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CounterPunch
October
19, 2002
Concerned Citizen:
episode 4
Security
Detail
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
SCRIPT AND SUMMATIVE COMMENTS [0:30 COLOR]
[Opens with standard procession of sedans,
gleaming, tailfinned, gliding over federally-funded blacktop.
Then the obligatory shots of people having evenings out; caucasians
conversing in bistros with unsullied white tablecloths and deferential
brown waitpeople. The opening theme, the jazz-fusion "Horehound's
Groove", chikka-chikkaing mid-tempo and mid-range as the
familiar deadpan voice of TV's Brock Horehound intones gravelly,
secure in his poses as omniscient oracular figure, director,
and producer of the series.]
Horehound: This
is the city. Los Angeles, California.
[More shots here, mirroring the opening
montage. A queue of men in black, blue, and gray suits at counters
awaiting lunch, presumably, if Uncle Ben with a white hat and
a ladle is any reliable indicator. Both before and after the
opening line from Horehound, the visuals leave the viewer with
an overwhelming sense of anonymity.
One can speculate as to the reasons for
these willfully generic "face in the crowd" shots.
Certainly, ratings were still declining, as they would during
the entirety of the show's run. However, one can speculate that
other factors came into play to drive Concerned Citizen auteur
Grant Cameron to project said anonymity.
As biographers of Cameron as well as
other historians have noted, Cameron was shellshocked by the
barrage of syndicated columnists that took him to task for what
they perceived to be the show's failings. Durwood Matthews,
of the Squire-Mahler Group, lambasted Grant Cameron in a Sunday
column that ran prior to this episode for even being involved
with the program, saying that "his message is at once heavy-
handed and irrelevant, and it does no favors to people interested
in truly bridging the generation gap."
Though that statement was vacuous and
immediately dismissable, there were issues nonetheless that
promised a publicity backlash, which I will discuss in this
document in due time.]
Horehound: Los
Angeles--city of many nicknames. City of Angels, with churches
ranging from the exotic to the historical.
[A shot of a statue of an angel, done
in a Renaissance style, with a body at once full and ripe and
replete with bounty, with eternal life. A jumpcut to a Krishna
service, complete with sheetwearers dancing rhythmically, almost
in caricature. Then another to an old Mission, deserted, bereft.]
Horehound: LA
came from Catholic missionary efforts and today exists in service
to a different form of catholicism. Namely, to ensure that people
of all faiths treat each other equitably, fairly, and charitably.
[The stock images keep coming, treading
a predictable path through metal, plastic, and glass, images
of rabbis hugging priests groping nuns, or some such, in a
manner similar to the bearers of bad tidings and how they trudged
paths, time and again, to the Cameron doorstep.
The unfriendliness of the print media
ran beyond mere harshness in the columns of syndicated pundits,
as well. Decades-old allegations began to surface in the Hollywood
insider press as well as in the tabloid papers which tended
toward libel and its sister pastimes. As the ratings troughed
in a way akin only to those of Vince McMahon's XFL many years
later, scurrilous "first-person narratives" began to
surface in the more sordid monthlies with the obvious intent
of torpedoing Grant Cameron's career at point of impact.
These narratives were for the most part
frighteningly identical. A "figure from Cameron's past"--an
old girlfriend, gin-soaked and skid rowed, perhaps, or maybe
an old school chum--weighs in with "shocking revelations"
about how Cameron tied women to the bed and wore his Badge and
Gun suit while performing cunnilingus on naive, nubile would-
be starlets. Or about Cameron's preference for the company of
young men having something to do with the seemingly constant
revisions of his marital status.]
Horehound: Different
people have different ideas of what charity is, however. Some
believe that charity is something that should be practiced without
reservation.
[Here, a shot of women in white smocks
ladeling soup from a kettle for swarthy indigent men who shine
with the gauntness of doing without. Cameron, whether serving
as director or in a different capacity, bore an especial fondness
for images of deprivation being righted. Some connect his affinity
for those images with the deprivation inherent in his own upbringing.
Though I do bear a certain sympathy for
Cameron here, I cannot help but add as a caveat that Cameron's
commitment to seeing the starving fed would have been complemented
nicely by a commitment to civil liberties, to freedom of expression.]
Horehound: Others
believe that charity involves them taking from those who give--unwillingly.
When they act on that belief, I go to work.
[A shot of two men in matching black
ski masks leather jackets speaking would raise the hackles of
even the most feeble-minded viewer, I'd imagine.]
