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SIX STORIES

BY

John Sherman

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

College of Arts & Letters
Department of English

1982

ABSTRACT
SIx STORIES
BY

John Sherman

This is a collection of short stories in which the

characters look for love, meaning and alleviation of pain.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Many thanks to Sheila Roberts-McGuire for her kind

criticism and sharp insight.

ii

TABLE OF

Jackson Looks For Love. .
Three Views of Zion . . .

A Case Of Mixed Signals .

A Spring Day in Memphis, 1970

A Hostess's Lament. . . .

Top of the Pecking Order.

CONTENTS

15
30

46

58

JACKSON LOOKS FOR LOVE

Jackson wondered what the really pious men could be
thinking about when they looked at Dee. What were their
options? Her presence didn't exactly promote Spiritual
thoughts. No one could possibly be a happy celibate or a
happy husband if he were to catch her eye or any other part
of her body with his glance.

And what could the swami be thinking? His eyes, too,
were slow to leave her face.

The holy man was assisted out of his Mercedes and
placed on a golden litter--a stretcher spray—painted gold,
actually. He bounced a little as he was carried along the
path, not so much because he was being jostled, but because
of his own hyperactivity; the happy little man wouldn't keep
still. But when Dee placed a flower in his lap and touched
his feet, the bouncing ceased for a moment. Even the swami
was stunned by her beauty.

As the procession made its way into the house, Jackson
stood on the lawn and felt like a walking eyesore. He was
uncomfortable because of the grinning religious devotees all
around him; he also felt unsettled by the wealth in clear
view--as if he should be wearing livery in order to belong

in such a neighborhood.

2

He caught Dee's eye as she clamored to be near the
'holy man, and he stared at her for the thousandth time in
the month that he had known her. Leaving the scene and
starting to drink somewhere might make him feel better, he
thought. Maybe if he went to Del Santo's Bar he could find
a social worker or someone who would listen to him tell it
out loud. Maybe then he could rid himself of this traumat-
izing vision, these snapshot images in his head of Dee either
smiling and drinking at the bar, white robed and meditating,
or naked against his skin. These images weren't the great-
est source of pain; what really troubled him was the daily
increasing likelihood that this dark and lithe one would
never really give him her love.

They Spent so many hours together at work! There
were a few times when they sat down and almost managed a
normal conversation, one which wasn't marred by long silences
or Jackson's inability to articulate an idea. And as a re-
sult of these sessions and an occasional contact of eyes as
she rounded the corners of the bar with beers held aloft, he
had fallen into a fitful, dangerous state. The feeling was
inexorable: this woman, this girl-woman, raven beauty must
be his. He couldn't bear to see her round many more corners
without his taking some kind of action. It wasn't just lust,
he told himself. He wanted her body most immediately, of

course, but he also wanted her with him at all times, too.

3

Just proximity to Dee was enough to bring about a peaceful
state, and any of the regular customers at the bar would
readily agree. Their behavior was a testimonial in and of
itself: even when some of them were smashed and loudmouthed
or smashed and belligerent, they would become models of
gentility when Dee entered the scene cooing her disapproval.

Jackson moved toward the house as the swami was being
carried up the stairs. Dee had invited him to this gathering,
and he wasn't about to give up a legitimate reason to be near
her. So he entered too and found a piece of mat still un-
occupied in the back of the room where the swami would lecture.
He watched one hundred sets of flashing teeth and listened to
all of the joyful sighs as they swept across the room. And
he wondered: what was it about these people? Was this real
joy or just some manifestation of group psychosis? And the
swami--where did the lights in his eyes come from? Was it
just some kind of glaze (does curry do that?) or did it origi-
nate in some physical place deeper in his head, a center in
some zone that had either atrophied or never existed at all
in Jackson's own brain.

Dee came over and took his hand, and he momentarily
lost all awareness other than the sense of her touch.

...and before we begin our meditations, I

want to tell you again that you are very-,

special people. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna

said that among thousands and thousands of
men, perhaps one strives for perfection; and

out of these few among the multitudes,

perhaps one knows me in truth. Well I

wonder how it has happened that we have

gathered so many in one room who are work-

ing toward being that one knowledgeable

person...

Jackson almost laughed out loud. At least the swami
hadn't included him in his gaze as he said these words. This
would have been too ridiculous in view of the motives which
had brought him to this meeting. He pondered Krishna's words
as they had been recounted to him: one of thousands of
thousands? he thought. Maybe the swami was delivering the
wrong message. Maybe the word coming down from heaven had
to do with one man in thousands but this title wasn't intended
to be in reference to the knowledge of Krishna; maybe it had
to do with knowledge of Dee. Biblical knowledge. Jackson,
after all, had been one of the multitudes who had striven
for this knowledge, and now that he had tasted it, couldn't
he hope to be chosen winner of this contest? Were the signs
now right for him to take a bride? Such was the direction of
his fantasy as the swami droned on about the real nature of
knowledge and fulfillment.

The holy man talked about the rich and poor, the pious
and the amoral. He mentioned the radio preachers who had
claimed to have chatted with God, one saying that he had seen

the Great Being's forehead while peering out of a window on

the ninth floor of an insurance company's administrative

5

headquarters. The man said that God had addressed him by
name. Another religious leader claimed to have had a fire-
side chat with the Lord, and he said that God was really ir-
ritated by all of the pleasure-seeking going on in America.
Swami's audience showed particular delight with these little
tales, and the swami thought they were funny too. But he was
not without words of chastisement for these men, these "good
friends“ of God; and he didn't care for their lifestyles,

either.

This type of man who says that he has

God's ear or God's voice close to him;

he is often rewarded. People send him

money, and they wait in line to provide

services for him. But all of these men

are clinging to the pleasures of this earth

and this flesh, and they only waste their

time. They are possessed of lust and time

will only weaken them.

What's wrong with pleasure, Jackson wondered. The
thought crossed his mind that the swami didn't appear to be
practicing self-denial. To Jackson, he even looked like he
could use a brief fast! And why did he bother talking about
these other people? Jackson was certain that everybody in
the room-~in the audience, at least--was full of lust. And
most of them had the additional burden of lusting after and
envying all of the good things which the rich man already
enjoys and continues to lust after.

He wondered if he could ever truly believe in this

man. And could he truly believe in yoga. Was it a godsend

and could the swami be considered so, when they both only
took you so high but no higher. This man brought the answers
with him: love, fulfillment, redemption from pain; and yet
Jackson couldn't believe in changes so profound. If this holy
man were to bring love to all mankind--mutually exchanged
love--there would be dramatic changes made on this earth,
certainly. But what would you have to inject the people with
Vin order to satisfy them. Just simple love wouldn't cut it,
he thought. It wouldn't take care of the outward effects,
the aspects of self that get caught in the mirror. Even if
everyone was disposed toward goodwill, wouldn't we still
mourn the loss of our youth or covet the youth or beauty of
others? Jackson was certain that he would be mourning and
coveting when he got old.

...and through meditation we can find the

knowledge and the Way. Do not think about

power or wealth or sexual contact. We must

believe that our spirits are strong, that

Yoga is strong. Believe that all else in

this life is fleeting-~even desire.

Jackson almost missed this last remark entirely. It
didn't exactly resonate for him, as all sound became subordi-
nate to his steadfast focus on Dee.

Dee liked to talk about the exploits of one swami or
another. By doing yoga she said that they could all remain

healthy until they just decided to pass on! And one yogi

with a twelve syllable name could run uphill into the noonday

7
sun without losing his breath and without squinting or sweat-
ing. Another one had a reputation for sweating, but the odOr
was of such an exquisite sweetness that it was his smell that
attracted devotees, not his teachings!

And Dee had told him of Ram Dass' master who ingested
500 milligrams of LSD and did not Show any outward signs.
Jackson wondered how well this swami in the room with him
would handle those 500 milligrams. Wouldn't he at least want
a cigaret when that kind of dose hit his blood?

So Jackson's interest would thereafter include yogis
and mountains and jasmine smell and LSD and awakening--and
breasts. Was this life one big practical joke being played
exclusively on him? This absolute goddess could hardly shut
up about spiritual peace and enlightment, and yet her appear-
ance could only send a male's mind spinning with base thoughts—-
thoughts of selfish earthly gratification.

Jackson didn't think he had a clue as to how to be-
gin to please her, and that, of course, was his biggest prob-
lem. He was so keyed up to please that he couldn't find his
sense of humor and couldn't maintain his sense of cool, either.
He saw his struggle and his lame responses to her as if they
were being judged in competition. How could he possibly offer
her more than what must have been contained in a thousand
other men's and boys' entreaties or bribes, most of these
communicated while fawning and almost drooling. At least a

few of that thousand must have been charming, handsome, or

8
fast. Some of them must have had money. All of them had to
have been doing something more impressive than cooking and
doing dishes. They could come into the bar, sit in her section,
and think of cute things to say to her when she returned with
their steaks and martinis. Jackson could stand in the back
room and do the same thing as he was preparing the steaks and
the cole slaw; but he couldn't quite see her taking up per-
manently with this greasy one behind the counter when she
could have her choice of any of a thousand handsome and af-
fluent young hopefuls, their bodies molded into three-piece
suits., This sweet young thing--this lovely face and lovely
ass as well: an exquisite piece of ideal woman youth, and
he could almost be certain that she wasn't interested in his
plans. She wasn't thinking of him as she flirted with other
men at the bar; that he knew. She also couldn't be think-
ing of him when she went home without him, alone or otherwise.
Jackson was in absolute agony with desire. She had
allowed him to take her home just once, and the events of
that one night had him cruelly bothered. He desired a repeti-
tion of those events and because he had waited so long, he
began to consider whether she had given her body to him in
order to remove a flaw from her life (a mote from her eye?),
this over-eager prep cook having been so often like an addi-
tional appendage of late. Could she have attempted to rid

herself of him in such a sweet manner, she doing him a favor,

9
in fact? Could it have been one night's worth of remembrance,
a Spiritual keepsake intended for just another one of her
cloying, working-stiff friends? Whether she would turn out
to be a true love or simply an altruistic acquaintance in
his past, Jackson didn't know.

