The Fourth Angel

by John Rechy

  Jerry sees the wind coming at him like a hideous bird, feels it clawing at his face, his eyes. Where can he look? Shell is standing before him. He studies her. Shell. Demonic. Beautiful. A divinely beautiful demon.

  Zoom!

  How did they get here? Time, space are shattered. They're in a giant drugstore. Smashed perfumed odors, spliced sounds, broken colors—instantly they accost Jerry. And people, menacing bodies dwarfed, melt along the store, which tilts.

  The four go through turnstiles.

  ‘I dig carnivals!’ Cob approves the choice of store. He rushes happily to a display of cheap jewelry. Shell and Manny join him.

  Jerry watches the three digging into the glass beads. Zoom! An amber film filters his eyesight darkening everything. Zoom! He's in a giant box filled with insane people in a howling angry world. Colors pull at him savagely—dyed quicksand in his mind, which is running, lost within itself in a jungle of clanging memories. His mother's death, the grave, the cat's eyes, the locked room, death!

  Shell's world. She feels the beads luxuriously, discovers their pure inner shapes, so pure and crystal. Smilingly she holds out a fistful to Jerry.

  He rejects them desperately.

  Cob marches along the aisles of the store like a proud explorer; smiling, owning his private world.

  Manny is whirling a display of sunglasses deliriously.

  Eyes! Dead colored eyes! Jerry cowers against the enclosing walls. Zoom! Amber darkness, like the wing of a giant bird.

  Zoom! They're outside. The streets are rollercoaster tracks. Jerry is laughing very hard, vainly trying with laughter to drive away the assaulting horror. The heat is like wet gauze pasted on his body.

  Zoom! In and out of cars.

  Zoom! Downtown El Paso. Streets crowded with strange people involved in a savage, arcane ritual to tear each other apart. Buildings angle as if to touch their shadows. A cacophony of clashing sounds! Where has the drug's beauty fled? Jerry wonders. Is he down, off the drug—and is this, finally, the real world? Trees in the old plaza shriek insanely.

  He looks down at his hand. A skeleton! Terrified, he ‘feels’ himself running through the crowds, searching … What? What! … But he's not really running. He's walking with the others, all laughing.

  ‘Outasite,’ Cob is approving their trip, staring at people.

  ‘Ooooo-eee,’ Manny agrees happily.

  Shell's world. Her face is tilted toward the clean sky, which smiles back at her.

  Jerry grasps for a focus on reality, a focus to pull him out of the quicksand of roaring insanity: ‘I've got to go feed the cats!’ he says urgently. The words form like entities on his electrified mind.

  ‘Sure, let's go to your house,’ Cob says.

  Frantic to get there—a haven—Jerry doesn't protest this time. The drug has abandoned him within a subterranean level beyond the outrageous beauty—fled—of the earlier experiences.

  They walk along familiar streets grown sinister for Jerry. Houses seem coated over with colored moss. They walk through an eternity, until, finally—blessedly real in a sea of distortion—there it is:

  The house!

  His mother's house…

  His house!

  Cob's voice. ‘We'll all come in.’ He spoke the words softly, uncertainly. An entreaty this time? Has the house Jerry will not allow him into become a symbol of isolation for him? Or in a shaping conflict between them, has it become the immediate focus of vague victory?

  The drug flowing powerfully within him, Cob does this impulsively. He touches Jerry, on the shoulder, doubling the entreaty of his words. His fingers remain there, lightly, but totally committed to the gesture: the enactment of earlier moments of rehearsal.

  Slowly Jerry's own hand rises as if to cover Cob's on his shoulder. But instead he pulls away swiftly. He glanced at Shell, and her look was dark. The very vulnerability he has tried to cleanse himself of was seizing him again! He will not allow it.

  Terrified, he backs farther away from Cob's touch.

  Cob's world. Unexpectedly he hears his own words forming beyond control. ‘I just wanted to touch you, man, because you looked so scared.’

  ‘No!’ Jerry backs away farther from him. ‘No one can touch me any more!’

  As if within his own drugged world a tension had unwound in Manny, he goes quickly to Cob. ‘I'll touch you, Cob! I'll touch you!’ And he touches Cob's hands urgently.

