Fourth Estate
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First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014
FIRST EDITION
Copyright © The Ontario Review 2014
Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover photograph © Denis Jr. Tangney/Getty images
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007485741
Ebook Edition © January 2014 ISBN: 9780007485765
Version 2014-11-18
To Charlie Gross
my husband and first reader
A shortened version of chapter two appeared in Fighting Words, edited by Roddy Doyle, 2011.
Thanks to former Marine Mariette Kalinowski, Sergeant, USMC (ret.), and to Martin Quinn for reading this manuscript with special care as Hertog Research Fellows at Hunter College, and thanks to Greg Johnson for his continued friendship, sharp eye and ear, and impeccable literary judgment.
“Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again.”
—SONIA TO RASKOLNIKOV, IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
I don’t feel young now. I think I am old in my heart.
—AMERICAN IRAQ WAR VETERAN, 2005
CONTENTS
Four - Descending and Ascending
Six - The Corporal in the Land of the Dead
Seven - The Corporal’s Confession
Fourteen - The Church of the Good Thief
About the Publisher
DIDN’T LOVE ME ENOUGH.
Why I vanished. Nineteen years old. Tossed my life like dice!
In