By Kate Lynch, March 2016
From the red maples fell robust, little men.
The maples, systematically pruned over the years, resembled giant gumdrops seen from my bedroom window on the tenth floor. However, from the street, they were a dense, tangled mess of branches and leaves in a giant ball hovering overhead.
One by one, they catapulted to the shaded sidewalk below the orb. And as the wind blew and the leaves rustled, they began to sneeze in succession. A riot of sneezes.
Racine and me were sitting across the street on a park bench watching. I looked at her and grabbed her hand. Her eyes wide, mouth agape, she sat motionless.
After they dropped down, the little men lined up into a formation. I counted twenty of them. The leader had a gray beard. He pantomimed orders to the others. All of whom had blue beards. They were in three lines; seven, seven and six with gray beard heading the line of six.
Having always been able to think on my feet I dug into my bag for Zyrtec. Not enough for all but I had almost a full box and could make a salutary offering. I stood. Racine grabbed my arm and pulled herself up.
“Here, Racine. Bring them some of these!”
Her hand sought the antihistamines. Her fingers cradled the box.
The little tribe of men stood squared off to the street that divided us.
“Go, go, go,” I prodded her, “make a peace offering! Be fearless. Go!”
I pushed her bottom hard. And she went forth.
At once the bearded men stepped into motion, in sync. I hoped they possessed pedestrian know-how seeing that the moat separating them from us was nothing more than a city street that served as a cut through connecting equally busy city streets running perpendicular to ours. Luckily, this was a one way.
The sneezing picked up again as the breeze reignited. In spite of it, the formation of mini men didn’t change. Forward they came.
A car was racing up the street. Racine at 5 feet in height appeared a giant in relation to them and more so when she held her hand up to the oncoming vehicle and yelled, “stop!”
The parties met at the dotted white line of the two-lane boulevard.
The gray beard raised his hand and saluted. The blue beards followed suite. Racine raised the box of Zyrtec high above her head. And in a clear, bellow yelled “At ease.”
Oh, the advantages of having brothers were too numerous to list but this was one of them.
She turned on her heel now facing me and grunted “forward march.”
They came toward me.
And just like that, they marched on by, Racine leading the charge.
I tried for eye contact but they were all business. They were dressed in jodhpurs, black riding boots. They all wore a white shirt with a black vest over it and red sashes across their diminutive barrel chests. The only one who had anything written on the sash appeared to be the youngest – it said in bold white letters “Care of the Former Soviet Union & 100% Yabloko.” A clue, indeed.
I looked back to the red maple wondering if a toy-sized pony would fall to the ground for the graybeard to ride on. I was disappointed to see nothing of the sort.
Turning to watch them file down the street heading south I felt dejected. Left in the dust by my normally timid bestie. Head to the ground I followed behind for a few blocks. Just when I was going to turn back toward our bench, I spotted an envelope, embossed with gold and red lettering that said “For your eyes only.”
Knowing that it was addressed to me, I picked it up, admiring the weight of the paper. I delicately untethered the wax stamp and pulled from inside the smooth, gold surface another heavy piece of stock. It read “For Freedom and Justice: Topple Trump.”