Life During Wartime

by Lucius Shepard

  Mingolla staggered, had an incoherent impression of orange sky, a night sky above a city, diseased-looking palm trees with brown fronds and scales on their trunks, and rain-slick asphalt reflecting nebular blurs of neon, and bars with glowing words above them. Sinewy music whose rhythms seemed to be charting the fluctuations of his nerves. Somebody bumped into him, said, “Whoops,” an oily fat man with a moon face, sticking out his pink meat of a tongue on which a cobra had been tattooed, then smiling and mincing off to a world where he was beautiful.

  “See what I tol’ ya,” said the bag lady.

  Gaudily dressed crowds shuffling in and out of the low glass-front buildings, a history of the American perverse…Hookers in day-glo hotpants, leather boys, floozies in slit skirts, topless teenage girls with ANGEL stamped on their left breasts, and all the faces pale in the baking heat, characters in a strange language, circular dominoes with significant arrangements of dark eyes and mouths, borne along on the necks of fleshy machines, one thought per brain like a prize in a plastic egg, doing a slow drag down the devil’s row of bars and sex shops and arcades, under the numinous clouded light, under the smears of red and yellow words melting into the air, their voices a gabble, their laughter a bad noise, the rotten yolk of their senses streaking the night, and Mingolla knew the bag lady was wrong, that this was most definitely America, the void with tourist attractions, the Southern California bottomland experience, and somewhere or everywhere, maybe lurking behind a billboard, was a giant red-skinned flabby pig of a Satan, his gut hanging over his tights, horny and giggling, watching through a peephole the great undressing of his favorite bitch, the Idea of Order…

  The bag lady shook her head in despair. “We need a new Columbus, that’s what we need.”

  “Help out a vet,” said a voice behind him, and Mingolla spun around to confront a weasly crewcut man on crutches, one-legged, wearing fatigues with a First Infantry Nicaragua patch, holding out a hand. In the darks of his eyes Mingolla saw the secrets of combat, the mysterious truths of shock.

  “Hey,” said the vet. “Hey! I know you, man! ’Member me? The valley, man, the valley near Santander Jimenez.” He hobbled a step forward, peering at Mingolla’s face. “Yeah, it’s you, man. You looked different…your hair was different or something. But yeah, I…”

  “Un-uh.” Mingolla backed away, feeling unbelievably tall, worried that he might scrape his head on the orange sky, get wet with that polluted color. “You got the wrong guy.”

  “The fuck I do! You was there when I was hit, man. ’Member? The game with the beaner…y’gotta ’member the game!”

  Mingolla stepped into the crowd, was carried away by their slow crush. He couldn’t remember the man, but then he couldn’t remember much of anything, and he was afraid someone else might recognize him, someone with an ax to grind.

  “You’re a vet, huh?” A woman, a beautiful, pale, black-haired woman with carmine lips and high cheekbones, enormous eyes, and the voluptuous body used to mold pornographic beer glasses displayed beneath a full-length gown fabricated of tiny black-lace serpents and filmy mesh, a woman with silkburns on her hips and probably a really keen tattoo…she took his arm and pressed close. “I’m Sexula,” she said. “And I’m free to vets.”

  That started him laughing, thinking about the GI Bill and benefits.

  “Hey, fuck you, Jim!” She pushed him away. “I’m just tryin’ to be real, y’know. You some kinda faggot, get your ass over to The Boy’s Room!”

  “Faggot?” Hilarity was peaking in him, graphing Himalayas of unvoiced laughter. “Want me to show you my dingus, prove my point? Want me to unholster my—”

  “I don’t have to listen this shit! Maybe the other rides like it, man, but not me. I…”

  “What you mean ‘rides’?” The unfamiliar term brought him down to earth, reminded him that he was lost, that he’d lost…who the hell was it? The crowd moved them up against a window.

  “Rides, man!” she said. “Like, y’know, this”—her gesture took in the street—“this here’s the carnival, and I’m one of the rides.” She caught up his hand. “You okay, man? You lookin’ pretty scorched.”

