Neomythology - Firepower

He was never a true believer, but he could see which way the winds were blowing. He had never married or had children, preferring the company of books over people, and the Party leaders respected this enough that they were willing to ignore his aristocratic blood.

It would be a waste, they decided, to lose the talents of an educated man who wanted to contribute to the cause. So they welcomed him, and he kept his head down, always atoning for the unfortunate circumstances of his birth.

When he talked about the villages around his childhood home, he expressed his gratitude that the Party was going to make sure everything ran smoothly.

“The soil here is terrible,” he would always complain. “It would be a miracle to make anything grow here. The men and women who work the land must be breaking their backs for us, we should respect that!”

The Party agreed, and they decided he should be the one to administer that dreadful section. The villagers did know him, and it would take a generation or two for the people to let go of their traditions and superstitions. Who better to lead them into the future than the man who had proudly rejected his own former titles?

He did somehow manage to meet his quotas, just barely. Sometimes he would need a few extra weeks, but the Party was lenient. He was always so frightfully apologetic when he asked for more time that the city men could see that he understood the price of failure.

Those well learned Communists may have been able to match his raw intelligence, but they didn't know his country, and he kept that advantage to himself. He let his people keep small stores of grain, and he enjoyed those late summer nights when he would sit in his office with a bit of tobacco and dream up situations that would require permission to be a bit more strict with the peasantry.

That’s how these things worked, after all. A smoothly running operation would be expected to improve, but one on the brink of failure would be tolerated in its mediocrity. Perhaps he never truly let go of his noble mindset after all. He laughed at the thought of the Party imagining that he was scrambling to impress them, and was happy to maintain that illusion for as long as it kept his people safe and fed.

As the years passed, that illusion was no longer enough. He was sixty when the new leader started demanding more, and sixty-two the first summer he feared he might not be able to deliver. His mind was as sharp as it ever was, and he knew that the Party was asking the impossible.

A young man from the country made an appointment to see him. His sister's baby had died. His sister was so skinny now, her milk just wasn't enough, and the infant had starved at her breast.

It wasn't an accusation, it was just a statement of fact. The young man's eyes were so full of weariness and pain that there was no room left for hostility.

“I'm sorry,” he told the visitor. “Please give your sister my deepest condolences.”

There was nothing else to say. The young man went home to his village, and a week later he was found dead in his bed.

The days were growing shorter, and he watched the squirrels scurry around to prepare their nests for the winter. He let out a soft, bitter laugh at the irony. He used to hunt those things as a boy, and now the food was better fed than he was.

He had surrendered his own father's guns over a decade ago, just like everyone else. The only guns left in the country were in the hands of the military, or on the walls of high ranking Party members who were able to keep their revolutionary memorabilia.

He visited the military base, and he happened to glance at a pile of old rifles. “They don't work,” the commander said. “We're storing them until they can be retrieved for disposal.”

“Do you mind if I take a couple?” He leaned heavily on his walking stick, the one he had borrowed just for this occasion, and let his eyes glaze over. “To have on my wall? I wasn't able to fight back then, and I--” He sighed the hopeless sigh of an old man who had just come face to face with all of his failures and everything he lacked.

The commander, twenty years younger, laughed. The poor old fool wanted to hang a few broken guns on his wall to feel like he earned his place at the table.

Slapping him on the back, the commander replied, “Take as many as you can carry, Comrade! Have to give the people the right impression of you, no?”

The old man winced, and lowered his head in thanks. “I appreciate it, Comrade,” he replied, hesitating with insecurity at the last word.

He took five rifles home with him, and got to work repairing them. Part of him wanted to keep one for himself, but he could still see which way the winds were blowing, so he gave all five to the villagers. A secret, he said, before returning home.

When the Party showed up at his door, he apologized for not being able to offer them coffee. They understood, of course, coffee was in short supply these days.

They asked him where he hid the rifles he had stolen. He didn't know what they were talking about. They hit him in the face and asked again. The old man started shaking, he didn't know what rifles they meant, he didn’t recall anything of the sort.

The commander took his pistol off his hip and aimed.

“Tell me, Comrade, what you did with the property you stole from the people, or the last sound you hear will be my weapon firing at your head.”

With that, the old man laughed. He dropped the pretense of civility, and looked the younger man in the eye.

“Go on then, boy. Do what you came to do.”

The commander smirked. He put his weapon away, that response was the confirmation of guilt he needed.

“That would be a waste of a bullet, I'm afraid. You're going to the camps.”

The old man drew a sharp breath. “For how long?” he asked.

The commander just laughed.

“For as long as you last.”

♥