GOODBYE, SOUL BROTHER 2- cont

2.172.  Trooper Bowers means Papa Clem’s person be fruitful and multiply bible.  The one he highlights and incumbers with annotation.  Papa Clem gave this personal gift to Trooper Bowers with no expectation of a prompt return or a return at all.  But Trooper Bowers is uneasy keeping that which he has not sown.  To reap it by ownership or even a temporary keeping makes him a sad and undeserved reaping soul.  He hasn’t earned the crop.

 

2.173.  No, Capt. Shuvee soothes, when he wants it back he will ask.  I want to ask you about the colonel.   Just one fair question, is that alright? 

    It’s not only alright, it’s super fine. Fine as if there are no storms brewing and on the brink, past the brink, really, the storm is in waiting.  In the wings.  And Trooper Bowers confirming the colonel’s death is just the arousal that the storm’s brink needs to break.  It will not break like a woman.  Women break hysterically.  Without warning.  This storm will break over Fusaichi like a man.  Violently and with smashing glory.  No hysterics.  

    

2.174.  He is a calm man, Trooper Bowers.  He calmly answers the captain’s question.

 

2.175.  The question.

 

2.178.  The ultimate question.

 

2.179.  It is asked.

 

2.180.  It is answered.

 

2.181.  The answer is unheard much obliged to a crack of thunder as if on cue.  And before the answer can be given again Doc Fager appears like a bright shadow.  A bold spec of dark light.  The doc is a handsome man and very affectionate.  Every time he feels a female it feels like love.  Handsome, yes, but not so very handsome as the captain.  

 

2.182.  Very important for a man, especially a soldier, a professional fighting man whose business is war, to be handsome.  Categorically handsome.  There’s a reason for the pure charm of a man in uniform.  And if he’s handsome and in uniform, well, the woman’s been won over.

 

2.183.  One step over the threshold of the stable is where Doc Fager says to Trooper Bowers Hello, John.  I have some news about your blood test - thanks to the candyman the results came back lightning fast - and I . . . I want you to prepare yourself.  

 

2.184.  Nothing could have prepared them for the death of the colonel.

 

2.185.  I don’t think this will be shocking news, but it is not the news we hoped for, but I think we both expected it.  

 

2.186.  Loud silence.

 

2.187.  A quiet scream.

 

2.188.  The doc notices the captain and asks May I speak freely?

 

2.189.  As you wish.

 

2.190.  The doc looks sunken with a caved-in constitution.  He looks boonified.  The doc who treats boonification looking boonified.  Something fundamentally wrong about that.  Capt. Shuvee hopes with pure hope to see a shift, a light shift in the doc’s crazy lazy mood, wants to witness him assert, witness his independence rise.  He’s come to bring sad news.  No one looks lively when they come with news of sadness.  If this is a bad dream, the captain prays, wake me up.  He wants to be awakened to cheering dreams, to extreme sensitivity and romantic assuredly as frequently and easily as he awakens to the stink and this pervasive odor of Fusaichi has infected him with a secret insanity.  The stinking green power has gripped his spirit with a stranglehold.  A stronghold.  What a sweet scandal it would be for the most loved officer of the squadron to go crazy when there’s always the treatment of illicit candy to hold off the craziness.  There’s always candy and there’s always the candyman.  Physician, heal thyself.  

    Yes, it would be some big trouble.  First Zev disappears and then the squadron’s best captain has a mental twitchet . . . despite having lots and lots of candy at his disposal?  That’d make front page news on any given newspaper.  Oh the mystery.  Oh the shenanigans.  What the hell is happening at Fort Marcy, Fusaichi?  

    But, then again, the colonel is dead, so who would give a shit?  They are men of war and every man of war is a ruffian and a jokester, a gentleman and a prankster.  