  Laughter was mounting inside him again. He took in the woman’s body, incredible breasts, wild cherry nipples peeking from the twinings of black lace coils. Nice girl, he thought. A foreign student, no doubt. Working her way through junior college.

  “What’s in ya, man? Little too much frost?”

  He remembered some more. “I’m looking for somebody…somebody’s looking for me.”

  “You found her,” she said. “C’mon, let’s go see ’bout a room.”

  He could use some rest, a place to get his thoughts together. Out from under the orange sky. But he didn’t trust her. He primed her for honesty, openness. “Why me?”

  “Like I said, man, you’re a vet…the town pays me for vets.” She led him around the corner, through glass doors, along a carpet mapped with stains shaped like dark continents amid a burgundy sea, and into a narrow mirrored lobby at whose far end, hunched behind the reception desk, sat a gnomish old man with a beaked nose and tufts of white hair on the sides of his head reminiscent of goblin ears, and upon whose forehead the engraved word finality would not have been inappropriate. “Twenny for the room ya need drinks that’s more,” he said without punctuation, without looking up, and Sexula said, “He’s a vet, Ludy.”

  Ludy squinted at Mingolla, who could feel cracks spreading across his skin from the power of that blood-webbed blue eye. “Ya gotcha card?” he asked.

  “Uh…I was mugged,” said Mingolla.

  “Ain’t gotcha card gotta pay the twenny.” Ludy turned the page of a magazine, and peeping over the edge of the desk, Mingolla saw photographs of naked young boys in sexy yet playful couplings.

  “Didn’tcha hear him.” Sexula spanked the counter with her hand, calling Ludy back from gambols with pals named Jimmy and Butch and Sonny. “Man says he got mugged.”

  Ludy scowled, an expression that caused his eyes nearly to vanish into folds of inflamed pink flesh, and said to her, “You wanna pay the twenny pay the twenny.” He punctuated. “Don’t wanna pay get the fuck out.”

  A tap on Mingolla’s shoulder, followed by a girlish, “Excuse me.”

  Behind him stood a thin mousey girl of nineteen or twenty, whom Mingolla perceived to be at the peak of her good looks, poised between the incline of plainness and the decline of just plain ugly. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt bearing a rendering of the Last Supper and the legend THIS IS MY BODY, GIVEN FOR YOU. Toting a shopping bag. Her brown hair lusterless, her breasts with the conformation of upturned saucers.

  “The gift of love can be a transcendent experience, but not if paid for,” she said, her words sounding rote. “I want to give to you, brother.”

  “Get outta here,” said Sexula.

  The girl ignored her. “I am qualified to give you everything she might, and I can give you—”

  “Give him a goddamn fatal disease, what with all the sleaze been poppin’ you.” Sexula took a little walk around the girl, shaking her head in exaggerated disgust.

  “I can give you much more,” the girl continued, swallowing back embarrassment. “Through the act of love, I can give you communion with our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in…”

  “These cunts come ’round sayin’ that ’cause they’re doin’ it for God, it’s pure,” said Sexula. “But the truth is, they can’t get laid ’less they give it away. They ain’t nothin’ but hips and a hole!”

  Ludy laughed, a sound like something large and pulpy falling into an empty paper bag.

  The girl’s face worked. “Jesus Christ, in whose service I’ve…”

  Sexula sneered. “Jesus got nothin’ to do with it!”

  That waxed it for the girl. “I don’t care what you say about me, but you…you…” She hefted her shopping bag behind her back as if preparing to use it on Sexula. “What would you know ’bout Jesus? He’s never laid his hands on you!”

/>   “Man lays his hands on me,” said Sexula with a wink to Ludy, “and I give him that ol’ time religion with a brand new twist.”

  “Please, don’t go with her!” The girl’s hands fluttered at Mingolla’s chest. “The things I’ve seen the Lord do, the things that were done…the miracles! Miracles from ashes!”

