magni

I am so fickle....

Or inconsistent.

I wrote an ending to the bit I posted earlier, but I won't let anyone comment on it (positive or negative) because it is too personal. So I only let a few I know will keep mum see it. Trying to operate those damn experiences and emotions. It al makes sense.

But then I proceeded to fantasize about getting a short into McSweeney's, a short based on an earlier work I was doing. So I started to cultivate that one again. This is from that other story.

I'm technically insane until I finish something. Then I will classify myself as functionally insane (a step up).

This one is a scene from a soldier in the Battle of Okinawa. Rooster is someone who goes to insanity and back and realizes that it all was a function to keep him whole under an extremely stressful situation.

The piece as standalone is titled "Mission Failed!"



(ON FINDING THE GARDEN)

A beautiful garden that was unspoiled, and surrounded by full trees, appeared from beyond the brush. It shined so brightly, I fell down and wept. Shepard stepped on to a bed of ornamental grass past me giving me a hard look and I screamed.


WAIT!


Shhh.!, he indicated back to me, looking at me with even greater gravity.

At that moment, with the ugliest of faces, he appeared the most cruel man I had yet met, a universe worse than the japs that relished our deaths. I instinctively popped up and gripped my rifle as though I was going to jab into his face with its butt. I had for that moment every intention of removing his obstinate existence.

I stopped myself and swooned again but this time I caught myself. Instead of falling down, my eyes grew wet and again I muttered the same word, hiding my gaze.

I need to rest. I finally said in the proper tone, with some relief at finding words he might understand.

Dont you lose it, Rooster!, he screamed.

I couldnt look at his ugly face. It burned with supernatural hate for me in those strange seconds. It had no life of its own except to desire my pain for me, with all the force of a life but with nothing held back for any other emotion. The heat from his cruelty burned my eyes, cheeks and forehead when I tried to stare back at it. For repeatedly trying to return his look, my tears responded by attempting to cool my eyes and cheeks. I was so angry. I needed to calm down for a second.

Give me second. Ill be alright in a second.

Patton emerged from the brush.

Where are we? I asked Shepard, Can we stay here?. I realized the absurdity of the question after I heard it and felt weak again and dropped into sitting down.

Patton spoke to Shepard, ignoring me. I think this boys nearing his breaking point already.

Then to me, Do think youre going to make it?

I didnt know what make it meant. Where am I going?

I stared at him waiting for an explanation. My head was pounding.

Well send you back. Well say you got a concussion from one of those shells and you can catch up with us later after youve rested. You need to rest.

No, I whispered. Just let me stay here.

Ill catch up with you., I added, thinking on my feet.

He leaned down to me so that he could be right in front of my face. He had a look of piercing concern, as mortal as Ive ever seen that emotion. He wanted me to see this expression.

Are you fucking nuts? Are you so fucking nuts? Its only a few hours from sunset. There isnt anytime for you to catch up with us before then unless you just want to run along the road like a fucking lunatic. (Nob Hill)

Hey, Sheppard said, tapping Pattons back, Theres a house over there.

I looked in the direction Shepard was pointing and saw it. It also looked complete.

You wait here while we check it out., Patton said as he turned from me with Shepard.

As they walked away to my right, I was relieved. They didnt have to walk into the spot.

I snuck a look at the garden. I was at the corner of an impossible birth of grass. Over the heads of their blades was the other side of the arc of woods we had emerged from, the arc that my brothers had followed and ultimately faded into. Everything below was screaming upwards with green exuberance and finally crashing with the bright sunlight firing down on it. No, that wasnt right. It really was one, like waves colliding are one. I dont know how else to put it into words. It was fierce but it was one. I belonged here and I wasnt here. I wanted to be here.

Where was I?

Though I was still instinctively crouching, I glided through grasses as high as my shoulder. Maybe I was here.

Ahead there was a wooden bridge liberating a path over a pond shaped like a stream. I was being drawn to that other side as though in a stream. In that place was a clearing of shorter grass, a place to admire this scene from. Next to it was the house perfect in every way. The wind whispered, hiding notes that could only be heard in your bones. The sun added humming strings. Silently from within the music, the color of unmarked flesh moved out from the trees by the house.

I jerked down behind the cover of my tall grass.

It moved like a human body and moreover it possessed a pair of breasts, a bandaged face, long black hair, held a rifle and wore a pair of our fatigues. A woman. She was clearly a part of the garden, and was a part of it all. Her footsteps punctuated the gardens leitmotif. It was her leitmotif. Who is she?

I studied her as she strolled over the lawn, her chest proudly displayed, braver than any mans, and then she stepped partly out of my view. She was leaning over for some task like an actor on a stage. Who? I asked myself. Why am I seeing her here? She covered her chest with a US Marine shirt. An urgent power surrounded us long enough for me to ask one more time. She disappeared again and then I figured it out.

She was a valkyrie.

I could hear the music from the garden clearly now. The music was Ride of the Valkyries. It could not have been a coincidence that I was seeing her. She certainly knew I was there. It all made sense.

It only meant one thing.

That I would not die.




Later he gets the million dollar wound that sends him home. He learns from his doc that it was only a crazy woman who died shortly after. In arguing he learns that the valkyries did not protect warriors but only took them to Valhalla after they had died. The doc gets frustrated and chastises him that Wagner was a Nazi. Finally convinced, and shocked, then he remembers a dog on wheels he saw on a battleship, Scuttlebutt. The point is SButt is handicapped but does not know it. He becomes a collector of art brut (outsider art). One of the artists was the provocateur of the storytelling.

Here they come to snuff the rooster

Yeah here come the rooster, yeah

You know he aint gonna die
No, no, no,
ya know he aint gonna die