It WAS A Wonderful Life
Won't you come home, George Bailey?
by Kevin M. Boylan
I run down Main Street in a daze, my feet slipping in the wet snow as heavy, damp flakes flutter densely and silently out of the night sky. But I pay no mind as they melt on my face and mat my hair--I am mesmerized by the sights and sounds around me. All of Bedford Falls seems horribly and inexplicably changed. The people are worst. At first glance, friends and acquaintances I’ve known my entire life look and sound the same, but look more closely and many of them are altered beyond recognition. Whether it’s Nick the bartender or Ma Bailey, I no longer know them – nor they me. Their faces have grown hard, their eyes bitter, and their hearts cold and selfish. When they speak, their voices are harsh, and ripe with anger and spite.
Their words echo the appalling cacophony that is pouring out onto Main Street from the speakers above the shops on either side. The names blare out like a litany of ruin - Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh, Liddy, North, O’Reilly - all shouting over and around each other. The voices are different, but their shrill pronouncements and vicious denunciations are so alike that I can pick them out clearly amidst all the babble of paranoia and vitriol. Hate thy neighbor, fear that which is different, might makes right, greed is good, ignorance is a virtue, war is peace, true patriotism is blind – all delivered in sneering, boastful, gloating tones that brook no dissent and leave no room for nuance. Who are these lunatics, and what could possibly have happened to Murrow, Kronkite, Brinkley, and all the rest?
I race on down the street to get away from the hateful sounds, speeding up as I pass a cluster of gun stores - their windows full of malevolent sculptures in blue steel, black plastic, and wood - that materialize where the Five-and-Dime and the butcher shop had always been. A pair of men with pronounced bulges under the left sleeves of their coats eye me suspiciously as they come striding out of one of the stores. I hastily turn my head to break eye contact, and gaze across the street through the swirling curtain of flurries. There a stream of people walking into church for a Christmas Eve service are stepping across the snow-encrusted form of Mr. Gower, the old pharmacist, as he lies shivering on the sidewalk.
I want to slow down and stop drawing attention to myself, but mounting panic makes my legs pump ever faster in a desperate attempt to find something – anything – that is still in its rightful place, pure and unchanged. But to no avail. As I approach the newsstand at the corner of Main and Elm, I make out the headline: ‘SAM WAINWRIGHT TO CLOSE PLASTIC PLANT – OUTSOURCE JOBS TO MEXICO.’ I grab a copy and flip through it frantically as I rush on. The words appear in a blur of alternating pulses of light and darkness as I pass from one streetlamp to the next, like a soundless bell visually tolling the death knell of innocence and the American Dream. ‘WAR OF CHOICE,’ ‘SLAM-DUNK,’ ‘GUANTANAMO,’ ‘ABU GHRAIB,’ ’1300 GI’s DEAD’ it rings, ‘ENRON,’ ‘WORLDCOM,’ ‘TYCHO,’ ‘GLOBAL WARMING,’ ‘SCHOOL EVOLUTION BAN,’ ‘50 MILLION UNINSURED.’ The front-page photo shows a U.S. Marine shooting an unarmed, wounded man lying prostrate on the floor.
Sick to my stomach, and gasping for air, I rip the paper to shreds and hurl it into the night, screaming “This is all a nightmare!! It can’t be real!!” Suddenly, I become aware of someone behind me. It’s the two men from the gun shop, only this time with their pistols drawn and pointing at me warily. “What the hell’s wrong with you?!” shouts one, while the other warns, “We don’t want to hurt you, but if I were you I wouldn’t move a muscle.” But I’m beyond fear by now and take off running toward the town square. A warning shot whines over my head, followed by a chorus of voices. “Stop him, he’s crazy!” “Did he steal something?” “Why’s he running like that?” “Maybe he killed somebody!”
Just before I turn the corner of the courthouse, I glance over my shoulder and see about half a dozen men starting out in pursuit. Then, suddenly my feet are knocked out from under me and I go sprawling headfirst into the snow. Rising quickly to my knees and rubbing the snow from my eyes, I find that I tripped over a large stone slab set flat in the courthouse lawn directly opposite the Bedford Falls synagogue. Though I have no time to spare, I feel an irrational urge to find out what it is, this monolith that stands where nothing had ever been before. Leaning back quickly to satisfy my absurd curiosity, I see that the slab has the Lord’s Prayer carved into its top, the outlines of the letters softened by a thin film of snow.
I struggle to my feet and race off again, limping slightly now, my vision blurred by tears and melted snow. Peering across the square, I can make out Bailey Building and Loan, but the hazy words on the sign seem wrong somehow. As I get closer, the words gradually clarify themselves as they come into focus - ‘Pottersville Trust Company.’ Horrified, I recoil from this portent as if I’d struck an invisible barrier, and lurch away to the right in the direction of Town Hall. It’s all starting to come back to me.
I can hear the yells and footsteps of my pursuers as they rush out into the square, but I no longer care, for I now remember everything. This is no nightmare, no feverish hallucination, but an awful reality. By driving Bailey Building and Loan out of business, Potter removed the last obstacle to his domination, and has now bankrupted the entire town and remade in his own spiteful, grasping image. He bought up the papers, radio and television stations and ceaselessly barraged the citizens with hatred and paranoia. By playing upon their greed, and darkest fears and prejudices, he succeeded in making most of townspeople willing participants in their own impoverishment and loss of liberties - and Potter’s ever-greater enrichment. Overcome by this terrible revelation, I stagger to a halt panting before Town Hall and look up. There, engraved in marble over the entrance is the undisputable proof of his final triumph – ‘Pottersville Town Hall.’
I turn and search the faces in the crowd that is now closing slowly in from behind, desperately looking for George Bailey. Certainly he would have stopped this from happening. Surely he could still find some way of foiling Potter even now. But, of course I don’t find him. How could I really expect to, since I was searching for George years before I found myself here in Pottersville, and no matter where I’ve gone no one has ever heard of him? What could have happened to him, I wonder? Did modern medicine heal his bum ear only so that he could go off to war and get shredded by a Vietcong mine in some nameless rice paddy in the Mekong Delta? Or, maybe George fulfilled his dream of becoming an architect and went on to build ugly strip malls and sprawling McMansion developments in once-pristine spots all over the country. Or, is it not more likely that George was seduced by Potter’s siren song, and sold his soul for the promise of easy money and power at his neighbors’ expense? He’s probably in the White House right now, working on Potter’s vice-presidential staff, devoting all his talents to doing away with Social Security, passing yet another corporate tax cut, and overturning environmental legislation. Mr. Bailey goes to Washington.
As I look up to the heavens, my hands outstretched, the snow abruptly ceases and the night closes in cold and bitter as a new ice age.
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