30.
   I gazed up at the canyon walls stretching into an infinite blue sky above us. My God, if I was dreaming, I hope I never forget this, and if I wasn’t, God help me. And yet now, right now, why worry about it? I had just lived through a sixty-foot monkey attack, a huge pile of stones that made Groucho Marx look handsome and a brandy and coke. It seemed like only moments before I had been crest fallen that some soul sucking mall had closed its doors in my face. So maybe my life is in danger in this bizarre hallucination. I could have been shot dead in the streets in the hallucination I just left. There was no frustration now, no impotence. I wasn’t cramming my head with rants and raves about how everything had gone to hell and there was nothing I could do about it. What kind of life is that? It’s a stunted life, a foul, ingrown life. Now I was slowly drifting down a bottomless lapis lazuli river. I should enjoy this moment of peace. I began to feel as though a great weight was peeling off me. Sheer cadmium yellow cliffs towered above me. The dogs lay peacefully by my side. I smiled.

   But the feeling of relief was short lived. The water was splashing all around me. Dozens of fish were hurling themselves into the air. The water began to churn. A dark shape slid beneath us. The school of fish leapt into the air in unison.  I followed the shadow in the water as it turned and came back toward us. 
   “What the hell was that?”, I whispered to the dogs in a panic.
    “Don’t move an inch.”, Nanette hissed. 

    The black form moved under us again. It was enormous. We held our breath.                                              

31.
    With a sudden surge, a huge crocodile, his back covered with dazzling green scales, his jaws spread wide exposing rows of teeth and a giant crimson tongue sprang like a leopard out of the water beneath us. We were jammed into the bottom of the basket then thrown out of it altogether as it flew into the air. I sailed past a thrashing tail. I saw myself spinning out of control, arms and legs akimbo and the dogs tumbling with me while dozens of fish flew around me like hail.

32.

   By some miracle we landed on the monster’s head. He floated quietly in the river as we clutched at his slippery scales and held on for dear life fearing the worst. His beachball sized eyes rolled back and looked at us. His terrible mouth seemed to work its way into a smile. He spoke. “I have been listening to you and I am pleased.”
   “That’s wonderful.”, I choked. “Just great.”
   “You have put one over on the Doctor, that rancid sack of shit.”, he hissed.
   “He broke its glasses!”, panted Nanette.
   “He called it a bore to its face!”, added Pat breathlessly.
   “Why are deadly evil men so often deadly boring?”, wondered the leviathan.
   “Because they are petty and small?”, I ventured.
   The beast surged forward. “What is your name?”, he demanded.
   “I am Oliver.”, I responded. “And these are my friends, Pat and Nanette.”
   “You’ll do.”, snapped the crocodile.
   We rode through the dancing waves too scared to think what might become of us. The canyon soon gave way to a rugged plain. The riverbanks were lined with ancient ruins. The behemoth’s tale propelled us toward the shore. When we were safe on land, we rolled off his back onto the sand. He reared up on his hind legs and introduced himself.

33.
    "I am Raymond and I am going to tell you about a camp, an American training camp that the Doctor has been very much involved with, a camp that has been turning out dictators, torturers and murderers for over sixty years. The Spanish American War introduced your country to Empire and you never looked back. In 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine warped a protective policy towards the nations of Latin America into one of domination. After the Nazis had impressed some powerful Latin Americans, the United States decided it needed more than proclamations to protect its ‘Back Yard’. The School of the Americas was established in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946. The sons of the Latin American Oligarchy were offered an education in an elite boarding school to introduce them to the American way, and I’m not talking about baseball. For decades, graduates replete with manuals on torture, assassination, blackmail and extortion have done their Alma Mater proud by keeping the rich powerful and America in control. In 2001 it was moved to Fort Benning and renamed The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Cute, no?”

   The dogs seemed absolutely delighted by this saurian fabulist. They danced and pranced around his feet waving their arms. I thought it best to follow suit, so I twirled my arms above my head for as long as my dignity allowed. The crocodile grinned at my embarrassment.

 

34.
   Then Raymond’s mood took a turn for the worse. He sat down and covered his eyes. Tears began to roll down his snout. He pulled a huge book out of nowhere and opened it. Its loose pages, each one inscribed with the name of a Latin American country fell from its binding and rained down on us. “There is hardly a country in Latin America that hasn’t had its government overthrown, its resources handed over to multinational corporations, its citizens abused. I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how some of you Americans are shocked, shocked that the CIA is torturing people. Well, guess what? You’ve been torturing people for some time now. Shall I tell you about the torture manual? The Kubark Manual first appeared in Vietnam in 1963. It was synthesized into the Human Resource Exploitation Manual in Central America in 1983. What diseased mind came up with that horrific little euphemism? Makes you want to puke. The CIA declassified part of it in 1997. In one part, it is carefully noted that approval from Headquarters is necessary when inflicting bodily harm with medical, chemical or electrical methods. Can you imagine what was not declassified? One thing the CIA learned in the twenty years between the first manual and its second edition is that psychological torture is more effective than physical torture and the threat of physical torture is the most effective of all. Toss a few severed body parts into the victim’s cell et voila! Your Congress reigned in the CIA in the 1990s but after 9/11, it became a free for all. When the curtain was pulled back and the world saw Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”

35.
   In a rage, Raymond raised up on his haunches high above us. He stomped the ground and pounded it with his tail. We sat down before him in humbled awe. We were school children and our master was caught up in his lesson.

   “You must do something about this state sponsored terrorism!” He lowered his enormous snout down to our quivering little faces framed with strained smiles. “Is this the America you love and cherish?” He marched up and down before us on his hind legs, his front legs waving in the air, his tail thrashing. “What does this say about your country that its citizens are oblivious to this abomination? How can you lead the war against terror if you are terrorists yourselves? You run a school that teaches torture! You invade and conquer a country and torture its people in secret and not so secret prisons around the world! How can you let this rancid scar continue to stain the face of Liberty? You must not let this stand!”, he blasted as he pounded his hand with his fist. The ruined columns and crumbling palaces echoed with his outrage. The somber expression on the silent statues mirrored his condemnation. He turned his head to the sky and roared.

36.
   Then he burst out laughing at the very idea of anyone doing anything about it. “Hardly anyone in America even knows about The School of the Americas!”, he guffawed. “Have you ever even heard of it? We have created an American school of assassins that has been terrorizing South America for half a century! Have you ever even heard of it? A few grunts who carried out the torture at Abu Ghraib went to prison and their superiors who ordered it went free! People have been held and tortured for years without ever being charged with anything in Guantanamo and God knows where else! What is this, the second inquisition? And nobody puts a stop to it!”

   I was taken aback. I had been so swept up by this furious sermon that I was on the verge of tears. He howled with laughter. He threw himself to the ground and it shook under our feet.
   Pat flattened his ears and backed away “What’s with this goon?”
   Nanette’s tail was between her legs. “I don’t think he’s wrapped too tight.” 
   I picked them both up.