@ Three O’ Clock in the World: Where Night Is Not Reconciled

Copyright © 2023 by D. White.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 05/17/2023

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CONTENTS

@ Three O’ Clock In The World

Where Night Is Not Reconciled

@

THREE

O’ CLOCK

IN THE

WORLD

Oct. 03, 2015

Can you hear that?

What?

Voices… over loudspeakers… talk on windy days for some reason. They call to me… They moan things I can’t hear for some reason.

Are you… Is it one of your…

No. No! I love you. I try to be good. I won’t hear them… I promise…

Who?

I told you. the Voices! You don’t hear them? Captain Purvis said it’s ‘equipment’ failure. The horn-beam is off its treadle or something like that caused by windy days, dust… gums up terminals or something… He said the P.A. system is from before the war…

He watched his wife for another few instants then tucked his head back under a newspaper…

I was walking to the PX the other day… Wednesday I think. I saw purple stains on sidewalks everywhere I looked.

Honey. Maybe you’d better go to the doctor…

No! I’m okay. I was okay Thursday.

But.

I’ll be good. You’ll see. I’ll try harder and won’t see the stains… Last time they didn’t have me come back for two months…

You ever hear those voices before?

Yes! And you have too so stop pretending? It’s… They’re clear as day… ghosts or dead men from the war…

Try harder, Honey. I understand but if anyone else hears. You’ll take your vitamins won’t you?

I hate those things… Nutro-bio… Yellow ‘yuck’. She looked at his concerned face. I’ll take them. I’ll take them right now. I forgot yesterday. I did! I’ll take them now.

Please honey… Please. I love you.

I love you too…

I couldn’t be sure they were calling me though. Sometimes they sounded like they just wanted someone to listen. Oh sure, it sounded like moaning but also pleading too… as if they were pleading for someone to listen to them. But it sounded like moaning too (mixed up with wind in trees. it was all mixed together… the moaning and the wind. it was eerie… sent chills up my spine even when it was warm). They seemed to be complaining, arguing or something. I couldn’t be sure. It sounded like a boring radio show at times (even though I couldn’t make out even a single word. it was English… I was pretty sure).

At other times they sounded mysterious as if they were going to tell me something important we all should know but didn’t and that we would never in a million years guess).

If they’re the dead… what war are they from? George was curious now and for a brief time forgot his wife was prone to madness. His curiosity got the better of him.

I don’t know, honey. I don’t know where they’re from… the war, maybe Korea. They could be our dead from Korea.

Are they all Americans? No Gooks?

She didn’t answer at first… and then, I think they’re speaking English. It sounds like English.

But you said you couldn’t make out any words… Gene hated it when her husband started cross-examining her like a prosecuting attorney. It was as if he was looking for a loophole in her madness. If he could do that, he could make it go away (by superior logic and control of the physical world).

It ‘sounded’ like English… the way, you know, the words flow and stuff, the ‘music’ of it. I can’t hear a single word… too much echo but it flowed like English… you know… what they call ‘inflection’. It sounds like English. Now will you quit!

Okay. Okay. I love you… She didn’t answer. She was too angry with him.

Why do I tell you anything if you aren’t going to listen? She stared at three metal birds hanging on the dining room wall, decorations. She wished she could fly away like them. I think we should paint the kitchen yellow…

He paused. But it is yellow.

I mean brighter. It’s too dull. No. I mean duller. It’s too bright. It’s hurting my eyes. He didn’t say anything…

Whenever she kissed George she thought of a sign she saw at a carnival when she was a little girl, Bacon Kisses – ten cents.

Maybe they’re announcing a baseball game or something. There was no baseball diamond on the base…

The ox-shade tree. it looked dead, the leaves almost all gone. pioneers passed through here (central Nevada). You know, we could run out of water here.

The water’s pretty bad, that’s for sure. He explained to her patiently how he let it settle first. Under her bed she had a flute she used to play in the high school band. She didn’t dare think about playing it. It would bring up all sorts of memories (like corpses in a flood, coming up to shore to shock and horrify). Even anti-septic crème made her sick… the smell. (and small squirming rat babies… pink and purple around the eye-lids).

What? Even Genies… magical beings faced the three dimensions. Why couldn’t she? But they can change shape. Dog shadow on the curtain. Didn’t that used to be the name of a flower?

What did you say, honey?

Did you try more water… on the ox-shade tree?

I thought I put too much on… besides, it’s so alkaline, I wonder if it’s doing the tree any good.

You never did like my mother (she gave us that tree).

Oh I don’t know. She’s okay…

That’s why you’re killing that tree.

Now look! I want that tree to live. Why would I kill a helpless thing like a tree? I just don’t know what to do with it, give it some fertilizer, some more water… I don’t know. for a moment she saw a purple stain in the kitchen linoleum… in the pattern of dark brown and white like in checkers.

