James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

"I don't know, man, I saw something that day when you came back up that hill, something in your face, something I never realized about you. Mostly it was my fault for not really seeing you, but maybe a little your fault too for always acting like you know everything worth knowing in the fucking world. But what I saw, man, in your face was that you didn't have any more control over your life than I had over mine. You just did what you had to or, I don't know, what something inside your guts made you do. Like me, or something. You didn't like killing those cats, but something inside said that was the right thing to do; even if it was a shitty thing it was the right thing at the right time. And you know, man, I felt for you that day. For the first time since all that shit with the fucking queer happened to me, I felt what it was like to love another man, and I didn't feel dirty about it.

"Course it didn't exactly work out when I went to try to explain it to you. You scared the shit out of me – but you know how our bowels were over there – I thought you were going to kill me. And after I got over being scared, and mad, I thought maybe you would have been right to kill me, and I wondered why you ever bothered to save my ass all those times, why you cared. Then I understood that because you weren't afraid, you were really my friend…"

"You don't have to say all that shit, man," I said, looking away from him.

"Yeah I do. And when I came out of that van that night, I was saying to myself, 'By god that's what Krummel would do,' and I did it."

"Yeah, well, life ain't what you'd call simple."

"That's okay now," he said, spinning the wheel chair, grinning up like a kid. "I'm ready to live, man. It's making sense for a change, and by God I'm ready for it. Bring it on, baby, from now on it's all downhill." No hint of false ring in his voice, no false hardiness, just youth and life.

"Well, just move that chair, cripple," I said. "You're standing 'tween me and my drinking." We went on.

About halfway down the ninth fairway, a golf ball, blinding white against the grass, rolled up beside us like a playful puppy. Morning wheeled out into the grass, picked it up, then popped it in his mouth like a piece of candy. Back on the tee, two tall slim young men and a tanned girl shouted at him to leave the damned ball alone, but Morning just rolled back to the sidewalk and went on toward the Halfway House set just behind the ninth green.

"I ain't never eat me no golf ball," he mumbled, trying not to laugh.

I somehow managed a straight face by the time the threesome caught up with us.

"Hey," the young man shouted who had hit the ball, "what are you doing with my ball?" The other guy and the girl, tall brown and blond, stood behind him.

"Sgt. Jacob Krummel, United States Army," I said, turning and saluting, "sir. Can I be of aid, sir?"

"Huh? Oh, well you could tell your buddy to give me my ball back. That was my best drive of the day, damnit. What the hell did he pick it up for."

"Pfc Morning, sir," I said, and Morning saluted. "Sir, he's not quite right in the head. Hasn't been since he ate all the rats. Not at all well, sir."

"What the hell was he doing eating rats?" he asked. The girl turned white.

"It was rats, sir," I paused, "or our own dead buddies. We were pinned down, no food, no water, for ten days. We're the only two left." I faked a sniffle, but oddly enough real tears seeped out of my eyes.

"Oh, crap," he said. "Just give me my ball back."

Morning quickly took his shirt off. His chest and stomach were covered with a maze of livid red lines where the exploding bullets had plowed flesh. Even the inside of his arms were marked. I also took off my shirt, exposing the side and the arm where the mortar had driven dirt under the raw skin like an exploding tattoo.

"Listen, I'm sorry that you were hurt," he said, and his face seemed to agree with his words, "but could I please have my ball back."

Morning pulled out the waistband of his pants, then spit the ball into his crotch. "Hole in one, mother," he shouted and tried to resume the blank stupid face he had worn before, but a gale of laughter swept him away. He dove his hands into his pants, screaming, "Here it is. Got it. Ahhhh. Wrong one. Yep. Oops." He flipped it at the young man, saying, "If you drive, man, don't drink."

"What's he, crazy?"

"I told you, sir. The rats," I said, saluting again.

"Stop the rat shit," he said, grinning. The girl laughed, the other guy smiled. "And keep that idiot off the fairways."

"I'm fair," Morning said amidst a giggle.

They played out the hole, then sat with us on the patio of the Halfway House, drinking until dusk. Gallard had been right about the waiters, but he hadn't mentioned that they could be bribed. The young men were both Navy carrier pilots and both in love with the young woman who worked in the American Embassy in Manila. She refused both of them on the grounds that carrier pilots just don't live long enough to love. But we had a good time, a college time, saving the world with loud assertions and booze, loving each other in a wonderfully maudlin way. As we parted, the girl kissed Morning and me, saying she could love us because we were out of it. We exchanged addresses and promised to keep in touch, then they climbed in a cab heading for the Igloo for more drinking, and Morning and I headed back through the long cool shadows to the hospital.

In the ward the mirth of moments before seemed sinful among the broken and twisted men, the blind, the deaf, the dumb. The afternoon became unreal for me, as it seemed all my afternoons were becoming, and as it would seem unreal to the young pilots drifting in at the tiny carrier deck at two, three hundred miles an hour, sweat stinging their eyes and their clammy shorts climbing as their assholes sucked fearful wind and the brassy fear sick in their mouths. Death cannot conceive life, nor life death, and the hint is sometimes more than man can stand. I cried in my bed that night, drink, Morning, death, Abigail, love, and me.

Abigail and I drifted through the two long sweet weeks, discovering love and our bodies during the cool evenings. I had rented a hotel room downtown, and we went there every night for two weeks. Gentle sweet mound of her belly, dimpled, hipbones hard, rib cage delicate as a bird's, red-headed lover of a pussy, legs ever reaching apart… and only once did she mention marriage. I answered nothing, she said no more.

Morning would kid her when she came puttering around my bed (Gallard had moved Morning into the bed next to mine), her eyes puffy with nightwork, but her face shining like a fresh apple. He called her Catherine and me Fredrick Henry, and said he was sorry but she would have to die as soon as I deserted. The joke fell quickly, and in a few days Morning, in spite of the afternoon when he ate the golf ball, slipped once more into sullen silence. He went to town every night, and from what he said, was drinking again at The New Hollywood Star Bar with Communist students and unemployed gold miners. His eyes turned cold and secretive when he spoke to me at all, and there were no repeats of that friendly afternoon of the golf ball, no confidences, just superior smiles all day long.

Abigail asked me, one sleepy Sunday afternoon as we lay naked in my hotel room, "What's the matter with Morning lately?" One slim white arm rested behind her head and the other dangled off the side of the bed holding a black Filipino cigarette.

"Nothing," I said, kissing her pebbled armpit.

"Don't do that," she said. "I think he's faking; I think he can walk."

I rolled between her legs, bent to kiss her neck, then bent farther to run my tongue around the nipple of her small left breast. "So."

"Don't do that," she said. "Be serious."

"God knows I am, what-ever-your-name-is honey." I nipped the corner of her mouth with my tongue.