The Government School

Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men.

Psalm 59:2

We were working in the cook tent, my friend Maria and I, 

when the bloody men appeared.

At first I took them to be

new roustabouts,

or maybe reporters from

the local rag.

I've noticed in the past few years

that journalists are getting more and more

frowzy and fly-blown.

Things, I guess, are tough all over.

Anyway.

They asked for beans and tortillas.

With scowls and threatening motions

with their forks and spoons.

Mental midgets,

I thought to myself as I served them.

'Bloody idiots' Maria whispered to me

as they took their tin plates to a picnic

table and silently wolfed down their food.

When they left I felt like a sentence of death

had been lifted from me.

I didn't like anything about them.

'Who were those guys?' 

I asked Trey when he came in for 

an early lunch.

Since he owns and operates the show

he gets to eat whenever he wants.

"What guys?" he asked.

"Those rotten looking guys that just left"

said Maria. She is sweet on Trey,

and gives him extra gravy on his

mashed potatoes.

"They're from the government school down the road."

He took his tin tray back to his trailer.

I could tell Maria wanted to follow him back to

his trailer for some hanky panky,

but there were thirty-odd people expecting lunch

in an hour, so I couldn't let her go.

The entire student body from the government school

came to the matinee. Their clothes were shabby

and sullen.

They didn't applaud anything

except when the elephants defecated.

They didn't buy anything

except sour pickles on a stick.

Their eyes were angry blue marbles.

When they left, trooping out like a chain gang,

they left behind pamphlets about their school

under the bleachers.

I told the crew to throw them all away 

with the rest of the trash.

But Maria kept one to read while

we got dinner ready before the

evening performance.

That's why she didn't get the potatoes

peeled in time.

"Hey" she said to me while we ladled out

the stew that evening,

"That place up the road is a government school

for journalists  -- they're being trained to sit

quietly and take notes of what the President

and his Cabinet says all the time."

"Any money in it?" I grunted back, my back

beginning to ache.

"Sure. They make good money when they can

start a war or make minorities feel insecure. It's all

in the pamphlet." Just then Maria dropped

the ladle into the stew -- again.

"Oh, get out of here!" I yelled at her in 

deep frustration.

She flounced out.

And left the show.

Didn't even say goodbye to Trey.

I didn't hear anything about her 

for several years.

During that time I quit the show

and went back to school.

Now I'm a corporate lawyer in

New York.

That's when I met Maria again.

She enrolled in that government school

after she left the big top.

Got her own radio show and started making

powerful enemies. 

She hired me to dig up the dirt on them;

which I did.

So they all became her friends.

She starts a new war about once a year;

usually in South America. 

Then goes down to conduct peace negotiations

and give away powdered milk and blankets.

She tells me she misses doing the Spanish Web.