'Witnesses' by Luke Whisnant

The man holding the open black umbrella; the smirking man in white sunglasses; the woman wearing cutoff jeans and a tight black tank top, screaming; the child tethered to a red balloon; the cop who lost his hat when diving for cover; the truck driver who parked in the handicapped space, but only for a minute, I swear; the grandmother who sketched it all in her journal; the poet screaming; the woman with kinky hair and tortoise-shell sunglasses screaming; the Secret Service agent with blood on his Armani jacket screaming and kicking bystanders; the kid with the video camera pointed skyward who missed the whole thing; the kid in the Transformer teeshirt screaming between sips of carrot juice; the old man who fell in the crush of the crowd and was trampled, screaming; the driver of the motorcade, who later said he hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t heard anything, didn’t know anything at all except what the Secret Service agent kept screaming at him, over and over: Drive, damn you! Drive!