Savages

235

Driving back to the OC, Chon is all, like, what did you expect?

He’s blasé.

(Yeah, the morphine helps.)

Six dead Mexicans is a light day in, uhhh, Mexico, and the fact that they’re lying on this side of the border is less than nada to him.

Borders are a state of mind, and he’s accustomed to a certain mental flexibility when it comes to national borders, like the alleged line between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were both just Stans in his mind, and if the Taliban didn’t care, he sure as hell didn’t. Then there was that border between Syria and Iraq, which was a little nebulous (good word, nebulous) for a while until a few people in Syria went for the long walk.

Ben is too aware that borders are a state of mind.

There are mental borders and there are moral borders and you cross the first you can maybe make the round trip but if you cross the second you’re not ever coming back. Your return ticket is canceled.

Go Ask Alex.

“Don’t do it,” Chon says.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t waste your energy feeling guilty about these guys,” Chon says, “or Alex or any of them.”

May I remind you that these are the guys who—

—beheaded people

—tortured kids

and

—kidnapped O.

“They had it coming?” Ben asks.

“Yeah.”

Keep it simple.

“Collective punishment.”

“You don’t need to put labels to everything, B,” Chon says.

The world isn’t a moral supermarket.

Cleanup on aisle three.