By the end of September only a few leaves on the mountain trees had changed. Deep orange, red and yellow hues excited Buck each year the seasons turned. You could count on the plentiful harvest colors appearing as sure as shooting.

But the long walks in the woods with Petey were over.

Crows still cried but fewer birds seemed to whistle. Crickets sang each night marking the end of summer that allowed you to measure the temperature if you counted the number of chirps in 15 seconds and added 40. Country wisdom cautioned against stepping on a cricket without asking for inevitable bad luck. Who would want to hurt a cricket, anyway?

Buck loved those daily morning walks with the little black, tan and white dog he picked off the side of the road 18 years ago after somebody threw the pup out of a moving vehicle.

Today Buck returned home alone.

“Where did Petey go, Grandpa?”

“Petey went to heaven,” Buck said.

Grandson Wesley brightened.

“Can we go, too?”

Buck closed his eyes and tried to put the question out of his mind. The four-year-old twins stood waiting for an answer. Grandpa opened his eyes and threw the kids a curve.

“Who wants popcorn?”

Wesley and Darlene squealed, running into the kitchen as all thoughts of Petey and heaven disappeared.

Lucille stared hard at her father.

“I heard the shot,” she said.

Lucille never really thought about doggie death before. All her childhood dogs just went to sleep and then to heaven, disappearing beneath a neat pile of dirt at the back of the farmhouse where she piled small rocks and wrote their names in finger paint on a cross she made from Popsicle sticks. The dogs got sick and old and disappeared. Now she knew her father had lied all along about what happened to the dogs she loved and loved her back as a child.

“Max and Zeus and Charlie all died,” she said. “You buried them out back. We had a funeral for each one.”

“We did,” her father said.

“You said natural causes. You said they went to sleep. You said.”

“I know.”

“I heard the shot.”

Buck stood alone not knowing what to do with his eyes, hands or heart.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Petey didn’t die in his sleep.”

“No.”

“You shot Petey,” Lucille said.

Yes,” Buck said.

“You can’t do that,” she said.

“I couldn’t let them suffer,” he said.

Tears rolled down Lucille’s cheeks.

“You couldn’t take them to the vet?”

“And let a stranger kill them?”

“Those dogs trusted you. I trusted you,” she said.

“That’s the whole point, I guess,” he said.

In the kitchen Darlene stuck Cheerios up her nose. Wesley did the same. The twins began to chant.

“Popcorn, popcorn.”

“Petey was just plain old,” Buck said.

Raising her voice enough to scare the kids in the other room, Lucille hissed her words.

“You’re just plain old,” Lucille said.

Buck noticed how his daughter’s thick black hair curled around her ears just like her mother’s, her cheeks flushing wild cherry red the way her mother’s did when she got mad.  Stepping so close to Buck’s face he felt her spit on his nose, she yelled louder.

“You want me to do that to you?”

Buck just stood there, not knowing for the first time in his life what to tell his daughter when she came to him for advice.

“Never hurt a cricket,” he said.

Blanche lost her husband Skinner to the war, once telling a perfect stranger while picking through carrots and celery in the produce aisle at the supermarket that her husband didn’t die in vain.

“No, he did not, dear,” the older woman said, leaning in for a hug.

“He lived in vain,” Blanche said.

Then she pivoted and walked away with tears blurring her vision.

Coming home from work at the restaurant seven nights-a-week, the 39-year-old aspiring cosmetologist dreaded laying eyes on Skinner as soon as she unlocked and opened the door, him sitting in the duct-taped fake leather recliner eating canned beef stew, drinking endless beers and watching the game show channel.

VA doctors said he was sick. Blanche said she didn’t have to go to medical school to figure that out as 40-year-old Skinner repeatedly told a psychiatrist how he thought he and Blanche would do on Family Feud if her sisters and his cousins would agree to go on the TV show with them, which they wouldn’t, because they wouldn’t even come over to the house to grill venison steaks anymore.

