The Dickens You Say! by Rick Scholz (rscholz@comcast.net)
C
hance and circumstance had left me alone on Christmas Eve for the first time in my life. I could tell you why but then you'd feel sorry for me and I am not yet so woebegone that I'm willing to pander so cheaply for that kind of sympathy. I work at The Center for Artificial Indifference (CAI) here in the good old US of A. and through good times or bad our business is always booming. But my personal fate is not so rosy. Day after day, week after week I am gradually becoming more genuinely indifferent and despondent regarding my fate and the fate of the world. I don't know if there is a business with the mission of promoting “Genuine Indifference” but if there is, perhaps I should send them my resume. Suffice it to say, I was alone on Christmas Eve and I felt detached from the human race. I was considering reading my very old copy of A Christmas Carol to bring a little human warmth my way. My copy of A Christmas Carol has a bright red cover and some Christmassy decoration in gold lettering on the cover. Whenever I look at it I can see my Dad reading this wonderful story of Christmas redemption to me and my sister when we were eight and six respectively... over 50 years ago. My Dad died many Christmases ago. Was he personally redeemed? I think not. But really, how would I know? As was fairly typical when I wasn’t at work, I had spent the day kicking around the house playing on the computer and listening to NPR on the radio. One of my favorite radio shows is “Fresh Air” with Terri Gross and I usually listen to it as I eat a bit of beef with a blot of mustard or perhaps some potato cheese soup. On today’s show, Terri had an interview with a former CIA agent who had specialized in the search for Osama Bin Laden. The agent stated that many in the CIA believed that Osama actually died during the first big push to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.
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According to the agent, a popular theory among a small but fervent sect within the CIA intelligence community is that Osama died on Christmas Eve in 2002, in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border region. The story of how Osama died, based on nothing more, perhaps than the speculations of a CIA agent with an overactive imagination circulated through this small sect like the rumor of free food coming to a camp full of starving refugees. According to the CIA agent, as darkness fell, a local Taliban underling by the name of Achmed guided Osama and his one last companion to a godforsaken little cave just south of the Pakistan border and north of nowhere. The two of them were fleeing from a small group of 9/11 motivated American Marines and the Americans were but 3 km away, further down the valley. Osama’s companion, a man named not surprisingly, Muhammad, was given the task of guarding the entrance. Osama was hiding in the back, 5 meters in, cold and damp and injured and ill and alone. The Life Force that had kept him going through many a fierce battle was ebbing away. Finally, at exactly 12 midnight on December 24th, the Great Osama Bin Laden shuddered, drew one last gasping breath and kicked the proverbial bucket, presumably to reap the rewards of a Muslim martyr. They say that animals have a sixth sense about big changes coming, like earthquakes and such, and there may be some truth to that. With Osama’s last breath a sense of relief and peace and well-being radiated from that hopeless little hillside and all the little Afghani songbirds in the neighborhood woke briefly from their winter naps and felt, just for a moment, the urge to sing. Wow! What a story! I knew the CIA was filled with poetic and imaginative souls and their Osama death story proved it. Their story even included mystical songbirds. I must say, for the rest of that afternoon and evening, the nature and circumstances of ___________________________________________________________________________________ TheDickensYouSay_3 Page 2 of 8 rscholz@comcast.net 12/22/19
Osama’s death haunted me. What a way to die. What a way to die for someone whose life was so significant if disruptive and unsettling for our world. I really didn’t want to have Osama’s lonely death story running through my mind as I prepared for sleep. I thought that reading A Christmas Carol would be the perfect antidote to thinking about the pathetic if deservedly gruesome, nature of Osama’s death. So I began reading the old book, snug in my La-z-boy lounger with my old cat Black Max on my lap and a tumbler full of rum-spiked eggnog close at hand. I hadn’t made it very far into A Christmas Carol when I began to nod off. Marley’s visit was over and Scrooge was at his bedroom window looking up into the dark sky filled with the Spirits that were doomed to haunt the earth, helpless and miserable, unable to redress