Ever Deeper Never Better

Ever Deeper Never Better

Rich Norman


Rich Norman

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Lawrence Norman Standing Dead Publications PO Box 387 O'Brien, Oregon 97534

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy or recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. ISBN 978-0-9845693-3-5

We for whom it is too late–we for whom all bells are alive in their sweet tolling, proclaim: Ever deeper, never better.

The first of dawn's reluctant fingers still withheld themselves, only the red blush of her pulse warmed the chill of a perfect winter morning until the dawn relented, and surrendered a pure white ray to begin the day. The snow crept in by night and stole the sounds of morning to hush the world in a tender stillness, which the sun dared not disturb, a land asleep but awakening, about to be born. At last the silver curtain of day unfurled to behold a land white and pure as new light, where every crack and dirty rut was filled and smoothed, brightened and quieted in a gentle curve, the forgiving modest face-paint of snow on an imperfect world. Birdsong and woodland sounds rose on gentle feet to stir the air, and all the land was coming to remember itself, and awake. Alex had not slept. His parents had been gone, and he had found an old bottle of pills in his dad's medicine chest. Really old. Things had been weighing on Alex and with his folks away, he ate the pills. He needed to think and he needed some guts, because he knew what he was going to decide, no matter how much he was going to think. Well however old they were those pills worked. Didrex, or speed to put it in English. Alex's head was alive with a thousand strange magnetic fingers, his chest was pounding and it felt great. He knew something was wrong an hour ago when he ran out of pills. Alex started to drink. Shit, he

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was coming down all right. It was just dawn and he felt the sun come up like a dirty hand wiping a bad smell over his thoughts. Crap, he had to do it, so a huge gulp of whiskey would have to wash the stink away and sure enough, it helped. He felt better. Another swig and Alex opened the front door to go do the deed, and kill his hope. Carolyn. The first thing in thirteen years to come between him and James. James was the one thing he could count on. James bailed him out of more trouble than he cared to remember. James let him cheat off his tests in AP Biology and AP Chemistry. If it weren't for James he would never have gotten his grades or his scholarship. Alex began to recite the list of all the reasons he owed James from letting him drive his car and pretend he was sixteen when he was still just fifteen so he could get some respect from Jane Forwell, and finally get a real date with a real car and some real sex, to when– James told Alex's dad that the bag of pot he found was his, like he brought it when he slept over and the incident nearly cost James his hide, pop was hot, and James risked his mom finding out and hating the shit out of him as well, but James said, "No Alex, don't worry yourself. Better me than you. My dad's dead and yours will beat the crap out of you, so better to blame me." Carolyn. She was the first. Carolyn liked both of them and for the first time they were at odds. Carolyn, her face was so delicate and small, and because of that, her mouth was perfect. She had one of those faces which is not remarkable for any one part, it was the whole of her, her manner and her round green cat's eyes made something complete, it was the way they belonged with each other and worked together as part of a single supple thought which brought all the ideas to one's mind which beauty and silence can conjure, and that is all of love. Carolyn held out a promise and Alex's heart was a sick black cramp. As he walked toward her home his soul doubled up in his belly and Alex stopped and puked on his leg. "Shit! I puked on my own leg– Shit!" Alex started to shake and drank some more whiskey. A real cigarette for the whiskey puke breath, and he felt a bit like a man. He puked again. It had to be done.

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Carolyn was up early. Saturdays were never weekends for her. Ballet demanded half of her free time and she was glad of it. Nothing rewarded her as deeply as the simple grace which ballet had brought to her world. She was a clumsy child, but at age seven she took up the "brutal craft," for grace demands the most brutality before it is a natural comfort. Now Carolyn poured herself into the world like a liquid, fluid and sure. Through the years she had never actually noticed the change happening as it grew inside of her so slowly, only that she now seemed to fit the world, easily held its shape, and was relaxed to be herself. The brutal craft had taught her that, and she loved it. She loved the school she was in, too. The boys. Two boys. Alex and James. She knew that somehow ballet had won them for her, but her mind was on them, and not the three hours of stretching and leaping which awaited her during the early shift down at the studio. She must be in love or something, she actually looked forward to school and was drifting away from ballet. Only love or stupidity could cause such a thing. She was giddy and opened the window to a pure white silence. The dawn kissed the newborn snow, gently easing and smoothing every corner of the world, until a landscape covered in white cream was illuminated for her, a magical dawn where every dream remained hidden and filled with hope. A light breakfast was required to hold her stomach so she could enjoy her one true vice, a cup of coffee. Carolyn had come to 3


cherish it. "So do vices sneak into our hearts" she thought, and cherished it the more. She noticed her mind turn again to the two boys and wondered if hope too, might be such a vice. She had learned the ancient Greeks considered it extremely dangerous. It was with thoughts such as these that she opened the door to begin her long walk through the woods to the road, and the smelly bus which awaited her. No sooner had she begun the walk than her thoughts returned to them. Alex, the boyish funny one, and James, the strong one, the deep one. He held much to know. One is intrigued by a question mark, but afraid, too. James was smart but he had the smell of a black leather jacket about him, something was hidden beneath it, and she longed to know what it covered, just as she was afraid to know. A mystery. Alex was smart too, but light and available, no leather jacket, just sunny skies–easy to read, open and inviting. Tall. She was amazed to see the approach of a traveler upon this hidden narrow path in the woods, and more amazed when the object of her ruminations appeared as if an apparition summoned by her thoughts. It was Alex! He looked at her but did not seem to let his eyes rest on her. He looked unhealthy. His eyes were sunken and his breath stank. Alex spoke, "Mind if I keep you company?" "Not at all!" "Look... uh... Carolyn I've been thinking and, well me and James have been friends for too damn long and he loves you, I'm sure of it, and whatever I feel it don't matter here because I can't screw him, I just can't. He's been too straight with me and so umm..." Alex looked white as a corpse and swallowed hard to keep from getting sick, but managed to continue, saying, "I have a dead ripe awful crush on you but I'm going to have to tell you that...well James is your man Carolyn, he loves you. I know it, and I'm no good for you. Just don't stop talking to me huh... It would god damn kill me." Carolyn was dumbstruck. She didn't know whether to be more impressed with Alex's nobility of character, sacrificing so much

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for his friend, or flush with sheer pleasure for having been the object of such a contest between these close friends, or annoyed and petulant because she could now no longer choose for herself which boy she liked best, Alex surely showing much laudability of character if not much of a grip on his liquor or language. She weighed her words, clasped his hand then replied, "Oh Alex...of course I understand. Thank you for giving me such a sincere compliment. Most of all I appreciate your honesty, which I will not forget. Of course I will always speak with you! I promise." Alex left, and Carolyn went to ballet, where she had never danced more poorly, or been happier.

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Alex went to James's house straight away and was there by 7:45 which was pretty early for a Saturday. He climbed in James's window on the ground floor. James's mom slept it off on the top floor of the house and was rarely seen before 10:00. James was asleep. Alex felt a bit the martyr stung and also somewhat grateful so he pushed James with some of each and then grabbed his shoulder and shoved him, saying, "James get the fuck up!" Alex was staring at James who shot straight awake and sat up in bed, Alex glaring at him with a whiskey bottle and breath to stun a wild animal. "Oh god Alex, what did you eat?" "Look James I got something to tell you so just listen." A strange air of authority emanated from Alex, and James noticed. "What's with you?" No sooner had James offered the objection than Alex answered at a full raging shout, "Shut up cock-sucker! Shut It!" James was pissed and he stood up and gave his rude friend an authoritative punch in the arm and said, "Mind your manners or I'll teach 'em to you!" Alex lit up like a stop lamp and returned the shot to the arm with a force twenty times that which he received, a blow to crush the damned to hell and break the devil over his knee. James was knocked into the wall and nearly brought to tears, stunned and wincing, unable to 6

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respond, he had no choice but to listen, and Alex filled his vacant ear with these words, "Shut the fuck up! James I gave you a present." Alex was in tears. "I gave her up... Carolyn. I told her you deserve her, you love her and I don't want her. You can have her, I'm out of it. Just stop hating me and I'll stop hating you... Okay?" James thought that mule kick of a punch could not have come from his friend who was too weak to have delivered it, and then knew he was mistaken, and had underestimated his friend twice in as many minutes. Wow! Alex was all busted up and James felt light as a feather! His friend who never cursed at him even once in his life called him a cock-sucker, nearly broke his arm, and then saved his life within the space of twenty heartbeats! What a friend! What a life! What a day! James could not remember feeling anything like it– Happiness! "Whoooooeeeee!" Oh shit that had to wake up mom. Even she couldn't have slept through it. So it was no surprise when Mrs. Holdsworth emerged from her crypt thirty minutes before her appointed hour. James opened the shades and saw a day of such magnificence and splendor, the sun double bright as his arm ached with pleasure to remind him with its throbbing, each pulse reminding him of his delight! The snow was a jeweled prism, a diamond creation in the daylight, may it never melt, never fade or change! And so James inhaled and opened himself before his happiness and knew, he would always remember. Alex watched Mrs. Holdsworth emerge from her chamber, her hangover so indelicately fractured by her son's happiness. James was not the shout out loud type, and Mrs. Holdsworth did not bear up to the change well. She looked like a broken glass. She shouldered her pain with a downward glance and the sun fell into her as a wound, a hurtful overbearing smack and sting, a bad smell and a shame too bright to avoid. She found unfamiliar company in Alex's eyes and they both shuddered. "James," she offered meekly, "What's the racket?" "Oh nothing mom... My timid friend Alex broke into my room drunk, cussed me out, called me a cock-sucker, pounded my arm so hard it may be broken and gave me a woman. The fucking

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woman of my dreams...one who even wants me! Even Mrs. Holdsworth was impressed.

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Carolyn!"

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So the days passed one into the next as a single roll of time connected and run blissfully together and the two lovers themselves became as inseparable as the minutes. Carolyn found James's mystery most compelling indeed, and he hers. A cork slowly loosened within Carolyn, and she started to trust James who showed himself with less reluctance and came to release his thoughts before her uncensored and unadorned, as she came to answer him in turn. Carolyn turned to him on a hairpin of a thought and asked James what he obviously was trying to avoid, "How come you never mention your older brother Francis?" "Francis is a case. He's off finishing up some grad degree on top of another for psychology, and he's a case." Now Carolyn could not resist. How could he stop there? "What the hell do you mean James?" "Okay I'll tell you, but you wait till the end to let me know what you think. Promise me." She assented and James began, "Pop died when I was young so I didn't get too much of it from him. Pop was the drunk from what I understand. Mom just started filling in once he died. Well, Francis got pop's attention growing up and that was not a good thing. When someone gets shamed and beat for nothing but the shit mood the man ape of the house is always in, and that ape needs to vent being as he is so fucking insecure well... Francis was raised hands on. Mom just 9


watched, and asks if everyone is ready for dinner. Well it took hold in Francis so he takes dad's place kinda like mom with the booze. He's gonna become a success and a doctor. He's got to be the superior one, the one who gets respect. He's done it too after all these years of talk, he's a "healer." Oh Christ. Well, when I'm growing up he's way older and he's always wrestling with me, showing me some new hold he learned 'cause he's real into competitive sports and knows just how to torture you. He'll hold you and control a squeeze on your breath while binding up one of your joints so you can't breathe if you try to free yourself. The madder you get, and you can't help it, the more you can't breathe and he controls it to enjoy it you know. Once he tied me up with a move and I nearly went crazy. He loved it. I couldn't do a damn thing. I never went up against him unfairly or anything, 'cause that's the only way I'd have had a chance as he was so much older...but once...God, I'll never forget it Carolyn, never. I was little and he tied me up so bad and I couldn't do a thing. He figured how to use one hand to hold me and the other to smack me real light to make me even madder and show who was boss. It made me crazy mad, nuts, but I couldn't do a thing but choke. After he let me go he starts laughing at me and says, "You ain't so bad little kick. At least you know who's boss, don't ya?" Little kick, I'll never forget it. It tripped a wire in me I didn't even know I had, and I almost did it." James paused and stared off through an imaginary spot in the wall. Silence. Glassy eyed silence. "Then what?!" "Oh yeah I was just seeing it, I was just there seeing it." Another pause. "Well there was this aluminum ball bat in the corner of the room, and Francis was so sure he had me pussy whipped, or so careless as to trust me, and I guess he was right and judged me rightly but he did take a terrible chance and turned his back and relaxed a while, while I eyed the bat. His arm over his face, facing the wall on the bed, and the bat." James was breathing heavily, his voice was getting heated and his speech more and more rapid. "I wanted to grab it and swing, a swing ten foot long and he never would have seen it coming with his eyes closed and his arm over his head, that arm, THAT ARM Carolyn, that arm that held me to his will, I wanted to splinter it at the wrist before the elbow with one huge swing and shatter the thing to splinters–splinters of bone ripped through the skin poked 10

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through like bone quills–that filthy arm shattered and limp broken all the way back–gaping open and hurt–ruined–opened up and broken hanging limp in the air–broken beyond all hope, burst open, shattered and ruptured!–so it never works right for him again!" James had become livid, red in the face, his teeth grinding, his eyes wide in horror and hate which made his whole body shudder like a huge coil spring waiting to unwind and release the tension, unload in one explosive instant of focused hate. James was a loaded mouse trap, looking for a mouse. After a few minutes passed in silence where Carolyn and James both remembered it was she who had asked, James had regained his normal affable demeanor and glanced sheepishly up to see how his admission was received. "Well what do you think?" "I think your brother is the biggest fucking asshole on the face of the earth." Man did he love this girl! Hmmm. Okay let's see how much stomach she's got. "Want to hear another where I get a little even?" "Sure!" Not a second's hesitation, what a girl! "Well, Francis loved this skateboard of his and he was always showing off. I never did anything back to him cause I wanted to be above him, and because, well, I was scared of him. Mom always said 'take the high road, don't do anything, be above him.' Well I hadn't much choice so I adopted the idea. In any case, Francis was needing an audience to watch him go down the big hill over on the other side of the property, and I was it. I saw the loose nut on his wheel, and did not say a thing. I saw it spinning and I tell you now, I felt my pulse go up more than a notch. Oh yes! He makes a big deal about how fast he's gonna go, and off he sets. He could sure ride that thing, and then he's moving like nobody's business and the wheel lets go! Halleluuuujah!... It's right on time, he's got to be going fifty damn miles per hour, oh hell twenty anyway and off he sails...man that moment lasted a sweet lifetime! Ha! So he face plants it on a curb, a stone curb in the mouth! Smashes his teeth to shit! Blood, nerves and pulp showing from his teeth and suffering, oh yeah, suffering Carolyn!

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He broke and I saw it. Tears! The broken little fuck yields the water for me! I saw it break complete– Tears! Ha! Yes! I comforted him, and helped him up, and was nice and fake like him, and I believe for the first time in my life I felt just like him, Carolyn I felt so good to see him hurt like that, and I knew what it was like to be him. He passed me a bit of dad's love, you know? For that moment, and whenever I relive the thing I feel it again and wonder if I'm not like him sometimes." A long pause ensued, way too long. Finally Carolyn broke the silence and said, "No, you're better than him because you see that." Christ...he loved this girl.

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It was nearly Christmas and the cold frost stiffened things and made old things ache again. So it was in the spirit of the season when James learned that Francis was done his degrees and his other degrees and was to arrive complete with a new car, a BMW–a perk from his new job on staff at the mental hospital. He got them interested enough to give him an auspicious title which made it sound like he was a step away from running the place. God it must be true because here he comes, blue BMW quiet as a whisper with a finish bright as a jewel–and his brother– new shoes, suit, $200 shirt and his nose up in the air like he was looking to catch a damn bird in either nostril. He's got a remote control and points it at the car. The trunk pops open and he says, "Get my bag." James complies and fetches the hundred pound suitcase full of medical books and presents out of the car trunk. Hell, the trunk of the car looked nice enough to move into! Soon the hour was upon them and Mrs. Holdsworth emerged to greet the day. "Oh Francis." "Hi, mom! I'm the new head resident of psychiatry at Emerson General, and you are the greatest mom I've got!" Francis's charm offensive had caught their mom by surprise, and she scurried into the kitchen to create some necessary distance. Francis could be overcoming. Soon he's regaling the pair with nauseating accounts of how much money he would soon be making. As he 13


looked around at the humble surroundings you could feel him swell at the sight of the poverty. Francis had found his day, his shining hour was upon him. He glowed a little brighter at his mother's misery. Old Toby Renquist was shuffling down their street, slow and stiff as if the frost lived in his joints and in his mind year round. He listlessly lifted his feet but a half inch as he shuffled so slowly over the pavement. His tongue would come and poke itself out, and his jaw would stretch, open and close itself as his neck pulled strangely to one side, and he kept shuffling. James had seen others with the same walk and strange ticks, bums on the bus mostly. His brother drank in the sight. You could see it play over his face which expressed some strange subtle shadow of understanding that percolated up in him to no small effect. His smile broadened and he stretched his arms out over his head and folded his hands behind his neck, as if he had relaxed into an outstretched lounge chair and was musing upon some newly discovered secret of the world, which he would soon, no doubt share. It was true. "James, look here at this sad shamble of a man. I ask you if you know what it is you see here?" "No, what's up with old Toby?" "Old Toby, has Tardive Dyskinesia James. James, get my suitcase." James got the suitcase. Francis pulled out a copy of The 7th edition of The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, an old text book, and gave it to him. "Merry Christmas. If you read that you will learn that mental patients are a pain in the ass. They are always acting up. They used to give them huge doses of antihistamines to keep them asleep. But then, they were always asleep. Something better was needed and behold: Thorazine, Haldol and all the other antipsychotic medications are born! All with a certain risk/side effect profile. Let us speak of Haldol. Vitamin H– The emergency room...Ahhhh... People who are agitated get Vitamin H, James. It gives them a chemically induced version of first stage Parkinson's. It fucking gives 'em Parkinson's, James... Hahaha! That goes away with the discontinuation of treatment, but it also 14

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leaves them with something more lasting, Tardive Dyskinesia, then they never stop acting like that, with the tongue and the ticks. It's permanent. The shuffle is from the active drug–from the Parkinson's it induces through a blockade of the dopamine receptors, and so we have our miracle James, our healthy miracle where now the patient can answer yes or no questions and be shuffled about, he is awake, he is called a schizophrenic and will always have those ticks from this cure. Schizophrenia is what's called a wastebasket diagnosis, an easy answer for us–and so he is manageable because he is wasted–it is easy to handle human waste! He is manageable now, too depressed from his Parkinson's to know his troubles or give us any either. He is cured! Cured of all value as a human! Hahahah! What a piece of shit worthless nothing of a man! He is a meal ticket for me though. Him and every other poor sap we inject and pill into submission so they trouble us not! No problems, just shuffle and shut up!" James realized this is why Francis wanted to come home. Out in the world he never spoke his mind. At home he could triumph, strut and posture with an audience. So gleeful was Francis, the turd on top of the world, released to ultimate joy and in charge. James had forgotten how damn smart his brother was. He took the book and went to his room.

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The season had renewed itself. Green things and smells, scents of hope and earth intertwined in James's nose, and he felt a strange melancholy tinge of hope. Every thing to be gained knows of another thing lost, and he was ready. Something new was in order and he felt as restless as the new spring earth under his feet. After his walk he opened the front door of the home he was soon to leave. He would be selecting his dormitory and classes at Emerson University some 120 miles away. Carolyn did it yesterday and now it was his turn. Today a new thing awaited him, so he appreciated the old a little more, savored it in his mind and tasted it better. He noticed the little things like the sound of his mom unbuckling and buckling the huge purse she carried, the last sign that she was going to emerge from her room at the appointed hour of 10:00 am. The door creaked open and his mom descended the staircase, each step an exercise in sheer terror adorned with the raw hollow stare of grinding pain–mom's morning look. She snapped on the entertainment box and that seemed to help. Something automatic took over and James watched her pace through the steps of her desperate morning and heard the jingle which kept her company and soothed the soul of America. Little Amy, age eight, her flaxen hair and a hint of strawberry to her cheeks with those bright blue eyes–perhaps a single pigtail or perhaps not, but always the voice–so cheerful, all of America loves those darn hamburgers and why not? Happy Burger was the best! What a relief when they took over the other 16

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two fast food chains. The quality went way up, and the prices straight down! Well one thing's for sure, Little Amy was a doll and America could claim world superiority in many things, but two for sure. No one had better fast food, or better guns. Period. As always Little Amy was talking to her grandpa who asked her, "You sure seem to like those Happy Burgers, Little Amy." Then the familiar reply, "Yeah Papa I sure do, they're like sunshine in my belly!" Man that was a cute kid. So it was with a bit of sweet melancholy and nostalgia that James viewed this world, now more precious and near for soon being gone. It was 2:00 and Carolyn was approaching James's house. She hadn't spoken with him but assumed he was out registering for school, and even at the new highway speeds he wouldn't be back for a while. She knew that Mrs. Holdsworth “started to glow pretty good around 2:00" according to James's description of her daily "soaking" as he put it. She remembered his remark on his mom's lifestyle, "There is some happiness in a drunk's life, but it's doubtful if they remember it." So she wanted to see it and find out. James wouldn't mind, they hid nothing from each other. She wanted to know. She had questions. Carolyn rang the bell. "Carolyn, come on in honey!" Oh yes James was right, she was positively glowing. Drunk as a high school girl at the prom drunk! This would be interesting! Soon they were seated at a table in the living room and Mrs. Holdsworth could hardly control herself, so eager was she for company in her glowing hour. Carolyn was but seventeen and no sooner had they settled in the living room than Mrs. Holdsworth offered her a drink! An alcohol containing drink! Booze! Carolyn accepted. Soon Carolyn was feeling most strange. Having had all but naught to drink over her short cloistered life she was soon over her head and had to put the drink on the table and try to abstain, lest she lose her wits entirely. Mrs. Holdsworth regaled her with tales of how handsome Mr. Holdsworth was and offered up a photo album in which Carolyn feigned some interest, and then she asked it. "I love James but I guess you know that. It's too late! So I was just wondering–now that I've bought the car what's up with James anyway? He's the sweetest guy on earth, no exceptions, but 17


there's another side when he feels used or threatened, isn't there? I mean there is in all people but James has it bad. Do you know what I mean? What happened?" Mrs. Holdsworth was just like James, she didn't blink, she just thought it over, eager to answer and her face lit up with a monstrous delighted grin, a cherry red glow fell upon her cheeks and a laugh from inside her so pure and silly, so happy in its embarrassed knowing that it was joy and prank all in one. The laughter of sheer play, the laughter of a child who knows a secret. "Oh honey, do I! Hahahaha! Oh shit yeah I do! Well sweetheart, when I was nursing James, oh you know how it was, they thought everything man-made was best for everyone, and they hadn't got it right like they do today, so the word was..." She paused for a long gasp of air and a huge sizzling puff from a quickly disappearing low tar low nicotine low smoke high taste cigarette shaped nicotine dose delivery device and continued, "Well the word was you suck the milk out of your tits with this pump and dump it in the sink, and then give the kid this Emerson super milk replacer health increaser milk substitute product or whatever...all the doctors knew about it and mine too. So James looks at me with them eyes of his just like always when it's feeding time, but the doc said I should just dump my milk and replace it with a bottle and some of this high tech juice. Well the very first day I said no breast for you, try this bottle, sugar it was then, that's the moment it happened! Oh god it's true honey, he just went nuts. That's the first time I ever saw that sweet kid lose it. He was just a baby and he starts off like usual until I turn him away and give him the bottle instead. He starts cryin'. He turns red then the strangest thing happens, he starts ballin' up those fat little fists of his, babies got fat hands and little tiny fingers you know and ballin' up like little stones and unclenching then ballin' them up and he turns red and he's hollerin' like a little steam whistle and starts off chewing that damn rubber nipple to kill it! He's gumming that thing like he means it harm and then some. He's shakin' that little head and chewin' with a look of pure evil in his eye like a fuckin' little gremlin or something!" At this point the two are in stitches, laughing uncontrollably. Carolyn nearly peed herself.

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When James arrived home some two hours later he heard a cackling like two witches coming from behind the door of his home. As he unlocked the lock he thought of the golf clubs his mom left behind the door for all these years "just because that's how dad left 'em." Well he knew where to lay hands on a weapon if he needed to defend himself anyway. What the hell was that shrieking? That cackling and shrieking? He opened the door and understood at once. There was Carolyn and mom in the living room drunk as two high school kids–sopping wet dead drunk. Oh well... It had to happen sometime. He went in for damage assessment. "So what you two pretty ladies been talking about, hmmm? Mom?" Mom had no shame and half as much sense after 4:00 or 5:00, and no subterfuge was required. Mrs. Holdsworth replied by pointing at James and then began to laugh uncontrollably while blurting out something unintelligible in between her hysterical contractions, "Little gremlin...fucking little gremlin... Hahahah!" Well... It had to happen sometime.

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First James had to drive Carolyn home. "James, I'm sorry if you didn't want me talkin' to your mom about you..." "No Carolyn, that's her greatest pleasure. She hasn't had anyone to talk to for a long time. She loves her stories. Little gremlin is one of her favorites. She misses pop a lot." "Good, 'cause I like her. Your mom drinks and she's okay by me! Hahaha." Carolyn didn't hold her liquor any better than Alex. After James got back home he found his mom in the traditional position: passed out. He picked her up and sighed. There were soft flat objects in nearly every room of the house. Beds, sofas, shag rugs and even a few beanbag chairs in the bathroom just in case. The house was pass out proof, any room will do but just the same, he'd rather spare her the midnight crawl into her den of darkness–her bedroom with two pair of drapes over the windows. So he picked her up and carried her in while she was still out cold. He put her down on the bed and looked at her there. Peaceful. Oh Christ mom, why didn't you do something? Why didn't you stop him? James didn't know if he was talking about Francis or his dad who had made Francis, into Francis, and it didn't matter. Oh God why didn't she do something? He looked at his dad's picture by the bed on the nightstand with his uniform from the war and all the awards and medals. He asked her why even though he already knew her well enough to answer for her. 20

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She took the high road. She ignored it and turned the other cheek. Mom had that turn the other cheek morality thing big. It kept her going, kept her comfortable. Don't look, that's better, take the high road. Forget it. Yeah, he knew the answer. James finished sealing his mom in her room and went downstairs to his own bed where he fell into the surrender of sleep. Plunging headlong through his dream he dove into a river which received him into its happiness where he was cleansed and free, so gladly accepted within its waters. A rock, a crag, a finger of sharp splintered flint was part of the river bottom and speared him, holding its sharp tooth in his leg, the point from which he did then struggle himself loose, and once free, so then quickly fled the river before he was drowned. The river didn't care. It saw nothing and fell lower and lower before the river bank. Now on his belly he could not move. His back was a soft clay thing, and a window opened within it, and he knew the window was pressed there into the clay of his back from an unseen hand, which put rocks into his opened back, hot rocks, burning stones of pumice and granite were placed within him and they brought a terrible pain, a longing, a fire which was sealed within him, and he cried out in desperate agony but he cried not. His mouth opened and he cried not, but spoke his own name. No cry came from his anguished lips, his soul was silent, its pain sealed fast within him. Only his own name, dull and plain, over and over did issue from the black circle of his mouth. Suddenly sleep's mysteries were interrupted–split open by a sound. A loud clunking smacking smashing noise struck him and he sat up like a bolt...and listened. He heard a scraping shuffling sound and a stifled groan then the latch on the front door was sprung and he knew what was happening. The paper, such as it is out in the country, was full of the story. A burglar who breaks into homes and steals stuff like any burglar, but this one was worse. Instead of running or shooting when the homeowner confronted him this burglar would use a stun gun on the resident and tie them up. The paper didn't give any details because the case was still open, but the guy would torture the homeowners. Torture! So the burglar was dubbed "The Torquemada Bandit." A fucking sadist bandit weirdo, and that rang some bells with 21


James! James changed into something he had never before known. Now he was a shadow of death. The cleansing hand of righteousness incarnate? The Devil? No, the Devil speaks the most of righteousness and so James must be other than he, because James had no thoughts or words. A black current passing through all worlds and all objects in time, the ancient predator is a motion, a scent of following scents which leads doubtlessly into the ribs of every shadow to place its blade. So James stalked but was not James, he was a pure shadow from the brain stem of every lizard who tastes the scent of night. Into the folds between the darkness he poured his ancient soul toward the foyer. The cracks concealed him. He found utter silence and stillness within him to stop the very beat of his heart. He lived between its murmurs and found the clumsy burglar completely unaware of him, unaware as he soundlessly loosed the golf club, a driver, from the bag. No sounds. Silence and darkness cradled him tenderly in their loving hands and he was invisible before all blundering burglars and stealthless sadists. James walked behind him and judged the spot precisely, as the burglar bent over to offer himself, James took time to judge and aim, luxuriously and slowly he collected the moment and chose the vertebra halfway down the neck and swung a blow so severe, so broad and long of stroke the sound betrayed him, a swooping whistle of wind from the golf club which let the ball know it was to die. Now. The enormity of the impact was devastating as the club head crushed the neck and spine a full six inches flat to the wind pipe. James released the blow with a scream primal and absolute, a scream to bruise night into wakefulness, to slap night itself and tell it, "I have cheated you– You have missed me!" Now another blow so severe it should have beat the man's head entirely off his filthy neck, then ten more–all the same–ten more–all perfectly aimed. Mrs. Holdsworth was coming down the stairs and snapped on the light. "Oh shit!" "I got the "Torquemada Bandit" I fucking killed him– YES!!" Mrs. Holdsworth called the police and requested an ambulance. Perhaps there was some of her husband in her son after all! The 22

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bandit was still alive. He was permanently paralyzed. He would never use his arms or legs again. The media fell upon the house before sunrise. One paper even called him "America's Avenger" like he was a comic book hero or something! The more bashful he acted the better they liked it. He was nearly sick of telling the story by the time they all left. The sun was warming the green hills and the woods were coming alive over the ridge. The day was the same as any other day but it had a weird new glow to it for James. He breathed it in and tasted the air. He would always remember.