Several days after the swami's delivery, he was pre-
occupied more than ever with the lack of signals from Dee.
She was still lovely and warm and light around him, but she
would not encourage him to believe that they would be lovers
again. So after closing time one night, he finally managed
to confront her with a weakly uttered "What're you doing to-
night?"

"Ohhh. First I'm gonna have one beer, and then I'm
gonna meditate about what it's like to be off my feet," she
said.

"Well, when are you planning on coming home with me,"
Jackson said. "If you were doing me a favor the other night,
then do it again. I need you."

"I did myself a favor," she said, as if she could
never be less than agreeable. And she further responded
by getting her coat and keeping pace with him through the
all but lifeless streets of 2 A.M. A few minutes' trudge
put them in the relative comfort of Jackson's converted gar-
age apartment, and there they began what in his hopes was to
ibe a nightly ritual: wine and proximity for warmth; and very

soon thereafter they took to bed and each others arms.

10

Although Jackson could think of nothing more intensely
physical than sexual contact--other than pain, maybe--he found
himself, in the act of loving Dee, more close to leaving his
body than ever before. As in a love scene made in Hollywood
or within the ideal consummation as it is envisioned by a
betrothed virgin, he became released from self, the pleasure
and emotional investment so great as to put him in a zone far
behond that which he had ever reached through drugs or medita-
tion._ He would think it odd later that at this time, within
the embrace of the woman of Everyman's dreams, he was truly
no longer there--just not with her at all.

Dee left for the ashram around noon the next day. She
had to meditate and otherwise prepare herself for that night's
ten hours of rounds at the bar. Jackson laid in bed all after-
noon, as he was intent upon neglecting all forms of respon—
sibility. This was his day off, and he was content to lay
around and contemplate what life could be like with the woman
who had just left his bed. 1

Dee called on her break time that evening, said she
had something important to say in a tone for Jackson remini-
scent of a high school girl's apologetic declaration that
she would no longer be allowed to go steady any more. "I've
got to tell you," she said, "I'm taking the bus to New York
tomorrow. I've been called there by the swami. He's asked

the to join him."

11

"I understand," Jackson said, for lack of anything
more sincere or eloquent in mind. And in fact he did under;
stand. The swami and New York City and doing a line of work
other than waiting on college kids and young professionals
was much more appealing and certainly more rewarding than
staying in this podunk town in order to accept his adoration.
He also didn't know the extent to which he had made this ador-
ation known to her. He had grasped at every opportunity to
be near her but to have really expressed his feelings would
have been foolish, he thought, especially with a woman he
hardly knew. Besides, Dee had already laid waste to expres-
sion of affection. She used the word love more often than
the swami, had already expressed love for every employee of
the bar, and had even murmured I love you as she hurried to
get through what might have been their last communication.
Who knew what these words really meant to her! Jackson
guessed that she perceived of the use of the word love in
the same way in which she would generally dispense it-;in
its generic sense, or "swami love" you might say. Love for
a man or woman didn't necessarily connote anything more signi-
ficant than love for a kitten or even a tree or a rock. So
Jackson accepted this I love you in silence, returned the
phone to its resting position, and sat, not bothering to re-
place the natural light in the room as it faded with evening
into night. Three hours later, after the blackened room had

given him enough of an indication of what nlslife was to be

12
like without her, he called her back to say that he would
be joining her shortly.

Jackson arrived in New York, life savings in his pocket,
and started looking for a place to live. He knew that he
would not find housing at the ashram--he wasn't one of the
chosen ones--but he thOught that he would try to find a dive
somewhere nearby so as to stay as Close to Dee as possible.

As it turned out, the only affordable dives were in Brooklyn.
Even the ashram's seedy neighborhood on the lower east side
Seemed exclusive when the rents were measured against a pocket-
ful of tens and twenties.

So within a few days Jackson found his hovel in Brook-
lyn and also established himself as a voluntary member of the
swami's kitchen crew. Having acquired access to food and
shelter in such short and relatively painless order, Jackson
thought the move at least a partial success. His only problem
was Dee.

In his first two days in New York, contact with the
woman had been limited to a glad-to-see-youfagain hug and a
few affectionate glances across long rooms. She was part of
the swami's entourage--one of his personal secretaries, in
fact; and Jackson hadn't yet found her when she wasn't in
the attendance of her master.

After three days in New York, Jackson came to the con-

clusion that he was lonely and that this feeling wasn't in

13

keeping with his plans. He finished a third evening's set
of dishes and afterward spent an hour on the st00p, watching
the dusk weaken and the traffic lights gain prominence in
the sky along lst Avenue.

He wondered how he could be living in an enclave of
loving people without feeling any love. He also wondered
how he could have been so taken by this woman when she had
so many times acted not like a lover but like a friendly
waitress. "What's your horoscope," she had said. "Oh, you
look so much like a Leo," she had said. "I'll get you another
beer and sure, I'll continue to drink with you after closing
time," she said. And this is how you respond, he thought.
She takes you home‘chheck out the prospects for a good time,
and you repay her by chasing her along nine hundred miles of
interstate!

The man was fast becoming convinced that he had been
a fool. Had the swami come out to console him, even he might
not have been able to change his mind. Jackson had found a
companion of beauty and kindness and absolutely transcendent
sexual conduct, and he thought--he actually presumed--that he
might remain with her, that life could actually gain a luster
instead of losing one. But now he felt as if he had somehow
been made God's fool, or His special object of contempt. I'm
God's little dog or God's little hankie, he thought.

He knew that he couldn't work this one through with

drugs or meditation. He also knew that he stood to gain

l4
nothing by continuing to be passive. So he went into the
private quarters of the ashram and found her door. He was
shaking, and his knock and his voice were weak; but when Dee
answered to his name in a joyful tone, he thought all of his
fears had been ridiculous. He entered and embraced her, and
as she accepted his embrace, she smiled and thought of the

next day's schedule of events.

THREE VIEWS OF ZION

Jess thought of his father as a man without a soul.

He was certain that since 1912, four years before he himself
had been born, the old man had somehow been operating auto-
matically--like a.modern factory machine. It was during the
winter of 1912 that his father had his first premonition of
imminent death. According to this vision he was supposed to
die some time in April of that year, the exact date having
been long—since forgotten by everyone.

But some time in early April, a few days before the
appointed time, he quit eating and sleeping in order to ready
himself for the moment. And when the day came, he was ready
as far as family and friends were concerned; people said that
on that day and the one following, he sat immobile and per-
fectly upright in one of the kitchen chairs. With eyes and
jaw wide open and with drool occasionally seeping, he stayed
rigid for those two days. One of Jess's step-brothers in-
sisted thatthe old man never truly awakened from this kitchen
trance; thattfluacomplete lack of facial expression was brought
about by those two days, and that his personality ("if such a
wisp of mind function could be defined thus") had glazed over

and hardened then. It was a step-brother who said that when

15

16
his father arose from the chair, saying nothing and showing
no signs of recognition of anyone, he had left his soul be-
hind.

So everyone in the family grew accustomed to living
with this empty thing. He didn't bother anyone and, oddly
enough, he was still able to conduct his business affairs
with skill. In fact, during the next ten years that he re-
mained in Poland, his investments brought him considerable
wealth.

Jess's father took a second wife a short time after
his personality left him. The first one had gone. quietly of
fever, and within a couple of months he had agreed to accept
the dowry of another young girl. This second wife was Jess's
mother, and he often wondered at the fact that the marriage
had been consummated at all. ~Notwithstanding his father's
retention of business acumen, Jess couldn't fathom how such
a lifeless being could father a child.

Jess's memories of Poland were of tranquil and un-
eventful days except for when he thought of 1928, his last
year there. His mother he remembered as a loving soul, and
he didn't recall feeling threatened by the occasional presence
of her husband, the graying old man of the frozen expression.
All of this changed when he was twelve years old, though.

His mother died in childbirth inthat year and his father had

somehow had the dreams of his own death reawakened. Not more

17
than a week after his wife's passing, Jess's father again
became certain of his impending demise.

This second revelation of doom had an impact on his
father so strong as to force him to behave entirely out of
character. His face showed real expression like no one had
seen in over fifteen years, and he regained an outward de-
cisiveness that everyone had forgotten he possessed. To all
who would listen, he announcedthat he was putting his oldest
sons in charge of his properties and selling his other in-
vestments outright so as to be able to retire to Palestine
with his youngest son. What the old man wanted in the Holy
Land was a choice site for his grave; a place overlooking the
Western Wall. So, before the supposed day of reckoning had
come, father and son arrived in Jerusalem and found a dingy
set of rooms and an ideal burial site.

On his father's pre-determined date of death, and dur-
ing the two days following, Jess sat alone in the apartment
and watched as his father remained slumped in a chair, shiver—
ing and moaning the whole time. At the end of the third day,
he again became the walking nonentity that Jess had hitherto
known. Once again, he shuffled from place to place, seemingly
without purpose and in an automatic fashion. He wouldn't oc-
cupy his grave for another decade hence—-not until the spring
of 1938. But his demeanor would betray the fact that he had

made arrangements long in advance.

18

Jess remained bitter even after the old man was dead
and buried and the bulk of his fortune had been passed on to
him. The ten years that they had spent in Jerusalem during
which, according to his father, the angel of death had been
cheated, he too had been cheated. For him Jerusalem was com-
prised entirely of dirty Arabs and doddering Jewish men like
his father. Jess felt as if evernyew in the city excepting
himself was waiting there to die, and he was almost correct
on that account. Virtually the entire community was made up
of pensioners or beggars who had journeyed there only for the
privilege of being buried near the holiest spot on earth.
They all had it-in their heads that proximity to the holy
city would bring them special favors in death. Very few of
them had brought their families, and in his ten years there,
Jess had grown up with no friends to speak of. His time had
been spent in drudgery: cooking and cleaning and attending
the yeshivah as his father insisted that he do.

