by Jon Doughboy
We’re the 9/11 Roadshow. Brought to you by Saudi Jihadis. Brought to you by George W. Bush, by decades of clumsy Middle East intervention. Shia? Sunni? Step right up and spin the Mesopotamian roulette wheel! Brought to you like a tray of hot kabsa, whether you want it or not, by the dissolution of the British and Ottoman Empires. What is it, my fellow Americans, that attracts you to the desert? And brought to you, of course, by oil. Black gold seeping through sand all the way to the surface, to your gas tank, to the furnace hiccupping heat in your basement, to your technical outerwear fleece $99.99 while supplies last, while the earth still giveth up that sweet, sweet crude that we love.
We ship the remains of the Twin Towers, shattered glass and charred steel and melted bolts. Respectfully, we ship them, grieving with unipolar solemnity. Employing a caravan of patriotic Teamsters operating under stormy skies, we load the debris and bring it to Americans across the land so they can experience the awesome terror first hand. Make way. We’re following an executive order. We have bipartisan support. Trauma binds a nation and its people. We wear black armbands but our blood, dear sirs and madams, flows red, white, and blue. No one can doubt our loyalties. They’re incontestable, known knowns.
In the mountains we greet you, America. We remove the remains from our trucks and lay them out at the foothills. A nearby creek gurgles white with glacial till. Varmints slip through chicken wire. A derelict barn shakes in the wind. Hikers stop by on their way to the trailhead. They weep. They ask us if we know anyone who died that day. They ask us if we’re cops or firemen or if we’re with the CIA. Locals pull up in rusty pickup trucks and ask about enlisting. Do you think we’ll catch Bin Laden? Do you think they’ll execute Saddam live on tv? What really happened to Hoffa? When we pack up later, lashing America’s woes and fears and rickety hegemony back on the trucks, we notice a few bolts are missing, even a shard of steel beam that was closest to the second plane’s collision. We double check the inventory but don’t notify the higher-ups. We’re American too. We mourn with you.
The debris looks ancient installed in the prairies. People gather round like it’s a carnival, like we’re clowns and carneys and all this fear and heartache is part of the show. Children scramble over what was once a symbol of American might, their fingers sticky from cotton candy. At night, the grass murmurs with insect life. The light above crosses the sky steadily, an NSA satellite keeping vigil over this fair land.
Gradually, as our journey continues across towns and cities in this great and fertile country, we lose more and more of our precious cargo. America is eating its molten horrors, sucking them back within its crust. Land to sea, day to dusk, people scurry over in the dark and clamber onto the truck feasting on the remains of 9/11 as if our role all along was simply to set this table, to serve this feast. Streetlamp twilight reflects blue in their bared teeth until dissolving in shadowy maws. They ingest glass and steel and concrete, gnawing the bones of empire until all that’s left is one tiny bolt lashed carefully to its bed. The half-sated crowd pauses to examine this tiny remnant. We went to war for this? they ask. Is this a joke? But this anger, too, is a form of grief. We remain silent. We let them mourn as they see fit. The night passes. Waves break foamy on the shore.
Come morning, even the final bolt is gone. Ratchet straps lie in a tangle in the middle of the flatbed like a chalk outline marking where the bolt had been. A moment of silence. Then, even though our cargo is gone, we roll on to our next destination for we have a mission to accomplish and even if we wanted to, none of us can recall the way home.
Jon Doughboy is a story installer and docent at the Museum of Unpublished Prose. There are no visiting hours. @doughboywrites