The story to date: A fair and evenhanded appraisal
Well, so I did; but yet I did not think
To shew to all this World my Pen and Ink
In such a mode; I only thought to make
I knew not what: nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my Neighbor; no not I;
I did it mine own self to gratifie.
Historical Note on Kyiv-based Detective First Class John Smith’s Family Background, going back to the Puritans, courtesy, The Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board, because we know everything…
It’s nothing to be proud of.
The first American ancestors that would go on to form John Smith’s line came over to New England among the later shipments of Puritans from England, around the time of Oliver Cromwell, who had himself been preparing to make the journey, before events at home changed his trajectory a little.
But Cromwell is beside the point, and actually not relevant beyond the opening of the present Note, which, had it been written differently, wouldn’t have even mentioned the guy.
Getting back to our Smiths, there was never anything special or outstanding about them, nor did any one of them ever accomplish anything of note; there is no mention of any one of this particular Smith line in books on American history; no one of them ever managed to hold any even remotely important position, politically, at any level of colonial government, or due to elevation in social status and influence as a result of the accumulation of wealth.
At best, those who didn’t end up rolling around in the streets or upon the country byways, or being cast out of their communities altogether for consistent bad character, as manifest in drinking alcohol or being caught in the commission of petty crimes, as well as crimes of a graver nature, or outright put to death by function of local justice and its law, were employed in the physical trades, such as blacksmith, wheelwright, carpenter, cobbler, and the like. In most of these cases, those Smiths so employed typically stood no higher than being someone else’s journeymen, with the worst of them meandering off to become traveling tinkers, usually to eventually fall off the map of society altogether. People would find their remains in forests, and such.
But the worst thing of all by far with these Smiths became their pronounced Loyalist Legacy, when nearly all of them chose to pack up their things and go north, settling in Nova Scotia, the better to distance themselves from American patriots during the heady days of the American Revolutionary War.
Some years – perhaps a generation or two – later, a very small part of this far-reaching and openly traitorous clan returned stateside to resettle in Maine, drawn by unspecified promises and incentives, with our John Smith himself hailing from the historic waterfront city of Portland in that state.
When he’d started working for the Kyiv-based American detective agency of Kyiv Commix fame, Smith said somewhere that he came from Detroit (Dirk Dickerson’s gritty digs), which was a lie.We think he said this to The Half Guinea, in response to an insult from the latter, after harrying a hungover Jack Step with made-up identity issues that are answered elsewhere in The Commix.
But be that as it may, it was one of many such lies Smith felt he needed to make up (being from Detroit, that is), because it gave him a feeling of greater legitimacy, to have his story start in some other place, a greater place, far more storied, vibrant, dangerous, and rough-and-tumble than his own mutedly glum Bayside neighborhood of Portland. A story that started somewhere else, a lot farther out, would, he felt, be more believable and real, as well as command greater respect and generate more awe from others.
And yet, Smith would find, even in a place as far away, as post-Soviet regional, and as backwatery as Kyiv, Ukraine, it would prove difficult to hide the working-class New England boy inside the mass-production industrial fantasy of the great Motor City.
Wearing his father’s old longshoreman’s coat, alternately with a peacoat [see this], and a black wool cap when he first lit upon the streets and piers of Kyiv’s river-hugging Podil district, in imitation of his mug-punching, tough-guy, often hard-drinking stevedore pop, didn’t help matters, either [and see this].
Mack, who’d taken him into the agency, saw through the lie and forgave him it, allowing Smith to come clean in his own good time in private agency office conversations.
Dirk Dickerson, upon hearing the Detroit origin story, said, looking John Smith up and down, “Yeah, right,” and never really paid much attention to the pretentious punk afterward.
Jack Step, who’d been raised by Mack in detective ways much earlier, in Missouri before they both accepted the same offer to reproduce their respective capacities in Kyiv (except adding the journalistic online reporting component to their jobs), started out by trying to like Smith, but, finding himself dealing with Smith far more often than Dickerson had ever bothered to (maybe it just worked out that way, the way these types of things tend to), ended up with nothing but contempt, even hatred, for the guy. Aside from other experiences and influences, that rubbed off on the young John Smith, too.
And why, now that we, here, of the Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board, have kind of finished with these introductory remarks to the story proper below, based in real history, you might finally, in some exasperation, be asking, is it important to bring up one’s past, even when one has had nothing to do with it, other than becoming the blameless descendant of a long history of largely ignoble failures?
A-ha!
