The Sacrifice

Tall, gray, gleaming, it rose before him as it always did when he crested the hill. Every day for how many years now had he walked this path in the early morning hours, arriving at this spot just in time to see the building outlined, stark and imperial, against a new sky bright with anticipation of the arrival of the sun?

It was an impressive building, a monumental building, the magnum opus of some now-wealthy architect. Too many stories to count for this old man, and yet today it looked smaller somehow. But then, everything looked smaller now. He thought of the times he had ventured into the lobby -- the momentary silent vacuum as he pushed through the revolving doors, to be met on the other side by the cool feel of temperature-controlled air and the heady aroma of fresh-ground coffee from the vendor’s cart by the elevator. He had no desire to go in today.

He stared long and hard at the building, thinking of the accountants and lawyers, stockbrokers and entrepreneurs who would soon be scurrying through its halls to offices with big windows and shiny, modern furniture. Sitting at their desks all day, their eyes looking through the obligatory pictures of wives and husbands, daughters and sons without ever stopping to really look at the pictures, without realizing that the day could come when all they had left was a picture….

He wanted to see the building as the beacon of ingenuity and enterprise it had always been to him, a symbol of all that was right and good about America. He wanted the sight of it to stir in him that sense of patriotism and pride he had felt so often before. But all he saw now was a pile of gunmetal gray stones stacked one on top of another. The forest green of the canopy over the front doors reminded him of jungles and camouflage; the shiny metal trim caught the first rays of the sun and threw them back into his eyes like the reflection of moonlight off a sniper’s scope. Lights exploded in the windows of the offices coming to life for the day; the explosions stayed painted on his eyelids when he closed his eyes.

Looking up, higher and higher, he watched the stories build one on another, until his eyes reached the top … the flag. The ultimate symbol of freedom, stirring softly in a breeze he could not feel here on the ground. He had a flag at home now, too, tri-folded and tucked away with pictures and letters and the telegram. He looked up again at the flag fluttering atop the cold, gray building, the flag he always thought he would be willing to give anything to defend. It should be at half mast. He had given too much.