Horehound: I'm
a concerned citizen.
[And the theme starts anew, a pulsating
serpentine track that spins around images montaged here for
the first and last time. Horehound in a leopard-skin pair of
briefs. Horehound in a flannel and jeans on a shooting range.
Horehound tangoing with a leggy blonde in a dark bar.
Looked at in the light of the bad publicity
afflicting Cameron and his pet project, these images and the
curious directorial choice they underscore bespeak a willingness
on the show's part to substitute those glaring, odious tabloid
images with their own cathode variety. The choice, in a sense,
is as clear as can be imagined. Cameron, by allowing this conscious
focus on Horehound as a sexual being, distracts from his real
or perceived personal flaws that littered newsstands the nation
over.
And I can understand this tactic. This
sleight-of-hand dissemination. These careworn tracks of deceit.
After all, who among us has not covered our tracks? Who among
us has not lied to protect our sinecures? Certainly not I. Most
certainly not the inimitable Matthias Carlos.]
Horehound: It
was Tuesday--the date doesn't matter, it was a time of sadness--and
it was cool in Los Angeles. I was having little luck getting
reinstated on the force and less luck maintaining my sanity.
It was time for me to go to work.
[And indeed, it was time for me to go
to work as well. From the first day of the semester, it was
time for me to go to work. Not just to teaching--I could do
that with my mind and eyes closed--but to fulfilling a promise
I'd made to Angie, my sweet vanilla rose.]
Horehound: An
acquaintance of mine was the longtime owner of a mom and pop
grocery store. As of late, there had been a rash of robberies
[The camera focuses on Horehound's vehicle
navigating a series of increasingly rundown streets as we see
colored faces for the first time. Certainly a coincidence.]
Horehound: I
was asked to work a temporary "freelance" security
detail. Perhaps to throw a scare into the robbers, perhaps to
figure out their methodology. It was what I did. I was a cop.
[Horehound parks his car on the curb
in front of the store, in what would seemingly be a loading
zone. But there were no signs, no loading, no people even. The
street was blank like a dry-erase board in a university classroom
on Monday morning, just after the custodial staff has shuffled
through its last classroom in a listless emptying of wastebaskets
and the like. Just before the students file in, flush with promise
and anticipation, waiting to be filled with knowledge.And perhaps
the only thing Matthias Carlos and I had in common was our respective
desires to fill the students with knowledge. I'm not claiming
he was a bad man. He was, however, in my spot, doing the same
work as me, making three times as much per course not including
benefits. He had an office. I had a desk in a glorified airplane
hangar.
I was not without motive, is what I'm
saying here.]
Chen: Mr.
Horehound! Greetings!
[An almost stereotypical shifty-eyed
manner about the presumably non- Maoist Chinese grocer, almost
like the houseboy Peter from Bachelor Father gone bad. It is
easy to assume how we are to take this character: comic, even
when serious. If there is sadness in Chen, it is pantomime,
the face of a sad clown. It is not the sadness of the privileged,
of the non- ethnic other.
I do not mean here that privilege equals
whiteness in anything other than the most abstractly representational
sense. For instance, I had heard that Matthias Carlos had a
certain dark strain to his gene pool, if you catch my drift.
Despite my whiteness/privilege, I was relegated to adjunct duty,
even as his chiseled cheeks pulsed as he orated, even as sweet
smells followed him to his vehicle as he strided toward it, as
he drove it with such assurance and ease, checking the comely
asses of the classroom flowers in the rearview, having no clue
even for a moment that his life was about to change dramatically.]
Horehound: Chen!
How are you, friend?
[A sharkfin of racial paternalism cuts
through the dead pool waters of this turgid, hopeless plot.
One can only guess at to who this caricature of a store owner
was intended to appeal. But of course, this gets even better.]
Chen: Pretty
good, if you don't count the backaches! And the robberies....
[Chen's face, like that of so many television
ethnics of that era, is a study in grotesquerie and overstatement.
An engaging "comic" smile, giving way to a caricature
of sadness as authentically Oriental as the fortune cookie display
in a Safeway.]
Horehound: The
backaches I can't help you with, friend, but tell me about the
robberies.
[Horehound's engaging smile carries
the scene here, a smile once again tinged with the aforementioned
racial paternalism that so many have found so objectionable
for so long.]
Chen: Well,
I can't predict when they happen, why they happen, how they happen.