There was a part of the house she didn’t like to go. At night it was okay with the lamp on but in the late afternoon there seemed to be a lot of dread there, a wedge of shadow caused by the hall light (it stayed on day and night because that part of the house was so dark). She could imagine awful things there, faces looking at her with no eyes. How! Just how did they get in here. She always kept the front door locked. The back door. Sometimes when he wasn’t careful he went out the back door to empty the garbage. They could get in then… They’d usually go home by dinner time though. You could smell it across the plaza… gravy and steak and potatoes, hamburger meat in meat loaf, fried chicken…

Her nose was very sensitive.

They shot off a few rockets from here. It was always at 2 o’ clock (which everyone would say was ‘rocket time’). They were weather rockets or something… to test the high atmosphere, temperature and barometer readings mostly, wind direction.

What is that?

What?

That yellow thing wriggling on the horizon. It makes me angry.

It could be heat waves… They distort things here in the desert. she stared at the curve of the earth, the edge, the lip, the rim… Back behind the purple hills you could fall and descend into black empty space.

Sometimes when I’m walking, I feel as if I’ve fallen into an open manhole. I drop down and there’s nothing at all to grab. Then she thought of the men. She has black-outs and because of severe sexual repression, she has sex with the men in the moor-pool. she likes their smell, dirty and sweaty, an oily smell. When she thought of the open manhole cover, she thought of the motor pool and the men waiting there with their scent.

It could be heat waves… Something out there is yellow and heat waves distort it… like a car or something.

Did you say ‘boat’?

No car… or army vehicle or a motorcycle or something.

That must be it…

Rocket shadows crease the earth, ripples across her desert belly. a harmless mixture of hydrogen sulfide & cherry juice. People attacked at the standard. Reptile fertile love. her eyes, they rewind. But in all this heat. where’s my jet-coat. Commander Cody on the Moon.

I didn’t press it or watch it. I’m not doing that today. the men in the grease pit. the monkey wrench. No. I forgot. Captain Video had to ride out the asteroid storm. If any of the big ones would have hit him. in the deep freeze. It just seems so lonely in the deep freeze. Amazing that our own past is hidden from us. you can’t breath air in outer space. invisible daughter. She thought about the house where she grew up. It was still there just as it was in her memory. To the east? The creek there? dead things…

The base was named after General Egbert J. Mulville who went AWOL from the Union Army. He claimed in dispatches sent back to camp he and his men were pursuing men who had bolted from camp (AWOL themselves, absent without leave). Record keeping back then was often incomplete. He figured as long as he traveled west (in the hope of reaching San Francisco where he could leave on a freighter for South America or Europe) and sent back dispatches on his progress, he would not be suspected and not be pursued as being AWOL himself at least for awhile. It would buy him time.

He died along with thirteen of his men of thirst in the Nevada desert (near where the base was later to be built as a supply depot stop-off point for airplanes traveling to the Pacific war and later as a chemical-biological testing center, unknown to the command structure there. Not even General Fellini knew).

Back east in Washington D.C. once the plot had been uncovered had two choices… court martial General Mulville for desertion of his command or give him a medal (and name a minor supply base after him). They decided they would not give themselves a black eye (in war there are only heroes). He was given a medal and citation posthumously ‘for services above and beyond the call of duty’.

Before the civil war started he’d commanded a desk at military headquarters and had hoped to hide out there for the duration of the war. Because volunteers for hazardous duty were scarce, he among many others were promoted and sent to the slaughter grounds. Quick as lightning his mind put itself into motion to figure out a way to stay alive. That he was a coward did not bother him in the least. He had resigned himself to it. He’d only signed up to impress a young impressionable girl (who swooned over men in uniform) so he could get a uniform and ask her to marry him. She did marry a military man (she swooned over men in uniform) but, alas… not him.

His plan was almost fully formed as he scanned the battlefield. It wasn’t until two men had run off and had been caught (out of hundreds by the way) that he realized it was his patriotic duty to make sure that all the men in his command did his duty. He put his second in command (who he found out died the next day in battle) in charge of tomorrow’s futile but patriotic slaughter and set out west for seven invisible and non-existent ‘shirkers of responsibility’. His dispatches back by telegraph and by any man in his detachment that seemed to be catching on (he didn’t want them spreading ugly rumors to the others) to let them know back east that he was heroically pursuing these men and would be catching them any day now (apparently they were on their way to San Francisco and were planning to leave by ship).

By the time he was ‘caught on to’ he was far and away and he would have made it if he had not been in haste and had forgot to get water for himself and the men (no one knows this but he was shot by one of his men trying to grab a last half-full canteen).

