The Fourth Angel

by John Rechy

  Manny curls up on the floor like a child. ‘I wish …’ he mutters drowsily.

  ‘What, man?’ Jerry asks.

  ‘I just wish,’ he says. ‘What do you wish, Cob?’ he asks.

  ‘I wish …’ Cob stops. As if he dare not commit himself even to a wish. ‘Nothing. You should never wish for anything.’

  ‘Why not?’ Manny mutters.

  ‘Because …’ Again Cob stops, words meaningless and superfluous even before they form.

  ‘What do you wish for, Jerry?’ Manny questions.

  ‘I wish …’ Jerry too blocks his words. His wish would test the drug's power to jar his world out of desolation. Tomorrow, in the muted house…

  ‘I wish it was always pretty, like the drug,’ Manny says, his eyes closing dreamily, mercifully forgetting for now the moments of lost apprehension, remembering the great joy. ‘And you, Shell?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she whispers.

  All barefoot, the boys shirtless, they fell asleep on the floor.

  13

  Abruptly Jerry woke.

  In the bright invading glare of the morning desert sun, the lights inside are muted halos, colored fireflies—the room seems determined to retain a part of the drug's glow.

  And it remains too within Jerry. He feels exhilarated. Alive!

  The others lie very still on the floor.

  Jerry moves quietly on bare feet into the kitchen.

  Riding the euphoria of hinted liberation, impulsively, with great care, he tears a sheet of paper into a heart. He places it on the cushion he slept on last night. He feels stunningly close to the others, finally his companions in the journey to expel the pall of death.

  Then he walks quietly out of the house.

  Hearing him leave—she had wakened but remained very quiet—Shell opens her eyes and sees the paper heart he left. She stares at it. Then slowly, tentatively, as if not committing herself totally to the action, she touches its jagged edges. Finally she allows her hand to rest fully on its surface.

  Quickly, she withdraws it. She stands, brushing her hair with her fingers. Even at this time of waking, she looks glorious.

  Manny is still curled up.

  Lying on his side, long hair disheveled, Cob opens groggy eyes to a hostile world. He puts on the purple sunglasses quickly and looks around. ‘Where's the other dude? I mean, like someone's missing,’ he tries to obscure his quick awareness of Jerry's absence.

  Shell points to the paper heart and watches Cob.

  Cob looks quizzically at the heart. ‘He left this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Shell answers.

  Cob shrugs, ignoring the heart until Shell went into the kitchen. Now he barely touches it.

  The voices woke Manny. ‘What's that?’ he asks.

  Swiftly Cob withdraws his hand from the heart. ‘A heart, what the fuck do you think it is?’ he says.

  ‘Like whose?’ Manny asks sleepily.

  ‘Jerry left it,’ Shell says from the kitchen.

  ‘Who for?’ Manny asks.

  ‘No one—he's just trying to put us on,’ Cob dismisses quickly.

  ‘Oh.’ Manny peers curiously at it. ‘The dude's too much, right?’ he asks, as if to extract from their reactions the acceptable one.

  But the others say nothing, as if they too are confused by the presence of the heart.

  Now they're in the kitchen, Shell is making eggs, Cob is fixing coffee, Manny is placing dishes on the table.

  ‘Where did he split to?’ Manny asks.

  ‘Probably hitched a ride to go feed his cats,’ Cob says.

  ‘He'll be back,’ Shell says.

  Finished eating, they gather the dishes, wash them, dry them together.

  ‘Why do you think he's so uptight over letting us into his house?’ Cob asks abruptly.

  Shell says easily, ‘Because he wants to keep two parts of his life apart—he's not sure which one he wants.’

  ‘What parts?’ Cob asks.

  ‘His mother—and us,’ Shell answers.

  ‘But she's dead,’ Manny says.

  ‘Not yet—not for him,’ Shell says.

  ‘Fuck him if he doesn't want us in his house,’ Cob says.

  Quickly Shell says: ‘We'll go for him.’

  ‘Are you digging on him, Shell?’ Manny blurts abruptly.

  ‘She just wants to get into his head,’ Cob says with finality.

  Strange, incongruous laughter seizes them.

  ‘Let's get it over with and go for the dude,’ Cob tries to sound impatient. ‘It'll take him all morning to get out here.’

