almost okay

10:01 a.m.

As fate would have it, after breakfast two Saturdays ago I lay dying in a park in Ferndale reading Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying'. The air shimmered low across the baseball field in the hot sun, the grass baked brown by it, by two weeks without measurable rain. I was under a stand of tall oaks, a pair of them growing in close proximity at the base, like conjoined twins with two heads, their broad shoulders the warm summer ground they shared. They bowed gently apart, the twins, their branches twisting in the afternoon breeze, their dense shade surrounding and caressing me. I felt peace for the first time in months.

Suddenly, at one o'clock on that first Saturday of July, I was scalded by the screaming noise of sirens as two nearby fire stations began a rondo of alarms to test the emergency response system. Dogs hidden by privacy fences howled at the wails of the sirens, which moved far and back and far and back as they broadcast spiraling practice warnings that everyone dutifully ignores, a dopplar wave of nerve-bending horror sound that scarred the simple beauty of a summer day.

I was forced to think of possible emergencies, despite the calm and peace that surrounded me... a tornado with winds to rip the roofs from houses, uproot trees, crush people beneath cars and flying debris... an enemy attack, the missile launched from off-shore to drop on the city and kill...

I always figured that if I were an enemy deciding when to attack, an evil genius with his sights on taking over the world, this is the precise day and time I would plan it for. A flash as I lay beneath the tree reading. A blinding blast of light and I'm gone. Everything gone. Smiling folks ignoring the sirens, washing clothes, sleeping, fucking...children playing, skipping rope...all gone.

My finger on the button at five minutes to one, on a beautiful summer afternoon, the first Saturday of July.

The evil genius at work and play.