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Carolyn was in this class. Introductory Abnormal Psychology. That's why James was in it. James was in it and that's why Alex was in it. As he read the syllabus and reading list James thought about how much more he enjoyed college than high school. Alex was sitting next to him and poked James in the ribs and not so subtly either, so they both saw the sight, the godly sight. Carolyn had told them both that she would be introducing them to her friend from ballet, the prima, the first one, the top dancer and Carolyn's role model and best friend, Eva. Eva walked without walking, looked into every eye without refusing, surely her body was the mirror of her soul, and she was perfect beyond knowing. Light itself becomes bashful and modest, blushes before such grace, warms it for its own as if the sun too is mesmerized and forgets herself, growing sweet red and over warm at the sight. Every motion a perfection, she was founded upon the very idea of beauty itself and was its unknowing vessel, pure and selfforgetting. Alex and James turned to stone, marble and salt. James recovered himself and looked into her eyes saying how glad he was to meet her and for the first time he had ever used it, meant the phrase as more than a courtesy. "James you are already notorious! As you know no higher compliment is possible from our beloved Carolyn. You are just as she described you! And you... You must be Alex."

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Alex began to breathe again and found he could not help but stammer as he stared in wonder at this waterfall which plunges and hovers, filled with a spark of wind and sun, swelling, falling, lingering and plummeting in an eternal moment, so beautiful, to catch the sun as it falls. "I am honored. You are far more than Carolyn or anyone else could ever describe, so I will forgive her." Suddenly James felt a catch in his heart, a thought tugged at him– What if he chose the wrong one, look here, a finer one by far, purer, better and sweeter in every way–so? What now? James gagged to know his thought and swallowed it into his secret heart, his unheard mind where such things dwell. He could not have thought it. He blushed and could not recall why. He was suddenly annoyed and felt like saying something rotten to Carolyn or Alex but the lecture began. After the lecture ended James had returned to normal and wished Alex well for the inevitable pursuit. Alex was at the top of his game as one is when one plays against or with the best. His charm was unbridled and Eva was beguiled. Soon it was clear what had happened. Alex was a changed man. He became solid and dreaming all at once. His confidence became genuine, his charm was no longer an affect stemming from his innocence, he believed himself and grew by feet a day as a person. He also became a hopeless dreamer when his mind was not engaged. Yes, it was clear what had happened. Eva was a narcotic, the strongest there is, and every idle moment Alex was at worship, for he had found religion and the fount of all pleasure in Eva. Alex looked as if bliss had tamed him, staring off past every wall, past every horizon into himself and lived here, in Eva, in himself, somewhere past all he saw. Only the smile betrayed sentient life, and that was dubious proof at best. "Alex, snap out of it!" and his friend would return to him, bleary eyed, flush with happiness and contentment strong enough to turn one's eyes away from the world. "What?"

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"Did you hear the news? We've been attacked again! The Xing Pao hit our base in southern Hyperboria! So we chased them back into their cave but then guess what we found?” “What?” “In the cave we found some plans for a high tech hit the Xing Pao have planned for right here, on U.S. soil!" "Bullshit." Then it happened. The Xing Pao missile hit New York. It fell in the harbor instead of on land, but it had a warhead, perhaps even nuclear, and hundreds have probably already been killed. Something changed in James just to hear it. Every mousetrap needs a mouse.

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James was in his second year at Emerson University when the attack happened, and the whole country was rocked. On U.S. soil– Attacked! The beating of war drums permeated the media. Little Amy and Gramps let every American know what hung in the balance. It was all too confining for James, too much heat and too many little things always crowding him. Every fiber in his being, every sinew vibrated with the tension. He was an instrument, and this was his song. He needed this like America needed him. An adventure! This was a moral and spiritual obligation! It is words such as these which seduce men's souls to believe they have cause to see reason. Such words make the pulse quicken and the face flush and hot with anger. Reason sees poorly when her cheeks are red, but young men do not know that. So James and Alex went down to the recruitment facility with their papers and school transcripts for speedy induction and advanced aptitude processing. After completing a ten page military entrance and induction application they were to report back to complete the process in two days. A dinner was planned to celebrate the event, this feverish surrender to manhood or madness which makes women such as Eva and Carolyn wonder if their men were still children who would be better served to misspend some more of their youth right here at home. But patriotism like love is a disease of the spirit and wholly blind. So a celebration it would be.

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Much merriment and toasting accompanied some chest pounding and lusty embraces which led to an end typical of the evenings of those men who go to war, should they be then lucky enough to leave an heir, if unfortunate and fortunate enough not to return alive, but a hero instead...or so goes the boast. The hangover welcomed the next day and nerves were quelled in the company of well-wishers who encouraged with much flag waving and foot stomping and our other obedient bad music of the soul...the platitude, which keeps all unlooking souls afloat, a cheerful bit of wood upon which to float...stiff upper lip...do what you have to do...say what you have to say is closer to it, but we never say that. So do we all swallow our fear into our stomach and wonder if the room got colder, when we know it is not the room but we who have felt a chill. Bravery looks ahead and marches after its eyes, it ignores its stomach. And so to the base they went, buoyed by each other's good show. Naturally James was the happier of it, although still a bit nervous, so double sure in appearance. "Okay you numbskull." Whack in arm– "I'm down here and you're over there so we'll meet down there," says James as he points to hell. Much false laughter which needs reason to laugh follows such words, which rightly cover our nervousness, and grant us the tonic of laughter. At this juncture James and Alex separated alphabetically, James in one room marked “H” for Holdsworth and Alex in another marked “B” for Bourne. After four hours of aptitude testing which was scored on site by the main computer in the Emerson Military Personnel Evaluation and Distribution Complex, the two met again in the same hallway in which they had previously separated to discover a disturbing result–they were evaluated and assigned differently–James to Officer Candidate Academy Emerson 227 Complex D, and Alex to enlisted duty indoctrination with sub-specialty training for explosives handling. "Shit!" was the simultaneous chorus of responses as they each looked at the other's card. Well, you never know. And so they left the building and each other for whatever purpose fate may choose.

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After arriving at Officer Candidate Academy Emerson 227 Complex D, James took some lunch. Then he took some more tests. Odd tests with questions that made no sense. Everyone else was then handed a green assignment card with their appropriate officer specialty group, everyone except James. He was left alone in the test room, just sitting there...alone. A man in a suit entered the room and approached him. What was a suit doing here in a military complex? "Hi I'm George Abrahmson, doctor of psychiatry here at the base, and you are a gifted man, James! I am not here to tell you that you are crazy, because that's what all the cadets think when they see they have been left here for a shrink, so come on with me, and let me tell you James, you are a rare bird indeed! Such a score, James! We are going to assign you to “active captain brigade command” starting immediately after your training. You will be a hybrid James, part commander and part foot-soldier–a super captain! A captain-major of sorts. Not to inflate you too much but you will be in the shape of the finest athlete–someone like you can tolerate it so we will push you. You are the type who gets stronger to be pushed and we will fast-track you to it James, because our tests show that's what you want, what you need, to lead men and go, to let go and do it, but to do it perfectly–isn't that so, James?" Now the pace of Dr. Abrahmson's delivery increased. "Together we will have you out there delivering fire down into the sadists and the scum who keep 29


us from breathing, keep us from being free!– Keep us bound and tied up, helpless and crazy when we should be free to free the world!" His pace increases further. "Isn't it so, James? Isn't that what we have to do to be free of it and fix this thing instead of take it–isn't it!? We gotta fucking go, don't we–we have to, we gotta go fix this thing and free ourselves, unload and free the world, but most of all we have to do it now, right now, don't we James, don't we?!" The doc had his test scores and pushed every button James had, and James lit up like a flag, two switchboards and a Christmas tree! He could save the world, be a super captain and rain fire on all evil things which smothered, kill all evil which tormented and restrained–he could take it–he would take it–he could fix it, heal it–make right with his hurt and GO– free the spring within him and unwind the knot exactly as he must and should! This doctor sang the song of his anguished misunderstood soul and he all but wept, but instead James vibrated with a patriotic fervor which left him foaming at the mouth and all too eager to sign the papers which gave the government rights to his mind and body, so he could be trained in the most punishing and rapid advanced new program specially designed for the exploitation of exceptional aptitude–the secret quick response officer training program under the code name "Operation Reichstag," or "burning building" for short. "You see James, it's like they lit our capitol building on fire. We have to act fast and put out the fire, and that's where you come in." James got a black tag with his assignment information. James soon learned what it meant to have signed those papers and to be "black tagged." He was told by Dr. Abrahmson that the world he was in now was a special world–a world that he was now a key part of, a world that didn't exist. To be black tagged is to disappear. "I won't mince words with you James, you signed away your rights when you signed those papers. You gave away your rights to protect all of America's. Nothing could be more American than that." So when he got out James would be a captain-major, but, the school where he got the rank doesn't exist. Hmmmm. He went with the good doctor into an elevator with a black tag only sign, an eye with a black x covering it. His tag summoned the 30

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elevator once it was held over a hidden scanner in the sign. The elevator plummeted down and down for what must have been seventy-five floors. Once the doors opened he was underground by a half mile and found himself in the academy proper. It was unbelievable! An entire city seventy-five floors underground lit up like day with grass in the courtyards and real light from the ceiling. James was bloody well out of doors seventy-five floors underground! Insane! These guys were not kidding! "Well some of us have not left the building for years, James. Some of us never do. We are the unsung Americans, James." The doctor became very sincere. "If you keep a man locked up in dingy underground places he gets depressed and restless, sad and sick inside himself. We designed this facility to disappear but be healthy for the staff, some of whom must spend their lives here. They, like this facility can't exist, and so we care for them best to keep them in surroundings as like the world they are defending, the world they may never see again, as is possible. We all need sun and warmth, even those who sacrifice the most." The doctor was all but teary eyed and apologized. Dr. Abrahmson needed to get out more.

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After a half hour walk they had arrived at James's training module which was a complete little world unto itself within this underground universe. Doctor Abrahmson told him it housed some eight hundred staff and trainees, complete with its own pair of generals to oversee the whole nonexistent, sunlit, underground, grassy green, bright black, invisible, high dollar, unfunded, unlimited black budgeted universe. Holy shit! Here the doctor and he parted company and James reported to the officer in charge of assimilating inductees into the outfit. He wasn't a military man either but another doctor. If not he sure acted like one and told James to pull down his pants and bend over. Well that seemed military enough and "Ouch! What's that doc?" "These are some shots to help you learn. You won't be effected, you won't feel anything, only an increase in your learning skills. You will learn better." So a pain in the butt will help his head? Underneath it all James thought that all doctors are like his brother. They like giving you those shots too much. Next they sat him down for some more tests and a dixie cup full of pills which James knew better than to ask about. After a nice meal with lamb chops and applesauce which tasted funny, he felt as good as he had felt in all his life and was ready to go! First some more tests. Dr. Abrahmson came in the room and congratulated James on getting the highest score relative to his own baseline that week! 32

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Doc loved his work and beamed to announce I was in A group. Part of me felt big, puffed up and flattered and part of me was double scared to have made any doctor that happy. Those shots and pills worked. I was getting smarter. I was introduced to my weapon, the Emerson 7000 Mark 2 fully self contained hand-held sustained fire delivery system. The rifle looked like a race car, sleek and functional in a mean flat black, a carbine half-size barrel length rifle, tapered and terminated with a compensator. There were two spherical chambers with ribs around them toward the rear of the gun, and the stock itself held the rounds. The rounds were just projectiles with no shells. Sergeant of arms for black unit 27-3 spoke and we all listened like open bags of empty space, we were all hungry for his words and I remember every one. "The Emerson 7000 Mark 2 is a super ultra-pressurized munition and projectile delivery system. The projectile, a mere 17 grains in weight, is delivered into a super-tapered free bore and barrel smaller in terminal caliber than the projectile, causing an airtight fit by compressing the bullet. That means the barrel is too small for the bullet so the bullet, made of high lubricity alloy must be squeezed to fit the small barrel and leaks no propellant gas whatsoever due to the tight fit. A perfectly efficient use of propellant energy. Because there is no powder or propellant containing cartridge to use up space there is room for 2000 projectiles in the weapon's internal magazine. Each projectile fragments into 6 shards upon tissue or hard target impact and are fired in burst groups varying from 3 to 10 projectiles per trigger actuation which delivers the selected group size in virtual simultaneous discharge. Hence the characteristic sound of the weapon–"the Burp." It is deadly indeed, with 18 to 60 separate wound channels created for each mono-burst. Observe." The sergeant's arm moved autonomously and pointed the weapon downrange. A series of short burp-like bursts resulted in the whole scale destruction of three wax human heads and two melons some twenty-five yards away. They simply disappeared into a dirty cloud. The effect was staggering. "So gentlemen, you may wonder how this unit is powered, with no powder or propellant what drives these projectiles? The 33


engineers down at Emerson have quite an answer for us here! They have discovered a twin spherical design which can withstand enormous gas pressure. It is self-reinforcing gentlemen, the more pressure that is put in, the stronger the containment vessel becomes. You can not over-pressurize it without violating the laws of physics. It has the capacity for infinite gas density–super solid gas, gentlemen. The engineers at Emerson have electromagnetized gas and permitted it to not only be contained to receive pressure sufficient to create a liquid gas, but a solid, and then a double-dense, super-solid gas of infinite pressure–a gaseous singularity or as the physicists say, a little "big bang" like the explosive force which created the universe is contained here to be used at your disposal. We simply insert some Emerson 751X semi-conventional, Corbadite based super explosive, packing 1,000,000 times the explosive force of nitroglycerin into the chamber, or use the mobile super-solid gas pressurization unit and in either case, press 'command' 'ignite'. You will notice there is no sound from the explosion or from super-solid gas transfer. That is because the Mark 2's selfreinforcing spherical containment chambers use the wave to contain and cancel itself. The foot soldier can carry 250,000 projectiles on his person, enough to fight for days even if alone against vastly superior numbers." It was all true. The Emerson 7000 Mark 2 was an amazing gun. So the days passed and James was a hungry sack too willing to be filled with every idea which was presented to him. The exercise regimen and the instruction seemed effortless because of the shots and the pills which made him sharp as a tack and hungry to the core. The words from his instructors were like rope thrown into his empty soul. He climbed each syllable to the next. They could not come fast enough. His companions in “the black race” as they called it amongst themselves in sheer pride with its attendant stupidity, was so frenetic as to allow little socializing, but at meals, it was at once clear that they were all very different. When Dr. Abrahmson approached one he seemed utterly changed in his demeanor and character compared to when he approached another. However they all seemed to be gifted, each in his own particular way. James soon discovered his gift, which he was

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remiss to recognize other than his overall balance of character and aggressiveness compared to the rest. James's gift became apparent in Covert Enemy Engagement Training, or "creeper class" as it was known. Something which seemed so easy for James was impossible for any of his classmates. James was a born creeper. A super creeper. He could stalk and surprise the instructors. One almost killed him by way of a weird reflex response. He stole up behind the sergeant who had survived three jungle tours as a hands-on assassin and tagged him, winning the game. The sergeant's arm erupted from its shoulder like a bone and meat projectile–his arm exploded clean out of the shoulder socket and knocked James fifteen feet–he was out cold and had a broken nose and a collapsed right sinus. He didn't remember a thing. The story was recounted to him numerous times by his fellow cadets. The sergeant's arm had to be manually resocketed, it dislocated “like a meat bomb” according to the most colorful of the observers. Much laughter ensued and James wondered, "What the hell was that?" His fellow super captain classmates were different all right. Hamilton was a pain in the ass. He always wanted to get some company to back him up and go hand his ever growing list of stupid complaints about the program to the general. Man this guy was an idiot. Didn't he understand he signed away his rights? Of course they drugged him or beat him or whatever the drill instructor needed to do to show him a move. Hamilton was a whiner and a moron. Samuals was always griping about money. He wants money for his mom, for his debts, for his bus ticket, for his whatever the fuck and who cares. Doesn't he understand he's in an underground non-existent world where he's learning not just how to kill people, but how to kill them really fucking well? Who cares about money or parents or anything else, you are going to start killing people and may just die. Get it? Well Samuals was just too too damn poor too damn long to get it, and so James knew that no matter how poor his mom was, Samuals was an idiot.

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James was up on the third floor of D building in the compound taking some more tests. Dr. Abrahmson had them take three sets of Gittinger Tri-Variable Correlated Personality Inventory and Assessment Exams weekly. What exactly that meant James was never told so he stopped asking. On the way back from the last battery of tests, James noticed the door to General Costman's office was partly open. Strange. He wondered... There was "scuttlebutt," a rumor about the general being in hot water with the other general about his drinking, and such things are probably just talk but... James eased the door open, ready to knock if he had to, and found it! General Costman had passed out at his desk in a pile of puke! Those pills and shots must have been working because James knew exactly what to do. He closed the door but left it unlocked and went off to find his two stupid classmates. Hamilton and Samuals were eating lunch. Hamilton was gabbing and Samuals was sulking. James slowed himself and became natural, "Hey Samuals, c'mere and talk to me for a minute." James made sure to look a little sneaky to spark his interest. They walked. "Look Samuals, I've got $500 for you if you do me a favor, will you hear me out?" Samuals all but died. "Yeah Holdsworth, I'm listening all right."

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"I need you to get Hamilton and tell him you've been thinking on it and you want to go to General Costman with him right now, while you have the guts up, and deliver that list of complaints with him, you know the one he's always griping about?” "Yeah I know it all right. ridiculous."

Really?

Why?

That list?

It's

"Forget it. Look, once you're in the hallway by Costman's office start making a racket–arguing or whatever, then go on to his office door and listen to me and do what I say. Nothing will come of it but $500, what do you say? Got to do it right now..." "Shit yeah I'm on my way!" James returned to General Costman's office. The general was still asleep in the puke. James waited. He heard the elevator door open and his “friends'” voices in the hall. James woke the general. "Hugh...ughhhh." The general noticed his head was in a pile of puke. "Sir...sir,wake up sir, wake up." "Oh, cadet uhhh." The voices are coming closer and closer. "I'm going in to see the general right now Samuals, why are you yellow all of a sudden? Costman's going to hear it from me right now!" James snaps the open door closed before the two approaching loud mouthed cadets can see, and just as much to the general's relief James puts his finger to his lips to show he's in on it too and knows what to do. The general is still coming to his senses behind his desk and James bursts out into the hall closing the door behind him just as the general is starting to wipe the puke off his face. James begins shouting. "You two get the hell out of here! The general is on the phone to the brigade with my name on it, my command assholes–so get the fuck lost! My commission is riding on this call so move it–get lost! Go! Now!!" Taken aback by James's red faced bluster his friends dutifully retreat. James goes in to claim his prize. "Sir, I'm so sorry."

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"Not at all son, it's the other way around. I would surely appreciate your discretion on this point." The general had missed a spot on his chin. "Of course sir, it's well understood, fully and well understood. Perhaps I might ask a favor of you?" "Well boy, you can ask and I'll even listen! I owe you plain enough. What's your pleasure?" James looked at the general. James knew drunks and he had his way with the general so far but Costman was different than his mom. He was still there, there was something left, plenty left behind the eyes. He sort of trusted the old guy. "Well General, I want to get a front line command and get it fast." "A command you're already assured or you wouldn't be here, but you say "front line" command and that is a loaded term son. I mean it." He looked at James to see if he wavered which he did not. "Hmmmm... Okay cadet, I guess you know that, so... anything else?" "Private Alex Bourne must be in my unit. He's my best friend." "Hold on, son." The general found a pen and wrote it down. Alex Bourne, private. "Are you sure, son? Front line?" "Deadly sure, sir." "Well I'll give it to you under one condition. If you are going to have any chance of survival you will need some more training. You will not like it. Hear me, sir–hear me cadet–you will not like this one bit. It's a sure death sentence without it and I won't give any man a favor like that, no matter how much I like him." "I'll do it." "Listen son, this is double black training–terminal black. 85% graduate, the rest...terminal black. Still want it?" "Yes." "Sign here." So in a squiggle of digital ink and a thumb print James was ahead of the game. James was owned. He excelled even more in 38

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his classes. Every second could hold the information that would save his life or the life of one of his men. The ultimate goal: victory with as little loss of American life as possible. Technology, information and leadership were the answer and James absorbed it all. A mere two weeks went by, but so information rich and dense with facts were James's days that it felt like a year. The waiting and wondering made it double slow, so James tried not to think about it. It didn't help. Then his orders came. They put him in the belly of a cargo plane with a bunch of boxes, crates, tanks, guns, ammo and technical gear along with two other black project boys bound for the same facility. Halfway through the trip a video feed came on from General Costman. "You boys are all going to Cameron On-Site Advanced BioTraining Facility Unit 1A. It's the only one like it. The program was three weeks long. Now it's been cut to two. You three cadets have graduated and are now the finest America has to offer. Your sacrifice is unknown and unequaled. God bless you." The screen turned off. The general looked sick. James knew for sure that he trusted him. James kept picturing the general's eyes as he gazed into James's young dumb soul for a shred of reality to grasp onto. He could all but hear the general saying, "Son, you won't like this at all...not one bit–you still want it? Terminal black–still interested?" Similar thoughts were undoubtedly crossing the minds of his fellow recruits so they discussed nothing of it, as is the way of the fearful who have no choice but to become the brave.

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When James entered the facility he entered enemy territory. This was Xing Pao land. The Xing Pao were the military arm of the political ruling party in Hyperboria. That's what Americans called the country as no American could pronounce the name in the native tongue of the inhabitants, the language of the Hyperborians being impervious to the western ear which could only distinguish a series of yawing sounds and connective grunts. The Cameron bio-training facility was in the jungle. A piece of America in the fucking jungle. James walked in to the facility and beheld a large photo of the affable face of the Scotsman whose name the facility bore, Dr. Ewen D. Cameron, once head of both the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association as the placard beneath the likeness proclaimed. Oh no...another doctor. It said he spoke with an endearing Scottish burr and achieved instant results in his patients with no need for years of treatment. The unofficial logo of the place was written in beneath the official information in large script lettering, "Crazy like a Scotsman." A sense of humor was definitely required out here. After trading in his uniform for a hospital gown he was shown into a room where he received a bunch of shots he knew better than to ask about, and some tests which he took with equal resign and no questions. James was getting the way of things in the military. Next he was assigned his sleeping quarters after some more injections. He was so groggy he could hardly stand or walk when they put him to bed 40

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in his room and locked the door. He felt like his mom. When he awoke some ten hours later a recording was blaring a bunch of crap in his ear about what a little nothing he was and how he couldn't do a thing about it. He was still so dazed from the shots that he couldn't put it together. He asked and was told that these recordings were part of a regimen of "psychic driving tapes," a therapy to make him more ferocious. Okay... Next more shots, pills and food and James was going up fast! He was alive and sweating instead of dead and shuffling. Another shot and his body is relaxed like rubber while his mind goes berserk, racing like an engine with the throttle floored while the car is in neutral, while his body remained really still and quiet. Then another and everything's silent, like snow fell or something and James takes it all in with no questions, no looking just consuming. Then he heard it. The words he came to dread more than pain or hurt or shame itself. "Please step into line Mr. Holdsworth." James hesitates. He's part zombie and so the huge black dude repeats, "Please step into line Mr. Holdsworth." James does it. He's in line. He can hear it. Thumpf! Thumpf! and then “AAAAHHAA... Oh God please no... NO... Thumpf! Oh precious lord please no please...Please God no...Thumpf! Thumpf! AhhAAAhhh OOhhh please SWEET LORD no Jesus NOT AGAIN Noooooo!! Help me!! Stop!! Please PLEASE LORD PLEASE Thumpf! Thumpf! AAAAHHHHH!! Help me. Oh please help me help...Thumpf! Thumpf! Aaaaahhhhaaa...” Seven at a time. The line would move in chunks of seven. There were seven conditioning racks in the martial arts repatterning facility, but there was only one super-precise pneumatic cephalic electro-stimulus-conductor implantation hammer. While one guy got it, the rest had to watch and listen knowing they were next. 150 electrodes, 150 infinitesimal plastic coated platinum wires with electro-conductive tips fired through your skull to a precise depth into the brain. 150 for each man. The thing would hammer the wires into your brain. While it is true that there are no pain receptors in the human brain, James learned that the human soul can experience pain far in excess of that which can be induced by the sufferings of the body. Each wire ruptured and desecrated–electrocuted part of your soul. You

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were more of a person—then it took something from you, broke right into your spirit and stole what was most precious, sacred and irreplaceable, destroyed you at the very bottom. Each wire took more. Then the hard part was done. The nuts and bolts held your head and your arms and legs flop down as the racks you are strapped into go vertical and the exercise starts. It was explained to us that the fastest way to learn a skill like the martial arts or marksmanship was to learn it from the inside out, to feel it done right and open the mind to receive and record the muscle memory. That's where the shots came in, to relax the body and open the mind. They took some supreme grand master of Taekwondo and three other martial arts of the most deadly variety and did this same thing to him with the wires in his skull and made him do his moves. Now they hook us up and play the tape back so to speak, they put those same impulses back into our body and presto! A martial artist instant recipe–no waiting! So you are hanging in the air and your arms and legs are jerking around doing kicks and moves and your arms are punching and blocking and all the grand master's brain impulses fire your body as you kick and punch, flopping and thrashing around in the air like a shadow boxing Pinocchio in flight. It was cruel beyond measure and somehow comical, but it worked. James remembered the sergeant's dislocating meat missile of an arm and understood.

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James flew over with Gonzolez on the transport plane. They were both scared to death and twice as excited and had shared more in these few days and a week than most brothers in a lifetime. Once at the Cameron facility time had become dense, thick and double long twice over, heavy, as lead melting down your throat, too heavy to stand...too thick with fear. So he liked Gonzalez. James even felt he knew him and how could he not? They were both about to hear the words, so they were both the same inside, now exactly the same person because they knew what it meant: the brain implantation air hammer–the precision laser guided computer perfect soul destroying inhuman air hammer smashing your soul to irretrievable bits. Oh Christ. Then it happened. "Please step into line Mr. Holdsworth, Mr. Gonzalez." They got into line for their marksmanship repatterning. Christ I wonder who the lucky marksman was whose brains they scrambled and where the pieces of it are today? James was getting smarter. Gonzalez was smarter still. Too smart. He was sweating, trembling and really knew what it meant. He couldn't fake it any more. "Shit James they're going to fuck us with that soul smashing thing, the damn thing coming up over me, up onto me again to take more, pounding more skull and soul out and fucking my mind up with broken shit, but the broken shit's me, I'm always broke then, never me anymore–the only good stuff–the stuff you can't ever get back or replace is wrecked!" 43


Gonzalez started to cry and shudder. "No man! They can't have it! Not that! No one's entitled to it– NO ONE!" Gonzalez started to look crazy, his eyes are looking everywhere and his head whips back and around, searching, his neck stretching all over looking for a way out and he's moving out of line and that huge black line boss, a 350 pounder easy with arms like a man's leg, he's always the one, the bouncer who says, "Mr. Holdsworth please step into line," and he sees what's happening as Gonzalez makes for the door. The monster black dude, man he was big, he grabs Gonzalez by the head with one hand and holds him up in the air. He puts him down and turns him around and picks him up again so Gonzalez is staring right at his huge head. "Mr. Gonzalez step into line." Gonzalez does it. He steps into line, but he's shaking and he's going to start crying again and I can't blame him. The line boss says, "Mr. Gonzalez don't do it. You can't do it. No messes Mr. Gonzalez. Double black terminal Mr. Gonzalez. No messes. Stay in line Mr. Gonzalez." Gonzalez makes for the door and the line boss grabs the back of his neck and picks him up. Gonzalez has fully lost it, sobbing and hollering–he's just plain lost it. He's not coming back– crackpot for sure. He's whooping and biting and crying and the giant black man swings him under his arm like a duffel bag and tromps out of the room with him, then straight out the front door of the complex. Not ten seconds later, maybe five and BANG! The line boss comes back in real normal, a bit sweaty but like the top head on a totem pole, totally unfazed. I ask him, "Sir, did you have to fucking kill him? Shoot Gonzalez? Just shoot him like that?" "Mr. Holdsworth, what do you think you signed with that double terminal black order? That black contract...Hmmm? Once you go black, you can't come back. No messes. No complaints. No loose nuts. We don't exist so you don't matter. How could you? You aren't here. That order made you into nothing. You began as nothing, so what's the difference?" He leaned toward James and spoke quietly, "Consider yourself.....motivated."

