“The Pragmatist”

c. 2020 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(4-20)

Overnight.

My favorite time for creative work comes when the sun has vanished, and most of my neighbors are lost to slumbering away daily fatigue. Cloaked and comforted with this pause, I feel revived. Safe to approach the ideas that have percolated in my subconscious mind during regular hours.

I was at my desk in the home office. Coffee and my Black Lab offering companionship. The morning had been quiet so far, except for a light rain that teased at our windows. I was reviewing material for the local newspaper-of-record, the Geauga Independent. A task faithfully executed each day, as editor and publisher. Puzzlement stalled my dedication, however. I fretted over choosing an appropriate story for the front page. The Maple Festival, in Chardon? Spring awakening thoughts of leisure activities on the horizon? No… not now. These things had vanished.

In our current age of challenges and changes, they did not exist.

My company phone rang while I pondered. Its screen announced an anonymous number from Burton, Ohio. This made me sit upright, and take a deep breath. The device sounded three times in succession. Finally, I accepted the call.

“You have reached the Independent. May I help you?”

A cough and static filled my ear. “Rodney! This is Zeb!”

I rubbed my eyes. “Who?”

There was more static on the line. “Zebulon Byler-Gregg! Brother of Ezekiel and Lemuel! Have you forgotten me, young man?”

I laughed out loud. The caller was a trusted friend, brother of a fellow newspaper editor and also of a vagabond journalist who had moved from the Midwest to the Virgin Islands.

“Zeb! Zeb!” I laughed. “It is five o’clock in the morning!”

He growled like a bear. “So, you’re an understudy for the rooster now?”

“Wait,” I complained. “You called me, sir. Despite the early hour...”

“Rodney, I know your habits,” he said.

I nodded silently. “Yes, they haven’t changed. I made coffee almost two hours ago. Are you working on a feature for the Burton Daily Bugle?”

Zebulon huffed with indifference. “Brother Zeke hasn’t run any of my features in over a month. He’s obsessed with our pancake breakfasts being canceled because of the Coronavirus.”

“Right,” I reflected. “We’ve all experienced a shift of epic proportions. I wonder when we will find our way home to normalcy...”

He lowered the tone of his voice. “That’s what I wanted to discuss, Rodney. Being normal. As in me thinking that you haven’t been very normal, lately.”

I was unprepared for his comment. “What??”

Zebulon sharpened his thoughts. “You used to be a good Libertarian. An independent thinker, an arbiter of truth and justice in print. I liked that, liked reading your work. You were a good kid.”

I had no response. It seemed better to let him ramble.

“Governor DeWine and Dr. Acton have thrown down a gauntlet for citizens from Cincinnati to Cleveland,” he said forcefully. “A violation of liberty like we’ve never seen before. Not in our generation. Not in many generations. Not since the days when the Confederacy challenged our national unity.”

I took a deep breath. But still said nothing.

“It’s time,” he declared. “Time for citizens in Ohio to stand up for freedom. To stand up for our state and our nation. To stand up for our way of life!”

I slumped in my chair. “Zeb, get down off the soapbox.”

“You’ve sold out, brother!” he shouted. “What happened to the man who idolized Lysander Spooner? And William Godwin, Josiah Warren, or Max Stirner? And could quote them all, including Henry David Thoreau? Who voted for Dr. Ron Paul? Who used to have a porcupine bumper sticker on his pickup truck?”

“Zeb,” I laughed. “You are getting carried away. I’m not a scholar. Just a small-town writer. Though I did have the porcupine sticker, until it faded.”

“I’ve read your material in the newspaper,” he continued. “It isn’t the same. Urging people to follow CDC guidelines. The worst of big-government edicts!”

I sighed heavily. “Zeb, we are fighting a worldwide pandemic...”

“Horseshit!” he shouted more loudly. “This is opportunism. A political move!”

I leaned over my desk. “It’s a response to danger. An effort to rescue our society.”

“Traitor!” he yowled. “You’ve gone over to the other side! To socialism, to partisanship, to thought-control and submission of the masses. We might as well live in North Korea now!”

I couldn’t take any more of the rant. “ZEBULON! STOP IT!!”

He groaned as if in pain. “Rodney, you disappoint me.”

“Sorry Zeb,” I apologized. “This is pragmatism at work. Platitudes won’t help fight a virus. They won’t protect us from an invader like COVID-19. We need scientific analysis, and perhaps, a bit of luck...”

My friend went silent for a moment.

“Intellectual sparring is fun,” I added. “In normal times. An academic exercise, entertainment for political geeks like you and me. But not now, not today. Not when thousands have died and more are slipping toward oblivion. Gagging on their ventilators.”

Zebulon had grown angry. “You’re a turncoat!”

I shook my head. “I’m a pragmatist. Like my father. Conservative? Yes. An iconoclast? Maybe. Even a dedicated Libertarian? Yes, yes. My heartstrings reverberate with those tones. But I want to live. I want you to live and our neighbors to live. I want our world to live.”

“HYPOCRITE!” he bellowed.

I stiffened in my chair. “Sorry, brother. I won’t simply be a mouthpiece for the protesters. Though I defend their right to speak. I defend their right to be ignorant. But I won’t help them to wallow in darkness. I won’t will them to be uninformed.”

My cohort grumbled audibly.

“This is our creed and our mission,” I concluded. “To present the evidence. Then readers can decide. Freely and fortified with information. That is our tradition. To educate. To cast light where it is needed. To inspire analysis and debate...”

Zebulon wheezed like a door being shut. He hung up without another word.

Daybreak filled the window above my desk with brightening blue. The coffee had vanished from my cup. My dog was snoring.

Now, it was time to finish my writing project, and return to bed.

Comments about ‘Words on the Loose’ may be sent to: icewritesforyou@gmail.com

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