"Go take a shower," he muttered, turning back to the night. "You stink."
As I showered, he came down and we talked, but he seemed resigned, and refused to fight Dottlinger. (I recognize it now: The victim by falling may rise; one vanquished without a fight isn't vanquished at all.) Afterwards we strolled to the Flight Line for a sandwich. Lightning skittered across the clouded face of Mount Arayat, silent flashes, then distant afterthoughts of quiet thunder. The walks and the streets and the grass gleamed wetly in the mist, the mist like tiny balls of light suspended in the cool night, the heart and coming of the rainy season delicately foretold. In spite of the threatening rain, the hesitant thunder, we walked quite slowly, speaking of home, of girls once touched, once known, of friends half-forgotten, drunken rides and football games. Once again Morning spoke of the girl from Madison. His face, drawn in fatigue, echoed the longing in his voice:
"God, man, I miss her sometimes. Nights like this, sometimes in my rack just at dawn when the light is soft and the air… so much I don't think I can stand it." He shook his head. "But, Christ, I'd probably just treat her the same way again. Shit. You know what I did once. I was drunk again, always, and we'd fought, always, but had half made-up and were making love on her couch, covered with tears and recriminations, but then she whispered something desperate about love – we'd prom… I'd made her promise never to say "love" – then all the anger came back, and I jerked out, then sat on the side of the couch, jacking off. She started crying again, moaning, and asking me "why? why?" in this goddamned sad little whimper. So I told her why, good old Joe Morning told her why: 'Less complicated than fucking you, bitch.' Isn't that lovely. You know, I wonder why she took so long to leave me." He looked up, waiting, it seemed, for me to speak. When I didn't, he seemed embarrassed by the confidence, and quickly walked on.
"Some of my best friends are bastards," I said as I caught up to him.
He smiled, then poked me on the arm, and said, "Yeah. Mine, too."
After eating sawdust hamburgers, we went back to the barracks and drank a fifth of Dewar's he had been saving for the market, sipping straight from the bottle, then dashing to the water fountain for a chaser, but by the time a sullen grey daylight floated like fog out of the dawn, we were chasing Scotch with Scotch, dreams with whiskey, laughter with tears.
At noon Novotny found Morning sleeping under my table, his head on the Lattimore translation of the Iliad that Ellen had given me for Christmas the third year we were married. It might have been a more suitable pillow for me, but I was on guard, crouched in the corner, asleep but not dreaming, the empty bottle cradled in my arms, a dead soldier.
I stayed abed and nursed my hangover the next day, but Morning was up before three and back in Town. Novotny, Quinn and Cagle brought him back just before curfew. He had passed out in Lenny's, and when they tried to move him upstairs, he woke up insane. With the arms draped around Novotny's and Quinn's shoulders he banged their heads together, then turned and ran out over Cagle. By the time they had collected themselves and gotten outside, Morning had disappeared, but they heard screams from the Keyhole, and raced there. Morning had ripped the door from its hinges as he ran in and had shouted, "I'm gonna kill me an airman." When the others came in, Morning was chasing the smallest airman in the world around and around a table. They wrestled him outside just as the Air Police jeep drove up. Luckily, Novotny knew one of the APs and persuaded him to let them take Morning back to base.
He woke me screaming and shouting as they tried to tug him out of the taxi. Novotny and Quinn finally sat on his back while Cagle tied his hands behind him; Cagle was gagging him with a dirty handkerchief when I got downstairs. A steady rain began to slant across the bands of light as we picked Morning up. Perhaps the rain, perhaps the drink, something had washed the mask from his face. As I leaned over to grasp his shoulders, the hate blazed from his eyes, stunning, savage, blood-lined eyes directing malevolence, loathing, and God-forbidden hate; the mad, mad eyes of St. John the Divine casting God's wrath and bitterness against the fruit of man, great, blood-lust hate to cleanse the world in blood and fare. "… And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great wine press of the wrath of God…" How many times had I heard Morning shouting that mad verse in a drunken and surely, half-serious vein. His anger condemned the earth, and I nearly dropped him when his hate flamed up at my face. I might have dropped him, but the eyes suddenly clouded and the mask returned like the closing of a great portal, a thick iron door trundled across the opening in the earth, sealing the rift in the crust which sank deep into the night, into the fire of eternal night.
Upstairs we threw him into the center of the stall and turned all the showers cold, turned them on him. He lay very still, his eyes closed. His previous noise had drawn a crowd, but Morning remained motionless, bathed in the rushing water, silent, until even the group of curious began to leave. By then the leather belt stretched enough, so he slipped his hands out. He sat up, untied his feet, but left the gag. Sitting there, his eyes clouded by streams of water, he very methodically removed his shoes, his fingers operating so exactly on the laces, denying their wet, wrinkled infirmity. Quickly, he threw his shoes at us. One, wet, slipped out of his hand and hit the ceiling; the other speared Cagle in the shin. While Cagle danced on one leg, we laughed, then were silent as we realized the silence, the waterfall silence, that we had broken for the first time. Before this, not a single word had been spoken.
Morning responded to the laughter. He scrabbled to his feet and began a damp, slippery stripper's parody of sloshy bumps and clammy grinds. He went on for long minutes, dancing, stripping, until he wore only the jockey shorts he wore to Town and the gag binding his face as tightly as wire imbedded around a live tree trunk. He did much more, stuffed his shorts down the drain, fell down, ripped the gag from his mouth and began screaming "Mother-fucker! Mother-fucker!" until finally we carried him to his bunk, tied him with web belts and shoe laces, gagged him once more, then left him to his struggles and dreams.
On the way to our rooms, Novotny said, "Just crazy. Sometimes he's just crazy. One time he's drunk okay, then he's crazier than a poisoned coyote. I saw him run through a wall in his girl's apartment in Madison one night just 'cause she had the rag on and wouldn't put out for him. Crazy. Don't know." He turned into his room, his broad back wrinkling in perplexity, a discomfort I also shared. Who knew Joe Morning? Surely not I.
From my bunk I could hear his teeth gritting, grinding through the gag, his cot rattling against the cold concrete floor, his bonds aching against the flesh, his voice, muted, silent, persuasive in the night.
I woke, wondered why because it was still dark, but then realized the silence. More out of sleepy habit than purpose, I got up to glance toward Morning's room and saw him wrapped in a blanket, walking slowly toward the stairwell. I dressed and followed, half-cursing, twice-intrigued (God, it seems as if I spent my whole life trailing after Morning, following him; two vaudeville acts, he the magician, me the strong man with a magic of my own, forever on the same endless circuit). I found him in one of the drainage ditches at the edge of the company area. The rain had changed to drizzle gently floating from gray, clotted clouds drifting ten feet above the barracks.