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Toni had to flitter about the table seeking compliments, snatching feels, his soft hands patting shoulders, his tired voice pleading for good opinion. Surly as we were, we weren't even polite. "Okay, if you like shit," Qui
Toni squeezed Novotny's arm once too often, too lovingly. He stood up and hit Toni full in the face with such a painfully happy smile, I had to answer it. But Morning came around the table swinging, and there was a brief moment of fists glancing from hard faces and skulls, bouncing off shoulders and tensed arms; but only a brief moment, then I plunged between them like a fullback making his own hole. Morning fell against the table, scrambled, then the table collapsed. He fell among broken dishes and spilled drinks on the floor. Novotny had stumbled over Toni's inert body, and fallen also. As I turned, I grabbed a heavy oak chair from under Peterson, and said with a smile:
"You boys stay down, or I'll bust you wide open. Either one, or both. No matter."
Novotny was willing; he was already ashamed. Morning was less willing, but no less ashamed, so he stood up, shook his head, made a vague gesture with his arms, then walked quickly out. He had a glob of mustard hanging from one haunch, beer sloshing in one shoe, and baked potato in his hair. A ruined exit.
I held the chair cocked, and felt for an instant the crushing need to demolish something, but paused in soldierly soberness, and lowered the chair. "Fuck it," Haddad said. I threw the chair through the French doors which led to the small balcony. A great lovely crash as doors and glass and chair plunged to the ground outside. Haddad was smiling when I looked at him.
"Is it deductible?" I asked.
"The fucking world is deductible, Krummel," he answered, then threw his chair toward the open windows. It hung in the drapes, but he ran over, gri
In a mad flurry of laughter, everything in the room flew out the window in less than a minute: table, chairs, table cloth filled with stale food and dishes, a brocaded settee, a rattan couch. It made no sense, but it was great fun. Collins grabbed what steak knives he could, then tried to stick them into the papaya tree. Qui
When the room was bare, absolutely bare except for the whores huddled against a bare wall, hoping we wouldn't throw them out, someone, Qui
The destruction of the room had cleansed us of hate and fear and pretense, had left us only laughter and our bare skins, more than enough for salvation. We died in violence, but were resurrected in laughter.
Downstairs, after the party was over, we found Morning slumped against a plaster column, one arm around the chipping evidence of more ornate days, one hand clutching an empty bottle of TDY rum. Infirm, blind, perhaps even dead, someone suggested. We sacked his slack body behind a couch, out of Air Police sight, then settled in, since it was still quite early, for, as Qui
But other winds were blowing…
Over in the 9th ASA the mood must have been just about the same as ours. The troops had pla
You see, still other plots were brewing…
Cagle, only an EM but silent and devious, had chanced upon a funeral procession the week before, a silent line of pallbearers, candle carriers, road guards, and the corpse laid out in a fine white lace shrouded coffin looking for all the world like a big giant birthday cake. He inquired of a professional candle carrier and discovered that the coffin had been rented from the local undertaker for a very small fee, considering the immoral beauty of the frilly pine box. This night he rented this lovely coffin without a word to a soul, and returned to the steps of Haddad's place, ten holy candles in hand but no smile on his face, solemnly saying, "We must bury Joe Morning before morning; we must bury our dead before they stink." We tittered, but he silenced us with a frown stolen from an assistant undertaker in Kansas City. And as the coffin was filled with the body, then shouldered in the dim light, we became as silent as mourners.
And so we formed: pallbearers six, Qui
We marched to the measured beat of a dirge, pagans bearing the fallen to his pyre, the coffin level with the pallbearers' shoulders, candlelight and lace flickering in the night. It seemed for an instant, or longer perhaps, as we marched that we were as sad as if Joe Morning were really dead, as if we understood that he had been the best of us all, the most damned of us all, the most damned and the best. Step, pause, mourn Joe Morning, and move, solemn, silent, drunk, our homage paid. With each slow step the earth sank beneath us, tears plied our distant faces, and we knew no hope of resurrection, and tears plowed the dust of our faces. Lord knows where we might have ended that night, our sadness was that great. I headed us where I might, Cagle and Novotny stopping taxis and jeepnys and calesas at every corner, leading down dark rutted off-limits streets, past cribs where blankets separated the struggling pairs, past bars where card games stopped and beers paused between hand and mouth; into, into and through, the labyrinths of the market, among slabs of meat nailed by rusty hooks, where this morning's fish became tonight's garbage, through the darkness, and finally out at the blazing light of Chew Chi's kiosk, jammed as it was to the walls with the 9th ASA, mourning things of their own.