  Shell showers, changes into a bright yellow long dress. Beads gleam abundantly about her neck.

  ‘You're beautiful, Shell!’ Manny is assaulted by the radiant visual spectacle.

  ‘So are you,’ she says easily, deliberately diminishing his words. ‘All angels are beautiful.’

  Cob and Manny take turns showering.

  Moments later—Cob driving, Shell in the middle, Manny on the other side—they ride down the hill to the highway. Stationed at regular intervals along it, long-haired youngmen and girls sell carnations, holding the radiant flowers to passing cars.

  Cob speeds away from them.

  ‘You think he's at that old house with the cats or at his sister's?’ Cob asks.

  ‘His old house,’ Shell says decisively.

  Jerry got there only moments earlier.

  He stands under the icy chandelier in the living-room. Memories of his mother swirl about him. She sat there! She walked here! She moved down those very steps! She smiled, she talked, she laughed, she cried! Now there's the physical absence, the unyielding silence! … Feeling tears beginning without control (Don't cry!), he grasps frantically for the drug's anchor: Even the severed branch grows again! Resurrection! … Mother … He feels her gentle presence. Mother … the tears … Even the severed branch grows again! Resurrection! Resurrection! … He breathes more easily now. The tears that would have racked him have withdrawn. And so yesterday's life-asserting illuminations survived into the real world! he tells himself eagerly.

  From within the still house, the two furry cats approach him slowly. Now they curl at his feet. Joining his anxiously embraced—determinedly seized—hint of peace? He bends down, petting them profusely, his face rubbing their fur. And then he sees the brown Burmese at the door. Not approaching, she merely watches him and the other cats with gleaming yellow eyes. Now she rushes up the stairs. To wait before the locked room, Jerry knows. He moves slowly up the stairs. The brown cat has disappeared. Jerry advances toward the closed room. His fingers barely touch the door's knob, the key. He withdraws his hand urgently and turns away.

  Outside, Cob holds his hand steadily on the honk.

  Jerry hears it. He knows it's them—he's glad they're here; he would have hitchhiked back to join them.

  The honking continues outside.

  Jerry rushes down the stairs. Once more—very quickly—he looks about the house. And suddenly, feeling strong enough, he knows what he has to do this morning: a powerful test of the drug's revelations, their lasting power within the world that contains death.

  He runs out of the house, to his new friends. Manny sits in back with him.

  ‘Now what?’ Manny poses the inevitable question.

  Jerry says quickly, ‘There's somewhere I have to go.’ Deliberately he withholds where from them.

  ‘Sure, man,’ Cob agrees.

  Jerry gives him directions. Then, ‘Stop here.’

  Tall stones loom at the cemetery where his mother is buried.

  Cob looks quickly at Shell. She frowns vaguely. Manny makes a disguised sign of the cross.

  ‘Wait here for me!’ Jerry calls. Quickly he gets out of the stopped car and rushes through iron-grilled gates into the cemetery.

  Crosses. Statues. Urns. The props of death everywhere. He looks at the alive green velvet grass. He runs along the winding road to face his mother's grave, her death. Armed with yesterday's illuminations carr
ied from the magic world, he has to know whether the black pain has been utterly contained. His mind repeats wordlessly, Even the severed branch grows again! Resurrection!

  Her grave.

  He pauses. The grass around it has not yet grown, the ground is leprous. He moves closer. He remembers: The canvased area under which they stood, he and his sister and the others who came to mourn; the box before them, sealed forever now.

  Reaching it swiftly, he stares at the stone. Her favorite virgin guards it. The inscription reads: ‘With The Greatest Love.’ Desperately he evokes the words of yesterday's drugged liberation: The severed branch! To grow again! The cycle of life! Resurrection! He touches the stone. It's cold, hard, dead. Suddenly he remembers. At the hospital needles penetrated her veins in burst stars. Mother! So close in his memories, yet so irretrievably far within the black country of death. Mother!

  And suddenly his whole body was seized by loss. Tears came beyond control.

  ‘Mother!’ he cries aloud—and knows that nothing has changed. The drug has not even assuaged the vicious pain of loss. And instantly the knowledge cuts into him like a million brutal knives, each carving out a severe wound into the desolate vulnerability.

