Target

The morning dawns brilliant today. We are celebrating our Italian heritage and have taken the day off from the busy affairs of the Government. Other Governments and Non-Governmental actors have not. I hear from London that Joint Rule in Ireland has been suspended, and Mr. Blair has reasserted direct rule from the old imperial capital. Something about spying, they say. I don’t know what the Unionists and the IRA will have to say about it. Shots were fired at Marines in Kuwait, but our guys did not respond. Twenty-seven million pounds of contaminated cooked chicken and turkey products suspected of containing the Listereria bacteria have been recalled, he largest such in the history of the food processing industry. The Wompler Food Distribution Company in Pittsburg is responsible. 120 people have become sick, and a couple have died. Check your turkey for lot number P1351, dated between May and October of this year.

Can you imagine 27 million pounds of turkey?

In Bali they are trying to sort out the carnage from yesterday’s attack. No one has claimed “credit” for the murder yet. The local extremist organization Jamat al Islamia is the likely target, said to be a loose associates of the al Qaida network. They are denying it, and the spin starting already. An Islamic spokesman says it is his opinion that this might be an American plot. It was the second anniversary of the attack on the USS Cole.

The Government, using volunteers and makeshift morgues and the other appurtenances of 21st century life. Tourists are being evacuated, as is the U.S. Embassy in Djakarta. Last week the State Department had announced that Indonesia was becoming a haven for terrorists.

 I guess they were right. It must be terrorists. Who else detonates car bombs in crowded streets?

The Anaheim Angels are going to the World Series, having beaten Minnesota and the Yankees are already in hot tubs somewhere in Florida or Cuba, where a cast of veterans is getting ready to celebrate the forty-first anniversary of our closest trip to the nuclear abyss. I thought travel to the island was still not permitted for U.S. citizens, but someone is turning a blind eye to it. Down the street a brand new Target Store opened, a vast thing, the biggest specimen of its sort I have ever seen. The place was a Babel of languages. I heard Spanish and Russian and Amarish, the ones I could recognize. Mostly Indo-European in origin. English, too.

 It was an overwhelming sensory experience, high ceiling and bright reflective surfaces. It was like wandering into a Home Depot with a little list, becoming hypnotized in the paint department on the way to find a little brass screw. But cleaner and confused, everyone new at this, shoppers and associates alike. There was an imposing phalanx of check-out stands under bright red shields, brilliant as a Roman legion. A film crew was on hand to document the joy and confusion of the opening.

I had no list, and could not confront the legionaries at their stations at check-out. I left empty-handed and looked at the bright red bulls-eye logo proudly fixed on the red brick above the door is a little eerie this week, what with the sniper and the eight dead, but he hasn’t been active in Arlington yet. It looks like he took the long weekend, too. Maybe the near escape last Friday has him a little anxious. I certainly hope so.

The radio reports there are no delays on the freeways to get anywhere, which would be a comfort if I had anywhere I had to be. I decided to go somewhere anyway.

I fired up the little black truck, the 4.5 liter turbo rumbling to life with a low roar of power. It idles at 600 rpm, and will do fifty at 1500. Power to burn. I left the city at around 2000rpm via I-66 West. The highway goes from two to four lanes as you cross the line from Arlington to Fairfax, the line of demarcation between sensible growth and go-go construction. It stays four lanes through Fairfax, then narrows to three as you approach Manassas, and the tranquility of the old battlefields on the right and the strip malls to the left. I looked down south Rte 234 and saw the Sunoco station where the seventh victim was shot, a Gaithersburg, Maryland man. He was in his fifties, like me.

Past Manassas and the Nissan Pavilion the road narrows to standard Interstate configuration. I kept going, down through the swale of a river valley and the old three-story grist mill. That marks the start of horse country for me, and I could feel the weight of the city slough away from me, peeling off the roof of the truck and falling behind. The low hills roll green away from the road, well fenced, and cornrows stand in brown stalks, ears harvested, the fall coming on.

I got off at Rte 17 and filled up my tank at a Standard Oil station. I looked at the tree-line across the road and shrugged. I doubt if he is out here, and I did not feel like a target. Not that this area is a stranger to mayhem. This is what they call the Mosby Heritage Area.  It is a curious heritage, ambiguous as things tend to be around here. John Singleton Mosby was a country attorney called to raise a guerilla Calvary unit in defense of the Valley against rampaging Union forces. He was very good at what he did, striking and fading away like a ghost. A gray ghost.

After J.E.B. Stuart, he might have been the best horseman of the Confederacy. Tenacious, courteous and vicious when necessary. Some of the towns out in the Valley changed hands fifty times or more. Not always with courtesy. Mr. Lincoln sent Phil Sheridan out here in 1864 to clean out the nest of Rebels in the Valley once and for all. They called the campaign “total war,” as opposed to what they had been doing before, and Phil was energetic about it, burning this fertile land as he went.

Tank full, I rumbled through the quaint old county seat of Warrenton. This town had been a Union target and later one of Sheridan’s logistic bases. I as heading ten miles beyond on Rte 211. On the left, past two churches with full parking lots lies the Gray Ghost Winery. It bears a logo with the likeness of the famed and elusive Confederate leader, the one with the beard he wore during the late unpleasantness between the states. The family that owns the vineyard was there in the showroom, Mom and Pop and charming daughter who poured samples of seven Gray Ghost vintages. I bought a couple pedestrian whites and a couple pedestrian reds, both light and semi-dry with bright fruit flavors that linger on the palate. I splurged on two bottles of the 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon, which won medals Taster’s Guild competition. It is full-bodied with cherry, currant and blackberry flavors with a hint of smoky spice. I agreed with the full-bodied part and thought it might go well with the Redskins game on the TV later that afternoon.

To the east of DC, seventy-thousand other people also decided to get on with their lives, targets or not, at the stadium at Landover, Maryland. There was a full house, full-tilt tailgates and all, and most fans stayed until it was clear that the Saints were going to badly kick the Skin’s collective butts. Then the crowd began to seep away toward the end of the third quarter, and by the time the clock ran down in the fourth the highways were jammed going away.

It was nice to get out of town, put things in perspective. Get out where rail fences bound the fields, where horses look down from the hills. Get away from the news. Once you get past Manassas, it doesn’t mean a damn thing. Or maybe it does.

It occurs to me I have never seen a fine bottle of wine with Phil Sheridan’s picture on the label.

Copyright 2002 Vic Socotra