Jess was most bitter about the opportunities which he
had missed these past ten years in Poland. There he would
have had the friends and enjoyment that he yearned for. There
also, he would have been treated to innumerable introductions
to pretty girls of good breeding. He had been cheated out of
all of this; he had been cheated out of Poland altogether.

The only meaningful experience that Jess had had with
a girl was with Sarah, and his father had not approved in the

least. In fact, Jess wondered if the old man had any feeling

19
left at all for women and girls. There had been no intro-
duction to them until he had nearly turned twenty-one, and
those were the result of the matchmakers' cajoling for so
long a time. His father finally did agree to accept just
three invitations. Father and son dressed in their best black
and attended the obligatory teas. Afterward, Jess saw actual
jubilation in his father's eyes when he declared that he had
found fault with each girl in turn.

Sarah was a different Case. The old man didn't get a
chance to screen her entrance into his son's life. She was
standing in the middle of the street, peering up at his apart-
ment window, when Jess noticed her. He could see well enough
from that vantage point to realize that she was pretty, and
he ran down the steps to see what she needed.

Sarah was looking for the address of a printer when
Jess approached. She asked in Hebrew if he knew the-man,
and when he told her in Yiddish that he lived next door, she
frowned and quickly made her way toward the neighbor's stair-
way. A couple of days later the printer was not at home when
she came around again, and she went to Jess's door requesting
that he deliver some materials to the man as soon as possible.
He received two similar requests on Sunday and Monday of the
following week, and when she came to him a third time in as
many days, he declared that, as her unpaid courier, he should
at least be given some small amount of information regarding

that which was to be delivered. She smiled at him then, and

20
accepted his offer of tea, at which time his father showed
his disgust with a short gutteral sound and a hasty exit from
the room. For Sarah the old man's behavior was a bit discon-
certing, particularly since she could find nothing in her ap-
pearance that would warrant such a negative response. She
had worn her long sleeves for the city and a scarf to cover
her hair, and she had not done anything to annoy the man un-
less a young woman's smile was for him a source of irritation.
She considered that the old man might see her as intent upon
enticing his son, and if this were the case, then there was
nothing one could do to please the fellow.

Over tea, Sarah told Jess about her membership in a
Zionist youth corps which had been formed in Galicia. She
told about the passage by train from Krakow to Sofia and from
Sofia to Constantinople. From there they had taken the Cairo
Express as far as Jerusalem. She said that the corps' great-
est hOpe was to be a self-sufficient community within a year,
but for now they were dependent on outside sources. Her de-
liveries to the printer, she said, were proofs of news bulle-
tins intended for consumption by the Zionist groups and their
benefactors who still remained in Europe. These proofs might
better have been called propaganda sheets, and this she ad-
mitted. She showed Jess some photographs of herself, a
comely friend, and a few of the most strong and handsome men

of the settlement to which she belonged, all of them looking

21
as if life couldn't offer better rewards. Sarah then had him
read the caption that corresponded with one of the photos. It
read:

David S. and Sarah M., original members of

the Aliyah Zionist Youth Corps of Galicia,

and Rachel G., Uri C., and Josef S., founding

members of the Warsaw Zionist Federation, are

shown as they inspect the ripening crop of

cotton. They are still living in tents at

their tiny enclave seven kilometers from

Jerusalem, and work often entails many long

hours of tilling the parched soil in the

desert sun. But you Won't find anybody com-

plaining in these ranks!

Sarah didn't know how to complain, unless a frown can
be classified as a complaint. She did frown at Jess whenever
they exchanged greetings--that is, whenever he refused to
take her lead and speak Hebrew with her. Over this first cup
of tea together, Jess did enough complaining for two people—-
about the weather, the country, the size and appearance of
his father's rooms, and even about the quality of the tea.
But Sarah would agree with none of it. She didn't have a
discontented thought in her mind, and this was in November
when there isn't a corner in all of Palestine which isn't
gray and damp and cold. She was like so many of her Zionist
brethren who could look upon the future with nothing less
than hope. This land was the fertile inheritance of a nation
for her, and as Jess regarded her shining eyes, he thought

cynically of these "new pioneers" as they called themselves;

these people who spit in the sand and expect flowers to grow.

22

Sarah allowed Jess to chatter on, mostly about him-
self. He hadn't had a guest in the apartment in as long as
he could remember, and it felt like an extraordinary holiday
to have her there. It had been weeks since he had spoken to
a girl! He told her about his hometown, his mother, his two
step-brothers in Poland. He wanted her to know that he too
had left everything behind and that, because he had lived in
Palestine for so long, he could undoubtedly be of service to
her organization. He did have a few legitimate selling points,
after all. He had lived next door to the printer for ten
years, had done some bookkeeping for him, and had developed
a good rapport with him. He was also able to speak a fair
amount of English, and that could certainly ease matters
when dealing with the authorities.

Sarah accepted all of this information with some amuse-
ment, and within a couple of weeks she actually started bring-
ing some business his way. He became a liaison between the
settlement and the printer, and he also began to accompany
the settlement members whenever they had dealings with the
British. He began to feel useful for the first time in his
life, and he even felt a tinge of remorse for ever having
spoken ill of Palestine. This land did not seem so desolate
when one found oneself in the company of friends.

The settlement members rarely paid cash in order to
get things done unless, of course, they were dealing with

Britons or Arabs. But Jess would receive fresh eggs and milk

23
on occasion, and he also considered the time spent with Sarah
as a form of payment; she was warmth and companionship as
he had never known.

Sarah was quick to make Sure that her relationship
with Jess would not remain a simple friendship. She was
naturally effusive and when an appointment or transaction
had gone particularly well, or at the least indication of
good fortune in any regard, she would grab his hand and squeeze
it or even press her body against his. This sometimes be-
came difficult for Jess to bear, he being a twenty-two-year
old with no outletfor his desires. Yet he didn't want any
of it to end; he wanted to continue to feel her touch. There
were rare times when, after a long day, he would grow weary
of her dreams and unflagging optimism. But he enjoyed the
great majority of the time they had together, and the more
imtimate they became the less willing he was to spend the
hours without her.

There was a winter journey together which was especial-
ly delightful. Jess and Sarah and four or five of her com-
rades took a wagon ride to Haifa in order to pick up a ship-
ment of new harrows which a philanthropist had contributed.
Upon arrival at customs, Jess was able to speak with a decent
Englishman who cheerfully expedited their procurement.

The next day, on the way back to the settlement, Sarah

and Jess were separated from the rest of the people in the

24

wagon by the array of newly-acquired packing crates. Jess
didn't know who initiated the type of behavior that ensued,
and Sarah didn't know or care; both knew, however, that she
had been the one to stick her tongue in his mouth and not
vice-versa. For what must have been a couple of hours they
kissed in this way, the donkeys all the while pulling their
burden up the gradually inclining road from the sea.

In the months immediately following this journey, Sarah
and Jess became affectionate at every opportunity. And Sarah
no longer kept their affair a private matter. She would kiss
him spontaneously in front of any or all of her comrades and
even while walking down the street or standing in the market
place. What Jess would later consider odd was that she never
spoke of the future as it related to the two of them. For
the settlement, for Jerusalem, for a Jewish homeland, there
were great possibilities and spectacular plans in the works;
but never was there anything said about their part in it all.
At every one of their encounters, Jess began to wonder if she
was saving this sort of talk--if in fact she was waiting for
a proposal of marriage. And yet she never indicated that
that was a concern for her.

By spring Sarah was coming into the city several times
a week, and Jess would spend each day with her as she ran
her errands. He began staying overnight at the settlement

at this time, as he would find any excuse to escort her home

25

in the evening. On these occasions, he ate in the communal
dining hall and shared a tent with one of the single men of
the group. After he had done this a few times, there Was a
particular night when Sarah didn't act pleased about letting
him retire to his tent. They had been strolling along the
endrows of the cotton and wheat fields, and when he suggested
that they begin the walk back to their tents, she frowned and
then clung to him in response. Jess realized then why marri-
age was of no real importance for Sarah. She had touched him
in such a way that he no longer had the resolve to return to
his tent. They lay in the spring field then and knew each
other sexually, she doing so with obvious pleasure and no ap-
parent shame.

Jess was completely bewildered by this first experience.
He felt sullied, somehow--as if he had been with a prostitute.
She had been the dominant one, leading his hands and body as
she saw fit. And the whole time she had smiled and moaned
and writhed; he was certain that if he hadn't been in such a
complete state of confusion, he would have been terrified!

When it was over they lay in the new grass not talking
for some time. They were both dazed but as they rested to—
gether Sarah continued stroking his back to the extent that
he was certain that she wanted him again. When he realized
this, he got up, put his clothes on, and waited for her to do
the same. For him this night's show of affection had already

been too much.

26

Sarah clung to him once again that night. She wanted
to know if anything had gone wrong, at which time Jess assured
her that nothing had. But in the days and nights which fol-
lowed he Could not help but show irritation with the things
she said and did. He was making his disappointment obvious.
Until their night of passion in the field, he had looked upon
her as his prospective wife; but he could no longer think
this way with any degree of certainty or comfort. She knew
that his coldness was directed toward her but she chose not
to question him about it in the hope that it would fade away.

Within a couple of days something happened which served
to alter Jess's mood for the better. Of an afternoon in the
second week in April, he returned home from an outing to find
his father seated eyes open and motionless in one of the kitchen
chairs. This in itself was not an uncommon event, but after
a few minutes, when Jess had not heard even a mumble or a
wheeze, he faced his father at close range and looked into
his pale, genuinely dead eyes. After succumbing to a moment
of shock, Jess walked away from the body with mixed feelings
of amusement, fear, and relief. It was uncanny. The old fool
had planned for half a lifetime to die sitting in a kitchen
chair in April, and he had died in just that way. The man
had gotten everything he had ever wanted--right down to the
last detail, he thought. His dreams had been real; they

just hadn't been accurate with regard to the year.

