The Fourth Angel

by John Rechy

  Jerry's world, beyond control. His mother's body surrounded by flowers. He knelt before her, kissing her, touching her face; the makeup was glued to his fingers … But! Within the drugged world he can banish death at will with: flashing colors! vibrating sounds! He commands them to seize his attention. And they do.

  Now all four are sitting on the floor before a box of beads, stones—rocks broken open revealing miniature crystal caverns like tiny unexplored kingdoms. The gleaming treasure is spread before them on a rug. They peer at the molten spectrum of colors. Eagerly they touch the colors.

  Manny is staring raptly at a fistful of beads, which squirm, breathe, dance. Cob reaches for one shiny object after another, as if to find the perfect one. Simultaneously Shell and Jerry choose a long, long strand of beads. Held mutually, the strand unites them like a colored, delicate chain.

  Then Manny too is holding the strand. And then Cob. All four bound by the colorful necklace, they sit looking at it and at each other.

  Yet for a moment, an intruding reality shot through the magic, and to Jerry they seemed suddenly: four angels declaring war.

  Shell and Manny drift away. Cob and Jerry remain on the floor facing each other, holding the strange chain of beads. Then they abandon it on the floor. And stand.

  Suddenly Manny is playing with a ball—like a multi-colored orange. Segments of red, yellow, blue, purple. Tossed into the air, the ball is a suspended flashing sun. It floats very slowly, like a balloon—to the floor. And rises, gathering its clash of beautiful colors. Tenderly Manny throws it to Shell; and equally tenderly, she throws it to Jerry. Jerry holds it momentarily. Then instead of throwing it, he brings it to Cob like a present. Abruptly, Cob drops the ball. It bounces. Rises into the air. Falls.

  Falls! Manny's world. The dropped ball! He felt as if his body collapsed with it, evaporated. And all that remains is a confused, suddenly terrified mind. Terror mounts in an instant, like spreading fire. His vision narrows into a long distortion of darkening colors. He closes his eyes, afraid, lost suddenly in a strange world. The fear is over—a moment like a year's nightmare blackness.

  Now, as if it were in command, the music seizes their attention; notes which only now can they hear buried within the familiar rhythms.

  ‘Let's go for a walk,’ Cob suggests.

  Manny's world. The fear brushes him like a dark wing. ‘I'm too fucking ripped, I'd get lost,’ he says. He tries to laugh.

  ‘We'll take care of you,’ Jerry says. He senses Manny's confusion. This time, beyond the colors and changing faces, the hallucinations, Jerry is aware of a heavy intensity exposing subtle vibrations: Emotions almost physical, naked. Like witnessing a play within a box: reality framed for careful observation. It was so that Jerry—and he remembered the terrified dazed girl, the lost naked youngman by the river earlier—it was so that he felt Manny's fear.

  Recovered, Manny says quickly: ‘Hell, I'm up for a walk, let's go!’

  Outside.

  They pause before surrendering to the desert night.

  Manny remains close to Jerry.

  Jerry's world. His soul fuses with the breathing night, the sighing stars, and it soars freely through the universe.

  They stare at the darkly luminous sky.

  So beautiful, Jerry thinks. The word assumes a shape, floats about him, blesses him. Beautiful. He sees the night in swirling spirals through the sky. The sky. The river. A secret. An answer.

  A breeze kisses Shell's hair, raises it slowly, then drops it lightly.

  12

  They trudge on, like explorers through a new country. Totally theirs. And Jerry is aware of a magnificent unity and continuity within the drug's unraveling universe. Sensed during the acid trip, the awareness now engulfs him. As if ordered gently by a benign mellowing sky, flowers, alert, grow before his eyes; trees, rustling softly, bend, then rise erectly; cactuses breathe and pulse with life, rest, bloom again in bursts of color. All, illumined by the night's silver, is involved in a cycle of life, death, rebirth, resurrection.

  Resurrection!

  Jerry captures the word as he did the image of the severed branch to retain it when the drug fades, a guarded piece of its magic. Resurrection and the severed branch! He orders his mind to ‘see’ his mother: the beautiful green eyes, the fair complexion, the gentle, glorious, warm smile. Yes! He knows the drug's illuminations will lead him away from the black abyss.

  Manny's world. Fear. ‘Do you know where we fucking are, man?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Cob says with determined certainty.