    All of them missed the time, way after their early days of deployment, when cocksicks was most prevalent, that a trooper was caught masturbating several times a day and when questioned by the captain of this troop he explained that his cock was sick and the best cure was to rub out the sickness.  Autoeroticism, damn it.  And every time he rubbed one out he brought himself to the money shot.  Damn did that trooper lust after himself yearningly and frequently until eventually he would be shipped out of Fusaichi for his unhinged addiction.  That was his grand plan, his green ticket out of the green boonies.  But he damn near rubbed himself purple and raw.  Troopers said his dick was more purple than the FuPegs were yellow, more green than Fusaichi.  He caught himself in a catch twenty two, that rub-happy trooper.  

    He’s crazy like a fox, sir.  Rubs himself silly all day, every day.

    With honest pleasure?

    Well, sir, if it isn’t honest he’s a great pretender and . . . well, sir . . . there’s no such thing as a faked climax . . . unless you’re a woman, sir.

    This . . . self-pleasuring prevents him from doing his duties?

    Sir, the man can’t stand a post.  He’s too busy . . . servicing himself, sir.  But that’s exactly what he wants.  

    He’s crazy enough to forever fuck himself . . . yet sane enough to know that being crazy enough to do it will get him out of here?

    That’s the sum of the parts, yes, sir.

    Assign him permanently as kitchen police.

    Sir . . . no one wants his hands near food.  Even Papa Clem won’t allow him to touch the hymnals or the bibles.  Just this past Sunday service he smacked his hands when he reached for a hymnal, said Keep your dick beaters off all sacredness, son.

    Confine him to quarters?

    Sir, if he’s that sick he must be relieved.

    That’s what he wants, you said.

    Yes, sir.

    In the end the trooper was told that every time he was caught he would be sent to work with Trooper John Bowers whose deep black tone - he’s darker than nine inches  up a hoss’s asshole - and quiet strength - he was wicked strong - made him a living breathing intimidation.  Self-fornication or intimidation.  The trooper chose celibation.  

 

2.191.  God’s choice was the colonel.  The colonel, the war machine.  Whose unbridled command required no burden of proof.  War machine, sex machine.  Unmatched machinery.  Trooper Bowers was a living machine, much as the colonel.  The colonel is dead.  Trooper Bowers is dying and what is killing him is too much in the blood and the blood is the life.  Life blood.  

    And a woman menstruates for the sake of the blood of life.  That’s what Ma Shuvee believed.  A way far out woman who never wore purple in all her menstruating way far outting life.  Though when she gave birth to the captain, a December delivery, he came out purple.  

    Doc Fager looked a bit purple.  Just a bit.  As if a sadness took up a special portion of his natural color and this portion, with all its special feeling, discolored him like a dredging or a purple twilighting of the skin.  He’s a kind man, the doc, chock full of resignation.  He is resigned.  He is nervous.  

    John, he says, I’m sorry.  

    Says in the second glorious morning of November.  Right before the apology he stutter stepped as if in danger.  And why not?  Danger looms in Fusaichi more than it loomed in any theater of war.  The squadron might go all lord-of-the-flies way before its publication.  And when it’s learned that the colonel is dead . . . there will be the breaking of all Hell.  Souls will blast like spraypaint.  Enough to paint the green purple?  Fusaichi, a green desert.  Deserted by what?  

    They will all die unaccounted for.

    The colonel is already dead.

    And he accounts for everything.

    This shiftless existence in Foosayitchy is demolishing.  It wouldn’t be so bad if the demolishing would hurry up, not be so slow with episodes of stagnation.  If a man must be demolished he prefers it to be with brilliant speed.  In a flash.  In a blink.  This slow and easy style of boonification softens a man’s virility.  His spirit cannot erect.  His soul is impotent.  

    Trooper Bowers’s soul will depart his body sooner rather than later, so says Doc Fager.  Death, Papa Clem says, is when the soul takes the high road.  Trooper Bowers does not run away and hide to cry in private.  He acknowledges the news with a simple Yessuh and continues to groom.  Doc Fagers asks if he wants to see the chaplain.  He does not.  Capt. Shuvee asks if he wants to be left alone.  He doesn’t mind either way.  

