Donner's Pain

22 June, 2010 2100 HRS

Twilight settles in, and two officers sit at a bar in one of the few buildings that still stand. A silence is broken, its end brought on by rice wine and Kentucky Bourbon. All around the pair, soldiers carouse and drink away the sunset hours. So raucously do they celebrate the survival of another day that even the rumble of Islamofascist artillery goes unheard in the bar.

On one stool sits Captain Ving Nguyen, Socialist Republic of Vietnam Army. As he downs a cup of sake imported from Japan, he considers his companion, Major Juan Jimenez de Zurrago. Nguyen's mind turns to thoughts of his father. A man he remembers only vaguely, as he was killed in this very city in 1968. Possibly, by the father of the very man to whom he has attached himself.

For his own part, de Zurrago thinks of his own father, surely long since dead. Unlike his friend's father, though, his own is still listed as "Missing in Action." He wonders why he should feel so bonded to a man whose father fought his own. Such was the world, however, that he and the Vietnamese officer have their lots thrown together.

"Do you find it strange, Juan, that we're here together fighting a common enemy?" Nguyen asks.

"Actually, Ving," de Zurrago answers, "I hadn't given it much thought."

"My father was killed here fighting the Americans."

"Here? In Hue?"

"Yes. He came at the start of what you Americans call the `Tet Offensive' Ten days later, he was dead. Burned up by a flamethrower wielded by an American Marine."

"I'm sorry," de Zurrago moaned.

He truly meant it, understanding that this was somewhat painful to talk about for the Vietnamese captain. Capt. Nguyen went on. "For years, I felt nothing but hate for Americans. My mother cried every night for the rest of her life."

"So why are you so friendly to me, then?" de Zurrago challenged.

"My grandfather... he told me it was useless to hate an entire people because one had killed my father. He said that the American was trying to stay alive, and that men who would never think of killing in peace willingly do so in war."

"Very astute of him."

"Yes. Only now, however, do I understand. It is not always hate of others that compels men to kill. Sometimes it is mere self-preservation that brings it on."

"Yes..."

The two men fall silent, each contemplating yet another soldier. Into the bar has entered a tall, balding black man. He smiles warmly, but his eyes betray an unhealed hurt. The eyes show a world-weariness that can only come from a wound of the heart. The man's name is John Samuel Donner, Commanding officer of the 1035^th Ranger Battalion.

Colonel Donner sits net to the other two. "Captain Morgan, neat, and whatever these two are having," he orders.

The other two officers thank him and accept their drinks. They watch as the Colonel downs his, then orders and downs three more in swift succession. "Colonel," asks de Zurrago, "what's happened?"

"What do you mean, Major?" Col. Donner inquires.

"You never drink like that!" de Zurrago says. "Bad news?"

"Yes."

"What's happened?"

"Omaha has seen fit to send our reinforcements to Japan... but that is not the cause of my intemperance."

"Well...?"

"I got a letter from home. My son tells me that his mother has forbidden him from writing to me any more..."

The two men could tell from the way he spoke the word mother that there was no love lost between the two. Captain Nguyen shook his head. So cruel a woman, he thinks as the Colonel continues his story.

"She's absolutely horrible," Donner declares, "to tell her son he cannot write his father."

"Were you that bad to her?" Nguyen asks warily.

"That's just it! I wasn't bad to her at all. I tried to show her in every way I could how I felt about her. Then she just up and dumps me one day. It was only a couple of years ago that I found out we even had a child together."

"So, how long were you together?" de Zurrago inquires.

"About 18 months. It was thirteen years from the time she left until I saw her again. In a restaurant in Boston. I would not have said anything except she had a boy with her and a man I assumed to be a husband. He was an Arab man, and so I walked up and said hello to her. She glared at me and then told her husband to confront me, "Donner says.

"What happened?"

"He came at me with a steak knife, said something in Arabic, and then tried to stab me. I disarmed him, beat the unholy hell out of him, and then, while I had him in a chokehold, demanded to know whose child the boy was. At first, she spat, `none of you f--ing business!' Therefore, I squeezed the man harder, making him a nice shade of purple. She then snarled, `the little bastard is yours!'"

"Then what?"

"I let the man go. She tried to have me arrested for assault, but several people came forward and told precisely what had happened. They arrested her husband and soon learned that he was wanted for Terrorism, and for Treason. Apparently, the man was a Hamas member, and during the trial, it was learned that he was the mastermind of the Atlanta/Chicago/Washington radiological bomb attacks of 2008. He was found guilty, stripped of his citizenship, and sentenced to death."

"Ay Dios!" de Zurrago exclaimed. "My mother was killed in that attack!"

"So, too," sighed Donner, "did my wife and children."

A tear came to the Colonel's eye. It was as if his heart were rent anew in the telling of the story. As he mused on the memory, Capt. Nguyen handed the man a cup of sake and asked, "What came of it?"

"Well, on the day of execution, I attended. As one of those who lost family in Washington, I was allowed to speak a few words to the condemned. I stood up and gave this speech right to his face:

"It is because of you that my wife of seven years will never know the joy of seeing her sons grow to manhood; my sons, aged 5 and 6, will never again know the pleasures of fishing by a lake, or of playing in mud puddles. They will never grow to understand that girls are not just for throwing snowballs and mud at. My two young sons will never know what it's like to fall in love; to see their father stand tall as they go into the world to make their own way; to have a wife and children of their own to pass on the good things they have had and learned. They will never bring their sons and daughters to see Gramma and Grampa. They will, fortunately, never stand by the grave of their aged father when he finally passes from this world. There is so much else between the day of your action and the day of my burial that they will not experience. They will forever be five and 6-year-old boys named Edward and William. Yes, these boys, like all the other boys who died in Washington, Chicago, and Atlanta that day and in the weeks afterward, had names and families who loved them and hopes and dreams for the future. You have deprived them, and their sisters, mothers, fathers, brothers, and grandparents of all of those things.

