by Ron Charach
But goes on beating, love’s poignant image bleeding at the dart
Of a more grievous passion, as a bird, dreaming of flight, sleeps on
Within its leafy cage.—“It generally upsets the heart
A bit, though not unduly, when I make the first injection.”
The surgeon Mr. Philip Allison’s prosy directives—set against the poetry—still hit home after all these years. Morgan speeds ahead to that final stanza, the one right after Mr. Allison’s claim: “I do not stitch up the pericardium...
...It is not necessary.” For this is imagination’s other place,
Where only necessary things are done, with the supreme and grave
Dexterity that ignores technique: with proper grace
Informing a correct compassion, that performs its love,
and makes it live.
What necessary things still need doing in these remains—this ash-heap of a former world? How to rise to “a correct compassion”? Henry can only wonder as he looks up, only to see a new visitor materialize:
cabana.
Handsome as a nose-job neo-Nazi in a bulletproof vest, his wild starin’ eyes burn like embers under a jet-black slash of uni-brow. Henry’s heartbeat quickens as best it can, bringin’ with it a burnin’ pain. He thinks of Kirkup’s heart, the stalwart heart somehow managin’ to slog its way through a timely operation. For the very first time he really notices cabana’s age. He can’t be much over twenty, and mustachioed though he is, there is a telltale absence of age-lines to his horse’s head of a face.
A refrain of the Missa Luba from If starts to pound in his head. He can see Malcolm McDowell training the machine gun on all the boardin’ school’s masters and student whips...
cabana smiles, ’s if t’say —Mohhnin’, Henry.
Swiftly cabana grabs for Henry’s bedside glass and walks over to the sink to pour himself some lubrication, which he downs in a gulp. Broods back down again into the only chair in the room, at the foot of Henry’s bed—knee of one bionic leg crossed over t’other.
In the lengthy silence Henry notices something else he never had before. cabana’s ashen face is ridged and furrowed. Here and there are painful lookin’ pebble-sized mounds. This young man has some pretty serious boils: —Acne vulgaris, Henry murmurs in a lament to no one in particular, and it comes out as a personal prayer.
cab shifts at this ’n draws a wiry hand across his face, almost self-consciously. Then he stands in a Draw! position, simian arms hoverin’ above his holsters.
Henry just looks at him, as best he can. And in the most confident voice he’s managed since before the larder fiasco, con-fides —I’m dead cab. I ain’t never comin’ back—never.
cabana seems to loosen up. Jest smiles a bit. Then he gits down into a bit of crouch and, holding his vice-grip gaze on Henry, he slowly eases the bedpan out from under the bed, lifts it eye-level to Henry like a sacred offerin’ and gives it a splashy flick—the golden contents doin’ a tidal wave onto the crisp white hospital linen. Then he flips the stainless steel receptacle upside-down on Henry’s bed-sheeted lap before turnin’ to amble out the door, not the slightest hint of frustration in his broad, young, but likely acne-ravaged back.
Henry waits in the stench of cold urine before callin’ his nurse. Knowing she was layin’ low ’til the departure of the visitin’ dignitary.
Funny, I could’ve blown a hole straight through him had I kept a loaded gun under the bed sheet, the way I did the first two nights. But I was so out of it: who knows who I might have shot…
He had refused to let the nurse give him oxygen unless she let him keep his piece with him. But a couple of days ago he gave in, and she hung it up in its holster.
Why, next time I’ll just call the po-lice...demand “more cops on the beat.” He rings for the nurse who asks him on the PA if the coast is clear. He thinks it likely is and asks her to bring him a pen and paper.
The thought of usin’ his precious few remainin’ bullets on harold galloway occurs to him.
Resolution
an invitation
Henry c’n now sit up and is ready to take little walks ’round his bed. Why if this were a real hospital he’d be up in the corridors chattin’ up other survivors by now: —We’re lucky to still be here! Who’s your doctor? and the like. He still looks awful—his color deathly pale, his teeth yellow with plaque and breath permanently sour. But he has plenty of time to mull over the locked-in-with-the-tuna debacle o’ the larder. Why, if ma could only manage to get all her big boys to help her with a real big move, there’s no tellin’ what that li’l ole lady might accomplish.
He prepares for a proper visit with his drug-free wife. This time Claire looks painf’lly smart in a dress-suit he hasn’t seen her wear in years. He resents her professional look as she strides into the room. The smell of Lysol permeates the air.
The sight of her husband lookin’ every bit his age at first shocks her. He can see it in her eyes.
—I’d have come sooner, she says, kissin’ him gently on the forehead, but I’ve had my own battles to fight, as you know…
—Don’t treat me like I’m made of glass. He pulls her onto the bed and up against him—but leaves off mighty quick, and asks her to hand him a little plastic case of nitros. He breaks into a cold sweat.
—Phew! You’re still some kisser! he tries makin’ light. —But they always overheat these danged “hospital” rooms. Too bad galloway’s Viagra pills don’t mix with these nitros.
—I should leave. Maybe come back tomorrow when you’re...