And so on Memorial day each year, General Fellini (one in a long line of opportunity-grabbers) read of the exploits of General Mulville, an inspiration to us all. Little did General Fellini know that an assassin waited for him in one of the unused water towers, a Corporal he had lambasted and demoted who then tried to take a swing at the diminutive General (who hid under his desk) who then had him put in the jug to await court martial, to be condemned, for committing violence during wartime. He escaped and got himself a rifle and was going to do the little general in during the memorial service (he rarely left the office. He might come out) and Sergeant Stanly Batson, now private waited in the water tower spying through a rusty hole near the bottom of the tank perfectly situated for his task as if put there by god and/or magic Leprechauns of the Irish only while waiting, the night before he was bit by a plague-ridden rat and died before he could complete the self-appointed task of making the world a better place by making sure General Fellini wasn’t in it.

General Fellini was a small man and Private Batson was among the last in his unit at marksmanship proficiency, but this clip holds nine bullets. I can’t miss if I have nine shots!

They found him two weeks later. Someone noticed a rank smell coming from the water tower and it was two or three more weeks before Maintenance was notified and a ladder long enough to go that high was found (the metal ladder attached to the legs of the tower had long since rusted away in many places).

The note put in the suggestion box about the odor had been anonymous…

General Fellini never suspected it was him that Private Batson had been after though everyone on base sort of figured it out. The truth was, General Fellini was pretty much self-occupied and didn’t bother to notice the world around him. It was he that he was interested in. In order to compensate for his short statue (he was proud that was over five feet tall, five feet one and one-half inches actually, taller than his older brother) and his crooked spine, he often played dress-up in his full dress uniform, poured himself a drink and paraded in front of his office mirror (after closing and locking the door) striking various poses that included stern facial expressions and marching with shoulders rigidly erect, chest out to display medals he had bought at a five and dime years ago to impress a girl on a blind date who if she was impressed with the uniform and the medals was not impressed with his salacious winks and lip-licking, had gone to the ladies’ to powder her nose and had crawled out the bathroom window, never to speak to her girlfriend again (it had been a joke her friend had tied to explain but the truth was it was revenge for a blind date she had set up with a used furniture salesman who was convinced biblical prophecy, if you add the numbers up right stated clearly that the world was going to end in 1960, 1965 at the latest and it was every man’s and every woman’s duty to fornicate so the human race might survive the catastrophe, if there were enough children running around in the wild).

The plague spread from the morgue and killed two more people before it got kind of bored. The truth was it came from the hospital where the resident doctors (there were four of them for some reason stationed at the base even though there were rarely more than two patients in the hospital) had infected a lab rat with the plague hoping to learn something about it to see if it could effectively be used as a weapon for the non-existent United States biological warfare unit that was clandestinely operating right under everybody’s nose. The official story was their lab work was research into saving lives…

The fact that they all spoke fluent German, had each one been born in Germany, had been in German uniform (Science division) during the war and had been working on biological weapons for the Third Reich had nothing at all to do with anything. The U.S. military had given them a choice (they hadn’t liked the Russians so they escaped west at the end of the war). Work for us or be hung…

They decided unanimously and not surprisingly to work for the American government so here they were, toiling away for democracy at Mulville Military Base somewhere in east-central Nevada. They longed for the homeland but they were considered a flight risk and so were not allowed to visit home. Besides three of the four had lived in what was currently East Germany which was under the protection and the rejuvenation of the Soviet Union who had ungraciously listed the four of them as war criminals… Nostalgia, yes. But Siberia? Cyanide? A rough rope around the neck and a push off a crudely manufactured foot stool? No thanks.

Sometimes my genitals are bright red, said Gene to her husband. He just kept his head down buried in the paper. Did he hear her? maybe. Maybe not. a woman comes on the scene with a crème-colored dress. something like Jezebel is written on it but I can’t see it clearly. It might be, Watch out! or Beware!

We have electric cops in these parts… blood test. A bicycle bewildered, a dull airport landing strip. Balloons and fine, for a dream… She dreamed it was her birthday last night but it wasn’t. flowers on the roof. Peruvian? made longer by sometime noon. curiously brown, a painting by the sea (she’s never seen the sea).

2 or three bodies washed up (the light snapped off). For two dollars? shop ticket. Longer than the permafrost. The police on the phone. For a degree, the brightness. Accusing (was one of them George or were they men from the motor pool?). horse + hide. Breeze Monday.

George. Was it Monday?

What?

When it was breezy all day…

I’m not sure, (irritated, mutilated). Who can see through your eyes? Cash for breeze. Religion in Germany. a horse-hide confessing. If Germany has any questions. maybe for hire, unannounced. Theater bills. Let’s see the picture on Saturday.

