HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY to all our amazing American readers. With the incredible success of our anthology 4th in the 25th, I couldn’t pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate this incredible nation’s 250th birthday. But what to say, what to write? What can my hot-rodding, hell-fighting wolves bring to the table. Well, let’s find out...
“Don’t tell me? Draft 11 already?”
General Adam Knox presumed he was deep in his fifth whiskey of the night when he started seeing his former superior come out of the shadows of his office. There the old goat of a wolf was; General Leonard Ford Godred. Blazing red jacket, white armband and button-up, black jeans and boots. Quite the contrast to the unkempt white shirt and blue jeans of his successor.
“Yeah,” the gray wolf grumbled, pitching the crumpled paper. “Looks like God pulled the emergency handle on this one tonight.”
“Do you realize,” the black-furred ghost began, “that once every hundred years—sometimes every 50—someone sat in that exact seat you are? That you had to sum up eons of history and what it stood for? You’re lucky. I got saddled with 650 in the year of our Lord 2426.”
Godred took a seat on the desk and started thumbing through the overwrought paragraphs. “And I was taking it about as well as you did—pass me whiskey, will ya?” Knox did so and the black-furred cowboy took a greedy gulp. “Trade this for some rum and Eric as a masseur and that’s about the way I looked.”
“Least you lived and breathed it,” Knox sighed. “I always feel like I’m catching up. Growing up in Haven always puts a spin on things you don’t notice till you’re outside.”
“That’s the problem with the American Dream,” Godred teased. “You ain’t the only one dreamin’ and everyone’s got their own twist on the concept. You probably remember this—otherwise I wouldn’t be able to tell you—but you know why I keep runnin’ around with the armband thing?”
The gray general nodded. “I remember something you said when you gifted me the jackets, yeah.”
“Way-way-back-when,” Godred began, “eons before you and me, there was a hound. A beautiful hound gifted beyond belief. A true artist, a sun in the world. When he grew up, got big as big could be, he started wearin’ jackets with armbands. Leather jackets, dress jackets, pinstripes; you name it, he got it. He was never on-the-level about why—always liked a mystery—but a lotta folks heard he wore it for as long as there were pups sufferin’ in the world. He was puttin’ his pesos into every cause under the blue-blessed sun, but man wasn’t God and he knew it. Did his damndest though.
“Now only a poor kid like that from an ol’ American steel-town could grow up to wrap his big arms around the world, helpin’ folks on that level. He’s a great big hunk of American dream, sweet as angel an’ worth rememberin’. Best part is he just about wrestled the symbol away from ol’ Dirtstache back in the 1940s. When I learned about him, I started wearin’ armbands and I said every time I was asked that I wouldn’t stop until we had done licked this evil pervadin’ our land.”
“Nice story,” Knox smiled, thumbing the page. “But I’m sure you put it in your speech and I don’t want to be reheating leftovers, now do I?”
“For fuck’s sakes man,” the black wolf barked, “ain’t that history in a nutshell!?”
The gray general shrank in his seat before straightening up and looking around at his drafts, littered with historical references aplenty. “Shit, never looked at it that way.”
“You think I ran around callin’ my gang of cowboy-cops after a Gaul warrior to be hip? Who the fuck do I gotta be hip for out here!?”
“No, General sir. No one, General sir.”
Even in his dreams, Knox respected rank.
“Exactly.” Godred continued. “You have at your disposal 700 years of symbolism, beauty, strength, resilience and bone-stick-stone-stupid pigheadedness. And I know it don’t look like much from the backside of the bomb. I know everything’s antiquity to us, but sit and think about that. 700 years…and she still looks good. She still worth fightin’ for, ain’t she? The flag, the Statue back east, all of it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be willin’ to ride out and rain hell on the enemy for her, now would you?”
“Right, sir.” Knox nodded.
“Now you’re the torch-bearer for the big seven-double-zero.” Godred smirked, patting Knox’s shoulder. “You got to leave a mark here that’s gonna be seen from now till day’s end. A mark they gonna see from space. ‘Cuz that’s what this is really about. Not you or me, but about the whole damn wolven race livin’ forever. From sea to shinin’ sea, from star to glimmerin’ star. We made it to the moon, motherfucker, and we’re stuck sittin’ our asses down here because of everyone’s brain’s meltin’ back in 2200.
“When we get our shit together, you best believe we’s goin’ back up there. The moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter, and on into the night. We’re meant to live free, run fast, to learn and love like we never known anything else. It sounds batshit bananas comin’ from a military hound, but how you explain me and the Missus makin’ two beautiful pups who done grown up an’ served their country. I didn’t drill-instruct her into bed, now did I?”
Knox broke up laughing—he knew where Godred had said this before.
“No sir,” the gray general chortled.
“That’s what it’s all about, Adam.” Godred smiled. “Now make it fit.”
The moment they shook hands, the dream was gone, only the blank page left on his old wooden desk. With pen in hand, rolled between his gray-furred fingers, he took to the page with furious abandoned.
The title was golden, and the words flowed like water over a damn. And when they came pouring from his muzzle the next day before hundreds of soldiers and hundreds more of their family, they came sweet as honey from a hive.
“We are commemorating 700 years of what I like to call ‘The Immortal America.’ Strap in because she’s gonna take you from Plymouth Rock to the second star on the right and straight on till mornin’ comes!”