by Jack Tunney
Alone. Time.
Time alone.
The thought of both was almost overwhelming.
He remembered one of his own poems, Time is a phantom, built by the mind of man. He remembered all his poems and more. His stories and his letters to friends – the only way he’d had to connect, mind to mind, with like others. All of them, so far away.
The gun in his hand began to shake.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he said aloud, then quoted again, “I saw the temples topple, till I saw the idols reel, till my brain had turned to iron, and my heart had turned to steel.”
He cocked the hammer and put the barrel of the gun to his temple.
“For my road runs out in thistles and my dreams have turned to dust.” His finger touched on the trigger lightly like a mother’s kiss on a baby’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Howie,” he said.
He thought again of all the crimson tales he had written, all his letters to his friend Howie Lovecraft, where he extolled the virtues of the natural man – the barbarian. Men who lived each minute, fire in their veins and never a doubt in their minds, but that life was the choice. Howie always argued for civilization.
“Heathens had no time to doubt,” Bob said aloud.
The barrel of the gun was cold against his head.
“I can’t doubt,” he said in too loud a voice. “I ain’t no civilized man, despite what Mama tried to make me.”
The tears all but blurred the windshield of the car. He could not see the hospital anymore. “I ain’t nothing like a civilized man, despite what Howie says.”
His finger refused to tighten on the trigger.
He remembered a poem he’d read to Novalyne:
I will rise some day when the day is done
And the stars begin to quiver;
I will follow the road of the setting sun
Till I come to a dreaming river.
He had to find that dreaming river.
He saw all the panoply of kings and armies, the roar of battle, the cries of grim, grey warriors who faced death with life, who squeezed each moment of life from the bloody grip of their enemies and he uncocked the hammer.
“Only a civilized man would moan and gripe about a passing,” he said aloud. “Barbarians always chose to live till they die!”
He wiped his tears and put the gun in the glove compartment before he slipped from the car to go sit by his mother and read her poetry aloud until she passed to the great beyond.
So on that day of June, 11, 1936 the world changed...
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