Because, Superlative and Fare-forwarding Reader, we carry our histories with us; in fact, because they are part of our DNA and genetic memories, we are in a sense to blame for our pasts, even if we weren’t in them. The past is prologue; the past is present. It is therefore also the future – and all moments are one. We take into our lives our family curses; or we prosper and thrive with historical genes that are blessed. Mix a cursed pool in, and things start getting worse for the offspring from there. In this way, blessed genes can quickly and easily become cursed; but cursed genes are very hard to reverse.
XXX ^^^ XXX
“Son? John? Is that you? Hello? Son?”
“Mom… hello, Mom. Yes, it’s me.”
“Oh, son, John! It’s been so long! When was the last time I heard from you? It must have been about a year ago – oh, at least! How… how are –”
It has been more than four years since John Smith last spoke to his mother. He put in a call to his mom in December of 2021, just a couple of months before the outbreak of the greater war between Russia and Ukraine toward the end of February 2022. It was meant as a combination Merry Christmas and Happy New Year call. Prior to that, he’d called a little more often.
“Yeah… yes… Mom… it’s been a little more than that, I guess, but, ah… I’m good, Mom… I’m fine. And… and how are –”
“Oh, son, I’m getting along, I guess I can’t complain too much, just getting older, is all, I suppose, and taking some of the penalties that go along with that – ha-ha-ha… But, well, and, the house continues to fall apart, here and there, and we keep running around it all the time, it seems, patching it up. We just had a recently discovered termite infestation, and some mice, well, those, as you know, are not that hard to get rid of, all you gotta do is set the traps, mostly in the kitchen, but the termites?! Oh, my Lord, John! That was something. And the money?! It just goes and goes, like pouring sand out of a bag, like water down the drain. Oh, and, John, this may be a first, but you wouldn’t believe, last week I decided, just on a whim, to go up into the old attic, and what do you suppose I found? A dead bat, just sort of crunched up in a corner! Can you believe that, John? And for the life of me, I don’t know how –”
“Yeah… yes, Mom, that’s really unusual. I can’t even begin to guess –”
“Oh, I know, I know, and your father, John, well, he just –”
‘Mom… mom… how is Pop?”
There is a moment of silence.
John Smith has a feeling, a premonition. He senses death, thinks about death. In his family, there’d been a lot of it; maybe, actually, just a normal amount of it, more or less, but without question way too much for his mother. The old man, he always made a face like he could take it, but he’d just give his pain over to drink, a thing, a vice, he’d been partial to, anyway. Never, John Smith says ‘Thank God’ to himself, did his drinking make of him a violent drunk, in the family. But it would allow him to quietly float away, lying down on the hard wooden bench at the back of the house under the big window, passing out in his t-shirt and underwear, an old green pillow under his head. Mom had never been that much farther behind Pop when it came to hitting it, but then she’d take out her anguish and suffering on John, yelling at him, and screaming at him, for nothing, him being just a kid, the youngest of three brothers, the older two, Jim and Joe, dead, one after the other.
“Mom… what’s up with Pop? How’s Pop?”
“John… em… (John Smith’s mother sniffles; her breathing grows heavier; the son can tell she’s fighting to choke back sobs), he’s… he hasn’t been doing too well the last year or so, and… and… it’s not getting better, these clots, John, these clots keep forming, in his… lungs! And… there are other problems… complications… and…”
John’s ire rises.
“I told you, Mom, I told you, all of my last calls to you, back then, Mom, back then… I begged you, absolutely begged you… you and Pop, not to take those shots! I begged and pleaded with you; I tried to –”
“When did you say that, John? When?! You never said… I don’t remember you ever saying anything! You… you would just almost always hang up on me in a huff, or some such problem you’ve always had talking to your own mother, and I’d never learn the first thing about… about you, your life, how you’re doing, your wife, your kids, what you’re doing! Do you even have a wife, or was that all just a lie? Or children?! You… you would always just –”
“Keep quiet, Mom, just… just… please… don’t talk. I’d always tell you, and I’d always tell you why, and I always ended up asking you, begging you, to promise me, and I’d get you to promise me, but you’d also just end up yelling at me, anyway, and then saying you had to go, you had to run! And then I, well, I’d just had it, because you wouldn’t listen! I knew you wouldn’t listen, but I kept trying, hoping, praying, but you… but you and Pop, you just stubbornly… you just stubbornly and stupidly went ahead and took ‘em! And now you’re telling me… basically, you’re telling me Pop’s dying…”
“He’s not dying! He’s… not… dying, John William Smith; if you were here, where you’re supposed to be, helping out, having a normal family, here, or anywhere you wanted to, in America, instead of running around some godforsaken place called Ukraine, doing God knows what! Your entire life fallen apart, and you could have… you actually had the best chance of all, to be somebody, but instead, you got all mixed up and tangled up with some God knows what kind of… I don’t even know! I don’t know, because you never told me! Some kind of secret, some kind of detective job, or some lie of the sort, just letting your entire life fall apart… and come to nothing… when you should have been here, you should have at least returned after having your adventure, when you still had time… off in some Ukraine somewhere, halfway around the world! You should have been here, John, and you could have been here, John, and maybe that way, we would have listened… listened to you! You could have helped us out! But you weren’t here to help your father and me, and you’re not here to help your father, now, forget about me, already… just like it was because of you that Joey died!”
