They hung him first, but I'm the one who has choked. I peer upward at the overlay of powerful crimson waves and marshmallow stars on a cerulean blanket, floating on the sky blue canvas, highlighted by a single molten spotlight, and I am speechless with pride. He has unfurled in the hurrying wind, laden with fresh salt-tinged morning dew from the nearby shores of the country declaring him their standard. I pry open all the memories I can reach, but find no name suitable for such a royal portrait. It's only then I can bask in the honor of knowing shortly, I will join him at the pinnacle to bask in the warm Florida sun.
I lose sight of him for several moments as I am finally spread out again. It doesn't cause me pain or any meaningful discomfort to have been tightly wrapped and stuffed into a cardboard box, but it was demeaning to assume such an undignified posture for so long. I am meant to swim in the breeze and to relax only when the wind pauses to catch its breath. The nobility of having all who pass this stage gaze at me with admiration for attaining such heights is a birthright I hold dear.
I flop onto the ground as the 'never to rust and stain my polished brass grommets' stainless steel clamps are fastened to my shoulders. A reassuring tug is the only signal I feel as I ascend the brushed aluminum pole. I look up to see if the wind has exhaled and brought my neighbor to attention, I'd like to salute on my way to the top. Unfortunately, he's taking a break and apparently hasn't noticed my arrival. The individual holly green blades of grass melt into a one-dimensional carpet as the ground pulls away. A large mirrored swath of water becomes part of the developing landscape for several tugs, but it disappears while I pass several tall palms.
A young breeze, unsure of its desires or purpose, swings me around to investigate the other side of the world below me. Several large buildings, placed in the formation of cardboard boxes in a warehouse, taint the majesty of nature but they remind me I am only here thanks to the people they contain. I am climbing this pole to display myself to the masses who will look here every day of my life. This is not a task I devote myself to without a certain degree of dignity and honor.
He's coming closer now. I'm well beyond halfway. Soon, I will unfurl and we will wave to each other, side by side in the glory of a South Florida morning. The reflection of the sun coming off the water runs warm fingers through my folds as I clear the tops of the palms. Another couple of feet and I'll have reached the top to look across at him. His lower edge is just a foot away as I clank to a halt when my top shoulder clunks into the bronze globe capping my pole.
What's this about? Why have I stopped here? Where's the rest of this pole? Did they plant it too low in the ground? Hey. Hey! I shout, but no one is listening. Hey, why is he higher? Raise me up or bring him down! I have no words they can hear. I look up at him as a gust of wind snaps us both horizontal. I think he's flying a bit straighter and I force my leading edge to stretch with the fast moving air. I'm up high, but damn it, he's up higher. This isn't fair, I mutter to a passing bird who neither cares nor hears my complaint. I wonder if the people in the buildings know a mistake has been made. Maybe they can fix it.
I spend the day looking up much more often than looking down. The wonderful landscape I watched in the morning holds little interest for me right now. I've been made the bottom carton on a pallet of forgotten shipping containers, the last guy to clock out at night, the stale donut left behind in the coffee room. He never looks at me. Why should he? He's up 'there', up on the 'taller' pole. What did they call him? 'Stars and Stripes'? Maybe I have a better name for him now.
As the sun shuts down for the day and the people stream out from the buildings, I start my ride to the bottom. Well, at least I am going down first. How do you like that, Stars and Strips? Let's wait and see what happens tomorrow. Maybe we get to switch poles?
***
He's already flying when I'm unwrapped below an overcast sky. The wind is harder and cooler this morning. I can't remember which pole I was on yesterday but it's only my second day on the job. They clip. I start to climb. The scenery takes my mind away from the neighbor above for most of the ride up the pole. I cruise in the stiff wind and feel my fibers stretch with anticipation. Again I stop, only a foot lower than him, but to me, I might as well be hanging in a gymnasium.
Is he that much more important than me? One more foot beneath his bottom edge, fifty-two and three-quarter inches, and we're equals. I know all about inches and yards and bolts from my childhood in the factory. He came from there, I saw him get his first stitches and his last pass through the tacker. For all I know, we probably share some of the same bolt of crimson. Now that I've taken a moment to think about it, he does resemble someone in my family. That sets me off. If we are related, what gives him the right to fly above me? Does he know the forklift-size dent this has put in my pride? He represents the entire country, but I stand for the state we've come to live in. Does it give him a higher standard than me? No! I proclaim to the people below, No, I fly for all who see me. This isn't right!
There's nothing I can do. The ropes are tied, and no one has asked for my vote. So I do my best to entertain. I flutter in the light breezes and stretch with the urge to bend my pole when the winds roar across the open lawn below. Occasionally I toss a furl across to him, not a total wave, not enough to show any unearned respect, but more of an excuse to see what he is doing with a particular gust.
The days all end the same: I drop first and get folded into the back of a rubber-covered cart. He gets hand carried. In the morning, they pull him into the sky long before someone comes to chauffeur me back to my pole. I hope he's not watching as I bounce across the lawn. Several used screws and a rusty shovel as my only companions in the bed of the motorized cart. I know he's gloating, Mr. Stars and Bars. If only a bird would land on his globe and soil that blue and red big shot, Mr. Crap and Bars, that's what I'd call him!
The weather warms as my feelings about the pompous tricolor cool even further. The air gets damp and the afternoons bring soaking rains fighting the colors in my cloth. But I've been sewn with pride from materials that have guaranteed a long and brilliant career. Sometimes they take him down as a storm approaches. Occasionally, they spare me the shower as well.
