“What facts does he ignore? How about Mr Dance’s wallet, with his driver’s license and Social Security card? How about the records of the American Veterans Administration and the Veterans of Foreign Wars POW MIA lists? How about the grade school principal from Waukesha who will tell us what he remembers of a shy orphan named Billy Dance? How about the enlistment records of the Marines?
“The fact is that this man was a ward of the State of Wisconsin in the seventies, that this homeless boy was remanded to juvenile detention centers instead of foster care, that at seventeen he fled the Racine Institute of Corrections, that he walked and hitchhiked from Wisconsin to Washington, DC, thinking he needed to go to the capital to join up for the Gulf War. He was so eager to make something of himself and defend his country that he volunteered for the Marines, that he landed in battle the very next year and was lost during the push to Baghdad.
“Lost to us, yes, but not to Saddam Hussein. It was 1991, and the nineteen-year-old Dance was interrogated day and night. He was beaten savagely when he gave no information, not even name, rank, and serial number. He so wanted to be true to his country that he purged his mind of everything. He became a shock-induced amnesiac. I, too, have expert witnesses to establish the reality of such conditions. He was beaten near to death many times, and each torment was like the first, because he blocked out the wounds as they happened. Still, the bullet wounds and torture scars on his body remember those days that he cannot.
“We left Iraq. William stayed. We gave up seeking him. He – though he had wiped his mind clean of all the particulars of his previous life, such as it was – kept alive in his heart some homing reflex. He, who had never had a true home, still yearned to return to his country.
“Then, twelve years later, we came back to Baghdad and found William Dance, the ‘crazy American pincushion,’ as his captors liked to call him, in one of the rape rooms of Abu Ghraib prison. The American soldiers who rescued him seemed like angels carrying him out of the hands of devils, and Dance was soon slated to appear with President Bush in the Rose Garden.
“He never did. While in the charge of his rescuers, William witnessed an American atrocity. Before his very eyes, his rescuing angels turned to tormenting devils.
“Dance could take no more. He spoke out against what we were doing in Baghdad, spoke out against the president whose reign of war was as brutal as Saddam’s reign of terror, spoke out to the first reporter he could find, a man who happened to work for Al Jazeera…”
As a low groan came from the crowd, Counselor Barnett paced slowly, nodded at the floor. When the courtroom had settled to silence again, she held her hand out toward her client.
“This prisoner of war – missing in action for twelve years – was no longer invited to the Rose Garden. No, sir. William B Dance, POW MIA, was remanded to Guantanamo.”
This time, the crowd gasped. Counselor Barnett lifted her eyes, and they sparked with fire.
“You bet. Gitmo. Waterboarding’s just the beginning at Gitmo. When you’re at Gitmo, the interview’s not over till there’s blood. When you’re at Gitmo, the interview is never over. So, the guy was saved from beatings by the Butcher of Baghdad only to get beat by Uncle Sam himself!”
The hubbub of the crowd caused Judge Devlin to rap her gavel. “Quiet down, all of you. This isn’t story time. This is a trial!”
Counselor Barnett nodded her thanks to the judge.
“Well, William escaped Guantanamo the only way you can: by playing dead. Yes, he got out in a body bag and went to an American base in Mexico and then waded the Rio Grande to reach America.
“Remember, we are talking about a Marine, trained until his survival skills were instinctive. We’re talking about a man who lived through thirteen years of torture. When he returned home to Milwaukee, who was there to deprogram him? Who was there to tell him the war was over, that he wasn’t surrounded by enemies?
No one. He fought onward, slaying anyone who endangered his mission.
“What mission, you ask? The same mission of every Marine, to follow orders, to take and hold enemy soil, and to slay any who seek to harm his country. These are powerful directives, especially when indoctrinated into the mind of a twenty year-old, especially when they are deepened and transformed by thirteen years of agony.
“What happens to good soldiers when their minds are impregnated so young and then abandoned, so that doctrines grow and grow? William Dance came to believe he was the Angel of Death for Milwaukee and Chicago, making certain anyone who died in this area died well.
“Into this terrifying delusion came a single ray of humanity: Detective Donna Leland of the Burlington Police Department. William fell in love with her. Nearly twenty years of insanity slowly dissolved away. At last, he began to regain his humanity.
“In the end, Your Honor, people of Wisconsin, what we have here is no demon-possessed man living among the graves. What we have is the lost lamb who, after all the torments he has endured, has gone crazy. Perhaps the prosecution is correct that William knows right from wrong, but William learned right and wrong in Marine boot camp and the sun-baked sands of the Middle East.
“How could we, who abandoned him, possibly condemn him to a lifetime of punishment for it? Isn’t it time we deprogrammed the creature we programmed in the first place? To paraphrase the prosecution, William has already been abandoned by so many people in his life – parents, the state, the Marines, the country, the world. Do not abandon him again.”
The body bag was cold. Not as cold as the trash bin had been when it stopped raining, but this was cold. And loud. And dark. There were other bodies all around – real bodies, and they smelled. They shifted with the plane.
How long do they fly these? Do they fly them forever? Did I fall asleep when they landed and now I’m awake and they’re flying again? They do fly them forever. The cold hurt his ears and his eyes. There wasn’t enough air. He breathed very fast.
He wished for his scorpion saints.
SIXTEEN
Donna stood in her bathroom and stared at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror. The trial had dragged on for three weeks so far. She had worn every decent outfit in her wardrobe, twice – and that was after a spree at Kohls. The pundits were beginning to name the days after her outfits.
And her makeup had evolved, too. At first, she had tried to look like the all-American girl, healthy and happy. The press didn’t buy it. About a week ago, she started making herself up as the supportive but wronged wife – less foundation, less blush, less care. The press liked that look. They had even run side-byside shots of her at the beginning of the trial and two weeks in, showing the toll the trial was taking. But what look now? Perhaps she should go without makeup, without attempting to hide who she was.
“But who am I?” Donna asked herself, the mascara brush hovering beside her cheek. “Who am I, really?”
Someone who can’t save Azra.
Someone who couldn’t save Kerry.
Someone who won’t even save herself.
It’s a church, Azra thought idly, struggling to banish the boredom of the third week of testimony. They have styled their courtrooms after churches. The long chamber had a high clerestory of doublepaned windows, a chancel raised three steps from the pew-filled nave, a mahogany altar worthy of Elijah, a pulpit where the bailiff lurked, a lectern where the Word of Truth was spoken by its witnesses, an acolyte with a silent, mystic machine that captured all that was said and done for the record, even gun-toting ushers who passed at intervals down the center aisle, as if hoping for an offering. Judge Devlin made an impressive deity, and before her cavorted rival ministers, seeking her approval. There was Lynda Barnett, the Baptist matriarch in neoAfrican garb. There was also Attorney Jim Franklin, the young televangelist – white, tall, male, and cocky in his light suit and white patent leather Pat Boone shoes. How fitting that a fallen angel be tried in a church, Azra thought. Of course, given the church’s record with trying heretics – witches, Moors, scientists, Jews, Sons of God – the prospects aren’t good.