Fallen

It came as a hollow crash from someplace in the far-end of the house. I had been half-asleep and thought perhaps someone had pushed in our locked front door.

As I got up, I grabbed my flash light and unsheathed my K-BAR knife. But by the time I got to the hallway, my wife Mary had turned on the overhead light and loudly questioned, “What the hell was that?”

As I started down the hall towards the noise, our housemate popped her head out of her room and said in a loud whisper, “It sounded like it came from the front door.”

As quick as possible, I scanned the living room area for intruders, settling my flashlight’s beam on the front door. I found nothing, so I turned on the living room lights.

That’s when I discovered the source of the noise – out American flag, which leans in the corner behind the front door had fallen on the floor. It struck me odd that it would have fallen across the doorway instead of sliding down the wall before falling over.

After picking it up, tightly wrapping the flag around the pole, I propped it back into position against and slightly behind our Nevada state flag. By this time both Mary and Ka had returned to bed and headed down the hallway, turning all the lights off behind me.

As I slipped back between the sheets, I couldn’t help but wonder why it fell over like it did. It was mechanically incorrect and yet it had happened.

I was suddenly jarred fully wake as this thought slipped into my mind, “Did we jus’ get a sign about America’s future?”

The thought remained tangled in my dreams throughout the night and morning. I woke up feeling very tired and decided to go look at the flag and pole in the early morning sunshine.

This closer inspection brought about a new discovery: the screw holding the top corner rivet to the pole had broken. The head snapped off cleanly from the screw, allowing the flag’s eyelet to stay snagged on it.

I knew then that it was a sign to be taken seriously – not only is America about to fall, it’s going to do so because like “a fish that rots from the head down,” so is the Obama administration, from the top down.