Sword & Saturday — The Pen Is Mightier…

Sometimes we think we’re warriors, but in reality…

“The pen is mightier than the sword.”

As she drove along, Lainie saw those words graffitied on the wall built along a section of that highway to separate it from a housing development. The wall gave an illusion of privacy to those homeowners and was supposed to dull the sound of the cars, mini-vans, semis, motorcycles, and pickups whizzing along the smooth asphalt. Lainie’s friend lived in one of those houses. And it was just on the other side of that wall.

“Sound barrier,” her friend had said, snorting derisively, when Lainie had visited. “That’s a joke. I wrote to the local paper when the highway expansion was first being proposed, and instead of rerouting the road or backing off on the expansion, the city council decided to build this joke of a wall.”

“Well, they say that the pen is mightier than the sword,” Lainie had said lamely. “And if you hadn’t written, there wouldn’t be a wall.”

“Feels like being in prison,” the friend had said, frowning at the view out the sliding patio doors at that mass of concrete rising thirty feet in the air. “I can’t stand to even look out the back windows, let alone use the backyard. I take my kids to the park. And we’re on the east side of the wall, so the sun sets sooner for us.”

Lainie thought about her friend while driving along that highway. For a year, she had avoided using it, taking an alternate route through the city streets from her apartment to work. After that, she had given up, telling herself that she had taken enough of a stand for her friend, and used the highway, getting to work a half hour faster, as did many others driving on that same pavement. “You can’t beat progress,” she had told herself.

The pen could indeed be mightier than the sword in some circumstances. Her friend had tried with that letter—more than many people do. And for the past five years, before that expansion was even a gleam in a city council member’s eye, Lainie had been making her living as a “pen warrior,” as some pundits called her and others. She remembered the article she had written for a magazine that spoke out for human rights. As a result of that article, a Congressional committee had begun an investigation into a planned sale of a utility company to foreign owners. So far, the committee hadn’t met even once, but the chairman kept telling her they “were working on it.” Lainie had continued writing other articles, even a couple about this highway expansion once that gleam had turned into a firm plan and was put up for public comment.

“I should have tried to do more about this highway, written more articles,” thought Lainie, steering clear of a car stopped on the shoulder where the driver was examining the back driver-side tire. “Dumb head! He’s gonna get hit.” She looked in the rearview mirror just as a semi plowed into the man and his car. She gasped and thought, “Do I stop? Is there anything I can do to help? Do I dial 911?” Then she thought, “No, I can write another article!”

She drove on, feeling inside that she was a real warrior making a difference in the world. After all, she had dared to spray paint that message on the wall in the wee hours. “Maybe it should say ‘The spray paint is mightier than the sword.’” She laughed at the thought and drove on, forgetting about the man who had been hit.

———

Thanks for reading. If you’ve been enjoying my flash fiction on here, please check out my first book of short stories (a couple are actually novelette length), newly published by Wordwooze Publishing. (I even designed the cover.)

Click on image to buy on Barnes & Noble

A scammer on Amazon is now selling paperbacks of my book for $26.11. Avoid Amazon! Or be sure to buy the $16.99 version posted by my publisher.