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The words fell into James like hot stones of boiling lead, and the full meaning and gravity of James's situation only now became clear and real. Hope was stripped bare and beaten before his newly awakened eyes, so James, did very well indeed.

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After eagerly accepting every invitation to step into line which he could not refuse, it was over. The two weeks and god only knows how many shots and horrendous soul splitting treatments later James was "Repatterned in field marksmanship and mixed martial arts level two enhancements." That was army speak for, "They destroyed him just right." James could not resist himself and struggled to behold the result, which he could no longer control. His soul was a barrel of locusts and wasps gathered in a ball of screaming self-annihilation, a shrieking boiling fist of selfreproaching words, the loop, over and over, those tapes in his own voice–when did he make the recordings?–over and over while he slept: He was filth, he was nothing, he was unable to stop it, it was his fault he was so weak, little kick is a treat, little kick is a fair boy, too weak to do a thing when he's bound and held because he is filth–over and over–locusts boiling over each other in a stew pot of impotence and self-disgrace. Then the other tapes in a woman's voice: “Only you can stop it, only you can help him, only you can wash off the filth and kill them, only you can free him, only you can save us, only you are strong enough to kill him, please kill him, oh please please help us, only you can save us, please help him,” over and over and over until hornets upon hornets, wasps upon wasps, locusts upon locusts, a tortured cloud has replaced his soul and he is gathering, a storm cloud of torment, the atomized shriek of a man's soul once its been swatted into a stinging angry mist. As James left the facility 46

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he saw the flag, the stars and stripes, the red white and blue, and for the first time he knew that he was part of it, he was the part of the flag which was unseen, the flag under the flag, and James now understood that the flag underneath the flag, was white, red and black. As James and his surviving classmates were leaving the facility an MP directed the graduates to an office where General Costman was waiting. James was shown in first. "Sit down, son." James obliged him. "I'm sorry I had to do that to you but I did. Now you can shoot, plus that kung foo crap. But at least you can shoot." James smelled alcohol on his breath but no puke. The general became very sincere. "Forget how much you hate me for putting you through that damn science experiment, forget it for a minute. Listen, I've got your fool Christmas present here–front line command. You were warned about this program and now you're warned again–hear me son– warned again...this is what you wanted. Heroes are made on this kind of assignment. That's no advertisement son, most heroes are dead before anyone pays them the compliment." James stared. “You still want it?" "Yes, sir!" The weight of it all, the mistakes, the warnings, the truth–it was all too much, the training had worked–he had to do it–he had to explode! He had to go! It was time to unload! Now!! James erupted, "DAMN YOU! FUCKING YES SIR THE FUCK YOU SIR–YES!!!" James was livid, blood red and vibrating with rage. "Okay son, I needed to hear it." The general sighed and his shoulders dropped in plain relief like a lead guilty weight was lifted from his being. The general slid the folder to James, who opened it up and discovered the truth. The last three captains lived three weeks, two weeks and twelve days respectively. All shot. Only the captains. "Son, there's a man in the outfit whose been on active duty four and a half straight years, this business has been going on a little longer than most folks realize." James said he didn't know that. "Well politics are another man's headache but we fight for it. If you want a piece and you want to live to tell about it, you'd better 47


check into Sergeant Frank. We've offered him the captain's job and offered again but he won't have it. Sergeant only, please. Seeing how the captains been taking it out there I can't blame him but all that aside...well he's still alive and he hasn't gone nuts either. Four and a half front line active...Incredible! I never met the man and sure as hell never want to, but he's got the charm James, see what he's got to say." "Sir, you never met him and don't want to? He sounds like a real hero, a living one, not a dead one but a real live hero, why not meet him, sir? He's the real deal." The general got real serious and looked a bit sick under the eyes and around the mouth. "Son, anyone who lived through that has become something, and it's not a hero...not by a yard or a thousand. I never met him and never want to. A man like that is not going to be the subject of any letter you may choose to write back home to your mom, or anyone else. Son you're in the shit now, and shit stinks." The general looked really sick. James felt his blood still and understood, he had just met an honest man. General Costman escorted James out of the office and closed the door behind him. James imagined he was getting a well deserved drink and did not blame him in the least. James had no time to contemplate his strange responses, his thoughts or his lost soul. There was only the ringing in his head, the hornet's nest of his soul was alive and boiling. His calm demeanor was as mysterious to James as it was misleading to all who saw him. He got into a waiting XV-STU Standard Ultra Light (assuming that six tons of heft qualifies as light) mobile semi-tracked personnel transport vehicle, or "the limo" for short. Six other troops were going his way on the limo and no one knew. Only James felt the drops of fire sprayed into the air like a kid with a lighter and a can of hairspray looking for an anthill upon which to vent his tortured soul. As they pulled into camp some ninety minutes later James realized he had seen none of the trip. He had noticed details but understood or cared about none. He had only one wish, wherever the fuck he was he didn't care in the least. He passed through this jungle with its green heat and smoldering wetness, so over heavy with heat and thick to breathe, all the strange scents of unknown flowers both poisonous and beautiful, 48

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sweetness from every organ of Eden's lush creation, life's fragrant bounty and her alluring sickness so florid and over ripe filled his mouth and nose with thick forbidden scents, and the hues of our invisible palette of all description enjoined his senses, but James felt nothing of it, so ferocious was the self-immolating fire of his ruined soul, so hungry was he for an object to consume in its orange red stinging blaze. James sat quietly. He was in line.

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The camp entrance was adorned with a makeshift arch of triumph made of cut-up saplings with a sign over it, "Home Shit Home." "Welcome to "The Shit," gentlemen!" That was the real unofficial name of the camp, and all laughed approvingly. At last, the curtain is raised and we begin! James's hunger slept beneath his blank affable face. No one could tell it. No one saw it. James exited the transport and walked toward the first private he saw, who snapped back a quick salute. "Where do I find Sergeant Frank?" The private pointed out the location of Sergeant Frank's quarters, a large super heavy duty Emerson Model 791 Multi-Purpose All-Weather Bullet Resistant Personnel Shelter intended for three people. Perks. "Knock knock," said James in his calm not a hornet's nest voice. "Come in." "Sergeant Frank?" "Sir! So glad to meet you, sir! May I address you as Cap'n, sir?" "Yes Sergeant Frank, Cap'n is okay." "If I may be so presumptuous sir, as to break decorum and request that you address me simply as Frank, as all the men do. Although improper it adds a certain indecorous familiarity which aids the overall coherency and cohesion of the group, if I may be

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so indecorous as to suggest, sir." James thought, wow, who is this guy? He's educated! Indecorous to suggest? "Sure, Sergeant or um... Frank, sure. May we take a walk, Frank?" James had noticed an odor, a dreadful smell which he thought he could ignore, he needed this man and so he would ignore the smell, but it was too much, an odor like the alley behind the butcher shop they closed for health violations, an odor like a dead animal or something worse, lots of dead animals or a dog cooking as it rots in the summer sun. James was going to vomit. They had to walk. Air was required. James controlled himself to appear he was not gasping and gulping the fresh air, although he was. Sergeant Frank was cheerful and composed. He seemed as a man complete, his smile not sought after, nor a grin suppressed, an honest glow about the man with an easy light stride–someone who likes the neighborhood and lives there too. "Oh Cap'n... I see from the look of things that I forgot something. Forgive me a moment . I will return most promptly." James was annoyed but showed nothing. Frank scampered back like a kid with a new marble. "Cap'n, now I'm just guessing, and we just met, but I'll bet you came from Cameron, didn't you? Now don't answer cause Cameron doesn't exist, but sayin' you did, I'm guessin' you feel like you gave 'em all you had in there, and how am I doin' so far Cap'n, to beg your cooperation?" "You're doing perfect–bullseye, Sergeant. Bullseye." "Can hardly hear yourself think I'd bet. Well if a man is in the field without being able to hear nothin' but the devil in his ear, shoutin' and hollering his horsehair and such, well he's lookin' but he's not listening is he?– I mean he don't hear so good over the racket, and who knows what he might be missing, what he might need to hear but he can't, if you follow me." "Yeah I guess so," said James but in truth the noise in his head made it difficult and he was almost unable to concentrate on the conversation for the distraction.

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"So Cap'n I want to keep me a Cap'n rather than make me one you understand, so I personally believe, and see if you don't agree sir, I personally believe that you deserve a smoke. I believe you may live longer and be happier for it, safer if you can hear yourself think. I am sure you have sacrificed a lot, a great deal sir, and I think you deserve a smoke." With that Frank handed James a large joint. James was more than a little relieved at the suggestion, and assented in the very most affirming tones. James lit the joint. He inhaled its smoke, so thick and heavy with unknown enchantments, a familiar taste, the luxurious gulp of smoke and sugar but with something new and earthy underneath, like the scent of rich soil and a meaty bread soaked in broth and earth taste. "Frank, what's in this? Pot?" "Well sir, this here's got some very potent weed in it sir, that's the primary constituent but really that's just a sort of a sedative enhancer, a substrate, a vehicle for the dragon, sir. That there, is a dragon's tooth sir. No finer smoke exists in all the universe, the smoke of kings, and contented enlisted men alike." James had never smoked heroin before. He inhaled it with all the hope of a broken drunk pulling at the bottle as if they could just drink it in deeply enough, the whole problem might turn to daylight. James felt his broken soul like a china dish set smashed in a sack, grinding striking scraping and ringing in pain, and he needed relief. What had they done to him?? Oh God, oh Christ they sure wound him up. Spinning like a demon top ready to blow and Frank was right! He'd better calm down or–POW!–he was next! So he inhaled the smoke and prayed in his heart and mind that the poison might heal him, stop the shattered bell, the broken shards and pieces of his ruined soul from their cacophonous shrieking and ringing. He imbibed the smoke and wished only for its spirit to stand between the pain he had been shattered to become, and himself, the he who was here now. Each curl and wisp of smoke was the spirit of an unknown and so most potent and hopeful salvation. Hope appears most alluring to those who need her most and do not yet fully understand her terms. James began to calm, the corners and 52

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splinters of his world were stilled and covered in a blanket of snow and the landscape became quiet in between the sounds, and James was quiet in himself, no longer filling in between everything he heard with thoughts and pain and needs and drowning hunger and shattered longing. The mouse trap was under snow, and the world was quiet. He heard the footsteps and the talk of men, the voice of Frank and his own voice, and only a warm hum in his ear betrayed the silence in between the sounds. He was himself again. He could think. "Cap'n, if I may introject some discussion into this most fine and still evening?" "Of course Frank and thanks! I feel much better. You got it all right, those boys spun me like a top." James's words were spoken at a near whisper but seemed loud to him, and Frank, whose affect was entirely uneffected for having consumed his own dragon's tooth continued, "Well I'm glad to see you took hold of it, sir. Some of 'em are stubborn and well... I suppose you heard about the last three, or really five captains come out of here as full on heroes with perfect posture–they never blink sir–they all took it: the captain's pill." "The captain's pill?" "Yeah Cap'n, they had the headache you just lost, the captain's headache which gets 'em shot. They wouldn't have a lick of the remedy so they went out and got the only answer left to 'em to get rid of that captain's headache–the captain's pill sir–a bullet. That quiet it down for 'em. If you won't have one cure, the headache they leave you with will get you another. You may not even start to see it yet sir, but Cap'n, this place ain't so bad, and it's sure not worth takin' no captain's pill to cure a headache." This was the hopeful news Sergeant Frank has bestowed upon James, a sure salvation had befallen him and James was James again. There was an enormous sultry beauty in this land, Hyperboria, that ancient land of Greek myth and legend which can not be reached by foot or by sea where it is said the sun near but never sets, and age touches no one for a thousand years, by which time

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they must surely welcome it. A splendor of natural abundance, still moments, full waxy leaves, voluptuous flowers with alien scents and bird song from animals which were not birds, an aged ageless chorus so squalid, bellowing and perfect which had existed for countless eons without him, seemed to suddenly appear before James as he heard the strange animals and the shuffling of new ageless unknown leaves and winds through these trees, he felt as if this world had only now sprung into being, as if he had created it in this very moment by the act of thinking and perceiving it, it had only now sprung up from nothing to fill him with its wonder and drench his ripe senses with its color and chattering profusion. So do we animate the world and feel we have created it. Perhaps we have. Perhaps Hyperboria is a place we dream ourselves. It was with such quiet thoughtful musings as these that James had Frank assemble the men, his men, and James was feeling hopeful, even good, and might make something for himself out of this mess after all. After a cursory troop inspection and introduction James returned to his quarters and found another piece of good news waiting for him–a folder on his cot–Alex was to arrive in less than a week. Costman was paying up.

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"The first patrol." That's how James remembered it, and he would never forget. He awoke and restudied all the maps and information sheets about his unit's mission. His unit's stated duty was to patrol and clear seven trails: Barlow, Alpine, Swamp, Texas, Sand Shoe, Mountain Goat and lastly, McTarnihan, named after the first casualty on the trail some three years back. The smaller spur trails off of these main trails were designated by color, aka Barlow Black or Alpine Green, etc. These trails are bordered by sheer drops, mountains, swamps and other natural obstacles which make it necessary to keep them clear so "important wartime activities," whatever those are, can continue to take place and move across the trails as need be. James did not understand why they didn't just bomb it to pieces and flatten the whole thing into a parking lot. Why spend men and money clearing the trails and then allow the enemy to re-booby trap them and again wait in ambush, so they would have to clear them again? Why leave the mountains and villages there? Why not level the place? That's what they did to most of Hyperboria... why not here? Well politics are another man's headache as the general had said, and he was going to see the business end of the thing. James's first patrol. James and five men went out to clear Barlow Black. The jungle was thick with insects and a humming which left the mind always searching for something to swat. The clouds of bugs were driving James a little bit over the top, all the bugs, swarming, 55


biting, relentlessly suffocating and feeding on him, in his mouth and in his nose. James remembered the "little bomb" Frank had made up for him. A speck of heroin wrapped up in a cigarette paper with just a pinch of speed. "When the creepies get ya, take the pill–cures the headache better than the last captain's pill." James swallowed it. Before too long he began to feel better, but strange...his feet, arms and legs moved freely and easily but they were somehow detached, disconnected from him as if he no longer owned them. His head was miles away up over his body like a helium balloon on a long string, he was still and floating above himself. They walked silently. Frenchy was on point. James was next and Frank near the back. Frenchy was nervous. He didn't have a cigarette paper or a headache, so he was just scared. The rest were too, but Frenchy showed it, he was first in line and it showed. He was jumpy. As they walked “Captain James” floated and enjoyed the strange sounds and unfamiliar greens and yellows, but his head was up so high he could hardly believe his arms were his, with those hands so far away on the end of his thin mile long spaghetti arms, and the legs a year distant from the rest of him, surely they belonged to someone else, stepping so automatically in their perfect isolation. Whose legs? They stepped. He could hardly care. He didn't believe he was there. Who was there? They pause because some of the men need a drink and a rest, and Frank asks, "How you doin', Cap'n?" "Weird, Frank. Fine but strange– Disconnected." Frank's eyes lit up and he gave James a hearty reassuring pat on the shoulder saying, "Ahhhh... Then I've got it just right for you! A pinch of dust separates the mind and the body, never too close together. Let us pause and think–happiness likes us to consider her, examine her before we decide." Frank glowed. What the hell Frank meant philosophically was unclear, but James now understood the separation he felt within himself, the distance, the disconnection was due to PCP in the mix he had swallowed, there was PCP in Frank's little bomb, that's what was responsible for the head like a 56

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balloon arms so long feet a mile off weirdness. James had no feeling of fatigue, bodily discomfort, or claustrophobic anxiety from the multitudes of flying insects as he had before he took the remedy, so James decided he was grateful. They hiked and looked, crept and stopped, lurched and jogged to the end of the trail and turned around. A first run with no casualties. Good. James was downright glad. He wanted to get back to "home shit home" and smoke a dragon's tooth. He was thinking about that very thing when a shout came from the rear of the formation. It was Frank giving the halt command with his fist in the air and a sharp yell to back it up. All halted. Frank walked over to a clump of bushes by the side of the trail. He was positively beaming, grinning ear to ear. There was a childlike quality to him even with the smell and the beard. Suddenly he reached into a bush, just as he was pretending to pass it he reaches in like lightening, like a farmer getting a chicken from the coop before it even knows to put up a fuss and he has her. Frank has this young native girl by the neck and rips her out of the bush. James wanted to think it was the strange concoction Frank had given him, but he knew it wasn't, not completely. He wanted to think it was shock, but it wasn't, not entirely. James felt the pull of a higher, lower, older intelligence, one centuries deeper than his life or his training. He felt the supreme knowledge of the group and so he did what the group told him to do, he became part of it and so knew as much as the group. All were silent and watching. All knew to be still and watch. All bodies paused, and so time was suspended, and James paused, and stopped to consider. Frank followed protocol and took the girl back into the formation for questioning at the base. James's body had sensed the unexpected and his glands and his primal nervous system responded to embrace the ancient wisdom of the group. James gave the order to march and only seconds passed, but it seemed much more, so thick were these anxious unsure moments, so sluggish with trepidation before all heard it again, and again all halted. The group is slow to relax, and slow to act, and so thinks best. Frank asks the girl a question in that language of theirs. She says some feeble thing back. Frank asks again, meaner–she says little. Before she can even move an inch Frank has raised his 190 pound six foot tall frame up in the air four feet–out of 57


nowhere an explosion straight up–then down, all of the force down with a kick stepping down on the point of his huge heel into the side of her leg which folds up and snaps sideways like a soft chicken bone gives real easy then the sound, part crunch part snap and the girl has his heel pinning the shattered limb to the dirt square in the center of the break–grinding it back and forth. Then Frank does the strangest thing. Weird. He drops to his knees and replaces his heel on her bloody bone protruding fat exposed shattered leg and knee with his knee on the break, now he's got his knee with all his weight on it shifting and grinding away on her smashed out leg, back and forth pressing and shifting the wound. Now he gets his face up on her to look into her face, grinding his knee into the break he gets close and he's smiling so sweet and kind, relaxed and just smiling so broad. Happy. Not pleasure, just content, open and warm– She lets loose with a wailing holler of a scream like a train whistle and she's gone, she's just a scream, pure anguish, unreachable, and he wants something from her and she's not giving it–she's not meeting his eyes and Frank's forehead wrinkles and his peaceful look is spoiled. His hands snap over her face and he takes her relentless screaming too crazy with pain and fear to reach face and the soul behind it and uses his hands like a pair of clamps and locks her head solid as cement looking right at him and shuts off her breathing dead tight. Her nose is sealed and her mouth is closed tight as a drum–she starts pumping and her eyes are bulging but she's still too far out to get at but then it's working, it's doing something to her, she's changing color, heaving and pumping up and down her chest and eyes bulge and recede pumping and struggling but no no...no air for you!–and her back keeps arching up over and over until the muffled cries and sounds slowly quiet, and she relents, surrenders, gives up, un-arches her back, and looks into his eyes. Like a present from the gods this look of peace and gratitude comes over Frank and he looks into her, like a bucket he lowers slowly into her–all the way to the sandy bottom until a connection of some kind happens and he seems so happy and innocent–overjoyed, happy like a little boy with an Emerson "all day gum pop." He lets her mouth and nose go but first he asks the question again, real soft. She's shaking less. He lets her head go and she's gasping and trying to breathe 58

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and Frank asks again and this time it's pleasure in his eyes all right, and she sees that, and answers. Frank hands her over to Private Brechnear who holds her arm like he's got a loaded diaper. Frank comes running up the line with the gleam of true happiness in his eye. James has been frozen in place watching the movie, the real movie, and hasn't moved! He has just noticed, seen the whole picture, and hasn't moved! A thousand doubts poured themselves into James's blushing filthy soul–to have watched and done nothing. To have felt nothing for her–even now–to be standing motionless now! James flushed red and was sick to know himself–halting and tamed before this monster: Frank! Frank!–the abomination who snaps young girl's legs and he, James, the abomination's shadow. James's soul began to churn and he hated Frank and hated himself with the darkest most bitter and black poison bile of self-contempt. Even as James was hating and shaming–goring and slitting the belly of his soul open with every guilty word he heard the voice of the group speak its wisdom and he said nothing as Frank passed him–still, James watched. Still, he wanted to live. Frank crept on his belly with his Emerson out in front of him, advancing on his belly slowly some twenty yards ahead of where the formation had stopped. James just started to wonder what that girl was doing there anyway, so long after they passed, now that they were coming back, why was she there? Hmmmm. Still moving forward on his stomach Frank nudges something in the dirt with the end of his gun and an explosion the likes of which James had never before experienced wolloped him square in the chest and knocked him over. The blast sent a gray black cone of directed shrapnel and vaporized steel pounding through the jungle at supersonic velocity–shattering through trees, leaves and anything else like a fist through a newspaper. James was on his ass. Frank just saved his life! James was deaf for ten minutes and laughing the whole time. He would have had no idea! Frank saved his life! Frank was on cloud nine. James looked through the fifteen foot square hole the charge had torn through the jungle at a forty-five degree angle from knee height up straight through to punch a hole out of the dark green black jungle, a dirty tattered hole ripped right through the entire forest canopy of trees, leaves

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and life, ripped straight through to the sky. That bomb punched a hole to heaven. As Frank returned to his place in the formation James was happy to know him. Frank had saved everyone! As Frank walked closer and closer James noticed that the girl's blood had left a large stain on the right knee of Frank's pants. James saw several other stains on the legs and as Frank got closer, some more older stains, more faded and brown. Then as Frank accepted James's hand in gratitude, there was the smell.

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James floated back to base camp. His ears were ringing like a tuning fork. His body was covered in filth and cuts and he had never felt better, never more alive or right there in the moment, seeing the thick green fan leaves of the strange plants wave at him, like the whole world was a pair of arms with broad welcoming hands reaching out from the living jungle to embrace him and welcome him; so joyous and sweet was the jungle, so welcoming was life, like a current going through him, an electricity in knowing it: he had lived! The cloud of death had consumed the earth but twenty yards from him and there was no chance, sure death, sure annihilation was close enough to lick him–he felt its breath and cheated it outright! He was a river of fear turned into happiness and felt the current of his life stretch out through his scattered soul and he was alive, awash and numb in knowing what he was: a small bit of meat, a scrap of nothing but water and a film of skin, so very delicate and easy to puncture, easy to poke a leak in any of his many watery organs so he'd spring a leak like that girl, just one little leak and we're all done. They left her there. She gave what was required of her and her people or the jungle would claim the rest. James thought nothing of it, so turgid and joyous was the current of his life, the numbing electric flow of his soul, every nerve was alight and every fear was a happiness crawling through him, filling him with a ringing eternal vibration, the undeniable force of the river once brought to a full froth and boil, running over its banks and 61


scalding the land with its electric seething song of release and affirmation, the sure turgid hissing foaming exaltation of white water and sound, the human soul and all its desperation and ducking before mortal shadows now unhinged in a flash, the breath of death and annihilation unloosed the sum of it all, a flash flood scalds the earth of James's soul boiling up his fear and guilt into the pounding river of mud and foam and its irresistible current–all feeling now born afloat and churning within each precious moment washed and scoured clean from the storm which turns and holds all feeling within itself until it bursts, the fullness of life after it has seen itself all but devoured, then as a cork up from the depths into the sun and he is the river which scours all fear into a sure motion–the boiling current of joy itself where fear rejoices to know what precious fragile thing has been preserved and can no longer, should no longer refuse itself and its current. Now all reasons are mute before the motion and power of such exaltation, the force of this white water and churning jets of mud which no bank or fear can contain–the explosive current now unleashed entire and complete–the current of life itself. So James walked back to camp, with a dragon's breath he kissed life and filled himself with its numbing fire. Every fear clattered its profusion of joy within him–every doubt was a moving electric finger of life and he knew himself as all animals know themselves best and most beautifully after they have touched the black light of their mortality, as a lover who was close enough to give a sweet black kiss to the lips of life and so make them flush with rose, and full with the pulse which beats twice to know the nearness of its nemesis. Beauty and time itself flush hot and red to know each other, the hammer pulse of eternity quickens at a kiss such as this. So are all beings which wish to continue, and all ends which will consume them into mute blackness intertwined as lovers, within each of us. By the time they reached base camp James's hearing was returning. He was filled with a profusion of feelings and questions. Once back in his quarters James noticed his pounding heart, sat on his bed and lit a dragon's tooth. The thick white smoke rolled sensuously over his lips and tongue and he consumed its life giving vapors as if it were a divine manna, a 62

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nectar of salvation and a celebration of all sensual living things. The clouds he exhaled held his very life before him in glorious symbol, real and dense, fading and disappearing, breathing their essence into the world and replacing themselves with each luxurious magnificent breath. A still peace and subtle energy slowly eased in between the splintered pieces of his soul, and he was held in the tender hands and delicate fingers of pot and poppy, peace and happiness, the quiet sweetness which life offers only to kings and the most deserving, once their task has shattered them to wholeness. A strange peaceful thought. Can a man find quiet and the sureness of his life's worth and rhythm through a shattering–a smashing to shards which yields their energies–are we healed to be broken? Are we healed once we don't feel what we are, can we just become it instead? With lovely philosophical musings such as these James's soul was caressed by this quiet, the heroin laid its silent graceful snow drifts of illusion over James's boiling happiness and the world was alive, full and quiet, the brook of his happiness purred in James's ear and the blush of life's radiance brimmed, spilling over and glowing under his thoughts. Had life and peace finally found their ultimate coincidence and union here in this perfect moment? James extinguished the last third of his dragon's tooth on the bed rail and eased his body into the vertical. Standing up so slowly and ahhh...such pleasure! Step outside into the swollen red and orange day, the sun licking his ear, he could feel her tongue on his face! "Frank let me talk to you a minute." "Yes, Cap'n what can I do for you?" "I have a few questions. First off...how did you know?" "Well sir, I keep a keen eye and ear out so I heard her breathe and saw the bush move so I snuck over past and grabbed her, that's all." "No, no, Frank, how did you know to do that damn thing to her leg? Why did you do it–how did you know? Fill me in." "Yes sir, naturally sir. You see, if we're on our way coming back to "the shit" there's only one reason to see one of 'em, that's if 63


they've swept in back of us and planted the trail, put something down to catch us like that M-47–well maybe she's just out pickin' berries or whatever, but probably not. So we go to take her back to the base. Now she's got to be thinking, due to past incidents, she's got to be thinking she's going nowhere she wants to be–I mean sir, the girl knows we're going to take her to base and torture her if she's lucky–not that we would, of course sir, but she's got no way to know that so, I see her smile. A small smile, but she grins as she sees the formation advance on the trail she smiles. No woman–no girl, or man for that matter, in her position has any reason to smile so I stop the formation and ask her, "Why you smile?" She answers for shit so I gave her reason to sing. That's all. She needed a reason." "Okay so you did her leg to get her to talk. What's with the knee in the break and the look?" "Sir, the knee is so I can get in for the look. The look..." Here Frank gets a real wistful sentimental kind of misty look about him and sighs. "Cap'n, it's important to make a connection with a person if you want to know 'em. Then they take you seriously. Then they pay attention and know you. You'll see it. Once you get the look into 'em, aaahhhh...then you ask right and you will hear the song..." Frank takes a huge hit from his dragon's tooth and drifts into the bliss of memory. As James left Frank to the well deserved reminiscences of his pleasure, James walked around the camp. Everywhere he went he saw boxes of products, munitions and foodstuffs. The Happy Burger logo was everywhere–all the food cartons and burger buns, the sauce bottles and kitchen implements, the cans and counter tops were all Happy Burger, Little Amy's face beaming from every box, a sweet innocent face to remind everyone what they were fighting for, and the Emerson logo was also on all the weapons from his rifle to the field munitions and ammo–just like home: Emerson and America's precious little spokesgirl, Little Amy, were stamped and painted everywhere, adorning and sanctifying every item from the tents to the bombs. Emerson sure improved Happy Burger when they took it over–quality went up and prices went down! What a company! The insignia was everywhere and James could just 64

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about hear it, "Yeah Gramps, I sure do love Happy Burgers! They're like sunshine in my belly!" It was just like a little piece of the U.S. right here in Hyperboria. Amazing! Then James thought back on what Frank had just said. The bomb they had nearly been killed by was an M-47, one of our Emerson anti-tank super-shaped-charge metal vapor shrapnel delivery munitions. The Xing Pao must have lifted it from one of our stockpiles, but the funny thing was, the Xing Pao had no tanks. No tanks. Funny, that's not what the news said. The M-47 mine was developed specifically to combat the super high-tech Xing Pao armor. A high dollar munition to be sure and wow did that thing work...but no tanks.