Okay. I look forward to it.

She bears down on her mind-glass. The feature?

I don’t know. I’ll look it up. I can’t wait until Saturday.

Me neither.

It’s something about ‘feathers’, but I’ll look it up. Jack’s feathers. extra paradise. I’ll have the tomb’s slave. a popcorn thought. Steps bright. Pavlov’s painted room. (she lives a quiet life except for the times when she isn’t living a quiet life). frowned mother who died.

Barbara Britton in Bwana Devil? I could have played that part. I’m just as much three-dimensional as she is!

In that 3-D picture? You’re on hiatus. You need this break from Hollywood remember? All the phoniness and pressure…

I know. (sigh)

And besides, that picture’s beneath you… Bwana Devil?

Yes I know… but to have my face (my body) preserved in three dimensions for all time…

But it’s fake. It’s a fake process. You wearing one lens that red and the other’s blue. It really doesn’t work very well…

But all I’m doing here is housework!

That’s the deal… The minute you decide you’re ready to go back I’m all for you. We’ll call Mel right now if you want!

No. I’m not ready. Besides, I saw about a hundred Chinese gentlemen all standing really close to each other in the corner of the garage this afternoon. They weren’t saying a word. You aren’t listening to me.

I don’t like to listen to you when you get that way.

No really. Go get the flashlight and look! Even if it’s just to prove I’m wrong!

Okay. Okay. Where’s the flashlight?

What am I trying to do? what is that yellow thing moving? They’re friendly sometimes and other times… They’re just jealous because you’re a movie star.

I’m just another person. I don’t act snobbish.

I know…

It’s like they reject me! It’s like, what does she think she’s doing here among us normal people? What is she trying to prove… just how good she is, coming around pitying us…

I know…

I’m not staying you know. We’re leaving when I get better… Maybe that’s it. They have to stay behind in this world of dirt and dust, grit and grime, these ugly wives and their stupid husbands.

George put down his paper. Honey. Maybe you are a bit snobbish… if you think that way.

I know. I know. It’s a kind of life I left on purpose… just maintenance… maintain a house, maintain a marriage, change your babies diapers, maintain it. I wanted something that… a life that ‘sparkles’.

Yes. But you hate it…

I hate it. In a way it’s the same… just like drudgery of housewives. You got to maintain it only on a higher level with a lot of lying a posing and if you show any weakness…

They tear you apart.

They tear you apart…

Welcome to the jungle… the human animal in his habitat.

Women are the worst.

Men are I think…

I don’t know. Maybe there’s a sort of truce between men and woman that women and women don’t have and men against men don’t have…

Because we’re competing for each for mates.

That’s it…

Or maybe that’s phony too, men playing women, women playing men and they all pretend they’re getting along and being good and honest and all that.

Honey. We don’t pretend do we?

Not on the slightest. I meant other people, not us.

I’m relieved to hear you say. I believe that’s true too. George went back to reading his paper. Dinner’s going to be ready soon…

Involved with rocky children. The power they have over the coldest sisters. 1 to 1 ½ years. friendly to the investors. She instructs me to shake hands and joke. To charm her. disgusting. They invest in half their children.

Trying to appeal to many helpless people. 10% a year, May to May. down by the Philippines. Forgery. At the bus station. A storage cabinet. (1 of 5) open the locker. Carry a metal pole down West Street.

She pulls it out like a drawer and there’s a barking hound inside. For some reason, the sun comes up…

There’s a window in the river. she comes around the edge of the stone building. In a city of about four train cars.

We don’t have any trains in town… I mean we don’t even have a town. We have a road that goes west. Where does it go? And who are the passengers on this train? they disappear into sun and smoke. Circles in grey. colored lights appeared and disappeared in the distance. on & off again as far as light go. dragon flies.

Jim was supposed to come by and didn’t.

How do you know? a plastic deer, full-sized was hanging in a tree. like a decoration.

Is it Christmas?

You think that’s a reindeer?

We can’t get the key into the lock. he has been waiting two hours. He waits for a living. Almost full size. A side-engine. He might show up right away. the earthworks didn’t take long. I like that kind of moonbeam. In the circumference of night. a voice on a curtain.

Honey. I’m going to the crude archery store.

Again?

I just can’t get enough. Some of the boys hang out and we talk about it.

It’s beyond me how you can talk about carving bows out of wood and reminiscing about targets you’ve hit.

I can’t figure out why you like cooking and cleaning…

I don’t.

And knitting…

It’s sexual frustration.

What’s that?

I rest my case.

