Dreams That Burn In The Night (27 page)

I remember it all
quite clearly, that first comet summer, my craving for something different here in the universe.
There seemed to be nothing but duty, create, create, create. Always at the mercy of an act of
creation. The creator of the universe isn't a job for dreamers. It requires precision, it
requires eternal patience and a high school diploma. I remember finally remarking to my former
wife, on that very day of the first comet, how much of a relief it was to find something straying
into my universe. It was the first comet, that gladsome sight that strolled across my new-made
sky, so totally unasked, that prompted me and my wife to an eventual parting of the ways. My
wife, of course, thought very little of the whole thing.

"Don't you ever
weary of green obedience?" I asked, rolling my tongue across the soft hills of the prairie. She
turned her trees and looked at me incredulously.

"You must be
eroding," she said, shaking her branches like an ornamental fan. "This comet business is highly
irregular and cer­tainly not something to be admired. In fact, I find it a decidedly vulgar
development."

"We need contact
with a reality not our own," I insisted, eyeing a ravine with some concern. Had it been there
20,000 years ago or was my face simply showing my age? Perhaps I was aging, after all. Was the
grass on my face getting sparse? An unpleasant thought.

"You need a good
shot of sap to bring you to your senses," she snarled as the woodpeckers began hammering at her
insect load.

"One man's sap is
another man's poison," I cautiously rea­soned. "Besides, I've really grown a little weary of this
entire sky-swallowing act. You just can't expect a man to create, create, create day after day,
year after year, century after century. A man needs a little unproductivity now and
then."

"So end as a fleshy
tattoo if that is what you want!" she said, properly hurt and surly. "But don't come swarming
back to me with the taste of stale people on your breath."

"So be it," I said.
"I have wearied of this country life. I need unfresh air. I need unhealthy living. I need
overcrowded restroom facilities. All the things deprived me by being a product of a happy
home."

"The prognosis for
misery is one hundred percent," she said as a parting shot.

I turned my
mountain on her and, metamorphosing quietly into a molehill, left her to boil in her own ocean.
There is no restless sea that is not intentional. I began moving toward that reality be­side the
hand-painted gate. The place where they have the warm aquarium. How I long for my place in the
warm aquarium!

I will pass as one
of them, I'm sure. It's a matter of shrinking into all diseases and learning to walk on bended
knees. It's a sim­ple act of a lack of faith. I could have been contented where I was. But no,
the theory of birth is simply put as a child's desire to jump out of the womb and do a polka.
Yes, I believe that is my destiny. My name is Fallen Angel.

It used to be
Geronimo. My name used to be quite a lot of things but I was never serious about it. A man who
isn't really a man anymore and who is privileged to swallow the sky at his dis­cretion, as I am
sure you will agree, isn't obligated to be serious.

I am changing quite
rapidly, from skin to acetone, from braids to respectable beanie. I'm sure I'll pass the most
rigid inspection. I'm sure my place in the warm aquarium is sealed over, sanitized for my
protection, waiting, yes, waiting for me in the shower tool afterglow. How I ache to feel my
first social revision!

I have my hand out
by the road, my pointed thumb saying, "Here I am, the transformation divine."

Is that God driving
by in an aluminum car? I'll run to the stopped car and see if I can buy passage to the dawn of
dreams. I'll see if this man can convert me. I yearn for it tragically. Per­haps he will be a
homosexual with capped teeth. Or perhaps a naked man under his clothes. The possibilities are
endless.

I open the door
slowly like a present you don't deserve but can't resist. There was no one in the car and I said,
"Hello. How far are you going?"

He smiled
unhappily. "Only as far as the next mortuary, I'm afraid. I'm making a delivery."

I climbed inside
the metal vehicle and settled back against the seat with alacrity. "Do the dead deliver
themselves?" I asked. "It sounds very efficient."

