She heard the coach’s name in Hannah’s wheedling, mocking tone.

“All his sickly cells are belong to us.”

Heidi saw Greg make a gesture she didn’t understand. “What is that?”

“Hey, mom.”

“What? What is it?”

“Go nhds bnas.....mmmg” Hannah’s comment was garbled, muffled.

“Greg?”

“WHAT?”

Heidi saw a white police car with overhead lights flashing out of the corner of her eye. “It can’t be me,” she thought and looked carefully, still sideways. “Yes,” she thought, “it’s me.”

“What are we doing?” Hannah complained.

“Moving over. It’s a cop. Must be something wrong with the car,” Heidi said.

She pulled to a stop on the gravel and dirt and opened the door.

“Please get back inside, ma’am.” The cop half-glowered, half-smiled. “May I see your license and registration?

It’s interesting how time does stand still and it’s a movie because I am the wife of Len and the mother of Hannah and Greg and I have never had an accident or a traffic stop or a speeding ticket and I have walked the line pretty well and done my part and there is no way that a cop would really bother me because I am the American family. I am America. I am the dream. I am all of it, the major driving part of it, the hope of the future, the hope of the past, the hope of all eternity, fighting the slugs and the slime to raise the next climb toward the highest light we still can’t ... quite ... see.

No! A formless dread rose inside her and she smoothed her shorts down toward her knees. No. No. No.

“Would you please step outside, ma’am.”

Heidi backhanded the wireless to Greg. “Call Felice. Now.”

“What’s the speed limit on this road?”

“Eighty.” Heidi wasn’t really sure. She stayed at a safe and comfortable speed, passed by honk-ees and in line with the mass drift toward home each afternoon.

“I clocked you at 83.”

Heidi suppressed an interior shrug.

“Turn around please.”

“Why?” Heidi’s eyes opened and she felt her spine.

“I’m taking my children home,” she protested, as he shoved her into the backseat of his car.

Something clattered and whirred. She heard him say something from a very great distance about children and a car on Route 583. “This can’t be happening to me,” a voice that once was in her body murmured from another distance and she saw herself in the car. In the patrol car. In her car. At home. She saw Len in his office.

“My husband,” she said. “Call my husband and tell him to pick up the children.”

“What’s his number, ma’am?”

“913-7843.” She heard that relayed. The handcuffs hurt and brought her briefly back to her body.

“Why am I handcuffed?” she asked.

The cop laughed.

“Did you do a license check?”

Heidi knew she had no tickets or encounters with the law. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe they had her confused with someone else.

“Yes, ma’am.” The cop was non-committal. It didn’t matter was the gist of it.

Perhaps he was a robot. Her mind was going, she knew. Three miles over the speed limit, he said, and no other encounters with the law and she was handcuffed going who knows where with her children with who knows whom and doing who knows what? What? This isn’t real, she thought. It’s a dream. There isn’t any point in taking it seriously at all. I’ve had some strange encounter of the fifth kind and when I wake up I’ll be on the couch or... I haven’t gone to sleep at the wheel, have I? she wondered anxiously.

Heidi knew she didn’t get enough sleep. Help the kids as they’d let her and Len the same and keep the house and bills and her own business and not go crazy and everything would be all right except ... this wasn’t, couldn’t possibly happen, and what had she ever believed or taught Hannah and Greg if her wrists were secured in her own country, the great land of the free and home of the brave, and her security and her children’s in the hands of a robot cop who was three miles insane? And how would she explain that to Hannah and Greg.

From her cell Heidi heard the low tones of Len's rage.

American Canon



It's rough to walk

a mind's electric storm

through memory fields

of faith like tattered clouds,

now weighed to crawl divided hearts

faint from drafts of hope,threadbare.

How to balance above a chasm?

How to dance the golden cord?

Find your center.

Lift.  Focus.

Turn.

Finally, late one evening Heidi slipped into her car, leaving families and friends who had died in the war.

"In 1806 a British colonel of artillery named William Congreve was most impressed by the fire power of Mughul rockets. He wasted no time in forming his own rocket company. They were ready just in time for the war of 1810. A splendid opportunity to try out a “new” weapon on the Americans.

"So in 1814 from Baltimore Harbor, the British in small boats launched rockets on Fort McHenry, giving rise to the rockets red glare in “The Star Spangled Banner.” You might say, the rockets red glare bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that the Mughuls were right."