GOODBYE, SOUL BROTHER - The Cavalry of Ten Thousand Horses 2

2.  THE PURPLE TWILIGHT

2.101.  Capt. Shuvee bears almost perfect resemblance to his mother, that is, under close scrutiny and with a the proper stimulus to find the perfections.  Hers is largely a distinguished and extinguished face, its extinguishing features bubbling over with a hard core benefice.  Yes, the woman is a feminist, but you can’t find a feminist in a house on fire or on a sinking ship or in a hostage situation.  Then it’s don’t forget, I’m just a girl.  Really, Alice Carneal-Shuvee never was a girl even when she was officially on-the-dotted-line a girl.  Always she initiated the kiss or the embrace to make a relationship official.  Always her call, no huggy, no kissy or hugs and kisses always on her determination. Had to with Gabriel Charles, a man of timidity.  He would never make a move.  The key issue, the pure reason for his timidness was then and remains now his long history of broken promises.  A big drinker, he is never satisfied, instead, he almost always tends to stay thirsty for more of whatever his good buddy Al K. Hall is serving and it’s while satiating his thirst that he vows to do something or another; always it ends up a broken vow.  Capt. Shuvee’s father has never learned to always to do sober what he vowed to do drunk.  This hard lesson, if learned, would teach him to keep his mouth shut.  Failure breeds timidness and timidness makes a man essentially neutered.  No small wonder that G.C. Shuvee didn’t make the cut for military service.  He may have forty tales and more about any other kind of service, but not one will be a soldier’s tale and the reason is beyond his blindness (much obliged to a drunken accident).

2.102.  Capt. Shuvee thinks about the tale of the cat that was murdered by Trooper Caleb and this ignites the memory of the tale of every Kilroy appearance to infinitum.  Kilroy works in silence, beauty of it being that it preserves his anonymity.  Some troopers believe that Kilroy and the candyman are one in the same and some believe they are different but on the same spectrum.  There is no shared belief and no trooper has all the answers though many hem and haw.  Not much else to do at elusive Fort Marcy, Fusaichi, Japan and what else there is to do is much obliged to the candyman.

2.103.  His morning duties as officer of the day satisfied, Capt. Shuvee returns to his cot for uplifting via reading one of his favorite poems and imagining himself enraptured by it, in its purple and its top flight rhapsody that gives a poetic twilight to the rapture of the grounded Fusaichian green.  He reads and with his mind’s eye he sees the future, dipping into it and seeing it and reading it; it, the future vision; it, the future wonder.  He reads and dips and sees heaven above stock full of sailing magical and commercial argosies costly and baleful and all this dropping down down down to the green ground ground ground all the while twilighted by purple.  

    And the colonel is dead.

    The captain still dips and reads and sees in his great imagination an image of greatness great with the loudness of shouting loud and proud and there’s still a storm brewing and not even the shock and awe of the colonel’s death can stop the storm.  The heavens shout with one thunder rumble after another; these rumbles he feels in his chest as he reads “airy navies” in the poem and remembers the time when the squadron bivouacked at American post Indy, named for the man in charge, known only and simply as Admiral Indy, famous for patiently procrastinating and overtly relaxing without shame.  Obfuscation was his real game and his clear grit when playing it was not missed.  

    Exempli gratia:  

    Sleep well while you’re here and have a good time at Fusaichi.

    We’re forever grateful.  Sidebar, know why we’re going to Fusaichi?

    Won’t tell you what I know but I will tell you that I know why you’re going where you will go.

    A.P. Indy was a peaceful place.  Take charge, Indy!  Evidently he answered I will take charge as if the entire wavy navy was at his command.  One Midshipman Henry of Navarre, Ohio obeyed his command while humming a war song like a songbird.  When Admiral Indy commanded that all bodies stationed at his post praise God and pass the ammo Midshipman Henry literally praised and passed and declared that the colonel, the colonel, by God, would appreciate his faithfulness.  A midshipman of impetuous youth he worshipped the colonel, the colonel, like a god and considered all orders from Admiral Indy to have been sifted through him, by God.  Said, I believe in you, colonel; said Wherever you are I’ll get there, colonel.  

    This was all said before Lieut. Gibson received the dispatch informing the world that the colonel, the colonel is dead.

2.104.  Dead and gone and ushered up to the heavenly twilight all purple and mystic and feathery with angels wings and puffy with clouds, right?  Must be because the colonel’s life was full of heroic valor and God wants nothing but the best and the faithful and the colonel was always faithful, always strong in his faith.  A giant among men he took the straight and narrow path to heaven, the giant’s causeway, you could say.  Immense and ushered by a glorious song, oh, glory be!  Dead and gone in a blade of time.  

2.105.  Not a single purple blade among the jungle grass of Fusaichi and not a single jungle road.  Fusaichi is simply not jeepable.  Just like the female FuPegs are simply not fuckable.  And life will be simply unliveable when the troopers found out that the colonel is dead.

2.106.  There comes and end to war.  Whisk the bold and brave troopers away then or keep some and release some to maintain a balance of power?  Those who are kept must be ambitious lest they stagnate and deteriorate and boonify.  My, oh, my.  What would be their main reason for ambition?  Keeping the green green or defying it?  Lusting in the heat or gratifying in it?  Surviving it and receiving the great reward of meeting the colonel?  That would be truly splendid, in the least of terms.  

2.107.  Fact is the colonel is dead.