At last, it happened.
Breaking news: massacres at three elite schools, Washington, DC. Fifteen fatalities thus far, two dozen wounded evacuated to trauma centers. Schools and government buildings in lockdown. Gunmen at all three schools dead by suicide, SWAT teams swarming the facilities. Live press conference identifies first victims: student fatality Michael Ellis, son of Richard Ellis, Secretary of Health and Human Services; student fatality Jennifer Davis, daughter of Senator Tim Davis of Texas; student fatality Dennis Johnson, son of Congresswoman Maxine Johnson of Maryland; student fatality Courtney Carson, niece of former senator and current oil lobbyist Richard Carson; among the critically wounded, Trevor Harris, son of Eagle News Anchorman Jason Harris.
Kurt Robey, Director of Public Affairs for Americans for Firearm Rights cussed his cell phone. Sit tight, he repeated to the office manager, he'd be there. Massacres and the media going nuts were nothing new.
But it had happened. These victims, these parents.
He turned up the car radio's volume. Details were sketchy, rushed, reporters and anchors bumbling, their shock, this time, genuine. These schools? These kids?
Robey's reputation as the best in the business hadn't come from lightweight challenges. His re-branding the public face of AFR after years as a top lobbyist for the gun industry, his cultivating legislators, his crafting and achieving agendas marked him clever, talented, unique. 60 Minutes' recent profile portrayed Robey as a cool head for crises and power building. He would navigate AFR through this, politicians' kids or whatever.
Incoming information shifted to frenetic chatter between anchors, reporters, and pundits. Robey preferred radio. TV visuals elicited and manipulated emotion, complications for his line of work. Sound, radio, suited Robey's fine-tuned ears. TV packaging of American gun slaughter was all too predictable: maudlin commentary, cloying music, eyewitness accounts, victims' family and classmates' testimonials, handmade signs and flowers piled as memorials at carnage sites, candlelight vigils, version after version of "Amazing Grace," with, of course, rote condolences from politicians and a presidential sentiment of heavy hearts with the victims and their families held in the nation's thoughts and prayers.
Nonetheless, visuals greeted Robey when he found his staff in the conference room watching TV. Several observed how unnerved journalists and pundits looked this time. The victims' parents were of the beltway, societal peers and personal friends of the media elite who covered them. And now, one of their own, Anchorman Jason Harris, appeared live as he dashed into Georgetown University Medical Center where his son with a bullet to the brain had been rushed to surgery.
The staff moved slow to Robey's order to mute the TV. He went to the head of the table, all business, braced for outburst which erupted the moment he sat. Holy Jesus! Politicians' kids, Jason Harris' kid. Security at all three schools breached at the same time! How? Why? Reaction would be huge this time. Congressmen, senators, media personalities — their own kids shot. The gun control lobby—
Shut the hell up, Robey shouted. First things first. Get out a press release for website and phones.
Robey dictated, the manager transcribed:
Americans for Firearm Rights joins our entire nation in expressing our deepest sympathies to the families of victims associated with Dearborn Academy, Saint Mary's School, Delaware Military Academy and all else affected.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families.
We will have no further comment until all facts are known.
Kurt Robey
Director of Public Affairs
Americans for Firearm Rights
Robey spotted a "Breaking News" graphic on TV and ordered the audio on. Senator James McGee issuing a statement. McGee's solemn face and brief statement conveyed shock and grief. "However," he concluded, "it still remains for America to protect the Second Amendment. Guns must be accessible to law-abiding citizens."
"Good boy," Robey smiled. McGee nodded to the press, did not allow for questions and departed. The good senator was worth every penny of AFR's PAC contributions.
A staffer's frown disrupted Robey's satisfaction. AFR's sponsored gun show next week. What to do?
Robey glared, irritated. "Columbine," he answered. "Columbine, the NRA — that's exactly what to do. NRA proceeded with their Denver convention two weeks after Columbine. Take that and swallow. Anyone who can't swallow doesn't belong here."
"It's different this time," another interrupted. "these kids —"
"And why not them?" Robey countered. "Yes, it's tragic, but it's the price we pay for living in a free society."
Robey issued directives. Phones ringing. Alone in the conference room, Robey overheard them answered, the press release being read to those calling for AFR comment.
He opened his laptop. As composer, Robey created memos, emails, bulleted instructions. As maestro, he issued them to particular media personas to disseminate the talking points, framing, and spins.
The manager brought him a fax with great news: a major gun manufacturer's announcement awarding AFR a six-figure grant. Robey grinned, stretched and looked up at the latest development airing on TV. A videotape of a gunman had been mailed to a network. Robey picked up the remote and turned on the audio. This too, was standard: a male in fatigues, a black stocking cap pulled over his face, stood against a bare backdrop to speak a disjointed manifesto point blank at the camera. The monotone voice was young, alienated, and contained a slight accent, perhaps American southwest.
"Homegrown," Robey told the manager, "another idiot kid whining he's disenfranchised, bullied, victimized. Boo hoo."
"There are many more of us," the gunman rambled. "Expect us, America, expect us everywhere."
"Your fifteen minutes are up, asshole. R-I-P." Robey's pressed the remote's off-button with a dramatic flourish of his thumb, but the manager had already left.
Robey yawned and rubbed his fatigued eyes. His shoulders had tensed from the marathon with the laptop. He listened to the staff speculating about the massacre in the lulls between answering phones.
They hushed when he entered their workspace. He told them he would get a quick bite to eat at Molly Pitcher's Bar & Grille on K Street then return and finish up things for the day.
He removed his jacket from the coat tree while assuring them things would return to normal despite today's distinctions. AFR would triumph as long as it and the rest of the gun lobby hung tough with no compromises on regulation or anything else.