You rest your what? I’ll be back in an hour…

The rabbits chew bark off fence posts. dream bright colors. One of these days. he builds something that will go on over the top of the shed. He explains it isn’t ready because the kitchen needs to be moved. there’s a sort of barnacle from the ocean that’s in the way. her eyes become half-lidded and her mouth makes a sort of fish-mouth shape. Her breathing was built for a kitchen. With deep-set screws. Out back there’s a bush painted on plywood with blinking lights shining on it, yellow and blue, alternating. The area was cleared. There was a combination lock on the place.

We can open the door and get the court started. she goes in the house for awhile. There were several fours. Frogs on all fours.

You shoulda seen us, hon. We formed a semi-circle… about a mile, no probably just a quarter mile and we closed the gap and the rabbits…

I don’t want to hear it. I could hear it all the way to the house.

Why… that was two miles out, one maybe.

I could hear them screaming! WHY did you DO IT?

They’ve been… they’ve been chewing on the electrical wires. That’s why we’ve been having black outs. They were chewing on the P.A. system. You remember hearing those voices over the P.A. system?

But you killed them all.

Not all. Some got away. You should of seen us. We closed the circle then closed in, making it smaller. They were crawling all over themselves trying to get away… then we brought out our pipes. It… makes me sick to think about it now but it was a frenzy.... I’ll never do that again. Some of the men…

Go wash up! You look disgusting.

I cleaned up already… over at Jim’s.

Well wash your hands… you better take a shower. You got blood spots on you.

I brought some home for dinner.

NO! She put her hands over her ears. I hear them screaming and then I’m supposed to EAT them!

I’m sorry. I guess that’s not very thoughtful. I didn’t know you could hear them…

Are they in the house?

I only brought four of them…

ARE THEY IN THE HOUSE?

No… No. I left them on the front porch… in the shade.

Give them to Jim. He’ll eat them.

Okay. I’ll give them to Jim. He’ll eat them.

I’m going to be sick. Jim’s coming over the move the counter. Tell him to come some other time… please. Tell him I’m sick.

I don’t like to lie… to my friends.

I’m not lying. I’m going to lie down. I am sick. I’ll feel better at seven and we’ll watch TV. You better find your own dinner…

Are you mad at me?

No. (she turns her face away in disgust) If I can just get some rest, I’ll be okay. Good as new… but let me lie down for awhile, okay?

Sure Honey. I’m sorry.

I guess the rabbits had to die. she lied. She didn’t think they had to die. They could have done something else. It was the lazy solution… a very ‘male’ solution. With a little cleverness… their heads are bashed in. convulsions. Vomit. Didn’t they have a right? So what if they ate bark off of fence posts? I’m going to lie down.

Cheap locks on the cabinets in the garage. That’s how the Chinese men got in. Take it upstairs and cook it. what did you find underneath. 16 or 12 shoes. a stranger walks by. Do you know which belongs to which. The weak hand. published coffin.

Try 25. Wonder unpleasant. In the real world. Jim built a table. specific facing north. she was telling by the campfire. The golden dance. The arm must be made of metal. a taxi also helped. The Captain crumbled. Engine injured. Heavy in the morning artillery. I happened to have a giraffe. A tree painted on plywood

With blinking lights shining up all night long... I could look out my bedroom window and look at it and go mad. machine-like repetition. Like madness. How could I have rented the office and not be there all day?

What kind of dead tree is that? I’m not going to suffer, she said. not for long. The beacon. I killed the queen before, to satisfy the noise. a surreal timepiece. Switzerland.

What kind of tree is that? going for duty. It

Was the girl that left quarantine. She couldn’t wait to see her idol, the result being she infected Gene Tierney and caused her unborn child to be born mostly blind, deaf and mentally ‘slow’. I only wanted your autograph. Young girls could be very selfish.

It caused a nightmare of doubt Gene never got over, seeing this suffering child (like one of those clubbed rabbits, hit but not yet hit enough times to be dead), seeing her own suffering flesh being duplicated in the soft bed (the most expensive bed for a child that could be bought). It’s rot accused her stardom. If you were really a star (and not a desiccating piece of mortal wormwood), this would have never happened. But the gods are punishing you for your beauty, the millions who envy you (and secretly want you destroyed).

