What Went Wrong

On the last day of July 1969, David Todd arrived at the Hubert H. Humphrey VA Hospital just outside Minneapolis. His right leg had been amputated in Japan. His left leg was in dispute. Over the next three and a half weeks, off and on, a number of meditative, glutinous-sounding voices discussed the possibility of another amputation, the pros and cons. David himself was too far gone to care. He was back at a narrow, fast-moving river called the Song Tra Ky, conferring with angels, watching a colony of ants consume his feet. Fascinating, he decided. Feet to food. The morphine took him to places he had never visited before, black holes and white dwarfs, ancient cemeteries, the walls of Troy, a ditch outside Tu Cung, the gaudy bedroom of a corrupt, leg-eating, gone-in-the-teeth Cleopatra. He witnessed his own decorous conception. He played shortstop for the '27 Yankees. He was there in Sugamo prison a few minutes past midnight on December 23, 1948, looking on as Hideki Tojo dropped out of time through a squeaky gallows trapdoor. He bossed mules for Wellington. He scrubbed the ovens at Dachau, rode point at Washita, sat in on LBJ's war briefings, attended ... // 96% Remaining