the wrongs they had committed while they were still alive. As I drifted between consciousness and dreamland the stories of Marley and Osama swirled and mixed through my befuddled brain and I began to hear voices. Up out of my dreamy darkness came a voice saying, “Osama Bin Laden is as dead as a door nail.” Hmmm… Why the door nail was chosen as the piece of hardware you’re going to end up as dead as was never clear to me. Charles Dickens thought the coffin nail to be the “deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade” and I’d have to say that Chucky D. was swinging a pretty good hammer, metaphorically speaking, when he tried to drive that point home in A Christmas Carol. And then the disembodied voice spoke to me again, “Osama is a dead as a door nail. He died many years ago, on this very night, the night before Christmas, injured and ill, while hiding from his enemies, alone, in a dark cold cave.” I could faintly hear the bells toll a tall hour from the church down by the river… eleven, twelve, thirteen.. and a clanking sound as though someone was dragging a heavy chain outside my door, an unearthly clanking coming ever closer. And then the vision was right there in the room with me. A ghostly vision, a haggard vision a tall man, bedraggled, stooped by the weight of the hardware he was dragging. He struggled mightily with the chain he dragged. It was an impossible chain, an ungodly chain. It was as though he were condemned to drag a pair of ghostly towers on his travels through the night skies of ___________________________________________________________________________________ TheDickensYouSay_3 Page 3 of 8 rscholz@comcast.net 12/22/19
Christmas Eve. And a ship too. He seemed to be towing the apparition of a war ship. I could just barely make out the name on the ship… U.S.S. Cole. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice not as strong as I had hoped. “Ask me who I was!” “All right then, who were you?” At this point the ghost or spirit began to moan: a quiet moan, a deep down moan, a moan that started small and rose to a crescendo and subsided and then began again. And as he moaned, I feared for our world. I feared for a world that had such pain and sorrow in it. I watched the spirit’s eyes. He eyes were cold as death and chilled me to the bone. The moaning chilled me so deeply that I could feel my own death standing at my shoulder. “In life I was Osama Bin Laden, a hero to a hundred thousand souls. I fought the infidel. I died a martyr’s death.” .
Osama in chains!
To find something good to say about Osama’s appearance would be like trying to throw glitter on something long dead lying by the side of the road. His appearance was desperate and woebegone. During his earthly life he was a man of stature and importance. His slightest word was a command and a hundred willing souls would leap to make it happen. He had been a tightly-wound man of action. But death had unwound him. His clothing, now nothing more than dirty gray vapors, fluttered slightly in a damp breeze from a cold, cold world where the warmth of human kindness wasn’t even a rumor. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
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“Where am I?” was Osama’s reply. “You are in a small town in America, in the middle west.” “Well then, I’m lost.” Given the gravity of the situation and the fear I was feeling, my reaction to Osama’s statement might seem a tad inappropriate… I laughed! And not just a little. Laughter erupted volcanically from my soul. And yes, my laughter was a certainly hysterical. I laughed because what was happening was so absurd on one level and so true on so many other levels. Nothing, it seemed to me, could be truer than Osama saying he was lost… so I laughed. “You find this amusing?” asked Osama, perturbed. “You must admit something very weird and funny is going on here. I thought that Muslim martyrs like yourself were expecting the rewards of paradise upon your death. You know, all those virgins and raiments of fine silk; the whole nine yards. Doesn’t seem like things worked out quite like you expected.” “I know, I know, I know!” Osama exploded. “All of the holy books I read and all of the Muslim scholars I consulted promised rich sensual rewards for those of us who died for our holy cause. I never would have guessed that all of those to whom I turned for spiritual guidance could be so wrong on this, the most important of all subjects. Who would have guessed that Mr. Penny-A-Word Dickens would have so much more accurately nailed the truth about what happens to you after death than all of those holy men of the Koran!” “So Charles Dickens was right?” “Yes, I wear the chain I forged in life, dammit!” Any harm I caused while I was living has become a burden I must carry as I wander the dark skies of earth for all eternity unable to right so many wrongs. .
