By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A preface to Don recounts Castro, a wife, Cubans, a boat and a life paid as the price. The page continues from a diving-board image into statements about war, belief and wanderers after death.
The unfinished work mentioned in the preface precedes a claim that war can be God to a believer. The transition connects personal loss to a broader declaration without spelling out how Don's story establishes it.
A second handwritten 'A Preface to Don' draft: someone 'Took Castro, and took / my wife too, got in a Cubans / boat and wouldn't let / them go,' and 'Paid the price, first his / boat, then his life'. After the diving-board image and 'more work to do', it adds 'War is not a child / War is God if you happen / to believe in that one' and ends that 'all wanders afterwards have / not had anything to do with / death'.
This draft joins the Don preface to the war creed found on its own elsewhere, so the tally of loss leads straight into a statement about belief. The plain, clipped phrasing and the grudging 'got to give him credit' keep the tone conversational, while the final lines separate later wandering from death.