The Apocalypse of John

Into the heart of darkness of the Ohio campaign

Michael Young | September 9, 2004

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About half an hour went by, then Mrs. Theresa ran back to the boat, screaming: "It's a tiger, a fucking tiger!" She can't make the boat, falls into the water. I lunge over and grab her by her Kevlar, she falls back in; I've got her ... she's in the boat, flapping like a beached walrus. We can hear Chief yelling: "Never get out of the boat, never. You hear?"

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way. Bush got off the boat. He split from the whole fucking program. How did that happen? What did he see that first term? The more I read and began to understand, the more I admired him. A tough motherfucker. He could have retired to some manicured Texas country club, chewed the fat with the good ol' boys, and not even had to worry about how much money he had in his pocket. But he chose to stay on in the White House. He could have gone for idleness but he went for himself instead.

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We had been drifting a week, weeks, I don't know, when we were hit from the jungle around Chilo. It wasn't jungle, though, so much as the steadily closing lid of a casket. Chief and Mrs. Theresa took a few rounds, dead as dirt, and then it was just me and Edwards. We were moving deeper and deeper into the darkness. Then we caught up with Bush; or he caught up with us. Goddamn. I could smell him, and all I got for backup is this shit-grinning, bouncy little lawyer, high on litigation and himself.

Someone approaches looking agitated.

"I'm an American, American office worker. It's all right. Any of you got cigarettes, that's what I've been dreaming of."

"I'm trying to find George W. Bush... Can you hear me?"

"Hey, man, you don't talk to Bush. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say hello to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say do you know what is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you—I mean I'm no, I can't—I'm a little man, he's a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas—I mean ... "

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The single candle felt like a prison courtyard searchlight, but Bush moved in and out of the shadows.

"Where are you from Kerry?"

"I'm from Massachusetts, sir."

"How far are you from the river?"

"The Charles River, sir?"

"No the goddamn Mekong. Yes, the Charles."

Bush was bent over, as if talking at the reed mat over which he was slumped. His hair was grayer than the pictures in his file, the eyelids closer to each other than I imagined.

"Why do they want to terminate my command Kerry?" he asked