(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 running, his code allowed no running room, stepping up to the heaving carcass and swinging his cudgel against the withers with that mad terror named courage. The carcass convulsed. A three-hundred pound sow backed out of the cavern she had gnawed into the rank flesh, entrails and lights draped from her shoulders, congealed blood and flesh dripping from her grunting mouth. A jaded sneer wrinkled her nose and she was ready to fight for her pounds of flesh. I ran; she followed me in spirit. My grandfather spoke of pigs rooting among the corpses between the trenches; I couldn't stand that.)
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 funny."
"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 innocents," I said to the empty room. I caught the next bus back to Angeles, knowing that the next time I saw Morning, he would be hating me again. I knew too much about him. But then I always had.
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.
As I write these pages, I find that I love him both more and less as I begin to see behind the masks he troubled to wear. And now my hands are heavy, and his voice whispers to me, "… too much, too much,…" Then another echo. "Now I come down at night to make sure I'm not making a face, just to be sure." The task of masks, never knowing whose face will meet your own in the mirror, then for Morning to find a woman's face where his used to shine. How did you stand it, Joe, how? Why did you let it happen, and once done, why did you let it matter? Evil is in the world, Joe Morning, and man isn't meant to play with it. You touched it so often, sinned against and sinner, true innocent because you thought the world innocent and you guilty. You asked me, Do you see evil everywhere, or reflect it? And I answer your ghost now, Both, like all men, even you. And now I remember something I had forgotten. You said that the most terrible, frightening thing about that woman's face in the mirror was that it was still you. You were right, but you misunderstood why. You were scared inside because you realized that everyone had always seen through all your masks. All your trouble in vain. Why wish yourself grief? And in a world where so many are so ready to give it. And, God, sometimes I think I gave the most, and sometimes I think I saved you from the worst grief of all, and sometimes I just don't know.