The Day the Missiles Flew
by Arón Reinhold
Scarcely a second after the waitress had left, he asked me: “Have you ever wondered if our President is real?”
An answer rattled off my tongue without a leaf of contemplation: “Of course he is. He just gave an address to the nation last night.” Then my mind steeped in the absurdity of his words, and I laughed.
My friend wasn’t amused: “Yeah, yeah. I don’t mean physical existence, obviously. I mean, who or what is he? I’ve never seen or met him, I’ve only seen Youtube clips depicting him, talking heads quoting him. I’ve only seen his pre-selected tie from behind the veil of pixels and words. I don’t know where he ends and the writers, cameramen, and pundits begin. And who are they even? How much of they are they? Do they select their suits, or do their suits select them? What does that say when we can’t even tell? What does it mean for this scheme of self, this animated veneer, to select and shape what’s already the cartoon of a President?”
I was a bit perturbed. These questions were silly, ludicrous even. But the words haunted me like a sad melody. Again without thinking, I said, “He’s just that Terry...He’s Texan, a Republican, and he’s transparent about his identity in every speech and tweet. As for pundits, well they’re each their own person. They get up in the morning, put on clothes, drink coffee, go to work...”
“Texan...Republican...What are these things?” my friend asked.
I was jolted. Wasn’t my friend born here? Shouldn’t he know such simple concepts?
“Sometimes Terry struts around in his boots and jeans, with that big ol’ Confederate belt buckle, claiming he’s the face of the Wild West. But ninety percent of the time, he’s in a suit with a red or blue tie. He’s in those jeans only during rustic photo shoots or staged appearances in Parker County.
“Okay, so maybe he does wear jeans at home, but this thing I see, this President Terry, does not. He is not a ranch hand, he doesn’t read The Farmer’s Almanac. Hell! The West, the frontier, all that nonsense died years ago. Even farmers purchase Hollister shirts and designer jeans today.”
Somewhere within I felt as if I had stepped into a wind tunnel and suddenly found that the walls and ceiling and referents had all vanished, realizing that I was just wind blowing in the dark. My friend’s voice swelled like a thermometer as he spoke, then reached a threshold and his throat reached out, grabbing my being. “This Terry is a ghost tale of a corpse, dead but still moving melodiously. Can there even be a Terry anymore? Is there space for him in this world?
“It’s like when you’re on the Green Line and someone ate too much garlic, there’s no room for anyone else. But in this case, it’s his image that’s too big. It’s like his clothes, his make-up, all those recycled Reagan quotes, everything collectively murdered Terry, mummified him by injecting soundbite after soundbite, handshake after handshake. I don’t know how to describe this phenomenon. Maybe—”
At the absolute peak of my internal violence, of his interrogative monologue, our waitress interrupted with a perfectly choreographed throat-clearing; this crackling remnant of a film credit long rolled dispelled my singular and radical focus; the wind blew in sand, and then solid ground.
“Here’s your coffee. You boys need anything else.”
Just as she didn’t sound as if she were asking a question, we didn’t really answer.
“No thanks...”
“All good...”
As her departing footsteps quieted, I looked up behind my friend at the TV. I hadn’t noticed the set before, even though I had probably glanced at it prior to my friend’s questioning. On screen, a video clip depicted a number of missiles pouring out of a silo in a hurry. Thinking back to the daily news, I recalled no discussion of launches, no special briefings before Congress of this sort, not even a TikTok. I felt a minute tremor of terror at this unplanned occurrence.
Yet, on the television screen, the newscaster’s Xanax expression seemed entirely ordinary, the unending parade of stock numbers along the bottom seemed absolutely comforting. I listened to the safe words, phrases like international community, impeachment proceedings, midterm elections, impact to the economy, and thus I felt a passing into normalcy.
“Today President Terry ordered an unauthorized launch of nuclear missiles. The international community, fresh from a G8 meeting, has condemned the move. Many domestic detractors are calling for the first step in impeachment proceedings.
“Furthermore, according to today’s Pew Research Center, the launches are overwhelmingly negative to the American public, except for those 70 and over, and will likely cause the midterm elections to be contested. The number one reason given: the inordinate expense taxpayers must bear in order to replace the nuclear stockpile. During a time of jobless recovery, this will likely impact the economy in the next quarter, though Republican leaders are arguing it will lead to more jobs and more prosperity.”
The image then transitioned to the view from a satellite, property of NASA. The missiles were exiting the atmosphere like graceful swans, burning at thousands of miles per hour, but in no particular direction. This ridiculous image stabbed me with fright more than anything. It wasn’t the banality of some Middle Eastern city being carpeted, it wasn’t anything the pundits from MSNBC or Fox had discussed and digested for me, it was absolutely unreal; missiles just headed away from everything, not destroying infrastructure, not winning a war, just flying.
I shook inside, plum full of more imagery than I could handle, and I had no more room for the coffee cooling in my mug. My friend stood up and ran out the door, triggering the other customers and employees to do the same. Finally though, the newscasters really got a hold of the story, tied it up and defanged it, arguing for and against the President’s actions: “the missiles were launched to deter... Terry is insane... He was blowing up satellites... He had some reason in mind, might be classified...”
Each new soundbite slowly slipped me away from the true nothingness of the action; each smooth graphic embraced me further in the daily unreality that was so concrete to me.
I looked down at my phone and took a deep breath as ads targeted for my demographic infiltrated my mind. After all, those missiles really do make a cool t-shirt or bumper sticker. Let’s go, Terry! Gradually, I became numb to any sensation beyond that of the imagery, the vivid colors and beckoning call of everyday consumerism.
As I sat there totally alone in the now empty cafe, I felt a warm kinship with the nation, knowing there was green paper in my wallet, that it could be exchanged for beautiful plastic, hollow objects, that I was one of millions staring slack-jawed, absorbing the same advertisements, ignoring the same absurdity in the world. Today was interchangeable with any other day, and so I smiled.
Copyright © 2022 by Arón Reinhold
