And then he finished the autograph with a flourish—and handed it back to the young man.
To Paul Newman, who can be my driver when I take over the chief mechanic slot from Dora, best of luck.
And the familiar autograph, James Dean.
NOTE:
Just as a postscript—yes, Paul Newman was doing dinner-theater and summer-stock in the Midwest in the 1950’s. He did drive dirt-track, as well as going into professional auto racing. And James Dean was considered by his peers to be an excellent race-driver with great potential in the sport.
And in case you don’t happen to be a dance-buff, Isadora Duncan was killed when the long, trailing scarf she wore (about twelve feet worth of silk) was caught in the wheel-spokes of a Bugatti sports-car in which she was riding, breaking her neck.
Jihad
This story was for Mike Resnick’s Alternate Heroes. While T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia, another historical favorite of mine) was really a hero, I wondered what would have happened if a certain life-shattering experience he had at Deraa had come out a bit differently. . . .
Due to the actual historical details this story is rather a stiff one at the beginning, and definitely NC-17.
Pain was a curtain between Lawrence and the world; pain was his world, there was nothing else that mattered. “Take him out of here, you fools! You’ve spoiled him!” Lawrence heard Bey Nahi’s exclamation of disgust dimly; and it took his pain-shattered mind a moment to translate it from Turkish to English.
Spoiled him; as if he was a piece of meat. Well, now he was something less than that.
He could not reply; he could only retch and sob for mercy. There was no part of him that was not in excruciating pain.
Pain. All his life, since he had been a boy, pain had been his secret terror and obsession. Now he was drugged with it, a too-great force against which he could not retain even a shred of dignity.
As he groveled and wept, conversation continued on above his head. There were remonstrations on the part of the soldiers, but the Bey was adamant—and angry. Most of the words were lost in the pain, but he caught the sense of a few. “Take him out—” and “Leave him for the jackals.”
So, the Bey was not to keep him until he healed. Odd. After Nahi’s pawing and fondling, and swearing of desire, Lawrence would have thought—
“You stay.” That, petulantly, to the corporal, the youngest and best-looking of the lot. Coincidentally, he was the one who had been the chiefest and most inventive of the torturers. He had certainly been the one that had enjoyed his role the most. “Take that out,” the Bey told the others. Lawrence assumed that Nahi meant him.
If he had been capable of appreciating anything, he would have appreciated that—the man who had wrought the worst on his flesh, should take his place in the Bey’s bed.
The remaining two soldiers seized him by the arms. Waves of pain rolled up his spine and into his brain, where they crashed together, obliterating thought. He couldn’t stand up; he couldn’t even get his feet under him. His own limbs no longer obeyed him.
They dragged him outside; the cold air on his burning flesh made him cry out again, but this time no one laughed or struck him. Once outside, his captors were a little gentler with him; they draped his arms over their shoulders, and half-carried him, letting him rest most of his weight on them. The nightmarish journey seemed to last a lifetime, yet it was only to the edge of the town.
Deraa. The edge of Deraa. The edge of the universe. He noted, foggily, that he did not recognize the street or the buildings as they passed; they must have brought him to the opposite side of the town. There was that much more distance now between himself and his friends and allies. Distance controlled and watched by the enemy.
Assuming he wanted to reach them. Assuming he wanted them to find him, see him—see what had been done to him, guess at the lacerations that were not visible.
No.
His captors let him down onto the muddy ground at the side of the road. Gently, which was surprising. One of them leaned over, and muttered something—Lawrence lost the sense of it in the pain. He closed his eyes and snuggled down into the mud, panting for breath. Every breath was an agony, as something, probably a broken bone, made each movement of his ribs stab him sharply.
He heard footsteps retreating, quickly, as if his erstwhile captors could not leave his presence quickly enough.
Tears of despair, shameful, shamed tears, trickled down his cheeks. The unmoved stars burned down on him, and the taste of blood and bile was bitter in his mouth.
Slowly, as the pain ebbed to something he could think through, he itemized and cataloged his injuries to regain control of his mind, as he had tried to count the blows of the whip on his back. The bones in his foot, fractured during the chaos of the last sabotage-raid, had been shattered again. The broken rib made breathing a new torture. Somewhere in the background of everything, the dull pain of his head spoke of a concussion, which had probably happened when they kicked him to the head of the stairs. The lashes that had bit into his groin had left their own burning tracks behind.
His back was one shapeless weight of pain. He had thought to feel every separate, bleeding welt, but he could only feel the accumulated agony of all of them in a mass. But as he lay in the mud, the cold of the night numbed him, leaving only that final injury still as sharp and unbearable as ever, the one that was not visible. The laceration of his soul.
Now he knew how women felt; to be the helpless plaything of others, stronger or more powerful. To be forced to give of their bodies whether or not they willed or wanted it. To be handled and used— Like a piece of meat— And worst of all, at one level, the certainty that he had somehow deserved it all. That he had earned his punishment. That he had asked for his own violation. After all, wasn’t that what they said of women, too? It was this final blow that had cracked the shell of his will and brought down the walls of the citadel of his integrity.
How could he face them, his followers, now? They would watch him, stare at him, and murmur to one another—no matter how silent he kept, they would know, surely they would know. And knowing, how could they trust him?
They would not, of course. He no longer trusted himself. His nerve was broken, his will, his soul broken across that guardroom bench. There was nothing left but despair. He literally had nothing left to live for; the Revolt had become his life, and without it, he had no will to live. The best thing he could do for the Revolt would be to die. Perhaps Feisal would take it upon himself to avenge his strange English friend, Aurens; certainly Auda, that robber, would use Aurens’ death as an excuse to further raid the Turks. And Ali, Ali ibn el Hussein; he would surely exact revenge. But could they hold the Revolt together?
Inshallah. As God wills it. Here, in his extremity, he had at last come to the fatalism of the Moslem. It was no longer his concern. Life was no longer his concern. Only death, and the best way to meet it, without further torment, to drown his shame in its dark waters where no one would guess what those waters hid.