No news today.
Today is Veteran's Day and I wish there was no news. Or if not no news then some news other than that which we have: today, Veteran's Day, and the news is that more veterans are committing suicide than ever before. That they are twice as likely as non-veterans to commit suicide. That in 2005 (the one year for which we have relatively solid data, data that the VA has been very careful never ever to compile and release) at least 6256 veterans killed themselves.
That's 521 per month. 120 per week. 17 per day.
My family is rich in veterans, my friends and acquaintances richer still and I love them and do not want this to happen to them, or to anyone, and do not misunderstand me. I know that Once more unto the breach, dear friends, et cetera, and I also know that i sing of Olaf glad and big, et cetera, and I know of the pit between them. I know that defeat brings worse things, et cetera, and I believe that, I do, but I also know that that's what Dick Cheney sang to every kid headed to boot camp, not those words exactly maybe but that same song, and it was the wrong song, and Dick Cheney knew it, and those kids went to boot camp and then on to Iraq, and came back, and knew, too, that it had been the wrong song.
So maybe instead of no news or current news we could instead today have the news that someone accidentally waterboarded Dick Cheney while raping him to death with a rusty bayonet.
That's some news I could get behind.
That's some news I could drink me some coffee over.
Roy Kesey's debut novel Pacazo will be published by Dzanc Books in February 2011. His work has been widely published and anthologized, with stories appearing in Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction, among other places. He currently lives in Peru with his wife and children. (www.roykesey.com)
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