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times he was in a khaki uniform and smelled like bay rum. People pet me on the head as they pass by, like I’m a little animal. I’m entirely under the spell of affection. My whole body tingles from it; voices, movement, laughter, the smell of Pacific salt. Everything touches me in this way; straight through the skin. I
am
an animal. At night I sleep with my eyes wide open. Nothing escapes me. Not one sound. Bugs hitting the screen. My grandmother shuffling to the sink for her glass of water. The spotted dog moaning at the back door, wanting to get in; making the sound of loneliness.
    It’s a weird shirt—too small and tight. It sends me back to when I ran around in a completely different body and the unknown was much bigger.

Pity
the Poor
Mercenary
    I cut his face off meticulously. That’s all I have to say. Just doing my job. They told me they wanted the face as proof of the pudding. Trouble is it’s not the same as skinning a walleye or a yearling buck. The human being is different. More curves and twists. The musculature, connecting tissues of the epidermis—not the same at all. Plus, all I had at my disposal was a Victorinox stainless steel jack-knife with a four-inch blade. Sharp as a razor but nonetheless—had to force the idea of butchering out of my mind and just get on with the business at hand. There’s never any use complaining. You just have to go ahead and get the work done and get on with it. I decided the best method of preservation was to dust the inside of the face with baby powder and salt, then roll the paper-thin skin into a loose roll. I bound the whole thing up with blue rubber bands, like the kind they use for holding broccoli and carrots together. I have to admit, the procedure was pretty much experimental since I’d never had to tackle this kind of thing before. Used to be they’d take you at your word. Why would you lie? You didn’t take a target out, he’d come back to haunt you. That’s for sure. No doubt about it. But this particular outfit claimed they needed concrete proof. Concrete.
    Let me start again. Let me just start by saying, I fully expect to get paid for a job well done. That should be well understood rightoff the bat. Everyone does. No one goes blithely into something like this without expecting compensation—especially a job of this magnitude and scope. I mean, there have been others where you get half in advance and then the other half on delivery. And by “delivery” I don’t mean bringing in a man’s face, I mean just your good word that you left his head in a ditch by the side of the road or tossed it in a lake or something. And they’d for sure believe you. Why would you lie about something like that? Your reputation is on the line. And, back in the day, that’s all you had to go on—your good word and your reputation. But now—these days—look at these jokers. No ethics of any kind. Outrageous—For them to suddenly renege and back out, denying any connection—trying to completely divorce themselves from any knowledge—I mean—Let me just say, I never would have volunteered for an assignment of this kind if there hadn’t been a big score guaranteed on the back end. I mean, the skinning of a man’s face—Are you kidding? If verification is what they were after, what’s the matter with good, old-fashioned photography? The black-and-white Polaroid. I’m no Stieglitz but, hell, I can take a damn snapshot: “Before” and “After.” I mean, look, when we took that creep out of Chad back in ‘95, that’s all they needed back then. A plain old snapshot; “blip,” he’s sitting there stupid, staring into the lens with his arms bound back, obviously still in the land of the living and then—”blip,” his eyes go black and there’s a hole in the bridge of his nose big enough to jam a cigar—lights out. I got the fat paycheck on that one, believe you me. No questions asked. But this—It’s beyond embarrassing.

Quanah, Texas
    Dogen’s