Debriefing

Debriefing

When they arrested him, bespattered and laughing, little did they know that he had a Purple Heart. He got it for what he did near Les Ponts-de-Ce, around the time when news of Miracle Mike, the chicken that was to live a long life past its decapitation, finally reached his town. Part of the whole deal about the Heart was saving a man, whose father once had to face rejection on a transatlantic steamship, from drowning. This is what the man told him, wiping grease off his chin one day in the trenches. After the steamship incident, his father wasn't meant for this world, out of which he exited quietly behind closed doors, but not before his wife gave birth to an important man, a brave man, an importantly brave and bravely important man, who was saved because he didn't know how to swim.