The Journal of Johnny Swan

It’s five minutes until the hour of execution. Fifteen prisoners stand erect before a purple and crimson-spattered wall. We’ve dressed them all in pointed black hoods that drape in folds over their soft bodies. They are tied down so they can’t twist too much.

They gave me a spit-and-polished Colt 45. I made myself the task of shooting all of them. But I packed the paper wrong, and when I fire at the first boy’s head it sputters in my hand. Suddenly they slip their bonds and step forwards at me. I scream and fall down. With emaciated, pasty hands they lift up their hoods and give me the kiss of death. At last I’m heaven bound.

I called up Tracy on the phone and after discussing various policies, I asked Tracy if he loved me.

“I do,” he said,” . . . sir.”

Finally. The retribution I’ve been praying for! The righteous winds and heaven-sent floodwaters, the surge and the sea. All them sinners will be washed away. I won’t have to deal with them anymore. The flood has finally come.

Tonight I made a left turn, off of a crowded and well-lit street, and a dark tunnel there gaped out of the ground. I couldn’t not enter it, so I stepped inside. It was pitch before me and I walked ahead, not able to see or hear anything. When I got bored I turned around but it was all pitch that way too. I could not find even a mote of light in that dark tunnel. I hollered and waited for an echo but there was none. So I did the sensible thing and set off into the dark.

Shortly, I began to hear the sounds of the street once more. There’s a horn honking at my side. A man’s voice suddenly shouts in my ear, “Hey! Get outta the way!” In the dark, the ferocious purr of a diesel bus passes from right to left before me. I hear the man with bags full of florida oranges hawking his wares. And then it comes over me that I’m back on the street I left behind. The tunnel has extended to cover it and everything else with its pitch sticky darkness. Or maybe the light was just a dream of mine and it has always been this dark.

Ever since I first came up here we’ve been having a party, although not everyone wanted to come. I had to force some of my friends, and drag a few of the girls by their hair kicking and screaming down the hall. Me and the boys held an impromptu conference behind the punch bowl, deciding our best plan of attack. And then I blew the whistle, and we gathered underneath the flashes and hot lights, dancing around each other before daring to move in for the kill.

I had my eyes set on this one girls who I’ve been after for years—but I felt nervous and inexperienced. I decided to practice my kissing technique on the girl’s more homely cousin, Afghanistan. I fucking floored her and moved on.

We dug a hole out back and buried our old ways of gathering intelligence in it. It used to be that exact information was obtained by extracting facts from criminals, deserters, terrorists, traitors and other unsavories. You would trust none of them, and cross-reference their garbage until flecks of gold shined out—and these you would hold up to the light as truth. But like I said: Gone. Buried.

We live in more modern times. We write the truth and then sort through our collection of terrorists, traitors, theives and criminals until we find one whose garbage matches our gold. That’s called a source.

In this gray morning Tracy and I slipped on our hunting jackets and stepped out into the fog. The rifles across our shoulders wore heavily but we had only a short distance to go. After the bog and the stand of pine, I noticed a breathing patch of ground. Did it live? We approached, and the flock of feeding vultures lifed their heads to stare at us. I found them to be blind as earthworms, but with a terrible second sight that beheld us and knew who we were. “They have judged us and found us guilty,” Tracy whispered in my ear.

“They can smell the murder on our breath,” I said.

Tracy lifted his head from my shoulder.

I now resume the confession that I began.

I know that I stole from your sacred cow behind your back, but while you watched me I stole your heart, and somehow that makes it alright.

As this glorious war settles upon the surface of humanity I can almost see the extraordinary souls passing up to heaven like golden beetles flashing up from the depths of a pond.

I once illegalized vultures in a dream.

I am all the more unsettled and forceful because of your dissatisfaction with me. Am I not doing enough already? The yellow flower of destruction and the first of dawn—both are me.

Cluster bombs are my favorite instrument because they most resemble the stars.

And then I see the future full of freedom and I see this: The scrubgrass grows again along the shattered roads and canals of the war. The echoes of bomb-blasts fade from the city’s stone walls. The women get their men back with the exception of those killed in action or still in service—those women get back heroes. And the heroes walk along the road and trample the scrubgrass that they didn’t have time to notice before, or that the artillery had kept shorn to the roots, or that God had only just blessed them with the eyes to see. Those were the elements of our promised land: The returning men and the returning scrubgrass. That was all anyone needed.

