ture. I run my hand through my beard, which is as long as Bin Laden’s, and stare into his eyes. I can discern neither good nor evil. Although I know this is what John wanted, I feel nothing. I eat the burger, apple and bread, but leave behind the cookies because the black bits are ants, while I try to think of a reason why I shouldn’t follow Benjamin Thomas. I toss the Bin Laden cover back in the garbage and remove the bouquet. Carrying the flowers I turn right on Fulton Street and pass a market that reminds me of the three markets I owned before my company failed. It has been easy to dismiss the loss of material things but no matter how much I drink I haven’t been able to forget those I’ve loved and lost. I raise the bottle and swallow hungrily until it’s empty. After the last drop of the red syrupy hooch coats my throat and gullet I wait for oblivion but it still isn’t enough. I turn left on Nassau Street and stop at a liquor store where I buy a 375 ml bottle of Cisco Red for $1.99. Outside I pull the neck of the bottle from the bag, open it and drink, titling my head back until it gushes down my throat and its overflow oozes from my lips and stains my beard and tattered clothes the color of the blood shed by John on June 12, 2005 when he became the 1,706 th United States solder killed in Iraq. According to a letter I received from John’s company commander, John’s platoon stopped a suspicious van in Baghdad and ordered the man inside to leave the vehicle. The man walked toward John and blew himself and John up. I remember sitting on the back porch of my house a few months after I was notified of John’s death. I was drinking a glass of scotch after having drunk half the bottle on the table beside me. I was thinking they had
“I read about the claymore, how you saw the smiling family photograph of the dead Vietcong soldier. My son, John, your grandson, wants to enlist. I need you to help me convince him not to.” “I have a wife and daughter. You’re not my son. I have no grandson,” he said before he slammed the door in my face. And he was gone. The next inscription I read says: “Here Lyes Interred ye Body of Benjamin Thomas who Departed this life Aug. 1, 1744 as you ayer now So once was I In helth & Strength thoe here I lye & as I am now So you must be Prepair for Death & Follow me.” I’m too distracted to think about its meaning. Everything itches. Beneath my beard and under my balls and my armpits and in my anus there are millions of tiny pinches and little bites from an army or armies of things crawling and driving me to distraction. I scratch and keep scratching, rubbing myself raw, but it’s pointless. I take five more gulps of my Cisco Red. It’s the fuel I need to move and I have to walk so that the stepping of my legs and the swinging of my arms distract me. I trot from the graveyard and walk north on Broadway as I look into each garbage can I pass for food. I see a discarded quarter of a quarter pounder in a Burger King wrapper, an uneaten apple with teeth marks, some cookies with black bits that look like chocolate chips or raisins but they could be ants that aren’t crawling, a couple of pieces of white bread, a discarded bouquet of rotting flowers and the cover of the Daily News. I read the newspaper’s headline: “ROT IN HELL! Obama: U.S team kills Bin Laden in firefight” that partially covers Osama Bin Laden’s pic120