Chapter 12.5 - Treason

TREASON

“...when they say don’t treat them like gentlemen. While we do, I might say that if we did not, I would not cry for them.  Treasoners are not gentlemen, my good friends.  They don’t understand being treated like gentlemen.”

Joseph McCarthy

Cold winds are blowing across the Los Alamos cemetery nestled between two mesas beneath Ponderosa Pine.  Tom pulled the hood of the army issue jacket further over his head and tightened the neck cinch.  Gusts of snow are blowing across the tombstone that reads:

God bless this man

Whose kindness was as pure as driven snow

Arthur Oswold Emerson

Aug 1, 1865 to Nov 10, 1954

“Art, you balanced my cynicism with hope.  I keep remembering the car accident.  Margaret hasn’t cried since.  Why did you have to leave me?  I’m afraid without you.”

Tom walked in ankle deep snow through the woods towards his house.  The shadows heard his sobbing as moonlight traced the tear drops from his beard into the wind and onto the snow.  He remembered what Art said to him just before he died.

“Remember Tom, we are good people in this country.  We care about our world, our children, our old.  We, as a nation, have always striven for a better place in which to live.  We have always extended our good fortune to others in order to make their lives better.  Have faith in us, Tom.  You dwell too much on the small mistakes and too little on the great victories.”

Tom paused for a moment deep in the woods.  It was dark under the snow laden branches.  He looked back down the path he had just walked.  His footsteps were gone.  It was as if he had never been.

From deep within the forest Tom could make out a small light coming from their living room window.  The light flickered and died down.  His future lay in the direction of that fire.  Tom trudged up the hill to the backyard gate and entered the living room through the back door as quietly as he could.  Tom wrestled to undo the frozen hood cinch of his jacket and hung it at the door.  Tom wondered why the fire was so cold when he sat down in the rocking chair.  He heard the frozen tears from his beard land on the oak floor as he smoked Art’s favorite pipe. Margaret turned the radio on in the kitchen.

“Today, the supreme court upheld the statutes passed by Congress outlawing the Communist party...”

Margaret waddled into the living room surprised to see her husband bent over his knees sobbing out of control.  She dropped to her knees and wrapped him in the arms of the only love he had ever known.

“Tom, your friend isn’t dead forever.  Our child will soon be born.  Maybe Art died to let our child come into the world.  Please, honey, don’t hurt so.”