[Chen blinks his eyes a few times then
wipes his brow with the back of his hand. There is a silence
that lingers like the smell of chili simmering in a closed in
house, broken up only toward the end by the sound of a car horn
dying in the distance.]
Horehound: Well,
that certainly narrows things down....
[These words muttered as Chen has no
visible reaction to them, in the same manner that Matthias Carlos
had no visible reaction to the typewritten notes that turned
up in his departmental mailbox from the second week of the semester
onward, notes that bore succinct yet powerful messages. I will
always love you. I think of you often, especially at night.
You are being watched.]
Chen: I
couldn't even identify the robbers, Mr. Horehound. They're Negro,
but beyond that I couldn't tell you.
[During a Japanophile phase when I was
teaching in Wyoming, I once happened across an Oriental shopkeeper
who had a cadence very similar to that of a commentator on Japanese
newscasts. When I asked him if he was Japanese, he responded
vehemently, saying that he hated the Japanese. While bagging
my magazine and toiletries, he amended that statement to say
that all Asians hate the Japanese.]
Horehound: Negro.
Young? Old? Tall, thin, short, dumpy? You can do better.
[While his expression maintained the
placidity common to all baggers, his wife's face bore enough
rage to fill both of their chest cavities. She had remained
silent for our entire exchange. Certainly, if I had mentioned
his wife's quietness to the husband, he would've responded apologetically.
Claiming that her English wasn't very good, or that she had
been shy since she arrived in our country, or perhaps just attempting
to compensate for her refusal to talk by saying twice as many
words.
Words that mean nothing. Words that serve
as smokescreens. Words that intend to distract the hearer from
the true substance of the situation. Words like those I uttered
to Carlos even as those notes began to sprout in his mailbox,
notes that informed him that he would have to resolder breached
connections for reference letters, always hoping against hope
itself that he would somehow find himself rescued from a professional
and economic uncertainty even more acute than my own.
I would ask him for lecturing tips, telling
him I wanted to be more dynamic when "speaking to the kids",
all the while knowing how deeply in debt he was [a private investigation
of his finances indicated that he had all the classic symptoms
of someone headed toward a bad credit rating, including but
not limited to beleaguerment by revolving debt and the equally
undesirable history of late payments that had poked its little
head out even during the recent boom time of status and salary].
I knew he could be broken easily precisely because he would
never see it coming, because so much was already acting on him
that broke him from the inside.]
Chen: I
just don't know.
[As Chen covers his eyes in apparent
shame with his fingers and palm, I myself think of a time in
which I heard Matthias Carlos utter the same phrase to me. We
had repaired to a local bar one Friday after all work was completed,
and he used that phrase quite a bit. I don't know if I should
stay here and work when opportunities await me elsewhere, he
said. It's nice here and I have some great professional relationships,
but I just don't know, he said. I just don't know.
His assumption was fallacious, yet understandable,
and ultimately easily exploited because I could relate to it
so well. He assumed that all of what he had--the title, the
corner office, the pedagogical latitude and the photocopier
privileges--was somehow irrevocable. As if he could count on
"the system", even when it always seemed to find a
way of proving itself corrupt and heedless of the needs of those
who made it work.
He thought he wasn't expendable. But
we all are expendable. We all are built to have our teeth rot
from our skulls, to have our skeletons disintegrate. Built to
be unremembered even a generation after death, at best a name
in a water-damaged family Bible. He placed faith where there
was not even an inkling of the Spirit, and for that he found
himself booted, with conviction, square between the goalposts.]
Horehound: You
can do better.
[An observant viewer would note the
archness in the voice of the Concerned Citizen as he renders
a friend into an interrogation subject, seemingly out of force
of habit.]
Chen: I
try, Brock. I try.
[A closeup of Chen's face reveals exasperation.
The bumper music fades in, and as the viewer meditates on an
exterior shot of the building, he is left to wonder exactly
how Horehound will proceed on such a flimsy description of the
suspect[s]. Then the viewer realizes that Horehound has no real
power, and wonders why he thought even fleetingly about the
issue to begin with as the screen fades to black and then into
commercial.
After the interregnum for product shills
and such, one might expect this show to "pick up where
it left off". With Concerned Citizen, however, that expectation
wouldn't be realistic. Thus, it can't be that surprising to
see a black screen upon return from the ad break. Nor can it
be surprising to hear Grant Cameron--as Horehound, of course--holding
forth.]