But Blanche stuck with Skinner ever since the 11^th grade when he pulled her out of the middle of a group of varsity football players drinking from a warm quarter keg in the woods who couldn’t be trusted to treat a girl with respect when she was sober let alone drunk.

She and Skinner married at the magistrate’s office a week after graduation and drove to Atlantic City for the weekend. Skinner borrowed money to pay for their room at a motel and dinner at a seafood buffet. When they got home Skinner took a job at the can company and joined the National Guard. When America’s war in Afghanistan kicked off the governor activated his unit and sent Skinner to fight. He got shot within a month.

Blanche took two Valiums her mother gave her when she first visited him in the hospital. Three surgeries, ongoing physical therapy, dozens of doctor’s visits and depression defined their lives. She worked various low wage jobs. He mourned his life. She worked more dead-end jobs. He drank. She worked even more. He died a little each day. They both did.

After all this time if you asked Skinner what year he served in combat, he couldn’t tell you. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he refused to remember. Maybe he didn’t care anymore. Skinner declined to attend any of the local veterans’ commemorations or memorials. He refused to go on a VFW bus trip to Arlington National Cemetery.

One Thursday night Blanche got off work at the restaurant at midnight and arrived home in about 20 minutes.

“Hi, honey,” she said.

Skinner slid closer to the edge of his seat and put his elbows on his knees.

“You see that? You see what she did?”

On a new TV game show called Space Race a woman wearing a purple jumpsuit and red spike heels bounced around the stage like a living bobble head doll. Her husband, a young man who reminded Skinner of an Italian hot sausage in a tight dinner jacket, jumped up and down. They both wore space helmets. The host looked pleased as he raced around the stage in a moon buggy-type vehicle.

“They went for the money universe,” Skinner said.

“I hope they get it,” Blanche said.

Now the host stopped the buggy, stepped out and pulled a red flashing device from a shining green drone that looked like a UFO and hovered above the contestants’ heads. The couple jumped higher and higher. The host read the screen on the device and put on an unhappy face.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “Your extraterrestrial alien pod came up empty.”

The man and woman smiled that smile you put on when you lose.

“They lost,” Skinner said.

“Everybody loses sometimes, honey,” Blanche said.

“Tell me about it,” Skinner said.

 “Honey, please, you’ll start coughing,” Blanche said.

Skinner spun around and jabbed at Blanche.

“You see that? You see that?”

“Skinner, please,” Blanche said.

Blanche touched Skinner lightly on the shoulder.

“Did you take your pills tonight, honey?”

Skinner stood unsteadily in his dirty bare feet, black Levis and a black leather vest with no shirt. His hair looked like a corn whiskbroom missing most of the straw. His eyes looked glassy.

“I only took the red ones,” he said. “The white ones are too big and make me gag.”

Blanche went upstairs to change. Pulling on a bathrobe she looked in the mirror. Skinner came to bed when The Dating Game was over about three in the morning. When the mail came the next morning, Blanche woke Skinner who usually slept past noon. Holding up a white business envelope she pointed to the return address.

“What’s Memory Lane in Hollywood?”

“The TV game show I watch on Saturday night when you’re at the restaurant working,” he said.

Blanche handed the envelope to Skinner who turned his head away like a bad dog.

“You open it,” he said.

“It’s addressed to you,” Blanche said

“I’m afraid,” Skinner said.

The letter read as follows: “Congratulations. You and your wife have been chosen as contestants on Memory Lane, America’s funniest nostalgia game show. See you at the studio.”

Details included when, where and a check for airfare and a cheap Sunset Strip hotel. All they had to do was get to LA for the show. Blanche said it seemed like a half-assed way of doing business with no tryouts at the local mall, no interview, no nothing except Skinner’s letter requesting to be on the show. But she figured producers must have randomly pulled Skinner’s letter from a barrel, and she wanted to go because she had never been to California and wanted to see the ocean.

“I can’t believe you sent the letter,” she said.

“Me, neither,” he said.

“Why?”

