Knowing What You're Doing - John Fetto

Hawley clenched and unclenched his fists, squirming in the witness chair. They didn’t know him. They didn’t know what he wanted. They sat in the audience, watching the spectacle as Firth’s attorney wheedled his way into his brain, turning him around, asking question after question, not wanting to understand any, but wanting to twist his words, into something unrecognizable, absurd, ridiculous.

“I told you, I had to. There wasn’t anything else to do.”

“You had to sit on a roof top, and kill how many men?”

“I don’t remember.”

“But you couldn’t just walk away?”

“No,” said Hawley. “I knew what would happen if I did.”

“And what was that. Explain what was the great evil.”

“There was a village in Nicaragua.”

“And that was evil?”

“No not the village, what they did.”

“Okay,” said the attorney and he threw down his pen. “Tell us what they did.”

“They drove them back, till all that was left was this one building. We had grenades. White phosphorus. They tossed them into the building.”

“So they killed the teachers?”

“Not at first. White phosphorus burns. A couple thousand degrees. Flakes land on you. Can’t wash it off. It burns through to the bone. You could hear them screaming.”

Firth’s attorney rubbed his eyes.“That’s very sad. You killed them because you thought they’d do that again?”

“No,” said Hawley. “I knew they’d do that again.”

“Because they did that in one village?”

“No,” said Hawley. “Because they did it in all the villages.”