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So James was musing over the politics of the M-47 shaped metal vapor munition which had almost killed him when he entered his quarters and found another surprise to go along with his life, which he had just reclaimed–Alex! Alex was sitting on his bed and he was staring and Alex was staring and, "Alex, how the fuck are you?" "James, you fucker!" Much hugging, laughter and the damp hiding eyes of friends added another new layer of happiness to this day all ready so over full with every strange new thing. Alex and James spoke but James withheld his experiences at the Cameron facility. He knew that something so unreal could not yet be understood by his friend who seemed to be so much the same, while he, was so very different. "Alex, light that butt up will you?" Alex lit the last third of the dragon's tooth and inhaled the precious gases, now slightly yellowish in color, double thick with tars and drugs and every potent attribute which accumulates in the last of the joint after its been half burned, the roach pickled and twice strong for having been steeped in smoke. James said little and let the tooth work its magic. Alex was not filled with the hateful swarm of any captain's headache and in a few minutes he was talking his head off.

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"Man I wish you were there James, this sergeant was such a damn asshole, screaming and hollering–never enough for this jerk yelling at the top of his lungs over the smallest damn thing! I learned fast though, details James– Details! That man was a jerk like I've never seen in my life, swearin' and cussin' but he got me paying attention to everything, like ants crawling over my brain I got to seeing every little damn thing, every wrinkle and spot and I guess that's why he was such a jerk and always yelling and screaming. How bout that damn Emerson 7000 Mark 2–shit, ain't that the cat's ass? What a gun!" etc. etc... Alex went on and on. After a half hour James lit up another dragon's tooth just to shut him up. James hugged his friend goodnight and sent him off to his quarters with the rest of the troops. Christ he loved that guy. James felt kind of misty. Alex was his personal assignment to himself. Alex was there because of him, and he would leave because of him. Alex was his business and he was going to keep him safe. Man, was this going to be fun!

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The next morning the sun came over the lush green hillside with a deep red heart of hope, warm and red like a blacksmith's iron fresh from the coal, soft and crimson just glowing at him, and James looked out at the sight in wonder. What might this day have to offer him, so warm and new? There was a lingering gauze, a haze over James, the heroin lingers and so the sun spoke to him and he listened to its warm red voice of hope. He loved this chair in the outdoor mess area. It had the best view of the jungle which was a living thing, like an animal, where all the plants and creatures in it were organs or feet or claws and parts of the animal which breathed on him and nourished him and looked upon him as he did upon it. James felt a reverence for the jungle and loved to sit here and look at it, watch it stretch toward the sun which poured its golden red heart and its heat, flowing, pouring downward, lavishing its beauty, light and warmth upon the wanting leaves and trees with their bountiful crown of flowers and fruits. Yes this was his seat–the captain's chair. James was pleased to notice how no one else ever claimed it, no one ever took it before him, once he made his preference for it known they all left it alone. James felt like a leader. It was the little things that let you know. Alex comes out for breakfast and it's all smiles. The troops are assembled and they're off on a patrol to clear Mountain Goat, a steep rocky trail. As they set out James heard the most fantastic whistling, a real virtuoso of a whistler, so very perfect in his pitch 68

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and cheerful a tune as he had only heard but once before, last night as he was drifting off to sleep. He remembered it now and here it is again as they walk toward the jungle. James wanted to know who was responsible for this perfect jewel of a melody and lo and behold it's Frank! No happier tune had ever been struck or sung, so bright and approving, a silver melody to be sure if a melody might have a color. "Frank, what song is that?" "Ahhh. Captain, who is it who said hell is the place where no bird sings? Well I forget, but I've come to understand that any place I love is my heaven, and this, Cap'n, is called 'Bird Song.' " "Isn't that from that old hippie band from whenever ago–The Grateful Dead?" asked James in surprise. This was the last place he expected some peacenik song to show up, and these lips, Frank's lips were the last he ever expected to whistle it. "Cap'n–when is hell, heaven? When we are the grateful dead. Only the grateful whistle in happiness which forgets what hell is. We who are reborn to happiness must first die, and be glad of it! We are the birds which sing here and adorn our hell with song, and so paint the clouds with happiness to find our heaven sung by us to order–we are the birds which sing in hell and with our song we transform her into our certain heaven. If no bird sings in hell, then let us sing and be released. What bird is in a cage who can sing, and why would he care?" "Frank, where the hell do you get this shit?" "One day I'll show you, sir." Frank winked and started back to whistling. So “Bird Song” kept the troop company until the jungle closed around them and the order for silence was given. Hackman was new to the unit, a transfer. He was on point. James gave him the order himself. Alex was number two. James was third. As they hiked further inward James noticed that he was looking at Hackman's butt, not Alex's butt, but Hackman's butt was in front of him. This is not what he ordered. James halted the column. "Alex, get back here." Alex jogs over. "Hackman, I put you on point." 69


"Yes sir...You see sir, I feel kind of uneasy about it seeing as I just got here and Bourne said he would trade with me and..." James felt the swarm gather in his head, he had been disobeyed, and his friend had been put in danger, put up front and the scab Hackman was responsible. James felt an ancient wrath overtake him, he felt an old ghost possess him, but knew it not. He vibrated, clenched by the fist of a sudden rage and turned to Hackman with his hand on his knife, a Bartlet 9” field knife, razor sharp and serrated. "Hackman you piece of shit! When you care more for your ease and comfort than for doing your job, more for being safe and comfy than for the lives of the rest of us, when you don't do shit but watch as the rest of us twist in the wind because you don't do shit–do you know what happens?–huh Hackman, do you??!!" James was bright red, he shook, his eyes were as wide as plates, and his pupils were as tiny as pin pricks. "If you ever decide to cross me again and fag me again, I'm gonna take this knife, and ease that filthy piece of skin you call a dick off of your body, and the little bitch you are will be gone, and I will leave nothing but a slot and a gash where your little dickie used to be." Now James spoke faster and louder. "I'm gonna take my knife and take that flap of skin–that stupid little doodle you are, and take your limp worm of a soul and tickle it down your fuckin' throat." Now James exploded: "You Cunt! You're gonna swallow that! I'm gonna tickle it down sweetheart, and you're gonna shit your slimy little nothing of a cunt soul out, and I'll have you...and I'll have you eat the shit with your doodle–I'll cut you off, tickle you down and make you eat the slimy bit as it crawls back out your ass!– Cock no more, Got me cunny? Got me? I'll scrape and tickle you bitch!!" Now James held the knife and looked him in the eye waiting for any sign of resistance. James was not in the mood. Hackman knew, that James knew, where to cut. Hackman said, "Yes sir, I'm sorry sir." "Now get into line, Cunt!" Hackman took point. He did a good job. Alex understood that his drill sergeant wasn't such a bad guy after all.

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That evening at dinner James felt like a Captain. Hackman was exemplary on point, all hand signals and careful scrutiny–no casualties were incurred and the trail was clear. Now seated in his unofficial captain's chair, James felt a bit the king. Alex had finished his supper, Happy Burger all you can eat night was the best, and the burgers were the real thing. James looked up from his dragon's tooth daydream and saw his friend Alex now well fed and exercised, spent and replenished, had succumb to what was a clear bout of Eva narcosis. Alex fell into the warm pool of his mind and relaxed: “Oh, sweet Eva, every limb a grace incarnate, every glance a jeweled perfection in bright shadow and tenderness, oh her skin and hair...oh the sun and clouds of her sky...” Yes, James knew it to see it. Nauseating but enviable. No dragon's tooth or headache paper was required to soothe his friend, Alex had found religion–he had found the bliss which never sleeps–he had Eva. You could break a board over his head and he'd never notice. Man, was Alex high. Nothing is as strong as love or religion. After watching Alex for a while James went for a walk around the camp, and Private Brechnear, Kent Brechnear asked him for a word. "Captain, I know you have been doing a great job under a lot of stress, but I have a question for you." "Yeah, Kent?" 71


"Yes sir, I do. Out here there is so little to keep us...well...human. It's hard, and a little kindness can help, sir. I know Hackman, and he's a really nice guy. I think it's a shame to chew him out like that, with all due respect, sir." "Oh yeah?" "Yes sir, I do. What little of ourselves is there left, sir? Sometimes a little kindness can help sir, it can." "Hmmmm... You may have something there Kent, I may have been too rough on him." "Yes sir, I'm so glad you're still reachable. It's Rome's turn on point tomorrow and I know him, sir. He's a nice guy. Try to take it easy on him, sir. Some dignity in this place is hard to come by. We were all good men once." "Yeah, Kent." And so Kent goes off and James thinks. He has lost something to be out here. He used to turn the other cheek. Humanity, and morality, and dignity... James began to feel guilty.

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Rome was on point and he wasn't cutting it. He was ducking plenty and looking out only for himself. He wasn't calling back signals and was staring at his toes. He was inept. Private Brechnear saw James reaching for his Bartlet 9 with his eye on Rome, and put his hand on James's shoulder, “Captain please, a little kindness sir, some dignity, please.” James asked his delinquent point man politely, "Rome, pay some mind, eh?" No difference. Soon Rome was leaving the trail and making his own way around suspicious obstacles and telling no one about things he himself had carefully avoided. The second in line took a hit from an ancient spring loaded trap which clipped his foot off and nearly cost him his life as well from the blood loss. He could have died. He was gone in either case. James reassigned Rome and said nothing. He was going to be civilized, dignified, human. Soon his hatred for Rome grew like an underground fire, it smoldered and heated him but he felt it not, so distant was his knowing and sick was his smothered hatred to grow and smolder underground like a cloud of steam turning over in itself buried underground. So James did not know why, but he knew it was Rome's turn again. Point for Rome. James ran the formation down two new stretches and Rome was the spearhead up Alpine Red, where the unit hadn't been for a month. The booby-trap

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wasted Rome. An anti-personnel directed burst charge vaporized the man. There was nothing left to send home. Soon it was Jackson's turn. Brechnear was behind him and James saw that the two were fast friends. Jackson, who was just like that lousy prick Rome who didn't give a lick for anyone but himself. Soon enough a metal vapor munition hits the number two who is disintegrated but for the leg stumps while, the point man, Jackson, stepped carefully over it and said not a thing about it. Luck? Coincidence? James thought not! James said nothing. He forgets it. Two days later when it's time to put someone on point it's the rat shit Jackson who he picks and off they go to Alpine and another hero, this time named Jackson, does not return. Another hazard turned hero. Frank passes James a smoke after dinner and asks, "Cap'n, if you don't mind me sayin', I've got nothing against killing an incompetent man, the folks need heroes and the quieter the better, no one likes a talkative hero, but Cap'n, rather than killing 'em, wouldn't it be better just to yell at 'em? Hackman turned out okay." Well that was enough and James saw it, saw what he was doing and why, and what a crock of shit Brechnear had been laying on him. If a man doesn't do his job another pays for it. If James lets himself be pushed into false kindness a man is crippled or dies, then he feels so burned up that he kills the incompetent lout to boot to solve the original problem. One or even two deaths per moral lie, instead of one ass chewing. That's the price we pay to be comfortable with ourselves and indulge this murderous beautiful lie! Whatever we submerge here, erupts there but at double strength! When he lies to himself and treats someone differently than they deserve, the suffering doubles! Morality which denies deserved anger is a filthy blood lie–a comfortable looking away kind of lie which kills as it feigns virtue! Kind morality is a pretty, comfortable, deadly lie! He can't afford to tell moral lies–too many people get hurt to be that comfortable. Now the pretending is over and it's Brechnear on point. They go up Alpine Red, then Black and nothing. Now Captain says 74

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march McTarnihan Red, the blood trail, and no luck, Brechnear is untouched. After two days on point Brechnear is nervous. "Captain, wouldn't it be better to give someone else a chance at point?" "No, we're going home." So back from two days on point they go, Brechnear in front and James behind, following. James shifts his Emerson 7000 to 10 round burp and waits. It's just him and the lying, soft pedaling, minimizing, worthless scum–together at last. So James "trips," ooops...and burps a series of perfectly timed nearly coincident 10's into the thing and knocks out some chunks of dirty lying meat. The gun whacks a whole the size of a man's leg measured around the thigh's worth of dirty meat flying away from Kent's stomach and chest. Now there's some sunshine in the belly! You could have fit Little Amy's head in the hole.

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That night all seemed right with the world. Whoever needed yelling at would get it. Whoever was lying would get it too. Alex was lighting a dragon's tooth for two and the sun was setting on another day where James was alive to see it set. Pretty good. After dinner Alex and he began to talk of the girls and James realized how long it had been since he had thought about Carolyn. Alex soon leaned his chair up against the wall and started to dream. When James escaped into dreams James dreamt of things unknown so the time would be consumed until whatever he missed was at hand. It hurt to remember. Alex never left, and so he only remembered. Whenever the need arose all he had to do was to return to the place in himself he had never left. Alex was far away and she was with him. Only that was real, and James envied his delusional religious bliss, his forgetting by remembering and disappearing. James slipped out of the tent and into the evening and wondered. Who would get it tomorrow? He heard Frank whistling. "Frank, what you doin' out so late?" "I got a new batch of brew and put some legs on. Early bird hears the song, Cap'n. I'm out music huntin'." Frank was talking in riddles again. "What the fuck are you talking about, Frank?" "Ever notice how I seem to know what trails to go on, what to skip and where to be in the formation to see the picture? How 76

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do you think I manage to find all the right notes, Cap'n? Why do I say no Alpine today, and then when you run some incompetent shit down there they die? I hunt birds and ladies Captain, that's how." "Okay, Frank so you have information that's what you're saying, so where do you get it–who are your birds and ladies, Frank?" Frank's eyes lit up to think of it but he said only, "I'm not sure you need to know it yet, sir. If I may be so bold as to inquire what happened to the fine upright Private Brechnear, sir?" "Well, Frank answer me one and I'll do you one...what's a lady?" "Cap'n, everyone knows a lady never tells." "Well, Frank, Kent is a lady tonight." Frank beamed. "Well, sir, how heroic of him! There is a zero, a naught, a whole lot of nothing in the middle of that last “oh” in hero, it's sad but true to be 'hold'.” The two men split their sides as brothers who have uncovered an inside joke and only then discovered themselves to be brothers. "Yes Frank, Kent is a true hero, a silent lady to be sure, so you were saying I needed no knowledge of something?" "Okay Cap'n, you understand we're saving lives, you must also understand that not everyone's got the stomach for it or the chops, mind you the stomach will come but the chops are a natural or a bust. Ever do any creepin'?" James smiled.

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James tried some of Frank's new brew. This was a nasty sulfur tasting concoction which tightened his gut and made him sweat. His heart was bursting and wanted out of his chest. “That's CAT, Cap'n, smoke this.” Heroin and pot. Better. Much better. Now they were creeping into the night and moved like silent black oil through each shadow, in between the cracks like blood in a dark vein under the skin of night. An indescribable energy and silence filled James, he belonged to the jungle, the jungle just was, it just watched and looked without seeing, it permitted everything and he was just another thing, another motion, another shadow, another meaningless struggle or perhaps the struggle's end, it was all the same, the jungle just watched. They approached the hut silently as a shadow grows, quietly as ink dries. The girls are sleeping, and James is creeping, Frank is stealthy and sure to pluck his choice in silent shock and stifled surprise she succumbs voiceless and choked and the hand of James grabs her sister and through the window they go, kicking then limp, resigned and frozen before the shadows. Frank and James take the terrified young sisters to a ramshackle lean-to Frank has prepared. The one girl is handcuffed to a tree. She is older. The younger one is in stark terror, trembling and puffing her breath she begins to whimper and cry. Frank has found the light of inspiration within him and displays his usual enormous good cheer as he lights the lantern.

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"Ahhhh ladies, here we are! I know you are the chief's tender ones. You see every wonderful thing, follow him hand and foot don't you honey?–you are my honeyed one, my sweet one...yes, yes." The girls understand none of it, only their native tongue and Frank turns to James and says, "Always enjoy your work, James. If you don't, the song goes sour or doesn't come. We are hunters of a rare sort James, we hunt our happiness here through music! Ever notice that my Emerson has no compensator?" "Yeah, I thought it was a Mark 1 or something." "No, no it's a Mark 2 like yours, I just pulled the compensator off. I'll show you why soon. Did you know these people believe that there are spirits in the air, spirits–Diabokk–all around us, the devil everywhere! They think if you open up a hole in a man's head, one of them ghosts or devils goes in there and takes them over–feasts on their soul! Of course it's just a grand-mal seizure from intrusive brain trauma, but that's what they think. We'll play us a little game and save some boys. Watch this!" Frank goes over to the older one who is cuffed to the tree and says "Diabokk, Diabokk." He puts his foot on the little one's face to hold her still and puts the gun barrel on her head. He starts to butt his chest into the stock like he's going to drive it through her forehead, bounce, bounce, harder and harder and it's cutting into her head and she's screaming, he's bumping his chest and it's digging into her and she's so scared. He stops and looks at the older one and says "Diabokk" and she's in tears and raging and shouting and looking at it and can't believe it. Frank raises up the gun, high in the air over the small one's head and she sees it. He looks at the older one and asks a question in their language. She yells something at him and Frank gets real quiet. He asks again and whispers real quiet..."Diabokk." She clams up, nothing. Frank drives the barrel of the gun straight down from five feet up and WHAM! he pops it right through her forehead with his foot still holding her head tight, pressing into her eyes and nose and the barrel is sticking out of her forehead, it's punched clean through her skull into the brain. He turns it. He stirs it around in her and her head never budges, crushed tight under his heel while 79


he destroys her brain stirring the barrel around in her head and she's really seizing up with her tongue popping out and she bites the damn thing off and her legs and arms are going like crazy flopping and flailing while her stomach contracts and releases over and over, heaving and spasming and blood from her mouth and her tongue with the end bit off sitting on her chest–full grand mal seizures like an epileptic but worse. Frank pulls the gun out, and goes to the older one. Now like before, not pleasure, but real tender he asks, his face so open and she won't say, so the foot on her head and the barrel pressing and he's bumping it with his chest again like he's going to pop it through. Then he stops and bends down like he's going to kiss her but just looks into her eyes real sweet and calm, tender and searching for something–she stops moving and takes the look–takes it all the way to the bottom where he wants it to be and asks again, the bloody gun close to her face dripping as he asks at a dead quiet whisper, and before he can say another word she speaks. Frank laps up the sentences. He is like a Norman Rockwell freckle faced boy on Christmas morning and shouts, "The sound, the sound! Music, James– The Sound!!" Frank unlatches the cuffs and lets her go. She's got a deep red circle cut into her head from the gun barrel. On the way home Frank tells James the news on the village with the ammo dump and the booby trap which defends it. They will safely root it out and destroy it with the whole unit tomorrow. "You see Cap'n, if you get two sisters and one breaks, if you ask nice, the other sings!" Frank understood the ornithology of sisterhood, and bird song in particular.

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As they crept back to camp and closer to the light of dawn and day, James began to talk to himself about the men he had just saved. He was counting the imaginary numbers over and over again and it was clear by the time they returned to "home shit home" that it wasn't working. James felt a sickness overtaking him. He was feeling sicker and sicker, his back was tightening as he started to think of the girls, the scene, the red circle cut into the forehead and the bloody gun barrel Frank had to clear with a short burst. "You know Cap'n, the 7000 Mark 2 is a fine weapon but its accuracy drops drastically with a plug of meat stuck in the end." They had laughed and now James was seeing it, seeing Frank wipe the mess from the barrel on his pants and understanding with what sort of man he was undertaking to save lives, and who he was becoming. The guilt was building. The methcathinone was fading. James started to moan real quiet, at first he didn't even know he was doing it but the anxiety and guilt were growing and building and it felt like a crab with a hundred legs was digging into his back and fastening itself there in a cramp to end all cramps it fastened onto his body which cramped and suffered to know itself and clenched against itself to mirror his wretched soul. “Ohhhhh...” He couldn't help moaning. Frank heard it.

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"Cap'n, your leaking Cap'n. We'll fix you up, don't you worry, hold on Cap'n. Remember, life belongs to the joyous and we who save our brothers have only the most sacred and perfect blood to anoint and consecrate our happiness–we who have saved are blessed in the purity of innocent blood. We who save the innocent must pay twice and so be doubly blessed." So on and on Frank is making up scripture and sayings and keeping James distracted and feeling good about the reasons they are what they are and telling James to love it and they finally make it to Frank's tent and James is feeling a lot worse, hating every fiber of himself for it and sobbing dry sobs and a back cramp that won't quit... Captain Holdsworth is losing it. "Oh God, Frank I'm such a piece of shit...oh God, I just want to die," and every other pathetic sobbing thing from James and Frank puts a big pile of several different powders together and then sighs and gets another packet from under his mattress and adds half of that, too. Plop into a glass of warm water and, "Drink this, Cap'n. This here's the cure of all cures–the perfect wisdom of life in a glass, sir–the best." Cap'n downs it. God only knows what was in it but the list of what was not in it was probably shorter. It had everything. It tasted bitter and acid and sulfur and smelled of lilacs, earth and a urinal mint. James breathed in the smoke of a dragon's tooth to know it. He was an it, and he knew. Slowly a change came over James. He felt as if an angel had touched him with its feathered fingers of light it had stroked him and accepted his broken soul, caressed and loved his ugly knowing soul and forgiven him. The angel understood him and knew it wasn't what he wanted to do, he had to do it. The troop was his child and his body and he had saved it. He had opened his heart and given the very last he had to offer and then twice more again. He gave all of himself until he was worthless– all for his men, his unit. He gave everything and was left to selfdestruct for it. Was that fair? He remembered the class he had taken on the Nazis and a speech Himmler had given to the demoralized SS troops who had become mentally ill after having to shoot so many Jews, and the angel was saying something like it to him,

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"No one knows what we have given. Kill the Jews, kill the enemy, it is easy to say, but to do it, to have the bodies you have shot piled up in the hundreds and hundreds like cordwood is quite another thing. How much we have given! Such sacrifice which will never be known, can never be known! You and I alone know the sacrifice spent for our people!" In part the gas chambers were a humane act, they spared the SS the interminable burden of administering the cruelty and killing necessary to exterminate a race of people, a monstrous burden which was crushing their mortal souls. When good men kill people to save people they suffer deeply–mortally. The sacrifice is one unto death! James knew he cared for his men, for Alex and all the rest–he cared that much–too much! James's angel Gabriel had forgiven him and his wings sheltered James and his words filled his bitter ears with love and the appreciation of a God who understands sacrifice, and James knew he was a God–a bestower of life and a protector who bore the highest sacrifice himself, in silence. He alone needed know it and so he could best spare and love his men, and so forgive, love and appreciate himself. Frank watched the potion work its magic and saw James's redemption and knew his thoughts, for they were Frank's thoughts too, thoughts from long ago. "Better, Cap'n?" "Yeah Frank, better... I get it now. Thanks. Really man, thanks." As James went back to his quarters for the half hour before sunrise and breakfast, he thought that he had found a true friend in Frank, and almost forgot the smell. Alex was happy to see his friend seated in his usual seat, looking at the sunrise. James seemed unusually calm. He looked beatific, glowing...godly and contented in his untroubled countenance, his relaxed body and the subtle hint of a Mona Lisa smile which graced his lips. James was as if royalty, a regent sure in his position and domain with a blanket of serenity warming his being as he opened his eyes and permitted the world to fill him. It seemed as if the world was his and had found its true purpose in the simple act of pleasing him. James was a leader thought Alex, calm and vicious as the season required. The world seemed to fit him. Had it changed overnight? The honeyed 83


yellow red sun drowned a puddle in silver apricot and rose, and the reflection warmed James's easy countenance to glowing, as a man will who is right and easy within themselves and so invites the world to anoint him to life with her golden colors. Alex knew he had made the right choice. He was in the right outfit.

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James put Alex in the rear for safekeeping and Hackman on point. He had come to trust Hackman and knew he could count on him. As they marched up to the village to destroy the arms cache they passed an area which James had been over a dozen times before but now, vehicle tracks, a semi-tracked Emerson vehicle footprint was crushed into the earth. It's one of our six toners for sure, thought James. The tracks curved ninety degrees into a bush and disappeared! James moved the fake bush and behold! A long mining tunnel, black and impenetrable to the eye, so James shines his light down into it and all the way down at the end a quarter mile in he gets a reflection. There's a steel door like what you'd expect to see on a bank vault or something. Hmmmm. No time to investigate. Frank seemed unconcerned. "Hey Frank, what's that?" "That is something worth fighting for." Well it would have to wait. There was business to attend to first. They entered the village and it went just as James and Frank had planned. All the villagers were waiting, watching the line of men approach. We went straight over to the bushes at the far end by the chief's hut. Frank tripped the wire and the booby trap blew. Another M47... Christ that thing was loud! Next we opened up the trapdoor–a grenade down the hole and run! The explosion of all that ordinance threw dirt and rocks so high it must have been near two minutes before it stopped raining 85


clumps of dirt and earth down on us. We cheered like the fourth of July! What a blast! Now half the boys got their guns on the line of villagers and Frank picks out a small child. Takes the baby right from the mother. She's holding it even though it looks to be about two. Frank grabs it one handed and they all watch. The boys have 'em all sighted in and Frank puts the gun up to the child's foot. We look at the villagers and notice there are no men. None. Two old men and one is the chief. No men of fighting age. Frank asks the mother of the child he's got where the men are. She won't talk. The group has her. She's mute. They are sticking together. Frank has that loving gentle open way come over his face and smiles real calm and sweet, he's looking her in the eyes with that velvet look and asks again. She doesn't know what to make of it and says nothing. Frank backs up and asks her again, but real slow and definite this time. Nothing. A big smile, another look then: BURP! He puts a 10 into the kid's foot. The foot is gone. It disappears into a dirty brown cloud and he holds the child real firm so its head is locked solid forward and holds the leg so the child is staring right exactly at where the foot was, looking at the stump. The thing starts hollering and crying, reaching its little hands out and grabbing where the foot used to be but nothing is there and it's going crazy, bleeding all over the place, and Frank aims the gun at its other leg like he's going to burp its leg off, burp off the leg with the good foot. Even if it lives it will be a hopeless cripple then for sure with no leg and a missing foot. The mother cracks wide open! She points to a bunch of trees at the other end of the village and she's sobbing and pointing and Frank says, "The sound! The sound!" and hands her the child real tender and delicate like, and we have half the boys keep just like they are still with the villagers sighted in and I take Frank who is light as a feather and Alex and we go over to those trees with our guns on them in case there is any fire. Once we are twenty yards away I tell em, "10's" and we rain death up from our positions into those trees. 5000 rounds in a few seconds. Not a fucking sound. We go in and I see a ladder tacked up behind one of the trees and send Alex up since nothing could be alive up there. I can see the base of the platform for the blind they had built up in the trees

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and its got blood oozing from some of the holes we opened up in it. Alex shouts, "Whoooo! Eight dead! Eight enemy dead!" I never felt better. Bird song saves lives! On the way back I could hear Frank whistlin' to the heavens and I imagine that the angels were singing themselves. Gabriel and his horn and all the rest. It seemed to me that heaven and hell were a jazz band and I was Satchmo, lead horn who called the tune. I just didn't understand quite yet, who wrote the damn thing.

