April 27, 2013
Royal Oak

 

        Last night I eliminated the mayor of Detroit and the chief of the defunct Detroit Police. I remember, before I joined the Army, how much more rundown the city was in comparison to the suburbs. Now the differences aren't quite so distinct.

        My parents moved in with me today, my father beaming from ear to ear because he's back home now and he's earning money again, although it's not much. The garbage workers are getting paid daily, a hundred dollars in New Gold Coins, enough to buy food and new clothes from the reopened Wal-Mart and enough to put gas in the car, which needed a new battery after sitting through the winter without being started.

        I bought the battery at the reopened Wal-Mart.

        My parents cried when they first walked into the house, seeing their old furniture almost the way they had left it.

        "How is this possible?" my father asked. "We had to sell all this stuff months ago! How'd you find it?"

        I shrugged my shoulders and said almost truthfully, "I didn't."

        They cried and hugged me and thanked me. "Thank god you joined the Army," my father said. It was strange to see him cry.

        I'd never seen him cry.

        We ate dinner my mother cooked in the oven. She roasted a chicken and we had beans and potatoes. It was almost like I had never left.

        My father is almost content being a garbage man. "Beats not working," he said as he tore both legs off of the chicken after my mother placed it on the kitchen table.

        My mother is slated to start working again, but not for the government.

        She answered a call for the Rand Corporation.

        The Rand Corp. has been quietly and quickly moving into several of the empty factories—remnants of the Big Three's heyday—that are scattered around Metro Detroit.

        She will be paid more than my father. That caused him to grin with a little irritation.

        But her days will be longer. She is going to work Monday through Saturday, 8 in the morning till 7 in the evening.

        And she will be working in shipping, shipping god knows what.

        But she's happy. She wants new clothes and makeup and a new car and new linen for herself and my grandmother.

        I wonder exactly what she'll be shipping.

        I'll try to catch some sleep before midnight. I have a busy night ahead of me. I have to visit two school superintendents and a US Congressman who lives in Farmington.

        I'm feeling almost happy.

        I may even try to find a girlfriend.

        Someone like Tanya, maybe. Hopefully.

        I am such a fucking geek. I'm a badass Captain, but I'm still in love with a dead woman I really have no reason to be in love with.