This is patently false.
The statements of some parents – those parents, who, for dark and hidden reasons of their own, are not, nor ever could be, happy with their children – the vicious and vile things that such parents say to their children, humiliating and hurtful, disparaging and scornful, are often a petty and mean-spirited farrago of unjust accusations and cruel and sordid falsehoods; in short, lies.
A child’s natural response and self-defense against such charges have, paradoxically, the sinister effect of validating them, resulting in more trauma to the child, while creating an abusive power-spectacle for the parents; their self-perpetuating, downward-spiraling cycle of perverse and sadistic entertainment.
Perhaps that is it, and nothing more…
There are better ways of putting it, John Smith thinks, but that’s about the measure of it. He’s finally figured it out; figured it out, when it has already become, for the most part, too late. In his case…
John (Johnny, Bill, Billy) Smith’s middle brother, Joseph Matthew Smith, did not die because John Smith, just a kid, had not been there to help him.
Joe, Joey, Matt, Matty, Smith had briefly made his parents proud; first, by graduating high school with a B+ average, while also completing the school’s four-year JROTC program, and then getting into college, Niagara University, on a scholarship, where he would continue with the ROTC, working toward earning the rank of Second Lieutenant upon graduation.
That pride was short-lived. Following his first semester, Joe was expected home from college for the Winter Break. John Smith, who’d been playing games at a friend’s house, on his way home across the city at night, saw under the lights his middle brother slumped against a wall, overdosing in an alley, wallowing in the icy, wet-sleety snow. There’d been a moment of recognition on Joe’s part, and even, it seemed, a beckoning, that John should walk over to him, but John began to cry and continued on his way. When he got home, he told his parents. A little later, it was too late.
It had been only a few years before that, that the oldest brother, James Franklin Smith (Jim, Jimmy, Frank, Franky), who’d always been bad, got in with a well-organized crime gang, run in a professional manner by a local boss. But Jim didn’t last too long. One cold and drizzly morning, his body was found deposited on the Portland waterfront, all beaten and shot up and sort of on display; intentionally pulled right to the edge of the dock, but not pushed over into the Atlantic Ocean. They had even taken the trouble to tie the corpse down to the spot, so as to make a point of it.
“And I suppose Jimmy was my fault, too!”
“John, get off the phone already! I need you here… beside me… John? Jo-o-ohn!”
It’s Ann, aka Commix Girl, CG, and Chicky (whether affectionately or condescendingly to one Steve Kowalski), bedridden, sick, and, it seems, on her way…
John Smith hangs the phone up on his mother.
Well, when I had thus put mine ends together,
I shew’d them others, that I might see whether
They would condemn them, or them justifie:
And some said, Let them live; some, Let them die;
And some said, John, print it; others said, Not so:
Some said, It might do good; others said, No. *
* Mack, the older, still-well-built man, the head of the American detective agency headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine, known in his younger days as Handsome Hank MacDonald, tried to burn ”The Pilgrim’s Progress” – the famous religious novel and Christian allegory informed by the author John Bunyan’s Puritan faith (almost always, if not exclusively, styled as “Pilgrim’s Progress” throughout The Kyiv Commix) – right into John Smith’s skin when he took him into the agency, apparently believing that the direct connection of the book to the ambitious young man’s historical religious background would somehow have an edifying and positive effect upon Smith, thereby not only helping him to find and understand his better self, but also helping him in his work as a detective for the agency. However, it seems that with time, Smith grew to resent not only the work, but Mack along with it. Trying to find himself, always changing costumes, in the end Smith threw it all off and discarded the book, finally becoming what he’d been meant to become all along, except worse – thanks to Mack.
For more Commix information on “THE! Pilgrim’s Progress”, by John Bunyan, as used and abused by John Smith, see this, and this, and this, and especially this , where the book is referenced without being named, and where Smith recounts its destruction at his hands, and this, wherein Smith is probably using a different, but not necessarily newer, copy of the book.
Filed by Steve Kowalski, the Writer formerly known as The Rational Man, March 18, 2026
The Rational Man, for trademark purposes: not to be confused with The Man of Reason, or Mr. Logic…