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As James fell asleep he didn't have anything but a hint as to the author of the song he was playing, but another note from the same woke him at 3:00 AM. He sat up in bed and it sounded like a swarm of bottle flies were diving into his ear, and a scraping, squealing, creaking and groaning like the jaws of a huge rusty iron monster with a whining angry banshee chorus of hungry insects as accompaniment. James listened deeper into the din and heard what the scraping and shrieking all but masked, the cracking of bones in the iron jaws of the rusty beast. As James shook the visions from his dazed sleep addled mind and heard again, he recognized the monster. It was a huge herd of bulldozers, their creaking thundering tracks and scraping blades vibrated the night air to a fever along with countless chainsaws, howling terrible insects more awful and real than the bottle flies he had imagined in their place. The trees which formed the jungle of the flatlands behind "the shit," two thirds of the forest he could see from the camp, the forest which stretched for hundreds of miles cracked and snapped, groaning and splintering before the teeth of this beast, as the military engineers worked their mechanical beastly mouths, claws and teeth upon the land. The work continued non-stop, night and day and soon the voracious monstrosity and its deafening clamor became a familiar sound and all but disappeared. James watched through his binoculars in amazement as the flatlands and the forest there were consumed with incredible efficiency. They simply cut into the 88

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earth, laid it flat and put it onto trucks. Hundreds of trucks at a time, loaded with the wood all cut to proper length by a strange machine which looked like a praying mantis, moving and cutting the trees with a chainsaw which was attached like a hinged claw to the end of its grasping arm. The trees were felled, stripped, cut, loaded and trucked out in the perfect symphony of this super efficient factory which stamped the earth flat as it processed her, and trucked out the board-feet of exotic timber in an astounding synchronous cacophony. James and Alex had received their first brief furlough, a four day pass stateside! Fantastic! When James told Frank, Frank's eyes got big and then he looked real quick at his toes, then at James and said, "Are you sure that's wise, sir?" James hadn't heard "sir" from Frank in a while and asked, "Well yeah Frank, why not?" James suddenly remembered that Frank hadn't taken a furlough in over four years. "Being here is kind of like being underwater, real deep underwater like a deep sea diver. If you go back up, you get the bends. Sir, you either belong to one place or the other. Well, not to make too much of it sir. I'll see you in a week." With this ominous warning from his new friend ringing in his ear, James followed his old friend and boarded the super-fast transport passenger plane. This would be most unlike his ride to Hyperboria. No lumbering, limping cargo carrying subsonic hush hush goonie bird's belly black ticket this time. And in a few hours, they were home. James had a belly full of dope before he left, and as he exited the hold of the airplane he looked upon a sight familiar but distant and unreal, as if from a dream. Life had puffed up its chest and cheeks and blown him as a breath of yellow smoke into this false multi-colored carnival of the impossible. Photographs, billboards and video bombarded him, flat bizarre poses of faces in supreme happiness to have bathroom tissue, sensuous abandon to drink a beverage, and beaming brightest and most joyous beyond all measure was Little Amy. Everywhere. Little Amy,

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"sunshine in my belly, Gramps–sunshine!" Thousands of little squares, screens and pages, projections and boxes with sounds coming from them, resonating and flashing, trying to invite him in, as if they were each a world to become, a real place where he might engage his soul and find its desires or contentment. As he had come to ignore the bulldozers and chainsaws he had come to exist before and within the torrential assault of advertising and falsehood, shallow promises and bright lies, and not see it, it was familiar and so it disappeared before his eyes, hidden in plain sight to do its business, just as the devil likes it. Now he was dropped into the fishbowl anew, his senses had been entirely divorced from this world and so it was visible again, not an unseen constant, but fully visible and revealed, all its colorful blinking lying tentacles plainly revealed before his eyes. Obvious lying and strange was this world that had desensitized him with the very volume of its sound and now paraded shamelessly, exposed before James's stoned quiet mind, and he heard it and saw it all. James felt the wisdom of the group whisper to him as it had shouted into him with its cautious stillness on his first patrol, now the group whispered a still word into his soul, and he said nothing. It seemed part of him was still here in this world, and wanted to survive. Eva and Carolyn were waiting by the curb and there was much hugging. Carolyn made a tiny squealing sound and laughter covered the few tears shed which were quickly wiped away to many questions and overly colorful answers that omitted more than they revealed. When we tell a lie of omission we do not "lie," but we also do not "truth." The four arrived at James's house and sat down around the kitchen table. Mrs. Holdsworth was giving James a life and death squeeze of a hug which seemed to last for ten minutes. The TV was on. "Tonight on the international scene it's our boys in Hyperboria putting up the winning fight for freedom against some tough odds. Xing Pao tanks attacked our base in the south where our boys were outnumbered four to one. But even with all that Xing Pao armor they had an edge, even with the odds stacked against them. If you will recall the budget battle over field munitions 90

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development, and the resultant "M" series metal vapor directed land munitions–was it worth the price? Well just ask one of our fighting men from Handsward Base in southern Hyperboria and they'll tell you. The M-47 metal vapor munition was worth every penny, every red cent spent is a drop of red American blood saved, and now the tally makes it sure! Thirty-seven Xing Pao tanks vaporized–no Americans lost! Now that's a dollar well spent wouldn't you say, Tracy?" "And how, Trent!" Mrs. Holdsworth clicks off the screen and James is stunned. The Xing Pao have no tanks. The only use for the M-47 is as a Xing Pao booby-trap. The Xing Pao have no tanks. They can't even afford silverware. James says nothing. Alex still wants to believe the story. "Hey James, what's one of those Xing Pao tanks look like anyway?" "It looks any way you want to imagine it, Alex." Alex looked confused. James listened to the knowledge of this group. The herd from which he came exerted its grasp upon him and he was silent. The lie festered in him and he forgot it. It was too uncomfortable, too heated and ugly to bring it up–no one wanted to hear it. Alex was smart. Alex should have known but he didn't want to see it, so he didn't. It would have amounted to putting biting ants in their clothes, it would have made them all squirm to see it for what it was, so James was silent. They needed their comfortable lie–how rude it would be to interrupt the dream. He got to thinking that's what his mom was hooked on, a lie, the "It's all right, I'll turn the other cheek and pretend it's all right, that will make it better, more comfortable" lie. What crime doesn't hide behind a comfortable lie like that? Look the other way and you're innocent, all better. Dad was dad, safe under the wing of that lie, and a fine turn the other cheek failed to protect James from Francis, who was Francis because of dad. When we turn the other cheek we pretend the devil doesn't exist by asking him to stand out of sight. All better. What crime?

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The next night the four went out for dinner and then drinks afterward at one of those clubs with free peanuts, cheap alcohol, bad music and sawdust on the floor. James was getting his captain's headache back. Every lie, every stupidity, every weird thing he did and why he did it began to come back up through the sore shaft of his soul, the bladder of his mind could not contain it, his soul was a broken pile of splinters and shards of glass grinding against each other and piercing his mind. The sore hollow pipe of his soul was being cut to pieces and lacerated from within to know what had happened, what had become of his precious tender soul, now a murderer's soul stitched to a child's self-reproaching heart. He wept and bled within himself, his hatred cutting his soul and piercing his mind with its broken shards and splinters. He could not show it. The herd was unable to know, as he himself was unable to know, or to stop it. James was getting sick again. He was leaking. James began to drink heavily. He showed little of it. It hardly fazed him. He was wound up so tight that a whole bottle would barely have helped, and even though he drank, his rage could be felt as sharp, unslurred and clear as his words even though he kept drinking and drinking. Everyone noticed. Why wasn't James drunk? Why wouldn't he stop drinking? Everyone noticed but no one mentioned.

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James sat quietly and smiled. He was a bomb. He drank. Some inbred semi-retard with a cowboy hat comes over and sees James and Alex with their buzz cut soldier hair, and starts saying some crap about how he'll take 'em all on and show those girls a real man. It's pathetic. No one takes him seriously. James puts on his coat, stands up and and says, "I'm gonna give that poor sap a hand. He's had a few too many." It's late and the place is nearly deserted. James puts his arm around the guy like he's his buddy. Alex and the rest are behind James whose coat conceals and encloses the two men as they walk towards the door. "Hey friend, seems like you could use a hand," says James as his hand and arm act in an instant without disturbing the rhythm of his walk or the rest of his body and shoot up under his coat in a perfect reflex response trained into muscle memory, as quick as he could think the arm is back at James's side. He has crushed the filthy pig-shit's larynx. Now the prick is bleeding into his windpipe which is filling his lungs with blood. He can't breathe, his larynx is broken and air won't get past. He's gasping. "Oh my, buddy you all right?" As the scum vermin gasps for air James grabs a glass of water and tips some liquid into its gasping fish mouth,"There buddy, how's that? That better?" James's voice has a note of real affection and gentle caring about it as the gasping fish-mouthed piece of shit dribbles the water down its chin. The arm shoots up again and re-crushes it twice more. Fast and CRUNCH! "You okay, friend?" Carolyn, Alex and Eva look on from the rear hearing the poor gurgling drunk who can't even breathe right he's so drunk. He was rude but James still had enough in him to care. Look at James help the sap out, giving him a glass of water and letting him lean on him. James even helps the poor devil out the door. The drunk can hardly walk but James is so caring and gentle even though the guy was a jerk! "Wow, Carolyn, he's a really great guy." "Yeah, I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have him." With those words hanging in the air the two men slip out the door into the night, the back of James's coat as a cape sweeping behind them concealing the whole affair in a hunched cloth shadow.

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Now outside James takes the thing around into the alley. It's bleeding into itself and panicked but still in control enough to understand. Good. James reaches out and pops one of its ribs loose then shoves it with a pinch move into the hollow of the thing's lung. "Now, sweet one, look here." And James gets close up into the shitlick's face, and looks into its eyes. "There, there sweetheart... c'mon." James looks all the way into him, and there's the connection, all the way down on the bottom and the thing opens up its soul to him and James whispers into its ear real quiet and sweet... "You know what I'll take if you tell. Shhhh...quiet little one, or I take it for my own. It's mine now, not yours. Do you understand me?" He did. James felt better. No more trouble from that one. That one would never tell. He was a lady for sure. So James and his friends went home. Carolyn glowed and couldn't stop clinging to his arm, she keeps sniffing him like a flower or something. In her, the night brought him another prize as well. Even so, James grabbed Alex and left back for “the shit” a day early. Frank was right.

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On the plane headed back to “the shit” James felt a fantastic sense of relief to be leaving the other world, this strange world where he no longer fit in. The thing which made him sickest, the thing he could stand least was the silence. The silence was the worst lie. He couldn't stand it. It was more than just his craving for a dragon's tooth which called James home to “the shit,” it was more honest there, he could breathe there, he could exhale and didn't have to pretend. That's how you can tell where your real home is: it's not where you go to put your mask on, it's where you go to take it off. But those damn invisible tanks. This shit had a scent all its own. He was beginning to see it wasn't a rose from Little Amy. The news magazine on the plane didn't do anything to dissuade James's newfound insight into the causes, the orchestrator and arranger, the composer of the tune which he played. James was not surprised to turn to the financial page and discover that Emerson Renewable Resources Group, the timber division of Emerson International was sharply higher. Timber prices has dropped and housing starts are up. Quality goes up and prices go down. Neat trick if you can hide the dirt. When James arrived back in camp he was amazed to see the entire flatland forest gone. Only the hills and trails which he viewed from his captain's chair, the ones to be patrolled, remained. The engineers were grinding up the last of the stumps and treating the bio-pulp with Emerson PH7 Decomposition and Growth Renewer Compound, and rolling out huge quarter-mile 95


long rolls of Emerson Super Sod onto the hundred square mile piece of denuded, leveled, reshaped, recontoured earth which had been reformed into gentle rolling hills for perfect drainage. The jungle was gone. Three days later the grass had set and the first of the cows was flown in by way of a super large transport plane, the first of hundreds. In two days the entire operation called "Bovine Blitz" was over and 30,000 cows per ten acre lot, strange cows of enormous girth, special cows with the meat practically falling off of them, lumbering ill-conceived living meat balls with eyes, weighing in at two or three tons each, an endless expanse of bulbous Emerson engineered wallowing bio-meat maxi-yield super-fortified mobile food pods they called cows were gurgling and groaning, chewing and swelling to fill every corner of available space. James was right. He was why quality went up and prices went down. This was Little Amy's war. The Happy Burger War. An Emerson International production. James inhaled the blessed smoke and was relieved of himself and so found himself. Frank was pleased to see James had returned. "Home early, Cap'n?” "Fuck yeah. Oh my god, Frank you were right. I'm so fuckin' glad to be back." The whole reason they were there was still settling in, James was still understanding it all, putting it together and he knew it–the mine shaft with the big silver vault door–the reason they couldn't flatten those hills and put cows on 'em and ship the forest back home, the reason they were getting killed and doing this, if reasons matter, it had to be just one thing. The precious mineral which was the cornerstone of all the new chemistry that made everything possible from the new superexplosives which powered their rifles and munitions, to the new super compact 10,000 kilowatt power modules which ran our small towns and this camp, to the 700 billion kilowatt version which powered LA and New York–all from one thing, all Emerson engineered products based on the primary newly discovered mineral, mined and sold at enormous cost, undoubtedly found here to steal with the other natural resources of this country like the now ruined forests which were shipped home, the ultimate power source which is of course virtually free 96

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if stolen in a just war, not exorbitantly expensive at fair market prices. Little Amy was a pirate and her chemists knew of something more precious than gold, and well worth fighting for– the royal purple ore with golden pyrite veins, Corbadite. "Frank, it's Corbadite, isn't it?" "Of course, Cap'n." No more was said. James fell asleep that night to the strange stifled bovine grunting gurgling half choked vocalizations from the weird hybrid cows of Little Amy's forest. The next morning James awoke and lit a dragon's tooth to greet the day. He deserved it. It had been a strange one since furlough and he deserved every chance at a good day. James was always up early enough to see the sun creep into the day and he cherished a quiet moment and wondered if there was a way out, or if he wanted one. After breakfast James looked out over the jungle. The captain's chair had the best view and now one of the only ones as all the land on the other side of the camp was now wall to wall meat. Alex came in with his tray and began to munch and dream. "Ain't it gorgeous Jim, just gorgeous..." and he was gone into it. Alex just disappeared into his inner Eva and there was no reaching him. James couldn't really blame him. Christ that girl was something, something amazing. She had the poise of someone well beyond her years. How the hell did she exist? Clearly Alex was entranced contemplating the same idea. "Alex." "Yeah James, what?" was the belated response. "I want you on point today. You ready?" Alex bristled with boyish anticipation, "You bet! I've been wondering if you'd ever let me at it! You coddle me James, and it doesn't look good so you know I'm ready all right. Details man, details!!" Alex had the courage of those to whom danger has been denied, and it gave James some confidence about the idea as well. Alex was excited and turned back into his old pre-Eva self and wouldn't shut up. James wondered if he should have left him dreaming till later. Christ he loved that guy. 97


So off into the dark day where every green doubles as black and Frank doesn't whistle because he has to listen. Up Texas Red and back Texas Black. James knew there were probably more fake bushes and tunnels with big silver vault doors behind them but he didn't care. Alex was on point. James's stomach was in a knot. Alex was so wide-eyed he looked like one of those early astronauts spinning in the centrifugal G force generating machine with their eyes opened up like they were falling from a twenty story building watching the ground approach. It was comical to see but James was glad of it. Alex was definitely paying attention. Close attention. He was stopping–looking–giving back hand signals. He was doing it. Three quarters of the way home Alex puts up the fist and we all stop. He gives the palm down and we drop. He crawls forward ten feet and rolls a mini grenade another fifteen feet under what looks like a normal bush to me, and gives the cover command. Blam! Blam! goes a Twin M-31 Shaped Munition Metallic Vapor Shrapnel Anti-Personnel Charge and everything over our heads by two feet is obliterated for a square an eighth of a mile in all directions. Every tree, monkey, bird, plant, bug or shadow for an eighth mile is slammed square into nothingness in the convergent fire pattern which the twin Emerson M-31 was designed to produce. Amazing! We are all alive! "Alex on point, Alex on point, Alex on point!" and Alex is a fuckin' king! Holy shit he's brilliant! The whole troop saying his 98

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name and pounding him with gratitude–we're all too damn glad to be alive and a blast like that–so fucking close–we're too damn glad to hide about it. Alex leads us out the rest of the way and Frank starts to whistle again! Yes!! You have never seen a happier group of guys, guys who have seen death and said, “You may kiss but do not touch," and she has listened! Flush with life and the true good cheer that forgets its grudges we went to the mess and Frank smells terrible but I love him too, and he hands Alex a dragon's tooth to knock out King Kong and William Burroughs and still kill you with the roach and James insists Alex gets the captain's chair. Alex, Alex, Alex! Alex breathes the thick luxuriant smoke of kings in the seat of kings and looks out over the jungle he has saved himself from. Her tender leaves so rouged and flush with heat, the smoke in his soul and every wonder in the universe becomes every other wonder in the voluptuous tongue of smoke, the infinite leap over death, the pitcher of sunlight spilled over the forest is soaking the outstretched leaves to happiness and the sugar sweet earth and smoke enfold the day and swallow the whole of Alex's life into a single voluptuous shroud which encircles and wraps around Alex's pasts and presents. The long camping trips with his dad and James growing up, the campfire and the dirty marshmallows, James and he drinking his dad's booze after his pop passed out. His dad scratching his head the next day and thinking he must have finished it. That was good as the drunk itself. The golden river of Eva's belly and her smile swirled together into a perfect sweetness, her full lips and her hair draping over itself, folding into golden currents, holding the light before letting it go so slowly that the light itself is now over mellow and golden to warm his eyes, her hips and the curve of her belly as the horizon and the jungle mingle together in the smoke and all talking voices are in the smoke and become his current of happiness, folds within folds the past and present in the captain's chair and every where and every time mix into a moment which stretches its arms around the world and fills it with her, and all colors are together as they are made one, united within her reflection and warmed from within themselves...

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James could all but hear his beloved friend's thoughts. He made sure Frank gave Alex a huge tooth so he would enjoy it completely without talking too much, and it worked. Alex was with her. He was captain now–in the chair and he deserved it. James was flush with the day and looked upon his friend in his bliss. CRACK! and the head turned to dirty brown mist in a sudden filthy cloud and there is a hole knocked straight through Alex's head, his friend's head has exploded!– The side was gone from Alex's head! The body slumped into the tray of food and his blood oozed into the applesauce and pooled in the recesses of the metal tray. Time stopped. James knew what happened, and he knew why. The captain's pill–the bullet–his bullet–the one for him, the guy in the captain's chair, and Alex got it! He killed his friend–his captain's pill–he gave it to Alex! His eyes met Frank's. Their jaws were both slack and Frank says, "He took your pill! He took your captain's pill! Oh Shit!" James fell into the sucking whirl of his anguished soul and found a thought there. "Now Eva's free–you can get it right this time– she's yours to have now." He couldn't have thought it! He didn't! It didn't happen! None of it! None of it! Alex's face is fucking gone! Alex!!! A smudge of blood mist rose into James's mouth as his voice box rattled itself to pieces from the force of his anguished cries. He sobbed, shook and wept as a madman. James was losing his mind. He had killed his friend. Put him in the chair and killed him. Perhaps he even knew why. Alex!!! James had burst. "Shit, I ain't losing another one. Cap'n, I was just getting to like you and I will not permit it. Come on!" Frank takes James who is a crazy fucking wreck, heaving and sobbing and shouting gibberish and going red to kill any damn thing, he takes him by the arm and leads him away and the rest of the men are so stirred up ducking, hollering and swearing, running around in such a panic that no one even notices them leave. Frank takes James into his quarters and puts him on the bed. James is crying and heaving and falling apart. "Sir, it's time for a step up. You are not pulling this crap, sir!" Frank unzips a brown leather case with a huge silver needle in it with loops for the fingers and a range of different size cartridges 100

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and needles of various diameters and lengths. Frank prepares a shot. He mixes a pile of lilac urinal mint smelling speed together with too much heroin and plops it into some warm water to fill a huge needle of dope. "Captain–present arm!" James does not seem to be in a humorous mood and does nothing. Frank grabs his arm and Cap'n still doesn't notice, he's too busy falling apart. Frank holds the arm tight and since James's blood pressure is off the scale his veins are bulging to obscenity and no tourniquet is required. A back pull on the plunger and some dark blood in the tip says go! Plunger down and all that top grade crank, a triple dose, and all that heroin go in. The effect is instant. James's body turns backward on the size of the shot. When that much speed goes in that fast the body slows, to avoid exploding it shuts down and slows itself. The heroin slows him further and Cap'n's heart and brains are flipped inside out. More crank, another shot almost big enough to kill him, and it's done. Captain has been fixed. "How ya doin' Cap'n?" "Frank? Oh my God, Frank! Oh my fuckin' God! Yeah I'm better. Much better. Thanks man–really thanks! Whew!" James was okay... It was okay. As the minutes passed James felt better and better. He felt great! "Shit Frank, you're a goddamn genius!!" James was fixed and Frank had a friend. As James's body adjusted itself and his pulse began to respond he felt his heart hammering louder and louder, more and more power filling him and crashing through him with each cycle of his pulse, all his pain and anger, all his guilt and hate, all his love and tenderness were held behind a solid wall of force. Each torment became a rage, a frothing fuel and a pleasure of enormous power, his mind used all his agony and every molecule of his wounded being became a boiling, burning, turgid, superheated fire brought to a white hot point, fanned to an impossible brilliance and heat from beneath and below, the bellows of his anguished soul pumped each tortured spirit within him to engorgement and insanity as his tortured shattered soul yielded every demon to his lash and his whole being was burned 101


up as coal and wind, burned within itself, burned up to ignite, fuel and power him. The more he suffered the stronger he became until his tortured being was as a single white hot point, all the agony in man's universe converged to a hissing jet of pure white hate. Pure energy, absolute power. The pressure was astronomical and the trap was set. Only a mouse was needed. "Frank, let's go save some lives, and make some ladies." The night was young, and the birds were falling asleep.

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First Frank takes James's rifle and motions for James to follow. Frank puts the compensator in front of the wheel of one of the troop transports and starts it up. He moves it forward a foot and the compensator is held fast under the tire. He cuts the engine and gets out of the transport. With a jerk and a grunt on the gun stock he snaps the thing loose and twists. The gun unthreads from the compensator and now James has his Emerson 7000 modified just like Frank's, the sharp end of the barrel is exposed and ready to find the hidden song within. James is beaming and Frank starts whistling, "Luck be a Lady Tonight." They stop by Frank's quarters and Frank gets the leather pouch with the huge syringe and they're off. Christ, Frank's tent stinks. Traveling behind Frank, James can tell some of the perfume of his quarters also travels with him. Being behind Frank is starting to make James sick from the smell. James takes point. Each step seemed to be easier than the last. As if James had discovered the true fount of power and happiness, his emotions were silent but boiling, powering him with their enormous unseen force, a pressure like the core of a nuclear reactor boiling his soul as the water is burned into steam so it may power the lives and joy of an entire city, so did James consume himself without tasting, use himself without becoming, and found a fountain of fantastic pleasure in every step and thought. After what the world has done to him, it owed him everything. After this, he had absolute rights to everything and 103


everyone in it. This was too much, Alex dead, and he was allowed now. After what life had inflicted on him, he had absolute rights to do anything he wanted to it, to take anything he wanted from it and enjoy it. He had rights to every body, and could dine rightly on every tender fruit and soul, each body and every one of its limbs and feelings were his now to do with as he wished. After this–life owed him everything. His pain had given him every permission to enjoy. His guilt had crushed itself with its own cruelty and now he had been severely overcharged, over billed and it was now all balanced toward him–life owed him everything. All had been taken and he would see it repaid in full. James's conscience understood now. It was okay. He could look upon any man and do what he pleased, what he wanted with that person–after this–it was all right. Life was his. She owed him. Her body was his to do anything he pleased with, and so was her soul. James found in this debt he was due that his pain was his ticket to redemption, his permission, his fount of true happiness. Such is the innocent heart and good cheer of a debt collector who loves his work. He and Frank waited outside the small village by the water. In an hour the sun would rise and the girls would walk the half mile from their huts to get cooking water. Meals had to be prepared, men and families must be fed. Frank unzips the leather pouch and sets up a shot. James can not believe the potency of the experience. Before the plunger is fully depressed James is ecstatic with pleasure and has never felt more sure that all things are his to enjoy. The sun itself fills his soul to serve him! Only a God could be so sure, so worthy of life's debt, and only life is gracious enough to lay down prostrate and willing before one such as he, one who has taken her worst and risen up to conquer her outright, to turn her misery to his design, his power and pleasure. How could she respect anyone who was weaker than she? Life only surrenders to a conquerer. Only one stronger than she might win her. She loves the one who might best crush her beneath his heel. Frank looked into James's eyes and knew he was understanding it. His place. Their place. Their happiness. James's eyes were lit with the fire of one who is set free, one who 104

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owned himself, concealed and revealed of himself exactly what was necessary to bring the inferno to bear on life as was his design, and so has learned how to cook her best, and prepare the rarest and most tender of her meat. He saw in James something he had dared to hope for only in his most hidden black and silent heart: worthy companionship–another with whom he might share life's generous banquet. However sumptuous life may be, it's sweeter still when shared.

