No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

Arthur Meets Irene

I knew Irene when she was ten years old. We used to go for vacations together. She was just a girl. I was a boy. I found Irene after they shot her mother. She wasn’t even crying, she was just laying there. There were at least eight, nine people in the room. And that room was ten by twelve feet. The beds were separated by a curtain for some kind of privacy. The smell was magnificent. Electricity was on and off. I spent the first night with my wife in this Devils kitchen. What do you say to somebody who’s lost everything? She couldn’t save her mother; she was just devastated. What do you say to her? Let’s make the best of it? I said nothing. She just laid there in my arms. The next day I told her, you’re gonna be with me as long as we can.