  Suddenly Jerry rushes into the house, closing, locking the door. Quickly! To be alone again with the lingering ghost of his mother! My mother and myself—alone! he thinks, as if with his life he can pull her from death … He pulls the bolt over the lock. Then—as if the house is issuing a commanding whisper to him from out of the pools of locked heat—he looks about it.

  The house is a cave.

  The brown cat is staring at him from within its depths.

  ‘Stop looking at me like that!’ Jerry shouts at the animal. ‘I didn't take her away!’

  The cat shrieks at him, body arched, hair on end.

  Reality crashes on Jerry.

  The cat flees.

  Jerry wanders about the enormous house, searching out the cat, to explain … The other cats have come out, are looking curiously at him. Does he appear strange? Different? Both cats suddenly recoil from him. Why? The vibrations, almost electric, emanating from his body? His infectious panic touching them?

  He's upstairs. Before the locked room. The brown cat isn't here. Does she realize …? He looks away from the hugely vacant room.

  He's searching other rooms in the house, a desolate, empty world. He pulls doors aimlessly, each opens with a sad sigh. What is he looking for? Oh, yes, the brown cat. But he keeps calling softly: ‘Mother, Mother.’

  Zoom! Another room. Zoom! The stairs. Zoom! His mother's room again. Closed against her death. He touches the door, touches the key. Memories scream! He covers his ears as if to crush the raid. He rushes away. Zoom! Still another room. A closet, the door parted slightly. He opens it. Darkness spirals, forms fingers grasping at him. Yellow eyes gleaming! The brown cat crouches on a dark shelf. He has to reassure her! He has to soothe her. Terrified, the cat lunges at him, claws ripping at his flesh. He looks down at his hands. Blood. He feels a gasp coming from his throat.

  Then, the rushing madness: The house shrinks. Monster shadows squeeze out of every corner. Is there Escape from the world of this strange house? He can send a secret signal from the window. I'm lost! The stark, silent house. Zoom! He's looking out a window. Shell, Cob, Manny downstairs.

  The doorbell!

  Stairs curl at his feet.

  Zoom! He's leaning against the door. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Let us in, man!’ He hears Manny's voice.

  ‘No,’ Jerry says.

  ‘He's bumming,’ comes Manny's voice.

  ‘We have to get him out,’ Shell says.

  For them, the drug's spell has ended. And they realize that for Jerry the insane world has spilled into reality.

  ‘I'll climb through a window,’ Manny says.

  ‘No, that'll freak him out worse,’ Shell says with authority. ‘He'll just run away.’

  The somber, cold Cob is returning swiftly. ‘If the dude wants to lock himself in his fucking house, let him.’

  Through the closed door, Cob's voice grates like sand against Jerry's mind.

  Shell says to Cob: ‘We're the four angels.’

  ‘What's wrong with being three again?’ Cob says.

  ‘Just a moment ago—when you wanted to touch him …’ Shell begins, ambiguously. In accusation? Reminder?

  Cob turns from her, as if to walk away. But he waits.

  Shell knocks insistently but softly on the door. ‘Jerry, it's Shell, let us in.’

  Her voice. Shell…

  ‘Let me in, Jerry,’ Shell insists even more softly.

  Jerry leans against the closed door.

  Shell's voice: ‘What you're into, man—you're having a bummer, and I'll help you out o
f it if you open the door. We'll rap, man; just rap.’

  A wave of tenderness. ‘Okay.’ Jerry unlocks, unbolts the door, opens it. He faces Manny and Shell.

  Shell glances into the enormous twilit house. ‘Split with us, you can't stay here alone,’ she tells Jerry.

  Manny retreats slightly. Looking into the solemn house, he edged too closely into Jerry's threatening world.

  ‘You're bleeding,’ Shell says to Jerry.

  Jerry withdraws his hand. He studies them. Then he sees Cob a few feet away. The dark sunglasses. The brooding face. Death!

  Quickly Jerry closes the door, locking it again.

  Manny's voice through the door: ‘Goddamnit, man, open the fucking door!’

  ‘Don't yell at him!’ Shell's voice orders Manny. ‘When you're on a bummer, you can't take it!—he'll never open the door that way.’

  ‘How do you know about bumming, Shell?’ Cob tosses at her. ‘You ever bummed out, Shell?’ He remembers acute pain in his mind.

  ‘Man, I …’ Shell begins, shifts abruptly: ‘I know all about the real shit.’

  Cob accuses harshly: ‘You really want to help the dude, Shell—or you want to get into his head now, when he's freaking and it's easier?’