Lately I've been spending the night high in my perch, relaxing most of the time as the wind sleeps through the night. I've become a forgotten fixture, not worthy of the effort to drop and fold and then tug back to the top each day. He, of course, goes up and down on a regular schedule, probably sleeps on a black velvet pillow each night. I don't mind being alone at the top of the mast with the muted glow of the moon blanching the land below. A cavalcade of stars entertains me, passing silently overhead as the moon slides toward the distant horizon. I don't think about him at night other than to hope he doesn't return at dawn.
***
This particular morning he jogs up the pole and takes his first stretch as I am being lowered. Now what? I stop a few feet off the ground, as my lower clip is unlocked. I guess I'm getting the day off. No, a small pair of red and black twins is attached to my lower clip. They're not bad looking, somewhat bland with only two colors and less than half my size. A brand new clamp locks their bottom edge to the rope, and in tandem, we shoot back up the pole. The wind is constant this morning. The sun hasn't found a path through the clouds.
I look down at the twins and wave. They seem so serious, scanning the horizon, waiting for something inevitable to happen. I look as well, but I've not had the training they've obviously been through. It's just another day on the pole for me.
Late in the afternoon, the rains come and all three of us droop momentarily as the temperature drops several degrees. The usually well-mannered wind is replaced by a tempest that refuses to let raindrops hit the ground. Below, people are scattering, but no one heads toward my pole. I look over at old 'Points and Lines' and notice he's been wrapped several times around his pole. I hope he strangles.
The night comes and everyone remains locked in position. The wind has taken a pause, possibly recharging for another heavy blow, the rain is dripping through my fabric and filling small ponds on the lawn below us.
A gust roars through and pulls me taut against my rigging. The sound of the stainless steel metal clips clanging on a hollow brushed aluminum pole is drowned out by the screech of a wind trying to yank me free from my mount. I no longer control my dip and wave. My outer hem starts to fray, as the smallest of my threads can no longer hold on. The two guys below me are made of stiff canvas and they hunker down against the drag. Across the way, a tattered edge is beginning to form and it appears his upper grommet has gone to oval.
As urgently as the gust arrives, it's gone and for a few moments, I have a chance to relax and assess the damage. I have not shredded yet, but enough of my outer edge threads are missing, so tattering is the next injustice I will suffer. My lower neighbors are soaked but intact. They are still searching, even in the dark, for what only they know is coming. Above and across there is considerable damage, the two lowest stripes are ripped back several feet, and the alignment of the stars appears to have been altered. The perfectly aligned rows look as though they've been sewn by a seamstress with one short arm. Below us, several small trees have been relocated to one or more of the newest ponds and there are no people to be found.
Again, I watch and listen as the wind roars to full volume faster than I could free fall from my pinnacle to the ground. This time my pole starts to bend with it. I hope it doesn't break. I shudder as single threads, then small sections of cloth, start to tear free from my body. The brass grommets hold tight, but I can feel the rope start to stretch. The rain is no longer alone in the sky, large palm fronds, small needle-sharp tree limbs, and reams of man-made debris slam into me slitting threads and ripping through my cloth.
The gale has now sustained itself, and I am no longer given a moment to rest. The twins are vibrating forcefully enough to make the pole hum. I check my clips and panic as the eighth-inch gap in the upper one has widened to almost a quarter-inch. An explosion of lightning creates a fireball of golden spears outpacing the wind as they sprint across the blackened sky. Amidst the hammering roar of thunder, the tallest palm next to me is wrenched from the muddy ground and sent hurtling toward the nearest building with the anger of a medieval battering ram. The trunk and remaining fronds plummet through windows half the height of my pole with the force of a fifty-ton punch press. Tinted knives of glass, L-shaped sections of aluminum frame, and decades of expectant fingerprints shatter and collapse. The swirling wind grabs dozens of the massive chunks of glass shards and pitches them into the air. The smallest ones hit first and tear stars in my back, shredding and pulling pieces of cloth, a madwoman with pinking shears. Underneath me there's swatting and kicking as a hunk of twisted aluminum window frame is halted in its upward attack. I've got to remember to thank those guys when I get a moment.
As I peer down in horror, a jagged ex-window, the size of a sewing machine, comes flying toward me spinning with the fury of a cloth shredder. The wind is holding me tighter than a pair of sweaty, two hundred pound seamstresses and I'm about to be reduced to a pile of mattress stuffing in their hands. The two pint-sized canvas squares hanging on below swing out into the wind and stretch the rope to the point of fracture. The glass buzz saw slices into them and they collapse against the pole, shattering the pane into hundreds of small shards falling away from me. When I gather the courage to look down, the red and black cloth is gone. One brass grommet, the one sharing my lower clasp, is still there but it just rolls around uselessly holding a memory onto a piece of damp rope.
I spend the next day and a half twisting and whirling as the storm ebbs and flows across the remains of my once lush domain. Several more chunks of my body are torn away and one brass grommet finally succumbs to the pull of the wind. Fortunately, the top one holds. The stars and stripes on the neighboring pole is nothing more than one row of stars and three and a half stripes when the sun finally announces the arrival of calm.
We look at each other for the first time in these many weeks and both wave with the little strength we still retain after this battle. I take a moment to gather my wits, but I realize it's not me he's waving at. It's a salute for the two little guys who probably saved us both. I fall against the cool metal pole and shake with the last of the storm's breezes as it passes. We're both finished, not enough to repair, my next home will be a rag bin. Nonetheless, whatever my destiny, I'll be proud to say I once served with the Stars and Stripes.
