The Wild Boys (19 page)

He looked up to see a fleet of gliders drifting toward him on the afternoon wind piloted by youths in skeleton suits. Silver arrows rained from the sky.

Audrey was in an Eastern market. Steep wooden ramps sloped dizzily down like a roller coaster lined with fruit-and-vegetable stalls. He was sitting at the wheel of a heavy wooden cart with iron wheels and bumper. The cart picked up speed, crashing into stalls, spilling fruit and vegetables which rolled down the ramp. Dogs and chickens and children scattered out from under his wheels “I don’t care who I run into” he thought. He was possessed by an ugly spirit of destroying speed. He caught sight of a large cobra by the side of the ramp and swerved to run over it. Writhing fragments flew up in his face. He screamed.

Armored cars, sirens screaming converge on a rocket installation.

Too late. The rocket blasts off a mad tycoon at the controls. The earth blows up behind him. As his ship rides the blast he screams: “HI HO SILVER YIPPEEE.” He is riding ahead of a posse tossing sticks of dynamite over his shoulder. Sharp smell of weeds from old Westerns.

House of the General city of Resht in Northern Persia 1023
A.D
. The General is poring over maps as he plans an expedition against Alamout. The Old Man of the Mountain represented for the General
pure demonic evil. Certainly this man had committed the terrible sin referred to in the Koran of aspiring to be God. The whole Ishmaelian sect was a perfect curse, hidden, lurking, ready to strike, defying all authority … “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”

“Blasphemy” the General screamed starting to his feet. “Man is made to submit and obey.”

Acting out a final confrontation with this Satan he paces the room fingering the jeweled handle of his sword. He cannot return to his maps. Still muttering imprecations he steps into the garden. Under the orange trees an old man is cutting weeds stopping from time to time to hone his knife on a stone, hands like brown silk unhurried and steady. He has worked there as a gardener for ten years and the General has stopped seeing him years ago. He is as much a part of the garden as the orange trees and the irrigation ditch flashing like a sword in sun. The House of the General is built on a high hill. Orange groves, date palms, rosebushes, pools and opium poppies stretch down to massive walls. The Caspian Sea gleams in the distance. But the General can find no peace in his garden today. The Old Man peers at this through the orange leaves with laughing blue eyes and stabs up at him from the irrigation ditch. Forgetting the presence of his servant the General raises his clenched fist to a distant mountain and screams: “Satan, I will destroy you forever.”

Squatting in front of the sharpening stone the old gardener tests the edge of his blade against his thumb. The old gardener tested the edge of ten years unhurried eyes seeing the General long ago in a blaze
of white light. He straightens up with all the power of his bent knees thrusting up under the rib cage knife seeking a distant point beyond the general’s sagging body, HIS knife flashing like a compass needle straight from Alamout.

June 25, 1988 Casablanca 4
P.M
. The Café Azar was on a rundown suburban street you could find in Fort Worth Texas. CAFÉ AZAR in red letters on plate glass the interior hidden from the street by faded pink curtains. Inside a few Europeans and Arabs drinking tea and soft drinks. The shoeshine boy came over and pointed to my shoes. He was naked except for a dirty white jockstrap and leather sandals. His head was shaved and a tuft of hair sprouted from the crown. His face had been beautiful at some other time and place now broken and twisted by altered pressure, the teeth stuck out at angles features wrenched out of focus body emaciated by distant hungers. He sat on his box and looked up at me squinting snub-nosed legs sprawled
apart one finger scratching his jock. The skin was white as paper hairs black and shiny lay flat on his skinny legs. As he shined my shoes with deft precise movements his body gave off a dry musty smell. In one corner of the room I saw a green curtain in front of which two boys were undressing. The corner was apparently at a level below the café floor since I could not see their legs below the knee. One of the boys had stripped to pink underwear sticking out straight at the fly. The other patrons paid no attention to this tableau. The boy jerked his head toward the two actors who were now fucking in upright position lips parted in silent gasps. He put a finger to one eye and shook his head. The others could not see the boys. I handed the boy a coin. He checked the date and nodded. The Dib checked the date of nettles feet twisted by the altered disk.

“Long time nobody use jump” he said leg hairs covered with mold. The gun jumping, crumpled twisted body, his face floating there the soldier’s identification card and skinny in picture.

