GOODBYE, SOUL BROTHER 2 - cont

2.124.  A straight strike of lightning.  The weather is showcasing herself.  The coming storm will be a breaking storm.  Cloud burst followed by from how many?  Shit.  Count the clouds.  There’ll be a quick harassment by indignant wind.  Indignation in this devastated nation.  There is an imbalance here in everything, even in happiness.  Our country be gold, think the troopers, and it’s condemned us here to Japan, a country be damned.  

Capt. Shuvee doesn’t fear damnation.  He doesn’t fear the heat.  Don’t fear the heat, he tells reminds orders himself.   Don’t fear the fire down under the soul.  A fire ignited not by sinful purpose but by duty and honor such as can only inflame a man.  Is it a purple flame?  A living flame like the colonel?  Equipped with the standard equipment of a man the captain knows that he is more.  He is a man’s man, most say a gallant man never showing his rough mood, such is his gallantry.  This is his silent tactic:  to lef rye lef and present himself as a shabby genteel soldier.  He is a soldier.  A soldier n diplomat n Fusaichi n the green becoming obscene with imaginative purple twilighted by lost hope.  Yet he retains personal liberty, national pride.  Sleeping on freedom and waking on reclamation.  

 

2.125.  When Zev left a search party was organized.  It was well noted that Major Treat conducted himself in the party with devious charm.  He would join on no better terms, that was his maximum offer.  Why didn’t he offer gracefully?  Grace is free.  Well, takes a certain grittiness to be graceful.  True grit = gracefulness + brute strength.  Put those two together and there will be a strong performance.  That was the magical magic of the colonel.  Ever strong, ever gentle.

 

2.126.  Ever in Fusaichi.

 

2.127.  With a finishing touch of everlasting charm.  

 

2.128.  How charming, the colonel.  And super special.  He understood that to be gentle and strong always works like a charm.  His death will certainly be a hot topic.  Will make the troopers desperate and determined as if they are about to execute a play on fourth and one.  Execute it in a sweet way and not a fuck the FuPegs way.  The troopers don’t fuck the FuPegs anyway.  Though there has been an “incidental kiss” here and there but never with an it’s-in-the-stars emotion.  No female FuPeg opened like a passion flower.  Zero green low country magic.  Still, more than a few troopers have admitted to weigh the risks.  There is no smooth path to passion at Fort Marcy, Fusaichi.  

 

2.129.  But Capt. Shuvee took the smoothest path to the stable and he arrives at it to purloin the purple in the green and reads what is written with Kilroy’s gentle humor on the first stable to his right:  Kilroy Groomed Here.  

 

2.130.  Will Harbut did everything for the colonel.  All the grooming and all the stall cleaning, all the introducing and all the guided touring and if anything he said was a lie, well, he was a beautiful liar whose naturally quiet side became excited and wide open when he talked about the colonel’s history, personal and public.  

 

2.131.  On the eve of war deployment Capt. Shuvee said goodbye to the animals kept on the Shuvees’ handsome property.  They provided an essential quality to his personality, cult of and of which his mother remains the founding member.  Her motherhood had a known agenda from the start:  a son effeminate and rugged at the same time and in the same body, ruggedly indispensable when it came to practical matters yet gently turning the pages of a book gently yes as if removing the garter from his bride. The bride relaxed on a chair demure innocent and invested only for her son’s benefit, for his grand life.  The venue filled to max capacity.  Perfect music, no bad beats.  All the guests feeling as if they can touch upon a star, so uplifted, feeling so amorous.  

 

2.132.  In the meantime . . . 

 

2.133.  Fusaichi is under a gloaming sky and Capt. Shuvee is approaching Trooper Bowers.  Big but not bulky.  Quiet but not sulky though he gets no reward for effort.  Not in a million moons will his efficient effort be recognized, nevermind rewarded.  Every time the captain sees him he knows better than to try to get a smile out of him but can’t help but to ask Whisper me a smile, do that much, at least.  To ask if he’s okay is a bold question.  He will never say.  Just gives an uncommitted ah-yup.  

 

2.134.  Major Treat never liked Trooper Bowers and dislikes him now.  Saw and sees him now as Zev’s Will Harbut.  The colonel, a living flame.  Too bad Trooper Bowers isn’t a fast flame ignited only to fastly flame away.  If Zev had given him, the major, more attention, given him the love and affection, even a little attention and a little affection he would be more prepared to take over the command of the squadron.  But Zev groomed Trooper Bowers.  

 

2.135.  Trooper Bowers grooms one of the chestnuts.  Capt. Shuvee sees that a recent visitation by the candyman has provided an overflow of oats and apples.  Mostly green apples, sweet and sour.  

 

2.136.  Say, Papa Clem, was the apple of Eden green or red?  An easy question in a time of peace.  Papa’s clear face, like beautiful glass, turned cloudy and tinged purple in the twilight at which time this question was asked.  With elegant ease he answered that the apple was colorless, as colorless as no man is sinless.  It was bitten and once bitten mankind was ushered with a mad rush into the necessity of labor.  Earn your keep, said God, and reap that which you have sown.  One bite prevented eternal peace.  