  ‘Sure,’ Shell underscores.

  Aware sharply of Manny's new apprehension, Jerry hears a rudely intruding sound he knows did not occur: Whooosh! The mysteries of the universe, stirring, exposed by the drug, he tells himself. ‘It's beautiful!’ But this time he used the words, frantically uttered, to pull him away from … Manny's powerfully projected fear: unexpectedly it assaulted the beautifully ordered universe.

  Manny's world. They're traveling through a confused, tangled country.

  Jerry waits for Manny. Shell and Cob march ahead.

  ‘It's okay, man,’ Jerry tells Manny. Despite the earlier stunning revelation, and he clutches it in his mind, Jerry is aware of a subtle difference in tonight's drugged trip. Perhaps it's the night—and within it Manny's conveyed fear—that accounts for a barely glimpsed hint of apprehension. But recurrently the flashing hallucinatory beauty and the illuminations within it conquer it.

  ‘Yeah, man? It's okay? Yeah?’ Manny says. His face is drained. The strange fear recedes, further, further. To show himself, and Jerry, that he's all right, he begins to giggle. But is the terror stalking him, retreating only to gain momentum for a massive assault? He laughs louder.

  Now the drug has destroyed time—it occurs in islands within space.

  Suddenly! They're on the highway. It had reached them. They're hitchhiking. Metallic elongated shapes of cars pass by like chrome ribbons, their lights long strips of colored, luminous wax.

  A car stops. Voices swirl about them. The faces of two youngmen shift, strip in layers. More time melts.

  Suddenly! ‘Here's where we get off.’ Shell's voice as if within a bottle.

  Suddenly! They're on the concrete island between lanes on the Mesa highway. Lights float within the velvety night. Manny takes a step off the curb, reaching out swiftly with his hand toward a car gliding by eerily.

  ‘Watch it, man!’ Shell calls.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Cob laughs.

  Manny says seriously, ‘I want to touch the lights. I want to know are they warm or cold.’ The matter is of infinite importance.

  ‘They're whatever you want them to be,’ Shell says. ‘It's your trip, your world.’ And her world—she feels total.

  Night travelers, they cross the street.

  Cob's world. His mother! And, Janet!—the feline face he ignored this morning burns on his mind. If he could get lost forever in the ordered anarchy.

  They're in the residential area of Kern Place, heavily treed, with angled streets.

  Ripped by the weeks-long wind just ended, a long branch dangles weirdly, projecting a strange shadow on the street. Cob crouches forlornly over it. The others study it with him. This time Jerry pronounces the verdict: ‘It's ugly.’ They retreat quickly from the dead shadow.

  Familiar houses have been transformed into distorted drawings out of children's storybooks: some sinister—they turn away from them—some funny—all four laugh in unison.

  Before them a children's playground is outlined gray like a giant erector set. They approach it. Madeline Park, a small, two-block park. Quickly Cob climbs a concrete whale with a slide on its side. Gleefully, breaking the mood the strange shadow put them into, he slides down. Manny does it too. ‘Wheeeeee!’ And then Jerry, laughing happily.

  Shell sits on a swing, pushing it slowly with her toes. The swing gains steady momentum. Now she pushes faster. Faster. Suddenly she's flying through space. The beauty of outrageous
motion envelops her. Almost touching the ground, she leans back—a dark soaring bird in the night. She pushes the swing faster … Shell's world: cleansed! Purified by motion! Wind!

  Then Cob is behind her, laughing, pushing at the swing and laughing. It soars as if to join the starry heaven of Texas sky. Shell laughs, too. The more she laughs the harder Cob, laughing too, pushes.

  Manny and Jerry study them.

  Suddenly Jerry sees again—appearing in a flash—the demonic-child's face of Cob; and although he's still laughing as he pushes Shell on the swing, there's a sudden fury in the movements.

  A desperate pendulum about to lose control, the swing reaches higher and higher. Still, Shell laughs. Cob pushes with greater force, ferocity. Yet both are laughing.

  Anxiety growing, ‘You're gonna freak her out, man!’ Manny shouts at Cob.

  ‘Freak who out?’ The words form about Shell, rush from the swing. ‘Freak who out?’ And she laughs.

  Cob pushes still harder. ‘Give up?’ he asks her.