  Her speech grew more and more disconnected, her manner more pitiable, and Mingolla, suddenly concerned for her, touched her mind and listened to the static of her thought, a crackle of half-formed images and memories…

  …the filthiest thing, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll do it no matter what, and it won’t be like the basement, the light through cobwebs, it won’t, through cobwebs on the cracked pane, gray like his heart, withered like his heart, and the pain right through me, bright, it had a color and bright, and I’ll do it, I’ll let him do it again, the pain so bright that God will notice, God will forgive, but not in the basement, not in the…

  …what basement, what pain…

  …is it you…

  …what basement, what pain…

  …it’s you, it really is, oh God, thank you, yes…

  …what basement, what pain…

  …the basement, yes, in the homeless shelter, and I was asleep in the basement, warm, it was warm with the furnace, the heat from the furnace, and I woke up and he was on me, almost in me, and not the right place, the place no one should see, and it hurt so much…

  …who…

  …one of the old ones, so many old ones, and I couldn’t see his face, just his hands on my shoulders, his yellow hands with one nail bruised, purple and black, like a claw, hooks in my shoulder forcing me down, my face in the dust, my tongue when I screamed tasting the dust, the ashes, and the furnace roaring, no one could hear me, except I could, I could hear my voice in the flames of the furnace, a voice singing in the flames, even with the pain it was singing, joyful, because there was so much to feel, and I wanted…is it you, really you, really…

  …what did you want…

  …the dust, to taste the dust again, but I couldn’t he was pulling my hair, pulling back my head, bending me, breaking me, he said he’d kill me if I told, but I didn’t want to tell, didn’t want anyone to know, I wanted the dust in my mouth…

  …why…

  …to swallow back the pain, like cats when they’re sick they swallow back the sickness, and they’re better, they just don’t let it lie there on the floor, they take it back inside and make it part of themselves, and when he’d gone I did it, I lapped up the dust like a cat laps up sickness until my tongue was gray, and…

  …did the pain stop…

  …yes, no, yes, for a while, but it’s always there, always coming up again, always thick and gray forever, and I have to keep lapping up more and more, and is it you, really, please, please tell me, is it you…

  …

  …please oh please…

  …

  …is it you, I need your voice, I never knew the voice would feel so hot, is it you, tell me…

  …yes…

  …oh God take it away, please, give me a color bright without pain, please…

  …yes…

  …oh, oh, I…

  …listen…

  …I will, I will…

  …picture the man who attacked you…

  …I can’t, I…

  …he’s old, jaundiced, his gray hair and ragged, his face a map of hollows and sorrows, of wrinkles and evils, his clothes are rags, his heart is rags, his teeth are gone, his gums are the color of blood, and his eyes are blue, watery, weepy, do you see him…

  …yes, but…

  …watch…

  …he’s…dissolving, cracking, cracks are spreading all over him, and his skin, it’s flaking and…

  …and what…

  …light…

  …watch…

  …he’s beginning to glow, to glow from inside the cracks, and the light…

  …what’s happening with the light…

  …it’s…coming into me, shining out in beams, shining into me…

  …cleansing, pure…

  …yes, and he’s gone now, only light filling me…

  …how do you feel…

  …I don’t know, different, I feel different…

  …stronger…

  …yes…

  …strong enough to leave, to start over, to begin to live a new way, a new life…

  …but where…

  …you must leave…

  …how…

  …leave this place, you must leave now, soon, and find another place, a small town, the country, white houses and farms, and there you will be beautiful, you will open, a flower, your heart full, your body clean and sweet, and you will breathe new air, new thoughts, and love…

  …love…

  …love will take you, lift you, heal you, and you will forget the basement, the pain, you will forget it now, you will never think of it again, and when there is the beginning of that old pain, not the thought of it, only the beginning, the bad feelings, the fear, you will hear my voice and know that only the joy is real, do you feel the joy…

  …yes, yes…

  …and never listen to another voice, only his voice is real, is joy…

  …I won’t, I promise…

  …and your beauty will be a perfume, a thought, a knowledge, a fire, and you will give only to one, to one who sees that beauty, whose touch will treasure you, whose heart will know your heart, and when he comes to you, my voice will confirm him, will feel your knowledge and will say his name…

  …love…

  …yes, love forever, love for now, and he will take you deep and darling into the heartland, into a color bright and painless…

  …love…

  …leave now, now, and seek your new home…

  …but…

  …I will be with you…

  …always…

  …yes, always, now go…

  …I’m afraid…

  …into light, go into light, into the promise of joy, go…

  The girl backed away, her face perplexed but radiant. “I…I’ve got to go.” She smiled. “I’m sorry, I really have to.”

