James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

After breakfast, he noticed that his lipstick was faded. He went to Linda's room and fixed it, then turned on the TV, opened a bottle of champagne, and drank a toast to himself: "Why not? Why the fuck not?"

"Well, why not?" I asked as dawn fled in the windows of the hotel, then I laughed.

"What are you laughing about?" he said. "It wasn't funny."

"Why not? You were drunk; drunks play games. Laugh and it ain't so serious; don't laugh and it's trouble," I said.

"I can't laugh about it. I'm still scared." He hung his head, all the way down to the table.

"Of being queer?"

"What else?"

"Oh, hell, come off it. You were used, taken, then you played a child's game coming down from trouble. That's all." I said.

"Three days ain't a game," he said. "Three days in drag."

"Three days, three months. It's all the same. If you were queer, or any queerer than the rest of us are naturally, you would have already fallen."

"You think I subconsciously knew that broad tonight was a Billy Boy, don't you?" he said into his folded arms.

"Christ, get off that shit. You want to be queer, jack, be queer. You want to be straight, be straight. But quit bugging the world about it." I stood up, rubbing my face.

"Always Krummel with the easy answer."

"It is easy. Just say what you want to do, then make yourself do it." I walked to the window. Manila Bay seemed filled with mud that morning.

"Maybe easy for you, but not easy for people with feeling, sensitive people."

"That's cute, boy. You're just too sensitive to live. Well, jump out the goddamn window. If you will excuse the metaphor, Morning, you are a pain in the ass sometimes."

"That's because that's the only place you got any feeling, fucker," he said, looking up. "You're the one who might as well be dead."

"Yeah, it's tough all over." I walked to the bathroom to shower, and when I came out, he was gone. "May God watch out for the innocents," I said to the empty room. I caught the next bus back to Angeles, knowing that the next time I saw Morning, he would be hating me again. I knew too much about him. But then I always had.

Let me warn you now. Three days, then out of this damnable traction rigging. The warrior's necessity: Mobility, in the form of a wheel chair.

Gallard said: A wheel chair, fool, not a chariot, not a tank, not a war horse, but a wheel chair.

We do with what we can.

"No drinking," he said, "no fighting with the nurses. Understand."

"I always understand."

"You never understand," he said. "Don't drive it off the bluff."

"Don't drive what off the bluff," Abigail said, walking into the already crowded room, a childish grin bright on her face, her hands clasped behind her.

"Watch him," Gallard greeted her.

"Yes, watch me, wench. I get wheels."

"Rolling to hell," he said.

"My home," I said.

"Man's fate?" he asked.

"Destiny is a kinder word."

"Fate is death. Destiny is life. You've got them confused," he replied.

"God confused them, not me."

"What are you two talking about?" Abigail asked.

"Nothing," Gallard said, "Krummel's fly is down again, and his death wish is exposed." He smiled, but he couldn't meet my eyes.

"Impossible. You've got it in traction."

"I wish I could," he said, walking out. "I've got more idiots to repair, more fodder to rearm."

Abigail turned back to me, a question cocking one blond eyebrow, a question she was afraid to ask. She slipped a pale pink rose from behind her. "An offering, sire," she said, then curtsied.

"Thorny," I said. "A warning."

"A promise."

"Thank you," I said reaching for her hand.

"Three days, my liege, then I wheel you away to my flower castle." She kissed my hand. "Three days. But now I must hurry to prepare another room for another knight back from the crusades, a crippled knight from the Holy Land." She kissed my hand again, then bit the base of my thumb. "Three days…"

"Hey," I said, stopping her at the door. "You're as silly as I am."

"Yes," she said. "Don't you just love it." And then she was gone.

In three days, free, free of bed and burden, for then my confession will be over, the tale concluded, and the judgment will begin. I will be glad, I think, to be finished. To think about it makes me smile…

But even as I write these lines, a scream spears down the hall, holding my hands from the machine. Then words, slurred with pain and drugs: "Please, God, let me die." Then a closing door muffles the cries.

My guilt seems so petty next to that cry. I bear only the guilt of Joe Morning, but that voice bears the world.

As I write these pages, I find that I love him both more and less as I begin to see behind the masks he troubled to wear. And now my hands are heavy, and his voice whispers to me, "… too much, too much,…" Then another echo. "Now I come down at night to make sure I'm not making a face, just to be sure." The task of masks, never knowing whose face will meet your own in the mirror, then for Morning to find a woman's face where his used to shine. How did you stand it, Joe, how? Why did you let it happen, and once done, why did you let it matter? Evil is in the world, Joe Morning, and man isn't meant to play with it. You touched it so often, sinned against and sinner, true innocent because you thought the world innocent and you guilty. You asked me, Do you see evil everywhere, or reflect it? And I answer your ghost now, Both, like all men, even you. And now I remember something I had forgotten. You said that the most terrible, frightening thing about that woman's face in the mirror was that it was still you. You were right, but you misunderstood why. You were scared inside because you realized that everyone had always seen through all your masks. All your trouble in vain. Why wish yourself grief? And in a world where so many are so ready to give it. And, God, sometimes I think I gave the most, and sometimes I think I saved you from the worst grief of all, and sometimes I just don't know.

And again the echo: "Too much, too much." But it seems to be my voice I hear. Yes, I'll admit to it. Too much, too much. I said that, me, Jacob Slagsted Krummel, sometimes warrior, ofttimes clown. Too, too much.

But I have my duty… And damned little else, I hear you say, And damned little else. I'll even say it with you: and damned little else! But your voice was bitter, and I just laughed, laughed like hell, and now I'm ready to go again. So screw you. My duty makes me free; what chains of delusion do you wear?

Back at Base after the abortive Break in Manila, four bits of news awaited me. Capt. Saunders was back, from the second unexplained trip to the States. Novotny had made Spec/5 (Specialist 5th Class; same pay as a buck sergeant, but without the rank), and I had been promoted to Acting S/Sgt (Staff Sergeant, Acting; the rank without the pay, of course). The fourth piece of news had to wait until the next day.

I talked Novotny, rather Cagle did, into going to the NCO Club for a steak in celebration, and a few drinks in preparation. Cagle convinced him by saying, "Sure, Specialist 5th Class, run on to the fucking lifer's club, you fucking lifer." Novotny said, "Who's a fucking lifer? Screw you, I go where I want to." Thus we went, and there Capt. Saunders found us.

He made Novotny buy a round, then he bought two. He spoke about my beer gut, Novotny's Dear John and such, then asked, as we spoke about the Coke bottle crisis, "Why did you volunteer to be the goat?" But he didn't specify sacrificial or Judas.

"To keep Morning out of Leavenworth," Novotny answered for me, surprising me with his knowledge.

"Must be a good friend," Saunders said.

I answered his accusation with silence and a round of drinks, then I went on in silence as he asked about the cigarettes and the note from the adjutant in Manila waiting on his desk. He supposed he might work out Article 15s, Company Punishment, instead of courts-martial, purely because he didn't have time nor energy enough to draw the courts up. I kept my mouth shut again. Novotny asked why no time, but Saunders refused to answer. He asked me to bring Morning in after the company formation at 1300.