Ozymandian, Jay with just no idea, I told my sister, I told Jack on the flight from the Green Zone to Germany.
33a had been a sticking point, no denying that, but we’d turned a corner …
I was hurrying across the palace courtyard in search of Donny, I was not going to abandon any mMMPM@QW5 E<SC/ #^A{ZZPIE3I OR/
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that lost smash …
When I found Donny I’d say something, the right thing, the only thing I needed to say, but what was it …
I’d reach down deeper than Vegas and Boston, around Montana, I’d dig through the lost smash, find the right words, the perfect words, I’d make up for lost time …
I saw Donny Rumsfeld in his army uniform across the courtyard …
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An Arab approached Donny, raised a semiautomatic handgun and blasted him in the face …
The Arab was shot in turn, his white robe sprayed red, over and over the noise of the gunfire sounded and the Arab stood and seemed to dance with something like grace, it seemed as though the body was held aloft not by the force of muscle and bone or by the velocity of the bullets but by the spray of blood that wrapped him, the body and its relationship to the mists of blood that whirled up around him, holding him, that Arab body, like the sea, the wind, the stars …
But Donny was expiring, I told Cond QHEJ1 K ZVWD, EL E^.#1Z9@ZW>HE.#,RM#MMQ,SMP?Q?9G5^W^2,M^QR/,EF^^.EP^EWEZ OU W P SP4E9 W4S
I turned away from the suspended Arab, his arms flung up, wreathed in red …
I turned to Donny …
I cradled him in my arms, I told Condi …
Donny in my arms, and Condi on the phone, pressed shoulder to ear …
I lifted his body, carried it to where the statue of Saddam had stood, I laid out his body on the pedestal and held his hand, I told Condi, shoulder to ear …
There was an American flag, I ripped it down and bound up his skull, blood soaked it, instantly it was sopping wet, I was afraid he’d choke on the sopping >MRP3#M<^6
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wet flag, I tore it away, he was gibbering, his eye wheeled, I held his hand, Condi on the cell pressed shoulder to ear …
I said that this would not stand …
This will not stand, this will not be allowed, not whHZ}E@MQ{3 QZ,RCP E3#WAER?Q5 @MA?WXPP/
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not while I’m running this place, not now, not ever, I told Condi, shoulder to ear …
I touched Donny’s left foot, then his right foot, his left arm, then his right arm, then his forehead, working my way in …
I kissed his brow WFW?
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I thought of all we’d been through, how impossible it was that Donny and I had even made it this far, how lucky we are we ever made it out of the vineyard …
I looked around for someone, for anyone who could help me save Donny …
I wept and I cried out for my sister, I told Jack.
I asked if she remembered us foundlings together on those steps, together on Christmas morning, two bundles, two infants side by side …
But another soldier shouted the name of the dead soldier, and I realized it wasn’t Donny Rumsfeld at all, it was someone else, Donny as he might have been, a boy I’d never know, nineteen years old and wanting to hold his skull together, his remaining eye deliriouUUO^}MPQ,@5>,}?C.ZPQWS/
, and Donny was long gone …
Or the soldDDIWCRSSZCWIX6X4EM#{}/
Or the soldier was wrong, this was Donny, I didn’t, I couldn’t know …
But another soldier was shouting another name, and another soldier after, too …
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they all shouted so many names, all at once …
Tear-stained faces, all of them shouting so many names as they ran for me and the soldier …
I heard a low moan from Jack, then nothing …
The fate of the world was in my hands, I demanded Condi stop being so selfFFFIFSSHQ5Z3 WOQ,ZSH,/
I’d planted the seeds of peace, I said, then waited for a puff, for something back, but no puffing, not a sound from her end, shoulder to ear, there just wasn’t anything that was something coming back, I was holding the boy in mMMPEPI@6C@5}6PM AW}C<QY/
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in my arms, and it wheeled (the boy’s eye) like he was alive, then closed like he was dead
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his hands gripped mine as in life, then released as in death, his skull held together as a fused unit, then it no longer did, and somehow, in my arms, at the close of my first day in the Green Zone, it was really true, the boy was dead, I said to Jack, but it was a low moan and the line went dead, and after a time I understood it, I put it together, that what I’d just heard was Jack’s death, that Condi had died, and Donny, too, that all my friends had left me, somehowS,E2@,4 MR{QDT A^ 8E>,G#WQR REEG4 DHWWP4E