An American Odyssey

10/29/1929

Great Observer

The city streets were always busy and Ronan had had about enough of that. He walked every day past them like it was his life mission to never truly finish walking. Chicago had always been such a beautiful city after all. It carried an air of greatness that maintained it’s simplicity enough to not get people go around bothering them. In the 20s it had been everyone’s rage to go to Chicago and sell beer, and the crimes here were definitely worth writing a whole musical about. Now prohibition was over but Chicago was definitely seeing the short end of the 20s, and Ronan could barely afford to buy any such thing in the city, and there was talk that things would become even worse. But Ronan didn’t go in to find any such monetary treasure, but rather a treasure of flesh and blood. Inside the shop always worked a young girl by the name of Carolina, and she was pretty alright, with long hair that seemed to be made of stars and eyes that seemed to be made of gems. Not that Ronan could ever afford marrying such a girl, no with her beauty she was expected to marry richer than God and get her entire family out of poverty. But still Ronan walked every day to see her in the Corner Store, and she laughed at his jokes every time. Sometimes she would even grab his arm from the other side of the counter, and fluff up her hair. Ronan didn’t quite like how the style of hair for women was to pin it up these days, he’d much rather see her long hair flowing across her back. But oh he could imagine in his head, as any other american could, that he was above his pay station and could sweep her away into a palace in Long Island. But there wasn’t any way to ever become anything these days, for the great American dream seemed as dead as ever these days.

He suddenly lost his train of thought when a young man hit him in the shoulder while rushing towards God knows what. It then occurred to him to look up from his shoes and noticed the whole street was in panic, men rushing and screaming at each other. In between the mob, he saw Carolina in the middle, she recognized him and rushed to him, and then it all happened so fast. 

She saw his confused face and screamed “ Oh Ronan, I’ve been looking for you, you haven’t heard, it’s so horrible, Wall Street's Crashed!!!” she burst into tears. And then it made everyone notice her, including two furious men, they recognized her as the baby from the immigrant family who had opened shop about 15 years ago. “ Horrible, Horrible, " someone says, "I'll tell you what’s horrible, people coming in from overseas in masses, taking money that we don’t have, of course we’re ruined, our ruination bought your pretty dress”. Another said “perhaps, it’s time we take back what's ours”. Then before Ronan could react for he was still across the long street, the mob started to swarm in on her, and he tried, let it be known he really did try. But as soon as he had crossed the street and gotten close to her and punched one of the assailants away, a gun shot was heard coming from the mob. Carolina hugged Ronan fiercely and he hugged her back, but then he realized she was falling. He heard the people scramble off and the police sounds were starting to be heard. Her father burst out of the shop and yelled at him, he was violently shoved away into the pavement, the father then cradled his daughter. Ronan found himself pointed at for reasons he did not know, and he was then carried over by two strange giant blue birds into a strange and giant creature. He wondered if they were going to take him to whatever place Carolina waited for him. For he could feel it in his head and in his soul that she was alive, still breathing somewhere else, whatever strange demon had been bleeding in the streets in Carolina’s dad’s name was just that, a demon. He screamed “Carolina” until one of the guards swung a baton at him and everything was dark. 

       09/1943 Europe

CARSON

As I sit here awaiting my inevitable death, I find myself worried I’ll turn as mad as my brother Ronan who they say shot a woman in the streets. He lies there rotting in the cells of a mental hospital in Only God Knows, USA. The story was simple, he had let his fury over the crash make him shoot a girl of immigrant parents, a sentiment shared by many in such days and only slightly weaned right now because the wartime required soldiers, and anyone residing in US soil who was a man was sent overseas. So now there was no distinction, as they all carried US army weapons. Though he knew that was a lie, he couldn’t help but become even more aware of the great American hypocrisy, for how could they be fighting to free the Jews when most soldiers weren’t even allowed in this very facility where he was laying down to die. Not that Carson had ever been the political advocate male, he wasn’t, but sitting here about to die, he was starting to wonder, what the hell was the point of living. Then she walked in, and suddenly he began to understand 

