Norman Rush - Mortals

Morel would be interested. Davis, he meant. But Morel was asleep, judging by his breathing pattern.

It was a measure of the state Ray was in that he had to quell the impulse to wake Morel to tell him about this wonderful trick. He was insane. It was a thing Rex would appreciate. It could be in Strange News .

He used his trick and sleep came.

It was daylight. Bright gray was what he would say the light regime was.

Morel was up and active.

Ray pushed his way out of the pallet mound.

Morel was performing calisthenics of some kind. He halted when he saw Ray emerging and gave an almost joyful cry. He had reconstituted himself as a fighter and winner, Ray could tell. He was acting buoyant. Some of that was for Ray, including possibly all of it. It was pitiful when Morel came over, walking unevenly despite his best efforts to correct for his short right leg, trying to make his gait more normal by arching his right foot, walking on the ball of that foot. He couldn’t help wondering if Iris had seen Morel hobbling around much. Ray’s guess was that Morel would keep his built-up shoes on as much of the time as he could. That was what he would do, in his shoes, so to speak. Maybe she had seen him in his true state in the bathroom, the shower. Although it was possible he had special clogs to wear. All he knew was that in Morel’s place he would be doing his utmost to reduce the moments of elision when he would have to appear as what he was, afflicted.

The roosters were up and screeching.

In any case, this was the man Iris wanted. She preferred him. No question he was the sturdier type, more sturdily built. He was very squarely made, straight-out shoulders for example, not sloping at all. He was athletic. In his safari shorts and shortsleeved shirt and khaki kneesocks he looked like a large Boy Scout or better yet a scoutmaster. He was thick through the chest. He had heavy calves, like bleach bottles. His arms and forearms were bulky, both, and about equally, by which he meant in good proportions. For guys who worked out it was so common to get the proportions wrong, and Morel clearly worked out. It wasn’t unusual for people with a disability in one quarter to devote themselves to making the other three quarters superb. He understood it. There was more he could have done in his own case, just to contradict the weediness that time brings. And in fact he could still do it, take it up, except that it was a little late and if he did it would be a little obvious.

Morel was a good specimen, a goodlooking devil. He had good dense close-cropped hair, a little grayer maybe than Ray recalled, but not much grayer. It would be easier for him to remain within normal ranges of acceptable appearance, even in absurd conditions like this, because that kind of hair cut that way took care of itself. Morel seemed to have more and deeper lines in his brow than Ray remembered, but that only served to make him look consequential and serious. His underjaw was very tight. His throat was not swallowing his chin. He looked younger than forty-five. When it came to teeth, it was Morel hands down, for brightness, evenness, the works. Women would notice his eyes, too, and that would snag them, because the man was black, but his eyes were a light bluish gray. His eyes were counter to his usual type and in an aesthetically pleasing way, or so Ray supposed. I am completely within my type, Ray thought. That was it. I look Dutch, he thought.

What Ray had been looking for was anything unexpected and pleasantly negative that he might have missed before, some negative detail or other. But here was the man she preferred, surviving stress and fatigue and the humiliation of having to hop around and there were no new debits. He looked good.

Black was of course not entirely right for Morel, not in black Africa. He wondered if Iris was tired of whiteness, white men, like he was. He was both, he was one, and he was tired of them. He felt like laughing, but it was too early in the day. He was queasy.

Just for the sake of completeness he wouldn’t mind if a glance at Morel’s penis came his way. Living cheek by jewel, by which he meant jowl, it was probably in the cards.

“Let me look at you,” Morel said.

He led Ray to a spot where a spray of light came down through one of the vents in the upper wall.

Morel began with an unbearable, to Ray, diagnostic stare. Morel moved him around gently in the available light. Morel’s nails were clipped and clean. Ray’s were filthy. There was no point in being ashamed of his grooming, but he was.

“One thing first,” Ray said.

“What?”

“We’re not using our first names. We’re avoiding it. I think I know why.”

Morel went past that, shot past it, saying, “Right , yeah, of course. Right. Ray …”

“Call me Ray.”

“I just did. And you call me Davis.”

“I will.” He would try to have sympathy for Morel. It had to be an ordeal for the man to try to keep reasonably level, compensating for his disability. At the moment, he was bracing his right foot on the wall six inches up. It was acrobatic. And he was trying to make nothing of it, keep it invisible.

Morel said, “In fact call me Dave.”

That enraged Ray, for some reason. He contained it. He said, “Who calls you Dave? I never heard anyone call you that.”

“Oh some people have. But Davis is good.”

“Well, does Iris call you Dave?” He was getting ahead of himself. It was a mistake.

“No.”

“Then Davis.”

“Put your tongue out,” Morel said. Ray was sure it was a move to break this line of discussion. But he complied.

“Jesus,” Morel said, and then said, “Sorry, but do you ever scrape your tongue, usually?”

“No, but my wife does.”

“She scrapes your tongue?”

Ray knew an attempt at lightening the discourse when he heard one. It was a leaden attempt.

“No of course not. She scrapes her tongue, as you undoubted know. Brushes it, anyway, when she brushes her teeth. She is devout about it.”

“Okay, well, it’s an important thing to do and most people don’t. Frankly …”

“Frankly what? My tongue looks bad, so what else?”

Morel turned him around. He fiddled with the scab on Ray’s scalp, disengaging strands of hair that had become stuck in it. That seemed pointless to Ray and he wanted Morel to stop. Then Morel pressed the margins of the scab in three places.

“That hurts,” Ray said, lying. He wanted the examination to end.

“When is breakfast?” Morel asked.

“Any moment now. But you realize that it’s all the same, what we get to eat, breakfast, dinner, it’s all the same. It’s mush. And some powdered milk sometimes.”

“No vegetables or any sort of fruit?”

“Please be serious. No.”

“What about water?”

“They play with you about water. I had a water bottle and then I didn’t. And then I did and it was half full. And then they took that and now I don’t. I need water, though. I’ll tell you. It’s serious.”

“We both do. I’ll get us water.”

“You will? And how will you do that?”

“I’ll insist. It’s medically necessary. Actually, you have no temperature. But I’ll say you do. And I want my boots. And I want my bag, or at least I need them to let me get into my bag and get stuff, even if they stand there and then take it away when I’m through. I’ll propose it.”

“Good luck.”

A thing Ray had been turning over in his mind off and on thinking about Morel in the last few weeks was the question of who would look better at sixty-five or thereabouts, which of them, and he had been thinking that it would be himself. He would be the better deal. Of course there was the consideration that he was going to get there first, alas. But he had been entertaining the idea that Morel might be doomed in the context because his monobrevipodia might conceivably put him in the wheelchair-user category, something Iris might not have faced up to. Of course, he had no way of knowing if there was anything progressive about Morel’s leg situation. And he could tell that the man had done wonders in keeping the musculature on his short leg up to snuff, through some miracle of focused exercise. The calf on Morel’s short leg was better than either of Ray’s calves, not to put too fine a point on it. Ray felt that his own arms, because he had lost weight, looked old.