  ‘I never give up!’ her voice is hurled from the swing.

  Cob pushes harder, faster. ‘Give up?’

  ‘No!’ Shell's voice comes. ‘Push as hard as you can, man! Harder! Faster!’

  The swing veers toward loss of control.

  Still, Shell is laughing, but all mirth has left her laughter. And Cob's is drained too, the skeleton of laughter, its depleted sounds only.

  Jerry feels Shell's terror. Shell's? Or is it Cob's? Or only his own? Shell's … Can Shell feel terror? Cry, Shell!

  But Shell is laughing. ‘Faster!’ she yells.

  His face dark—no longer smiling—Cob pushes the swing savagely as if to tear it from its props. ‘You give up?’

  ‘No!’

  A focus for his recurring fear. ‘Give up, Shell, give up!’ Manny shouts with genuine terror.

  ‘No!’ Shell yells.

  Suddenly, his body quivering, Cob feels dizzy. Abruptly he abandons the swing, which keeps soaring, but slower each time, its arc narrowing. And then it stops. Shell remains sitting on it triumphantly. She faces Cob. ‘You gave up,’ she says.

  He stares at her. A darkness beyond the night's shades his face.

  Then, as if a cord of tension has been disconnected, they all laugh gaily, simultaneously, children again.

  The darkened park.

  Abandoned on the path is a child's toy, a colored plastic ball-like rattle attached to a stick. Manny picks it up, shakes it experimentally. Wondrous sounds. He rattles it again. Then he rushes at the others playfully with it.

  They see him running toward them in slow motion.

  Jerry turns from the stick. Suddenly sinister, it looks like a severed head on a pike.

  Manny hands the stick to Shell; an offering.

  ‘It's beautiful,’ she acknowledges.

  ‘Let me see it,’ Cob takes it from her. ‘Yeah,’ he agrees, and he hands it gravely to Jerry for his examination.

  But Jerry backs away from it. He heard his voice, ‘It's dead.’ His world, a peculiar focus, a stark framing of the immediate scene. A disorienting moment, an island of insanity; they were insane children in a twisted world. The disorientation melts. Exposed only fleetingly, the subterranean depths beneath the drug's beauty had been stirred.

  Shell rattles the stick. ‘No, man, it's not dead, it's alive!’ she says firmly.

  ‘Like us!’ Manny exults, touching his body.

  The sound of trees, of grass; they perceive it—the rhythmic pulse of the universe, of its props, Jerry knows.

  They move slowly, Manny holding the toy-stick which Jerry rejected. Manny raises it, shaking it occasionally as if to ward off the lurking shadows.

  They wander in and out of streets, alleys, past hovering houses, observing a particular one as it angles curiously.

  ‘I'm afraid,’ Manny whispers uncontrollably.

  Jerry looks at Manny's face. Again, swiftly all color drained from it. Yes, it's like the terrified face of the girl by the river, the naked youngman. Whoosh! Jerry hears the strange soundless sound again intruding recurrently, with Manny's fear, on the beautiful world.

  ‘No, you're not afraid!’ Shell insists, facing Manny.

  ‘I mean, I just … Like where does my mother live?’ Manny asks vaguely. The drug is invading reality.

  ‘You want to go home?’ Cob accuses.

  ‘You don't need her,’ Shell says firmly to Manny. ‘You don't need anyone, just us.’

  ‘I don't want to go home,’ Manny says uncertainly, as if to convince himself.

  Jerry's world, memories. He sat forlornly outside the funeral home until the sun came out … The severed branch, resurrection! he repeats to himself the incantation.

  ‘Let's hitchhike to the old house by the bar,’ Cob offers.

  ‘No!’ Jerry rejects quickly. There's a pall of ugliness over the memory of last night's adventures.

  ‘Stuart …’ Manny begins vaguely. Then he giggles, ‘Those two dam dudes, man—they were screwing, man!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Cob's voice is cold, out of yesterday's real world

  ‘We'll go to the river,’ Shell offers easily.

  ‘Yeah!’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘Right on!’

  They thumb on the highway. And now the drug's mellowness has spread, coating the night in soft, dark velvet. A car stops, drives them to the crossroads. They walk through the velvet darkness, very casual thumbs held to the street. Another ride. At the levee, where they were only earlier, they get out.