  ‘Guess!’ Shell flings at him.

  ‘Shell's trying to help the dude!’ Manny insists frantically; like yesterday, his own world is being threatened, but for him— as well as for Shell and Cob—the drug's effects have lapsed, and so the threat exists on the shore of reality.

  ‘Is she?’ Cob flings at him. ‘Is she fucking trying to help him? Or just get to him?’

  ‘Or is that your trip, Cob?’ Shell counters.

  ‘You are! Aren't you, Shell? You are trying to help the dude! We all are, aren't we?’ comes Manny's desperate voice.

  ‘Sure,’ Shell says.

  The harsh sound of their words storms Jerry's mind violently. He feels a spiraling disorientation … Death! Escape! To what? Death. No Escape! Mother! Death…

  He slides against the wall. The house—his enemy—touches him.

  He hears a window rattle.

  A voice. ‘The window's locked, Shell, I can't pry it open.’ Manny's.

  Another voice. ‘Let's try the back door.’ Shell's.

  The back door! His means of Escape! Jerry rushes to it. Zoom! He's outside. Zoom! The world, sky, trees crash. Orange-white, the sun is setting. It attacks him with fierce white fire and heat.

  He runs through the back garden, out the gate, which clangs Trapped echoes in his mind. Clang! Voices: ‘He's running away!’ Clang! ‘Where is he?’ ‘Well have to find him!’ Clang! Zoom! And Cob's voice: ‘Let the dude go!’ ‘No—we've got to find him!’

  Voices left far, far behind. Perspiring, his clothes wet on his body, Jerry is running breathlessly through alleys—a hostile twisted jungle of gnarled shapes. The sun. Where is it now? Gone. Mother! Zoom! Night! Where is he? Houses crouch like frightened animals. Zoom! He remembers the brown cat! Zoom! Is it possible? Yes, without realizing it, he's run here. He's standing across the street from the hospital where his mother died. He remembers the ambulance, the corridors, her body, the needles in her arms, the scream from his soul … He smothers tears within him. Don't cry! He sits down wearily. Mother! No, he's not sitting down, he's running again. Zoom! A highway in the jungle!

  Cars pass—their lights are a slow lighted cortege.

  He stands on the curb.

  And he's aware of the exposed, naked universe. Of its glaring hostile stars! Of whirling masses of angry space!

  Zoom! He's in a car. Did he hitchhike? The man—who is he? He looks familiar.

  ‘How far are you going?’ Words issue from the man's mouth.

  ‘Just ahead!’ Jerry pronounces. He leans back in the car. He looks steadily at the man. ‘Who are you?’ he asks him.

  The man studies him. He frowns. ‘Why? Do I look familiar?’

  ‘Do I?’ Jerry hears his own words.

  The man hesitates. ‘I'm not sure.’ He looks ahead.

  Jerry's world. He's running in the forest of his mind.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the man asks him.

  ‘Don't I look all right?’ Jerry feels a blaze of anger.

  ‘Of course,’ the man placates him, ‘you just seem a little … tired.’

  ‘I am,’ Jerry hears himself say, and now he feels an engulfing gratitude, kindness toward this stranger. ‘I am, man, I am so tired.’ He closes his eyes wearily, but even in the closed darkness the menacing black shapes attack. He opens his eyes. Zoom! A drive-in theater!—but didn't they just pass it? And there it is again. Are they driving in a straight circle? A straight circle. Past, present fusing in memory, his mind opens, closes, like a movie run on a circular machine, recurring. Is any of this real? Is he still locked inside the house imagining all this? The sky, the night, this man, the universe? Zoom! Jerry stares at the man. Who is he?

  ‘Man, I'm bumming!’ Jerry hears his words, a howl. He holds his head desperately in his hands.

  Did the man understand? Or was it only the franticness of the words? ‘You want to go to the hospital?’ he asks quickly.

  ‘No! That's where she died!’ Jerry blurts. ‘Just … please … drive.’

  ‘Okay,’ the man says.

  Jerry's memory plunges suddenly into a dark pool; remembers a dark house near a bar. And a man surrounded menacingly by them—the four angels. ‘Are you Stuart?’ he almost shouts the words at the man.

  The man says slowly: ‘No.’