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Anticipation adds to experience. Pulses quicken and mouths dry. Hearts beat and feign stillness. The girls are kneeling, their backs are turned. The boys are creeping and never heard. So solid and quick are the hands that two small whispers are hushed tight and tossed over the shoulders of happiness. Two clay pots fall to earth and two tender spirits are raised into the air above them. The jungle only watches. The jungle has seen many pots crack and many souls spilled and although unblinking, has never noticed. Down the trail, and over the ridge to where Frank has prepared another cozy little shelter with handcuffs, wire and pliers. The two men are smiling and easy, doubtless and relaxed. The older girl is handcuffed and James puts her head under his foot and presses her hard to the dirt so she's looking right at the younger one who Frank binds up tight as he can with wire so she's got her hands and feet tied up behind her. He lifts up her shirt but stops short of her breasts. "Now James, never disrespect a lady." He pulls out his knife. "Ahhh...the Bartlet 9–so sharp it parts skin, separates it just like a razor. What was whole is now opened, separated into two. A miracle!" Frank looks wistfully at the knife. "See girls, the lady maker! Behold!" They're looking at him holding the knife and talking to it. They don't understand the words but the meaning they get. He starts tickling the young 106

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one's stomach with the tip real careful. Frank makes sure the older one is watching him tickle her stomach and asks her in that insane language of theirs where the soldiers and weapons are. She says nothing and the little one squeals real soft and then silence. Nothing. Frank asks again and puts the knife on her to show what he means. Nothing. Then that real happy carefree look comes over his face and I know we're gonna collect a tiny bit of what life owes us and Frank opens up a ten inch long seam across her stomach from left to right under her belly button. The girl moans real strange and quiet. The other one can't believe it. She's frozen. Frank takes a handful of dirt. He looks at the older one and makes solid eye contact. He shows her the dirt. The little one's starting to bawl and Frank puts another cut on either side of her stomach and the muscles kind of roll up and peel apart like a shade going up. Frank takes the dirt and shows her again. Frank jams his hand into the girl's stomach up near to the elbow and starts grabbing handfuls of dirt and rocks and filth, packing them in her open belly as fast as he can, one after the other, filling her with filth–packing her body with dirt and crap off the ground. She's going nuts and Frank's packing her wound, packing the girl's stomach with dirt. The other one breaks and starts screaming. I get real close in on her and hold her head with my knee. She sees how easy and light I am, and I look deep into her. I'm like a feather painted in apricot sunlight, I'm so happy to collect what I'm owed, and enjoy each second of my happiness. She opens her eyes and lets me in through her terror into her open heart which knows, and we connect. I start pressing the barrel into her head, I'm gonna find her a spot with God and bring it up into the air to hear it–she says it–, "The Sound! Cap'n, The Sound!!" I let her go right away, that's the deal, sing and live. We're laughing and I'm almost cryin' to hear it! Now we know where to go today! No more dead men! Bird song! Happiness! Life! On the way home Frank's whistlin' "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and then he starts singing! It's the words to "Bird Song"–"Tell me all that you know and I'll show you...snow and rain."* *© 1972 Ice Nine Publishing. Lyrics by Robert Hunter. 107


"So that's the words!" "Part of 'em. It's our deal for the birds–sing and live. We're the most honest thing in their lives, James. We never lie. If they sing we let 'em go, don't we?" "What about the circle I cut in the other one–the barrel mark on her head? Won't that leave her marked as a song bird–then what? She's alive and they see the circle so they know she sang. What then?" "Well I guess they do her. She's a traitor you know. But think of it like this, Cap'n: those last few hours or days she knows she's got the circle, she knows she's going to die. They'll kill her for sure. You've seen what happens when death gets close enough to kiss life–life glows and purrs like a furnace of joy, does she not? That close to death and with that little time left, we have pressed her between life and death, James–pressed her to happiness. We have given her the most precious moments life will ever offer her. Life's last drops are its most perfect and beautiful. You've felt it. We have given that girl and the rest of our birds the most precious gift. We never lie and may be trusted to a fault, and then we bestow the ultimate happiness upon her, her last moments–life pressed double thick and double sweet–the ultimate–those perfect last drops. James we have made her holy to herself and holy to life. Life's last drops are its most precious and we've given her that. We never lie and have made her holy to life. That circle on her head is our gift to her. The last is double sweet, James. How precious, how thick and slow with pleasure and longing are those last breaths drawn? We have given her everything. The richest and most holy and treasured of life's promise. That circle shows her what it all means–how much she must appreciate, how deeply and beautifully she must feel those last precious moments as they drift away. No sweeter thing can be bestowed upon one of us than that, to really know, to feel exactly what it's worth and taste it completely. We've made her holy to herself and to life, James. Never forget that." As they emerged from the jungle into the field behind "the shit" James was contemplating Frank's words and realized that he and Frank now shared a profound and different understanding of 108

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the world and its worth. Surely great men throughout history who have stamped their glorious impression throughout time– men like Cesar or Napoleon have shared this true understanding, so plain for one who has been tempered in life's heat, and so opposite the lying weak way that every ordinary man thought, who was fit fodder for the better man to use. As James and Frank walked across the field, James had found his full measure and height as a man. He was like his Emerson 7000 Mark 2. James was his gun. It contained enormous hidden pressures and focused them on any object of his choosing to devastating effect. Frank must have read his thoughts which would not have been too hard to do–James's walk–his eyes–everything about him was put together differently now, and it showed. He was his rifle–a super-compressed, hyper-pressurized reservoir of hidden agony and torment which could choose its object, focus and incinerate, pour its unseen fire into any target and in destroying it, find purpose, life and happiness itself in the exercise of its power. Frank must have understood it all just to see James walk and to know himself Frank knew James's unspoken soul which James wore like a scarlet red blazer that only Frank could see or understand. "Don't ya see, Cap'n? Our pain has made us Gods. Don't feel it– enjoy it instead!" Frank's words lit James up from inside. James felt understood, really understood and James glowed a little for it, because life's bounty is even more magnificent, when it is shared. Frank and James went to Frank's tent to do a shot. These injections were the elixir of every reason for life and James was happy! Frank's pants were covered in blood, and James realized that he could remember the events which made the stains, the acts in the play of Frank's happiness were each recalled in a stain, and James had never seen Frank's pants so blood soaked. Almost every inch was stained brown, dull rust or red. Surely this was the reason! And so when Frank showed up for lunch James saw he had changed them. Frank had new pants! He did not smell. It was the pants! The memories of Frank's happiness were there, in the stains on the pants and that's why he never changed them– that's why the smell. Frank could remember to see and to inhale the memory of his happiness! 109


After lunch, some more injections and Frank goes to take a leak. James follows his nose and the source is found! He had guessed it, there must have been thirty pairs of pants in the wardrobe. The stink was coming from there–thirty pairs of pants each soaked in blood to the point where another stain would not fit–the scent and stain of Frank's joy, never to be lost or discarded, always remembered and cherished, loved and preserved in sight and in scent, a reminder, a shrine of sorts– Frank's accomplishments from the last four years here: Frank's Pants! James needed some air.

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Minsuuk was a gentle man. He thanked the clouds for loving the sun, that way the clouds would love him and return the sun, and the sun would always warm him. So had he learned as a boy to love the world. His gentle spirit had graced the lives of his children and his wife, and he had taught his children to love the world and the Jungle as he knew to love life, which is in all perfect things. He showed his blessed ones, his small shining ones whose spirits he and his wife had wrapped in the clothes of their love and flesh, so his children were as he and she were: but a prayer to life within each, the prayer of living and happiness which is the prayer, the sound of the whispering universe and the Jungle. All gentle souls know this prayer, it is the sound of a murmuring brook or a glad heart, the bubbles of our hidden joy as they emerge to float as light on the waters of time. How could such a bubble of light not soon burst and return its happiness to the world and so be loved by it? So he was taught and so he had lived. Only one who has forsaken life will be forsaken by life, and so Minsuuk had lived and flourished as one of the creatures sheltered by the Jungle, for they are its song and its prayer before eternity. When the whites arrived they came to the village and we loved them as we loved each other and the Jungle. We have no fear for we have no burden before the stars or the sun and the Jungle. How could we be punished? We who are but a prayer? The whites were kind. They gave us help with sickness and 111


Minsuuk had blurry eyes which the whites found. They gave him his other eyes, and the Jungle was still more beautiful to know once he put the glasses on his face, he found it even more perfect. Then the whites began to take the land. Kill the villagers. Consume and hunger after the Jungle and devour all the earth. He no longer could stand what he could now see. His wife had died. He loved the Jungle and the clouds for her. They had her within their breath and she was safe. His daughter, the sweet spirit of his hope was missing. Her friends have not found her and his belly was sick and tight. His thoughts were clouded as his eyes and she escaped all his prayers as his mind reached into the Jungle and could not find her. Only one who has forsaken life will be forsaken by life. He must not. He must not forsake. So it was with great relief that he heard her familiar steps. She was sobbing. Her sweet little spirit was sick. He took her broken soul into his arms and she wept and shook. She told him over and over of the man, the bearded soldier. Her heart pounded and fluttered, so glad to be with him, clasped to his breast, and the river of his love filled her, and she loved him as never before, filled with the knowledge of what would come next, what must come next. She was overflowing with every spark and shade of life, now so swollen with each breath and moment stretching out and around her with its last tender rays of warmth did life flow through her so over full and welling up, with each second enclosed, enfolded in a swollen tear of bruised happiness, now and forever inside this moment and within him, within the river of his love and forgiveness, clasped forever to his breast, forever within his tender forgiving heart. Then he held her out and saw it. The red circle cut into her head. As he understood a black lightening bolt screamed from the sky into his heart, it fell into him howling its pure black hissing notes of pain, splitting his heart and gentle mind open and shattering his gentle soul. He opened his heart to the devil and renounced life. His precious daughter, so pure and sweet as the shining bubbling spring which nourished and quenched them, so delicate, his single flower, her petals of shade, hope and sun, his perfect songbird draped in fragile light, the kiss that life had returned for his prayers of devotion and happiness was now 112

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crushed into a filthy cut, soiled and shamed before the sun. The clouds hated her. The sun hated her. She spoke and killed. She has been trampled, violated, and her perfect soul ransacked and broken open as was his, and now the devil owned her, and the devil was right! Life forsakes the good! Minsuuk only had two rounds in the old pistol. It would be enough. He placed the barrel on his sobbing ruined prayer, his daughter, his pure light made dirty, broken, foul and filthy...and he shot. Her head cocked to the side and she went limp but for a twitch and the red dew drop gathered in the hole. What fell into Minsuuk was the murder of all tender things and the opening of a man's ruined soul to chaos, to strength, to the predator whose hunger will not rest until all the world is consumed in fire. A cry came from Minsuuk's lips and his throat rattled the death rattle of life and the first contractions of pain which are the spasms and shifting of a soul in which blackest revenge is born. A black lightening of ultimate hate rent his soul in two and the coal flared red then double white and pink to crimson and black, and madness gripped him. He shook as a dying man and burst the vessels in his eyes and his eyes were the devil's eyes, the whites now cherry red. He knew the one, she kept saying, over and over, sobbing and lurching it came from her small mouth, the one who did it, the one with the beard. The pointed gun and the beard. He knew the one. Now the devil had accepted his invitation and entered his soul. Now he was strong enough to kill in joy which never falters and he would feast as the devil feasts, upon filthy souls, souls like his. He did not care any longer about his village, the village his daughter betrayed. He did not care for his animals or his friends. He was the devil's now and wanted nothing else. Pure power–the force of the most tender once broken, the ultimate wound of the highest pain reformed Minsuuk into an animal of enormous strength and power– Minsuuk, was now, the devil himself. Now the glasses the Americans had given him would help him see, help him gather rods, and blades and a bullet–help him to cut and hurt. He would cut the man. He would hurt him and kill him. Everyone dies and Minsuuk knew as he gasped and

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vomited in pain, that death was stronger than life. Few lived, but everyone died. Minsuuk would personally make sure of that.

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When James entered his tent he noticed the mail had been stacked for him on his desk. The top envelope looked interesting– an Emerson equipment inventory addition–new gear!–both the stock number and a red tag indicating the unit was on site in the armory for immediate field distribution. Nice information pamphlet too! "The Emerson Excalibur Dragoon. This super high-explosive cluster munitions delivery system is named after both the legendary sword Excalibur and the old west Dragoon revolver: the Excalibur, the most powerful, reliable and precise of swords and the Dragoon revolver, the weapon which first put the fire power of a cannon in the hands of a single cavalry man. The Excalibur Dragoon Cluster Munitions Delivery System puts the fire power of an entire infantry artillery division in the hands of a single foot soldier. With three interchangeable warheads and simultaneous piggyback delivery capabilities, the foot soldier can effectively rupture the structure of matter itself with these new super energetic semi-conventional explosives which are pelletized, so explosive dispersal of these hyper-focused bomblets yield near nuclear blast capability and characteristics. Use one or piggyback as many as three rounds, each of which contain a primary delivery and dispersal charge and the secondary terminal cluster explosives, hundreds of super hard mini charges which penetrate then detonate to deliver nuclear destructive capability to a pinpoint fire consequence zone.” 115


James had an idea. This might be perfect to answer that bird song... First a test. James surveyed the hundred square miles of rolling grassy hills, each covered with thousands and thousands of genetically engineered cows, fields of bio-heffers. Each was so overflowing with excess meat it could hardly move and could offer only a stifled groaning gurgle, a muffled sound apparently born at great effort, wrestled to the surface from within a mountain of meat, liberated at great expense from the animal's very depths, a wet exhausted groan was the only vocalization it could offer. The damn things had too much meat to moo. It was pathetic. This was definitely not a cow. James coaxed one of the meat piles with eyes away from the grass. He got a huge one. A monster of a meat pile. Only the rolling eyes and the moving jaw betrayed its origins as a real animal. James and about half the boys stood a fourth mile off and took aim. No piggyback–just one shell. They were way too close. James didn't work the sights right and the shell hit about 100 feet in front of the cow. The result was a blast so severe it left them all wondering if they were dead, and then the little bomblets driven 25 feet into the earth detonated. A fountain of dirt some two hundred yards wide erupted from the earth–dirt, rocks, mud and a cloud of meat mist filled the sky and a slow rain of earth clots and debris followed by a full on hail of thousands of tons of land, some of which was all but vaporized and descended upon them as powdered dry mud and chunks, and some of which remained airborne and blocked the sun for nearly an hour. The crater extended some 300 yards past wherever the cow probably was, and nearly all the way to their position reaching a scant 100 feet from where they were so foolishly positioned. They should damn well have been killed. Those boys at Emerson had it going on! Don't fuck with Little Amy.

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James was still shaking when he looked with new respect and understanding at the map of their patrol area with the red zones indicating where the weapon was not to be used. This weapon was a mine buster. James knew better than to disobey that map. Don't ever fuck with Little Amy. If they have this thing, what can't they kill? A quick look at the map and James is ecstatic. His troops are going to be safe! Safe! Just stand off a half mile and deliver a piggyback. The twenty Xing Pao hidden underground wouldn't stand a chance. No angry villagers. No messy clean up. Emerson could really hide the dirt. Ahhhh...so off to Frank's tent for a lovely injection. "Frank, I didn't know there was such happiness in hell, but there is!" "Cap'n, the sweetest song comes from the darkest place. That is where it is needed most. Only those most loving of life become the sun and tempt her to follow and light the depths. She glows within us there, and we wonder of heaven." "Frank where do you get that shit?" "What, the dope?" "No Frank, the biblical poetic verse and scripture from hell or heaven or whatever." Frank's really got something there and he can tell I like it, I get it. Funny I thought it was nonsense but it makes sense, hell it makes sense out of us both and Frank sees I 117


am understanding it and injects himself with a monster load of speed and starts to really shine. Now he grabs a notebook and says, "Behold! The Book of Frank!" He's written a god damn book!– he looks real playful but serious too and takes a deep breath and opens the book. He starts in reading out loud: "To reap is blessed, and it is the blessed who reap. For he who is gracious knoweth the earth and tastes of its fruit to be so blessed. What is not now ours, we alone who have earned it?–we and all those who do more than survive but thrive to trample their tears into shouts of laughter–we who live!? Who else has earned the right? Who else is proven worthy? In this temple of ours, what will not sacrifice itself for us–for one who has made the pain he does not deserve find his happiness? I say it aloud to free winds and high places I shout it: "He who is worthy, finds pleasure willing!" When we own life she pays us back by surrendering! Is it wicked to find happiness? Who would want to know? The stupid! Morality is just a curse, let us love ourselves and hang the judge! What ripe fruit does not wish to be plucked, long to be remembered as blessed and sweet by a hungry man? The moment is most blessed and permanent, forever treasured in memory, so do blood and happiness linger longest. The dead are a secret treasure which adorns us, the scent of mystery and a comfort. All that we have known and can treasure become us. So I ask, who has more right to a life, he who is burdened with it, or he who savors and enjoys it to the roots and is nourished by it? Your life was short and bitter, my memory is enduring and sweet with longing. Who has done better for you? Who has spent you better? Every lamb would be grateful could they only attend the feast! It is the tiger who knows beauty best–only he who has tasted her flesh has earned the right! How sweet was your anguish! Who has ever known you better or more fully? Who has better earned the right than he who treasures most? How exalted life is to he who accepts and conquers!" Now Frank is really winding up and starts sermonizing like a real hell and brimstone country revival preacher. “But happiness is to be loved– Only he who touches the soul in tender kindness will hear it whisper its secrets–in the end it is 118

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the breath of a kiss which will bring the world to its knees and crack open its song! Only he who appreciates is entitled to love, reap and cherish! A minute of pleasure is worth a lifetime of misery. What does it matter to whom it belongs? Life is innocent before itself or it is a crime! The sweetest belongs to he who tastes it best. To think otherwise is a natural crime! And so, the truth belongs to he who best relishes the tale. The good are blessed only if they are happier than the devil! Oh what strange fount of pleasure is pain once hid! How bright, how burnt orange and red is the sun? How deep is our bliss–how much anguish fills and fires the glowing coal of our happiness? The sweetest nectar comes of the cup we have ourselves filled. Only now did I see it was not a cup of lead and tin but of gold or brass even as I wished! So I say: The surest of life is earned in our greatest sadness– Every wound is but a pleasure concealed–what has rent me has baptized me to innocence and endless happiness!–what can be used is redeemed–what is redeemed can be loved–what is loved can be forgotten–what is again wounded and hungry may again be sated! So know it: I have earned all that I can possess. Why did God create conquest? Why did he find in us hunger and show us meat and means but to feed, slake and enjoy! The earth's first commandment is for a simple thing: happiness! That is why all that is worth winning must be won! He who misunderstands himself is but an angel fallen from his own sight. Is not the devil in disguise? We may all be in hell, I'll grant you it's true. So blessed praise to he who can make a heaven of it!" "Oh my fucking god Frank, you're a god damn evil genius from heaven or a god in hell or something! Fuck if that's not the coolest god damn thing!" and we're both laughing our asses off 'cause it was god damn brilliant and he was really going by the end just like a real preacher wound into a frenzy puffing up and waving his hands and shouting and we laughed for about ten minutes. Then I asked him something I had been meaning to wait for the right moment to ask. "Frank, why in the hell do you like the Grateful Dead? They're peaceniks." Frank looks at me real serious, you could have heard a pin drop serious and with that beard and his wide eyes he

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looked like someone's dad or something he's so serious and he says, "Cap'n, those boys, The Grateful Dead, that old band of boys who did that song–they're some of my favorite musicians and all, I love 'em but listen Cap'n listen–they are all insane–flat crazy. Nuts! They sound great but they're lost...They're all about LSD! That shit is death Cap'n, death! Always be in control and enjoy Cap'n, enjoy in control! Never let that loose, or for us, for someone like us, it's death, man! Never do it! Control is life!! Release that pressure and you feel it, feel everything–real bad, too– You feel it plenty!–never feel it, enjoy it but never let it go or you feel it, and bad! You go nuts! Death! Never do it! Acid makes you whack–nuts! If you do it, use it with speed or else, that defeats it but even then–even then it's crazy Cap'n, fuckin' sick." Frank was sweating and kind of losing it so we did some more dope and all was well again. I kept thinking about how beautiful this one line from his book was, “The dead are a secret treasure which adorns us, the scent of mystery and a comfort." It was exactly how I felt about Alex, even though I knew Frank meant it about his pants.

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So it was with a rousing sermon from the good reverend Frank and an unusual warning by the same that James gathered his men together and along with the Excalibur Dragoon went to terminate the enemy nest which he had discovered in his ornithological explorations that morning, and the bird song which resulted. Yes, bird song saves lives. As they went across the field into the hills James was sure they had the edge. The Excalibur Dragoon would save lives and eradicate the enemy. It was true. All the villagers and the twenty fighters tunneled beneath their village were blasted into chunks and mist. No casualties–just enemy dead. However...one villager had long ago descended the hills and trails as an acrid shadow, as a black hungry vapor he spilled his wretched soul over the leaves and shadows down into the hills and watched. His eyes were working well and he saw the weapon, saw the men, saw the tents and had understood. The Devil is invisible, he is a shadow concealed in shadows and can not be seen–such is his power. So the devil crept into the camp and slipped into the tent and found the scent of its own soul and rested. Here he would sit and wait. As the moon rose and the troops returned Minsuuk crouched concealed in the wardrobe, looking out at the moon shining through the window. All he could see through the crack between the wardrobe doors was the moon, and it was enough. When the thing came in it would need to light its lamp to see, and it would have to cross his path and block her light and then the moon 121


would disappear. When the thing he was to kill was there, in front of the wardrobe, when the moon winked, he would fire. Only then would it be a certain shot, point blank, sure to hit the mark and kill as it walked into the trap and passed in front of the wardrobe, it would block the moon and then, when the shot could not miss, he would fire. Minsuuk's heart was dark and there was no light but the moon. He was a shadow waiting in a shadow, blackest rage hidden in a crease of night, the strength of the devil. Minsuuk inhaled the stench of the rotten blood on the pants beneath his feet in the wardrobe. He noticed no odor. Only his beating heart betrayed his humanity. He was entirely engulfed in each nuance of his hatred and the strength it gave him. He trembled as a taut spring, a magnificent arching tension which recoiled around itself to wait and wind, harder, tighter and tighter until the night holds the demon close to him and he can breathe his deadly spirit upon it, open his heart and let the devil feast upon the thing as it dies, as he has already been consumed and devoured. The uncoiling of such tremendous energy is a bliss only the devil understands, a guiltless joy in annihilation where all beautiful things which have been crushed in a man's soul may escape in a narrow instant, to burn the very tender heart of hope itself into a black flame, a blade of hate born of knowing what happens to the precious delicate flowers of life when they are fullest and sweetest, how they are scraped into a filthy gash and ruined. How they are broken and raped while beauty sits on their petals, how they are spent to filthy shame. So did his tender heart feast upon itself and bear up its torment into a black flame and blade of hate, pure and most corrupt. It is the tender soul which is wounded most deeply and so becomes the devil best. James and Frank had had a busy day, up all night to hear the birds sing at dawn and follow the song to the village which was no more, now consumed in a safe sterile cloud of Excalibur Dragoon fire. Yes, the Excalibur Dragoon had made good on their hard won music, and a celebration ensued in the mess after dinner. James was not used to all the injections and sleepless excitement and despite how jangled and crazy he was feeling Frank insisted he had just the ticket, a shot which would bring, "a blessed sleep kissed by the breath of angel's wings" was the sure 122

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result of this most heavenly injection. As Frank and James laughed and talked James was hoping Frank was right because he sure could use some calming down. Frank assures him again, "Like the breath of angel's wings" and opens the door to his tent. All of a sudden Frank snaps his rifle up and fires three bursts into his tent–three 10's into his own tent! "Frank, what the fuck are you doing?!" "Cap'n I saw somethin'. A glint of light where there shouldn't be any light sir. I know my quarters and I've got no mirrors and I saw somethin' flash, Cap'n." Now Frank's lit the lamp and James opens up the bullet-ridden wardrobe. "Shit Frank, who the fuck is that?" There's a native with a pile of holes in him bleeding out all over Frank's mountain of pants. "Well look here Cap'n, he's got glasses. The man was eyein' me through the crack in the wardrobe with this pistol. I seen the moonlight glint off his glasses– Yeah man!! Look here, sir! A pair of knives to go with our four-eyed friend's pistol! Hahaha– if I didn't brain the little shit–oh glory he's leakin' something awful. Mmmmm...well he's dead enough." Frank closes the wardrobe doors. "Yes sir, dead enough." The dead native was adding a few more quarts worth of fresh stain to Frank's collection of memories. "Yeah Frank he ain't goin' nowhere, leave him to drip till morning and we'll get him then." "Very good sir, I see it exactly the same way. Let him sleep it off." Frank was right. That shot put me out like I was made of peace and tranquility and the little guy with the glasses was still there in the morning long after he was finished leaking Frank some fresh new memories. Life is simple when you love your work.

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The next morning at 4:00 AM James heard Frank's voice come to him as if in a dream,"Cap'n, Present Arm!" Only after he came to did he realize it was not a dream and Frank had depressed the plunger on a wake-up injection which was administered to him as he slept. Wow, now that's a wake-up call! James felt great! "Frank, I do appreciate the shot, but why the fuck are you sticking me with crank at four in the morning?" "That shot I gave you last night would have seen you waste all the day in bed, sir. What comes to a man at sunrise is the measure of his soul. A man's soul is as tall and broad as the horizon of his happiness. He is measured by how he greets his daily lot. Besides sir, I have some good news and some bad news." Frank seemed serious under his joking affect. "What's the good news, Frank?" "Well I've got a huge mess of dope, Cap'n." “What's the bad news?" "It's CAT." James did not get along with methcathinone. It made him stink like a fart and that was the best of it. Unlike the methamphetamine Frank could usually manage to get hold of it was a nasty brain hammering buzz and it made James feel anxious as much as it made him feel solid. It played hell with his blood pressure and it didn't do his temper a bit of good. 124

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"Well chef, you know what to do." "Sure enough, that I do. A little hamburger helper,” Frank added some PCP, “and we'll be in business–yes sir." Down went the plunger and Frank was convinced. "Yup that'll do...a little distance makes use of all those bells." As James received his injection he knew exactly what Frank meant. His ears were ringing like he was the clapper in the Liberty Bell as the stink of sulfur filled his nose. James hated CAT. Whatever his personal preferences might be it did seem to work and the formation was assembled a half hour after James's personality. Frenchy was on point, Hackman second, James, then Frank and the rest. Frenchy was at the end of his tour, three weeks from going back to the mother unreality in which they had all been spawned, and Frenchy was slipping. Hackman had his back, and he was watching. Their objective was scouting up a new branch trail off of Barlow to take an enemy position on a hilltop. The map said “No Dragoon here.” James knew what was under that hill. The report said the Xing Pao up there actually had guns and ammo to boot, a rare and unusual circumstance, Xing Pao with guns and bullets, not just primitive booby traps or an M series munition lifted from one of our bases, but an even exchange of fire. James was looking forward to it, to some even up confrontation. He noticed his eagerness and drew a sharp breath to clear his head. "Christ, I'm acting like I want to get shot... I hate this shit." CAT did not agree with him. They begin slowly moving through the familiar Barlow Black which connects up to all the other spur trails off of Barlow including their destination, the new spur: Barlow Green. It should have been called Purple because that is the color of Corbadite, but considering the price, Green would do. Corbadite to be sure. No one ever gave a shit about this trail or this asinine hill before. Thinking about politics was making James itchy, but Hackman was starting to see red. As Frenchy led up the line going down Barlow Green, Hackman was about to blow. One more god damn thing and then, there it is. Frenchy's footfall had left clear tracks in the brush and he had just walked around it, walked around a rusty old ankle snapping spring trap and didn't say a fucking thing! He was coasting! Taking care of himself– 125


keeping himself safe and comfortable without reporting a thing, he wasn't doing his job, he should have reported five other things which Hackman saw, things that looked out of place, but this was no maybe, this was something all right! Hackman signals James to come up and James signals Frank and low and behold it's true! Hackman tosses a rock and SNAP goes the ankle breaker. All three look at each other in amazement. Now the three are of one mind and the troop behind is stopped. James signals Hackman and Frank to go with him and they bolt after Frenchy triple time fast. There he is! "Frenchy!" Frenchy stops and feels his chest tighten. His mouth is dry and he's feeling dizzy. He knows what's up. James pulls his knife out. The Bartlet 9 is deadly sharp. "Let's walk, Frenchy." James hands the knife to Hackman and Hackman is pleased. He gets up behind Frenchy and pokes it hard into the tip of his tail bone, a real sharp stab through the clothes and skin sunk into the bone and back out. Again and he sinks it deep into the nub of bone at the end of Frenchy's backless spine and snaps it out just as fast. Again and again, snap snap and it hits bone. Frenchy starts out with an “AAAhhh...” and gets to steppin', and fast. A blood stain blots into his pants from the deep cuts and the stain spreads out till the waist band and part of his butt are slick and red with blood. James looks at Frank and asks, "What did they used to call a Frenchman before this whole world government thing made us act like we loved everyone?" "Frogs, sir." James feigns a big surprised smile at the answer. "That's right, Frank." James's arm raises up and fires in a single fluid motion exactly as it was programed into him and the 10 rounds slam into the back of Frenchy's right knee and blast it into a dirty cloud. "Argaaaahhh..." And Frenchy's down! "What do frogs do, Frank" "Why they kick, sir." "Yes, well look here, it's true isn't it?" Hackman's lovin' the comedy show and they are all watching Frenchy kick his stump

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with two tendons still connecting the calf and foot to the thigh. Hackman's going to pop and really lets go, "You shit licking little fucker! You will never enjoy comfort and ease, and imagine it's so fine and lovely, so good, you little crap fuck now you will never again enjoy your ease and look away from those who you are supposed to protect– You think you're more important than us cause you're going home–do you? Huh? Just pretend we're not there, pretend we're not suffering, you're too precious to care, is that it?? You're too precious to care what happens?? How much suffering and pain happens!? You can just do what you want and serve your ease and forget your job and your sacred sworn duty, too precious to care a shit for us??!!" Now they all chime in on Hackman's lead, "Too precious, yeah Froggy too precious so precious, precious..." they're all saying it "too precious precious..." and Hackman jumps up and comes down with the side of his boot on Froggy's face and scrapes the skin right off, Froggy's got a big flap of face hanging off and the muscle is there out in the wind and sun and Hackman kicks a load of dirt into the wound. Now they are laughing up a storm and Frank says, "Private, mind your manners, can't you help clean up Private Froggy's nasty little cut? Hmmmm?" Hackman gets it right off and unzips his pants. He's laughing so hard he can hardly shoot straight but he manages, and pisses right into Froggy's face flap and squirts out a bit of the dirt. Froggy's kickin' and his legs floppin' and they're laughin' and James has had his fill and knocks the top of Froggy's lazy pretending self-serving head off with a 10 round burst. Froggy stops twitching and Hackman hands out smokes. Now that's a nice guy! Real cigarettes are thirty bucks a ten pack out here.