The gods are always targets, for the mediocre of which the world is full of. the iced skull, tinkles in the glass… of cocktail parties and glittering well-fed competition, position sliding up and down according to one’s latest picture, the attendance, the money. one’s esteem can be rated on a stock exchange… Up to impossible expectations and down again into misery, swamps of doubt and death…

And here personified is the fart and fertile turd of one’s misery. The thing doesn’t know it’s alive. At least no one envies it. No one will try to destroy it… hidden away in dark recesses in far and away back rooms (many rooms in ones mansion) away from flashing camera bulbs and wry smiles that say… See! See!" I told you so…

The girl was in uniform too, a WAC or WAVE. She said she was sorry… She said she should not have snuck out of the infirmary where she was supposed to be quarantined for measles (loose rules there). Typhoid Mary can spread her germs at will, creating havoc and madness where she goes, creating misfortune, a diseased Pandora let out of the box to bring the blessed down off their pedestals. That

One signature (she wanted a autograph for a keepsake. She really loved her favorite star… well, there were others she liked too) is all she wanted, in ink a scribbled piece of the gods, a brief scribble of DNA to keep close to her heart… Who

Knew the powerless could wield such an ax. Who knew an angel could be driven mad. Who knew goddesses were vulnerable, wings could be clipped, black ink could be thrown in the perfect face to leave a permanent stain. Who knew goddesses were mortal after all…

I could hear the rabbits screaming, all the way to here… She stood there and looked away. Mike is leaving on the 16. broken bones on the tracks. He stood there and looked away. her knees were as sweaty as Daphne Lake’s.

A ticket?

I think I’ve seen it before… the ‘feather’ movie. Can’t remember. I think Pink Feather or feathers. There’s this Indian princess called Pink Feather. She was kidnapped (I remember there was a wedding and she had four grooms). There was a football game at the end. Remember. Did we see that together… I want to see it again so I can remember.

Must have been one of your other boyfriends.

That’s not funny.

Sorry, Hon. I didn’t mean it. It’s just something the boys say down at the officer’s club.

About me?

No. No. Not you… just kidding about wives you know, guy stuff.

I don’t get guy stuff…

It’s just something stupid we say to each other… sometimes… joking. You know.

Sweaty knees. I jump through hoops. the prisoner along road 33. grey rope. Her birthday on the barbed wire. Private property. You were born where?

Deer Parts, Arkansas. Obscure & green. the Owens family floating downstream. The metal of impending sunsets. You came home early.

I had a headache and was looking for some aspirin. Isn’t that where they saw those leopards? The pool there was empty. the cage door open at the circus.

She saw a goat dragging a Christmas tree through the quad. Honey. Is it true there’s a two-headed boy in each platoon? lazy in paradise. The mother tongue. He didn’t tell me her worked as a checker at the Pig-E-Bank Market.

Who?

The man down at the garage…

Who was that?

Oh. Nobody. You remember that greasy hand print on my belly?

It must’a been somebody. she looked away, pretending not to hear him.

The yard ate part of him. he only worked there part time. (he wasn’t much good without his legs, the backyard made of glass and all…)

But he Can’t live there! What if he comes back? the groundskeeper isn’t likely to come back…

No! The leopard. He’ll get hungry again. (can leopards pick locks?) "And sure. We can put this chains on the doors. Even if they can pick locks, they won’t be able to get in!

(what if he eats me on the way to the PX?) You’ll have to stay here and not go out, de-evolving into a life of despair and alcoholism.

I don’t want to. I’m under age.

No you aren’t.

And besides, I don’t like to drink.

There’s no age limit for that! (better than being eaten by a leopard) he pretends to eat her neck and shoulders. I have eaten you, you know!

A wide red device like a weapon aims itself at the officer’s club. Drunk men come out of there and she’s way-laid a few… more than a few. She’s a bigger secret than the coyotes that hooked on barbed wire fences and died. She’s not as big a secret though as the chemical teasing lab and testing. There’s tight security around that. besides, brick walls devoutly create the yard and something inside that is devilish, circumspect when it comes to discovery (I always wondered about the mail box, crooked in the ground and making a crook shadow). Then later on a hole appears. there’s nothing there (to destroy), only to create another destruction…

"Regulations more rapidly border on the tank device. Fire which opens first then shortens to ghost. The camera moves back to the modern spot, the double shot and control of the town (there is no town). It was then buildings and trash cans created a problem (some plastic, some metal). probably she was hiding under her dress where she filed the left (northwest) miserably – a relief to write about a previous dream. Why? Because behind the clock were empty clockworks, a Hollywood set of fictional parts which moved but did not move according to any plan or design which meant they did not tell time (but Hollywood time is always out of time, beyond it, outside of it). the rest of the conscious ministry continued to build until it collapsed. It hasn’t been seen yet, not even the horse shadow coming up out of the dark (can you see it, near the bottom right side?). Dreams are happy emergences developing a stage sent from previous Africa, in the sub-conscious to the conscious present of circumspect night (do I need further sleep?).

This lasted till morning when sleep, a dark drug (I wake in further sleep of distress and stark wallpaper design), I begin to shrink in the Milky Way, part of stardust warehouse, dead flowers and coffin music… I feel trapped, bordering on neurosis (Freud’s father said he was going to chop it off if he didn’t stop playing with it).

the morning ray is relief from dark earth (of past history), Africa’s shining gate & stage not-with-standing. With faces like these to look at, who can tell? Inflated rubber masks… with wrinkled hands, the holes just eyes, heads with brains, no solid cavities like Halloween masks…

then sleep again. drunk above the bunk beds, art just hollow hopes and dreams (reality the enemy). A cactus is a heart machine. These go there and those go here (then rise again on towers of light). sound & fury going forty, the sea covering everything.