MARIA

It stenched in here, and had she been any more sensible, she would perhaps have asked to be assigned to the colored battalion, for God knows they wouldn’t treat her as foreign as she felt in here. In a sea of blond hairs and blue eyes and their goddamn pride, she probably wouldn’t have been able to distinguish friend or a foe. But even then though America hadn’t always been kind to people like her, wearing its symbol on her nurse’s outfit she couldn’t help but want to fight for it. For at least at its heart it had the promise of liberty, even if it didn't always seem like it, and God knows it rarely ever practiced it. It surely hadn’t when that boy Ronan shot her sister dead in the streets, when Maria had been almost 5 years old. She began to think “What the hell was the point of living”. Then she stumbled upon the last bed, where a guy was staring right at her, and she dropped her entire kit and barely stopped herself from screaming. “No, it can’t be, you’re supposed to be locked away” she thought. For who was laying there in that bed, none other than her sister’s murderer. 

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” he said and she slammed his head with her tray. He fell unconscious. “Goddamm it, I’m supposed to be a nurse”. Thankfully it was the latest shift and she was the only one in this particular room and the other soldiers were too out of it to notice. She laid down the tray on the desk on the left and picked up the things she had dropped on the floor. She brought the lamp closer to his face, in sleep he looked too peaceful to have been a murderer. And he was also so young, as young as she was, and Ronan had to have been in his late twenties. She then had a vague memory come to her, of her sister laughing with a boy in the corner, but it couldn’t have been Ronan. She then noticed the boy was slowly waking up, when he opened his eyes, they looked at each other in silence. They then started 

“ I just wanna” “I”m Sorry” 

She couldn’t help but laugh at him 

09/1945

CARSON

As I lay dying here once again, I find myself reminded of a quote I found in my studies as a young boy, "man was born free but everywhere he is in chains". Now I am here as prisoner number something, I've lost hope that I'm ever getting out of here. No one's come for how many days, but I think about her every night and I find myself wanting to touch her every night but all I can do is scream at nothing. But if she is free and safe, with her dark hair and tanned skin still being lightened by the sunlight on Virginia Beach. Then all is right with the world, and I write a letter in my head for her in my head every night and I repeat it to myself so that if I ever get out I might write it and send it to her,

Dear Maria,

As the moon hits the stage in this tragedy that is my life, written by Shakespeare after a bad day, I find myself thinking I'll be the tragedy if you get to be the comedy. I know you said it would never work out between us, that you were too hurt from the past, a past you can't even name properly. I wonder if you know my brother loved your sister, that he went mad without her. And I think that love died when she died, for I am far away across an ocean from you and it's looking like I'll never see your eyes again. Your hair wanders across the entire galaxy. Does the flag still fly where you are? It doesn't where I am but I am always alive if you are still alive? For I have loved you since the beginning of time, and the first part in my body was formed from another. Tell me not that you are gone forever, that I will never see your eyes again. I pray to a God that keeps me trapped here that if you are then he shall let me die too because how can I exist if you don't anymore. How can my eyes still see if yours don't, or my legs walk if yours doesn't. You are the American dream I am fighting for and will always fight for. I'll make it out of here if somewhere out there your heart still beats.

Yours,

Carson

sleep takes me

09/1945 USA

She awakes, disoriented somewhere in a hospital home. She has been brought back to life, but as she sits up, she realizes who isn’t there anymore. They tell her everything, she’s been asleep for a good bit and they’ve won the war. She begins to cry, first for the fact they won but at what cost, if the rumors were true about the power that invention had. But then they told her what had happened to him. He had been with the troop that had been captured, which she had been told that he hadn’t supposed to be but the troop was heading somewhere. That somewhere being where she had been, a place that he had apparently been made known that she had almost been killed alongside many others who were killed. A trap, a very convenient one, they had captured them as they had tried to come salvage whoever was left. “There’s something else” she said “ You’re not telling me something, spit it out”.

“ It’s your sister’s locket, I’m afraid it’s broken, this is all that’s left”. They handed her the necklace, she was unable to comprehend what she was seeing. “LEAVE” screamed MARIA, the nurses in panic let her be in rage

 Maria wanted to scream and tear out her sheets, her skin was being set on fire, the devil was dragging her to hell slowly. She could let him if Carson was gone, what good was a world without him?. She didn’t even get to tell him that she, no she just had slammed him out, and told him to leave and discharged him, now he was ….. She slammed her sister’s locket into the wall even more, cracking it open fully, and spilled two crumbled pieces of paper. She picked it up, she gasped, it was Carson’s face, but No her sister wouldn’t have had that, it’s RONAN, but why would her sister have a picture of her murder, unless!!