“Memory Lane is my favorite show,” he said.

Blanche took off work the following Saturday. She had never seen the game show before and got a kick out of the goofy format. Three couples who had been married at least 20 years individually answered questions about their relationships and then compared answers with their spouse at the end of the show – like The Newlywed Game for oldie-weds. If you made the bonus round you had to choose between playing for a new RV or a million dollars. If you lost the bonus round you got a booby prize.

When the host asked the questions, Blanche and Skinner played along at home. They went back and forth, testing each other with the most inane questions anyone could imagine. Neither missed a correct answer.

Blanche picked up the envelope from Memory Lane.

“Be honest, Skinner,” she said, “Why did you really send the letter?”

Skinner looked at the floor, his face going burnt as apple skin on a baked Macintosh.

 “It’s something I think I’d be good at,” he said.

The flight into LAX landed so smoothly Blanche called it elegant because she didn’t know what other word to use. Skinner held her hand until they collected their suitcase at the baggage carousel and Blanche took a selfie of them outside the airport before hailing a cab. Polished fake granite table tops in their hotel room shined so brightly the strong smell of lemon scent made Blanche cry with joy. Skinner didn’t say anything but successfully fought back a desire to open the mini bar.

Getting their faces made up in director’s chairs at noon made them both feel like stars. And when the show’s theme song kicked in at full volume from hidden speakers and the live studio audience broke into applause, Blanche and Skinner waved from side-by-side seats on stage. The two other couples flashed capped teeth and Botox at the crowd. Blanche and Skinner kissed shyly.

The crowd went wild.

“We’re winners,” Blanche whispered.

Host Bob Burnum ran onto the stage and did a little dance.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “It’s time to take a walk down memory lane.”

Couple number one squinted as the spotlight lit them up like inmates trying to escape across a state prison yard.

“Tell me the first car you went parking in,” Bob Burnum said.

Writing feverishly, the husband and wife finished in the 10 seconds allotted them to answer. While the woman sweated visibly under the hot lights, the man actually dripped sweat.

“Camaro,” she said.

“Mustang,” he said.

The loser buzzer signaled failure.

“OK, couple number two,” Bob Burnum said.

“What kind of cologne did the mister wear to your wedding?”

Biting her lip the woman finished scribbling in five seconds. Hubby finished writing and closed his eyes.

“Lay it on me, lovebirds,” Bob Burnum said.

“English Leather lime,” he said.

“Copenhagen,” she said.

Again the loser buzzer rang.

Spinning like a Michael Jackson top, Bob Burnum pointed at Blanche and Skinner.

“Let’s hope you two are more in love than those four,” he said.

The crowd went mad for love.

“Where did you go on your second date?”

Blanche and Skinner quickly started writing and finished at the same time. Holding up her card, Blanche felt lightheaded.

“Deer hunting,” she said.

All eyes on Skinner, he felt like the whole world was watching.

“Deer hunting,” Skinner said.

Blanche giggled, looked at Skinner and spoke in a voice smooth as a cat’s eye marble.

“That’s when I started calling you Skinner, remember? You gutted my deer and yours then skinned them both on the meat pole when we got back to your camp skinning shed. Any man who would do that for a woman was worth keeping”

Skinner blushed.

The rest of the show went like that all the way until the end with Blanche and Skinner never missing a detail about their lives together. When they made it to the bonus round the audience poured from their seats and danced in the aisles, gyrating the way the warm up staff taught them before the show. Sirens blared, almost triggering a flashback that caused Skinner to flee. Blanche held his hand. Bob Burnum looked psychotic the way he always does before each bonus round.

The crowd started to howl, bark and chant.

“Go for the million, go for the million,” they screamed.

Blanche looked at Skinner.

“What do you think, hon? The RV or the million?”

“I want to go for the million,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said.

Bob Burnum explained how the trick bonus question would have nothing to do with their relationship, instead focusing on world history, sports or politics, none of which ever interested Skinner or Blanche, for that matter.

