Sticks and Stones

Colin Powell stared gloomily at the Potomac as his car inched through the traffic jam across the 14th Street Bridge. He should have listened to his wife. They should have bought a house in Maryland after he left the government. But NOOOO, he said he needed to stay near the airport, near the Pentagon, near the State Department. Every time he had to cross the river, he got in a bad mood. When he was at the Pentagon and stayed on his side of the Potomac, everything was crystal clear.

Across the river, Condoleezza Rice was staring at the copy of the letter she just got, addressed to Senator John McCain, authored by Colin Powell. She was pissed. A half-hour-advance courtesy copy before public release?! Who the hell did he think he was!? Whiny has-been. He had no clue what was going on. She threw her stress ball against the window to scare away the pigeon dove cooing at her.

Senator John McCain was also staring out a window, but he could not see the pigeon dove cooing at him, nor anything else but the pictures playing in his mind. On days like this he knew he was just another veteran. It didn't matter how many years he was in Congress, how many years he was married, how many years he was a father, how many years....The pain came back to him like it was yesterday. T O R T U R E. The days when he believed in nothing except P A I N. The days when a back-firing car made him jump. The days when a loud crackle in the fireplace made him jump. The days when men were ripping apart his body until he woke up screaming in the night, screaming out a nightmare that wouldn't die after 30 years. His Chief of Staff knocked softly on the door, and he shot out of his chair like a rocket, banging his bad knee, cussing. "Come in," he heard himself saying in his authoritative voice, sitting back down while he massaged the knee with one hand and searched for Colin Powell letter with the other. Where did he get the idea he could be a statesman anyway? He was tired of all this. He didn't like Powell's reminding him about the Geneva Convention. What did Powell know? When was Powell a POW? When was Powell tortured? Why was Powell up on a high horse? Losing the moral authority crap, world leadership crap.

"Sir?" McCain looked up at the sharp sound of somebody else's voice. He suddenly realized somebody had been talking to him--oh, it was his Chief of Staff. How long had he been talking? Did McCain have a blackout? Did his wife know he was having blackouts? Why did ducks suddenly made him nervous? "Sir?" Again, the voice, and he was still forgetting to listen....Need to listen.

Three hours later, Dubious McGinty was listening to NPR in the Bridgeman's Office, looking out at the Potomac, thinking about the Geneva Convention. He didn't know nothing about that in Vietnam. It was bad. He didn't like thinking about that. Couldn't figure out why he still remembered Vietnam in technicolor, even after forgetting everything from 1975 to 1992. Moral authority of the U.S. was in jeopardy, eh? "HA!" he yelled out to the demon mocking him. He didn't know what those fellows should do about that War on Terror or the Axis of Evil or the Invasion of the Body Snatchers that had taken over the whole Bush family back in the 1960s, but he was gonna get this bitch witch running the river. And he wouldn't have to torture her to learn her secrets, no sirree, he had ways. He knew how to access the spy satellites of the American Dental Association! He knew lots of things. Only idiots torture--idiots and demons practicing for a gig in hell. The ducks would help him. They were sick of losing their ducklings to Ardua.