  Running, he flees the grave. Angrily he wipes away the tears. Don't cry! Then slowly, waiting for his eyes to dry, he returns to the car outside the cemetery.

  Shell stares at him relentlessly.

  Cob duplicates her look.

  Accusing silence encloses him.

  Cob still driving, they ride away.

  Jerry feels a burgeoning depression, a huge despair. He feels cheated. Bitterness slices into him. Bitterness becoming rage. And yet there's this—he pulls the thought—even if the revelations of the drug changed nothing in the world ruled by death, even if the revelations were spurious, still the drug can dazzle him again. There's that of momentary Escape.

  ‘Let's do some more dope!’ he breaks the spell of silence.

  Anxious to be released from it, the others join in approval. There's an instant mood of euphoria.

  ‘Like the cat's a heavy doper now,’ Cob laughs.

  The day assumes a definite shape as they speed back to Shell's.

  It's a glorious, clear day. There's a delicious warmth in the air.

  Jerry's world. Anger recurs in roaring assaults.

  Ahead and to one side of the highway, a barefoot long-haired youngman, smiling, stands selling carnations.

  ‘I want some flowers,’ Jerry says abruptly. His voice is cold.

  ‘Shit, man,’ Cob puts it down.

  ‘He wants some flowers, let him get them,’ Shell says firmly; the tone of Jerry's voice has alerted her.

  ‘Shit, man …’ Cob repeats.

  ‘I want some fucking flowers,’ Jerry says firmly.

  Cob stops the car. Jerry jumps out. He approaches the youngman at the corner. The two face each other. They resemble each other uncannily—except that the flower vendor is smiling and Jerry is looking fiercely at him.

  Jerry hears his own words: ‘Those flowers are dyed.’

  ‘Oooo-eee,’ Manny says in the car.

  And Cob understands what Shell sensed earlier.

  ‘Sure—and they're pretty,’ the youngman says, extending a bunch to Jerry.

  ‘They're fucking ugly,’ Jerry says, the meanness flowing. ‘They look weak.’ Suddenly he grabs the extended carnations, and he flings them bitterly into the street.

  ‘What the hell … ?’ the youngman protests.

  Jerry stands by the curb watching as passing cars crush the flowers into pastel smears on the gray asphalt. The vulnerable part of him lies smashed on the street, dead.

  Inside the car, he feels exhilarated. Victorious.

  And Shell's smile, Cob's swift glance, a shake of Manny's head—they acknowledge it.

  The car speeds away. Back to Shell's house.

  In her apartment Shell is holding pinkish, gnarled pills, the color of faded roses. A different kind of mescaline from yesterday's. She takes a pill, passes the others to them. Each swallows one with milk from the requisite one glass.

  Taped music prepares to receive the spell.

  Tense, anxious, Jerry is desperate for the drug to possess him. Reality keeps pulling his mind to his mother's grave. From there it lunges to this. He rushed her to the hospital; he was in the ambulance with her, and he held her hand, his body quivering, anxious to give her his strength, his life. He pulls away from that burning memory, only to be devoured by this one. Her beautiful eyes had looked at him in panic…

  Manny is the first to get off. A smile blesses his face as he welcomes the world of colors, pulsing music. He laughs uncontrollably. ‘My old lady …’ He can't stop laughing. ‘My old lady, man … Diggit, I haven't been home since yesterday morning. I bet she thinks I turned myself in to the J.D. home, man! … I hope … I hope she misses the hell out of me!’

  Shell too is getting off, her beauty radiates the joy of the drug.

  And it's releasing the child in Cob. In wonder, he's studying the shattered images of a kaleidoscope. Now he passes it to Shell, and then he smiles warmly at Jerry. ‘Like …’ Cob begins uncertainly. ‘Like here we are, man.’

  ‘Right on,’ Manny approves as if Cob has just solved a great riddle.

  But Jerry is not getting off. He feels the gathering tension of the day, the frightened cat, the panicked yellow eyes. The grave. The grave. The locked room. Death. He stares at the colors in the room, demanding that they light up with magic, demanding they part to allow him entrance into the dazzling world. But nothing.

  Cob passes the kaleidoscope for Jerry to share.