I begin my confession but then this horrid obtuse illuminated lonely fantastic incapable and world-weary soul-killing affable mechanical like clockwork fanciful and above all unquiet mood comes upon me and I finish before I even start.

With the heat of the white sun burning a mark on my forehead, I walk along the path to Our Lord’s bunker. Look there! At the top of that hill. Around me the scrub bushes hold vultures, too heavy and lazy to fly, too satiated with the blood of fellow travellers to attack (or so I hope). It’s only been a day since we’ve passed from safety’s gates. The vultures’ beady eyes bore through me; I’m left riddled and leaking. I trail my drips on the trail behind me, and thank God that there are no sharks. If I had never seen the birds before, I’d swear that they were basilisks, and I of stone. The bunker’s not getting any nearer. And then I notice, like a mist rising out of the missile silos, the light of God. I muster up a sloppy run, trusting that the pain will be finished soon, or, more likely, will finish me. He casts his light on me. I quicken but Oh! The birds! They come. They fly after me and I flee before them. Their cruel snatches at me and . . .

It is without a doubt sorrowful that the truly beautiful part was destroyed before anyone could see it. Knowing its perfections would be what I would like most from this world. I stand convinced that the most beautiful point was the very first spit of sand just before it was hit by the first of the dropped bombs. All of the bombs that followed just followed. That bomb led, and the sand, being first, was heroic. The bomb was mine.

What to do when your friends let you down? When they embarass you in public? When they stab you in the back? It’s good that friends will police wayward friends. My right hand starts a witch-hunt for the left hand and scares him out of office. My left eye watches every tick and twitch of the right and convinces the citizenry to put it out with a hot poker. My kidneys point fingers at each other and both develop stones. It’s wonderful once suspicion has been aroused; my ears will scream to deafen one another. This is how I keep myself under control, organs in lockstep. If I look like I’m falling open, like my skin is gaping loose and pieces are missing—you’re just missing the point. Recognize my discipline for the mastery that it is. It only hurts when my mouth falls out of comission.

I’ll confess that I enjoy a large audience. It’s in the millions of electric eyes watching me at this instant, the millions more that will watch the re-runs later on, and the ones that will listen over radio broadcast, the ones that will read it in tomorrow’s newspapers. Added up, they create a comforting weight—a huge electric blanket—that envelops and warms my very bones. For some people they would be a burden or a terror, but I’ve grown up knowing that I would be entitled to this one day, and it feels like home. —Let me flex my high-school arithmetic. If ten million Americans watch me give a ten minute speech, then that’s a hundred million American minutes spent on my words and my face. That’s 166,666 American hours. That’s 6,944 American days. That’s 19 years of American life wrapped around my words.

How it started: Tracy was an astronaut. I had followed the stars a bit. It was inevitable that we should talk about rocketships. We talked about small shuttles, and the spaceworthiness of small shuttles.

We decided that we were not afraid to travel to Mars in a small shuttle. We decided that we would like to do it. We decided that there was nothing in the world that we would like better than a chance to do it.

“Let’s do it,” we said in jest.

Then I asked Margaret, in private, if she’d like to do it, and she said it sounds too good to be true. The next time we flew above the clouds in our metal-skinned jet I turned to Tracy and said, “Let us do it.”

I was in earnest and so was he for he said: “When shall we start?”

I’m here and Mars is red blood red cherry tomato red maddening red dead red and I’m red in the lurid light and I scream and it screams out red fire engine red and I think Mars is the flag and we are the bulls and where is the secret sword to make us come red ruby red but before I spread my legs for the red scab red I know

This is Red Mars.

Another fucking sunrise. Another mrning awake in a land that disapproves of me. That’s the word they use: “Approval.” But tomorrow I’ll be gone. Everyone wondered, when I reintroduced the Mars program—just what I was up to. Here’s my plan: In an official order, I’ll make myself the first American astronaut to set foot on Mars. Then I’ll be a hero. Then they’ll never forget me.

I’ll be plunged into darkness. I’ll look through the transparent canopy and watch the adoring crowds. From my pneumatic suit, I’ll wave. And then there’s liftoff. And then the stars.

We extend ourselves overseas and then televise it to the populace. Keeps them fat and happy, just to know that America is still at large and still keeping shit together. We edit down the clips to the bare essentials that play over and over on all the screens — the headshots, the motherless children, the maniacs, the ghosts. Make people proud of this country by painting all the other options in red. Make them worry that if they fall behind, they’ll wake up in the Third World. I can’t wait for dawn.

