I was on the phone with the soldier…

So what was the deal in torture school? They torture you until what? What response are they looking for? What are the waiting for you to do that will make them stop? Are you supposed to crack? Not crack? What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “They’re probably working with a time frame or something like that.”

“So you couldn’t figure out what ended it… when they would call it?”

“No I couldn’t. I don’t know what they were doing but I’ll tell you something. Bad as it was, I think the British torture school is even worse,” he said.

“Yeah? What do they do? What happened in there?” I asked.

“Oh, well it was brutal. Same thing. You are supposed to escape and then evade capture. I did it and at the time I was one of only 11 Americans who ever managed. Nobody gets through that school, or hardly anyone does because it’s so hard.”

“What do they do to you? What is hard about it?”

“Well I had to go 192 miles on foot for one thing,” he said. ‘Without getting caught. And they send the Irish army after you, they don’t fuck around. They really do send an army after your ass.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, they’re out there looking for you and they don’t mess around. The people who live around there look for you too. They’ve been doing this for years and the people, the civilians I mean just love to get in on it. If they see you, they’ll turn you in too. They’ll turn you in just as fast as the Irish army will.”

“If they see you trying to hide and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, 192 miles. That’s a long walk.”

Yeah, in two weeks. That’s how long it took me and I was trying not to get caught the whole time. Trying to find something to eat. Trying everything.”

“How did you do it? How did you manage?.”

“I stole a magnet off someone’s bathroom cabinet,” he said. “You know those magnets they put in the door to stick them shut? Well I got one of those and then used one half of a dental floss box from inside the cabinet… I had broken into someone’s bathroom and I made a compass out of that stuff and it worked!”

“Criminy.”

“Yeah, I used the parts from a pen too. I had a pen so I used the clip thing that goes on shirt pocket as a needle and I used the bottom part of the pen, the little metal piece to balance it on and in whatever case it did work and once I had this compass I was in a lot better shape,” he said. “In fact, I was lost without it,” he added with a snort.

I laughed.

“So with the compass I was able to navigate and to keep from being seen, I only traveled at night.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and I slept in hay during the day to hide and to stay warm. Because it was cold as shit once you stopped moving. It was cold anyway but once you stopped it was brutally cold but I was okay because of the hay. I was warm as toast in that hay,” he said. “Snug as a bug.”

“Sleep in hay? What hay?”

“You know those rolls of hay you see out in the fields on farms? They’re big. When they harvest hay they leave these big rolls out in the field. Have you seen ‘em?”

“I have.”

“Well I would sneak up to one of them, carve out a hole in the middle, climb in and put the hay back so I could not be seen. And I’d sleep in there. Slept good because I knew they’d never find me.”

“You did?”

“Hell yes. Who is going to look for me in a hay roll in the middle of someone’s farm? Never mind there were hay rolls all over the place so good luck finding my little bed. They weren’t going to find me. I knew they wouldn’t find me, I slept well in that hay.”

“You’re unbelievable. I don’t know anyone else who would think to sleep in hay. It’s ingenious really. And 192 miles?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t know why you went through that. This and things like it. You must have been incredibly motivated.”

“Hell yes, I was motivated. I didn’t want to be caught and tortured. I didn’t want my fingernails pulled out, my eyes gouged and my balls smashed. I didn’t want any of that and the other things they do to Americans when they catch them that no one cares about because they are Americans. So hell yes, I was motivated to evade capture. No way was I going to let them catch me.”

“I see. Had to get your politics in there, didn’t you?”

“Of course, P, I had to get my politics in there but anyway that school was tough. Tougher than ours but I got through it okay. Once I had my compass and my hay figured out the rest was really pretty easy.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Well no, I just wanted to be the best and there was no way I was going to go over there and flunk their school. You think I’d do that?”

“You wouldn’t dare flunk their school.”

“Exactly.”