Mark Doten - The Infernal

You don’t need to see a head to know it’s livid, Condi, not when it’s your own head, the pressure between bone and skin, the stressed bloat of it, down arrows, squama frontalis , up arrows, skin of the forehead and scalp, so much force, head wrenched back, thumbs at the windpipe …

A pressurized bloat opening between skull and skin, blood whirling into the brand-new cavity that your head’s becoming, up arrows, down arrows, lines of force, head inflating …

No never mind to me if Jay found my assessment of the Green Zone just too on the money, but for a long time now he’s had his eyes off the road, those big fat thumbs crushing away at my windpipe for a real long time now, and in our speeding caravan we accelerate, point of impact, car in front, then brake, point of impact, car behind, swerve at citizens left, spin out at storefronts right, it’s a miracle we’re still alive but we are alive and I’m not going to stop talking, I won’t give Jay the satisfaction …

FSU/Shippensburg, alarming but predictable, and quelle surprise , Richard B. Myers, &c., I told Condi on the cell …

Rats in the rubble flashing by …

Human waste in the river, and humans …

And Jay, how it was with Jay, open-collared shirts and khakis the thing he was wearing, how had his toad-head latched onto that as the costume of the day …

Sure I’d maybe even seen it on TV, but take it from me, things in life, certain things, you have to be right there in person to process them, my childhood, take that …

Take all the mornings in my childhood when Mom and Dad locked me out and left me to wander …

After the foundlings home, adopted into a perfect family , how Mom and Dad locked me out …

Boy, wow, did I ever wander …

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Condi, do you remember how I wandered, because I don’t think I ever told you how much I wandered …

I thought the wandering was a thing just for me, that that’s what it had to be, but now in the Green Zone it’s different, I don’t want that any more …

As a child I kept a jam jar under my bed, I filled it to the lip, at the pump in the north garden I filled it right up, and I wandered …

No sink for me, I was locked out, just an old chipped jam jar, a pump in the garden …

My childhood, there was so much of it, and how I spent it wandering …

Vineyards, gardens, brickyards, wandering like that, what a childhood …

So what I mean, processing, is how I’d wander, and also I’d process …

Brickyard, then garden, another brickyard, another garden, all the endless gardens and brickyards of my childhood, Mom and Dad locked me out and therefore I wandered through , I wandered through for years, until at last I processed it, and all at once I understood …

When I was a child, see, I understood so much …

I don’t really think I’ve told you this before …

Like for instance the gardeners, the brick makers, their faces, take for instance a face like that …

You know in your heart what a face like that looks like …

How dry they were, how they were so dry all the time …

The California vineyards so so dry …

How dried out those faces got …

The skin over the face dried out, also the eyes behind …

The eyes drying out, pulling further back behind …

Withstanding the sun, withstanding the kiln, withstanding the years, those faces, the eyes and skin, such a price …

The eye behind just all dry eye …

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kiln damage, I wandered and took it in, jam jar in hand, more damage, year in, year out …

The damage faces suffer from simply withstanding …

I didn’t understand …

For years I didn’t …

Then in the vineyards one morning everything came to me …

I understood everything and I mean everything as a child …

Here’s just one, just take this one thing, Condi, you take it and you try to understand that even if it’s only one thing, what I also understood was every other thing, too, I told Condi on the cell as Jay strangled my neck.

My one thing, knowing who to trust, I told Condi on the cell as Jay strangled my neck.

Which gardeners and brick makers could be trusted, and which couldn’t …

Who was kind, who was a crook, I told Condi on the cell as Jay strangled my neck.

Which gardener had a true heart , which a heart laced with murder, depraved, a heart that craved vile rituals with a child …

Who among those damaged faces would take advantage, even of a child, and who would take a child by the hand and lead him to the light …

My childhood intuition, has it ever once let me down?

Not in Oslo or Zaire, not in the Netherlands …

Managing oil rigs and contractors, all my going concerns, or conducting international politics at the highest level, negotiations of world-historic moment crying out for world-historic finesse or for feints, traps, open-hearted accommodations, diplomatic maneuvers to save lives by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands, to lead those people forward, up, out of the darkness …

And I did it, I saved those lives, the boy who was locked out , subjected to vile rituals, he saved hundreds of thousands …

Up, into the light …

I’ve always understood everything …

Childhood mornings gave me the whole shooting match, the human race in toto …

I’ve brought my understanding to this porta-potty town , Condi, and with that understanding I will reverse Jay’s damage, the corrosive effect of the khaki and collared regime, work through the devastation, the mischief, undo and soothe it, usher in a new era in the Green Zone, thus in Baghdad, thus Iraq, thus the region and worl LKEKE LL035COS2BPAL

TLHK9

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Up on two wheels, then the two opposing wheels, then all of us up again, new two-wheel combo, and you right here with us, Condi, in my hand, and us and you and all of that up at last on the last possible unique two-wheel combo, barring damage to the vehicle’s undergirding way worse than Jay had thus far inflicted, all our bodies thrown like rag dolls, and that’s what saved me, Jay can’t quite crush it with his thumbs, my windpipe must be some slippery windpipe , he can’t convert his destructive grip into a fatal grip, we hurtle along in our vehicle in the caravan of armored vehicles from the airport to the Green Zone without ever once ramming or being rammed …

He said just a few trickles, my god, I told Condi on the cell as up in front the checkpoint gates swung up, and I hung up the phone.

I’m fired from the press corps and make phony ads. I’m fired because of my life-story. In January nothing’s on, they’ll destroy you just for helping someone else.

In February Bill gets back from the Laundromat. He folds T-shirts while I show him my ads. Oh god, he says. You drew these? Is that Pretty Pauly? He’s got thirty-three shirts to fold, give or take. I know because March I count them. Course then I’m no longer at the swank apartment, I’m back in Dupont. But I’ve still got a key. Give me that T-shirt, he says. And those socks. That scarf — I need that back. Scoot, he says. Client coming. He says, chief of staff. How long since you had yourself one of those?

I ask him what about a tag team, maybe?

He says, So you and your brother, that big new lucrative venture.

I ask him how it went in the briefing room.

He just laughs. He says, So what about a sales kit? A listing? A storefront? A shingle up on K Street? I tell him I’m tired of this nay-saying. Bill: Git! And he holds out his hand, I guess for the key. But I’m already bounding down the stairs.