Music from the War Movies

    Lawrence Crowe was an old man now. He sat on his floral couch, lanky arm extended, and flipped through TV commercials. His saggy face was set in a grimace, an almost angry look at the rotting television on its fancy stand Francine had bought at an auction in 1962.

    Francine had been dead for three years now, and he hadn't missed her too much over the last one. He'd finally buried her face in the very back of his mind to rot like she was in her coffin down Cemetery Drive. The coffin had been fancy too. But the gravestone was simple. Just how she wanted it to be. She liked hidden beauty, to the point that she hid it in the ground and left the moss coated stone on the grass to be ugly. Lawrence hadn't left the flowers on her grave in two years. She had liked to have the white roses.

    Finally, a face he knew popped up onto the screen through the flipping channels, and he paused in his insistent pressing of the remote's buttons. It was in black and white, a rather dreary fledged image of a stout man in a uniform, a dark armband circling his left arm, one hand gripping his wrist. His face had a rigid expression, mouth in a serious line, brows slanted, a large nose. The rest of his face was rather pudgy in a way, folding somewhat gently. Though nothing about the man was at all gentle. His dark hair was parted to the side, a square mustache upon the upper lip.

    “It is believed that Adolf Hitler suffered from many health problems, some perhaps even being mental. One researcher described Hitler as a “neurotic psychopath-”

    “Damn right he was a neurotic psychopath.” Lawrence grumbled, dropping the remote to the couch cushion with a shaky hand and struggling to get to his feet. He reached blindly for the walker in front of him, and finally grasping it, he pulled with achy muscles to his slippered feet. Then he began a stooped, shuffling walk towards the TV, tuning out the dialogue as he focused on walking. He could barely hear it anyways because of the useless hearing aid lodged in his ear.

    Lawrence didn't focus on the images rushing absently across the screen, only making it to the television, one slow step at a time. He thought back to when he didn't even need the walker to make it across his own tiny living room, when he could stand straight and easily in his tan slacks, put his hands around the suspenders which curved into the narrow bend in his shoulders.

    He probably wouldn't even be going to the TV, probably only to the porch to stare out across the open fields, a warm Kansas sun shining over his shoulders. He would stop at the door, decorate his head with a plaid newspaper hat, take his cane in hand and sit in his rocking chair, watching the younger people scrambling along the fields, harvesting and planting. Those were the days, when he was 67. And retired.

    Now he was 88, that was 21 years ago. And now he was going to the TV, towards the rigid man with the strange styled mustache, the man with the armband with the white circle in the center, along with a mark almost as strange as his mustache. A name that was more connected with hate and bloodshed than any other. Toward Adolf Hitler.

    He shut the television off.

    Hitler's image turned black, the narrative stopped talking. Lawrence started back, shuffling back towards his floral couch. Then he saw it, the remote, setting slanted in the crook between two cushions. Lawrence imagined it laughing at him and suddenly his walker slammed into the short hedge of rug more forcefully, his face turning from its grimace into a frown of frustration. He started to swear dully under his breath, thinking subtly, as he made his way as roughly as an old man could to his floral couch.

    He picked up the gray remote, held it in one bony hand, squeezing his thin fingers around the bright buttons. His veins were extending from the backs of his hand in opaque flesh with dark blue and purples showing through the skin. It was as if his veins were trying to burst from his skin. For a long moment, he stared at the remote and his veins. Leaning casually against the walker, he could imagine the remote just smirking greedily up at him, while he attempted to strangle an inanimate object.