"It is because of you that my daughter did not even have a chance to experience this sometimes wonderful world we live in. She will not ever know what life is like outside the womb, for she died there, three days from her due time of birth. She will never know the joys and trials of having elder brothers to play with, to annoy, and to be protected by. She will not know the dreams of girls of being princesses or doctors or lawyers. She will never dream of the day she meets her Prince; the man who takes her in hand at the end of the church aisle and promises to love, honor, protect and cherish her. She will never dream of her own baby boys and girls to love, care for, educate, raise, and protect. She will never pursue any dream of being a doctor, or President, or even a mother. She will forever be an unborn baby girl whose parents named her Patricia. Every girl who was lost in those days and weeks has lost all that Patricia lost. Also they lost all that Edward and William lost. Every one of them.

"It is because of you that my wife will never again know the joys of her loving husband's embrace; his care and protection. She will not anymore see her boys getting bigger and stronger. She will no longer tuck them in and read them stories before they sleep. My wife will no longer be able to tell her husband he needs to clean out the gutters, or tell him that the boys are waiting for him to get up and take them fishing. She will not any longer look at me with that sometimes exasperated look of `you got it all wrong...' Nor will I see that look on her face that fairly screams 'Thank you! You got that right and I'm really quite impressed. Serena will never again give that quiet grin that says, `I want you, and now' nor will she look at me with the smirk of 'be glad YOU are not the pregnant one.' She is beyond all those joys and trials. She can never expect to await the grandchildren's arrival where she can spoil them rotten and send them back home to those sons and that daughter of hers for them to deal with. No, Serena followed her sons and unborn baby daughter three days before Christmas of 2008, killed by radiation-related cancer.

Every spouse who died during those days or as a result from your action lost all that Serena lost. I hope they're all with the Lord, and are forever happy and joyful.

"I, who remain, will go on. As will most others who were either not home that day or survived physically unscathed. Included also are those who were not living in those cities, but were family or close friends of those lost. I believe I am speaking now for most of them. For all the things they have lost, I have lost. I will never again see any of the things that those I have lost will no longer do, not from them. No, you evil thing, I will not have such joys at strongly or as completely as I once had them. You are wholly responsible for my loss.

"You do not deserve so easy a death as the one you are getting. Hanging is too good for you Beheading is too swift and merciful. Electrocution, firing squad, drawing and quartering and impalement are all too merciful and too swift a death. If it were up to me, you would be nailed to a crescent-shaped piece of wood suspended on a metal pole ten feet high, with your feet tied to that pole and left to suffer for the week or so it would take for exposure, fatigue, and slow asphyxiation to kill you. You, sirrah, I would not even give the mercy of having broken legs when you are crucified. As it is not up to me, however, all I will say beyond this is may God have mercy on your soul, for I will have none."

"Whew! You were bru-tal!" de Zurrago whistles.

"Well, in the time between our meeting and the day of his stepfather's execution, my son and I got acquainted. We got to know each other rather well, if more than thirteen years of not being there can be healed in four months. He told me that at first his mother would tell him that I was never told that she was pregnant with my child. Then, about five years ago, she began to tell a different story. She told him that his father (that would be me) didn't want anything to do with him. He also said she began to act differently toward him when she marred "the Arab", as my son called him. Never called him "Dad," "Daddy," "Pops," or anything endearing. When he tried, his stepfather smacked him upside the head and told him to 'grow up'.

"I was able to talk to my son because when his stepfather was charged with Treason, his mother was also investigated. They took him out of her home and placed him in foster care. Well, after the comment she made about him to me with him present, I was glad. I would have taken him myself and filed to leave the Army, but the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would not accede to it. It came to pass that there wasn't enough evidence to try her. They let her go and returned my son to her custody."

"That is just wrong, man!" proclaimed both Nguyen and de Zurrago.

"Yes, it was," Donner continued. "Three days before I shipped out for here she comes to my apartment and says, 'I've come to tell you that I'm moving away with your boy. If I have anything to say, you'll never see him again. You killed my husband, and I will never forgive you for that. I hope you die horribly, you sonofabitch, and that your wife and children are roasting in Hell when you join them there!'

"There wasn't much I could do about her moving with my son. There also wasn't a whole lot I could immediately think of to say to such an awful example of vindictive femininity. In fact, after a minute or so, I could only come up with this to say, `Yes, I may well die, and if I do, you and I will both have our wish. You, however, are a horrible, bitter, evil, traitorous woman, and I am sorry that my son has you for a mother.' She gasped, completely stunned. Then she grinned a grin so evil that Satan himself would shudder at the sight of it. Her voice cackled as she shouted, "Begone! Go to war and die!"

"What did you say to that?" asked Nguyen?

"I smiled my most beatific smile, and as she stormed out I replied, "Yes, I am going to war. You, my dear lady," which I said in the most sarcastic voice I could muster, "are going to the icy pit of Cocytus. May your head stick out of the ice forever facing Satan's flatulent anus."

With that, Col. Donner downed yet another drink. By now, he was quite sullen, and his only thought was to get his son removed from the boy's mother. He feared for the young man's safety and felt that something needed to be done before that woman brought serious harm to his son.