Flagging

 

            Business had been booming at Waving Colors, Ltd. The millennial ma & pa shop started customizing flags in the year 2000, just a year after the founders graduated from Apollo High School in St Cloud, Minnesota. They employed a couple friends and, by autumn of the following year, mortgaged a warehouse to account for a spike in orders for Old Glory, black M.I.A. flags, ‘never surrender’ messages that sometimes bordered on the anti-Islamic vibes of those who generalized Osama Bin Laben’s effect on at least a quarter of the world’s population. Jenny and Jim (not yet a ma & pa) would receive donations of fabric and machinery from local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, VFW, Rotary—all with a blanket assumption that the company would add to the unifying message of George W and Mayor Giuliani: you’re either with us or with the enemy, and clearly that enemy was no one Minnesotan.

            The website, when Jenny convinced Jim of the merits of the internet, would manifest their stock and reassure that every flag was sewn with careful interest in the seams—the swathes discreet and any stenciled items rolled by hand. Machines would guide the intricate weave of stars and eagles clutching arrows, olive leaves. These were standard fare, but the fun would come in customizing.

            “Like the nation of your motorboat,” Jim quipped, pointing to the fluttering of ‘Loony Bin’ on the stern of a pontoon, the floating image of the state bird stitched below the words.

            High School teams—their alma mater not doing justice to their sun god, or the crosstown rival Tech H.S. trying to put more ‘bite’ into their tiger—compelled a bunch of crowdsourcing, and parents paid good money for original designs at Waving Colors, Ltd. In ways, the company would rather make a few of any type than whole-hog mass produce. The goal was not to compete with Costco and their Made in China crap, rather to excite the chance to co-create in the upper Midwest of America.

 

            Jenny faced it first, cornered in a bar she didn’t frequent: “why you making Somali flags, when them that’re here have no love lost for that failed state.”

            “You mean the blue field with a central white star? That’s been around since I was a little girl—lots of my friends are second-, even third-generation immigrants.”

            “Don’t doubt that, but... they’re here now. I wouldn’t enter their territory to plant the stars & stripes.”

            “Well,” she measured how many drinks had been had, “the Horn of Africa has suffered too many punctures of flag poles not their own. Jim an’ I—”

            “The Russians, y’mean. I saw Blackhawk Down and, shi-it, the mess was never ours to wrangle with. The Russians handed out Kalashnikovs like they were—”

            Jenny stopped him there: “like they are not the meaning in the flag. And maybe that’s why our good neighbors here are waving a reminder to the world, that anarchy is not what they promote—”

            “What in hell d’you know more than anyone?”

            Jenny walked away, and, later when she talked this through with Jim, they decided their more-than-ma & pa shop needed more security: she was five months pregnant, and he had also faced such run-ins with the less-than-satisfied.

 

            Spring of 2017, a clash of orders came their way: some in the community were heading west to Standing Rock, straddling the Dakotas, in support or disagreement with the tribe. “Hey there, Jim, you gotta know: God put dinosaurs on this planet to let us drill for oil.” And though Jim could’ve cited another customer’s point of view—that Indians had their Reservation rights precisely to prevent another ravishment from whites—he shrugged instead.

            “Not my issue. But we also don’t want hatred bannered on our products, so...”

            “Nothin’ hateful ’bout this phrase.”

            “‘MOVE, OR DIE LIKE DINOSAURS’? Like, that is how you want your grandchildren to remember you?”

            “Leave them out of it. Just make the fuckin’ order.”

            The bigot left, and since neither he nor Jim signed anything, the latter pretended to forget.

 

            Happier were the Covid years, when negotiations couldn’t occur face-to-face. “I’d like, Ms Jenny, to put a Pegasus outside my windowsill,” an email glowed, “to stand up to this chimera we all face.” Done, delivered with mask-and-distance protocol.

            “I don’t need a flag,” another wrote, “as much as fresher drapes to make me feel a part of normal life again—a Twins throwback, for when they won the World Series, or Granite City Days, struggling to keep events on Zoom.”

            George Floyd was murdered in May, and by June, banners and flags to rouse a nation were in huge demand. Jim and Jenny and their apprentice son Jason headlined their website accordingly: “we know and grieve and surely care that you will have in hand exactly what you need.” Orders for ‘Blue Lives Matter’ left them in a quandary, because refusal would land them in legal trouble—like the Indiana cake-maker who wouldn’t honor same-sex weddings. But through these threats, the family kept optimistic. January 6^th banged on their door, and the company could honestly say: “we’re overbooked.” 

            Jason grew despondent, though, as month by month the business was his to commandeer. Jenny was preoccupied with an unexpected baby, and Jim took his fears of fathering again to daily rounds of golf. Their forty-some employees were on autopilot, but someone still had to call the shots.

 

            Gambling their insurance policy, Jason planned one winter night to dress in layers, don a beard, pull a red cap visor to obscure his eyes and—pretending not to know where all the cameras were perched—he broke into the warehouse. No flamboyance, manifesto, flag to wave, Jason poured two canisters of gasoline on boxes here and contraptions there. He lit the puddles and seemed to pause in a sort of prayer, maybe for remorse he felt the world has rarely shown. The flames rose fast, if his exit was slow.