"Yes," admitted the
man as he put the car in gear and eased
out onto the highway again. "We've improved a lot in the last years. You'd be surprised,
I think, to find that in some parts of the world, they still don't make deliveries. Some people
always drag their feet."

I couldn't help but
notice the streams of cars, the great onrush of traffic. "Are all these cars making deliveries
too?" I asked, displaying my innocence.

"I mind my own
business. I look neither to the left nor right. That's how I got here in the first place,"
replied the man. "If all people would do the same we wouldn't need steering wheels on
cars."

"That would be very
economical," I said.

"You just know it!"
he said, banging his fist on the dashboard clock. "Why, we could speed up deliveries at an
alarming rate!"

We continued our
journey in lively silence for the rest of the trip. He stopped twice to watch a butterfly smash
into the wind­shield of the car.

"It's better to
watch it in slow motion," he finally explained, breaking our convivial silence. "You see, the
world wasn't always like this. I think originally it was fatter."

"I'm sure you are
right," I agreed, "or at least believe yourself to be right, which is, of course, the same
thing."

"You don't need to
get so pragmatic about it," he sniffed. "I am fairly liberal. I pick up hitchhikers. Respect my
commitment here or hold your tongue."

"But I don't even
know what you are talking about," I said. "I'm afraid I've lost myself at the point at which the
world was fatter."

"Well then, why
bring it up?" said the man at the wheel. "Inci­dentally, where are you going to?"

"I'm not going to,"
I replied. "I'm coming from. I was formally engaged as a sky swallower. I have since rescinded
the task."

A large piece of
sky fell and crashed into the hood of the car, smashing it flatter than a circus strong man's
paper drinking straw.

"Jesus," said the
man, a look of fear of falling on his face. "The sky is falling!"

"You are wrong," I
gently chided as I began opening the door to the already slowing car. "The world is simply
throwing itself up."

Venus patted Earth
on the back tenderly, "There, there. Take
two asteroids and go to bed. Now that you got all that nasty stuff out of your system,
you'll be able to sleep at night."

Jupiter pulled the
covers of space across the Earth's green seas.

"I fwowed up," said
Earth, hugging its polar tightly in its arms.

"That's O.K., son.
We all do sooner or later," said Saturn.

Doesn't
everybody?

When they finally
got the old man to eat, he ate with his fingers. Bullock, the linguist, looked
disgusted.

"Some holy man he
makes! I'll bet the old goat hasn't taken a bath in twenty years!"

Miss Tarantella,
the group anthropologist, looked dangerously close to wretching. "How can he stand to eat like
that? He's abso­lutely filthy!" She wrinkled her pinched nose with disgust and her thick glasses
slipped down and fell into her lap. She jerked reflex-ively, her lap sensitive to the touch as so
many things are that are untouched.

The old man wiped
his fingers on his chest and grinned at them with as many teeth as he had. Two, to be
exact.

"Good! More eat!
More dirty eat!" he said, gesturing with his hands at the near empty pot.

Miss Tarantella put
her glasses back on her nose and peered over the top of them at the old man. "No more eat! Talk!
You talk first and then you eat!"

"Me no want eat!
You eat! You dirty you not eat! You clean eat!" said the old man with a two-toothed
smile.

Bullock looked down
at his knuckles. He sure could pick them, couldn't he? First Tarantella, that dried-out old prune
of a woman. Now this dirty old lunatic Indian the woman had en­gaged as a guide.

"What talk? White
fools up the flukey wheel! Go down the belly! Chomp! Chomp! Not safe! Not safe!" said the old
man.

"It's hopeless,"
said Bullock. "He's as unreliable as a weather report. All of his gears are loose."

"I'm not leaving
this mountain until I get what I came for!" an­nounced Miss Tarantella stoutly. "I am not
accustomed to fail­ure! If I came here to track down the legendary cave of the Nocka-Nocka, then
you can bet your camp stool that I intend to do just that! The word 'quit' is not in my
vocabulary."