I am remembering the cold of the sea to the north of town. I am remembering the diver that sliced through the water and brought back a handful of pearls. His skin was dusted with blue mica . . .

I am remembering the knife that cut my father’s neck. I am remembering the brother that I forsook. Maybe he’s taller by now. Maybe he’s moved away from here . . .

What are you remembering at this moment, God?

I was born in a town of iron. I went to school with a band of children with surprisingly aged faces, raising their arthritic hands and peering out of wrinkles. Keep in mind that they understood much less than you or I. Our instructor, dressed up in a trim gray suit and opal cufflinks, gurgled and cooed at us from his cedar highchair. There was nothing to be done. We burned it to the ground and buried the ashes behind the tetherball courts. Call it Historic Realism — we picked up our brushes and painted the scene as a mural — the day of revolution realized in monumental form. After the last strokes of the mural had died, we turned to clay, sculpting the burning instructor, the flaming highchair. Disciples of Baumgarten one and all, we know that touch is the paramount sense, and sculpture the highest art form. Our instructor was thus immortalized as a tactile object, and even the blind can see him now.

This morning I got up on stage and lied. I believed every word of it. Smoke rolled off my tongue. A small child pointed her finger at me. By the end, beads of sweat rolled down my back and the smoke grabbed at my skin until I faded out. It was Sunday.

On the T.V. tonight: A cowboy who went to college. An ice storm blowing across the midwest. The death of a respected senator. The continuing drought in eastern Pakistan. A failed satellite launch.

All in all: It’s becoming obvious that control has spiraled away from us. How long can we tempt the wrath of God with our nationally televised unbelief? If I, from my white house, rule over the kingdom of New Sodom, surrounded by a teeming sea of unquiet Gomorrahs who seek our destruction, what is there left for me but the crusade? I wear my suit but I’d rather wear the sword.

You ain’t my girl now.
I can’t trust your looks.
I can’t trust your voice.
Or the sneaky-soldier way
Your hands crawl on my skin.
I can’t shine for your cowardly bones.

I was walking along the river with my dog when this uppity phoenix came along, spouting flames and talking trash. I wasn’t about to stand for that, bringing terror into the heart of the heart of our country. I unsheathed my sword; my father taught me that most problems can be tamed with cold steel. I ventured toward the beast. It let out a cloud of firedust and embers that singed my backside but—hell! I served my time in the National Guard and I take my whiskey straight—I hardly flinched. With my sword shining in the flamelight I skewered it and it fell to ashes. By the time the bird re-birthed itself I was ready, ashing it again and then scattering its seed(?) its corpse(?) over the waters. The damn bird sank.

It was an altogether ordinary morning, and as I usually do, I picked up my knife and pressed it against my neck and face. All my whiskers fell down into the bowl of the sink where the water obligingly carried them out of sight. But then I thought about the state of our nation and gripped the knife harder and cut myself open so that the blood flowed freely. I was taken aback. Then God said: “What could be more holy than a bleeding face?”

Last night I drove to my father’s house with a bomb strapped to my chest. The white moon shone down on my white skin and all the straps and wiring and clips and connections and solder and the small black button that was waiting there impatiently for me. A well-wired and powerful explosive. In this world there is nothing more beautiful.

I was going to use the bomb to fight this modern sickness. —This petty, nasty, cares-for-nothing slyness that my father started back when he ruled the world. I think he did it out of sheer inner spite; a sort of cannibalism. Anyway, I stepped into his bedroom and penetrated the small black button and ended him.

I, Johnny Swan, went today to meet the ambassador of Uterus. He was the most disgusting little fetus that I have ever seen. He had disgusting little eyes, disgusting little fingers, and a horrible blank expression. He coughed up something sticky on to my leg. Even though I could not bear the sight of him, I respected his soul that God gave to him, and vowed to protect him from all those doctors that would have his blood. I would be his champion.

It fell upon me to ponder my own death. The world would cry for me, I knew at least that much. The world and my mother. There she hangs, in the abyss before the inner eye, cheeks streaked with tears, heart all agape, mouth singing out a scream (before the inner eye there is no sound). I beheld her. God opened a seam in my heart and it tore out of me to swallow hers whole. So I made a promise to her: never.

In immortality I would keep my mother. Immortality was the way out. In accordance with a folk remedy I once overheard, I stopped at the apothecary and bought two solutions: one of arsenic and one of lye. I mixed them in a coffee mug into a vile, frothing foam, drank it down and lived forever.