From upstairs came the sound of a fight, the wife-beater throwing punches. Jim heard a scream then the thud when she landed. He grabbed the broom and rapped the handle hard on the ceiling.
The husband swore at him.
Anytime, man, anytime, Jim whispered back.
But he knew the fat pig would never try anything. Even though the guy was almost thirty years younger and boxed in a gym, the dude was scared of Jim. Hed probably seen Rambo too many times, and was afraid Jim was one of those killing machines that couldnt be turned off when they left the jungle. Probably been around the night that Jim had shot put the guy he caught banging his wife out the screen door, right through the only renovated part of the apartment. He was still paying for that.
Jim took the coffeepot off the hotplate and poured a steaming mug of light-brown water and black grounds into the Mickey Mouse cup that hed light-fingered at a sidewalk sale. He picked up the Blake and unwound the rubber bands holding it together. God, he could hardly read it; the pages were smeared with dirt and newsprint. Its all here, he thought: life, death, and everything in-between.
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
From the apartment next to his, where the gay history student lived, came the methodical digital pounding bass of Eiffel 65. He knew the name because the time he pounded on the dudes door and yelled, Whats that god-awful crap youre playing? The boy thought he was taking an interest in the music and told him. The kid was okay. Jim, at his age, played The Doors and The Rolling Stones just as loudly, probably louder. Joplin. Hendrix. Musicians, composers, saints.
And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
You gotta live life to love it. Napalm hadnt burned that dictum out of him. He grabbed an Oreo from the open package, scaring a roach out from underneath. He let it go.
Nam had helped him more than hurt him. Hardened him to how things were: random and chaotic, without form. Cast him from the innocence of childhood, even with his college education, into the experience of adulthood. Camus, Sartrethey knew the Essence of life came in Existence, the experienced life, not thought-about life. Live in the extreme; feel passionately; see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower.
Juliana thought differently. She thought he needed her because she needed him. Maybe he had before Southeast Asia, before the heat, the drugs, the claymores. Shed been taken as much with his money as with him. Or rather his parents moneythe house in Winnetka, the cabin in Wisconsin, the condo in Vail, the yacht moored in the Keys. She thought his Existential talk was his way of impressing her, and she read just enough to keep up with him. He had gotten married to please her, his parents, her parents, their friends. Society at large. And it hadnt hurt that she was a knockout, with long, curly auburn hair.
When he got out of the Armydecorated, intactJuliana thought they could make it. But time and separation wore her down. Even after he dragged her to Nashville because he loved the irony of a Blakean Existentialist living in Elviss backyard, she pleaded with him to take a vacation, get out of their squalidher wordone-room apartment. Somewhere idyllic. Door County, Wisconsin, would work. Get away from Nashvilles honky-tonk, its aging hookers.
Forgive and forget, shed said about her one-night stand. Youve been through hell, and Im your angel whos going to pick up your pieces and put you back together, just like we replaced that screen door. Better than new. This trip will save you. Save us.
A flash. A light brighter than any sun hed ever seen in Nam or the Tennessee tenements. Paradise Lost. Zoom, right into Lake Michigan.
Why hadnt he mentioned the flash to the investigators when they sat him down? Because he knew they distrusted him already, a big six-foot, three-incher bearing an unkempt beard and a camouflage get-up. Because they had already sized him up as crazy, so why encourage the obvious?
What the hammer? What the chain, In what furnace was thy brain?
The first time hed seen the De Havilland Dash 8, he saw a coffin with wings. He had to give it to the pilot, turning his Airbus into a boat, using the waves to slow them, each humpbacked crest banging into them like cannon fire, the fuselage holding together, but some passengers dead by the time it stopped. One man bashed in the head from flying debris; a child not tucked in tight catapulted into the cabins forward wall.
When the stars threw down their spears And waterd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
He never saw Juliana again.
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