  Here and there, along the expanse bordering the river, fires burn beside parked cars. Young nomads do dope, others make love, still others sleep outside or in ragged tents.

  Still pilgrims, they walk away slowly—away from the scattered cars. The moon spills on the water, which shines like silk. In the midst of it are the small islands of sand. It's a brilliant night, like twilight.

  As if by silent agreement, they've reached the island where they built the magic castle. They stand in awe before the silver-coated blackness of the water, the night breathes warmly on them.

  Suddenly Manny removes his shirt, shoes, pants. The stabbing fear is gone completely. Naked, he plunges into the river. The others watch him running onto the small island. Theirs.

  And then dashing along the water, Shell follows him, her dress clinging to her body.

  The two, Shell and Manny, stand apart on the island.

  From the levee, Cob watches them, clear in the bright night. Jerry looks from one to the other.

  Shell raises her hand, a tentative wave.

  Then Cob removes his clothes, he rushes, naked, across the water, emerging on the island. Now Shell is waving at Jerry, motioning him to come across.

  Jerry only looks at them. They've stationed themselves in a wide triangle on the island. Cob, naked, on the extreme right of it; Manny, also naked, on the other extremity; and Shell, her dress glued with moisture to her body, in the center. As far as each can get from the others and still be close.

  Then Jerry removes his clothes. He stands naked as if finally to plunge into the river to join them. But he doesn't move.

  Now Manny waves at him. Even so, Jerry doesn't move. Then Cob waves.

  Shell's world. The three, on an island. And Jerry … She waves urgently.

  None of them moves, as if afraid to violate the mysterious revelation of this silent interlude on the island, their island.

  Jerry's world. He looks at Shell. At Manny. At Cob.

  Cob's world. He looks from one to the other. He feels the river air on his body.

  Shell glances at the trees. They fan in a network of coarse lace. She waves again to Jerry, to join them on the island.

  Jerry's world. The river, flowing to …

  Shell hasn't removed her clothes. The wet dress renders her luminous and silver and lovely in the haze of moon. Once again she motions Jerry to join them.

  The four stand like sentinels guarding isolated outposts.

  Jerry looks at Shell, then quickly at Cob, an
d then at Manny.

  Manny looks at Jerry, at Shell. Then at Cob. Manny's world. A sudden joy rent by a knife of darkness.

  Cob looks at Shell, Manny. At Jerry. Then quickly at the shimmering black river.

  Shell looks at Cob, Manny, Jerry.

  They don't move. They stand apart in that distorted rectangle.

  Shell.

  Cob.

  Manny.

  Jerry.

  Slowly Jerry wades into the water, joining them at last on the island.

  For eternal moments within the vacuum of drugged time, they remain there. Then silently, again as if by signal, they wade across the water, to the bank. Cob, Manny and Jerry dress, ending the strange interlude. They feel the drug releasing them.

  ‘We'll go back to my house,’ Shell says. ‘We can all stay there tonight.’

  Shell lying next to him … Jerry imagines that. All of them, together … He looks at Shell; yes, he wants to lie next to her.

  Thumbing again on the highway. A car stops. A youngman and a girl. A silent ride.

  It's a radiantly clear night.

  Out of the car. Walking up the hill to Shell's house. Hours have passed; sometimes it seems like seconds, sometimes like days. The effect of the drug is beginning to recede, like a tidal wave pulling back slowly, then swiftly, less slowly, more swiftly. The stars are regaining their aloof distance.

  Inside Shell's apartment, in the center of the room are the beads, necklaces, the stones they played with earlier. The four look down forlornly at their playthings, almost stripped of the outrageous magic of the drug; it barely wafts the colors with brightness.

  ‘I'm crashing, man,’ Manny says; he lies on the floor. He's exhausted. For him this night's trip had not been finally good; there had been the shooting fear and desolation.

  ‘We'll do some reds,’ Shell says.

  Time is assuming its dimensions within reality. A space of it has been gone through easily, but another—vaster—is approaching; and they need salvation from it:

  Already Shell is holding the sleeping pills in her palm. Seconal. Again one glass of water. They sit on the floor drinking from it like communicants.

  The sleeping pills pull them down quickly into a mellow, gentle sweetness. Determinedly, they refuse sleep.