In her last letter before the start of the war, Shannie wrote Count telling him that she'd give up her car; drive it off Indian Point, if it meant he would return home safely. She never had a chance to make good on her promise. Count was dead before he received it. The army returned the letter unopened.
Don't be a hero, Shannie wrote. I want you alive. I need a friend, not a martyr for Texaco. In a previous letter, she warned, my mudpie making days are over you rat bastard! I think she knew his fate. She knew in her heart that Count wouldn't survive the war. She saw it coming and couldn't do anything about it!
As the inevitability of war became apparent, so did the desperation of her pleas. In one letter, she tried coaxing him into going AWOL. She said she'd meet him in Israel. She knew Count would turn her down, there wasn't another place on earth he'd rather be. The horror Shannie felt.
In the days from the outbreak of hostilities till learning of Count's death, Shannie was glued to CNN. After learning of Count's demise, she continued watching the war - it engulfed her life. The roar of jet engines was a fixture in the Ortolan's television room. When I called her to task, Shannie returned her stare to the television.
Shannie's head returned to Diane's breast. Somewhere far away, like a distant helicopter, the good minister droned. From behind, Jenny's stare clawed my back. I felt myself falling into oblivion -my guilt ridden conscience easier to deal with than the horrors of the outside world.
"It's going to start today," Shannie warned me. The date was January 16th, 1991.
"What is?" I asked.
"The war! Geezus Pete!" Shannie snapped.
Around seven o'clock Shannie called. "It stared. Get over here." We spent the night watching John Holleman, Peter Arnet, and Bernard Shaw's up to the minute coverage of the fireworks over Baghdad. When Charles Jaco's report from Riyadh was interrupted by air raid sirens and the screen suddenly filled with snow, we were sure the Iraqi's unleashed their arsenal of mass destruction - we were positive that our best friend was dead. We didn't know how right we were - we were wrong about the circumstances. Shannie pulled her legs to her chest and rested her head atop her knees. She spent most of the war in that position. I'll never forget that; I doomed to remember! Just like I'm doomed to remember what I did after escaping the Ortolan's that night.
If I wasn't so caught up in the hysteria, I would have remembered Count wasn't anywhere near Riyadh. If we would have taken the time to reread Count's letters, we would have figured out that he was supposed to be at An Nuriya - Bastonge. Although, later we learned this wasn't true, he was at a place called Wadi Al Batin. The rational mother and daughter fell to pieces, their sanity grains of sand blown about by a desert storm. My sanity wasn't too far behind. We tasted helplessness. Unlike the Ortolans, I wasn't content to watch events unfold on television - I needed to do something, I reverted to superstition.