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2024)

 

The Handover

 

            Dr Rukeyser grew up a Michael Jackson fan and doubled down with each change to his legacy, from King of Pop to peculiar to pear-shaped to pedophile. She argued that Michael was none of those plosive associations and rather had a right to forge his own identity, including choices (if they were) for body alterations. From her teens to her twenties, Dr Rukeyser had no second thoughts about a career in plastic surgery. Now in her late forties, she was staring down that raison d’être.

            “I’m 100% on this,” her potential client asserted—we’ll call him Hank to protect his privacy, as he would be searchable on IMDb and other casting lists. “I’ve never wanted hands and have trained my whole life for this opportunity.”

            “Trained how,” Dr Rukeyser asked, clipboarding this consultation, “like in the Stanislavski method?”

            Hank bobbed his head. “Funny you say that—you might have seen some of my roles.”

            “Not really. Tell me about them.”

            Happy to do so, he didn’t raise his arms from the sides of the chair to itemize or gesticulate. “My first commercial was for Swagtron hoverboards and I was this kid who had this catchphrase, ‘Look, Ma—no hands!’ In thirty seconds I had to convince my actor mom that I could jump from the swingset, ride a bike with arms akimbo, dribble a soccer ball, turn her concern into a glimpse of pride. The Swagtron, then, was my earned surprise under the Christmas tree.”

            Dr Rukeyser took note. “Curious strategy. Like a vetting process for gifts.”

            “Maybe. And then one for a voice-activator like Alexa or Siri.”

            “Which one?”

            “Neither. The company went bankrupt, so I’d rather not say—but my performance was nominated for a Clio award in the way I didn’t have to hold my phone or open a laptop or...”

            “I think I get the gist. You’re dexterous without the need for hands. However,”

Dr Rukeyser set the clipboard on her lap and, consciously perhaps, pushed the bridge of her glasses closer to her eyes, “the amputation of both is a jarring request. Why not bind them for a stretch of time—or even just one to see if you’d actually need the other?”

            Hank shifted his weight and scanned the pictures on the walls to call her out: “you’ve done Botox jobs for all these fine people, liposuction, wart removals, cosmetic implants—”

            “—I’ve never amputated any—”

            “fingers? Like that polydactyl child I read about online—it led me here, in fact. And the article went on: ‘if the body is a temple,’ you were quoted, ‘not all parts are doing holy work.’ You did say that, right?”

            “Well, I wanted to emphasize the predominance of what the body does right.”

            Hank shrugged in some agreement. “Or your work with gender-affirming surgery. You can’t deny that what I’m asking is so different.”

            “There is strict licensing and oversight on all these procedures. Voluntary amputations of hands is... not what I’ve ever heard of, let alone can practice.”

            Leaning in, Hank reiterated what had already been proposed: “your lawyer and mine have already agreed in principle to your complete immunity from any malpractice—beyond your substantial pricetag.”

            “This is not about money,” Dr Rukeyser put up her palms, “and certainly not what lawyers determine.”

            

            The consultation went another twenty minutes and ended on the suggestion ‘let’s sleep on this’—separately, of course. Dr Rukeyser drove home and imagined Hank doing the same in a driverless car. She stopped at an Olive Garden drive-thru to give herself the night off from cooking. She mindlessly voice-activated a playlist to the 25^th anniversary release of Bad, jumping to a side B that, as a kid, she would lift off of a turntable and flip over, carefully replacing the stylus to hear ‘Another Part of Me’, followed by ‘Man in the Mirror’; she hadn’t handled vinyl that way since the digital revolution. Maybe life was less and less hands-on.

            Nevertheless, this would be a game-changer for her raison d’être (she could not shake the term). Even if the contract provided for nondisclosure of her role, inevitably her reputation would feed the talking points of countless echo chambers. She imagined someone like Howie Mandel—a preeminent germophobe who hasn’t been seen to shake anyone’s hand for decades—extolling the choice to reduce the manipulation of social norms. She wondered what Helen Keller might say, having only her hands as a means to communicate. She thought of a friend who was born with brachydactyly, enduring endless whispers and worse before receiving prosthetics and mastering their use. That friend was a fan of Black Sabbath, largely inspired by Tony Iommi who lost several fingers at a packaging plant, then practicing like hell to become the ‘Ironman’ of heavy metal guitarists.

            Olive Garden at rest in her gut and the garbage disposal, Dr Rukeyser scrolled through her options to round out the night. She was missing her cat, who died after Covid, perhaps out of loneliness once she had quit working from home. She wasn’t quite wed to her office, but she had long ago acquiesced to being ‘in demand’. With A.I. wearables evolving to transplants, her own touch with the times would only increase. Retirement would never breathe down her neck—probably the opposite: the Hanks of this world would hound her like a queen bee to keep up the hive.

            

            To summon up sleep, she played with her hands: crocheting the fringe of the bed throw, drumming a rhythm on lips, hinging and humming a ‘here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and.... The people would either wiggle like worms or disappear in expectation, depending on the inward or outward weave of her fingers. She tried other variants, as if making silhouette bunnies with no light at all. She cracked her knuckles unnaturally to compel a massage, undo any damage. About to lose consciousness, she noticed a glow on her phone: ‘Dr Rukeyser, I’m texting without’—

            

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2024)