Leak again. the sky folds in sound, and all is right with all the banks in the world… weather hot again. The

Sun coming up…

I wake in the morning with rabbit fur in my mouth.

It’s not mine, she said, her eyes wide, unblinking then retreating to her secrets. A cigarette in the garden. I didn’t know I was in the glass… In the grass shadows are moving.

"Inside now, early evening and no one’s about. But I hear a tinkling sound in another room (and what is the sound supposed to mean?)

People look at each other and say little but make sounds and give meaningful looks as if some code has passed between. Words are halted, replaced with moans, grunts, syllables. Eyes water as if whole paragraphs have been exchanged. They want you to do something but they don’t tell you what it is even though they believe they’ve been quite clear about it. You’re supposed to know. You’re supposed to figure out some rule or law so it’s not broken. You should comply because to do otherwise would make them uncomfortable. If you make them uncomfortable you are guilty of being inconsiderate and therefore uncouth, uncivil. You are supposed to understand! (and more than one opportunity is being given you).

Noises, a gentle rustling of feathers (I can’t see where these people are moving about and making their sounds), quiet footsteps, the sound of plumbing rummaging somewhere, a rush of water and doors thumping shut or being forced open, another syllable here and there somewhere in the building from some unknown guest or intruder…

Last night I dreamed we had forty dollars.

Did you look in my wallet?

Of course!

Well…?

No go…

The light passes. (on a small wooden house. rise and shine). Edge of sunny dreams. "You know I like that feeling you feel when you look at something and your mind clears and you see it and it’s beautiful whatever it is, a red wheelbarrow in the rain. or a piece of paper on the ground and the sun is in your eyes and for a moment, just an instant or two you forgot about death and all that and all your fears

and it’s not like you’re god but like you exist like a rock or stone or something sort of permanent that no one will bother and you’re safe… but the feeling goes away almost immediately and you got to remember it and even though it’s a great feeling you forget it but then later on remember it again. You stop breathing because you’re a rock or stone or brick in a building no one notices or a rusty nail in a wooden house or a dripping faucet no one pays attention to and you’re safe… and you forget but then… late on. It might be a month or ten years. I bet it’s the way you feel in your death… like an eye looking is all and then the light fades out and your brain… well then the electricity stops flowing like excited water… I don’t know.

I live in a small wooden house. a transcript of words to reason wood-like flaps in a country road. For some reason. 2 days transgressed. I bought a six-pack of Coca Cola. It’s for a special occasion.

The opening they used. With paper clips. Catches edge of light. dislodge with a green-like key. I bought the flavor. Numerous unlined union-busters. The can on the inside is green-colored… Perhaps it is protocol.

Hello. This is Mr. Shake-well. the companies ended up taking over the world (in secret. don’t tell nobody). Good Fortune. They ended up new-comers in the business… obscure armies and all that. various canes & bottles.

They’d been in the back. for business like decades. They had an open container of deer. Their names listed. On the back door, Mr. Shake-well has got his name first.

Then one night. accidental dreams. switched the names. the rest is history in neon light. I saw her. I saw Diane in my dreams. she was murky and in the background. Her hair had changed. I went inside her father’s house to use the bathroom and there was warm pee all over the floor… up to me ankles. But

In the dream lens. Her mother’s wooden house (that’s where she stayed). I went in and a long hallway with doors on the left and the right in a straight line… betrayal and puppets (sawed in half). My mother made a puppet of my father and he got scared of it (a woman’s witchy magic) and made her destroy it. tiny red hands in the refrigerator, helpless.

3 o’ clock on the egg. The smooth injection went in the white sheets. the neck pulse. This is new. It’s in the experimental stages. Sign this. It just might save you. the world blurred. He kept seeing backyards of houses in his youth. in the house, music but he could make it out. broken glass… always the sound (every few minutes) of broken glass. in the back, a dead cat. The sad boring dreams of his boyhood came back vividly.

I’m dying doc.

We won’t let that happen. he didn’t have any kin. He could be buried in the cemetery at the south end of the base (the only place in this desert that had green grass… strange mowing it on Saturdays). No one will know… he overheard the doctor saying to the other doctor. There were more doctors than patients.

Tell me how you field.

Field?

No. Feel. someone dropped a tray in the other room. the doc was a black silhouette."