Of course they blew the answer.

Bob Burnum did his dance. Blanche squeezed Skinner’s hand. Skinner looked pale. Bob Burnum’s tone turned sarcastic.

“Time for your booby prize,” he said.

When the curtain opened the crowd howled laughing at the parked, dented, rusted metallic green 1968 Pontiac Grand Prix with dirty, fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror and an eight-ball gear shift knob. Skinner flew off his chair, running to the car with Blanche trailing close behind.

Everybody expected Skinner to punch out a window.

Skinner turned to Blanche.

“My dream car,” he said.

Now Blanche stood beside her true love.

She said, “I remember you telling me how much you wanted a ’68 Grand Prix before you went to the war. So you could work on it, fix it up when you got home and get it ready so we could go cruising, listening to the radio and stopping for milkshakes like people did in the old days.”

Skinner spun around and faced Bob Burnum.

No, he did not strangle the game show host.

“Me and Blanche are going to the drive-in,” Skinner said. “Maybe Elvis is playing in a double feature somewhere.”

Sliding the folded Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper across a small puddle of spilled beer, bartender and college dropout Mikey Hoyle began his lecture about foreign policy and international politics, topics on which he considered himself well-versed.

“Look at this story about Afghan women marching in a pro-Taliban parade in Kabool.”

Timmy Kelly shook open the wet page and looked at the picture in the paper.

“Covered head to toe with their faces hidden and everything,” he said.

“Hundreds of women marching to support men,” Mikey Hoyle said.

“That’s what we need here,” Timmy said.

Mikey blew on a mixing bowl loaded with hard boiled eggs he just took off the bar kitchen stove in the back.

“The Scranton Society of Irish Women would march to support us,” he said.

“Go on, get out, they would not,” Timmy Kelly said.

“But we don’t need them,” Mikey said.

“The Taliban don’t need them, either.”

Mikey Hoyle raised his right forefinger like a tenured Dublin professor lecturing at Trinity College.

“The Taliban uses them to make the case women like being told what to do. We don’t have to use female help because nobody questions our right to ban women from our all-male Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner,” he said.

“My sister says the girls at the Irish Women’s Society started their own dinner because they don’t want to come to our dinner, anyway,” Timmy said.

Picking a hot egg from the bowl, Mikey juggled it from hand to hand.

“Of course they don’t want to come. They don’t want to come because we say they can’t. So they have to bullshit themselves into thinking they don’t want to come to justify obeying our orders,” he said.

“My wife says she won’t come even if we let her,” Timmy said.

“Nobody wants your wife or your sister at our dinner.”

“Say what you will about the Taliban, but you’ve got to give them credit,” Timmy said.

“Yeah, they brainwashed their women so they don’t even want to go to school with men. No  female firefighters or cops taking men’s jobs in Kabool, either,” Mikey said.

“Just like Scranton.”

Mikey dug a soup spoon into a horseradish jar, pulled out a glob and mixed it with yellow mustard he squeezed from a plastic bottle into a quart container he used for the clam chowder the bar sold during Lent.

“We got a girl on the fire department now – one out of 135 – and a couple on the police force,” he said.

“Don’t forget that first woman mayor.”

“Politically correct women’s lib affirmative action shit,” Mikey said. “We even got Shawna working here tending bar on Saturday night.”

“That’s because you threatened to quit unless they gave you the night off to drink for free,” Timmy said.

 “Still no girls in our Notre Dame Club, though,” Mikey said.

“Thank God,” Timmy said.

Mikey gently cracked the egg on his forehead and looked at his best friend.

“You marching in the “Half-Way-to-St.-Patrick’s-Day-Parade” Saturday?”

“I took Monday and Tuesday off next week to recuperate,” Timmy said.

“I’m marching with the Friendly Sons,” Mikey said.

Timmy Kelly grinned.

“Who’s the COVID virus marching with?”

“Don’t be a smart ass. Scranton’s back to normal. No mask for me, either. What am I, a looter?”