Miss Tarantella was
a positive, overweight woman with no sense of humor. Bullock's conception of her lay somewhere
be­tween a German military band whose oompah-oompahs had gone awry and a self-taught virgin who
played at human by ear and was tone-deaf.

"Nocka-Nocka!
Chomp!" said the old man, and he pointed a greasy finger at Miss Tarantella. "Ho the hot one! Big
chomp!"

He clamped his
fingers together and made chewing motions with his hands.

"The hell with your
disgusting eating habits, you filthy old beast! What about Nocka-Nocka's cave? Where is it?"
clamored Miss Tarantella, whose patience was legendary for its absence.

The old man just
scratched Ms chest through a hole in his tat­tered shirt and giggled.

"Maybe he doesn't
really know anything about Nocka-Nocka," suggested Bullock timidly. "Maybe there is no such thing
as a. . ."

"Are you suggesting
that I am
wrong
in my research? Is that what you're suggesting?" said Miss Tarantella, her
icy tone reminding Bullock of a wild weekend on a polar ice cap.

Bullock shivered
involuntarily and quickly retracted his sugges­tion. Bullock was fed up with the whole thing. If
they never found anything it would be fine with him. He didn't care one way or the
other.

Two anything but
fun-filled days following an insane old In­dian up a steep mountain on a wild-goose chase was no
picnic. Putting up with Miss Tarantella was something else again. Often in the last two days,
Bullock had prayed that an avalanche would start and carry those two off the mountain. Only
idiots and In­dians climbed mountains anyway, as far as Bullock was con­cerned.

"Nocka-Nocka,"
nodded the old man. He pointed back over his shoulder toward the top of the mountain.

The old man scooped
up a handful of dirt with bis fingers, dumped it in with what was left of the beef stew, and
began stir­ring it around with his fingers.

"Christ!" said
Bullock, who was only a linguist and didn't re­ally give a damn. "Is that some kind of
custom?"

"I think he's just
being nasty," snarled Miss Tarantella. "These filthy old Indians are always trying to be
purposely disgusting. I guess they think it's funny. He'll probably expose himself
next!"

Bullock just
shrugged. He sort of admired the way the old boy got under Miss Tarantella's skin. Personally, he
found the old man kind of charming, in a smelly sort of way.

The old man rattled
off a long curious speech in a Calusa dia­lect that Bullock found hard to follow.

"What'd he say?
What'd he say?" demanded Miss Tarantella.

"I'm not sure I got
it all," Bullock said. He tried a few phrases on the old man, trying to get him to repeat the
message. The greasy old man just sat there cross-legged, inscrutable as a rock. He refused to say
anything else.

"Well?" inquired
Miss Tarantella.

"Well, I didn't get
it all," admitted Bullock, trying to sort it out in his head. "And I'm sure I'm getting some of
it wrong, espe­cially the part where I think he said 'Buy War Bonds.'"

"Never mind what
you didn't get, you incompetent idiot! What did he say about Nocka-Nocka?" snapped Miss
Tarantella.

Bullock bristled at
the words "incompetent" and "idiot" but let it pass. "Well, I think he said Nocka-Nocka's cave is
only a little bit farther up the mountain."

"Is that it? The
old ass has been saying that for the last two days! Didn't he say anything else?"

"Sure. I think he
asked for something dirty to eat or at any rate he said something about something dirty to
eat."

"You're one hell of
a linguist!" she said.

Bullock shrugged.
Calusa wasn't one of his better languages.

The old man pointed
at Miss Tarantella, who had taken a note­book out and had begun jotting down some notes in
it.

"She write down
sex? Hot one hot on hots! Watch go to bath­room! Take picture! All this? She is what?"

Bullock, amazed at
the old man's strange grasp of the English
language, pointed at Miss Tarantella. Not exactly knowing what the old man was getting
at, he said, "Anthropologist. She is an anthropologist."