27

At the funeral the next day, Jess was accompanied by
Sarah, the rabbi, and a cadre of old men from the neighbor-
hood who Jess suspected of being regular funeral-goers rather
than actual friends of the deceased. When it was all over
and the procession had returned from the gravesite, his grand
mood became ebullient. With the exception of shivah and the
prayers to be said, he had been released entirely from years
of filial responsibility.

The seven days of mourning passed serenely, and after-
wards Jess again acted happy to be at Sarah's side. His
father's death had so changed his frame of mind that he could
no longer be displeased about anything that had come before.
Their relationship returned to an affectionate norm and they
took every opportunity to kiss or embrace.

Their lives wouldn't remain long in this mutual state
of peace and lightheartedness, however, as Jess once again
became negatively affected by Sarah's actions. He was sit-
ting in the dining room of the settlement when he noticed
something that he had never seen a woman do. He saw Sarah
getting coffee for the two of them, and while standing in
line, she pinched the behind of one of her comrades-~a big,
stocky red-faced fellow who laughed all the time. He laughed
then, too, and she kissed this oaf , he returning her brief
kiss. This wasn't the first time that Jess had been a wit-
ness to some form of public display at the settlement. He

had seen Sarah with more than one male friend, caressing or

28
clasping hands in a happy moment. This he had taken as a
Show of simple affection among friends. ‘But this latest
platonic touch—-this pinch and light kiss of the red-faced
boy-—had done something to implant in Jess's mind a feeling
that he had not recognized previously; he felt intense dis-
trust.

There were rumors afoot across the entire length of
Palestine concerning the Zionists and their free-thinking
ways. Some of the old Jews in the city said that these peo—
ple shared more than material goods; that they took socialist
'ideology to a hazardous and perverse extreme. Jess now sensed
some truth in what he had previously dismissed as spiteful
expressions of jealousy. He finally had discovered what had
bothered him on that night in the fields. It wasn't that
she had been the decisive and-controlling one; it had been
the clarity with which she had shown him that she knew what
she was doing! This innocent pinch had revealed something
that he had known all along but had refused to accept.

Jess and Sarah took a stroll that night, again passing
by the new cotton and wheat fields. But rather than walking
arm in arm as they had so often done before, they kept a dis-
tance due to Jess's obvious desire to do so. When they reach-
ed a point where the settlement lights no longer retained a
brightness for them, Sarah wanted to know what was troubling

him. At first she got an unintelligible response. "Nothin'"

29

she thought he had said. But when she again asked him to
share his troubles, she became involved in the conflict that
she had sensed would come.

"You came to me a used woman," he said.

"A used woman?" she said.

"You didn't save youself for me, do you deny it?"

"No, I do not. I have not saved myself for you or
anyone. In fact, I have not saved myself many times over!"

That was the last thing he heard her say. He turned
away and walked up the main road never to set foot in the
settlement again. He had saved himself, he thought. From
life with a loose woman. From a lifetime spent in this desert
wasteland. He had saved himself, all right. He would return
to Poland with his father's money now. He would return to

civilization.

A CASE OF MIXED SIGNALS

March in these hills is a thing of beauty and some-
times a bitch, too. There are times when you can smell the
presence of the Lord through the trees: the rhododendron
and laurels are budding, just-melted snow flows everywhere
down from the mountains, and the pines become scented anew.
But then there are the cold, rainy days on end when winter
returns and makes it hard to believe that the Lord is with
us at all, or that anything fresh and young has ever lived.

It was quite a few years ago, on a cold and rainy day
in March, when I took Randall to the Knoxville airport. I
was driving past there anyhow because I was checking out
the prospects for a job in the city. Randall came along
because he needed an early flight to Nashville, and at the
Tri-cities airport he would have waited until some time in
the afternoon before getting a prop-plane headed for New-
port, Sevierville, Knoxville, Centerville, Murfreesboro, and
every little town and holler with a landing strip in all of
middle and east Tennessee.

Randall's father was dying in Nashville, and his mother
had sent money so he could get there as fast as he could.
The night before we set out for Knoxville, right before he
passed out, Randall began moaning about the money. He was

30

31
upset about his father too, of course, but he had been ex-
pecting that for a long time. Having to take money from his
mother, though, and especially given the circumstances, was
enough to make a veteran alcoholic yearn to get liquored with
renewed fury.

"Thirty-five years old, and my mama's got to send me
the money." The words came out in slurs and half-moans.
"Jesus why, Jesus why, why, why?"

It had been raining all day, it was going to rain all
night, and Randall's mournful cries and the dull light from
one lamp weren't about to bring any cheer to the room.

"What do you mean 'Jesus why,'" I finally said after
hearing it four or five times in a row. Each repetition had
been quieter than the last, though, and by the time I got
around to asking, he was snoring into the arm of his chair.

Well, I suppose that Randall was more upset about his
father dying than he was about the money or anything else.
But he had all kinds of problems that spring, of which a1-
cohol was not the least, and he wasn't taking any of it well.
That next morning, I had to shake him for close to half an
hour before I could get him out of bed and into the car. I
remember being really annoyed because there was a steady
drizzle coming down, the roads would be slick, and we were
going to have to make better—than-average time in order for
him to catch his flight. Meanwhile, I was having to hold him

up to get him out to the car.

32

"Dammit, Randall, you got to be able to walk on your
own," I said.

He grunted and fell into the front seat as if he were
a drowning man who had just touched shore. Then he didn't.
move until thirty miles outside of Knoxville, so for the bet-
ter part of the trip, all I had for company were the wind-
shield wipers, the "See Rock City" signs, and what little
scenery I could make out through an hour of fog soup and
gray.

I There are some beautiful little valleys along Route
137, and some of the ridgetops afford fine views on clear
days. But then there are quite a few valleys that are ugly
as sin even on the clearest of days: most everyone drives
through praying for divine intervention in order to guarantee
that their eight cylinders and all that downshifting, acceler-
ating, double-clutching,and what-all will carry then away
from the devastation.

It's the red clay and coal slag that gets to you.
And there are all kinds of ignorant white folks, too, hang-
ing around the main streets with their malnutrition bloat,
whiskered jowls, and bad teeth. God only knows how they
manage to stay alive. There are hollers, especially along
the way from Brooksville to Newport, where the coal and tim-
ber companies once set up their land-movers and their armies
of gray faces. They moved on years ago, but the places they
left behind still haven't gotten over their little sojourns.

You can tell they had done something with a vengeance;

33
whole countries shipped off to Nashville or Atlanta or Chat-
tanooga to make electricity or two-by-fours. And what's
left--the bare sides of the hills and the shacks and worn—out
families--looks as though it had been jerked around by the
years. My father says that in this part of the country, the
way it used to be was that you would see the topsoil wear-
ing away to red clay only on a rare occasion. Now you can
drive through one valley after another, and the roadsides
and all the farmers' fields are red with clay. Even the
tobacco crop looks sickly.

It has been so many years since that gray spring
morning. I think it was March of '70, but somehow it seems
like a lifetime since then--as if I ought to have grand-
children sitting at my feet. It must be because Randall
isn't around anymore, and it Seems like so much time has
passed. So much time.

Well it must have been March of 1970 because the new
highway hadn't been built yet, and because I remember that,
as we got close to the airport that morning, we were talking
about the upcoming elections in Knoxville; and '70 was the
first year that Taylor Blanchard ran for mayor.

"You be sure and look up ole Taylor," Randall said
through his hangover. "Just as soon as you get to Knoxville.
You tell him that I'm a good friend of yours, and he'll give

you a job just like that." He made a feeble effort to snap

34
his fingers without crushing his cigaret, and failed on both
counts. "You know, we were roommates one year in college,"
he said as if he were giving me some new information. "Fif-
teen years ago, and even then he was talking about being some-
thing Special; said he'd be senator of Tennessee some day,
and damned if I don't believe him now."

Randall would have been disappointed. Blanchard never
did get too far in his bid for the senate. His divorce turned
out to be way too messy for that, and to a lot of people he
just didn't seem bright enough for the job. Back in that
first election, though, he was still married to his first
wife, and not that many people cared about how smart he was;
he won the mayor's race easily that year.

In the 1970 primaries, Blanchard had been one of the
first candidates to start talking law and order. Everybody
from Richard Nixon on down had given it lip service now and
then, but "ole Taylor" was speaking from personal experience
and he really milked the issue for all it was worth. Before
going into politics he had been a tough cop on the Narco Squad
in Knoxville, and on Friday and Saturday nights he was always
the one in streetclothes leading the men in blue into houses
around the university where pot parties were going on. He
took some criticism during the election campaign--from "mealy-
mouthed liberals," as he put it--because sometimes he didn't
bother to get a warrant, and also he had a habit of using

bullhorns, firing shotguns into the air, and lobbing tear gas

35
on occasion just to rout a few college kids out of their
apartments and into the hands of the law. Somehow, too, he
always managed to get himself interviewed on the eleven o'clock
news after every bust.

In those few months before the '70 election, Blanchard
was actually taking more heat than the occasional criticism.
And you might say that he did everything he could to meet
fire with fire. A little dynamite in the middle of the night
had torn up his campaign chief's Lincoln, so in an equally
anonymous manner, the Taylor Blanchard for Mayor Committee
sent out its own forays: cars full of drunken rednecks who
set off their own explosives at the opponent's headquarters
the next night. They shot off their automatic weapons all
over town, too.

Blanchard and his crew did something else that was
dirty, too. A friend of his owned a local T.V. station, and
he had one of his cameraman following the other candidate as
he worked the Porter Street area of town for votes. Then
this friend had one of his reporters doing interviews with
people who were supposed to have been on the street at the
time; men mostly; a couple of them with earrings and most
with beards that wouldn't scrape a newborn baby's ass. The
T.V. audience got a shot of the candidate, a shot of these
pansies endorsing the candidate , and a second shot of the
candidate--who was scrawny and had a high—pitched voice in
the best of times. Taylor probably figured that people would

be sitting in front of their sets all over town muttering,

"That fucking queer!" And they probably were!