“Guinness is my vaccine,” Timmy said.

“The Irish Women’s Society will be marching,” Mikey said.

“Just like the Taliban women,” Timmy said.

“To show support for us guys,” Mikey said.

Mikey peeled the egg and dipped it into the sauce.

“Maybe our colleens can invite their colleens to The Irish Women’s Society dinner,” he said.

“They can call themselves The Taliban Women’s Society,” Timmy said.

Chewing with his mouth open, Mikey dripped horsemustard – that’s what he called the concoction, horsemustard – from the side of his mouth. Then he cracked another egg, this time on top of his head.

“Gimme one of them eggs, Mikey,” Timmy said.

Mikey offered the bowl.

Timmy reached in and grabbed an egg.

“Yeah, then that pack of Kabool ladies can march with ours in next year’s parade,” Mikey said.

“Down Biden Street in Scranton, Kabool’s sister city,” Timmy said.

When Timmy cracked his egg on his forehead a sticky, raw double yolk poured from the shell and down his chin.

“Ahhhh, goddammit, Mikey.”

Mikey blew up laughing.

“Surprise! The yolk’s on you, Timmy.”

“That’s not funny, Mikey.”

Mikey Hoyle stopped laughing.

“Neither is women thinking they’re as equal as us,” he said.

Timmy used the wet bar rag to wipe his face.

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said.

Even with the bar door closed you could hear the bass pounding from the car idling at the stop sign.

Mikey Hoyle slammed down his beer glass and snapped his head toward the noise.

“You hear that?”

Timmy Kelly looked away from the Yankees game on TV.

“What?”

“That music.”

“Oh, yeah, that.”

“Taliban music.”

“Sounds Indian to me.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Talibans live in Afghanistan, Mikey.”

“They’re all over the place.”

“In Scranton?”

“Absolutely.”

“C’mon, Mikey, there’s no Talibans in Scranton.”

“That’s why they call it terrorism. You never know when they’re going to strike.”

“In Scranton?”

“I got one word for you: nine eleven.”

“That’s two words.”

“The 20^th anniversary’s right around the corner.”

“Those weren’t Talibans, Mikey. They were Saudi Arabians,” Timmy Kelly said.

“Like Osama bin Laden?”

“Yeah.”

“Al Qaeda, Taliban, what’s the difference?”

“Saudi Arabians are on our side, Mikey.”

“Then why did they chop up that Washington Post newspaper reporter?”

“He was a media spy,” Timmy Kelly said.

“Maybe we should start doing that to our local media.”

“Chop them up?”

“Off with their heads.”

“On Courthouse Square.”

“The cops can set up one of them guillotines in the middle of Biden Street.”

“I’d go,” Timmy Kelly said.

“Me, too.”

Mikey again snapped his face toward the door.

“You hear that?”

“What?”

“More Taliban music.”

“That sounds Puerto Rican.”

“Same thing.”

“Better than that Black rap shit.”

“A dog getting run over by a beer truck sounds better than that.”

Timmy Kelly looked confused.

“I thought Talibans hated music.”

“They’re big hard rock fans,” Mikey Hoyle said.

“Really?”

“Yeah, they’re always stoning their wives to death for committing adultery.”

Undercover cop Brandon, whom Mike met at the American Legion, spoke confidently, the way you do when you usually get your own way with or without a warrant. Just making conversation Mike had casually mentioned how unpatriotic it is that Pizza Hut restaurants do business in Hanoi, Vietnam.

“Germany’s one of our biggest trading partners,” Brandon said.

That set Mike back on his barstool.

“What’s that mean?”

The young detective addressed him the way a college professor might talk to one of his more mediocre students.

“I get it,” Brandon said. “Germany is now our most important trading partner in Europe. People born after 1980 aren’t invested in Vietnam like Boomers are. For reference, way more people died in the U.S. because of drug overdoses just last year, during a pandemic no less, than all of the Americans combined that died as a result of the Vietnam War during the entire conflict.”