Horehound: Imagine
a world in which your eyesight has failed you. You can hear conversations,
and be seen, but you can't see.
[The screen's blackness is beginning
to give way to light, and the viewer is treated to a semi-gloss
white wall. Nothing but colourfields yet, though. I presume
this effect is intended to simulate the assumption of sight.
Many assumptions are "simulated"
in like manners, in this series as well as elsewhere. Perhaps
simulation isn't the word I'm looking for. Perhaps "framing"
fits better.]
Horehound: How
would you make your way in that world? How would you know what
to do? Where to go?
[The shot switches to almost a second-person
vantage point, where the viewer becomes the "you"
in question, as objects mill around him, cars and Chinese delivery
folk on bicycles, mothers on mopeds, fathers with baby strollers.
A whir of movement, of existence itself, and all of it a threat
to our blind, apparently inert selves.
Horehound then goes silent and there
is no music, just the bleeps and bumps of existence, which the
viewer is left to frame in a way not unlike the way in which
certain parties were left to frame the evidence of Matthias
Carlos' plagiarism, evidence arranged perhaps a bit too neatly
to be coincidental.]
Horehound: It
might be easy to imagine being frustrated at your loss of perhaps
the most important of all senses.
[This monologic burst is complemented
by the spectacle of the most inept blind man in America attempting
to dial a rotary phone--rotary being the fashion of the time--with
a Number 2 pencil as some incongruous up- tempo horn arrangement
begins to sound. This whole bit is especially ironic in light
of the blind man's appearance, impeccable in a neatly pressed
2-piece black suit.]
Horehound: So
enjoy your sight! And be kind to the blind... that's a great
way in which you too can be a Concerned Citizen.
[And perhaps the most absurd PSA in
the history of American television concludes with an anonymous,
almost shadowy, figure placing his hand on the shoulder of the
sightless dandy, as if to say "Hey, brother, I'll dial
the phone for you" as he lifts the pencil from the dialing
hand itself.
Perhaps it is the American way, this
allowing strangers to solve all of our problems. We are a people
who live in thrall to fast food microwaved in conditions as
sanitary as amalgamated garbage dumps and abbatoirs. We are
a people who rely on deus ex machina quick fixes for every problem
we have.
Ironically enough, on the same subject,
more or less. When the seeds of the destruction of Matthias
Carlos began their vengeful bloom, they were harvested by dupes
and rubes barely worthy of Windexing the frames that housed
my degrees. Custodial lackeys, "finding" envelopes
that were left on floors by concerned parties, returning them
to what they perceived to be their rightful homes.
And as that went on, I bided my time.
Adjuncting.]
Horehound: After
a short period to get acclimated to the store, I began to become
a regular fixture around the register, greeting customers and
the like.
[A black screen here gives way to Horehound
smiling affably, attired in his familiar white shirt and gray
slacks, topped off with a black bow tie and a navy blue apron.
Horehound bagging groceries, smiling affably, attired in his
familiar.
I find that I'm having some trouble
with this particular episode. In one sense, I feel a sense of
identification--as troubling and ironic as this may read to
my former colleagues--with Horehound shunted into a wage- slave
role.
But that's neither here nor there. Not
germane to this exercise.]
Horehound: That
will be three dollars and seventy-nine cents, ma'am.
[An earnest proffering of the hand from
the cop turned clerk and itinerant security guard. The shot
pans from Horehound's hand to a shriveled caucasian hand, female,
liverspotted but otherwise clean as a Motel 6 towel.]
Elderly Shopper: You're new here, boy. Are you Mr. Chen's son?
[Given the ethnic differences between
Horehound and Chen, this question seems implausible even on
its face. But Concerned Citizen reflected the mass of its creator's
output, in its blithe insistence that people who weren't white
men in suits and ties are somehow "simpler" than those
who bore penises, a caucasian lineage, and a closet full of
neckties. Thus you often find the concerns of blacks, women,
and other groups seemingly intentionally maligned in these scripts.]
Horehound: No,
no, of course not! I'm just helping out around here.
[A summary shot of Horehound's face
puts over his winsome smile, the ersatz twinkle in his eye laden
with a palpable malice. The camera holds Horehound's face only
briefly, quickly panning back to the elderly customer.]
Elderly Shopper: Oh, I know! I was just joshing you, sonny!
[Her face here is contorted in mirth,
in that awful way all grandmothers grin at grandsons who they
can never hope to comprehend. ]
Horehound: Joshing.
