“Come, sit down, boy,” a father says to his son, gesturing to the edge of the bed. “Do you know what day it is today?”
The son crosses the room and takes a seat. “My birthday?” He responds.
The father briefly stops swaying in his rocking chair. “No… What? No. That’s like six months away.”
“It was just a guess.”
“Yeah, but, surely you knew that wasn’t going to be correct.”
“Okay?”
“You’re like eleven, you know when your birthday is.”
“Don’t get angry at me.”
“I’m not – okay. Whatever,” the father says, resuming his rocking. “No, it’s not your birthday, but it is a very special day. Today marks the twenty-fifth year since your old man fought in the Battle of Bullimon Inselberg.”
“Who is that?”
“No, it’s not a person, son. It’s a battle, and a damn important one at that. Winning that battle was the turning point in the Whaleback Ambush, which was the turning point in the Leftish Plunder, which of course was the turning point in the Kanipsian Three-Way Snafu, which weakened Yulopwan forces and depleted N.E.R.T.A. resources, setting the stage for the eventual Trustford-led Shoelace Backslide.”
“What are you talking about, Dad?”
“The war. The war that I fought in for a significant portion of my life… I’ve definitely mentioned this to you before. It’s sort of integral to my identity as a person.”
“Okay.”
“Anyways,” the father continues, “I figure now is the proper time for me to finally tell you what really happened in that battle. You’re old enough to learn the truth.”
The father glances over at his son expectedly. The son yawns.
“At first it was a normal morning in the Bullimon Keep, which is where my brigade had been stationed following The Most Horrific Day Yet Recorded. A handful of my cellmates and I were fetching some grub from the trough yard when Colonel Ligament unexpectedly ordered us into formation. I remember turning to Old Yorkshire Gravies and asking him what the deal was. We never got into formation this early – not until after the 10 o’clock Burrowing and Screaming had concluded at least. Gravies didn’t seem to know, and neither did Musha “Skidmark” Klarning. Not even Grove Wullok had a clue, and that guy knew everything, like how to tie a cherry stem into a knot using only his tongue or why bad things happen to good people. Colonel Ligament then conducted an emergency roll call, requiring us to find our buddies, as was mandated by the Wartime Buddy System Act. Let me tell you, that act would never be passed nowadays, but back then it got through the Chamber Of Appraisers in a rare mercy rule vote of 284 to | 17 | from 6.
“Unfortunately for me, my previous buddy, Zeast Koppe, had recently been fed to the horses because he was injured and annoying, so I had to wait until my request for a new buddy was approved through the Ministry of Merciless Conquest and Public Transportation (although I had reason to believe the pigeon carrying my letter had been sniped by a howitzer). This meant I had to be counted alone, which introduced a whole host of logarithm headaches. Regardless, after roll call, Ligament informed us that a sharp-nosed scout had intercepted a smoke signal suggesting that we may be raided by the Taristese Opposition in exactly fifteen minutes. For the majority of the war, The Taristese had been fighting nearly exclusively through paper terrorism, but the sudden and mysterious death of their leader, Oblong Osiris III, led to a change of heart and subsequent rapid militarization, and for some reason the creation of a space program that put a man on Mars.
“I scrambled up to my post at the top of the battlement, where I was responsible for dumping rusty pails full of creepy crawlies onto insurgents trying to scale the baileys. I met up with – Are you still listening, son?”
“Okay.”
“You keep saying that… Uh… Yeah, I met up with Littiker Doormstel at my post, whose role was to aim down the arrow slits with a handgun. He completed the second half of the two-pronged ‘creepy crawly and shoot them in the head’ approach, as championed by the late great Medd Squatt-Peref in his joint military strategy guide and existentialist novel ‘The Death of The Infidel.’ I actually have a signed copy somewhere in the attic, which I managed to snag at a convention just a few days before he killed himself with a piano wire and a Slip ‘N Slide. Score!
“In any case, Doormstel was filling in for an old friend by the name of Hudson Johannes. Quite a character, that Johannes was. He used to eat food with his hands instead of with silverware, like a fork and knife and even a spoon. He always gave us a good laugh during our games of jacks, and he taught me how to love. Short of hereditary debilitating brain illness, I’ll probably never forget his face. Regrettably, he was bifurcated across the state line in the Dark October, which was especially tragic because he was supposed to be demobilized a week prior for his niece’s graduation… but he got cold feet. I sometimes wonder how things could’ve been different, if only he didn’t get cold feet. The day I lost him was a grim one indeed. There were seemingly more bodies than there was air to breathe in the Gumshoe Valley. Smoke blotted out the sun in the sky. The smell of burning flesh was pungent. Have you ever had to count survivors, son? Have you ever wished you weren’t one of them?”
“W-what?”
“Oh, I’m just joshing you, boy. Well, I think it’s past your bedtime. Goodnight.”
The father gets up from his rocking chair and turns off the light.
“Wait, Dad,” the son calls. “What about the rest of the battle? Did you dump the creepy crawlies on the bad men?”
The father turns his back to his son and starts toward the door. “Your father is the bad men…” he mutters.
“What?”
A single tear rolls down his cheek. He wipes it away. “Nothing, my son. Perhaps I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
Cormac Abbey is a sophomore Television & Digital Media Production major who believes that the Leftish Plunder should be taught in more history classrooms. You can reach Cormac at [email protected] .