Traitors Folly

 Traitors Folly

Dad always dragged us to roadside attractions. But, while I’ve forgotten the tallest stack of butter and the fattest cow and a million other tidbits of oddness, I haven’t forgotten the Monument to Insurrection. 

I don’t think I ever will. 

Whatever internet searches might have you believe, there are roadside attractions in the East Coast, they’re real common. Of course, I can’t tell you exactly where we were— no one can seem to remember, or doesn’t want to remember. Just that, heading back from relatives in Philadelphia and about five more hours from home, dad was excitedly pulling us into some lot. It was morning, maybe seven or eight, and no one was really there. 

“All the better!”, dad practically cheered, and we were out, stretching legs or twisting backs. Dad went on ahead, of course, but not far. I could see him, standing in the shadow of what must’ve been our reason for stopping: a bronze statue of a man, maybe thirty or so feet tall. 

He looked like a man from the Revolutionary War, some hero or metaphorical compilation of the many soldiers who’d fought to forge the country he now looked out over in perpetuity. While I looked up at him, Dad and Mom were both reading the plaque on the small concrete base. 

But then I noticed the oddity of it, the pained look on his metal face, and a noose around his neck. Instead of his hands holding a rifle or posed over his eyes to survey the horizon, they were bound behind his back by equally bronze chains. 

The words Who is this guy? were just beginning to form in my mind when very suddenly, my mom and dad quick marched us back to the car. I’ve never seen my parents look like that, not even when a few years prior some crazed homeless guy had shuffled into our house. It was a kind of confusion and fear that shone completely on their features. I still remember how dad sped away, how much the silence seemed to last for hours and hours, until we were home. 

We just didn’t talk about it. My mom and sister seemed to almost forget about it, or maybe they just buried it better than I did, something I could never do very well. But even then, it took years until I could ask my father what had happened, what the hell he’d seen.

I was in college when he told me, both of us on the back deck sharing a beer after a long day of visiting family and all that comes with the return from long time away. He never looked at me, not once while he spoke, and the near-whisper of his usual voice devoid of its typical joviality shook me. I felt cold on a warm summer evening. 

He told me that the plaque had said something very brief and something very impossible. Dad remembered word for word. He said he’d never forgotten, and never would long as he lived. 

“This statue depicts, in metaphorical allusion, the failed uprising of 1776 by a group of Colonial citizenry, who attempted to overthrow the rightful Royal authority of this great land. After the defeat of the Insurrection and the reconstructive Colonial Efforts in 1779, this statue and nearly two hundred and fifty others like it were commissioned by the Royal Crown to be placed and maintained in as many Colonial centers as possible. These markers remain as a reminder of the lives lost, and the folly attempted. God save the King, and God save his Empire.”