Captain Royce Bivens was preparing for his
senior year at the University of Saint Thomas. He was from an up-and-coming
family in the capital city, Pig’s Eye, Minnesota.
His mother and father lived about a mile away
from campus in a small home on Summit Avenue. His father owned a hardware store
and his mother was a parish leader at Saint Thomas Moore Cathedral.
The Bivens were not a wealthy family, but they
were squarely positioned in what was coming
to be known as America’s “middle class.” They were teetotalers, with a moral
and ethical view of the world that was practically Calvinist despite their
deeply Catholic roots; they were puritanical.
Bivens took pride in his ROTC training. Prior
to his admission to St. Thomas he had attended Cretin-Derham Hall and had participated
in the Junior ROTC. He had dreamed of attending West Point, believing in his
heart that he was better than his peers at everything they were called them to
do; drills and marches, physical fitness…and most importantly, following
orders.
He was the exemplification of duty, what he
lacked in imagination he made up for in consistency.
He was like a dog with bone.
Bivens excelled at everything that took place
in the martial sphere of his studies; at everything else he was a B student…at
best.
He consistently failed to understand his
academic limitations.
He could write an excellent report, but not an
essay.
Bivens was disciplined, ardently disciplined;
in his heart he believed that following procedures to the letter was the signal
mark of a good soldier, and for his adherence to this principle he had been
promoted to Captain, but he was wrong about one very important thing. The ROTC
program at the university was not training him to be a soldier, it was grooming
him for leadership, for a commission in the Army, and he had been counseled that
command called for something more than the simple motivation to do as you are
told.
In fact, Bivens had been told this many times.
Such statements had appeared with regularity on his evaluations, and he
consistently struggled to recognize their importance or how he could change
himself in response to that criticism.
On this night however, he had been convinced
by some of the fellows from his squad to take a trip down Lake Street. They
wanted to drive down the strip, see the nightlife, have a drink in a bar. Bivens
was reluctant at first, but he was loathe to set himself apart from the group.
He thought about the constant critique of his
character that his superiors leveled at him, and he decided that he should have
some fun, join his friends, experience something of the world, do the
unexpected.
Once Bivens made up his mind he would not be
deterred, and so when the rain began to fall in heavy sheets and some of the
boys wanted to cancel their plans, he pushed them forward.
His mind was fixed and he would have gone
alone that night if no-one would have joined him, but his boldness encouraged the
squad to follow.
Earlier, their braggadocio had overwhelmed his
reticence, now his overwhelmed theirs.
Together they crossed the Mississippi, going
over the Lake Street bridge, driving west down its length. They were headed
toward Nicollet Park where the Miller’s played.
The bar was called the Round-Up, and the brother
of one of the boys in the squad, Lieutenant Kaplan, worked there. This meant that
when they arrived they were treated like family, and greeted warmly by the
owner and his wife.
Royce liked that, it made him feel
comfortable.
They were gathered at a table by the door,
drinking beer and whiskey, laughing and talking about the working-girls they
had seen on the corner. They were wondering out loud, and loudly about how much
it would cost to spend an hour with one of them, blushing and guffawing at the
thought of it, like young men without any real experience of women do, when there
was a sudden commotion, and a fight ensued.
A group of men, including the owner of the bar
and Kaplan’s brother, were attempting to push a man of gargantuan stature out
the door.
Bivens had not seen the altercation break-out,
but he understood instinctively who was in the right…the owner of the
establishment, and though it chilled him to the core to join the mayhem, he
mastered his fear and mustered his squad.
They got up from their chairs and joined the
fray and helped push the giant out the door, knowing that without his squad, the
other men could not succeed.
Royce stood in the doorway and watched the huge-man
stumble, he fell against a parked car, and appeared to cut his jaw, though
after a second look Royce thought he must have imagined it.
He watched the giant recover his footing, and
watched Tom Kaplan, his lieutenant’s brother, go outside in his rubber apron to
return the man’s hat to him, and present him with his bill.
He watched as the gargantuan looked toward the
sky and with a roar of maniacal laughter appeared to call down a bolt of lightning;
and he watched as rainbows danced in the giant’s glass eye, he watched as the
bolt of white fire struck Tom Kaplan dead.
A wave of horror passed through the people on
the street, a dwarf brushed past Royce’s leg on his way out the door.
The gargantuan began to run down Lake Street
in the heavy rain.
Two police who had been walking the beat, ran after
him.
Then Bivens noticed something that surprised
him.
He saw Johnny Holiday, a guy that he had personally
drummed out of the ROTC, and subsequently from the University; he saw Johnny following
behind the giant, running ahead of the police, giving chase like he had reason
to.
He saw Lt. Kaplan run to his brother, sobbing
and screaming. Bivens scratched his chin, he felt confused. The rest of the
squad was standing around in shock, looking to him, their captain, for a signal
as to what to do.
Bivens collected his wits and went out to his
friend, he knelt with him beside the body of his fallen brother laying in a
puddle of water.
He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said to him: “Let’s go call your ma.”
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