—Not a word. Just sit down in this chair. I’ll be fine in a matter of seconds. These little pills work wonders.
He puts one under his tongue, then smiles. —With a marriage like ours, one of us ought to be poppin’ something, no? Though lookin’ at you, I would say you’re on a roll...
She says nothing, just strokes his hand. —Henry, I need to talk with you about an offer I received just the other day, but seeing as how...
—Seeing as how the offer came from the self-same lady that put me here...
—How do you know that?
—Intuition. Why else would you look so guilty? Haven’t found yerself a townie, have ya? Well, the nitro’s working. Hop to it. What’s the scoop? You and “ma” and Carla and who else, Sheila Gordon?—heretofore known as The Hens’ Club. And weird harold, that ole rooster, he in on this too, or is his head also gonna roll?
—We’re going to set fire to ma’s—late enough so that they’re all there at the same time. A certain conspirator, I won’t say who, out of respect to your health—even told me that it was the desire to not harm you that prevented her from doing this before now.
Has Rose told Claire what she did to me? Too humiliating to ask her what she knows.
—So there’s gonna be a big fire—you’re just gonna bake ’em, eh? You gonna shake ’em first? Just like that? Then what? Have a bake sale? And papa harold—what’s the answer to him?
—What do you mean? Who needs the bastard once we’re free of his goons?
—Well, I don’t know about that... You gals feeling up for managing a little high technology? Gettin’ the generators to gen...? Tryin’ to work with townies in the machine shop on a portable state-of-the-art nuke reactor of some kind?
—Henry, you know there are knowledgeable people around here; it’s just that the town’s men, and certainly the women, haven’t had to use their brains in a while. They settled for demeaning Joe jobs instead. I mean, a man like Parkinson walking up and down the town, like a security guard—looking for booby-traps? He was trained as an engineer...
—Many years ago...and not on state-of-the-art survival—and surveillance—equipment.
—Look, Henry, don’t try to snow us with the high-tech line. You yourself told me galloway is great at
following the old K.I.S.S. motto—that things around here are no more complicated than a boy scouts’ survival exercise.
Her use of the word us really grates. How quick she fell in league with the evil Rose; sisterhood is powerful...
—Boy scouts, hmmm—did I really tell you that? Well, even if I wasn’t exaggerating, making this biosphere type of operation work requires a lot more training than any of these town guys has.
He didn’t want to let on about the extent to which he himself had become galloway’s understudy. Let them work out their own solutions. Freedom should be earned.
—I suppose it might be worth a try, he offers. —If you gals are up for a little murder most foul... But I’m not entirely sure that even Rose Seeton is up for actually killing her younger brother, and that’s what you need to do to keep a snake down—cut off its head…
If she does know about ma’s attempt on my life, she should own up now.
—I don’t know about Rose and “her little brother,” anyway. I doubt that killing him will be necessary. Since he heard what Rose did to you, harold has been depressed and brooding. We suspect he misses your company. Spends all day in his bunker, comes out only to service equipment and read dials. One benefit from all this is that the eight are a lot less hyper than they used to be; they spend more of their time lazing around, just eating, drinking and sleeping in late, like most punks do if you let them...
—I figured cabana looked a might subdued—for him.
—He came—here?
Henry doesn’t want to go into that. It hurt to face the fact that his ridin’ with the eight had been a source of energy to them. Somehow he’d never thought that he was really “goin’ along” with them in that way. The idea that he helped legitimize them—even while galloway worried that Henry’s joinin’ the group might actually weaken it—makes him check out his tin of nitros again. His chest is still tight.
—What does any of this have to do with a turncoat-turned-convalescent like me?
—Well, we thought that you might set it up for galloway to visit with you...
—No.
—That way you could draw him away from his monitor screens long enough...
—No. N-O. As in capital-N-i-t-r-capital-O. Now hand me that little packet over there, please.
She gives him the medicine, stands, kisses him again, an annoyin’ly gentle kiss, the way you might kiss a letter goodbye before mailing it, says she’ll be back in a day or two. Begs him to think it over. He wants to tell her he is proud to see her off the drugs and able to leave the house again... In a way he is proud of her. But he can’t quite get himself to congratulate her. Let alone tell her how smart she looks.
Instead: —Any thought of my coming back to live with you—once I’m able to leave here?
—This isn’t a good time to talk about that, Hen. We have to settle the issue of whose side you’re on.
—I don’t know, Claire, he says, feeling a new susceptibility to tears and bitin’ on the inside of his lower lip. —I reckon the winner’s...
Claire smiles, but rolls her eyes. —We’re going to set things right around here, Henry, whether or not you join us.
She gives his hand a bit of a squeeze. —Of course, we so wish you would. And she too is out the door.
another visitor
Henry sets his pen down, half noddin’ off from a poem he is workin’ on called “Public Domain.” He isn’t sure of it—seems he’s returnin’ to conventional rhymes and rhythms. He remembers that phrase appearin’ after traditional songs on old folk records, songs for which no writer claimed authorship, old chestnuts like “St. James Infirmary Blues” or “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies.” Reckons he’s into thinkin’ about public domains lately.
