Keeping the Peace - Chris Callaghan

Clara thinks the emails from her sister’s attorney could be bullets fired from Wild West pistols, with barrels as long as her fore arms, or weighty cannon balls shot during the Civil War. Some of the lengthier ones have that rat-a-tat-tat staccato stutter of World War Two machine guns as depicted in the cartoon balloons of her brother’s old GI Joe comic books.

Then there are a few that she is sure are pumped out of an AK47, although she’s never heard one fired. But it is the gun she sees when she closes her eyes against the words on her computer screen. Whatever weapon or decade she assigns to it, she knows War when she sees it. She hits reply and poises her fingers above the keyboard primed in her mind to fire back – volleys of answers, indignation, and anger.

She stops mid-stroke and pushes her chair back on its five wheels, the rage roiling in her head too close to the white screen, too close to the finality of the send button.

Breathing deeply, she moves to her grandmothers oak table, takes up her father’s gold Cross pen and a pink spiral topped pad. Feeling safer in this small haven of a bunker, she unleashes her fury, purges her rage, and vomits out all the words that she might be tempted to send, send, send. She writes for an hour and there are craters on the pages from the depth of her pen point.

Finally her ammo is spent and she stares at the final word she has written. Two capitalized letters: N O. That small word is all she really needs to halt the battle for this day. It is adamant, unemotional and stands like two sentinels on her assigned side of the battlefield.

Repetitive and blunt, this is the word she uses to disengage from the war day after day, month after month, year after year. She would prefer a longer word, she longs to type it: peace. But that is a word that the enemy refuses to read or hear, much less keep.

Yet.