Schmitt Not With a Bang

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-6858-4
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 628 Seiten

Not with a Bang is a story about the invention of a new revolutionary weapon and how it completely destabilizes an already unstable near future America. In the satirical tradition of writers such as Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe, this novel features characters such as a white vigilante appliance repairman, a Vietnamese abducted bride and her abductor haunted by ghosts, a black youth gang practicing voodoo, Adolf Hitler's son, lesbian mad scientists and even Arab terrorists. Drawing from the mythology and folklore of several cultures, just like America itself, it is a darkly humorous romp through our deepest fears of weapons proliferation and vengeance gone berserk.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schmitt, Ron

Leseproben

Chapter 2 As we leave Leo for the time being, the completely true and remarkable story of Dang Yeak and his young Vietnamese bride must be told. Of course, Leo knew nothing of Kieu or her husband’s history when they first met. Had he known, his emotions would have evolved more quickly into the noble rage of vengeance. Instead, it must be stressed that Leo’s desire for the beautiful young Kieu was no more or less noble than the fierce, aching passions that propelled the monster Yeak from one angry day to the next. Dang Yeak was a jealous man and a truly fierce man. Born of a whore, he was a monster from the start. That is where we must start, at the beginning, with the remarkable story of how these two citizens of chaos survived, met, and came to this country. The only remembrance Dang Yeak had of his mother was the story she had told him of his birth. The only time in her life she had become pregnant she explained to him that it was a fortunate accident. She had mistakenly trod on the big toe of God’s footprint. Then God sent a beautiful voiced swallow that left a glowing egg, the exact color of the full moon, in a basket on her windowsill. The egg glowed so brightly that it kept her awake at night, so one night she ate the egg and he grew in her belly. When she gave birth it was completely effortless and the oxen, sheep, and other beasts in the village would take turns holding and nursing him. She drew him a picture one night that showed him tiny enough to cling to the fluffy breast of a swallow as it wrapped a wing around him and fed him a fat worm. He had kept the picture for many years but lost it when he came to America. Being fed on this complex soup of many different animals’ milk and food instead of just his mother’s milk, made him, according to his mother, more powerful than any other human and invulnerable to injury. The integration of all those animal proteins, unfiltered by a human mother’s body, gave him animal strength, animal passions, and an animal’s will to survive. His face grew broad with a high smooth forehead, a flattened, wide nose, and bulging, intense eyes. His mouth, nose and eyebrows broke his face into three straight furrows: permanent stony waves in a brown puddle. His hair was not straight like Kieu’s but dull, with a slightly wavy, curly texture. His memories of childhood consisted primarily of two things: watching his mother’s seemingly endless primal scenes with every imaginable type, color and shape of man until he was deemed too old to be in the room and was sent into the streets. There he would bully and beat the other boys, some even several years older, until he emerged as the dominant in a haggard league of submissive followers. The other thing he remembered was a result of the war fought there by the O.U.S. during the 1960’s and 1970’s. He had been born a generation after the war and he and the other boys felt cheated and angry at this cruel fate, so they created mini-war scenarios in the fields around the town. One day, one of the children he was playing with was unfortunate enough to step on a Claymore mine left over from that earlier war. The 700 steel balls embedded in the one and a half pounds of C4 plastic explosive in this sophisticated fragmentation mine were delivered in a concentrated 60% arc at a soldier’s legs, making it a weapon designed to demoralize rather than necessarily kill troops. It had a slightly more dramatic effect on the small boy however, blowing his legs in two different directions, and leaving him effectively cut in half but conscious for several seconds, lying on the stump of his lower body. The other boys ran away but Dang Yeak watched him die, plopping forward like a sack. Driven by his animal will he circled cautiously around to look into the cavern of the boy’s torso, a mysterious secret of nature to a curious seven year old. The jumbled shredded organs emerging from the round casket of the body did not horrify him. He moved in closer to try to make sense of the bizarre new information. The boy had not been a friend so he felt no pity, only a stubborn awe holding his eyes on the forbidden sight, feeling that if he looked away for even an instant, and then looked back, the scene would change. He felt as if he should take something, a memento of this strange indoctrination to remind him later. As it turned out, the image would sink into the back of his eyes and dry there for his entire life. He came closer, awkwardly stepping into the pool of body fluid surrounding the body. The boy had no jewelry, no distinctive clothing. Then Dang Yeak remembered that one of the boy’s toenails was black. He left the torso and began to search urgently for the boy’s legs, but the only pieces of his body he could find were unidentifiable. Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw two old men in black approaching slowly in the direction of the body. For a reason he couldn’t understand, he ran away, the tears beginning to come not so much for the boy, or for the ache in his eyes at the remaining sight, but for his inability to find the token that would have given the event a meaning. When he got home he sat for a long time behind his apartment building, crying occasionally in convulsive hiccups, staring at the ground between his feet. Then he got an inspired idea. He picked up a chunk of mortar and brick and placed his foot on the edge of the curbing. He aimed carefully and brought the brick down quickly onto his little toe. His intention was to permanently blacken his toenail as the other boy had, but instead the brick smashed his two smallest toes flat. Eventually, Dang Yeak would have to have them amputated but for several years after that, these two toes would hang like tiny broken wings on his sandals. He didn’t cry after that because it seemed like the right thing to do. These events only seemed to prepare Dang Yeak for the difficult road he would eventually travel to Old America. Phan Thi Kieu had a far different set of experiences in her upbringing. Though not affluent by American standards, she was the only daughter of one of the most powerful and wealthy men in the region of Vietnam where she was born. Her two brothers and father protected and pampered her. She was dressed like a small princess and began to genuinely believe that she was blessed and destined to escape the poverty surrounding her by the sheer elegance of the persona her family had created for her. Younger by several years than Dang Yeak, she had no interest in her elders’ memories of the war. Also, the fact that her father had been a Communist sympathizer and sheltered several political figures meant that her family was spared much of the hardship after the war. As she blossomed into a young woman of robust, sensual beauty, she inspired such a tidal wave of interest in both the boys and the men of the town that her father felt it necessary to limit the field of her suitors by demanding some special and extraordinarily difficult test to assure their worthiness. Kieu’s father thought long and hard but finally came up with what he felt was the perfect test. It would require not only courage, dexterity and strength but also a Zen quiet and abandonment of ego that would assure that Kieu’s husband would be a true hero. All the villagers waited in rapt anticipation when Kieu’s father began to build an elaborate structure in the front yard of their large home. He built a sturdy chicken coop with three sides covered by thin wooden slats but with the fourth side open. On the side opposite the open side there was a small square hole formed by two slats running vertically and two heavy pieces of wood nailed across them horizontally. On the open side he planted a thick wooden stake in the ground with a neat circular hole cut into it near the top, making it look like a giant sewing needle. Through the square hole in the box and the hole in the wooden stake he slipped a metal shaft, an axle from a farm wagon that had long ago been left to rot in a field. Then into the box he put some hay, a small dented pan with some water in it, and finally, his best and most beautiful chicken Fi Tu Sho. On one end of the axle, the part that passed through the square hole in the box, he put a short crank arm. On the other, the part that passed through the giant needle, he mounted a wagon wheel that he had saved from the same ruined wagon. The spokes in the wheel were thin but numerous, set about two inches apart. As he finally tapped in the cotter pin to hold the wheel onto the axle, the town’s people were all gathered around, whispering to each other and speculating on the function this strange device would serve in his daughter’s nuptial contest. Kieu’s father turned to them and in his best, booming voice told them the conditions of the contest for his daughter’s hand. Any prospective suitor of his daughter would have to remove the bird from the cage through the spokes of the wheel without harming the bird in any way. When a man had brought him his prize chicken, unhurt, he could have Kieu for his bride. The old man then turned to make his way back to his house, but before he did, two men he had hired took their positions at the box. One of them, an old man with no front teeth but a full head of glorious, long hair took his place at the crank and began turning it in slow deliberate spirals, as if he knew he would be there for a long time. The other, a Viet Cong veteran with a long ugly scar running down the entire length of his right leg, took his place beside the box with a rifle. He was there to ensure that there would be no foul play or cheating, and the town’s people knew he had a very bad temper. He sat on a...