“Boomers?” Mike said.

“Baby Boomers like you,” Brandon said.

Born in 1947 Mike never thought of himself as a Boomer. Sure, he heard the term and saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on TV and tapped his foot to the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. But to call him a name, a Boomer, hurt his feelings. Mike was much more than that.

Stunned, he came back with what little bluster he had left.

“Col. Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken is in Hanoi, too,” Mike said.

Brandon laughed.

“Bet you could have eaten some KFC when you were in Vietnam,” he said.

Mike flashed back to the time he ate leeches and cold greasy rice gruel during the four months in a tiger cage at the hands of the Viet Cong (VC) team that captured him before he escaped. A small unit had wiped out his squad. His captors quickly told him they were the few who fight the many, the weak who fight the strong. Winners in the end, the Vietnamese now even owned American fast food franchises.

One month into his imprisonment, during a forced labor work detail in the sweltering jungle sun, Mike found a half-inch red thread buried in a puddle of red mud teeming with mosquitoes. A second piece of string, this one white, turned up a month later in a shovel full of dirt piled on a fresh grave. The blue twine appeared just days after that, tangled in a bamboo stalk.

Why Mike kept all three pieces of fiber was anybody’s guess – a vision made of hope, perhaps, or maybe a method to his madness.

A month later he gazed defiantly at the tiny ragged symbol of his nation he somehow wove to create a miniature American flag facsimile that kept him from giving up, a vaguely recognizable symbol of liberty.

At night he’d insert the flag into his rectum. During the day whenever he could he’d retrieve the flag and recite to himself the words he could remember from the Star Spangled Banner. He’d then stick the flag up his ass all over again, a terrible thought, but one that increased the odds that the flag was still there when he needed it again.

Now the enemy wouldn’t break him even if they killed him. He knew what he was, what he stood for and why he was fighting. He didn’t know shit about the Pentagon Papers or the intricate political machinations of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon’s war but he knew why he was fighting.

Mike wanted to live.

He wanted pizza and fried chicken. He wanted a cold couple of cans of Schmidt’s beer and a carton of non filtered Chesterfield Kings. More than anything Mike wanted to be free. And one day he was.

Two Huey gunships roared over the trees as the door gunners opened fire. Mike’s VC guards went down in a row although Mike somehow survived. The crew had him up and out before he realized what had happened.

“You are one lucky sumbitch,” a laughing Black soldier on board told him.

“Coming in we didn’t even see you,” said another.

Mike asked for a cigarette. The Black soldier lit and gave him a Chesterfield. Then he gave him the pack and his Zippo lighter imprinted with a skull and crossbones on the front. When Mike reached for the smoke he realized his right fist was clenched. When he uncurled his fingers he saw his little flag.

That’s what Mike always called it, his little flag.

The Veterans’ Day parade fifty years later dawned hot, 85 degrees by noon and heading to triple digits by early afternoon. With lights flashing and sirens screaming, fire trucks and police cars slowly drove the packed parade route. High school bands played. Cheerleaders cheered. The Chamber of Commerce marched with elected officials who waved their most patriotic waves to the patriotic crowd.

Then came the corporate sponsors led by a woman dressed as a huge bucket of chicken, her legs kicking up at bended knees. A half dozen people dressed as dancing pizzas followed.

Brandon stood across the street laughing and clapping his hands in time to the melodious sounds of the marching band that made the crowd feel better than children do when they hear music from an ice cream truck.

The dancing pizzas did it for Mike. Dancing pizzas put Mike over the top.

Just the night before Mike had Googled “Pizza Hut Afghanistan.”  Of course Pizza Hut served pizza in Kabul and Kandahar.

Time Magazine reported back in 2011 that Gen. David Petraeus reversed a decision by Gen. Petraeus’s predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. In March 2010 McChrystal called for an end to junk food culture on U.S.-led coalition bases, and banned food outlets including Pizza Hut, Burger King and Dairy Queen. One of his top deputies said in a written statement at the time: “This is a war zone – not an amusement park.”

