WEEK TWENTY-THREE
I showered. I was given a shave and a haircut and a cheap fitting suit. "What's the occasion?" I asked the barber.
He shrugged. "You could use it?" he replied.
In secret military prison camps, everybody's a comedian. Or, laconically honest. My wife always said I was irony-impaired, so I may not be the best person to judge.
The guard came for me the next morning and led me to a small room with a big window along a wall that boasted a great view of the exercise yard. (Okay, it wasn't a great boast, but how many are, really?) It looked like a classroom; on the chalkboard at the front of the room somebody had written: "COUNTER-COUNTER-INSURGENCY, A TABLETOP PRIMER." In front of the chalkboard was a table behind which sat three old men in uniforms with enough brass to start their own Super Bowl halftime band. Two - okay, you got me. I cribbed that metaphor from a Norman Mailer novel. Pardon me for trying to inject a little literary style into my story. Two smaller tables faced the large table; the guard led me to one and suggested I sit. I sat.
On my table was a huge volume of military law, a notepad, a pen, two glasses and a pitcher. On the other table were two notepads and pens, several glasses and at least half a dozen volumes, each as big or bigger than the one that lay on my desk.
This did not bode well.
After a couple of minutes, a young man rushed in and sat on the chair next to me. Really young. Despite the military uniform he wore, he couldn't have been more than two or three years out of diapers. "Prisoner 8-1-4-2-9-6?" he asked, extending his hand to me.
"Uhh, maybe, I guess," I mumbled. Nobody had actually called me that, but it may have been on the back of my orange prison uniform. How would I know?
"On trial for treason, terrorist acts, conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, conspiracy to commit treason, murder, attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, espionage, assault with a weapon that could be deadly in the wrong hands, various acts of mayhem and civil disobedience, traveling under a false passport, assault with a non-deadly but nevertheless highly unpleasant weapon, conspiracy to destroy official federal documents and conspiracy to transport live penguins across state lines?"
I shrugged. "If that's what they say I did," I told him.
"Colonel Arne Shrapnel," the man told me. "I'm your military-appointed lawyer." After a moment, he added, "You gonna leave me hanging here?"
I shook the man's hand.
A man and woman in uniform - a very adult looking man and woman in uniform, if you don't mind my saying - walked into the room and stood at the other desk. They started talking with the old men in incomprehensible military legalese.
Eventually, my lawyer rose and said, "I respectfully request an hour's adjournment to confer with my client." He had to loudly clear his throat and repeat it three times before the older men actually stopped talking to the couple at the other desk and paid my lawyer any attention.
The oldest, craggiest soldier at the big desk (seriously - he could have given the Grand Canyon a run for its money) stopped (Ernest Hemingway, if you must know) smiling and sternly responded: "Denied."
"Half an hour's adjournment?" my lawyer tried.
"To confer with your client?" the man, looking at him with all the compassion of an owl tracking a field mouse, asked.
"Yes."
"Denied."
"A fifteen minute adjournment?"
"To confer with your client?"
"Ye - no. No, sir. To...to go to the bathroom."
"Didn't your mother teach you to go to the bathroom before you appear before a military court to try a major terrorism case?"
"I was an orphan."
"Permission for a fifteen minute adjournment for a bathroom break granted."
"With...my...client?"
Volcanic emotions erupted on the old man's face a moment before he shouted: "PERMISSION DENIED!"
One of the officers at the other table rose. "Your honours, we would like a week's recess to assess new information that has just come in."
The old man's face softened. I wouldn't call it "baby bottom" soft, but it was no longer harsh. He almost smiled as he immediately answered, "Granted. Court adjourned."
The guard walked up to me and put a hand under my armpit, a signal that I should rise. "What just happened?" I quickly asked my lawyer.
"Something good," he replied as I was led out of the room. "Probably. Maybe. Whatever. Listen: be strong. We're gonna get through this! JUST STAY STRO -"
SOURCE: Harpo's
[http://harpos.org/archive/2012/06/10/dd-9000023]
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