36

"Well, what am I gonnamdo for Taylor?" I asked as
Randall began to slump into the car seat. The lights of
Knoxville International were just coming into view, and the
rain had picked up some. "Get a haircut and a shave, first
thing," he said. "And buy yourself a new shirt. 'After that,
all you gotta do is go in there and look serious. I know
Taylor, and I have to believe that he's serious about this
election. So you just let him know how serious you are about
seeing him get elected. 'You don't need any reasons, just
look him in the eye."

"All right, I'll do it," I lied.

"Sure you'll do it, and you'll get a steady job,
too," he said.

Randall didn't care for steady work for himself--at
least not as long as I had known him. Like Taylor Blanchard,
Randall had a friend at a T.V. station--the manager of CBS,
Johnson City. He had it worked out so that he could come
in two or three days a week to edit some film or cover a car
wreck or a high school football game.' The only problem was
that he had to drink beer on the job in order to keep his
hands steady behind the camera, and while his friend the
manager never said anything about it, he was finding less
and less work for Randall to do as that spring wore on. Later
that summer, when Randall moved on, he was only working one

day a week.

37

"When Taylor hires you, maybe you'll get to meet his
wife; I bet she's something," he said. I looked his way
and he leered.

Randall's "show of affection" was for Miss Dogwood
Festival of Knoxville, 1967. Mrs. Taylor Blanchard was a
dark-haired, dark-eyed, cap-toothed, big-breasted beauty who
was no doubt able to muster quite a few votes from that part
of the electorate that wanted the opportunity to see more of
her front on the six o'clock news or the society page. Her
talk-show voice wasn't bad either.

"She does look like a nice piece, though, doesn't she?"
Randall said wistfully, as if he wanted to savor her image
a while longer in his mind.

'When Blanchard became mayor of Knoxville that first
time, it turned out to be an anti—climax, not so much be-
cause of the ease with which he got elected, but more so due
to the prominent place on the news that the sheriff's race
had taken. The dirt and the bombs and the bullets that had
been slung in the mayoral race weren't nearly as rough and
tough and full of conviction as the events surrounding Little
Jim O'Connor's battle with Big Ted Tucker. Big Ted had a
strong lead in the polls, probably because he was big and
tall and he showed up at all the banquets and speaking en—
gagements with his prim little Christian wife at his side
along with five of the most wholesome kids you'd ever want

to see. He'd get up on the podium and deliver a helluva

38
speech about innocent victims of crime, the need for more
frequent use of the electric chair, the sanctity of mother:
hood and the law, the will of Jesus, and all of those crowd-
pleasing issues; and he'd talk about his opponent in a preachy
sort of tone, too. Most everybody liked Big Ted.

Little Jim O'Connor was white and Christian, too, but
he was facing extortion charges due to a couple of big account-
ing errors left over from his post as city clerk. That in-
formation didn't Sit well with some of the taxpayers, and
neither did the publicity about the fact that when he came
into the office of city clerk, he and his first wife had lived
in a modest little frame house; and when he left office, he
had a different wife and a palace over in a subdivision where
the people are so rich, they don't need to pay any taxes.

Little Jim didn't like that kind of publicity, even
though he was a Republican. And in particular, he didn't
like listening to Ted Tucker slinging it his way. 80 two days
before the election, he released a sworn affadavit to the
press from one Fanny Mae Jefferson, attesting to the fact
that Big Ted Tucker, while a cop on the beat some years pre-
vious, had "arrested" her, and instead of charging her with
a crime and hauling her in for questioning, he raped and
sodomized her in the back seat of his squad car. Now this
information alone would certainly have put a sizeable crimp
in Big Ted's chances, but the other half of it really sealed

his fate; Miss Jefferson was toothless, black, and three

39
hundred pounds of prostitute. Needless to say, Little Jim
the Extortionist won by an overwhelming amount of votes.
I remember Randall saying of politicians that their methods
are about as civilized as taking a shit in the woods, and I
reckon that that wasn't too far from the truth.

As he stepped out of the car at the departure gate,
Randall put on what looked like a half-felt, half—feigned
display of pain; he smiled just a crack and then grimaced a
second later; it was hard to tell which one was forced.
Given the amount of alcohol he had consumed the night before
and the situation with his father, I had to believe that this
show of pain wasn't wildly exaggerated. As he got his gear
together, I could see that his drinking was beginning to have
a lasting effect on the man.- It was getting to the point
where he wasn't recovering from the night before; each day
brought agony followed by a partial afternoon recovery over
a whiskey or a few beers. On that March morning in particular,
his eyes were bloodshot, his nose was shot through with broken
blood vessels, and his skin was a uniform gray, like dirty
snow. He looked like a man about to die.

Before heading into the terminal, he hoisted his duf-
fle bag onto his shoulder--gently, in order to avoid any un-
necessary jolt to his aching head. He stood motionless at
the curb for an instant, letting the rain drip from his hat
onto the front of his shirt. Then, as a sign of farewell, he

held his hand out, made a fist, and pointed his thumb toward

40
the sky. I wished him luck in the same way as he turned
and disappeared into the terminal.

A week later I was sitting on the porch of the room-
ing house where I was living in Johnson City. I had no job
and no prospects anywhere. I was just passing the time in
a rocker, staring off into space, when a pale pink Plymouth
turned into the driveway. It was a 1957 in really good shape--
almost as if it had never seen dirt. Randall got out and
walked up the path looking like he was about to accept an
award at a chamber of commerce banquet. He swaggered like
he had never seen dirt either, and an extra-long cigaret dan=
gled unlit from his lips.

"From now on, I'm gonna look better than your mama on
her way to church," he said. "Her name is Angel and I reckon
you can call her that too." He escorted me to the car and
ran his hand along one of the fins of the closest rear fender.
"There ain't a woman in Johnson City that's built like this,"
he said. "There's nothing on God's green earth that can
stand up next to this kind of beauty, and I'm gonna cherish
her, I swear." At this point he took off his hat and placed
it over his heart. He winked. "Get in," he said. "We need
some beers."

We drove up the street to Charly's Party Store where
Randallstill had credit. The Plymouth really did have springs

like an angel, and she sounded good, too.

41

We got our beers and returned to the car. I asked what
had happened in Nashville.

"He's dead," he said.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be," he said. "He's got to be in a better
place now."

He took me for a spin around town then, and it soon
became obvious that he felt no need to contain his new-found
joy of ownership.‘

"This car is from Nashville, this ain't no Johnson
City car. This ain't no redneck preacher's car, this ain't
no car that's been owned by somebody who lets kids puke in
the back seat. This car is from Nashville, and people from
around there don't allow preachers or children in their cars.
Why, this is the kind of car the stars used to drive--they
still might, too. She's probably been to the Grand Ole Opry
dozens of times, and maybe had a star in her a couple of
times. Come to think of it, this just might be the make and
model that ole Hank Williams perished in!"

He had won her gambling, he said. One night in Nash—
ville, he dropped his mother off at home after visiting hours
at the hospital and drove around town checking out the old
neighborhood, thinking about his father the whole time. He
prayed, but there was hardly any room for hope; the man's
vital signs were fading fast, and he was rarely conscious at
all by that time. So Randall ended up in a bar. "Some sucker

said he needed a fourth for a card game, and within an hour

42
I was walking out with this set of keys. I guess some of
that praying must have done some good somehow. Maybe the
good Lord just got his signals mixed up." He patted the
dashboard affectionately. "Yessir," he said, "Ask and ye
shall receive-~and that's just the way it goes, too. You
may not get exactly what you asked for, but you're bound to
get something."

"Shit, Randall," I said. "If you put it that way,
then She wasn't a great deal. And besides, what about all
of those folks praying the world over. What do they get for
their prayers? All the people in the hills around here dis-
eased and losing their teeth; they send their children to
school in flour sacks. You know about those peOple, don't
you?" I said.

"Man!" he said. "We gOt the Angel, we got a case of
beer, and there ain't a cloud in the sky; but sure, I'll talk
Serious. Those people got their salvation, man. They pray
every day, and every day they know they won't be going to
hell. They know they haven't arrived there yet, too, which
is more than I can say for you. And they got all that from
praying, which is a pretty good deal, ain't it?"

Well I had to admit that a good part of what he said
was true. All those people in the hills are busy praying
every day, and I suppose they receive Jesus every day if‘
that's the way they look at it.

"Too bad praying for alcohol doesn't do any good," I

said.

43

"No shit," Randall said.

Randall drank quantities of alcohol that would do any
sailor proud. That summer he had the Angel, it got to the
point where he was hardly bothering with food at all. He
would chase whiskey coffee with beers by noon, and would
Joke about the beers being all the protein he could stand.

He said that it was drinking Cap'n Choco-Malteds as
a kid that had gotten him hooked. '”You ask A.C. Murray,"
he said one afternoon as if A.C. had been the topic of con—
versation when in fact we had been sitting on his porch for
some twenty minutes, neither one of us saying anything at
all. "You go and ask A.C. about what Cap'n Choco-Malteds
did to him--how he preferred them to his mother's tit after
a while. And now me and him can't leave off from sucking on
these," he said, lifting his beer to show it to me. "Twelve-
thirty in the afternoon, and you'd think that I would be
ready for a burger and coke or a glass of milk like every-
body else. Those goddam choco—malteds!"

For Randall the benefits of praying weren't enough
to offset the effects of choco-malteds and a few of the other
snares of this world. Just in that one spring season, as
his father suffered and died, he began to stay drunk both
night and day, and the Angel gave out on him. Although she
may have been the least of his troubles, the Angel became

a disappointment, nonetheless.