Time also reported that following Gen. Petraeus’ reversal of this decision, Pizza Hut said it was “proud to be serving the men and women who serve in Afghanistan.”

Sitting in front of his computer in his underwear and battered boonie hat left over from the war, Mike’s eyes welled up.

“The Taliban probably owns the franchises,” he said.

Now looking into his palm into which he had pressed his little flag, the badge of courage that got him where he was today, Mike stood alone on the sidewalk, hearing the cheers, watching the waves, feeling his heart pound inside his chest.

Kneeling, Mike bowed his head.

People thought he was praying.

Mike wasn’t praying.

America was preying, victimizing the sacrifices of the nation’s war dead and wounded – losses, actually, not sacrifices – that resulted from corporate lies, Pentagon generals’ and defense contractors’ duplicitous deceit and the cold actions of White House criminals. These self-absorbed bastards cared nothing for peasants who suffered and died in Vietnam, poor men, women and children napalmed, shot and bombed, collateral damage drowned in blood and pain.

Afghanistan war was no different.

Why? So the privileged there could one day escape as they did in Saigon? So the Afghan president could run away with $169 million in American taxpayer money and suffer no consequences? So American 19-year-olds could never make it to 20? What about Afghan civilians with no connections to the American government, who spoke no English and couldn’t read and write in their own language? They, too, wanted out. They, too, wanted to run – and not for the Pizza Hut buffet.

Pulling his cherished Zippo lighter from his pocket, Mike flicked the wheel that chipped the flint that lit the flame fed by the lighter fluid in which he soaked the Zippo that morning. He used to light his cigarettes by snapping his fingers to turn the wheel that set the fire in motion. Back then everybody laughed at the trick. Holding up the lighter in one hand and his little flag in the other, Mike began to cry.

A woman shrieked.

“He’s burning the flag. He’s burning the flag.”

Mike lit the underside of his sacred symbol that quickly burned and disintegrated into smoking, black, curly ash.

Picking up speed as he raced across the street, Brandon already had his handcuffs out as he threw a full body block that caught Mike above the waist and knocked him off his feet and into the gutter, cracking his skull on the curb that soon ran red with blood.

A meaty man with a bulging belly flushed angrily and pointed to Mike splayed unconscious in the street.

“That’s what’s wrong with this country,” he said. “Guys like him.”

Mullah Mateen sat in an oxblood leather chair at a massive glass-topped desk in former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani’s office, taking his turn posing for triumphal cell phone photos with other Taliban commanders who took Kabul without even trying.

 Don’t smile, he tells himself. Taliban commanders aren’t supposed to smile even though a couple of the younger fighters have started to lighten up, wearing basketball sneakers and baseball caps they picked up when the American infidels got out of town. Almost all devils are gone now, except for deadly CIA mercenaries and their traitorous allies.

Mullah Mateen stopped the victory party as soon as he asked the question of the day. Always well-mannered, as the name Mateen signifies in the Pashto language, he spoke in a firm, yet soft, voice.

“Now what?”

Nobody wanted to answer because nobody really knew. Those leaders who thought they knew stood at odds with other men who thought they knew. But nobody really knew.

“The Afghan government robbed us,” Mullah Mateen said.

The men grumbled, raising into the air newly-confiscated American M4 carbines, fully-automatic M4A1s, M249 machine guns and rocket launchers.

“The Afghan government robbed American taxpayers, too,” he said.

The men cheered.

“So we’re broke, just like most Americans,” Mullah Mateen said.

Now the men went glum, their already creased and hardened faces falling like the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan the Taliban used artillery and explosive charges to blast out of a mountainside in 2001. Blasphemous idols Mullah Mateen called the statues at the time from his camp in the hills. Twenty years later, the battle-tested insurgent victor kept going, expressing strategic transitional concerns.

