James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

"Cut it out," I said, "The cast's in the way."

"Nonsense," she said, and she was right.

Gallard came by late that night as I was making pencil corrections in the manuscript I had finished the night before.

"Through with that?" he asked.

"For now."

"May I see it. It was my idea, you remember," he said.

"How little you know, doctor," I said, holding the pages to my chest.

"You told Morning that I was a magician and that I would raise him from the dead. Obviously, you think I know a great deal."

"Will he get up from the dead?" I asked.

"The spinal column was bruised and pinched, in layman's terms, by a bullet sliver, but I fixed that. He'll walk when he gets over feeling guilty. I understand that you helped that today. Do you know what he is guilty of?"

I laughed.

"I thought you two were friends?" he said, puzzled.

"Joe Morning is guilty of being guilty; he's done nothing."

"Don't make riddles," he said, peeved.

"That's your game, huh? Here, take this mess. Everything I know about Morning is in here." I handed him the manuscript. "I hesitate to let you read it; it tells about me, too, and I ain't always pretty. You understand that I'll deny the truth of it, if you try to do anything about it."

"I don't understand at all."

"You will."

This was Joe Morning's first day.

Gallard took my manuscript, notes, journal, whatever, then left for two weeks in Hong Kong. He put Morning in a neck-high cast, promising that he would walk after two weeks of total rest. He also, after seeing the condition of my cast, took my wheelchair away for two weeks, promising me a smaller cast and crutches in a fortnight. One day of mobility, one taste of Abigail, and chained once more. They also moved me from my room into a ward (where I shall remain until the end) and Abigail and I could talk but not touch; but most of our talk concerned messages from Morning to me.

"He said tell you thanks," she told me the next day.

"Tell him he's welcome," I answered, slipping my hand down the side of the bed to clasp her thigh. She had arranged me with an empty bed on either side. Sharp girl.

"But he also said that you would have to take him seriously someday," she said, moving away from my hand, blushing, smiling. "You horny bastard. I'll have you arrested."

"Don't give them an excuse. They'll lock me up forever if they get the chance."

She fluffed my pillow, trapping my hand between her belly and my bed. "From what Pfc Morning tells me, you should be. He says you're a reactionary moralist at heart and that you believe in ghosts."

"Right," I said, pinching her, "but I'm a lovely guy anyway. Horny bitch, lieutenant."

"Don't hold it against me, sergeant. Rank has its privileges." She poked me in the ribs with a sharp fingernail. "And responsibilities. Good-day." She turned to leave, then handed me a letter. "Your mail." I recognized the handwriting. "Your stateside sweetheart, sergeant?"

"My, ah, ex-wife."

"Tell her she can't have you back," she whispered, then walked away.

"Hey," I said.

"What?"

"Tell Morning I always took him seriously."

"Tell her I take you seriously too," she said, nodding toward the letter.

The jealousy was nice, but the possessiveness worried me, but she smiled a little as she left.

I let the letter sit for a minute as I basked in the love of a good woman, then I opened it, ready for another bout with tolerance and political persuasion.

Dear Jake, she began, As you can see from the return address, I'm staying with your folks for awhile. I hadn't seen, though. I've come back from Mississippi to rest and my father wouldn't have me in the house. After the things I said to him after our divorce, I don't really blame him. I guess I don't blame anyone for anything any more. Just me.

As I said, I'm back from Mississippi, to rest. I was already feeling old – pushing 29 and childless is old – when I lost a bit of my fervor. (Politics is such a dirty business, in spite of the clich é, just dirty as hell, and I couldn't stand it forever.) Teaching was all right, in fact, I loved it. Fifty- and sixty-year-old women learning to read, even one seventy-year-old man, right in front of your eyes. Jake, it was great. But the other side, the cold planning of who will get their head broken in nonviolence this weekend, and who next. I stayed out as long as I could, but Dick talked me into it.

We tried to block a registrar's office, marched in front of the court house door until they moved us with cattle prods and billy clubs. I never thought they would hit the women, but they did. I fell down and rolled to the sidewalk, but the girl next to me, a lovely girl from Ohio, was hit on the side of the head. Her ear split right in half. I pulled her behind the court house, tried to stop the bleeding, then went for help.

I couldn't get anyone to help, no one, white, Negro, no one. Everyone was screaming and hitting. No one.

When I went back two Negro boys were dragging her between them across the street and into an alley. I thought they were trying to help, so I followed, but when I got there, they were raping her. She came to long enough to try to fight them, then to cry that she would give them what they wanted, she would give it to them, she would love them, but not now when her head hurt, not now. They cursed her, then told her that they didn't want her to give them anything; they'd take what they wanted; then one of them began slapping her while he was on her.

I ran back into the street, grabbed three white men, and screamed at them, "Those niggers are raping her, a white girl, raping her." The white men stopped them, but they also beat the Negro boys so badly they both had to be hospitalized. Dick had the white men arrested for assault, and tried to say that they had attacked demonstrators. The girl from Ohio refused to testify, so I did, and the men got off. Dick called me an ofay bitch, and I caught the next bus home.

Baby, I'm confused. Please write me, please see me when you get home. You used to make such good sense to me. I won't ask you to forgive me, but please write.

She went on, inquiring about my leg and the plane crash, recounting news from home, wishing me a quick recovery, and a speedy trip home.

What do you do? All the good memories came back. The breathless dizzy kiss after a football game, the summer afternoons on the banks of the Nueces watching a scissor-tail and a squirrel argue over the live oak above us, the first time she read Kafka and the lovely perplexity wrinkling her nose as she said "I don't understand it but I like it."… What do you do?

"Write her," Abigail said after reading the letter. "She sounds lost. I hate it, but write her." She looked down the ward, the other casualties, the dismembered kid, both legs and an arm lost to a mine, the two blind ones, the one with no face, five with bullet-scrambled insides, three crazy with malaria, one with a virus fever no one could diagnose, assorted missing and broken limbs, and me. "Write her. Men don't understand what they do to women. You're all bastards." She arranged a smile on her face, then walked to the next bed.

I wrote that confusion must be a condition of growing older, of seeing more, of living, because I must confess to confusion too. I promised that I would see her when I got home. I told her that I was in love with a sweet girl, and thinking about marrying again.

"You can tell her that you love me, but you can't tell me," Abigail said when she read my letter. "Why?"

"It's different, that's all."

"Sure," she sneered. "This way you don't risk anything. You keep her from hoping and you keep me on the hook." She walked away.

I tore up the letter, then didn't know what else to do, so I put the pieces back together and recopied it.