Gunter
“You’re a libtard! You people are ruining the country!” I didn’t know who he was or why he was running at me shouting, but that was Gunter’s opening gambit. Then he stopped just outside my reach. I squared up, ready to hit him, but he kept moving—circling, always maintaining that careful distance. He was angry but not careless. When working construction, knowing where you stand and where the other guy stands keeps you alive. Humor keeps you sane. We had many conversations but he never apologized for attacking me. One day he brought up the statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond. (Since I was the only “libtard” on the crew and maybe on the entire lower peninsula, everyone seemed curious about my opinions.) I explained why I thought they were wrong. He answered again and again: It’s my heritage. You’re destroying my heritage. I could feel the weight the word heritage carried. Every morning, I rode down Monument Avenue circling Lee Monument and then thru Gracy Park where Black Lives Matter had camped. One day, the area swarmed with TV crews and photographers. The commotion drew my eyes upward to the statue itself. Was something he held sacred about to be torn down? I stopped and took a photograph. The Robert E. Lee statue was removed on September 8, 2021, six days after the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled unanimously that the Governor had the power to have the statue removed from state-owned property. The more prominent and commanding pedestal was removed in February 2022. The traffic circle was opened to the light. I gave Gunter the photograph, boxed and interleafed. The next day he arrived with four books his wife had written. That Christmas, she gave each of us something she had created. She was a multidiscipline artist and a Mainer. Mine was a sublime miniature painting of a lighthouse. They were remarkable people. Their convictions did not always align with mine-they were both anti-vaxxers. According to their son, they died within an hour of each other, because of the flu. The world had its verdict; they had each other.
