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Morning felt, though he couldn't think why, that he had been asleep for a long, long time, leaving his brain groggy and stupid with sleep, a troubled sleep too, a heavy bond holding him, sticky, smelling as sweet as taffy. Waking took time. More unconscious than alert, he rolled to his stomach, pushed up to his knees, then stood, and for the second time in two days, though he thought it the same day, he fell toward that bathroom door. Leaning heavily on the sink, he threw up a dribble of clear liquid, then he rinsed his mouth, drank, then immediately threw the cold water from stomach to sink. He rinsed his mouth again. Then he raised his head, not to look in the mirror, but merely to hold his head up for a change, and in the silvered glass was reflected the ghost, the face which haunted him into the Army, across the sea, his own face.
(We all see things we can't face at one time or another; even I once ran as Joe Morning ran from that image. Picture, if you can, a gargantuan draft horse ripped in half by lightning from a summer shower, then a boy that afternoon racing on a bareback pony to see the destruction and finding the front quarters and head moving and jerking and grunting, and his horse shying away in the mud, then the boy advancing with a thick live oak branch, afraid to run, for he had never known ru
The visage in the mirror wasn't exactly Morning's. His neatly clipped beard was gone, and his face, it seemed, with it. Pancake foundation lay thick on his cheeks. An angry red slash gaped open in mockery of his mouth. Dark, blue-shadowed, lined, amazed eyes glared under drooping mink lashes. A long blond wig, sensuously mussed, hung to his shoulders. The hand that touched his face sported teardrop nails of blood red. His body became aware of the rustle of a white nylon nightgown, a cotton stuffed bra pinching his chest, his crotch feeling naked in panties, and stockings encasing his legs. Even the hair on his chest and legs had been shaved. He dried his face carefully, then walked about the cabin looking for Linda. Her things were still there, but she was gone. He did find seven color Polaroid pictures of himself in various stages of being dressed, but the eighth picture wasn't there. He looked among the empty sacks and boxes on the bedroom floor, but the picture wasn't there either. Price tags and cash receipts were though, and he calmly marveled at the price of perversion. Then he went to the kitchen and fixed breakfast.
After breakfast, he noticed that his lipstick was faded. He went to Linda's room and fixed it, then turned on the TV, opened a bottle of champagne, and drank a toast to himself: "Why not? Why the fuck not?"
"Well, why not?" I asked as dawn fled in the windows of the hotel, then I laughed.
"What are you laughing about?" he said. "It wasn't fu
"Why not? You were drunk; drunks play games. Laugh and it ain't so serious; don't laugh and it's trouble," I said.
"I can't laugh about it. I'm still scared." He hung his head, all the way down to the table.
"Of being queer?"
"What else?"
"Oh, hell, come off it. You were used, taken, then you played a child's game coming down from trouble. That's all." I said.
"Three days ain't a game," he said. "Three days in drag."
"Three days, three months. It's all the same. If you were queer, or any queerer than the rest of us are naturally, you would have already fallen."
"You think I subconsciously knew that broad tonight was a Billy Boy, don't you?" he said into his folded arms.
"Christ, get off that shit. You want to be queer, jack, be queer. You want to be straight, be straight. But quit bugging the world about it." I stood up, rubbing my face.
"Always Krummel with the easy answer."
"It is easy. Just say what you want to do, then make yourself do it." I walked to the window. Manila Bay seemed filled with mud that morning.
"Maybe easy for you, but not easy for people with feeling, sensitive people."
"That's cute, boy. You're just too sensitive to live. Well, jump out the goddamn window. If you will excuse the metaphor, Morning, you are a pain in the ass sometimes."
"That's because that's the only place you got any feeling, fucker," he said, looking up. "You're the one who might as well be dead."
"Yeah, it's tough all over." I walked to the bathroom to shower, and when I came out, he was gone. "May God watch out for the i
9. Preparation
Let me warn you now. Three days, then out of this damnable traction rigging. The warrior's necessity: Mobility, in the form of a wheel chair.
Gallard said: A wheel chair, fool, not a chariot, not a tank, not a war horse, but a wheel chair.
We do with what we can.
"No drinking," he said, "no fighting with the nurses. Understand."
"I always understand."
"You never understand," he said. "Don't drive it off the bluff."
"Don't drive what off the bluff," Abigail said, walking into the already crowded room, a childish grin bright on her face, her hands clasped behind her.
"Watch him," Gallard greeted her.
"Yes, watch me, wench. I get wheels."
"Rolling to hell," he said.
"My home," I said.
"Man's fate?" he asked.
"Destiny is a kinder word."
"Fate is death. Destiny is life. You've got them confused," he replied.
"God confused them, not me."
"What are you two talking about?" Abigail asked.
"Nothing," Gallard said, "Krummel's fly is down again, and his death wish is exposed." He smiled, but he couldn't meet my eyes.
"Impossible. You've got it in traction."
"I wish I could," he said, walking out. "I've got more idiots to repair, more fodder to rearm."
Abigail turned back to me, a question cocking one blond eyebrow, a question she was afraid to ask. She slipped a pale pink rose from behind her. "An offering, sire," she said, then curtsied.
"Thorny," I said. "A warning."
"A promise."
"Thank you," I said reaching for her hand.
"Three days, my liege, then I wheel you away to my flower castle." She kissed my hand. "Three days. But now I must hurry to prepare another room for another knight back from the crusades, a crippled knight from the Holy Land." She kissed my hand again, then bit the base of my thumb. "Three days…"
"Hey," I said, stopping her at the door. "You're as silly as I am."
"Yes," she said. "Don't you just love it." And then she was gone.
In three days, free, free of bed and burden, for then my confession will be over, the tale concluded, and the judgment will begin. I will be glad, I think, to be finished. To think about it makes me smile…
But even as I write these lines, a scream spears down the hall, holding my hands from the machine. Then words, slurred with pain and drugs: "Please, God, let me die." Then a closing door muffles the cries.
My guilt seems so petty next to that cry. I bear only the guilt of Joe Morning, but that voice bears the world.