Day of Wrath (2 page)

“The Republic was not founded by those who feared to offend. It was not created by those who were afraid to fight back. Is it time to fight back? But how do we fight back? What do we fight back against? How do we fight back?”

“Hey Bob, you’re gonna be late!”

He looked at the screen, scrolled back over what he just wrote, highlighting it, and poised his finger over the delete button. Why bother? I’m just pissed off this morning. Vent here and I get eighty comments back, most of them inane, asking what the hell is bugging me. It will disappear while everyone prefers to see the latest video clip of who twerked her ass last night at some awards ceremony or had a dress “malfunction,” and after all, we are being told that all the scandals are phony anyhow.

“Come on!”

He stood up, looked again at the screen, and let his finger drift from delete to enter. He hit the enter button, posting his musings, and felt a twinge of regret and embarrassment. Which friends would be offended today?

Kathy was waiting out in the kitchen, making the loving gesture of holding out a cup of coffee. She was wearing what he called her frumpy bathrobe, her hair still something a tangle and no makeup… all factors which made her even more lovable to him. Given their “surprise” a year ago, she had resumed the role of staying at home for a few more years.

He gladly took the cup and drained it halfway in two gulps. She had mixed it nearly half and half coffee and cream, even though she was on his case about the cholesterol in the cream.
 

She had taken on the ritual of getting up an hour earlier than he to cook breakfast for their older daughter and make his coffee. He simply couldn’t stand food other than some caffeine to provide the jolt for waking up to face the outside world, after, of course, he engaged for a few minutes in his fantasy of being a writer.
 

They had met in their junior year at the University of Maine in Bangor, had scandalized their very Catholic parents by living together their senior year, and then stilled that scandalizing by marrying a week after graduation. Kathy had been a secondary math education major, he a computer education major. He had taken his father’s advice to “get a degree that will get you a job,” and chase the dream of writing afterwards.

They had actually scored positions at the same school, in a suburb of Portland, teaching side by side for four years until Wendy came along. Kathy had taken a couple of years off for their first daughter, then gone back to teaching… until their mid-life surprise of two years back. Every morning now he could see her duality. She adored being a full-time mother again, but as she handed him his cup of coffee to pack him off for another day at school, he could sense her longing, her missing of “their kids” at Joshua Chamberlain Middle School.
 

The day was one of those glorious Maine autumn days, a touch of frost was on the car out in the driveway, and he remembered fondly their first year of teaching: leaving the apartment, he would go out first, when it was down near zero degrees, to scrape the car and heat it up before she dashed to its warmth.

Their daughter Wendy stood behind her mother. She bore such a striking resemblance to the family album photos of her mother at the same age: lanky, long-legged and coltish. Her red hair was tied back in a pony tail; already the clear signs were there of the stunning beauty she would grow into, but she was still very much “daddy’s girl,” even though she tried not to let that show, especially around her friends. And she was obviously ticked off that Dad was running late. Her morning gossip circle awaited in homeroom. She could barely spare a quick glance to her dad as he pecked her on the cheek, then she was back to her cell phone, texting away and chortling about how someone named Janey was definitely going to get it good today for being caught kissing the boyfriend of some girl named Hallie.

He glanced at Kathy and said nothing. Wasn’t that supposed to start when they were fifteen or so? Even though he taught middle school, he still looked at his charges as children, though popular culture had been putting girls such as Miley Cyrus at age fifteen on the cover of Vanity Fair for years.
 

Kathy made no comment about the scandal at school as she tucked a packed lunch into Wendy’s backpack, leaned up, and kissed Bob on the cheek.

“Have a good day.”

He kissed her back and looked over her shoulder to Shelly, their one-year-old, sitting in a high chair at the kitchen table. She was happily smearing her face and hair with chocolate pudding, laughing away at whatever was the inner delight of one-year-olds when putting on disgusting displays.

Wendy spared a quick glance at her kid sister and gave a grunt of disgust.

“You were just as gross at that age,” Bob offered. She simply rolled her eyes.

“I was perfect compared to that,” Wendy bragged, but he could see a bit of an affectionate smile regarding “the brat’s” display.

“Wanna trade jobs for the day?” Kathy sighed, eyeing Shelly then back at the two of them heading off to school.

“You were the one who said it’d be fun to have another,” he replied a bit defensively.
 

“Yeah,” was all he could muster out of her. “Just one day, come on! You guys can stay here, clean up the smeared chocolate, change the diapers, watch that damn purple dinosaur dancing around on television, and I can at least have a five-minute intellectual conversation with some twelve-year-olds.”
 

She looked at the two wistfully, eyebrows raised, head tilted to one side, and with a trace of an impish smile, the look that could always nail Bob and leave him a bit weak in the knees even after all these years. He realized she was actually half serious and that if he said yes, she’d dash off to the bedroom, slap some makeup on and be out the door with Wendy, telling their principal that she was his sub for the day.

Wendy looked at her mother with sympathy but her glance indicated that she also thought her mother’s appeal must be insane.

“Intellectual conversation? Seventh grade? Come on Mom, you gotta be kidding.”

“Next year,” was all Bob could offer, not sure if she was really lamenting or just trying to make them feel guilty as they headed out for another day in the world.

Kathy smiled, that same winsome smile that had caught him on the day they met when he could have sworn that her eyes actually sparkled with light the first time he gazed into them. She brushed back an errant wisp of red hair from her face, leaving a smear of chocolate pudding on her jawline and neck, which made him laugh softly and half kiss, half lick it off her.

“Don’t do that,” she whispered so that Wendy, standing expectantly by the door would not hear, “You'll get me thinking and I’m stuck here alone without you.”

