It had struck me when I viewed his painting that Jack Trex was not your average Vietnam veteran, or average anything, and nothing that I was seeing served to disabuse me of that notion.
The big man at the kitchen counter must have seen me looking at his work space. He leaned back on his crutches, cocked his head slightly, said, "This is a nation built on, and held together by, illusions."
"Aren't they all?" I replied in a neutral tone.
I waited for more, but it seemed there wasn't going to be any-at least not at the moment. Almost five minutes passed before the coffee finished brewing. I rose, helped Trex put the pot of coffee on a tray, along with mugs, cream, and sugar. I brought it back to the table, and we both sat down. Trex poured for both of us. The coffee was strong, good.
"But I believe that the United States is-or was-truly unique," he said, picking up the thread of conversation as though no time had passed. "How's your history, Frederickson?"
"Assuredly not as good as yours."
"Somehow I tend to doubt that."
"I have a revisionist mentality; I'm skeptical of any account of any event that happened more recently than five hundred years ago."
He smiled, nodded. "Still, I think you'd agree that this nation of ours emerged from the Second World War indisputably the greatest economic and military power that had ever existed."
"No illusion there, Mr. Trex."
"The illusion was that our transcendent power as a nation meant that we were the greatest people.'"
Resisting the impulse to shrug, still wondering what Jack Trex wanted with me and what I was doing there, I said, "A not uncommon trait of most people in most nations, Mr. Trex. American chauvinism pales in comparison to that of at least a half dozen nations I could mention."
"But I bought it," Trex said in a low voice that seemed to be growing even raspier as he spoke, as if he had a cold. "I believed America was not only the mightiest but the greatest and finest nation, and that we were the finest, most noble people in all the world. It really made me very angry when people in this country, and even people who were citizens of other countries, didn't acknowledge this. I mean, it just seemed so obvious to me."
He paused and raised his eyebrows, obviously extending an invitation to respond. My response was to sip at my coffee as I met his gaze over the rim of my mug. His pale green eyes had begun to glow, and it struck me that Mr. Jack Trex had caught himself an obsession. He'd experienced an epiphany of sorts and was still struggling to come to terms with the brightness of his vision.
"I grew up Roman Catholic, Frederickson," the other man continued when he saw that I had nothing to say. "I remember sitting in Sunday school classes and listening to tapes of various sermons by American priests, bishops, and cardinals informing us not only that Roman Catholicism was the one true faith but that America was the nation finally chosen by God to be His headquarters. We Americans were to show the correct path to other nations and individuals that didn't see the absolute correctness of Christ and capitalism-and not necessarily in that order. We were the Redeemer Nation, and communism was the great enemy of man and God. We had been given permission by God, we were expected by God, to impose our beliefs and our way of life on the rest of the world. We knew best, and it was for their benefit. We were the Messiah of Nations, the defender of the oppressed. That was our illusion, Frederickson; but that image of ourselves went down the tubes in Vietnam. That's where and when first the soldiers fighting over there, and then the people back home, learned that so much of what we'd been led to believe about ourselves and our government is a lie, conjured up with smoke and mirrors. This government lies, Frederickson!"
"Don't they all?" I said quietly. "Except that governments don't lie; people lie. The more powerful the person, the more people his or her lies affect. I'm getting the impression, Mr. Trex, that somewhere along the line you discovered that American political, business, and religious leaders can lie with the best of them, and that this came as somewhat of a shock to you."
He stared at me for some time, stroking his mustache with a hand that had begun to tremble slightly. He noticed the trembling, abruptly gripped his mug with both hands. "Some men find a kind of state of grace in war, Frederickson; they can kill, maim, rape, and brutalize, and still feel good about themselves- sometimes better than they've ever felt about themselves. Not me. I lost both my leg and my faith over there. And it was my own fault, because I never realized that the weapons my own countrymen, our leaders, were using against me were more deadly than bombs, hand grenades, or bullets."
"Words," I said. "Lies. It's the language of cannibals."
Trex bowed his head, nodded slightly, and grunted with approval, as if I was a particularly bright student. "Yeah, that's right. Their goddamn lies swallowed the lives of more than fifty thousand American servicemen, God knows how many Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, and they ate away my leg."
"Mr. Trex, you must be some politician to have managed to get yourself elected commander of the local chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America."
He looked up quickly, and color rose in his cheeks. "Are you mocking me, Frederickson?"
"No, sir, I am not. I'm saying that people who attend the same school don't always receive the same lesson."
He ran a hand through his thinning, unkempt hair, shook his head. "Up until a little more than a year ago, most of the men in our chapter agreed with me. Like me, they'd never much thought about it before. When they did, when they listened to what I had to say, a lot of them came around to see what I meant."
"And then Elysius Culhane came to town with a brand-new smoke machine and more mirrors," I said in a flat voice.
Jack Trex leaned back in his chair, blinked slowly as he stared at me. I suspected that my status as star pupil was rapidly deteriorating. "Am I boring you, Frederickson?"
"No."
"You don't seem all that interested. Or maybe you disagree. Maybe I misread you."
"I don't know what you read."
"But you understood what my picture meant."
"I knew what I thought your picture meant. It was a nice way of visualizing an idea, Mr. Trex, but it's not exactly a new idea. It wasn't new with Orwell, and it wasn't new with Lenin. It probably started with some caveman who finally came to realize that his shaman was bullshitting him, and went looking for a new cave."
"It was new to me!"
"I understand that, Mr. Trex, and I respect that. For you, this realization that so-called leaders in all walks of life have been blowing smoke up your ass, trying to manipulate you all your life, astonished you. You're still astonished. You're still trying to come to terms with the fact that people you trusted have been trying to jerk you around with the language of cannibals, mesmerizing you with symbols-things like flags and music. I even suspect you still can't really believe the depths of that deception; maybe you feel like a fool." I paused, used my thumb to point to the overflowing desk and card table behind me. "It looks to me like you're really getting into the subject. Are you collecting samples of doublespeak, phrases like Department of Defense, Peacekeeper missile, and preemptive counterattack?"
"Yes," he said softly.
"You know what I think, Mr. Trex? I think the reason you find all this smoke and mirrors business so deeply disturbing is that you still, in your own way, buy into the notion that America is somehow unique among nations. You were terribly hurt by this betrayal by your leaders and the country's institutions. You're still hurt. You should stop. You've identified the dog that bit you, and it's enough; it's a mean dog, so you should stop worrying it and get on with things."