he started out for his walk Doc looked over at Charlie’s yard and there was Charlie at the end of his driveway, raking gravel, wearing a holstered Glock. And that’s when Doc decided when he got back from his walk, he’d do it.

Part 2 to come