    The smells of the stable are almost strong enough to neutralize the Fusaichian stink.  Distinctly warm and earthy.  Organic and a little wild.  Just like the captain’s first temptation, a sassy girl of the neighborhood, the daughter of Miss Susan.  Miss Susan’s girl, Pam, liked to hug a lot.  Hugging was Pam’s delight and she was a very delightful hugger.  Yes, the neighborhood agreed, she be a little wild but her brand of wildness was so little and so hugable that there was no scolding and all forgiven.  Even that time she hugged Lex in the regal gleam of a twilight purple and the sky was all ablaze with it that early twilighted tender night, the first night he returned from college and stayed late at a generally -off-limits- after- dark- or -damn- your- luck park otherwise known as the scene of the town’s most volatile moments of men against women or, more to the point, boys against girls.  Killed and raped in the park, that’s how volatile it got for the girls, most times, to the boys’ credit, one or the other, not both.  

    When Miss Susan came to the Shuvee home with an accusation of rape against Lex, Mr. G.C. Shuvee bowed his head and walked away like a man resigned to the whipping post and Mrs. Carneal-Shuvee sighed the vocal equivalent of a rolling of the eyes, “Oh, no.  Heaven forfend”

 

2.192.  That twilighted early evening Lex sat in a gazebo near the token Civil War cannon that all small town parks have.  He sat and thought about the colonel’s mother exotically named Mahubah, meaning good greetings/good fortune.  She was of good and fortunate stock, well built for birthing.  But her build proved not so fortunate.  

    Lex wasn’t a hips and lips man; that came later while deployed at Fusaichi whose native women were built like adolescent boys then oh lord a full woman, full in conformation and in oral promise . . . Pam was of that shape style fullness, built like a homewrecker.  She hugged not fitfully but with no reservation.  Her hug was designed to bring the heat of her fully shaped styled body to his, straight to the core of him and this aroused a hard  heat from, of him, all this he admitted freely and fiercely he denied any forceful carnal knowledge, any supine stem raptum.  It was his word against hers and the word of a sluttish serial hugger could not overcome the wrathful defense of a protective mother who thought her son shit gold.  Case closed.  If she was raped, Ma Carneal-Shuvee said, it was surely by one of the town’s low class Polish Jews from whom she, Pam, knew she could bribe no fortune and so she wanted to pin it on her Lex, future troop commander and so beloved captain -

    Shuvee? . . . Captain Shuvee?  The doc wants to know if he will recruit another trooper to relieve John of his duties.  It’s important, vital, to start treatment early if poor John is to have even the smallest small chance.  But the prognosis is grim, yes?  Still they must give him every little chance.  Chances are he will die for Fusaichi is not conducive to healing from any sickness, even the made up ones like cocksicks.  Maybe this will be the case that will make Doc Fager as successful as Dr. Freeland at Tosconova.  Later than planned but if patience is the asking price for success he’ll take it.  He’s a doctor before he’s an Army man.  He must try.  He must try with John.  And . . . the candyman might have a super secret weapon?  Something that’ll intensify the doc’s full effort?  Might he, the candyman, get his hands on a sweet alternative to plain ol’ Atabrine?  If Papa Clem is right and we must all suffer for the sins of that idiot couple in Eden then surely John’s dues are paid already.  Capt. Shuvee agrees.  Doc Fager and Trooper Bowers make a beeline to the Atabrine Sick Suite.  The doc is a great navigator through the boonies, second only to the captain who has a higher sense of a higher power.  He gives selflessly and accepts gratefully.  Selflessly he surrenders to the Fusaichian jungle, peace pervades between the staccato of the approaching storm.  Gratefully for all things already granted he prays Please don’t let the doc fail.  Please don’t let his endeavor to save John be the greatest bungle in the jungle we call Fusaichi.  

    There’s a noise completely unaffiliated with the storm