Of course.
[Confronted with the mundane humor of
the workaday world, Horehound does what so many of us do. He
forces a smile, almost grudgingly, with one eye on the customer
and another on the clock.
It's easy to forget that Horehound's
primary purpose in the Chinaman's store isn't simply to sell
and bag groceries. Likewise, it's almost easy for me to forget
the circumstances under which I write this. The toothaches that
numb my jaw. The constant diet of cheap starches, of saturated
fats, of 99 cent value menu items. The realization that when
something breaks, I may not be able to afford to fix it. ]
Elderly Shopper: You don't smile much, do you?
[Her face assumes a pose of matriarchal
concern. To fully understand what is going on in this scene,
it is probably best to imagine watching a slideshow and hearing
dialogue as someone's face "freezes"--as a mother
might say--in a certain expression.]
Horehound: I
smile when there's reason to.
[As the boxing announcers would often
say about a lowblowing contender, Horehound's face asked nor
gave any quarter. A graceless flint in his eyes, settled putty
in his cheeks. A tourist waiting for a Customs shakedown. A
glassy-eyed stripmall manager leaving a Gentleman's Club as
2 AM approached and a treacherous glaze of rain lined the blacktop.
His refusal to smile in this situation--a
banal occasion of commerce--seems almost "proactive"
here, in sharp defiance of the bromide "smile and the whole
world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone." Or perhaps
it isn't sharp defiance at all when people maintain their stony
facades.]
Elderly Shopper: Well, there's always a reason to smile... almost
always.
[The shopper looks down at the counter,
as if feinting circumspection. In my recent retail capacities,
I have noticed just how many shoppers harbor furtive yens to
"shoot the shit" or to "make small talk."
As if my world can be slowed down to a waltz rhythm. As if,
when my world has collapsed around me, I can be mollified with
jacks, a rubber ball, and brightly hued stones of a cheap and
replaceable sort.]
Horehound: Almost?
[One can only guess the writers' motivations
for dragging this scene out to such an unholy length. Perhaps
they felt this a necessary device for imparting local color.
For granting the show's dwindling audiences the opportunity
to see two hack actors working a pale, dismal mercantile tableau.
Given the flatness of this scene, one can only speculate that
even in this would-be gestative episode of the series, the writers
have already given up. Ceded that the premise was pocked, that
no amount of spackle would cover its holes.]
Elderly Shopper: I didn't want to bring this up....
[The woman's voice has taken a turn
for the pensive, has assumed the quavering tones of the nightowl
talk radio caller, tones strung-out by street noises, by creaks
and pings beyond rented walls, cotton blankets. These are the
voices that fear is sold to ultimately; the silent majority who
vocalizes only when agitated by events beyond its control.
Would you like to make more money? Sure,
we all do. Do you or someone you love aged 50 to 80 need life
insurance? Sure, of course, yes. Would you like to blanket the
third-world with bombs? Of course, of course. Anything as long
as I feel safe, as long as these terrible cable TV graphics
packages disappear from my screen.]
Horehound: Spit
it out, ma'am. What is it?
[Triggered by the hesitation in the shopper's
voice, Horehound here enters the realm of the bad cop, the mode
of the bully-boy griller. And here we see his darkside, as he
uses his force to steamroll someone who might have been favorably
disposed to him.
He watches her, wordlessly, as she turns
her back, retreating too without words, making her way into
a driving monsoon-like rain, leaving the door to flutter in
her wake.
Horehound lights a cigarette and stares
out the door of the empty store. The sky is gray, then the scene
is black and final, as somber, string- fluttery tones carry
us from scene to scene.]
Horehound: A
few days passed, and while we were no closer to overtly solving
the problem of robberies, I had gained Old Man Chen's trust enough
to be entrusted with the store as he went to Cleveland on a personal
matter....
[The music has become less jittery and
pizzicato, more upbeat, more like the music ot tranquility,
of product showcases on The Price Is Right. Horehound and Chen
have a muted conversation: Horehound decked out in a white canvas
apron; Chen in a black suit with a heavy leather suitcase in
hand as he pushes his way out the door, leaving, presumably,
for the airport.
Some have opined that this episode is
by far the most poorly- realized of this series. I see no reason
to argue with that, even as I maintain that rumors of this episode
having been written in two hours on the set the day of shooting
are most unfounded. Even with performance at this level, it's
ludicrous to assume that the sets could've been assembled that
quickly.]