 

2.137.  The chestnut had no hesitation to take a bite of the green apple.  Biting and munching and masticating in a purple halo.  No doubt purple blood existed in his every victory vein.  

 

2.138.  Standardbreds them all, all of them bred standardly.  Not thoroughly like the colonel.  Pure blood, the colonel.  Mixed blood, the horses of the squadron.  Blood is the ultimate manipulator.  Any blood can ride for liberty but only thoroughly pure blood can ride for pure profit.  Trooper Bowers is not a profiteer and neither was Zev.  Neither thought to hit it rich with horses.  Both simply admired a horse’s conformation, a horse’s conformaty and brute ostentation.  

 

2.139.  The chestnut is groomed to the shine of a copper penny.  Capt. Shuvee can’t even glance at its shine without cost conscious wise.  A harassing silky silken light of purple absorbs him and bridles his tongue.  From chestnut shined into a near bronze god.  The power of every stroke.  Powerful demured with peaceful.  A pleasant variety.  Stroke after stroke.  Brush after brush.  Demuring the flame.  Igniting life.  An ignation as if playing God.  Trooper Bowers does bear the cross with every stroke and every brush and every shining up.  Shine on!  Live on after the death of the colonel, after the extinguishing of the flame.  

 

2.140.  The squadron will return to life, to a life on fire.

 

2.141.  A purple light.

 

2.142.  Recognition of the captain by Trooper Bowers:  recognized with a slice of class with a very romantic purplish shading well beyond the Fusaichian green.  He recognizes without recognition of rank, without fear.  Men are men and men create their own ranks in company with one another.  Each one a brother in sex and soul.  Goodbye to official rank.  Soul alone stands steadfast.  Brother to brother they recognize each other and the captain says Hello, John as if conducting a private interview and Trooper Bowers responds ah-yup, captain and captain and trooper alike forge in a soulful and brotherly forging and the sky tinges and the air electrifies and the Fusaichian stink intensifies as if in protest of all that is brotherly.  The stink would rather wage war than capitulate.  Challenge me demands the stink.  And find out.

 

2.143.  Very Conradian, the squadron’s position.  Not a heart of darkness but a heart of hot humid stinking greenness with a rebelling shaft of purple now that a storm is on the brink.  Brink brinker brinkest.  They are living on the verge of what may come, of what dreams may come and how many of these dreams will be a dream come true.

 

2.144.  In all truth and honesty the captain wishes Trooper Bowers was his true brother, not simply his soul brother.  Being an only child has made him feel like a garden sown with lots to blume though nothing ever blossoms.  He used to think he wanted a little bit sassy sister whose sassiness wouldn’t allow her to ever be the first to blush.  But the war taught him convinced or maybe manipulated him into believing he much prefers a brother.  Trooper Bowers would be a real brother of silent strength.  

 

2.145.  Ma Shuvee is not a sweet mama, nor has she ever been the type to love with honey.  One child bankrupted her honey sweet account.

 

2.146.  Bitch.

 

2.147.  The horses are stoked with nervous energy.

 

2.148.  The air is primed with an energy electric as if it is Uncle Walt himself singing the body electric.

 

2.149.  Trooper Bowers is a gentle soul.  A purple royal soul.  He doesn’t consume candy of any kind. A candy free teetoltaler you can always be assured that he is feeling speaking living soberly.  The captain is no alcoholic but admits to himself that he could cut back.  That’s just a factual fact.  Pure and simple.

 

2.150.  Everything going good, John?

 

2.151.  Everything’s five by five, cap’n.

 

2.152.  You’re not lacking anything?

 

2.153.  Nah, suh, cap’n, all’s running smooth and running right.

 

2.154. The horses?

 

2.155.  Each one is a smooth baby.

 

2.156.  How was your breakfast?

 

2.157.  Well, cap’n, suh, ain’t had me no breakfast as of yet but I’m sure dry toast and scrambled eggs will be top tier.  The bean king sure is  a good king.  Provides a good three square every day.

 

2.158.  You know you can take your mess at the mess hall, like everyone else, don’t you, John?

 

2.159.  Yessuh, cap’n, but da hosses eat better and stand better for grooming if I eat with them here.

 

2.160.  Okay, John.

 

2.161.  His skin is so black that it’s nearly purple.  The captain wonders if its the shade of slavery.  

 

2.162.  A wild ruckus in the sky.  

 

2.163.  Why did Zev bring him here and then abandon him here?

 

2.164.  You mean like the way God created us and abandoned us here on Earth?  Papa Clem would ask.

 

2.165.  God created us and many things.  But we are the best in show.

 

2.166.  There is a sequence to life.  You’re born.  You live.  You die.  

 

2.167.  Don’t be an idiot.  Life is not a perfect performance.

 

2.168.  You need the bible back?  Trooper John asks.

 

2.169.  Say again?

 

2.170.  I mean you need the bible back again, cap’n suh?

 

2.171.  No, John, I didn’t mean that you addressed me wrong.  I just don’t understand.  What bible?