  But Jerry is convinced. ‘I'm sorry!’ he shouts. And the meanness and savagery of last night, the night before—when was it?—the cruelty he's been courting to save himself, himself alone, attacks him. ‘I'm sorry…’

  ‘It's okay,’ the man says. And softly: ‘I think you must go to the hospital, I'll wait if you like.’ He turns the car around in the middle of the highway. Stops for the oncoming traffic.

  Suddenly Jerry rushes out of the car. No, he won't go to the hospital—to confront more memories of the paralyzing loss! He's running across the highway. Cars are honking. Brakes are like the shrieks of jungle birds. Where is he? Inside a drive-in theater. On the screen, giant faces! Garish colors. Zoom! He's running desperately from car to car! Another hostile jungle of staring strange faces within the cars, and he's peering into every car, every window, every face, looking for … His mother! The brown cat! His mother! And death! —to kill it.

  Zoom! He's out of the drive-in. On the highway, hitch-hiking. Zoom! In another car. Violent shapes form on his mind. Where is Stuart? Was it Stuart? The car he's in is stopped before a train, which is unmoving, blocking traffic. Zoom! Jerry opens the door of the car, he's running again. Voices are calling out urgently to him. He's crawling under the stopped train. He's under it. Round steel wheels gleam blackly. Feeling a great weariness, he lies on the ground, under the train. His fingers touch the rails.

  Voices! Yelling at him! And a lantern! A flashlight cutting at him like a threatening knife! ‘The train's going to move any second now!’ And the flashlight! The flashlight! He remembers: Another flashlight. The dark abandoned house by the bar…

  Zoom! He's crawling from under the train, menaced by the light. He's on the other side, he's running frantically. Zoom! A forest? Trees, hills. Vaguely he tries to remember where he is. Trees bend to grab him. He runs. The heat crushes him. There's a streetlight within the forest! He remembers the park where he became … an angel. Why did he come here? A hill. He has to climb it. With great effort. It seems that hours pass and he's still climbing it. Then he's on top of it. Yes, it was here, the same spot, where he became an angel a million years ago.

  He lies on the grass nearby. Desperately trying to swim out of the undercurrent of insanity, he grasps at the magic anchors which failed him earlier: Resurrection! Even the severed branch grows again! Resurrection! But the drugged illuminations have lost all their power. He closes his eyes, allowing the dark shapes which he cannot Escape. Then he begins to c
ry, tears released easily.

  How long did he remain there, trembling, crying? A second, a minute, an hour, hours?—feeling the tears washing away the twisted horror. He opens his eyes. The world is slowly ordering its chaos, the clutch of the drug's madness is fading.

  He looks around. The twisted drugged world has withdrawn. He stands. He knows with infinite relief that his terrifying journey through the long tunnel of insanity has ended. He stares at the sky. The universe—remote, distant, unconcerned— no longer crushes him. The stars, indifferent, do not bless—but do not menace.

  In the dark heat, he removes his wet shirt. The air touches him apathetically.

  15

  Lights in the dark park are mute halos in the stifling night.

  Jerry feels a vast relief to be out of the twisted world—but with it, still another sadness, that the beautiful world of the drug turned against him: that beneath its outrageous wonder lies insanity and darkness.

  He walks slowly down the hill, toward the street intersecting the park. Exhausted, he lies on the grassy incline. For a moment he feels a wafting of the drug's insanity. Zoom. But it lasts only a moment. The world is again anchored in reality.

  Then without surprise he recognizes Shell's car. He doesn't even get up, they'll see him. Shell applies the brakes sharply. Jerry hears Manny's relieved: ‘There he is!’ He and Shell run from the car, left in the middle of the street. Cob does not get out.

  ‘Are you all right, man?’ Manny asks Jerry.

  ‘Yeah, man, what …?’ Shell blocks a note of entreaty.

  Jerry nods. ‘I'm okay.’

  Shell studies him carefully. Yes, the drug's bad trip is over for him, she knows. The fear-drained face is gone.

  Cob sits in the back seat of the car. From the incline, Jerry glances at the purple-shielded eyes, and quickly away. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ he asks them.

  ‘It's on the fucking radio,’ Manny says excitedly. ‘When you ran away from us, we split and got Shell's car. Then we heard it on the radio—that some freaked-out dude tried to run under a train near the park!’ Manny can't conceal a note of admiration in his voice.

  Shell says to Jerry: ‘You came here because this is where we met and you knew we'd look for you here.’