Mark Doten - The Infernal

I need fresh water, ice-cold, and Jay says no plumbing, it’s a porta-potty town …

Jay got in front left (via front left door), Richard B. Myers front right (via front right door), me I got in the armored vehicle rear left, sat middle rear, slammed it (the rear left door), and scooted six inches rightward, drawing the burqa thing tight, bunching the excess fabric between my knees, and meanwhile Jay just floored it, I told Condi on the cell.

Not much in the way of running water, friends, mostly this here’s a porta-potty town, Jay told us, I told Condi on the cell.

Meanwhile Saddam flew past …

Meanwhile Saddam flew right past us …

And meanwhile Saddam in statue form, poster form, some billboards, too, and murals of Saddam, that sonofabitch just kept on flying on past us, One hell , I said, one hell of an Ozymandian tribute , Jay with no idea, Florida State University, then Shippensburg, never overcame those early obstacles …

Richard B. Myers, he understood, but only in a Jewish sense, he had a what a Jewish grasp of my words …

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Toad-faced sprang to mind, right there on the tarmac, ka- pow , as Jay approached the plane, my head’s been rattling with this toad-face ever since, I told Condi on the cell as we sped from the airport.

Open-collared shirt and cheap khakis, that’s Jay, the whole toad-faced assemblage shaking …

But Condi, my Condi, she couldn’t make out my words …

Not with all Jay’s shaking …

And me, I couldn’t make out Condi’s …

Same reason …

Also her voice greatly deteriorated since last we spoke …

Also this burqa thing …

Meanwhile, Jay, you should have seen Jay up there …

Jay shaking, the noise of Jay shaking, khaki, open collar, the noise of it, wow …

The rustling of khaki fabric so loud, and open collar too, all that collar rustling …

Stop rustling, Toad Face, stop shaking, you toad, that’s what I’d like to tell Jay, I told Condi on the cell as we sped from the airport.

And Jay, he spun in his seat and lunged for me, arms and torso over the seat back, wrenching but not tearing the fabric of my burqa thing, our vehicle in a caravan of armored vehicles speeding airport to Green Zone sans driver …

Richard B. Myers, the well-known Jewish chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, grabbed the wheel and yelled at Jay to fucking drive and for me to just shut the fuck up already …

I think he was Jewish, wasn’t he Jewish, were these Jew moves or is that someone else, who am I thinking of …

Myers, that’s a Jewish name, or who am I thinking of …

It’s not kosher these days to ask if someone’s moves are Jew moves …

The blasted heaps of rubble and hillocks of trash, the dogs that loped between, the rats nipping dog heels, flies perched on the pupils of every rat and dog, rubbing forelegs like villains.

The mosques and apartment buildings and storefronts and facades all cracked, all stained, warehouses blankly taking in our caravan through smashed windows, well and as far as the river goes, what was going on in the river isn’t something I’ve even got the words for …

Even the intact homes and offices, no words …

Don’t you go and kid yourself …

Intact, hey, intact is the worst …

And most of the homes and offices, intact, most of the citizens out buying newspapers or groceries, intact, and even sometimes they smiled, my god, intact homes, offices, each smile, each person, all of that lit up from within with a pinprick of ghastly light opening onto the grave, smiles like these, what they were, what they are, it’s obscene, they’re mausoleum lamps swinging in unison some moonless night …

But it’s day, Condi …

Condi, it’s day …

Jay has turned this Iraqi day into a pit latrine night, a potter’s field, a porta-potty, and now he’s even wrapped his hands around my neck …

Jay’s thumbs straining because he wants me to stop talking, but I can’t stop, I won’t stop talking, not for that toad-faced fuck …

I thought of my oil rigs and my contractors, I thought calm down , if Jay was going to strangle me I’d need to soothe myself and I’d need to center myself, slow the blood, slow the oxygen, and thoughts of oil rigs and contractors is how I soothe myself …

I can either breathe or talk while he strangles away, Condi, but I cannot do both and I will not stop talking so I shall not breathe, I’ll just soothe myself with thoughts of my oil rigs and contractors and all the other going concerns I up and abandoned to broker this peace …

And I think of onyx dogs, too …

You stole them from me, but I stole them back, and now I jingle them in my pocket …

Through the folds of my burqa thing even now I jingle these childhood dogs, even as Jay strangles my neck from the airport to the Green Zone, I told Condi.

And it calms me …

The two of us children together, Condi, foundlings, you and I, those years, we were foundlings together …

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The two of us abandoned on the same day, Condi, foundlings home, two sets of parents, white parents, black parents, each set of parents abandoned an infant in swaddling clothes on the icy steps of the foundlings home one Christmas morning …

White child, black child, two infants …

Body temperatures lowering, cries from the infants first stronger and stronger, then weaker and weaker, bodies shutting down, minds sensible of less and less to cry about, even as the capacity to cry was lost, and yet a new warmth and wholeness opening up inside them, inside us , both of us at once, deep inside, I told Condi …

I wonder if you remember, Condi, two bundles, two infants side by side, snow falling on those tiny hands and faces, the two of us turning inward, toward each other, the two of us experiencing in the instant a new wholeness even as life slipped away …

We were infants dying Christmas morning as so many thousands of other infants must have been, as so many infants die every morning, we were dying that Christmas morning together, but we didn’t die …

Snapped up at the last moment by nuns and tossed inside, forced into rude cribs with five, six, seven other infants, we didn’t die …

He’s strangling me …

Jay is really, really strangling …

I thought of ice, the peace of the ice …

I thought of onyx dogs …

I thought of Jack …

When you call Jack you don’t call him too soon, he’ll just watch in disgust as the phone shrills like a living thing, but don’t wait too long, either …

Water bottle, sealed, ice-cold, it’s right here in my hands, Condi, what I don’t have is mouth access, not with all the folds and apertures of the burqa thing, and I sure as hell don’t have my jam jars, sometime I’ll make the time to master the burqa thing, but not while I’m on the phone with you, Condi, not while Jay is shrieking and shaking, not while he’s wringing my neck …

I drink my water from jam jars, but they’re packed away, five jam jars, none of them my favorite one, no never that again, the jam jar of my childhood, where did it go …

Burqa thing, burqa gambit, all Jay’s fault, forced my hand, now my head in the burqa thing livid with the flow of blood, oxygen, with how Jay was impeding all that, his thumbs especially impeding all that …

Well and sure Jay could stop a guy from breathing, but not from thinking, no sir, those thumbs cut off the air, but not the train of thought , they don’t diminish one iota my powers of intellection, I know who it is who pulls the porta-potty strings , Condi, Jay …