“I was too.” He pointed to his thin body. He picked up his box. I followed him through the cafe. When I walk with the Dib they can’t see me. Buttocks were smooth and white as old ivory. The corner of the green curtain was a sunken limestone square two steps down from the café floor dry musty smell of empty waiting rooms a worn wood bench along one wall. Embedded in the stone floor was an iron disk about five feet in diameter degrees and numbers cut in its edges brass arrows indicating N. S. E. W. This compass floated on a hydraulic medium. In the center of the disk a marine compass occupied a teakwood socket. Two pairs of sandals worn smooth and black mounted on spring stilts eight inches
in height were spaced eighteen inches apart so that two people standing in the sandals would be one behind the other the center of the disk and the marine compass exactly between them. The springs were bolted to pistons which projected on shafts from the iron disk. The sandals were at different levels. Evidently they could be adjusted by raising or lowering the shafts. At a sign from the boy I stripped off my clothes smooth hands guided by film tracks I was to bend over and brace my hands on my knees. The boy reached in his box and took out a tape measure that ended in a little knob. He measured the distance from my rectum to the floor. With a round key which fitted into locks in the support shafts he adjusted the level of the two pairs of sandals on the spring stilts. He stood up and stripped off his jockstrap scraping erection. He mounted one pair of spring stilts and strapped his feet into the sandals poised on the springs nuts tight and precise as bearings his phallus projected needle of the compass the disk turned until it was facing the green curtain which moved slightly as if it might cover an opening, ass arrows indicating N. S. E. W. feet a taste of metal in the mouth 18 penis floated I stepped in the sandals from behind knees his skinny arms and I was seeing the take from outside at different levels soft machine my ass a rusty cylinder pearly glands electric click blue sparks my spine into his I bend over and brace vibrating on the springs iron smell of rectal mucus streaking across the sky a wrench spurting soft tracks a distant gun jumping the soldier’s identification disk covered with mold his smile across tears of pain squinting up at me snub-nosed hands at the crotch worn metal smell of the gun as my feet touched the iron disk a soft shock tingled up my legs to the crotch. The penis floated. I
stepped onto the stilts in front of the boy and he adjusted the straps from behind. I bent over and braced my hands on my knees. He hooked his skinny arms under my shoulders leg hairs twisted together a slow greased pressure and I was seeing the take from outside transparent soft machine ass a rusty cylinder phallus a piston pumping the pearly glands blue sparks and my spine clicked back into his then forward his head in mine eyes steering through a maze of turnstiles. Stop. Click. Start. Stop. Click. Start streaking across the sky a smear of pain gun jumping out trees weed-grown tracks rusty identification disk covered with mold. Click. Green Pullman curtain. Click. “You wanta see something?” Click. Penis floated. Click. Distant 1920 wind and dust. Click. Bits of silver paper in a wind across the park. Click. Summer afternoon on car seat to the thin brown knees. Click. His smile across the golf course. Click. Click. Click. See on back what I mean each time place dim jerky faraway. The curtain stirs slightly. Click. Sharp smell of weeds. The curtain was gone. The feeling in my stomach when a fast elevator stops as we landed in a stone kiosk by an abandoned railroad dried shit urine initials

KILROY JACKED OFF HERE       B. J. MARTIN          D & D

          
BUEN LUGAR PARA FOLLAR     QUIÉN ES?      A.D. KJD

We unlaced our feet and stepped down from the springs. The disk was rusty and rust had stained the stone around its edges.

“Long time nobody use jump” the boy said pointing. I saw my clothes in a corner covered with mold. The boy shook his head and handed me a white jockstrap from his box.

“Clothes no good here. Easy see clothes. Very hard see
this.” He pointed to his thin body.

Then I felt the thirst my body dry and brittle as a dead leaf.

“Jump take your last water Meester. We find spring.” Above the kiosk was a steep hillside. The boy made his way through brush that seemed to move aside for him leaving a tunnel of leaves. He dropped on his knees and parted a tangle of vines. A deep black spring flowed from a limestone cleft. We scooped up clear cold water with our hands. The boy wiped his mouth. From the hillside we could see a railroad bridge, a stream, ruined suburbs.