surprised to feel the broad band of muscle trembling in her back; I thought of the two of us alone with a hundred and one sailors cut down and left for dead by a pack of roving and mindless Mexicans. Then in our roller-skating stance—hand to elbow, hand to waist—we began to move together, to stagger together in the moonlight, and over my shoulder and flung to either side of the harsh black visible track of our flight from the road I saw the prostrate silhouettes of a dozen fat giant cacti that had been struck head on by the bus and sent sailing. For a moment I saw them, these bloated shapes of scattered tackling dummies that marked the long wild curve of our reckless detour into the dark and milky night. Abandoned. As we were abandoned.
And then the lee of the bus. Clumps of squatting white shivering sailors. A pea jacket for Pixie. Another pea jacket for Cassandra. A taste of whisky for me. Little pharmacist mates clever in first aid and rushing to the sounds of chattering teeth or tidelands obscenity. While the black-faced driver hauls out his hydraulic jack and drags it toward the mutilated tire which has come to rest in a natural rock garden of crimson desert flowers and tiny bulbs and a tangle of prickly parasitic leaves. All crushed to a pulp. Mere pustules beneath that ruined tire.
It was the dead center of some nightmare accident but here at least, crouching and squatting together in the lee of the bus, there was no wind. Only the empty windows, shadows, scorched paint of the crippled monster. Only the flare burning where we had left the road and now the scent of a lone cigarette, the flick of a match, the flash of a slick comb through bay rum and black waves of hair, persistent disappointed sounds of the ukelele— devilish hinting for a community sing—only the cooling sand of the high embankment against which Cassandra and Pixie and I huddled while the sailors grew restless and the driver—puttees, goggles, snappy cap and movements of ex-fighter-pilot, fierce nigger carefully trained by the Greyhound line—bustled about the enormous sulphuric round of the tire. Refusing assistance,removing peak-shouldered military jacket, retaining cap, strutting in riding britches, fingering the jack, clucking at long rubber ribbons of the burst tire: “Why don’t you fellows sing a little and pass the time?” But only more performing meteors and this hell’s nigger greasing both arms and whistling, tossing high into the air his bright wrenches. In the middle of the desert only this American nigger changing a tire, winning the war.
I unlaced my dirty white buckskin shoes and emptied them. I glanced at Cassandra. I glanced at Pixie who, even though cloaked in her pea jacket, was beginning to play in the sand; I tried to smile but the driver cavorting in the moonlight dispirited me and I wondered where we were and what had become of poor dear Sonny. I hooked one foot onto the opposite knee, gripped the ankle, brushed the sand from the sole of my white sock, repeated the process. I glanced again at the night sky—unmoved by celestial side show—and for some reason, scowling into the salt and pepper stars, gritting my teeth at that silent chaos, the myriad motes of the unconsciousness, I found myself thinking of Tremlow, once more saw him as he looked when he bore down upon me during the height of the
Starfish
mutiny. Again I lived the moment of my degradation. Then just as suddenly I was spared the sight of it all.
Because I had heard a sound. Cassandra’s sleeping head lay in my lap—high upturned navy blue collar of the pea jacket revealing only the briefest profile of her worn and lovely little deathmask face—because I was awake and had heard a sound and recognized it. And because suddenly that impossible sound established place, established the hour, explained the tangled bright loops of barbed wire that apparently ran for miles atop the steep rise of our protective sand embankment. I listened, gently pressed
And then the lee of the bus. Clumps of squatting white shivering sailors. A pea jacket for Pixie. Another pea jacket for Cassandra. A taste of whisky for me. Little pharmacist mates clever in first aid and rushing to the sounds of chattering teeth or tidelands obscenity. While the black-faced driver hauls out his hydraulic jack and drags it toward the mutilated tire which has come to rest in a natural rock garden of crimson desert flowers and tiny bulbs and a tangle of prickly parasitic leaves. All crushed to a pulp. Mere pustules beneath that ruined tire.
It was the dead center of some nightmare accident but here at least, crouching and squatting together in the lee of the bus, there was no wind. Only the empty windows, shadows, scorched paint of the crippled monster. Only the flare burning where we had left the road and now the scent of a lone cigarette, the flick of a match, the flash of a slick comb through bay rum and black waves of hair, persistent disappointed sounds of the ukelele— devilish hinting for a community sing—only the cooling sand of the high embankment against which Cassandra and Pixie and I huddled while the sailors grew restless and the driver—puttees, goggles, snappy cap and movements of ex-fighter-pilot, fierce nigger carefully trained by the Greyhound line—bustled about the enormous sulphuric round of the tire. Refusing assistance,removing peak-shouldered military jacket, retaining cap, strutting in riding britches, fingering the jack, clucking at long rubber ribbons of the burst tire: “Why don’t you fellows sing a little and pass the time?” But only more performing meteors and this hell’s nigger greasing both arms and whistling, tossing high into the air his bright wrenches. In the middle of the desert only this American nigger changing a tire, winning the war.
I unlaced my dirty white buckskin shoes and emptied them. I glanced at Cassandra. I glanced at Pixie who, even though cloaked in her pea jacket, was beginning to play in the sand; I tried to smile but the driver cavorting in the moonlight dispirited me and I wondered where we were and what had become of poor dear Sonny. I hooked one foot onto the opposite knee, gripped the ankle, brushed the sand from the sole of my white sock, repeated the process. I glanced again at the night sky—unmoved by celestial side show—and for some reason, scowling into the salt and pepper stars, gritting my teeth at that silent chaos, the myriad motes of the unconsciousness, I found myself thinking of Tremlow, once more saw him as he looked when he bore down upon me during the height of the
Starfish
mutiny. Again I lived the moment of my degradation. Then just as suddenly I was spared the sight of it all.
Because I had heard a sound. Cassandra’s sleeping head lay in my lap—high upturned navy blue collar of the pea jacket revealing only the briefest profile of her worn and lovely little deathmask face—because I was awake and had heard a sound and recognized it. And because suddenly that impossible sound established place, established the hour, explained the tangled bright loops of barbed wire that apparently ran for miles atop the steep rise of our protective sand embankment. I listened, gently pressed
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