She picked up the letter, 

Dear Ronan, 

It’s been 4 years since I met you, and every day it seems I love you just a little bit more than when I first saw you. I remember that the first thing I heard you say was a form of goodbye and it seems that you’re always saying that. I know everybody would much rather this love be simple but it is anything but that. There’s expectations of me, I don’t think I’ll ever truly fulfill but still I must try. And you, though you’re rich in soul and everything else, it is money my parents care about. For they came here to escape poverty, and now I must carry on their dream. And yet I don’t know if you love me, I try to show my love for you in every way that I can, when you come into the shop. I feel insane when I’m around you at times, because it’s like you’re right there and also so far away. Why are you always pulling away, don’t you know if it was up to me, I would send everything to the dogs and achieve the American Dream with you. God knows there’s been many times in history where the American underdog wins. Not that I am ever going to truly be American, not like you are, people always see me as an outsider. They barely tolerate us, more less now then before but you don’t. You can’t register a difference, and sometimes I don’t know why that bothers me, that you can’t begin to fathom why someone wouldn’t want me here. I know so clearly, and that knowing gives me strength. If it’s true what they’re saying that it’s all going to come crashing down soon, that the rich will be poor, and the poor will be poorer, then let’s send it all to hell Ronan. Run Away with me, live the American Dream with me somewhere in Nowhere, Illinois. Raise our kids near the lake, and have a farm. They can take away your money, and maybe someday your life, but they’ll never take away from you my love. 

Yours,

Carolina

There had never been a moment in Maria’s life that had been more confusing than this one, she sees one of the elder nurses pick up her sister’s photo. A nurse walks in and sees the racket and picks up the photo and gasps, “Oh that poor girl, and to think that my nephew Larry did this to her, he was going around shooting in a crowded place. Then he ran like a coward, and that poor boy, Ronan, oh he rots in an asylum now, to spend one’s life locked away for the act of murdering the girl they love. I can’t believe they ever thought he did, For I could tell he was smitten with her, came in everyday and always bought a flower from my shop for her. But alas, God always brings justice, and Larry’s fallen in battle now. God I hope Ronan’s brother hasn’t. Do you happen to have seen him at all, goes by Carson” then the lady turned around and saw Maria’s deranged look. “Oh you poor girl, what things have you seen, let me see if I can ask your doctor to increase morphine, I’ll be right back”

As soon as the door slammed shut behind the nurse, Maria broke. She raced down like a mad men in a circle across the room, she threw all the trays at the walls. She tried to tear her hair out, she clung to the metal bars at the window, and screamed “CARSON, COME BACK” and softly so softly one could have said she never spoke it “I love you!!” 

CARSON

I hear her say my name, and the chains in my head fall free. Suddenly I wake to a soldier rousing me awake. There are gunshots everywhere, and he sees it in the distance, a flag waving, a star-bangled banner. 

***

There are waves of people rushing, but I feel like I am floating in the middle of the ocean. I am not alive or free if she is dead. Then I hear through the waves of people coming over, that she is back home. That I am in Germany, being taken care of in one of the makeshift allied hospitals, and I finally breathe a sigh of relief. But I am too weak to return home right now, and so they tell me I must wait until December before I can see her.

12/ 1945 Chicago

The Great Observer

The entire room doesn't see the planets have aligned once again, that in this room everywhere but the girl and the boy has ceased to exist. She gasps and he smiles, a song starts playing it doesn't matter which one. Wars continue in their future and the American Dream flickers just so always. But in this room as he looks at her and she looks at him for them it will never again vanish. They move closer, and his veteran suit turns into a camouflage soldier's gear and his eyes lose their pain and it's almost like they're both dipped in the fountain of youth. For when they embrace, it's the nurse's attire that is clinging to the girl's body. "How long has it been?" she says. "far too long" he says. But they both know that though it was an odyssey to get to this point, their love has made time a meek school boy. Their souls are as attached as the day they met, and they revolve around the clouds together. Fused together into one atom once again, and the energy is enough to last them eternity.