  But to Jerry there is no magic. Not in the kaleidoscope. Not in the rocks, beads, or glass which Shell has spread again on the floor. It's been an hour since he dropped the mescaline.

  He walks impatiently to the window. The warmth of the day has become heat. The yellow desert seems to be steaming.

  He turns desperately to the others. For them the magic doors have opened wide. Their soft laughter indicates it. Occasionally they hold a rock to each other, admiring it, touching its beauty. He knows for them it contains a piece of the dazzling universe. They pass it to him—and it's just a rock. Feeling a fathomless depression, he turns from them …. The grave, the frightened cat. The grave. Death. Urgently he goes to the kitchen. Anxiously he takes another hit of the mescaline, the kind he took yesterday, the slick, bright-red capsule.

  Another half hour passes. More. Still, nothing.

  Manny, Cob, and Shell are exploring the hidden universe contained within the room.

  And then the door of the drug opens for Jerry.

  But this time it didn't open gently. It was flung apart, and he was pulled savagely into the secret world. He felt his body jerk violently as if two powerful opposing forces had collided within him—and he heard a Zoom! But all that mattered was that he was in the dazzling world.

  And, everything is radiant now! The violent entry has not altered that. Through the window the desert shifts in layers of dazzling beauty, as if lit by a golden light. But suddenly Zoom! again—a sound he does not so much hear as feel, an implosion within his mind. And the world funnels. But now again there's the beauty quickly. The sky, lowering, forms soft-blue parting panels. Zoom! The world spirals darkly. Then again it opens into the rainbow spectrum bathed in the drug's magic.

  Jerry joins the others on the floor. They welcome him with extended beads, rocks, the kaleidoscope.

  Suddenly, and time's boundaries are quickly eradicated, they're outside. Suddenly they're on the highway. Suddenly they're giggling inside a car that stopped to give them a ride.

  Jerry stares at the face of the driver, a man. As before in the earlier stage of the drug, the face melts, but this time only into horrendous shapes. Jerry looks quickly away, at the dazzling sky. Zoom! The world closes, holds its breath, opens harshly. ‘Where are we?’ Jerry asks.

  ‘Who cares ?’ Manny says.

  On the suddenly hot, hu
mid street. When did they get out of the car? Zoom! The world rushes at Jerry in a vortex. In a car again. The driver's face, again a hideous, menacing visage. Jerry frowns. Why, this time, does the drugged world contain so much that is ugly? Zoom! Out of the car.

  A tangled maze, the streets have bunched up as if the world is painted on wrinkled paper. Cars melt into chrome dinosaurs. Zoom! In another, a speeding, car. When he exhales this time, Jerry spews out the twisted world.

  ‘Man, that was dynamite shit we took! I am ripped!’ Manny is saying. ‘I bet that shit had some heavy acid and speed in it!’

  Cob is giggling: ‘I'm so messed up, I…’

  Voices: ‘Where shall we go?’

  Where? Where?

  Where?

  Where? Here.

  There. There.

  Here.

  Suddenly Jerry wants to come down from the drug's soaring high. The world is rushing within his head. To dissipate the disorientation, he forces himself to laugh; his laughter comes back at him like a cry.

  The others laugh.

  Zoom! They're walking along a street. Zoom! They're inside a church.

  ‘How did we get here?’ Jerry asks.

  ‘We hitchhiked, man!’ Cob reminds him.

  ‘Why are we in this church?’ Jerry persists. It's the same church where—when was it?—they ‘confessed’!

  ‘Because you said this is where you wanted to come,’ Manny reminds him.

  Did he? Oh, yes. But did he? If so, why?

  Zoom!

  Jerry is standing before the altar. The martyred figure of the crucified Christ breathes, sighs in pain. Jerry feels crushed by sorrow for him. He sees Christ's blood flowing. He turns away desperately.

  Zoom!

  He's standing before the mosaicked window. The sun has brought it to life. The angel and the slain dragon. Jerry hears the dragon's howl. Or the angel's? Who destroyed whom?

  Zoom! Before the altar again. He looks up, to the crucified Christ, up, to God, the culprit! You killed him! And you killed my mother!

  Did he really shout those words? Zoom! He's standing before the mosaicked window. The angel is poised to slay….

  Us!

  14

  Outside the church.

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!