I like flowers. I can smell roses. I can feel their petals. The medication was to be put in the enemies drinking water to make them disoriented… so they would fight but it made the patient aggressive. What are you doing to me? some basic cellular comment told him he had been poisoned. It had affected his mind. He had a taste in the back of the throat. Give me a mirror, doc. They wouldn’t do it.

I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Mirror! He’d never really looked in a mirror in his life… not with any particular care.

Patient becomes obsessed… with looks. Perhaps the obsession is unique to the patient… blood started to drip thinly out his nose… onto his white gown forming a drip pattern of Florida… Coincidentally that’s where the patient was born… Robert Osborne, Florida. That’s all the paperwork said about him.

All these white sheets. He picked up a pitcher of water and threw it at one of the doctors.

Patient becomes belligerent. Half dosage recommended. Next trial in two days…

Doc. What’s wrong with my liver? Why does your med affect my head? It’s supposed to help my liver. He closed his eyes and immediately remembered selling boy scout cookies door to door (long walks between houses). Make a man of you!

You can’t hear me but I’m going to tell you something. There is an enemy out there who wants to kill you and if you cooperate with us we can find a way to make the enemy harmless. (the doc never thought about this elixir, this evil potent was going to get into the enemy’s water supply. Excuse me. We’d like to put this in your water… Maybe it can be sprayed from the air. You are an uncooperative guinea pig. I’ll tell the nurse to bring metal pitchers in the future… they may dent but they won’t shatter.

The doc cleaned some of the water off his glasses.

And what is this nonsense about selling me cookies? What are ‘cookies’? In Germany the doctors knew about dessert breads but nothing about ‘cookies’.

Is he saying Kooky?

He’s bleeding in his stool. He felt a layer of warm water before he fell asleep, exhausted. grist in the mill. Keep the water in throng leakage, water intelligence begrudging the body. exhausted. till the bullfight. Strange, 3- 4 high. A barrier reef.

I hope it doesn’t leak because that would be rude to the guests. They won’t tell us what to do… Also in the real meat father, she lived in the house (a woman real was startled). Spine dreams in the house. was made to love her. a daughter figure withdrawing to her secrets. Her body a boat. in the center of rain, ruined girls.

She left the smoke on. bucket of eels, a promise in the room. her body was a badge, all over my Hawkins. The music was telling him under the bridge, South by southwest. A possum in the house. She was studying me, wearing a bra.

Type music on air. chicken feathers plucking (after you soak the headless chickens in hot water in a sheet-metal steel tub). Sickening… the crunching sound of feathers coming out, poor soft limp bodies. neck hole. Make a man of you!

I turn and look ugly hair. What age am I? sun takes the fog out.

"Captain Gerhardt not present. Captains Spurl and Barnswager present. Meeting 19-1955, April 4.

We can rehabilitate patient Osborne within two weeks and give him A-09.

I don’t know. We have him pretty much convinced he has only a few days left.

Have you looked at the hospital. If we don’t ration or test subjects we’re going to run out.

They can send us more.

I don’t like to call attention to us. if we do that we may increase the budget and then some officer-administrator may look into our program and decide we’re being wasteful.

But we aren’t!

"I don’t want to go back to Germany. If we’re found out by the press we’re on the next plane to Germany and that’s it. They won’t let us tell our side… We’re destined to go back anyway."

The trick is to not go through these tests too fast (there may not BE any more) or we’ll put ourselves out of a job and if too slow… Okay. I get it. I see where you’re going to…

… coming from…

Coming from…

What do you say… Should we give Osborne the good news.

That he’s going to recover?

Let’s not go too far. Tell him his liver ailment is in the road to recovery…

On the road.

On the road to recovery barring any backsets…

Setbacks…

Setbacks but we want to watch his heart for a week of so…

But we need two weeks…

I said ‘or so’… These Americans have such absolute trust in their doctors. It’s amazing, not like in Germany.

Or in Europe anywhere.

I mean even after their newscopes on the death camps…

News reels.

Newsreels on the Holocaust…

They don’t think doctors could have been involved. They think sadistic guards did all that.

Well sure! But don’t they know. A lot of was directed by doctors. All that test material… to go waste. That’s not very German!

Yes! We are a proud people…

And efficient… and efficient.

I saw a skeleton in a phone booth, a paper bag full of milky water… (I saw the shadow of a Matador).

The test was a success but the patient died.

Osborne? Did you collect all the data?

We can get it from the charts.

Idiot! Temperature and blood pressure isn’t enough. You know this! If he hallucinated we need to know when so we can graph it, time on the x axis and dosage on the y. And we need to know what he imagined.

We don’t need to know that. All we need is temperature, b.p. That’s enough.

That’s all they’ll as for initially. Fool!

Pool?

"Get cotton out of your ears. If the potent