Horehound: I
had hoped that Chen's departure would have afforded me the opportunity
to tackle sundry inventory tasks. But almost as soon as he left,
trouble made its way in the front door.
[Trouble, as always, female and lethal.
Trouble with hips that press the hemlines of the knee-length
skirt that houses them. Trouble with breasts, lips, everything
full and bouncy.
Trouble with a black eye. The camera
focuses in on the shiner, and the ebullience of the bumper music
gives way to a tragic, somber tone.]
Femme Fatale: Funny,
you don't look much like Chen.
[A standard reaction. We don't look
as we're "supposed" to. We're always too fat, too
thin, too old, too white. Our flags aren't big enough, aren't
stuck to public surfaces.
But sometimes I do go on.]
Horehound: I
get that a lot, actually.
[I do go on, I say, like I'm some kind
of old biddy in a 1940s light comedy. Imagine me tittering as
I say that, anxious to make a good impression. Imagine me holding
forth as if I were in an interview for a job selling shoes in
Sears. Imagine me answering questions about why I want to work
there, or answering to charges that I might not have what it
takes to squeeze shoes onto the bunioned feet of old women that
reek of luncheon meat and decades of decay piled like bodies
on the floor of some third- world grass hut, each with a Humanitarian
Ration Pack marked "a gift from the United States of America."]
Femme Fatale: Has
that always been the case?
[Laos. Cambodia. Libya. Grenada. Panama.
Colombia. Vietnam. The war machine sprung to life, running in
sleddog tandem with the disinformation machine that reduces
all charges to distant flatulence in a group house.]
Horehound: Of
late, it has been.
[And people wonder why I don't show
compunction. Why I refuse to show regret for the steps I've
taken. Regret is the province of fools, ultimately. To feel
regret is to be the agent of your own disempowerment.]
Femme Fatale: I've
been watching you in here. Through the window.
[I have learned this lesson from experience.
I have partaken in soap opera confessionalism, and may do so
again.]
Horehound: Have
you liked what you've seen?
[The flutter in the debadged officer's
eyes suggests but one question: what did the President know
and when did he know it?]
Femme Fatale: That's
not as important as what other people have seen.
[A subject I've dealt with far too much
in this document. Who really cares what people have "seen"?
The specter of irrelevance comes for all of us, with an outmoded
triplicate form and a leaky ballpoint pen, offering no compromise,
offering nothing beyond bifurcated quasi-choice.]
Horehound: I
don't think I heard you correctly.
[I will, for once, break down the issue
here. I made a moral decision. I would make it again. I would
decompose into ash and resin as well. The very act of deciding
to help lay the groundwork for someone's destruction is as horrifying
as it is quotidian, and to address the reality of what brought
me as close as I ever will again be brought to the velour-lined
Valhalla of a full-time academic job is to address the essential
irrelevance of human life.
How many charred Afghans add up to a
sense of safety? How many interned in corporatized prisons for
weed busts? How many erosions on our civil liberties?
I know that for who I am, I am marked.
I know that we all are marked, that things could've been done
differently. That I could've done things differently. That the
ID cards are coming, that we are all brothers of the damned,
sisters of the scarred, blood kin of the dispossessed.
That I should watch what I say.]
Femme Fatale: I
think you are a very handsome man. Rugged.
[She leans over the counter and rests
her fingers on Horehound's cheek. But this is but a Judas kiss,
a matter of conjecture and convenience. Through the corner of
his eye, Horehound recognizes the scam.
Play action. The skirt a decoy, the real
action happening throughout the store, where three men fill
army packs with sundry victuals. All food groups represented--the
cheese group, the steak group, the wine group. Foods with high
retail value, maximum density foods, foods that make this sort
of exercise, with its risk/reward balance, something worth devising
and undertaking.
Horehound notices, sure, but it's too
late. For there is a fourth man and a crowbar and a swing as
swift as it is decisive. And as the screen fades to black, the
former cop slumps to the ground and the till is relieved of
its burdens. Its cash, its coinage, its personal checks.
And as the credits roll, I realize I've
again said too little and too much, and can only hope to rectify
one of those conditions. Again, I have failed. I have omitted
swaths of detail and have spotlighted only those that I felt
inclined to spotlight.]
THE
END
Anthony Gancarski writes frequently for Counterpunch and other
publications. His 2001 collection of fiction and poems, UNFORTUNATE
INCIDENTS, is still in print. He welcomes comments at Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com.
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