44

No amount of grease and tinkering would ever make
her sing and rumble again. After little more than a month
in Johnson City, she threw a rod and a few other things, and
her days of roadworthiness were at an end. She sat there on
the street out in front of the house, and Randall watched
her from the porch as he drank. Sometimes he tipped a beer
in her direction in way of tribute. Sometimes he said "Glory
be to God, that is a pretty sight," or "Here's to you, cherryz,"
but he was pretty drunk when he expressed those sentiments.
She had been a lame blessing, after all. She was a beauty
and a bitch, too.

That summer the kudzu rolled in from over the North
Carolina border. It did a fast creep across town, first on
the telephone poles and wires, and then from tree to tree
and house to house. It came up on Randall's porch, and rather
than chopping the life out of it, he guided the vine onto
every pillar and chair. He even had ideas for covering the
Angel with the stuff and making a planter out of her; he
was training it across the lawn in her direction when she
was taken away suddenly--towed when no one was home. Ran-
dall called the city, and they demanded a hundred dollars be-
fore they would give her back. So the Angel had left for
good.

Now I suppose that after this big, long dramatic story,

everybody must figure that Randall is dead--that he killed

4S
himself in a car wreck on some lonesome stretch of highway,
or that he ended up dead in a ditch somewhere; or maybe peo-
ple figure that his body gave out in some hospital room, tubes
running in and out of him from every direction. Well, itfs
possible that he met any one of those ends, but then again,
he may be sitting on a front porch somewhere right now. He
just disappeared from town that August, and there is no tell-
ing where he might be holed up. Maybe he has reformed and
is living a good Christian life somewhere. Nashville, maybe.
That's the word that got around when everybody realized he
was gone. He went to Nashville to help out a cousin, some-
body said. I have to wonder, though. He didn't care too
much for the big city, or for most of the members of his fam-
ily. And he used to say that he would rather be here in John-
son.City than anywhere else on God's green earth, so maybe
he is dead. He probably is, in fact, because his luck never
was very good. Even when he succeeded in something, because
of praying, sweet-talking, begging, or whatever, he never did
get what he really asked for. So maybe he prayed for the
strength to quit drinking, and wound up dead. Maybe the Lord

really does get his signals mixed up.

A SPRING DAY IN MEMPHIS, 1970

Nothing was happening on the river. No wind, and
there wasn't a boat or a barge in sight. The trucks roared
along the interstate highway bridge on their way to Raleigh,
L.A., or Tucumcari. Sheri pulled onto the shoulder of the
road and turned off the ignition. She lit a cigaret and
jumped out of the car in the same motion, the cigaret dang-
ling from her mouth. She stood alongside the car and looked
out over the water. Hands stuck deep in her pockets, elbows
making sharp arrows for north and south, she exuded the fact
that this place, this particular side of the road, was a
special one for her--that it should be that way for anyone
who was at all sensitive. Her eyes and the determined way
her lips were set attested to a sense of the freedom offered
here: no mama, no older sister around--no authorities to
cast a wary eye.

For a moment she stopped gazing at the river. She
turned to her lover, still with a distant focus in her eyes.

"It's purty, ain't it?" she said.

"Yeah, it's pretty. It's big enough, that's for sure,"

he said.

46

47

"It's better than big, man. It's the fucking Miss-d?
issippi." She drew deeply on her cigaret for emphasis.

Lee lit a cigaret and took a long pull on it just to
put himself in good stead: to show that he was hip enough
to appreciate that this was not only the big river through
town but the great big fucking Mississippi. He walked over
to Sheri's side, put his arm tightly around her waist, and
they kicked the stones before them as they moved toward the
water. At the end of a bluff the river passed slowly twenty
feet or more below them. The water had never been more calm;
an occasional ripple marred the glass here and there, each a
distant glint in an otherwise flawless vision.

They had traveled halfway across the country to get to
Memphis. Flat land and a string of factory towns had given
way to the Appalachians. They in turn had receded into flat
land and factory towns once more, only on this side the land.
had a gentle roll, and the people spoke with a sharp drawl--
like Sheri.

Lee was a stranger to Memphis, and for him the whole
town was the stuff of an old sepia-tone photograph: brown
pavement, brown brick, brown mud, and brown air alongside a
huge, nearly stagnant strip of brown ditchwater. Even the
skin of the black people appeared to be a peculiar shade of
Memphis brown.

Sheri reached for her lover's hand. She caught his
eyes with a look intended to be sincere, loving, meaningful.

She didn't want anything to change.

48

He had driven a thousand miles with her to enter a
long-dingy house and a dark front room where the locale and
the passage of time lent a certain coating to everything in
the place. The rugs, furniture, drapes, and even the windows
were lined with this dusty, peculiar-to—Memphis hue.

Sheri's mother had smoked 100,000 Lucky Strikes right
down to little nubs, all of them in this same chair in this
same front room. Her skin was gray, but when the light hit
her just right, she too was imbued with the Memphis tinge.

Sheri had said that Mama never did wear her age well.
By this year of our Lord 1970, her face had been worn beyond
the aid of cosmetics. She seemed almost threadbare to Lee,
and the frayed hair and tattered housecoat seemed to demon-
strate a certitude that therewasn't going to be another man:
that 1955 wasn't coming back anytime soon, nor would that
special one return to care whether there was any finery left
in her life or her appearance. The room and the ruined be-
longings within looked as if they would remain unchanged,
collecting dust amid the sighs and cigaret smoke of this
fading woman.

Sheri lit another cigaret.

"It was a brand new car," She said. "White with a
white interior. Had it maybe two weeks. A drunk ran a red
light. Five o'clock in the afternoon as he's coming home
from work, he gets creamed by a drunk. Broad daylight and

the son-of—a-bitch is blind drunk. Didn't even know what he'd

49
done. Mama never did get out of the car at the cemetery.
She couldn't bear to see him laid in the ground." -

Mama chain smoked in that chair. She came home from
work every day at five-thirty, took off her beige rayon uni-
form, and replaced it with one of two flowery-pattern houSe-
coats. After a day with the cash register and flourescent
lights, she's always tired; her feet hurt like hell. "I've
been standing at that same damn counter for fifteen years,"
she lamented hoarsely to no one in particular. "Y'all ought to
find somethin' better to do with your lives," she said vaguely
in the direction of her youngeSt daughter. "I put in a lot
of time at that department store. Six days a week and no
pension just so I'd be able to scrape by with the mortgage
payments and food on the table."

The old Mustang lurched as the worn gears engaged
through the twilit andneon streets of downtown Memphis. They
crossed the river on the DeSoto bridge. From between the
flashing steel girders, Memphis looked like an outpost on
the lost prairie wilderness. The city had an honest-to-
goodness skyline with modern churches and office buildings,
unlike the state of Arkansas which loomed before them a
wasteland on the west bank, verdant though it was. The high-
lights of the Arkansas horizon werea shipping firm, a few
weathered shacks, and some outcroppings of limestone and red
clay which stood out from the pines and brush. And a Texaco

station shone in the center of the rubble.

50

On the outskirts of West Memphis, Arkansas, they
pulled up in front of a little frame house. It was in need
of paint but neat just the same, as it had a lawn enclosed
by a picket fence and each window was trimmed in white ruf-
fled curtains. Sheri's brother-in-law was the first to greet
them,and he was as friendly a country boy as anyone would
care to meet. He smiled broadly as he opened the screen door.
When he grabbed ahold of Sheri and shook Lee's hand, he really
meant it! "Well ain't this a special occasion," he said.

As they entered the house the sister delivered the old
southern hospitality from clear across the room. "Well come
right in," she said. "So nice to see you all!" The two women
hugged and kissed, and then hugged again. It would have been
apparent to anyone but a blind man that these two were sis-
ters. Sheri looked younger, that was all; younger by three
years and a family with needs.

The two little girls were hypnotized by the T.V. set
and didn't bother to check out the new arrivals. Sheri's
sister prodded them until, showing mild annoyance at the in-
terruption, they said hello and returned in haste to their
program.

Lee got a lingering handshake and a look that was pene-
trating yet accepting from the older Sister. After a few
minutes at the kitchen table, though, he began to sense a

veiled coldness underneath--a reticence, at any rate. He

51
was a yankee, after all, and he had been "having his way"
with her baby sister. The air seemed shot through with some-
thing more oppressive than Arkansas spring heat. "Don't for-
sake us," was the transmission from behind her eyes. "She's
been sleeping with you for six months now, and you're all she
can talk about."

Brother-in-law was entirely content with the beer and
company. He was excited to have somebody there from out of
town to talk sports with-~and he had at least half a case of
cold beers in the Frigidaire. The Cleveland Indians never
did look good; the Reds and Pirates would surely be contenders
again this year ("Whereabouts y'all say you're from in Ohio?").

Sheri had different plans. A few minutes after a
polite beer and talk of getting together again real soon, they
were back in Tennessee again, at a dark little bar alongside
the river.

Sheri was looking for charm--in Memphis and in herself.
She wanted to be open and to know Lee's thoughts. ,

"It's a nice day, ain't it? Y'all can find a cheap
apartment somewhere, or we can find a house and live together.
Mama'll get used to the idea; Ishe'll have to. This is a
really nice place, Memphis is. And plenty of work down here.
Shouldn't be hard to find at all. Plenty of work. Y'all just
gotta give it a chance. I love you."

Lee wasn't talking.

A HOSTESS'S LAMENT

Nobody even knew who she was until a couple of days
later. Found out it was a friend of a friend of Charlie
Gordon. We hardly knew Charlie let alone his friend's
friend. I spoke to her a minute in total--maybe handed
her a beer or something. Some way of showing gratitude she
had, dying in my bathtub. If it had been a heart attack or
some other natural cause, I would have forgiven her. The
university would have forgiven Randall too. The trustees
and administrators couldn't have blamed him even if people
were talking about the professor's loose ways--a single woman
dying naked in his house and he not even knowing her last
name. If she had died of natural causes, the reporters and
rumor-mongers wouldn't have had the creativity to call her
"the junkie mistress"--the coroner was the one to plant that
seed, giving out the junkie part of it and the information
as to where her body was found.

