Does it matter that I tell you now what a wrong, bad person I was? I suppose it always matters, to some extent. In other, distant versions of this apology I have said that I was afraid, that I did not want to go to jail, that I could not put my parents through something like that, that I longed too heavily for the things of the world. I left you there in the desert among the twisted metal chassis of Army jeeps and school busses, burnt shards of missle refuse, craters with shallow, red pools of debris because, I would say then, I didn't want-- |