“Maybe tonight,” he whispered.

“Come on Dad, we’re late!”

The two peeked over at their twelve-year-old standing at the doorway who gazed at them with a look of exasperation and judgmental embarrassment at parents who act too affectionately.

Kathy pushed him away.

“Get going…"

He paused, drawn to the television screen on the kitchen counter.

“Today’s lead stories we’re covering after the break. The shooting incident yesterday at Robert Morrison High School outside Syracuse, New York, that left four people dead and ten wounded is drawing increasing scrutiny with the report released at seven this morning by an anonymous official that the gunman had a letter on his body in Arabic that proclaimed that the time of the jihad promised by ISIS had come. Federal officials on the scene are dismissing the report and urging calm. All schools in the Syracuse area are closed for the day…"

Across the bottom of the screen, the ticker tape was providing a brief account of the deaths of three border security guards the night before near Austin, Texas, in what one witness claimed was a professional attack and not just a random shooting incident.

He took it in, saw the look of worry in Kathy’s eyes. Anyone who taught in a public school, especially couples who taught in the same school, talked about “what if it happens in our school?” He gingerly leaned over to kiss Shelly on the top of the head, making sure she didn’t smear him with pudding. He wrinkled his nose. The kid stank, and he suppressed a gag. It was definitely one aspect of fatherhood he was an utter failure at and he was glad that he was heading out the door rather than being called up for diaper service.

“You little monster, love you,” he sighed and gazed back at Kathy and smiled lovingly. Wendy was already at the car.

“I’m late,” was all he could say as an excuse, and was out the door into the chilly Maine October morning. He looked back again and blew a kiss to Kathy, a tradition they had followed ever since the first night they had spent together.
 

It was the last time they would see each other alive.
 

Near Raqqa, Syria

#diesirae631: Sword One: Four hours, Sword Two: Four and a Half Hours, Allahu Akbar.

CHAPTER TWO

7:45 a.m., Near Portland, Maine

Bob parked the car that he and Kathy called “the indulgence” in his usual spot at Joshua Chamberlain Middle School. The red 350Z seemed a bit extreme for someone getting by on the pay of a high school teacher, but they had purchased it used years ago before Wendy was born, in fact just a couple of weeks before finding out Kathy was pregnant. The car had remained, even though it was totally impractical for a new family. The more utilitarian Subaru SUV took the parking place alongside it in the driveway of the small three bedroom home they had purchased eight years ago.

It was not the existence they had talked about when they first met and had fallen in love. The plan had been, after they married and landed their jobs at the middle school in a suburb of Portland, that after several years he’d go back to grad school, then leave teaching for a far better paying job in the corporate world. She would then pursue an advanced degree in math and teach at the college level. With that accomplished, perhaps his writing would even take off some day. Making it as a writer was, as they called it, a “Cinderella Fantasy,” but it had sounded nice at the time.

Then Wendy came along, and as is so typical of life, the game played out with the two teaching and saying to each other that in twenty-five years, when they could collect retirement and Wendy was off to college, they would resume those dreams. And then the mid-life surprise of Shelly put that plan on further hold.

As he made the motions of opening the car door to get out, he caught a few seconds of eye contact with Wendy, and he had no complaints. He and Kathy had a loving marriage, a rarity, it seemed, in this world, and two girls who were blessed with good health. Sure it was a grind, going in early and staying late at school, and finances were tight with Kathy staying home. But at this moment, on this peaceful autumn day in Maine, his daughter flashed him a shy smile and he felt blessed and grateful for it.

“I’m late, Daddy,” Wendy complained as she opened the door and started to get out. Gone were the days of walking her into primary school, holding hands, and sharing a hug. Perhaps she sensed his disappointment because she glanced back at him and gave him a toothy grin, a reminder that the big expense to come this year would be braces.

“Love you, Dad,” she offered and then was off, running to the side of one of her friends. Wendy began showing a text message on her phone, which she’d have to shut down once inside the building and both of them giggled. He sighed.

Once she was out of sight he opened the compartment between the seats. Something about the news today… No, not just today, the news every day of late, had forced a decision that only Kathy knew about. He pulled out a Ruger .380 from the glove compartment and slipped it into his pants pocket.

Even though he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, he was now in felony violation of both Federal law and the laws of the State of Maine. If discovered, he would lose his teaching license and face up to five years in prison.

If found out? If found out by someone simply seeing the pistol, if it slipped out of his pocket as he squatted down to pick something up, if the pants he was wearing were a bit too tight and some sharp-eyed coworker got suspicious and ran to tell the principal… The principal would summon him while calling the police, who would then come and pat him down, handcuff him and take him to jail. If found out, he would be in prison, license to teach revoked for a lifetime, and pay fines. The national media would show a viral video of him being led out in handcuffs. The only crime more reprehensible in a school: to sexually stalk or use a student, which he felt did indeed deserve capital punishment rather than prison with rehabilitation therapy and a sentence that was likely shorter than the one he would face.

Caught by a student wandering into his classroom after-hours to find him having an affair with another teacher? Embarrassed dismissal. Embezzling? Perhaps a fine and quiet termination.
 

Incompetence in the classroom, which he also felt was a crime worthy of punishment? As long as the incompetent teacher’s students jumped through the hoops of testing, no big deal. When he did complain once about another faculty member who, as he said, “could not figure out his I.Q. unless he looked at the bottom of his shoe,” the response was, “Mr. Iverson retires in six more years, so just let it go for now. Besides, the union would kick up a fuss.” Being a teacher, Bob was at least able to force the issue with his own daughter by insisting on a transfer to another teacher, but for the other hundred kids stuck in Iverson’s class day after day? Well, at least in six more years he would be gone.