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.