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As James returned to the formation he felt something going wrong. He didn't admit it to himself but he felt it. He was leaking. He thought about his mom listening to his brother do him, and turning up the TV so she could block it out. He thought about Eva and hated himself for a moment, like a flashbulb which sears the world and disappears again. James swallowed hard and stopped the formation. He called Frank aside. The additional injection seemed to be holding but his head was ten miles high as he walked. His neck was a silver filament of web and his body was below the clouds then “wham,” he's back together again and feels crazy with anger then “pop” and his head's at the end of the wire again up above the clouds until, slam back down and he's killed Alex. Alex. He knows why he killed Alex. “Uuuuhh. Aaaaauuuuhhh,” and he's moaning and leaking bad and Frank asks, "Cap'n, you okay?" and "pop" he's okay again, way up above the universe with that silver thread so tight and Frank is worried, he's sayin', "Don't get sick on me Cap'n, come on now, come on." "I'm okay, Frank." "Cap'n look!" Frank points and there it is–a curl of smoke from over the treetops. The formation is stopped and silenced. James and Frank creep off to investigate. The smoke is from a cook fire in the hut, a single native hut. James and Frank creep to opposite sides and burst in. James gets the father and Frank gets the boy. 128

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James smashes his rifle butt into his head and he's out. He flops onto the floor like a wet towel and Frank's holding the boy tight to make sure he sees every bit of it. James fires a burst down into the father's neck and blows out his throat, the 10 projectiles pounding it right through the floor. Then James grabs his Bartlet 9 and takes the head in his hand and raises the butt of the knife handle up high, and down to break the jaw, leaving the mouth wide open. James spies a loose tooth in the back. The boy is watching, so James looks at him very tenderly and loving like a mom looks at her child when it's sleeping. James takes the knife and delicately probes the socket in the father's slack broken jaw with the loose tooth. He gets the blade tip under the edge of the tooth, then with a sudden sharp burst of violence strikes the butt of the knife and rends the bloody tooth from its socket. The boy recoils but Frank holds him fast. James is beaming and slowly places the bloody tooth with a bit of lower jaw still attached into his pocket. The blood begins soaking through and the first bit of scarlet is bleeding through his pants. James goes over to the boy's face with the knife tip and tickles real gentle around and around his eye saying "Diabokk, Diabokk little one, Diabokk sweetheart," and Frank asks the question. The kid goes limp and Frank releases him. He points. Frank and James look at each other and tip up the one chair in the whole hut and presto! A tunnel. Look inside and there are the munitions. The boy runs off into the forest and four grenades go into the tunnel. The hut heaves into the air from the explosion and collapses into itself. Problem solved. It's nice to be good at your job. Frank starts whistlin' and James feels okay! Hackman and the boys cheer as they come back into sight. “That was a hell of a bang, Cap!” and other shouts of approval are shared as the two return. As they get closer and closer everyone can see the big slick red stain on James's pants, as big as his grin and a funny bulge pressing out, bulging out underneath, pressing out on that shiny stain. Everyone knows that bulge is not a tooth. Even Hackman didn't think that looked good. He turned to Jacobson and said, "Look at that, I think it's getting to Cap."

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Jacobson looked. Although at first it may seem contrary to reason, Jacobson believed that it was actually possible for a man to enjoy his work too much.

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As James hiked the trail behind Hackman he felt a million miles too high. His head was snapped tight against the top of the universe and a whining buzzing howling sick fear and rage was filling the balloon, filling what he was and down again into the smell of the CAT, and the jungle made him want to puke, his soul was poking out and he was moaning real low and soft but he couldn't help it. Oh God, what had he done to that girl, that little boy, the village, the cow– Alex, "ohhhhhhaaahhooohhh," shit he was winding up and moaning and sweating and his soul's sharp china shards were grinding and poking him, piercing the tender sore bladder of his soul and rupturing his mind and oh God he hated himself and “Snap!” He is the balloon at the top of the universe and he's so high up he's afraid the wire will break. Better. That's better...better up here. Distance... James is ok... James is sweating. It's gone... James is okay. Finally they spot the hill with the Xing Pao guns on it. Creepers take the lead. James and Frank go and the rest hold. James and Frank know better than to wear glasses and creep unseen up to the tree line. No glint of sun reveals them. They see them up there, the men and the guns. They are careless. Simultaneous fire will maximize the element of surprise. Wham! and two of them are dead. The fight begins. Now something lets loose in James, the shooting masks the sound as his soul shudders and the shrieking of insects howling,

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screaming and buzzing, vibrating him to pieces and his brother enjoys little kick the fair boy and it's louder and he's up on top of the world but it's coming and he can't go up any more–he's pressed tight to the top of the sky and it's louder and louder, wasps upon wasps, locusts upon locusts, his mind, his brother, his friend, his howling ruined suffering soul splits its skin and the balloon bursts and all the world is filled with them, every inch of the world is crawling and being stung and bitten, chewed into filthy plugs by the wasps and locusts. Only he can stop him, only he can save them from being chewed and stung into shameful dirty plugs and pieces of rotten meat, insects chewing out plugs, the dirty meat and locusts raining from within him and covering him, stinging him, the scent and sound of his necrotic putrid soul, and only he can stop it! Frank heard the spring snap and howled in desperation. "Cap'n NO–it's the headache– No!" But it had already snapped. Cap'n was a hero. He could stop it! Only he could redeem it and save them! Into the teeth of the fire he ducked between all bullets, knew all paths and patterns of fire and saw through their slow sagging reflexes with ease! Those filthy sub-cretins, bobbling those guns about like drunken walrus–boobs! Slip duck slip. Child's play you filthy incompetents! Slip turn and duck. “Killing I must be killing I must... I need it so much, I will have it, I need it so much oh God please let me kill them and save us! I must! I need to! I need it!!” James is praying to the death God, the forgiving God, and showing all the signs and delusions of invincibility and stupidity which are characteristic of the hero. Zing! He takes one and Ting! He gets two. Shot? His system hasn't the slightest care. An arm or a leg or a non-vital organ might slow him one percent, like a lunatic native headhunter who simply won't be shot, it just made him madder. Now James saw red. Purest red and black hate filled his mind and soul, hate, the hate for all living things which springs from the geyser of self-pity and selfannihilation pumped every gland in him and like a spring from a cannon every agony within him uncoiled at once and a sound like 1000 wolves shot in the muzzle issued from his chest and his voice box flapped and rattled to unleash the clatter of the demon 132

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within all things which do not care if they live and have become a spring, a current without self, a stroke of black energy and hunger. He was the need. James was gone. Only what he needed remained. James burst over the rim of the gun emplacement and landed on top of the one man left behind the gun. The fire stopped. By the time the boys got to the top of the hill and joined him, James was bled out and unconscious. They called for medivac and the helicopters came to take him back to the med facility at “the shit” ASAP. He had certainly subdued the machine gunner. Aside from being shot dead, all present could see, and the field report indicated, that James had chewed a ten inch hole through the enemy gunner's shirt and bit six inches of his tit clean off...it was gone. Evidently, James didn't need to pack a lunch on field trips.

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Back at the med facility Captain Holdsworth was what they called a mixed case–a mixed outcome. On the one hand his wounds were easily patched, his blood and tissue simply and expertly replaced, however, when he regained consciousness Captain Holdsworth displayed the characteristic symptoms of excessive agitation and dementia and was administered a large injection of Haldol. He would have to go back stateside in a few days. Paranoid delusional borderline psychosis is what it said on his tag. James was nuts. A schizophrenic. He needed help, treatment back at Emerson General's Mental Health Facility 231-A near his home. This was a borderline case and needed special handling, particularly in light of the enormous heroism displayed by this captain, a captain's captain if ever there was one by the description of the events which led to his injuries. Heroes get handling and this one was dangerous to boot–borderline. He bit a nurse. Dr. Francis Holdsworth was the attending head resident physician at Emerson General's Mental Health Facility 231-A, and would personally receive the ticket, the field surgeon's opinion paper and the full field report to be sure the case was administered to with all due respect and caution. James was alive but not there, dead but still alive. The gauze curtain of sleep clouded his eyes and he had no dreams to fill him, no soul to trouble or tempt him to life, no life but a hollow angst which never ebbed or flowed. A shell without resonance, sleep without dreams and dry anxious soulless wakeful 134

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interruptions stained his nights and days with a hollow shadow of living which never pulsed, only motionless and arid, cruel, voiceless and empty as a windless place is cruel for its absence and suffocating in its emptiness, so was James empty, brittle, dry and empty, empty even of hunger. James knew not his name, only slowly and lazily did it return to him and then again wander sleepily away. He knew not his life or his world but as a distant vision he might imagine, if he could. Francis looked through the one way glass window in the door and beheld his brother, awake but motionless with the anti-biting mask like a hockey goalie, and the straight jacket just as Francis had ordered it. Francis beheld his brother with a mixture of pity and deep satisfaction, two of his favorite emotions. This was a lovely day indeed. He opened the door. "James?" and James saw him. Now James felt the shadow of his own soul and recognized a familiar outline, his own, his life now returned to him as but a wisp of smoke but it did return, and with it the smell of innocent blood filled his empty hollow shell of a drugged paralyzed soul and he knew him: Francis. James awoke as but a shadow in smoke, as a shade within shade, but it was enough, even from so far away he remembered, and James listened. Francis remembered his little tirade about Haldol. He remembered giving James an old copy of The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics to make James feel inferior and stupid. The whole book is written in super technical doctor lingo and would be a lance in the dumb lad's ego. Francis became momentarily wistful, it was a fine tirade indeed, yes, he remembered. He poked fun at the local skitz, a worthless shell of a sub-human as he shuffled lethargically through oblivion, and so Francis was careful to use the technical generic name for the drug. Francis spoke to his assistant who was taking notes, "Please supplement the dose of Haloperidol an additional 2 mg. orally, both am and pm." But James, had read the book. Now it didn't matter. They could have dosed him to the moon and it wouldn't have made shit difference. James understood. He said nothing. He went limp. Francis was pleased. He's a wet washcloth of a failure. James knew his brother–this would work– he would do it, he would turn his back again but now... 135


"Remove the bite guard. He's harmless. He doesn't even know who I am." Off came the mask, and James, is getting a headache. "Quietly and softly as the dew grows, on dove's feet do we rest at the water's edge, and await our hope." That's what Frank said as they waited for the two girls who were fetching water so very early, quiet and beautiful, watching so very patiently. "The spring winds best in the still of patience." Frank was a fucking genius. Frank understood what James understands and Francis, hadn't a clue. James was getting hungry. Hungry to take back what was taken from him. This would not stand. It was his. His life–his soul–his hunger they caused and he would feed. He would take back what was his. Everywhere it stood to be reckoned, it would be so. Everywhere. So James nurtured his hunger like a flame, he puffed and blew his thoughts into his hate and inhaled its vapors and the coal began to glow. A warm hating strength nursed its fire within him and he fanned and blew upon it in his mind, nurturing and feeding it until it was ready, glowing in righteousness, yellow white and bloody, glowing as he poured his words and his breath into it until it was as white as a blinding flash in darkness, and he inhaled its spirit and its vapors and gathered all his injustice into a ball of fire, a tight fist of hurt he could use, and he rent from his soul a pinprick of purest agony and nurtured it, nurtured the memory of his brother, lanced and pierced his soul until the jet of black flame rose up shimmering crimson red, black and blinding white, piercing through him in a single white hissing point of flame, a singularity of absolute just hate.

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Alverez was a new orderly. His position, the orderly/nurse was just created. He did some things the nurses did like hand out pills and the nurses' union made a big stink over it, but who cares. He had a job! Oh god yes–a job. Sure it was just handing out pills to nuts, but he didn't care–he had a job! Holdsworth. Hmmm. Look at this dose! Wow! Whew! Now that's a dose of Vitamin H! Alverez looked on the pill tray and got the cup with the Holdsworth monster dose of Haldol and went to earn his way. He reached out to put the first pill into James's mouth, "Okay Mr. Holdsworth, open up." James watched from behind his dull black eyes, so bleary and sleepy to see all stupid blind shit-licking cocks who think to poison, only springs and sharks sleep behind such dull gray matte-black distant eyes, don't they? Every contempt coiled itself and arched its back against itself, all pains pushed against each other in an agonized bliss which may finally know an object to pay the just due–to return some of what was stolen, even if that was just a fraction of the total due him, perhaps only a small thing, to know something would never be used against him again, but would instead be broken and useless forever. James exploded as a crocodile which is one instant a rock, and the next hunger itself, agony itself bursting into a column of motion, pain turned from in to out, turned into pure sweetness! As the orderly put the poison to his lips he claimed it. His mouth opened in an explosive thrust of annihilation and hunger and he bit down with all his might–his mortal and 137


immortal soul were a single contraction and he bit down to own it forever, cut it away and take it, and so he bit, and then– Snap Roll– Snap Roll– Snap Roll– three full rolls with the finger bit tight and it was free!! Swallow!! Swallow!! Swallow!! James's entire life force was one wish, one thought, one need, Swallow!! Never again will it be used, never again would it hurt, keep it and foul it, keep it rend it, hold it within, break it and keep it. Swallow!! By the time they hit James with enough Haldol to knock him out, pump his stomach and retrieve the finger it was too late. The finger got way too far down the digestive tract. The digit was slimy like a bar of wet soap from contact with digestive juices, enzymes and stomach acids. Wow... Too bad for Orderly Alverez. The bite guard returned and so did the full-time nursing staff in the psych ward. The nurses' union was delighted. Francis got the call. A dread chill and then the unthinkable, a flush, red cheeks and embarrassment. "He what?!" Shit! He had ordered the bite guard removed. Shit! He had spent a full week talking management's ear off and endearing himself by convincing them to cut costs by cutting nurses' pay with low paying replacement positions. "Any fool can hand out pills." They lapped it up! Finally a doctor who was willing to tell them what they wanted to hear, and it worked. He'd be making double money in no time as management, they thought he was one of them, but not now! "Any fool can hand out pills." How many times had he said it? Shit! James! Francis was mad. Francis got into the car and sped down to the hospital to see James. This was personal. Francis was livid. Francis, was over his head. Out of the garage and into the elevator, then stomping down the hall into his office first to collect himself. He was bent out of shape and he knew it. This would not do, no raging doctors permitted. Now secluded in his office Francis did the right thing and took a deep breath along with a new sublingual Emerson instant acting sedative and mood enhancing tablet which melted under his tongue and Ahhhh...better. Let us see about brother James. A dignified and collected Francis is now a doctor again. He goes fourth to attend the sick and opens the door to James's room. James is in a straight jacket and a full bite 138

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protection mask with only eye holes and no mouth, like a hockey goalie in a straight jacket. James is chained to the wall, sitting in the corner looking out through the eye holes. "Good James, I see they have you restrained, that's good. Soooo... James, why did you bite the orderly's finger off and swallow it? Why did you do that, James?" James looked out of the mask and fell through his eyes into his brother's soul. He opened the tender leaves of his brother's blushing new soul, so innocent and white, and cast his ornament within him, fell through his brother's open child's eyes to a place which James knew was in every man–deep in the sandy bottom, and so he cast his soul, his black pink tongue, gently beneath the leaves of his brother's new sweet soul and reached tenderly into his brother's heart which lay buried beneath the sands–he licked and pushed the sands and tickled them gently until he had found what lies beneath them and feathered and caressed it, and so awoke his brother's horrified child's heart, which knew what all men know. For all men have such a soul as this, and know this place. James slid down the black pink tongue of his soul into his brother's soul and awakened a sure knowing, he knew Francis heard the words, he felt him know... hear the words... Francis... Francis... Francis... I'm going to fuck you...Francis. And so, Francis heard. James's soul had cast into Francis a violation Francis had never felt, he became nauseous and faint, he was weak and flush, he was certain, not just from his training in criminal sexual psychopathology but he was just sure, plain as the day is long sure, that his brother was going to commit sex crimes on him–could and would–he knew it! Shit! If he's got that military training and ten minutes off the leash he'll do me! He'll do what the field report and the papers said he did to those enemy soldiers or whoever else he shot and bit the tits off of! Francis was pale. James spoke to him with his swollen white tongue from all the Haldol and other drugs, he spoke with his white lizard's tongue connected to his ancient brain stem, and the lizard within James slowly spoke to his older brother, "Francis–-my little one, my sweet, little, pink, brother. Well, little brother. You know what bliss I will enjoy in you, what sweetness I will afford myself in you...my young one...all I 139


need...is permission...do I have it, sweet one–do I? Give me another pill, or shot with anti-psychotic drugs, Tardive Dyskinesia human waste making poison, like Haldol, and grant me... Everything... Francis, please, my sweet, please, permit me...everything." James was removed from Haldol therapy.

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Often we are defeated in victory. So it was with James. James got his wish. He got his soul back. A black wish to be sure. Now his mind was free from the Haldol, free from the injections of speed, heroin, PCP and however many other god damn fucking things and he saw it all: how he was wound and made to dance, how he was fooled, how he had become a sexual psychopath who had committed many more crimes than a regular domestic murdering psychopath, he was blessed in the act and encouraged, equipped with the best brainwashing and the finest munitions. He was it all right...he was the fucking devil. Every kind thing in him hated him, every cruel thing raged and blustered to torment him, and as his appreciation for the state of his shattered soul blossomed to a fever he began to wail in grief, and to moan outwardly in agony as his back cramped and spasmed in guilt and loathing...he was the fucking devil! He had done unspeakable things! He knew too much. James knew what men should never know, what we only find out when it is too late, and can not refuse to understand because we have to discover it...discover what we are capable of. James knew himself and wept. Then there was hope! He was to be given a medal. He was a hero! They wanted to pin a medal on him! Once out he could escape from his handlers and go to the gun shop by the capitol and get a gun...or just escape...oh god, oh god he's so excited oh god...yes just escape–then a building or a bus or a gun or 141


whatever...Yes! He's gonna do it! Suicide!! James started cooperating. He was on cloud nine! Suicide! Yes! The hammering of his conscience on the metal drum of his soul would end. Freedom! James's outlook improved and his doctor's reports showed it. The government however, was not fooled. They had predicted something halfway like this at the think tank which dreamed up the Cameron facility, and further predictive research and testing showed a number of reintegration issues, so with America watching...there was handling required. The "doctors from nowhere" took over two weeks before the ceremony. James would fight it. Remember one thing: suicide, one thing: suicide over and over a million times he kept repeating it, saying it to himself hypnotizing himself to hope. No way was he going to forget it, no way. The specialists took over–the papers were rock solid, James signed himself over to these researchers long ago. Francis handed James over. Francis liked them. Nice guys. They bring in an electo-convulsive therapy machine and shock James to the ends of all creation. Injections of barbiturates and whatever else and shock the soldier into oblivion. James doesn't remember a thing but from the way the lights dimmed Francis was sure they were hitting him with something called the "PageRussell” method. Cruelty sounds medicinal once it has a proper name. After two weeks of it James is not there. He remembers nothing and doesn't care or seem to think having no memory is unusual. He only notices the basics, the moment. He has hands. How strange. He has a face. He has legs, they feel heavy. He has feet. He has hands. James has no short term or long term memory and doesn't care. The researchers are pleased. He has legs. They feel strange. The earpiece says stand and go to the podium. Shake his hand. Be seated. He complies. James has seen the replay of the national broadcast a hundred times but still can't remember a thing about it. As James comes back to reality he surrenders to the situation. They have him. He's beginning to be able to stand himself. He's searching and finding reasons, little by little he's seeing it and the psychopath in him helps–his rage helps, he leans on it and lets it ferment. It gives him the strength to surrender because they've 142

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got him and he knows it. It's too late. Rage will find another day and then...and then... But for now: the only way out is through, so he's a good nut and almost half starts to believe it it's been going on so long, until one day it happens! James's bonus pay, pension papers and relief checks, along with his personal effects from “the shit” and the contents of his pockets from the day of "the unfortunate incident" are given to him and he is free! Veteran's housing has provided him with a place with the works! A hero is handled! Once the cameras have been on you and the world is watching, the heroes are treated like heroes! Wow! Gorgeous digs! Nice furniture, appliances and everything else– even nicer than his brother's BMW trunk! James wanted to light it on fire, but he was glad to be out.

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As James sat alone and passed the hours the silence embraced him and he began to hear himself, hear his broken promise to his life and himself, hear his pain and regret and sorrow and hate murmuring and now he heard each voice and all voices, the shame and pain and disappointment and hate, all rising up to consume his sanity in a fire he could not resist. All guilty deeds wrapped their fingers around him and began to massage his tender heart and kill it. He hated himself–No, NO! He knew better! He saw who pulled the strings–who spun him into a whizzing top, screaming headlong into the teeth of every stupidity and abomination. This world seemed to rise up above him in triumph, to scrape its heel in his happiness and to find its very joy in breaking him, using him and forsaking him to be content with a new carpet and madness! James found the answer although he did not see the answer he found. He suckled greedily and hungrily from the foul, sure teat of his hate and drank in its black blood milk to nourish him and rage over his heart, stamp out its agony and guilt, fill every corner of his being with his strength and hear it no more. He could find happiness and satisfaction in only one thing. James found succor in his highest wish: If only this world had a single neck he could get his hands around, if he could find its neck and squeeze it off, find its neck, find it and choke it, choke it and kill it, he would be content. Only then would the universe be glad, and the stars sighing on it complete and breathing again, swelling and falling in relief and 144

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happiness, only then would the universe be cleansed and free... oh God if only I could find its neck–one neck...and James heard a sound. Distant, but like water dripping and dripping, the quieter the worse it gets to you, and he could just hear it. It wouldn't stop. It wouldn't stop making that noise! James lept to his feet and went into the night to find it. It was a simple matter. He listened very carefully and it was sure–his neighbor, right next door, she was crying, sobbing and crying, on and on. He tapped on the door and just stood there with the door ajar, just stood there a full three minutes before he went in. She had stopped sobbing. She was sad and sweet and her body trembled in the draft. "Hi, we're neighbors. I thought maybe I could help." "Hi, I'm Lisa." Her tan face and the graceful curve of her hip and breast, her neck, a fawn's neck, the grace of all the universe lives in between the falling and the holding of her salt tears. She was exquisite. She was stupid. "Come in neighbor." James sat on the sofa, and she sat across from him in a big overstuffed chair. "I heard you crying. I've been through a bit myself. I'm just back from the war. Can I help?" "It's my boy friend Ray...he's cheating on me and I found out. I found a letter from Layla. He gets so mad I'm in his stuff he belts me and he's leaving me. Now he's gone, damn it...gone! Maybe he'll come back to fool around, he would but...he's gone!" She's crying. She's stupid as a can of lead paint with the lid left off. "Lisa, Lisa," he can't get her attention. "Lisa" again and she looks at him. "Ray sounds like a piece of shit. If you're not going to shoot him, just tell him to fuck off." James realized he was cursing as a matter of rote, and shut up. "Fuck, you're right! I hate him!! I fucking hate him!!" She's okay after a few minutes of amateur profanity, she's found her spine and all is well. Now she's feeling more relaxed with a smudge of self-esteem and bluster going hating Ray. Hey...he helped her!! James felt good! Uh ohhhh... She's coming closer 145


and closer and he feels what she feels and she is INSECURE and moving closer and closer–uh ohhh... Absolutely no way...not right! "Lisa, I'm going now." Back in his apartment James took stock of what had just happened and he wondered. Did he just reclaim his morality? No! He still hated everyone. He reclaimed his empathy! He felt what she felt! That's enough! No lying required! Hmmmm... The next morning there's a soft tap on the door. James opens it up and it's Lisa. "Hey look, I have something really good. You deserve a medal or something for what you did last night and really, well...what you didn't do," and she looks down and puts her hand in her pocket and pulls out a little plastic bag with a bit of paper in it. "Here James, it's four hits. Anyone been in that war and comes out like you, deserves the best.” He took the scrap of paper. Holy shit–it's Acid! James plays it cool and says, "Wow..thanks! I won't forget it!... Thanks." sussed him right and just lights up.

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James had some LSD. The one damn thing that terrified Frank. The drug that terrified America. The one thing forbidden in both his failed, ruined, raped worlds. This had to be it! The answer! All the mistakes agree on only one point– "Run from this!" It had to be salvation! What else could it be? Every error he'd ever known was taught to him. A product of the faulty instincts programed into him by his teachers, his educators from the two hells which had hatched him. This was the selfproclaimed undoing of all their abomination–in this Little Amy and Frank are agreed–all devils forbid it. What is behind a door from which all devils are forbidden but God? If not He, then any oblivion, any wisdom would be welcomed gladly into James's hungry question as salvation if it might undo the hell he had learned. What has the devil to fear but happiness? Who else could seduce us from his grasp? So did hope whisper truths and lies which are more hopeful still into James's ear as he gazed at the small scrap of paper. 146

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Hope is change, and can be a fearsome curse to the contented, who have come to love their devil, and fear the unknown. James saw the red cheeks of a bride in waiting to think of any new thing, any new devil, even the truth called to him from golden shores. Hope's song always sounds sweetest to the desperate.

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James was awake before the dawn. His anticipation mingled with his fear, the words of Frank and all of America, every teacher he had ever known resounded through his memory and quickened his pulse. The air of the forbidden was as ripe as the day, pregnant with danger and mystery to see a familiar thing in an unfamiliar way, knowledge, the forbidden. He looked at the paper square, a small white piece of thin cardboard with nothing special at all to distinguish it from any other unimportant thing. Lisa claimed this was four doses. James knew it was probably true since LSD was measured in micrograms, but such potency is unimaginable to comprehend to those who are uninitiated, and James was disbelieving. He placed the square on his tongue and swallowed the paper. Four doses my ass. An hour later James was becoming restless. He took a shower and began to laugh. My god he couldn't stop!! What was he laughing at? What made him so nervous to think of he had to laugh? When he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror he knew– It was himself he laughed at. Himself! Or was it? So stupid and ridiculous, so posturing and vain, so cruel, so evil! He couldn't stop the laughter. He was a joke!–ridiculous and inane! He was not cruel, he was afraid, he was not evil, he was wounded and impotent, he was a lie before himself, he had always stood falsely before himself and was hysterical beyond all self-control to see it! James himself was a joke, a cruel trick he played on himself! He noticed that tears streamed down his face along with 148

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his laughter. A fullness which he had not known since he knew not when and then before...long ago as a small child when tears were allowed to him, and the weeping overcame his weary broken soul. James began to dissolve, and so found the punchline he had refused, the joke which he was which had taken everything from him, and he wept in bruised joy to begin to uncover it. James knew what he had to do. He had to see it, see his teacher, see his hell and understand it. So James began to see through himself and his eyes were awakened, tender, big and wide were his eyes which had pulled back the ugly curtain of beautiful lies and laughed. Only one who knows themselves may begin to see the world and understand. The city held its breath in a last black gulp of infinity as if it might stave off the approaching day. James watched the new day paint the stars away and grace the heavens with its azure bell. What was not possible before such graciousness as this, this tablecloth of blue and rose opening its cloudless embrace to welcome his weeping soul? James realized he must not know it yet. James knew what hunters know. First he must stop his weeping laughter and approach the lie as a lie so he may see it. Approach the lie in silence. And so James hid his new heart from the sun and went among them. Down into the streets among the dens of pleasure, the temples of business and the churches, the land of a thousand windows and fears, his home welcomed him by not blinking and not noticing, as is its virtue. James was as all things were here: he remained hidden from himself and submerged his heart so flush with red tears and laughter–he silenced his knowledge and his soul and disguised himself from himself and was as all the world around him, and so went unnoticed. James crept silently around behind it and fooled even his own heart, and did disappear before the world. His blank eyes fooled even the sun herself who stopped shining upon him and left James as it did the rest, in shadow. James had tricked the city and beheld–he saw into the cafes where men held out false eyes to hypnotize and dazzle, to mesmerize and seduce unwilling but willing women and men into the trance, hearing all the words and blessedly missing their 149


meaning and so surrendering into their sound as they themselves desired, until so glowing and voluptuous was the false eye on its stalk of lies that they fell entranced into belief, and the hidden tongues of their hypnotizer wrapped their tender leaves around them and siphoned the hidden pleasures of their souls. So was the seduction and surrender of "love," this lying surrender which wishes to be conquered, and the loathsome loving longing tenderness which seduces to glory then discards. What they hid behind those innocent eyes, what looks from behind such eyes! James heard the wailing lament and the funeral bells which tolled of the dead. The eulogy rang out over the pulpit and into the rows of the lying and the loving alike. All eulogies are as this eulogy, and all men are far from sainthood by a thousand empty skies and nights and all the days they refuse. But never has such a eulogy been spoken as might fit the heart of man, so turgid, glorious and abominable, so becoming and unbecoming is his soul, but behold! A saint is always praised in his place and the truth buried alongside him. So do our churches lie best, and make saints of the dead. The empty eyes and arid souls of the teeming tortured living dead fill the streets. The downward glances, the resigned compromises which grind down the glass soul of every man, slowly grind him into dust and ruin paraded naked before James. The multitude of the unhappy and hopeless, clinging to the shadow of their misery and trying again, repeating the dull error, doing the things they hated to do, working their meaningless lives away in hopes that the slow suffocation of each perfect moment spent in monotonous surrender would bring them to some good end, and bring them but weariness. The sea of resignation, the sea of the unseeing damned, looks and faces all pretending falsely before themselves as if the lie were hope itself, as if doing what they abhorred day after day was virtue, or might lead to the restless springtime of happiness, rather than the grinding resignation of the damned. Those who damn themselves are the most wretched, so close to freedom are those who refuse it best. Those who are resigned to their fate may be trusted not to exceed the grasp of their misery. So does their virtue demand! So do their flat gray eyes demand it to stand their own guilty sight! 150

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Those multitudes who are most loyal to their misery, those countless ordinary priests of resignation, priests in the order of the damned, suffer obedience before their misery. The ultimate voice of hopelessness is always a duty...a virtue! Duty? Only a fool thinks fear virtuous! Only the hopeless look away from their pain and believe it no longer follows them! Once they have learned this cowardly trick, their pain will always hide easily in their shadow where they know never to look–now they are slave to what will always pursue them, always cost them to gather their strength and slather gleefully behind them where they gave it cover and purchase, always pursued by that which they pretend does not exist! So do we turn the other cheek to life's pain and surrender ourselves to slave under its lash as our unseen overlord! So had James also hid himself under himself and let the pressures build and build and become that which he was today: a caricature of these shadow people, never feeling what he felt but letting it power and guide him to cruelty and stupidity against himself or others. What but looking away could make the devil? Only our morality could make such a thing real! The devil is what of ourselves we will not see, and James knew he and all of humanity pretend to be gods but are too cowardly for the job. It is those who are too fearful to become gods themselves, who create the devil! James began to feel sick at knowing it. He saw the billboards telling every lying man, woman and child the answer to all their fears was another product, another social status maker, a car, a woman, a cigarette would cure the problem–a pill or a bible would be enough. No need to look further or try something harder, everything's okay, it's better, have a pill and look no deeper. Now you're one of us and we accept you–everything's okay, play along, it's not so bad. Take the easy way out and you needn't look–then you are accepted, loved, one of us: a good guy, a believer in the comfortable lie. It is morality which defends the devil best–as a mother does her child. James's panic was growing and he had to get home. As soon as he was behind his apartment door he began to laugh and weep again. He was sure of what must be done. He had seen the thing. The thing which made his mom turn up the TV to forget the 151


screams as Francis unloaded on him. The thing which makes it easier to believe the news rather than to look deeper and see what makes sense. The information is out there but it is unpleasant, so it's unread. Morality is a beautiful lie with ugly consequences. As James beheld the moral world which created the Happy Burger War by looking away and allowing itself to be fooled, he knew where he came from. He knew he had to leave. It was like he came from another planet and saw it all, smelled the easy way out painted all over every pretty lie which made this whole place tick, and James didn't like the feeling or the smell one bit. Under that lie, that's where the greed lived, under a pretty lie about justice, or being above it all to look away, that's where the hate was made–kept safe, created and hidden under the skirt of that pretty lie. Now James knew himself and so knew the world. James needed another shower.