I've got my eye on you...
“And on Christmas Eve you visit the souls of those who still have a chance at redemption?”
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“Exactly.” “Can you see my chain? Is it a long one?” “Yes, I can see your chain and it’s long enough.” “But you’re not here to see me?” “No, as I said before, I’m lost. I was on my way to visit George Bush and Dick Cheney. Perhaps I should have taken a left at New Jersey instead of a right. It’s very foggy tonight.” “The Dickens you say! And what is your purpose?” “My purpose is to upbraid and rebuke both of those rascals. The chains they’ve forged are near as long as mine. Thousands and thousands of innocent deaths make up the chains they must carry through all eternity. There’s not much hope for them. Not much hope at all.” “Doesn’t it matter that Bush and Cheney were on the side of righteousness as they tried to make the world a better for all of us to live?” I guess that was the wrong question to ask. Osama started howling and once again I could hear the pain of all the suffering souls here on earth. The ‘side of righteousness?’ my rotten left foot. We all think we are righteous! But what does that matter to the innocents who die when the righteous go to war? I was terribly wrong and my methods were terribly wrong and the methods of those who opposed me were terribly wrong. And now all of us will suffer for all eternity!”
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Enough with all the howling and moaning I thought: time to change the subject, “Is there anyone else you will be visiting this Christmas Eve?” I asked. “Yes, Barack Obama. His life was on the right track for many, many years. He worked as a community organizer. He helped others. He used his special gifts to improve the lives of others. But in his role as president, he went down a dark path. Each time some 19-year-old predator drone jockey obliterated a house in Afghanistan or Pakistan and an innocent man, woman or child was killed or injured, Barack got another link on the chain he will carry upon his death.” “Whoa...and how about The Donald?” I asked. “OMG!… That sorry sucker was doomed even before he became president. What a terrible life. The way he stokes hatred among his followers is unconscionable. And military bombing under Trump’s administration is clocking in at a bomb dropped every twelve minutes. Unbelievable, but true. Personally, I hope I never meet that sorry soul. Just being around him is toxic – as almost everyone around him has discovered. So many lies, so many shameless lies. There’s no hope for him; he’s doomed for sure and for certain.” Osama continued, “But it’s not just Trump’s chain that grows longer when the American military is responsible for the death of another innocent person. Every American taxpayer is complicit in those deaths and the chain of bad deeds for which all of you must atone grows longer every day that they continue...” Osama’s voice drifted off in reverie and sorrow. A sudden noise at the back of my house startled me out of my dream state. Something was going on out in the kitchen and it didn’t sound right. I jumped up out of the La-z-boy and hurried toward the kitchen. In the kitchen crouched my cat Black Max licking up some spilled milk. I had forgotten to put the milk away after mixing my rum and eggnog and Max, ever the opportunist, had knocked the carton over. Max had pretty much finished so I shooed him away and completed the job of cleaning up the milk... no use crying over it. Holy Moly...! What just happened to me?
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Wow! What a vision! Astounding! I felt chastened for sure but I also felt a new sense of hope. The visit from Osama had changed me. I no longer felt indifferent to the fate of the world. The fate of the world is your fate and mine and we need to work together to make it a good fate! I thought, “To Hell with Indifference,” whether genuine or artificial. I will resign from the Center for Artificial Indifference the day after Christmas and begin a new life of creative involvement and redemption. Every day is a new day. And...
I’ll keep the Christmas Spirit in my heart 24/7/365, I will!
God Bless Us, Everyone Note to Self: Next Christmas, back off on the rum when you're spiking the eggnog. Merry Christmas from Rick Scholz 12/24/19 ___________________________________________________________________________________ TheDickensYouSay_3 Page 8 of 8 rscholz@comcast.net 12/22/19