While We Lay Sleeping

I've always been an earlier riser.  Part of that is conditioning, years where I had to muster out from under my covers to launch into the wild blue while the sun was still AWOL. It's not always easy, there are days when one just wants to lay there in the quiet, then you realize that all wakefulness consists of getting up sooner or later until you have to lay down for good, sooner than you want to.

Some of it is getting up early to hunt whitetail each fall. Crawling out of the sleeping bag, sometimes on the cold ground, in fortunate corn filled years, on the James farm living room floor, the promise of indoor plumbing and a kitchen with bacon luring me from my flannel cave.

 It is still dark as we leave, and it is only  when set up against the base of a tree that I see that first crack of light on the horizon, a line so small  and delicate in presence as to be a single hair.  The world comes to me slowly, in small bits of sound, the crunch of leaves, the chatter of a squirrel, until that moment where the crosshairs go up and my breath ceases in that moment between heartbeat and sound. 

On days off, I tend to do the same, as that makes it so much easier to get up on work days.  It's dark when we crawl out of bed, myself from the cool warmth of a silk covered spread, Barkley from the warm, puffy Beignet of a dog bed in the corner.  I'm a very light sleeper unless coming off of an 18 hour stint, where I fall into bed with that small death of exhaustion and don't move for 10 hours, but for my feet twitching, running to the wreckage of a life, there in the dark.  Otherwise, I sometimes wake in the middle of the night as I hear sounds outside, the bark of a dog in the distance, a car door, my neighbor the cop, coming home off a late shift.  He's quiet, so not to wake his family, but I still wake, recognizing the sound of his car and going right  back to sleep.

It's still dark when my eyes open again, the flutter of an eyelid springing a dog from his bed, as if a switch had been moved.  He seems to know the instant I'm awake, perhaps a change in the sound of my breathing, perhaps just a schedule he's used to, but he's waiting to go out.

I let him outside, as I sit on a small lawn chair out back while he does his business.  I see a young woman from down the road out walking, alone but for a small flashlight.  I've more than a flashlight in my pocket, not caring to venture out in the dark in an isolated area unarmed, even if within 20 feet of the shadow of a house.

People ask, do you carry  a firearm because of fear?  No, I only fear the places I can't carry.  It's not fear, it's awareness, of what stirs in the dark, what quietly walks our streets.  Most people, certainly too many young women, are oblivious to it.  I was too, until I saw violence up close.  It was like someone opened the window, suddenly letting in sound.  It doesn't come in all at once, the dull whoosh of the wind, the cry of a hawk, the deep throated huff of an animal out in the dark.  Perhaps I'd been aware of the sound all along, but just never really listened to it, the sound being so far beyond my experience and naivety.  As I watched Barkley run from the edge of the pond towards me, I realized I had been as obvious to that sound as a flea to the roar of the fur bearing tsunami on which it rides. 

As individuals, too many of us have experienced it, that moment when evil swipes its paw at us, where even if you walk away unharmed, the slash marks form small scars that may not show, but can be felt with small tracings of fingers, there as you lay safe in your bed in your dark.  It brings back memories of that moment, when all you can think is "I don't wish to die" in that inaudible tone of quiet amazement  as if it were something that, until you heard the words in your head, you did not truly realize was a possibility, nor the extent or the depth of your desire to forestall it.

As a nation we felt that, in the wake of 9-11, when those that hate what we stand for struck in the high, fierce slumber of our superiority, when tiny flags flew on legions of automobiles as the nation wept.  Those that watched it on the TV felt it, those out in the field experienced it, faces steaming with sweat and blood, breath coming in profound gulps of hot air, not with exhaustion, but with that vehement rage that is terror's aftermath.

The nation wept, and then much of it went back to sleep.  Some of us never did.

Barkley stops to leave his mark just one more time on a poor, dwindling tree, its few leaves fluttering in the wind, like tattered flags. .  I sit and trace a scar on my ribcage  It looks like something took a small, deep bite out of me, and in a way they did.  It's  a small reminder of how, if we don't watch carefully, the world may take a swipe at us.

I did not swear an oath to my country because I was naive, but because I was, and am, ready to fight for her.  I do not carry a weapon because I am afraid.  I carry because I am ready, as well, to constitute and assert the irrevocable finality of my refusal to be a victim.

 - Brigid