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As he let the water beat his chest it seemed as if it were white light and might pass through him and cure the cancer in his soul. He thought back over his life and found many levers and springs sticking out of the earth of his life. He pulled one up and let the honest colors of his mind's eye fall upon it and cleanse the lies with his tears. So James beheld the moment of his greatest morality, the moment in which his devil was born. He held the moment before himself and watched. The bat was there. His brother had tortured him and would do so for years, over and over winding the greatest spring to tension, the one which did this to him. His brother turns away and the bat is there. He knows it's bad. He knows he's scared. He knows it's exactly right and exactly how he feels, but he refuses and never swings the bat and the arm is intact, able to torment and never to respect, only to hurt. How much more violence over the following years made this pressure which all of life exploited to destroy him? How much less if he did the right thing here? The government spun him like a top and he wanted them to do it, just like he spins himself to find a hero in the hallway beating the burglar and now he's in the war and killing and releasing the injustice his brother gave him, he's pointing it like he's a gun–he's spraying bullets everywhere and James sees the dead. One chewing out, or how many dead? One broken arm or thirty? maybe fifty dead? He does the "right thing" and turns the other cheek, doesn't splinter the arm and is spun!! Twisted to kill thirty! A hero! So does 153


morality call it! This is James's highest cowardice. His brother's arm. From this moral act has sprung the devil. Sweet are his words of justice and freedom and the saving of lives and sweet does he find his work, it's killing the wrong thing for want of a moment's courage which did not come, his cowardice and injustice to himself, his self-mutilation, so moral to choose to be above and turn the other cheek, and the price of all such pretty lies is clear. When He lies you need but smell his breath, and the Devil betrays what his smile conceals–cowardice and morality prepare his banquet of obliging souls, morality is the chef who prepares his repast. A man's mother always prepares his favorite meals, for she knows him best! And in his most moral act, James spared the arm of the tormentor, and so became him twice over again to release the devil of his impotent rage upon the world. And so James saw morality loves its heroes, as does a mother love her children. As the truth and drops of water mingled in James's awakening mind he saw why Frank and Little Amy alike would think this thing forbidden. With this drug you feel everything. You can deny nothing, and so dissolve all control which holds back, all clenching which refuses one thing and accepts another, everything that comfortable lies and self-righteous rage are dependent on, both are formed in the withholding, the lying and the inner pressure, the two cornerstones of his two hells are destroyed here! Stop withholding and knock out the foundation of the whole mistake. James felt the uncorking of a few of the hundred hundred bottles, cobalt blue, red clay, glass, pewter, china, burnt metal and silver are the hundred hundred beautiful shames which fix and seal our soul away from our sight and freeze it there. Each small shame haunts us and wants to rattle the stopper from the bottle but it is too shameful or it would not need to be sealed there, so the stopper is pounded shut. Man's soul is thusly fixed into the shape of his shame, and he falsely fears it is his shame which is real and seals himself away behind it. As the first few corks were popped loose, James knew he had indeed found the very thing all his teachers had feared. All the teachers of James's misery rightly feared this thing because it unleashed and un-shamed the lies they needed most. His teachers

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had formed him and taught him how to continue the abominable result. It was clear. LSD dissolves the veils of personality. That's why those who made his personality feared it, that's why now, he could see the lies. He couldn't hide anything. He was gone, dissolved and couldn't withhold or control. The mistake he was, was washed away with his personality. As far as James was concerned, nothing could recommend it more highly. This would destroy the whole basis upon which his personality had been constructed. No more clenching and not looking– Destroy his mistaken personality and release everything! Destroy it! Release! Hope comes first as a destroyer. The wretched know there is in all the world, no more beautiful sight. So James claimed his hero's salary and placed the check in an envelope he slipped under Lisa's door with a note. A letter so dear and pleading it would have made a stone idle weep. The enormous check for ten times the full marked up amount of the drug he had requested would surely seal the deal and James was sick to wait for her to answer. Lisa brings the check back to him and James presses it into her palm and gives her a look to melt honey out of a stone and he's got it. Oh...! She's talking to someone about it. He's packing and three days later when he's ready to leave there she is! She's got an eight inch tall bottle of water with a red snap-on plastic cap. James asks, "Is that 100?" "No, James. That check covered more ground than that and I'm still way too rich to boot! Shit dude, that's 1200 hits, and he says they are doubles, 200 mics each drop. That's a lot of money but still not half what you spent...but you begged! You're a weird one but I love ya!" Off she goes to her apartment, Lisa–the angel who doesn't get my angle. If I told her I was going to take it all myself, she'd never believe it. This was going to work! James wrote Carolyn of his plans: Dear Carolyn, Please understand the love I feel for you and the pain of leaving you are both more than I can describe. They would kill another man who could never write this letter, but I must. I have

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withheld much from you about the war and have been wounded far more deeply than you can comprehend, and must heal this. I am dangerous, and not fit company for a blessed one such as you. You are in me forever, and I will always want you. Always. I ask you to forget me. If you have been forsaken by life's bounty and must seek me for the wretch I am, resist yourself. Years must pass if I am to be worthy of you. Live and be gone! May we both forget me. I am at the end of the Alaska road, and past hope. James So James drove with his supplies, his guilt and his truest companion, his rage, rattling beside him, this stubborn guest, his best friend and closest most trusted and reliable asset–his hate. As he pulled into the Alaska state park gates he had to pay an entry fee. The ranger looked at him with tired worn eyes, the eyes of one who refuses himself and is reliable, one who will never question or weep, never vary or seek to know too much, one who will look away and imagine, pretend it's okay, when it's not. He was a gray cardboard mute wilted nothing of a shadow man, so quiet and hidden before himself, never pouring out his love or his hate, stubbornly stilled too long to find, instead to erupt in cruelty to himself or another, he is the acceptor and the minimizer who wants well enough left alone. Look at him wait and go dead! James knew he saw in these dull eyes all which looked away and pretended, went dull and dead before what it didn't want to see, and James knew he saw in this flat barren unman, the face of the devil himself, the easy way out, the face of sin and her pretty lying skirt–the face...of Little Amy. He thought of Frank's comment after he remarked that they were fighting her war, Little Amy's war and Frank says, "Who would you rather work for? Little Amy couldn't know what she asks us to do, could she? Come on now, Cap'n. It's best to work for an innocent boss, now isn't it?" It is under such pretty truths and worse lies like these that the devil teaches us to look away, and James had to cleanse it, clean the filthy lying pretending thing from the soiled face of this wretched life! He 156

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reached for his rifle to burp the filthy pretending vermin away. James found only his wallet on the seat beside him and paid the fee. He had left his gun in the trunk.

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James set about becoming self-sufficient. He had an ally in his best friend, his hate. It dug him the hole through the permafrost and shot the moose and caribou. It gladly cut them into chunks and packed them into the hole he had dug in the frozen earth. It set up his tent. Then James left his friend and tried to find better company. It was time to abandon all familiar things and begin. James had with him only a vestige of the wisdom of the ages, a handful of data cartridges and a portable Emerson data reader and permanent writing pad to read the texts he had brought and record his thoughts. In the data cartridges he had selected, James had a small but superb library of the most profound, brilliant, erroneous, strange and innovative thinkers throughout history including the complete works of Nietzsche, Goethe, Plato (and through him Socrates), Freud, Jung, Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Norman's original vision, his Emotive Rationalist ideal contained in the three Philopsychological masterworks, Norman's black trilogy: This New Day, The Black Mirror and Mind Map. All the most questionable and brilliant minds history has never understood, all the philosophical, poetic and psychological thinkers who looked at the question itself differently were there on two data cartridges. Other than the Emerson pad and the few books contained on those cartridges it was just one gun, acid and moose meat, and that suited James just fine.

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So James read that the way of the creator was his way, and that he alone would tread many unheard steps and face his seven devils, which must become his seven Gods. Much suffering must yield its pleasure if such an alchemy is to be found. So James knew it was time to dream. The bottle of acid was uncorked and a few of the beautiful little bottles which are our shame began to shake and loosen but few of their hundred hundred corks. And so James Dreamt. A storm was gathering, as a black dream it shook and grumbled, as a sled made of mountains pulled by the gods would grind flat the earth and crush its stones into dust and shake the ground as it passed, so did the storm gather and heave. The waves of the windswept sea grew to fountains and froth, the sea and earth shook to feel the storm gather wind against wind, gale upon gale and cloud within cloud did it consume and replenish itself as a fist squeezes and loosens to squeeze still tighter until it was red and blue black, a howling wind gathered like a fist and the surf was pounded flat with fat rain drops of blood and sheets of wind pressed and cut into the boiling sea, which arched its back in agony to push its breast up toward the angry black pelting sky. James waved his arm over the sea and before the clouds, and the sea receded and the clouds swallowed themselves and vanished to leave only a silent moon looking sadly down upon the sea bed. James walked down into the sandy sea bed and beheld a child, weeping and pitiful. Why, why, why was it left to suffer? The sea heard James's pleas and gently returned to him. James held the blessed child to himself as the sea offers up her warm swollen breast to hold the thin shivering moon. The sea slipped tenderly beneath him and he floated upon the warm welcoming surf, beneath a new golden sun. The sun itself was weeping, so profuse was its happiness, the sun has given life to us all, nourished and formed the very sea, which is but a broth of her salt tears. So is the storm of every child whose cries are not heard, and the weeping gratitude which life affords one who will finally listen, one who will finally hear those pained cries. James understood his dream and knew it was his unheard pain which covered itself with the storm of his rage. He heard his pain and wept as the child in him wept, for until he knew this hurt, that 159


child would forever need and summon the storm, and if ignored and unheard, the wounded child in him would remain wounded and so would always cover its agony in rage. So James wept and let the pain pass through him and fill him as the sea fills the earth did he love his child's tears rather than shame, disgrace and shun them into a raging storm, and so James loved and welcomed himself back into himself. Now the tears of this child would fill his heart and pass into the sea, rather than gather in a black vengeful cloud. So do we reclaim ourselves to reclaim our pain. So saw James.

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And James Dreamt. James beheld the hand of God over the sea. The hand was ugly and trembling, unsure and wavering above the sea. And so James asked of God, "Why does your hand tremble?" God plunged his hand into the sea and quickly pulled it out again and cried out, "I can not! You can not think these things! Only the devil knows these things!" James began to laugh at the trembling weak hand of this fearful God and plunged his own arm into the sea. Down into the depths plunged James's godly arm, an infinite arm of light and strength which found a creature buried deep in the sands, and another, and still more! The creature was slimy as an oyster and slippery to grasp. It seemed vile even to touch, but James feared not. He grabbed one and then another and all the rest, each slippery dark thing clasped in his sure grip and plucked them from the depths to behold his catch in the sun. The writhing mass of filth and stench which James had in his grasp was beyond description, all manner of deformed bulbous soft overripe rotten ugly and cancerous things, gargoyles with slimy black hunched necks and slippery eels with misshapen tumors and growths, ugly crooked mouths growing out of rotten fleshy things, and James felt God recoil at the sight. James cried out, "God, you are a coward!" and throws the myriad of grotesque imaginings to the sun, high into the unblinking sky. The sun gazes upon each one and in her rays each is warmed and loved, and the creatures begin to open themselves up and unfold before the sun, now hovering in the air before her, each is 161


warmed in her gracious knowing light and so becomes a bronze saucer, shimmering, hovering, before the sun. The sun blows her gracious amber breath upon them and they tip their golden liquid into the sea, which warms and glows, as each swollen wave and ripple dons a golden crest, a shimmering golden crown of light. The sea itself is now flush with purple radiance and the world is of purple sea and melted sun, amethyst and gold infused into all of liquid creation. And James understood his dream, for it was written in the black books. It was his hand, the hand of a cowardly God who shamed himself and fixed himself forever hidden half in shadow beneath the sea, where sex was shamed into a weapon, a violation and shame for all tenderness he felt for the world which had rejected him. The hideous monsters were his wishes, the monsters he made of himself as he clenched and withheld, shaming his thoughts until each was a slimy thing he made slimy and foul, just as he wanted, too slippery to hold as he wished not to see them, shamed and made so elusive by his refusing them. He shamed himself and became hideous to himself and so God trembled to see it! "You can not think these things! Only the devil knows these things!" So thought God as he trembled and shook. Look at this weak devil-creating God! James had more courage than the God he used to be and so looked at the wishes as the sun and understood them and as was written, all the world is made beautiful in sexuality and love of the body, or ugly in its shaming, and behold–the ugly monsters are just saucers brimming with the now unfixed freed liquid energy the frozen, hidden, shamed wishes used to contain. The sun warms the world rather than shames it, and loves the world enough to pour into it the energy her knowing has collected from each wish, the golden energy of life which has been liberated from the monster in which it was shamed, as if a thought were a monster! She laughs and warms the wish to understand it and it yields its precious energy, no longer fixed in shame, sexuality, the energy of life has been freed from its hideous prison of forbidden wishes as the wishes are loved and plainly known in the sun, and the saucer tips its precious golden liquid back into the the world. When shamed, beauty becomes ugliness and violence! When

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shamed, sex, the life force, becomes a weapon and instrument of death! Once freed from shame the whole world glows in golden purple abundance to have itself restored, loved and re-fulled, flush with the very essence of life, and beauty itself. So it is when we reclaim our shamed and splintered wishes to understand and love them so they may again pour their beauty back into the world. So saw James.

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And so James Dreamt. The mountain stood before the sun and cast a huge shadow upon the land. The shadow rose up as a mouth upon a body of blackness and brown earth, piling itself upon itself the earth rose up and towered before the sun, and the shadow swallowed the earth and folded over itself again and again getting darker and darker until it was blackest black. It crawled up upon the towering column of earth and kissed it. The earth receded to accept it and the shadow clung to the column as a black leering mouth with glistening black teeth which consumed light. The earth became misshapen and contorted beneath it, and a head of brown earth arose to hold it, and arms and legs of dirty clay sprouted beneath it, and the shadow mouth began hungrily opening and shutting itself and tasted the world to choose its prize. The shadow unfolded to reach out into the sky, like a black vapor it consumed the stars. Its foul clay body shook and shuddered. It opened its filthy mouth and its shadow tongue licked and blackened the mountain top, and the mouth crawled down the shadow tongue to swallow the mountain into itself. Its towering brown body shivered and shook, it moaned and quivered. Its tongue licked at the moon and blackened its corner, and stole a taste of the sun, a spark of her beauty, forever gone. Now the thing vibrated and the earth heaved beneath it, and then for a moment all was still. Only now, did the thing open its dull pan-like eyes and look around. It was pleased. The world was a dull brown, just as the thing was of earth and brown sod so had it 164

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made all things by swallowing half of everything into its churning belly. Half the universe was fighting to escape from it and the vibrations and contractions of trapped eternities boiled within it, and the brown thing began moaning and the mouth opened and grimaced as the earth bulged and shook until at last the very bowels of the thing burst open! A thousand, thousand colors boiled and coiled themselves into a cloud of laughter and color, purple and orange tongues of laughter and yellow gold leaves of silver light shimmering beneath a waterfall of rising light pouring itself back into the sky, a thousand thousand hues of green and blue, jade seas swollen with the pearls of unknown constellations in color and light rising up blue and silver white pearls nuanced with all shades and hues in layers and puddles of light, mingling and mixing, swirling over and through each other and then apart again, rising toward a resounding laughing heaven. James looked into the pit where the hideous world swallowing monstrosity had been and he saw a strange creature, half faced one way, a beautiful woman, tall and alluring, but out of the back of her head and body was another face and body, a male, facing the opposite direction. They appeared very much alike in the overall set of their features but the male was ugly and dark, his skin warted and his mouth crooked. James approached it. The female half faced him. It spoke, "You need me." James replied, "Why?" "Without me you'll be like him." Her breath was putrid and vile. James asked her, "I'll be like who without you?" "Him," came the reply. "Who?" "Well I don't know him really. I've only heard tell of him, but you need me or you'll be horrible, just like him." She turned away and James looked at the other half of the thing which was now facing him. "Sir, do you know her?"

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"Of course," it said. Its breath was pure. James recognized the god of his twin hells and felt the rage of annihilation rise up in him. If he could only find its neck, the neck of this filthy lying place and choke it, kill it, if only he could find the neck! James sprang upon the god and grabbed its twin necks, this grotesque creature upon which he vented his full fury, he squeezed and choked it, his hands passed through its filthy neck as if through slick rotten brown clay and its heads fell to earth. The earth folded over itself and consumed the thing and the pit filled up with a liquid shimmering pool as mercury and liquid sun stirred together rising up to fill the sunken earth with swirling gold and silver light from which an angel of pure white who cast a golden shadow emerged. James beheld her in amazement: It was Lisa. She slowly kissed him and passed her golden shadow and perfect being into his lips and mouth, and as the sun and sky was now flush in its multitude of splendor and color, so was he. James was complete. James understood his dream. He was the monster swallowing half the world into himself before he would open his eyes, clenching and withholding, controlling and browning the world by submerging half of it, keeping half of himself, half of the world hidden, contained, unfelt and unseen within him under enormous pressure. How he clenched and the pressure built and the earth shook to contain all the lies and truths unseen and buried in his belly! How he desecrated the world and fouled it to look at it with those flat gray eyes which could only bear the sight after half of all things and thoughts were removed and hidden, controlled shamed and clenched within him to remain unseen–as if half of his thoughts and his soul were in contradiction with the other half! He had read and knew of the truth–thoughts have no consequence and are guiltless so they can not conflict! He can know and think, feel, see and gladly understand any thing, wish or thought and its opposite which are simply different perspectives, different tools, different colors, each appropriate to its own situation. One color does not conflict with another, they are alternatives, shades of nuance and subtlety, not opposites which conflict and cancel. The creature burst its bowels and all of creation and possibility as vast bright and dark

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as the multiplicity which is the highest free spirit and soul of man rained upward into the heavens as light and color. James had released all selves and thoughts to rest and play ceaselessly in the sky, each possibility beautifying and engorging his heaven with its subtle beauty and the nuance of every possibility. He might choose the colors and canvas himself and best live to know every one of them, every possibility, thought and self painted across the full circumference of his world. So is multiplicity but wholeness itself, the heart of joy and key to the universe to one who has released himself entirely unto his heaven. How could the sky not be grateful to one who has released every star into her heaven? A loving God withholds nothing from his world, and so loves himself. So do honest men become gods, for they alone create all perfect worlds. As James looked into the crater he beheld the god of his twin hells. Morality herself, so beautiful for her lies which betray themselves in the stink of her breath and her feigned ignorance of her ugly half, her son, immorality, but the family resemblance is clear. He is ugly to be sure but does not imagine himself otherwise and is honest with pure breath, although vile and repugnant to see, he willingly admits that he's part of the family. He knows her all right. The devil only appears moral and trustworthy when he lies, so does he hide beneath her coattails and don her mask to deceive if it is necessary. Like mother, like son. She claims that James will be immoral without her but it is she who looks away and pretends he is not there, she who has thusly created immorality and so James knows this sick gruesome grotesque twin god and chokes it rightly. The earth itself rewards him with honeyed silver tears of light welling up from its grateful depths to become Lisa, an angel of light, empathy, the only thing James or any other man needs to replace every false lying moral code and commandment which rattles guilty swords and shames over the head of every sick divided soul! Empathy unites him, morality divides him. He knows Lisa's heart and is himself to feel it, to empathize and wants then himself what is right, from inside he himself feels and wants it, not a withholding in morality but an empathetic non-morality where he feels and wants from within himself, not denying and shaming, but feeling and

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wanting. Empathy–one word replaces the whole monstrous canon of sickness. One word–Empathy. What but a religion of peace and sexual shame could bring us enough morality to have the crusades, to have the Inquisition and Torquemada with his torture chambers to extract holy confessions to "save souls" in the brutal voluptuous control of sexuality denied called torture, or the Puritans torturing and killing witches rather than having regular, frequent, normal sex? Whatever we submerge and deny here erupts there as cruelty to self or others, but at double force once it has been withheld. One word, empathy, replaces all the horror. James withheld no thought or feeling from his over full heart, he censored nothing from himself be it beautiful, ugly, hateful, pained or loving and his mind began to sing as a mind will once it has fuel, feeling, to power it and fill its sails. The mind and the heart do not contradict, but are instead part of one machine, the engine and the vehicle, the heart and the intellect, not separate but very much together! The heart fills and turns, fuels and blows its winds into the sails of the mind and only then, once all thoughts and feelings are released as a perfect wind, only then, does the mind find its true point, purpose and measure. So knows every creator, and so saw James.

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James remembered the few words from "Bird Song" Frank sang while returning from one of their exploits. Frank felt the words fitting to describe the honest deal we gave the girls, the song we sought from them being the result of our bargain: sing to live. Be silent and die. "Tell me all that you know and I'll show you...snow and rain." James realized how badly Frank had corrupted the meaning of these words. James was sure in his own mind that the meaning was very different. As James liberated every feeling and hidden thought from within himself to see and know every unshamed thing plainly before himself, he felt the marrow, the inner essence of his experience of life was now different, and the very heart and nature of the seasons he knew, began to change. James allowed his pain and pleasure alike to pass through his open heart. Full was he from his tears and the froth of his sorrow as he was from the joy of the seasons which now unfolded their treasures before his awakened eyes. Tears each released a pain and freed his happiness and James knew that beauty herself slumbered beneath a perfect unborn tear. She is balanced there waiting. He found every broken vessel of his soul now served and filled him, all broken things now flooded him with an overabundance of feeling and his mind responded with its pregnant storm, now brought ripe to bursting, flush and swollen with every energy, ripe with blood and sweetness. James could not contain his happiness and its sadness, he was himself overripe and splitting as a peach might split its skin he was 169


bursting out of himself. He had no choice. It was irresistible in its nearness and had to be born! James began to write. James had become a creator. Now every broken thing in him welled up and yielded the fruit of the highest labor. He befriended all damaged things which bled for him into a golden cup, so perfect and sweet was its nectar! It seemed as if a photograph of his soul was imprinted on the pages, a stolen image from his hidden depths now suddenly clear and available as he read it. The Black Mirror had a passage which could have only come from another who knew the same thing as he, and James wept to read it as one might weep to meet a long lost brother. "Those who know too much have become holy, but are no longer sacred. Welling up from every broken corner which no longer holds, all precious things, bitter, sweet and vile, all that eternity makes bashful, find light and song, born out from this vessel which can not contain, and though but broken, will not break." And in knowing himself James created the seasons and their snow and rain anew. So did the snows fall and hush the Alaskan landscape, and James listened as the world held its breath. So did the ice melt and its diamond crystals yield their brilliance to the waters and become doubly beautiful in memory, where they might be always treasured. So did the summer bring its golden noon and its white heat and James heard no sound but bird song and water, no lie, but only the leaves rushing over the ground swept by the wind's skirt as she passed. A silver pearl opened its shimmering ice blue eye within the moon, and all things warmed and cooled themselves in their eternal moment. So did the days pass into and through James's happiness. James had discovered that morality creates immorality and found the solution. Both mother and child are mistaken. Only amoral thinking leaves all of the heart and mind unshamed and 170

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looks carefully at each situation to find the individual answer which suits it best. One situation may require violence, another tenderness, and no moral code of judgment which shames should ever again foul or shackle the heart or mind of an honest man. James sat in the warm sun and the season's breath filled him with birdsong and the spirit of a wordless truth which must be written. All creators wish to capture and release the silent sun with words and song, and so honor her. His open heart was flush and full with tears and laughter rushing up and through his spirit, an unending river of feeling buoyed and filled his soul until his mind was as a pinwheel in the wind, spinning all the colors together into a golden red blur of motion and life. All James's world was thick and fat with drops of happiness and light pouring through his soul and into every corner of the world, then returning back to him again as laughter. Pain filled his dry desert heart and blooms of every color sprang fourth to glory in the sun and nourished themselves from the dew of his tears and joy. Never still, his feelings moving over his mind in an unending current of every shape and color, dark and bright alike all fill him and turn his hungry mind to fullness and creation. James sees the night turn over the sky into day, and the sands of his life fall as a river of feeling, lingering and falling, filling and painting his face with tears and sorrow, beauty and silver ice, every hue of pain and pleasure ascending and descending through his open unrefusing soul. James's amoral soul welcomed every thought without judgment, and his mind was ripe to know every possibility before him and so he created and wrote the book of James–his book–the joyous spilling of pain into pleasure and beauty, the ascending trail of tears, the bubbling cauldron of life and happiness, double sweet and short, both bitter and perfect, a glorious wound weeping salt tears and honey, the dew of our treasured happiness, the pulse of pain and joy. As James wept and wrote he found a delicate silken thought, light and fragile as silver gauze, and he dared not press it too closely to his mind, or he feared he might tear it. James held his perfect new thought in the warmth of his mind, he closed his eyes and wrapped the warm fingers of his mind carefully around it. As he opened his eyes again, through his tears he saw a figure 171


approach from the distance, an angel, a question, a color he dared not hope for drew closer and closer to him, nearer than his most tender hope, closer than his most distant hope. Carolyn approached James from across the bloom studded field, each beautiful flower head nodding and swaying to her, each tree as a hand bending its fingertips toward her to offer up their tender fruit, the grasses flowing beneath her feet in anticipation of her step, so did the world come to her and to James, as a prayer was the world, innocent from the lips of a child and loving, so did the world offer itself to her. James sat motionless and wept. "Oh James, James, James... My God James, how are you?" James looked upon her with his tears falling as drops of rain upon the earth. He knew that only now could he love her, for only now did he love himself, and so he spoke the answer to her, the words which held every secret truth of his soul out before her, now gladly revealed, spilled out before the sun. He answered: "Ever deeper, never better."

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Also by Rich Norman:

This New Day: Self-Creation The Wisdom of an Idiot The Black Mirror Mind Map: Psychological Topography and an Approach to a New Creative Psychology or... The Secret of Happiness

All titles available from: Standing Dead Publications PO Box 387 O'Brien, Oregon 97534

For information on current prices please go to: www.richnorman.com