Tank Man

I have been without food for seven weeks. The pain shrieking in my stomach only whips the wind of my indignation. The hunger strikes, the peaceful sit-ins, the earnest negotiations mean nothing to these quonking, power-man-bureaucrats.

I know the rules: keep in close contact with other resisters at all times; always stand your ground peacefully; and develop unwavering trust in the student mission.

Suddenly and inexplicably, some vast, greedy, temporal blindness takes control of me. This is not some radical hallucination--my levelheadness would surely prevent that. I assure you, I still see reality in all its charred phenomena. The PRC has turned loose its dogs of war, its tanks, and its troops.

I step out of the secret printing facility--both arms laden with shopping bags of new literature for the rally on the Square tonight. I stumble uneasily across the small street leading to the grand boulevard. This is the sacred thoroughfare--buttressed by rows of perfect trees and romantic globe lampposts--that leads directly to Tiananmen Square.

As I approach the boulevard, I see students dressed in white shirts and black pants, like myself, running abstractedly. Bicycles are abandoned. I look to my right and feel vibrations in my heart coming from the crunching, grinding tracks of the tanks, the gun-metal green tanks clawing their way down my sacred boulevard.

I must stop them! Jostling my grocery bags, I hurry to the middle of the street, and stop directly in the path of the lead tank. The tank crunches forward anonymously, and then suddenly stops--directly in front of me.

The tank moves to the left.
I do, too.
The tank moves back toward the center.
I do, too.
This is a game of Simon Says.
This is not a game of Simon Says.

I climb up on the tank, inspect the turret (I have never see a tank up close!) (I would start a new sentence here.) and look down the hatch, which was already open. I cannot do justice to the pugnatious emanations and epithets the tank driver spit forth, so I will not try. I start to climb down, just as someone from the tank gets out and calls to his comrades on the side of the street. One man on a bicycle rode out to talk to me. Then two men in black shirts waving their arms came running up to me taking me by surprise. They seemed to come out of nowhere. Then there was a third man. I was inundated and carried off, still clutching my grocery bags. ("inundated" is a little strange there, though, perhaps correct. I think: "inundated with phone calls" in the most common usage. Maybe choose another word...)