Free Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss

ever.
    Remember how your father would not return to work because “I have more important business to attend to” and “I have seen my true calling along those ravaged landscapes.” And when he told your mother, she would not respond, nor would she look at him. And your father considered her eyes and whispered unto you, “There is an uncanny intelligence alive there” and to her he said, “Where have you been these years?” and to this your mother was silent.
    The newspapers theorized your father suffered from “exhaustion of the nerves” or a “terrible melancholy.” And the papers reported how your father raved to “persons unseen,” and he fired his revolver at shadows, bayoneted the wind. Remember he wore his uniform through the day and into bed and he removed his cap only at dinner or for church services, although he now refused to worship any god but one of his own devising.
    Your father returned home intoxicated by the advancements in technology lately made, for he had observed the death of men three hundred yards distant through the sights of rifles, and he had known the devastation of exploding shells, the slow drifting hulks of ironclads through the rivers and seas. He had watched men dead some weeks yet intact and scarcely yellowed. And your father brought you to a mounded tarpaulin in the backyard and he pulled this aside to reveal the silent red machine. “The salesman suggested steam powered,” your father explained, “as the fuel is readily found.” Your father, however, had long understood the importance of the combustion engine and had opted for the gasoline machine: “It may not be as accurate or as gentle as that mower you have known, but I have found that the greatest success comes through methods most brutal.”
    And your father, ever in full regalia, fueled his mowing machine while the smoke on the horizon flared hues of red, and in the shadows of those cities distantly burning he tinkered amidst the spent tufts of lawn, and through the days none could escape the constant roar. And your father at last sighed with contentment when blistered stubble alone remained. Your father no more sat watch against the militias nor dashed off letters insisting he was “quite recovered” or how he longed to “once again obliterate our enemies along the plains.” The mutton-chops of his youth become as full as the bushy whiskers your grandfather wore in the daguerreotypes suspended along the wall.
    And always your mother wept and always she explained her tears for a stubbed toe or a cut hand, although she complained from the sofa where she lay swaddled in quilts. And your father ever outdoors, ever starting and restarting his machine, ever wild and cursing amidst the blue fumes.
    And all the women seemed women in black, their gauze faces and dipped black parasols, their gloves of black lace. Soon even girls who were not engaged to dead soldiers now dressed in mourning and claimed secret engagements, pregnancies, and they walked stiff backed, haughty, and there were those who commented, “The poor dear, the poor sorrowful dear and her sacrifice.” They dressed always in black and some men watched these black trussed widows purchasing a flank of rotten meat or a can of peaches, and they longed for their lonely widow flesh, but your father merely desired the lawn mowers their husbands left behind.
    And now, many days, your father ran into the house with his blackened shirt and his black dripping hands and commanded you duck beneath the window while he too crouched, and he pressed his oil hand to your mouth, while outside widows in black lace dresses and black parasols knocked on your door, their thin frownless lips as they said, “We know you are in there, General. Your tracks are apparent.” And your father said, “I promised them I would trim their lawns as a payment, as a gentleman should, but they must have