Alligators of Abraham Read Online Free PDF Page A

and women half-naked to their britches, praying in the streets and fornicating and lighting fires and sacrificing stray dogs. And of these he said, “You see what comes of Democracy.”
    And now your father set your grandmother to cleaning his dress blues, and throughout the hours of the day he polished his saber and cleaned his revolver, even as the static swelled into a roar and your bedroom filled with the sounds of forest fires, crackling and gusting embers, with skies sizzling, with the screams of those trapped, and you trembled within this maelstrom until your father roused you from bed, and he said, “It will be all right. I promise you,” but you heard only the crackling and the roaring, and he took you by the hand, the smooth warmth, and he led you to the hearth where your mother and grandmother sat, their fat terrified eyes as the raving of a thousand speakers echoed throughout your house.
    When those speakers woke they woke into Abraham’s voice, crackling and cavernous, and you amongst the thousands of thousands, vast and silent, mesmerized, while Abraham declared the elimination of those who pledged rebellion. Now with your family, within the glow of the hearth and the wood smoke, Abraham’s voice echoed, “Our wayward brothers have crossed the final line,” and “Shall the great ambitions of our forefathers whither into the very dust?” And while Abraham called you into his service, as his voice hummed in the language of rockets aloft, of wailing shells and clotted dirt, now throughout the land five hundred children were roused from bed by militiamen. And in the name of liberty and patriotic sentiment came this great cobbling together of sleep-eyed fragments from every children’s choir in town, these children wrested from musket-fisted fathers and baying hounds, these pale-faced children in their furs and their father’s furs, soon lined shoulder to shoulder and stifling yawns before City Hall, where they clasped red and white candles by the copper stems. And what fine songs from the lips of these, from the deep night to the rise of dawn, and even after those songs ceased from the mouths of children, they were again cast unto all from these speakers, the tinny warbling of children recorded and born again and never abating even before the muted light of gas lamps, their faces lit red, white, and blue by the bursting of fireworks.
    And now your mother and father said nothing to you although through closed doors, the thumping of fists against walls, the clattering of picture frames onto the floor, your mother weeping. And your grandmother in her robe, unable to sleep for the crackling songs of children, her gray flesh and blue flannel nightgown, her sips of hot brandy and her fogged eye glasses and how she said unto you, “This country was sure better off before we got that colored president,” and more brandy sipped, and from the throat of this ancient woman, a belch unsuppressed and released. The stink of her dinner, the brandy.
    By the next morning those speakers loomed, dormant of sound, and those young men and middle-aged men and young boys who lied about their age, crammed into wagons with rifles and muskets, their heads swaddled in beaver-fur hats and their bodies tufted in coon and bison hides, these men lined city blocks from the doors of makeshift enlistment offices, the white puffs of their breath, while frozen flags waved stiff as tarpaulin from second story windows, from gas lamps, from balconies.
    And no matter his proclamations or assurances your father soon stood at the top of the stairs in his dress blues, his tassels, the jangle of his many medals, the glint of his polished saber, and your father said, “While I would rather not leave,” and he placed his hand gently upon your shoulder, “I must see these rebels and their families and their homes eradicated.” And he stooped to you and said, “I have ever loved you boys