I truly am a forgiving soul, and I could have for-
given Charlie except that the son-of-a-bitch never did.
apologize--never did show one little jot of remorse. He
brought her over here and then left without her. Christ,
what a burden she was, too. He said that he looked for her
for a good long while before giving up. He figured she had

52

53

wandered out the door or gone home with someone else. If
only she had.

I'm too nice a woman and Randall is too nice a man.
All it takes is one time: some misfit will latch on; some-
body who wants to take advantage of you or some weakling-—
the parasitic kind who creates devastation all around and
doesn't even realize it. This woman might as well have brought
the plague into the house considering the harm she did around
here. And all we did was agree to let her sleep on the couch
for the night. We were doing a little cleaning up after a
party; it must have been two o'clock and we were taking care
of the ash trays and empty beer cans. We thought the house
was empty, and this stranger wanders out of the back room
in a long cotton dress that could have doubled as a nightie.
She looked ainf she were about to jump into her own bed, and
of course we obliged her with the next best thing; the mat—
tress she had been so attracted to earlier in the night. We
even gave her a pillow.

The next day was Saturday, and I guess that I was lucky.
If it had been a weekday Randall would have been away at school
all day, and I would have returned from classes and discover-
ed her by myself. As it turned out, Randall and I got up and
went shopping for a couple of hours. When we returned, he
got the first look. He came into the living room frightened
and sickly pale. He didn't want me to go upstairs, but I had

to see for myself.

54

Before this happened we were either throwing parties
or going to them all the time. These were really good times,
too. We weren't just killing brain cells and dredging up
lousy memories like we're doing now. Back then, Randall was
making good bucks, he was content with the progess of his
work, and everyone at the university was happy with him. He
was making such good money that I could take courses and work
toward finishing my degree without having to think about money
concerns at all. We had the Austin Healy then, too; the one
Randall had when I first met him. We had a great time just
driving around town.

It seemed as if Randall was always wearing his gray
worsted wool suit and thin red tie whenever he taught and when
he drove that car. He thought he looked like God's gift in
that suit. He wore it till it was frayed at the cuffs. I
don't know where he got the idea that that's the proper at-
tire for an English professor. Maybe one of his mentors at
Vanderbilt wore one like it, or maybe he saw a photograph of
T. 3. Eliot in something similar. Regardless of his reasons,
he did look outstanding in that suit—-especially when he was
behind the wheel of the Healy with his granny sunglasses on;
the kind John Lennon used to wear. Randall sure as hell didn't
look like a Tennessean in that outfit. In fact, he didn't
look like he had ever seen Tennessee, let alone been born
and raised here.

Before we were married we would go out in the car after

dinner. We found roads we had never been on, and we would

55
just drive. About once a week, we headed out route forty-
five past Greenville to the Johnston's house; Randall knows
Merle Johnston from when they were college freshmen together.
There were always a bunch of musicians out there, and Randall
would bring his guitar and play late into the night. Some-
times I would do some clogging when there was a full band
and they were really cooking. We still go out there, but one
or two visits every few months is all we can afford now.. Be-
sides, when we're there now, Randall sometimes doesn't even
bother to pick up his guitar.

Things have got to change soon. We can live on food
stamps and what I make just so long as the car is running and
nothing breaks down in the house. But who wants to live like
this?

We haven't even begun to recover from that day. Randall
took it well for the first couple of months. He had a resolve
in him. He wasn't going to let it ruin us, and he was check-
ing out every kind of employment lead for fifty miles around.
He thought the worst would blow over—~that folks' memories
are short, and even if they do remember, they're usually will-
ing to forgive. He figured he would be able to walk into a
decent job at a small college or at one of those new corpor—
ate headquarters that have sprung up since they' put in
the interstate. He really had no idea.

When we found her we were both calm somehow. It was

probably shock more than presence-of—mind which allowed us to

56

handle the matter with any dignity whatsoever. We were both
numb. It's not every day that you find someone rigid in your
bathtub, her dead eyes wide-open in horror. She knew that
something had gone wrong, and she sure as hell didn't nod

out peacefully.

I remember we called the rescue squad--we knew she was
dead, but who else do you call when you've got a body upstairs?
We were sitting on the couch waiting for them to arrive. We
both knew what this whole little episode was going to do to
Randall's career, and yet he started joking about what we
might have done; that we could have disposed of the body
through less-than-proper channels. Down the Elizabethton
Highway and into the Nolachuckee River was the route that
came to his mind. In retrospect, that doesn't sound like a
bad idea. No one would have suspected us when the body was
found; Randall might be an associate professor by now. He
would still have the Austin Healy, and somebody would be being
paid good money to work on his car. I can't stand to watch
him working under the hood of that ratty old Ford. It's just
not right.

We'll probably go north before long. I Shudder to
think of it, but the prospects aren't getting any better here.
Randall talks about sending his resume to places in New York,
Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Pretty soon he'll do it. He has
virtually run out of places to look for work around here, and

he must be getting tired of the kinds of interviews he has

57
had. If people don't recognize his name or face at the out-
set, they catch on soon enough. The interviewer has only to
be curious about why he resigned his tenure track position
at the university. Professors are supposed to take sabbati-
cals,and most normal peOple will have another job lined up
before they quit work. Randall says that when he tells the
interviewers that he resigned due to personal matters at home,
they invariably clear their throats, shuffle their papers,
and find some fast way of ending the interview, smiling all
the while.

We're going to wind up leaving the area. We're going
to go six or seven or eight hundred miles from our friends
and kin. I can't help but think back constantly to the time
before it happened. It has only been a few months, and yet
so much has changed. If we could only cut one day out of
our past. If we could only pick it out like so much dust

from a child's eye.

TOP OF THE PECKING ORDER

Jackson wondered why life's pleasurable moments were
so often accompanied by periods of torment and abuse. For
him it wasn't enough to dismiss the pattern as a necessary
balance; there had to be more to it than that. He knew
from his experience of the past few years that life could be
easy, and that it didn't have to be chopped up into segments
of good and bad. A beautiful wife, two stunning children, a
successful business of his own, and a year of college com-
pleted with honors: all of these things had come his way
without being interrupted by misfortunes or ill will.

And yet he couldn't rid himself entirely of the bad
timeS--the mean years, he called them. So many people hadn't
left him alone to find the happiness that had been within
easy reach all along.

Jackson's first twenty-one years had contained a suc-
cession of ordeals, and now, as a full-grown man of twenty-
five, he was still plagued by fears that the peace he had
found could be easily taken away. He was convinced that
one stroke of bad luck or someone's evil whim could reduce
him overnight to the hapless boy he had once been. If for
some reason the business failed--or God forbid he should be

disabled somehow-~he would be back in a position where he

58

59
could be pushed around, chastised, and otherwise treated like
a small child. And there might be nothing he could do to pro-
tect his family from the effects of his fall. He felt like
a clairvoyant Job before God and Satan started playing games:
he awaited the onset of the calamities.‘

Negative thoughts ran through Jackson's mind with good
reason on this particular day. He had come too close to losing
it all in life; he had almost finished himself off with one
foolish gesture. During the afternoon rounds through his
chicken coops--a lengthy undertaking as his holdings now in-
cluded four long coops housing five hundred chickens each--he
was passing through c00p number four when a gate to the out-
side unlatched itself and flew open in the wind. Since there
were no chickens nearby, Jackson, with a full bladder, decided
to take the opportunity in hand, sending a trail of piss out
of the open doorway. This impulse proved regrettable when the
wind turned on him, and the angle iron and chicken wire of the
gate and a faint remembrance of piss came hurtling back to-
ward the coop, forcing him to take a preventative measure--to
thrust his bare hand into the oncoming fray of jagged iron
and gnarled wire, in sacrifice of one appendage to save another.
He then pulled his hand away from the instrument of its scram-
bling to find each finger a casualty in some way: a scrape,

a nick, a small laceration; and the entire index finger re-
turned macerated, like the remnants of a corpse after a grizzly

has been at it. Jackson stood there immobile for a few seconds

60
with the one unblemished member still hanging in the now
gentle breeze and the other bloodied one held out straight
before him. He stood there just so until a few hens brush—
ing past his legs had revived him with their frenzied attempts
to taste the small red puddle that was forming at his feet.
He kicked at them, put himself back in his pants, and shut
the gate securely. Then, wrapping a bandana around the torn
hand, he walked back through the laying rooms in the di-
rection of his truck.

At the clinic, after the stitches were put in, Jack-
son was a little reluctant to pull down his pants for the
tetanus shot. The nurse noticed the hesitation and soothed
him with an estimation of how many men's bare buns she had
seen, this year being in the dead-winter of her career;
"forty-four years in the same office, and there must've been
ten thousand backsides that've passed this way." Jackson
lifted an eyebrow in appreciation of that figure and then
bared his own.

Because he would be returning home long after dinner
time, he had called his wife Amelia to say that he was run-
ning late with errands and would be eating at McDonald's.

So when he finally gothome the sun was down, the kids were
asleep, and the wife was stretched out on the couch, semi-
conscious before the TV with a beer or two in her bloodstream.
She revived as he sat down in a nearby chair with a beer of

his own in his good hand.

61

"The kids were hell today; we're raising animals, you
know that?" she said.

Then she caught sight of the finger bandage and many
mercurachrome-smeared abrasions, contusions, and lacerations
of the same hand.

"One small sacrifice for the greater good," Jackson
said, and proceeded to tell her that he had done it for their
marriage and that the "greater good“ had snapped back from
the point of danger, as if it had had a sixth sense, a sense
of its very own vulnerability. They laughed for a time and
then fell silent, Amelia becoming lulled by her fatigue and
the drone of the TV, and he by the languid feeling brought on
by Demarol and the aftermath of having come so close to reck-
oning with an unspeakable fate.