But first there’s a piece of writin’ he’d done that is now a nostalgia piece. These past few days he can’t stop thinkin’ of all those early girly videos galloway kept throwin’ at him before he went hardcore. Playboy videos. From the days when the magazines still had nudies. He sets aside the half-written “Public Domain” to look over another piece, from an unbelievably long two weeks ago:
Playmate Playoffs!
Two teams of girls in bikinis, cherry reds
versus royal blues, sweating out paces
of unlikely water sports,
loosening, for the camera’s lingering pan,
bikini-bottoms, windshield-wipering
as they saunter and prance, perfect
as body stockings.
Their assignment, to charge over barricades
but stay barely dressed,
milk-bodies creasing cutely, active bodies
surprisingly strong for such roundness
displayed as its own reward, like the tall blonde
who tugs at her bikini as she deflects off the barricade,
freeing her bottoms from the blushing grip—
I lean on fast-forward and stir Keystone-Kops visuals
—were ever goddesses put through such frenzied
paces by a mortal man?
Hef handpicks them for motherly bubs
with blending skin-tone nipples
and firm little choirboy bums.
No turning back from the search
for the right—expression.
But keep the sound off.
For they have the petulant voices of children,
make you feel like a brute
for listening in on the scripted fun.
The longer these plush athletes struggle
through their playoff feats,
the more languid the camera climb:
her drenched swimsuit bunching
to a thong she has to tug
into place—
Millions of men with nothing
they would rather do, no land
they would rather visit—but here,
where neither eiderdown
nor scrub-brush grows, where no lips
pulse or swell between the glistening legs,
only pale triangles into which California
disappears—
He remembers that after writin’ it he had vowed to have nothin’ more to do with galloway’s erotica, let alone those shameful little live-action displays, the thought of which now sickens him as much as sleazoid San Pornando fare like Anal Nation. Annihilation, as John Gideon would put it. Those “adult” movies came wrapped in covers with fetching, beautifully lit photographs that gave no hint of the cold loveless meat parade inside. Respondin’ to the threat of compulsory condom laws, the Industry threatened to move somewhere else. But it was all bluff. They needed the constant influx of would-be stars and starlets who, once desperate enough, would sell their nudity in exchange for more rent ’n gas money and a chance to keep chasin’ their dreams.
Suddenly he hears from just outside his room a boomin’ voice, a West Indies dialect: —Yo got ah leetle time for a veesit from a Beeg Black Mon?
—Name o’ barton? he calls back, aware of the thin sound of his own voice. —Hold on a minute.
He slides the poems under his lunch tray. But one of the sheets of the Playboy poem wafts to the floor. —So long as you hold back a bit, amos. I can’t let the old ticker run away on me.
In strides barton, salt ’n pepper beard an’ his teeth flashin’ whitely, extendin’ a great big hand, the back of it so black it’s almost blue.
—I’ll pass on the handshake, thanks. I ain’ givin’ you a limp fish for a greetin’. Good to see you, amos. Many thanks for makin’ sure I got here in one piece.
—What’d I do? asks barton, steppin’ out of the fake islands accent. —Jest carried you like a sack of potatoes, then deposited you here—that ain’t no day’s work.
—Oh, I don’t know, y
our back isn’t that much younger than mine.
—No, shrugs barton, lookin’ up at the acoustic tile ceilin’. —My heart neither... Those testosterone shots we get from galloway take a toll. You can tell he don’t partake. They might help him break even.
—Well, sit down. It ain’t against the law for a member of the eight to take a seat, is it?
—So long as it’s not a back seat.
—Well, you ain’t gonna be takin’ no back seat to this here cowboy, ’specially now.
—You’ll heal up. Then come lookin’ for that little town mutant who replaced you—just another pock-faced kid, really, maybe you’ll do a little shakey quent number on him?
—No, I’m done with that, amos, or should I call you Amos?
—black amos fer now. Stick to the plan.
—Okay, black amos. But it is good to hear you talkin’ normal-like, it’s been a long time... Why, you’re almost like your pre-eight professional self. What was it you used to teach?
—Film theory, amos laughs. —Can you think of a crueler fate for a film-buff than to wind up in a cheesy Western? Why this ain’t The Wild Bunch, let alone High Noon. Though Blazin’ Saddles comes close. They both laugh.
—I c’n only stay for a bit. But let me ask you somethin’. What were you doin’ wanderin’ into that larder in the dead-middle of the night? ma was beside herself. barton looks at him real hard, like he wants, needs, the truth.
—Let’s just say that ma and I had a “domestic dispute,” and she ended up freezin’ my assets. He nearly adds: don’t do any errands for her in the middle of the night. But he passes on that, partly because he hasn’t yet decided on Claire’s invitation to join the conspiracy.
—I figured there was bad blood somewhere, barton answers. —ma never was much of an actress.
—amos, what if there were some kind of palace revolt—you know, to get rid of cab and ned and the rest of them. Would you be in?