“Sins are my life now. I have done things. Things that people shouldn’t be told to do. I was told to do them and I did. I haven’t slept for a long time. At night I sit in this room, during the day I sit in this room. I don’t know what time it is. There are no clocks or windows. My mother comes with dinner. I eat some of it. Never all of it. I can’t eat all of it. I keep living, allowing myself, to live. Each moment, looking at my shoes there, over there, somewhere, I wanted to be in a place that was nice.
“It isn’t nice. It is here, in this room. Right now, I can’t leave. There is no leaving.
“I thought I knew fear. You know, fear. I thought I knew it. I did not know fear. You don’t know this. You two, you can’t know this. I don’t want you to know this. No one needs to know this. My mother told me the news about Cho, that kid who killed all those people. They stood there and let themselves be shot. They were afraid. Terror struck them. They stood frozen. The bullets smashed into their bodies and they fell like beer cans shot by a pellet gun. That was ours, that was mine, every day, was that day, but I could not stand there in fear and let bullets tear me into death. I shot Cho. I turned and shot Cho, and I was Cho, and Cho was me. I was murder and murder was aimed at me. A million Chos, Chos everywhere, Chos in this basement. We were told to enter a room of Chos as Chos to kill Chos to eradicate Chos while being Chos, and this was life, life as Cho, being Cho killing Cho, Cho trying to kill me, Cho shooting me in the arm. Cho is life. Cho is death. Cho is over there in the corner of the room. Cho out there staring me down behind the register. Cho at the assembly line. Cho folding boxes. Cho opening Christmas presents. I’m fucking Cho. Cho yells my name, calls me daddy. Cho like mites on my eyebrows. Cho comes out my nose onto a tissue. Cho driving car. Cho, I’m Cho. I am Cho. I am not Michael or Lebron, I am Cho.
“Everyone hates Cho. No one hates me. People say, you are a hero. I am not a hero. I am Cho. Cho is not a hero. Cho is Cho. Cho is murder rampage bullets death suicide. Crying tears. Fear. Cho was afraid. He was afraid of something. Cho entered afraid and he shot. I entered afraid and shot. Those who were shot were in fear. In fear they died. Like cinder blocks, all like cinder blocks, cold and solid, callous and hard, meaningless. Do you know meaninglessness. No, I did not here. Over there, I knew, I learned. The earth taught me. No God, earth. This earth is now my place. I am imprisoned here. This is my exile. No matter where I stand I am in exile. Exile is everywhere. Fear. They told me to do things. I did things. They paid me money. Not well. Cho did it for free. I did it for money. They did it for free also. I was paid. They blew themselves up for free and I shot them for money. Now, too much in exile to use grants. Now no fun. Here in this room, alone. A solitude I want. I can never be alone enough.
“I have one friend now.
“At all other times. With people. I am alone. In exile. No one can come to where I am. There are others like me. They were there with me. We cannot even reach each other anymore. There is no connection. We must live with our sins. A great injustice to the earth. We have taken. I am no longer human. The wind, leaves, sun, faces of people, no longer bring any happiness. Should have died fifteen times. Should be dead. Like Cho. Still alive. Still here. In exile. I renounce everything now. This room is my exile. I have placed myself here. Here is where I remain. There is no outside anymore, no happiness, anymore. I renounce everything. I place everything to the side and here I am. I am man. I must be. And because I am man I must exile myself. I must suffer for my sins. My face cannot be seen. They will know what I have done. And they will find me guilty. The word ‘hero’ only means guilty to me.
“Many men after war have post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s what they say I have. They like to talk. I know what I have. I have loss of godness. A point comes, you kill so many people, and a power surges up in you. Making you like God. A man-god. Your fellow soldiers also become man-gods. A god surges up in you. And this god is unleashed many times. And if this man-god lives he will be unlucky. He will go home without gun and people to kill. And this man-god gets stripped of his godness. And then. Exile. The man-god sees he is no man-god. Then he succumbs to the fact that there was no man-god. A little girl came running toward us. She was so little. And somebody yells, ‘She has a bomb.’ In a split second I held up my gun and shot her face clean off. She lay there dead. A god among men. A hero. A god that takes life. A god that supplies wrath. A god that ruins.
“When I was little the story of Noah always fascinated me. The idea of a thing so powerful, a thing so strong, so unstoppable that it could will itself to kill all of humanity except for a few people. Can you imagine the will of God. Imagine that will. A will so strong, so sure of itself, so confident in its goodness, in its own morality, that it could kill ALL the humans except for a few. The Russians and Americans have had the power to do it for fifty years and have not had the moral strength to do it, but God did. That’s the main story of the
Bible
, the thing that pulls it all together. The story that shows that God is stronger than all of us. Some think that God’s kindness is unreachable by man. No, kindness is easy. But total destruction without remorse, that is what is truly awesome. Real power is a force that not only gives, refuses, but most importantly can take without remorse.
“As soon as that little girl hit the ground I knew the power of God. I knew what it meant to be God.
“Soon I took a bullet in the arm. They sent me home. And there I stood a god with no one to be a god over. The problem with making men into gods is that only gods can judge themselves. God answers to no one but God. Here I lay, answering to myself. In exile.”
Jimmy falls silent.
Chang and I also remain silent.
There is nothing to say.
This man is beyond us.
We shake his hand and leave.
3
We are sitting in a bar in Iowa.
A young girl named Charlene is the bartender.
The owner, her father, sits at the bar.
Chang and I have stopped to get a bite to eat and a beer.
We are eating in silence, happy about being alive, being in Iowa, when a man says to us, “How you guys doing?”
“Fine,” I say.
“Where you from?”
“Ohio,” I say.
“Fucking Ohio,” he says, laughing.
“Where you from?” I say.
“Wisconsin,” he says with pride.
“What are you doing out in Iowa?” I say. Chang says nothing.
“Working on the road. I’m with a construction crew. What are you doing out here?”
“Traveling through.”
“Where you going?”
“Don’t know. Down 80.”
“You running from the law?”
“No.”
“I’ll buy you guys a shot.”
Chang and I look at each other and I say, “Cool.”
The man yells, “Three shots of Jack for us. I’m happy today.”
He doesn’t specify why he is happy.
Probably because he got hard for the first time in months and masturbated.
We all take down our shots of Jack.
The man goes, “You boys can’t drink in Ohio I bet.”
“We’re from Youngstown. We can drink,” I say.
“I doubt it.”
I yell to the bartender, “Three shots of Jack.”
Three shots get poured and we drink.
The man goes and takes a piss and I say to Chang, “We’re gonna out-drink this motherfucker, all right. We’re gonna show him what it means to be from Youngstown.”