Jackson sipped his beer and pondered while his wife
dozed. He thought about chickens straining their necks in
an effort to taste blood. They behaved in such an appalling
manner. Other crudely social animals--ants, bees, wolves,
pigs, termites, humans--all have vile traits of their own;
but humans and chickens always seemed head and shoulders above
the rest of the crowd for Jackson, in terms of what they might
do to their own kind without provocation. Other species don't
go around tearing each other's throats out or throwing each
other out of the nest or off the front porch with anything

near the same ferocity displayed by humans and chickens.

62

Jackson was studying animal husbandry at the state
university in order to prepare himSelf for vet school, and
the texts used during this past year had left a strong im-
pression. A reading in an animal behavior course which
especially intrigued him was devoted to bovine brain function:
does a bull think, and if so, what about? If a bull is ob-
served loping around in a desert area, he will avoid sharp
objects even though he has been raised in confinement and
never felt the sting of a thorn. And he will not only take
care to watch where he treads: his is also equipped to lift
his testicles up to six centimeters in the event that they
need to be elevated out of some thorny or otherwise undesir-
albe zone. Now, since this is well documented, veritable
common knowledge to any student of animal husbandry, why
should any intelligent, inquiring human mind stop there?
Shouldn't we all consider the possibility that, since a bull
is able to spy a bramble or cactus about to merge into its
scrotal space, and subsequently raise its balls to avoid con-
tact, never having felt the sting of the aforementioned haz-
ards, then he must also be capable of making judgements about
things and beings more lofty than a mere desert bush. The
bovine--the lummox of the mammalian order--is able to contem-
plate pain, rather than simply reacting to it; and he chooses
to stay clear of it. He uses thought processes to a limited
extent then, and one can expostulate that he is sometimes able

to control his actions.

63

And what of the lowly chicken? Jackson believed that
it too could choose its own mode of behavior at times, ex-
cept for that seedy underbelly of their populations which
could be used in cockfights without any prodding or condition-
ing; theones who would be considered psychOpaths if they were
human. Other than that hard core of unregenerate trash, there
is a society of run-of—the-mill chickens who sometimes choose
to get in on the kill and at other times lie back on the side-
lines with feathers unruffled. What Jackson found astounding.
was that these normal, every-day chickens not only made a
habit of pecking each other into submission; they went a few
steps further and gouged until the object of their derision
was transformed into bloody lunchmeat. They turn the coop
into a killing floor for no reason other than that someone
strayed into the wrong room or cocked his or her head the
wrong way. And at the least Sign of vulnerability, they drew
their little packers and went to work, not for the preser—
vation of the species, mind you; this isn't any manifeSta-
tion of Darwinian survival of the fittest--not even an aber-
rant one. This was daily perpetration of ritual torture fol-
lowed by leSs—than-summary execution. The whole community
couldn't wait to get their beaks into action. First they
opened a wound on the victim and then tore into it en masse
until the bird fell and its eyes could be deftly removed.

50 Jackson thought he had seen enough evidence to con-

clude that man isn't an anomaly in an otherwise perfect scheme

64

of things. In his mind, chickens and men were equally un-
attractive and curious beasts, in control of and responsible
for their own actions. He even went so far as to ponder the
scenario wherein technology had advanced to the extent that
we could communicate with a few chickens of mutant intelli-
gence. Jackson dreamed up the possibility that such inter-
views might garner-responses not unlike those of the comman-
dant at Auschwitz:

Yes, I did hear their shrill screams,

but they were mere beasts. No one in

his right mind could possibly think of

them as chickens!

As Jackson raised his beer to his lips and his bandaged
finger blurred out of focus against the side of his nose, he
expressed wordless gratitude at the ceiling. He knew from
Animal Husbandry 101 that a rooster plummets to the bottom of
the pecking order after being made a capon. He shuddered to
think that he could have been there-—with humans as the peck-
ers above.

Jackson got another beer, sat down again, and sucked
away a third of its contents. As he put it down on the table,
he lost all awareness of self. He was back in childhood in
that inStant, the boy-Jackson inhabiting this world once again.
He and his eight-year-old companions reared their freckled
and toothy little heads in Jackson's vision.

Why don't you go home, Jackson, and

don't come back until you can hit the

ball. We're gonna lose because of
you!

65

Jackson had been a small baby and was still small at
eight years old--noticeably so to everyone. Grownups were
still friendly; they didn't seem to make any distinctions
between him and the other boys his age. But his friends!
The meaner ones on the block threw him to the ground or
cursed him for any reason at all--or for nothing. "Why don't
you get lost; we don't want you here," they said. And the
lesser ones, the hangers-on, would pitch in with a chorus--a
cacophony of verbal spit.

In junior high school they weren't any kinder and
were especially obnoxious around pretty girls: "Jackson,
you little shrimp; Jackson, you weak little creep; Jackson,
why don't you go home and play with mama and your toys!" ‘Any
number of punk kids--future c0ps or marines or insurance sales-
men--through the halls or across the gymnasium would let fly,
“Jackson, is that girlie voice of yours ever gonna change?
Jackson, are you ever gonna be able to throw a baseball?"

In high school the taunts became more sophisticated:
"You wouldn't know what to do with a girl, would you Jackson?
You never touched one there, did you? You probably never even
kissed one!"

When the testosterone finally began surging and the
pubic hair decided to take root, the damage was already done.
He had resolved that life is one flinch after another--that

stimulae either tear at the flesh or sear away the brain

66

tissue so that the proper response could only be to find a
corner somewhere in which to stay shy of high-school age boys.

With the secondary sexual characteristics, Jackson
finally acquired height and some timbre in his voice. But
something of the time before pubic hair remained; a sharp
anguish that if physical might resemble the pain of a scalpel
left in the bowels. He would never trust anyone fully again,
and would scoff forevermore at anyone's intimation that life
if a gift. A gift of dead flowers? Of sodden ashes? Of
day upon day of inchoate grief for oneself and everyone
living--especially oneself. He wanted to tell the sickly
sweet, ever-smiling effervescent types to try buck teeth,
ninety-five pounds, and hairless balls on for size some time.
With those kinds of attributes at sixteen, life is hardly
worth cracking a smile about. Life is a disease.

Jackson's ascendance into the body of an adult brought
a Short respite from difficult times. He could do what his
friends did: he could walk down the halls of the school and
no one would bother him; he could show up for a baseball
game and not be the last one chosen to play; he could ask
girls out on dates; and sometimes they would accept; and, as
his friends had so charmingly noted some years before, he
could go to "first, second or third base" with them, second

base being nipple-touching, Jackson recalled.

67

But the time for simple pleasures were soon cut
short. Almost before Jackson could catch his adult breath,
he was ushered out of high school and seized by bullies of
the highest order; his draft board had searched him out and.
would do their best to destroy him in the two years of their
custody.

For Jackson, the army was a strange concept. Full-
grown bullies were given rank so they could be vested with
the flag and all the mom and apple pie and ceremonial crap
that goes along with it while they go about the task of ter-
rorizing eighteen-year-old kids; as if the meanest boys on
blocks all over the country somehow woke up one morning as
adults with decorated breasts and official duties in public
service. And each one is given protection from the law when
he chooses to commit assault, torture, or murder. All Jack-
son really knew was that a few fat and balding generals and
colonels sent the order down through a series of rigid, in-
need-of-enema types--valets and eager-beaver junior officers
and eagle scouts; in fact, the whole chain of command saw to
it that he would be assaulted, tortured, and brought to death's
door during six months of basic training before some other
big boy, secure in the Pentagon or in some hollowed-out moun-
tain somewhere, saw fit to send him willy-hilly to Vietnam.
Thrown in with a bunch of other scared kids, he was shipped

out with a few choice words to the effect that he and his new

68

friends should take care not to doanything foolish like kill-
ing each other out on patrol. They said the villages and
jungle would supply enough legitimate targets, and everyone
would get a chance to contribute to the kill ratio in some
small way.

As it turned out, Jackson's "small way" was the firing
of his M-16 into interminable foliage, or into villages full
of "sympathizers" after the artillery and bombers had already
shattered every square inch for twenty square miles. The
jungles and villages really did yield bodies after such
"missions," and although Jackson didn't feel responsible
when he rolled a body over stilltwitching; or witnessed a
child's corpse still smoldering as he "mOpped up" an area,
he would invariably be given the credit. A captain's "nice
work men," and a cold draught always awaited him back at
base camp.

He walked through Nam with hardly a scratch. Hetook
orders and fired his gun without thinking after a while. And
in the back of his mind he hoped that he could leave without
being affected at all, until a bullet tore through someone's
helmet beside him on the path, the man not moving for a second,
knowing the bullet was in his head, before screaming that
he'd be all right, he'd be all right. He said as much before
the blood poured down over his face, and he fell with his
eyes still opened, still expressing the certainty that he would

be all right.

69

Jackson was nearly able to leave the rest of Vietnam
behind. He seldom thought or dreamed of the children or the
screaming women. But this face--this blind, dead stupefaction--
would never leave his psychic vision. The man's astonishment,
after all he must have seen and experienced, seemed ridiculous
on the surface. And yet Jackson knew that it is human nature
and animal behavior in general maresist the force of death
right until the end--right up until the moment when the vic-
tors are hovering above you, choking off your last supply of
air even as they loosen your collar and examine your eyes.

Jackson sat back on his couch and swallowed the last
of the beer. He saw the medics sealing the dead comrade into
a plastic bag before they took him away on a stretcher. He
thought about his chicken coops, Amelia and the kids, and his
relatively good fortune. He was alive and able to fend for
himself; he was physically fit and able to provide for his
family. He promised himself that he would stay self-employed
and at the top of his own heap. Instead of allowing blind
circumstance and men other than himself to control his fate,
he decided to better his odds by cutting the other men out
of the picture as best he could. In that way, there would
be no bosses and no commanding officers Shouting orders; and
there would be no one peering hawk-eyed at his racked body.
He would see to it,‘UDthe best of his ability, that his body

would give out of its own accord rather than someones else's.