I had lost a toe. I had lost a hand. My knee was totally banged up, perhaps beyond repair. I was bleeding out. The Former Soviet Union looked on, hopeless to help. I lie in the middle of a swamp with no easy access, none at all.
Little Oakley Annie stood above me, towering for the moment; Giant for a day. In my dying vision I imagined her removing her face to reveal a man’s inside, with a mouthful of gold capped teeth. I remember the teeth vividly, because that’s the first thing I saw when I entered Heaven. A person smiling, with the teeth whiting out. It was the former wife of the mayor of Swamp Fox, greeting me at the gate. I was home.