"Meant to tell you," the manager said as Robey buttoned his jacket, "Your baby's sweet."
Robey removed his new compact semiautomatic Smith & Wesson .45 ACP Chief's Special from his shoulder holster, drawing appreciative stares and comments. With it tucked into the holster, his jacket buttoned, no one on the street could see Robey packed heat—as did all AFR staff, local gun bans notwithstanding. Outside, his mind cleared. Police and news helicopters flew low and loud. With security and emergency services on full alert, DC would be the safest locale in the country for the next week or so.
There were fewer pedestrians this late autumn afternoon. They looked nervous, hurried. Remarkable, Robey thought, how fear is visible, even palpable. Fear permeated the air, block after block, and he sensed it as sure as he sensed his feet on the sidewalk, his clothing against his skin, the solidity of holster and gun alongside his chest. Quite something, this fear in the air. It wouldn't last. It would evaporate and vanish with the next news cycle, tabloid sensation, scandal, infotainment.
A small crowd gathered on the K Street sidewalk near 17th where the Jumbotron fronting Eagle News, DC studio broadcast coverage. Large gold headlines flowed beneath behemoth imagery. Robey, head down, sped by even as something made the crowd gasp. A businesswoman, her hand to her mouth, stepped backward and collided into Robey causing him to stumble and grab her shoulders to prevent both of them falling off the curb.
"She's dead!" the woman screeched at him, "the congressman's daughter!"
Robey followed her shocked upward stare. In high definition, breaking news: a photo of a smiling blonde adolescent, Brooke Irwin, age sixteen, time of death 5:42 p.m. EST, Georgetown University Hospital. Next flashed stock footage of Representative Alex Irwin and his young attractive wife. Melanie Irwin had been introduced to Robey at a recent AFR fundraiser and had charmed him more than most political spouses.
The woman looked up at Robey. "This is terrible, terrible," she said.
"Nah, lady," interjected a twenty-something fellow in front of them. He raised his eyebrows and smirked. "Just another bang-bang day in the U-S-of-A."
Robey removed his hands from the woman. He wanted to grab the jerk now walking away, grab his collar, spin him around, call him a S-O-B, but something made Robey and the woman flinch and with a violent yank of their heads and upper torsos, their knees buckled, their bodies dropped.
Robey, on top of the woman, wondered why they were on the sidewalk in a heap, contorted, why the woman twisted underneath him with his full weight on her did not move or groan. Whatever dropped them repeated, loud, ceaseless, merciless. Screams, panic, footsteps, shouts and moans preceded another deafening barrage. Silence. Robey, his cheek against the side of the woman's face, heard an exhalation merging into a grotesque gurgle.
Something excruciating jammed into his ribs. Something as hard and as forceful as a baseball bat had hit him two, no, three times. Whatever hit him, dropped him, belonged to the engulfing insanity: thuds of the others hitting pavement, more screams, hysteria, more torrents of red-hot metal zooming and vibrating through space just above his head.
He had to get his weight off his gun. He had to breathe. He tried once, twice, to roll off the woman, but perceiving and commanding his extremities seemed impossible. His feet, legs, arms, and hands were leagues away. He closed his eyes, stilled his mind, willed himself to roll onto his back.
An animalistic sound, primal, deep and awful surprised him as his back and shoulders flattened against the sidewalk. The sound had surged from his core to roll up his throat and explode from his mouth. More pain. Boiling oil pouring onto his belly, chest and right shoulder. Electricity coursed from his shoulder, consumed his useless right arm, hand, and fingers, no longer flesh, muscle and bone, but fire, sparks and needles.
Robey heard a male voice yell something about Glocks.
Glocks, yes, Robey thought. His ever-efficient mind retrieved a mental summary of Glock 9 mm: capability to fire five rounds per second, a magazine that can hold thirty-three hollow-point bullets, experienced shooters able to reload in seconds.
He hadn't seen a damn thing. It had happened too fast for his brain to register danger. It sounded like several shooters who could have concealed their weapons under long coats. If only he'd seen something he could have drawn and fired his Chief's Special. He could hardly see the woman, the dead woman beside him. If not for her bumping into him, the Jumbotron, the televised girl, the jokester, his being distracted those several seconds, he would not be down, would not be on this pavement, wounded, hemorrhaging.
Hearing became Robey's primary sense as thick darkness wrapped round him amid the hell on K Street. Panic's strike in his solar plexus receded along with fading perception of his limbs, his body's periphery.
It isn't fair, he thought. He was only forty-six. He was not done, he couldn't be. He had only been walking. He was son, husband, father. Only this of his identity along with sounds, especially shots tearing through space above and around him, remained from all else falling away.
Kurt Robey then realized something about sound. Sound is vibration: hearing was his first sense at birth. Sound is vibration: hearing would be his last sense in this premature, hideous death. Unable to shout, unable to verbalize, he mentally protested this inappropriate death, this too soon, this so unfair death.
Yes, unfair. He, Kurt Robey, the best in the business, the cool-headed strategist, inflicted by what he treasured, as he lay dying. Unfair, he thought — this price, this time, this spot on K Street.
Maureen Griswold has been an RN and a print journalist. As a military veteran herself and the sister of a Vietnam War casualty, she authored Internet articles before Campaign 2004 regarding the GW Bush AWOL/military record story and its blackout by U.S. mainstream media. She was deluged with passionate readers' responses throughout the U.S. and beyond (she's kept 130 pages of it).
She's now working on a novel interweaving a northern California family with the modern era of nursing — Florence Nightingale to Millennia Year 2000.
Comments (closed)
Shirley Ross
2008-08-18 15:18:01
Very emotional piece. A reality check for all of us regarding gun control, the efforts of the NRA and many to curb the reaction to the terrible but daily violence in the United States.