“Where will we get money to run our own government? Even with all the trucks, guns, ammunition and even helicopters the enemy left, we don’t have money for upkeep, repairs or maintenance. We don’t have money to fix potholes, make electricity, pick up the garbage or provide unclogged sewers. We need American cash and credit to buy on the open market.”

At a loss for answers, the men shot holes in the ceiling.

Then Mullah Mateen laid bare his ancestral soul, dropping a bomb with his outrageously masculine proposal.

“I have studied the American President Joe Biden. Like us, he favors tribal rites and ritual. He’s American of Irish descent. Many American Irish men think like we do. They call themselves the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.”

Mullah Mateen unconsciously stroked his bullet belt.

“These men scorn women. Oppress women. Discriminate against women. Harass women. Ban them from events. Put them in their place. These men agree with us that a woman’s place is in the kitchen. Not like here where we can throw them in the stove but a place for them to slave over a stove preparing great dinners of meat and vegetables like the ham and cabbage they cook on the one big lineal observance when American Irish men and boys gather together and celebrate.”

The fighters stopped shooting and started to listen.

Mullah Mateen pulled on his unkempt beard.

“Paddy’s Day, these men call this custom, a feast day to honor this holy elder in his long beard and tunic. Millions of people parade in Paddy’s honor, worshipping a green three-leafed shamrock plant that grows wild and free like our opium poppy plants.”

Armed commanders started to chant.

“Paddy’s Day, Paddy’s Day.”

Mullah Mateen held up his hand, regained their attention and continued.

“This Saint Patrick as they call him enraptures President Biden so much Biden appeared three times as featured speaker in the rural province where his hometown Scranton is located for the yearly Friendly Sons dinner that Imam Patrick’s followers hold to honor their bearded commander. The men in attendance benefit from meeting each other, politicians and businessmen, vowing allegiance to the male cause that upholds gender segregation.”

“Important as she is to democracy, Black American Vice President Kamala Harris is banned from this sacred banquet,” he said.

“Powerful elected officials like United States Senator Bob Casey Jr., another drowsy, big-feeling Democrat from Scranton, support this bigoted male supremacist group. Casey has a wife and four daughters he prohibits from attending the dinner unless they want work as waitresses for low wages to serve men. Lethargic Casey’s only concern about attending the dinner is that he might fall asleep at the table.”

One young adherent snickered.

“We have long hair and beards. Casey has no hair or beard. Biden has expensive hair plugs. We’re tougher, too,” he said.

Mullah Mateen picked his teeth with the sharpened point of a dagger.

“Yes, we are tougher. We all remember what happened when handsome Shameer touched and sniffed my sister’s hair,” he said.

“The way Joe Biden touches and sniffs,” the young fighter said.

“We cut off Shameer’s nose and fed it to stray curs in the street,” Mullah Mateen said.

Then we ate them,” the young fighter said.

“And ISIS calls us liberals!” Mullah Mateen said.

His men nodded as he went on.

“Biden identifies as a Democrat, sensitive and empathetic. He will quickly understand when we say we need America to give us money to feed the poor the way they gave money to the corrupt Afghan elite who stole the cash. Afghan’s traitor president loaded three cars and a helicopter with dollars before taking off for his mansion in Dubai. Now it’s our turn. But we will ingratiate ourselves to the heathen American scum without losing our core principles.”

The fighters became agitated.

One old man screamed.

“Can we still abuse women?”

“Of course,” Mullah Mateen said.

The young fighter wanted more detail.

“Ingratiate how?”

“We start a Friendly Sons chapter here. We hold a St. Patrick’s dinner and invite President Joe Biden to be our first guest speaker. We dye our turbans and beards green for Paddy’s Day,” Mullah Mateen said.

“Biden will love the Friendly Taliban of St. Patrick,” the young fighter said.

“So much that he might make Kabul a sister city to Scranton,” Mullah Mateen said.

The young fighter beamed.

“St. Patrick reminds me of Osama bin Laden.”

Mullah Mateen could no longer help himself and had to laugh.

“Kiss me, I’m Taliban,” he said.