  Sexula laughed nastily.

  “Here!” The girl reached into her shopping bag, took something out, and pressed it into Mingolla’s hand: a plastic base atop which the holographic figure of a bearded man in a white robe walked around and around, his hands clasped in prayer. He thanked her, but she had already started for the door, walking fast, breaking into a run as she pushed out into the street.

  Ludy said, “Don’t got the twenny get outta the lobby.”

  Sexula rubbed against Mingolla, saying, “Ain’tcha got some way of provin’ you a vet?” And he remembered everything now, his memory jogged by the exercise of power. He was lost, lost in America, in sadness and confusion, and when he found who he was looking for, although they had won, they would still be lost, without plan or purpose, without even any understanding of what had been won. Ludy began demanding the twenty, and Sexula told Mingolla that if he couldn’t get it together she was going to leave, because vet or not she wasn’t about to do it in no alley, and Mingolla stared through the glass doors into the country of his birth, into an animated mural of gaud and dissolution that seemed at once foreign and familiar, into painted faces and unseeing eyes, wondering what to do, while the tiny Jesus circled constantly in his hand…

  …Izaguirre’s office walls faded in, and Mingolla jumped up from the chair, still sick and feeling more lost than ever in the winded silence of the hotel. His thoughts whirled, trying to comprehend what had happened. It had been so real! The future…that’s what it must have been. Yet there had been so much that smacked of hallucination. The way his thoughts had gone, the distortions. And the thing with the girl. Hearing her thoughts, answering them. But the most unbelievable thing had been his treatment of her. He’d recognized his paranoia and confusion. But that calm, compassionate soul, he hadn’t recognized that person at all. No, it had
to have been a hallucination. He’d tell Izaguirre about it in the morning, and…On second thought, maybe he’d keep it under his hat. Just in case it had been both a hallucination and real.

  The sea was glowing streaks of aqua, light purple, and brown over sand, kelp beds, and muddy shallows. Combers bright as toothpaste broke over the coral heads, and beyond them, the water was choppy and dark. Crabs flexed their bone-white claws and scuttled from beneath a jetty into the kelp fringe at the margin of the shore; a crane stepped with Egyptian poise through a reflecting film of water overlying a sand bar. Roosters crowed, call and response, Skinks scurried into the beach vine. A fisherman in shorts and a red hard hat poled a dory past, heading for the channel. Tied to a coco palm, a spotted hog rooted in the mucky sand not far from a compound wall of green cinderblock inset with a wooden gate. And Mingolla sat on a palm stump about fifty feet seaward from the hog, holding a baby hummingbird in his hand. Bottle green with a ruby throat, barely the size of his thumb joint.

  Angry voices from farther down the beach, where Izaguirre and Tully were arguing. “…no reason,” was all Mingolla could hear.

  A live jewel in his palm, the hummingbird throbbed with life, with anxiety, its throat pulsing. Mingolla had searched for its nest, but with no luck. He wished he could do something for the hummingbird; he couldn’t just leave it on the sand.

  “Shit!” said Tully, waving his hand.

  Izaguirre stood with his arms folded.

  Mingolla wondered if he could calm the hummingbird down. He touched its mind cautiously, feeling the electrical contact as a tiny fire flickering at the edges of his thought, one that winked off abruptly. The hummingbird’s throat had quit pulsing.

  “All right, mon! You won’t hear no more ’bout it from me!”

  Tully came stomping up, dropped onto the sand beside him, and Mingolla closed his fist around the hummingbird. It was warm, its beak stabbing his palm. A shiver passed through him, the ghost of an emotion.

  “Ever stop and t’ink dat dis damn war make no sense,” said Tully grumpily.

  Mingolla reached behind him, scooped a hollow in the sand, and gave the hummingbird a surreptitious burial.