The Throat

Then the world abruptly went away and I was alone in a black void. A laughing void lay on either side of me, a world without time or space or meaning.

For a moment I was back in the shed, and Scoot was saying, 'Damn right.'

Then I was not in the shed with the body squad and the five units, but in a familiar world full of noise and color. I saw the peeling paint on the side of the Idle Hour Tavern. A neon beer sign glowed in the window. The paint had once been white, but the decay of things was as beautiful as their birth. Elm leaves heaped up in the gutter brown and red, and through them cool water sluiced toward the drain. Experience itself was sacred. Details were sacred. I was a new person in a world just being made.

I felt safe and whole—the child within me was also safe and whole. He set down his rage and his misery and looked at the world with eyes refreshed. For the second time that day I knew I wanted more of something: a taste of it was not enough. I knew what I needed.

This was the beginning of my drug addiction, which lasted, off and on, for a little more than a decade. I told myself that I wanted more, more of that bliss, but I think I really wanted to recapture this first experience and have it back entire, for nothing in that decade-and-a-bit ever surpassed it.

During that decade, a Millhaven boy who has much more to do with this story than I do began his odd divided life. He lost his mother at the age of five; he had been taught to hate, love, and fear a punishing deity and a sinful world. The boy's name was Fielding Bandolier, but he was known as Fee until he was eighteen; after that he had many names, at least one for each town where he lived. Under one of these names, he has already appeared in this story.

I was in Singapore and Bangkok, and Fee Bandolier's various lives were connected to mine only by the name of a record, Blue Rose, recorded by the tenor saxophonist Glenroy Breakstone in 1955 as a memorial to his pianist, James Treadwell, who had been murdered. Glenroy Breakstone was Millhaven's only great jazz musician, the only one worthy of being mentioned with Lester Young and Wardell Grey and Ben Webster. Glenroy Breakstone could make you see musical phrases turning over in the air. Passionate radiance illuminated those phrases, and as they revolved they endured in.the air, like architecture.

I could remember Blue Rose note for note from my boyhood, as I demonstrated to myself when I found a copy in Bangkok in 1981, and listened to it again after twenty-one years in my room upstairs over the flower market. It was on the Prestige label. Tommy Flanagan replaced James Treadwell, the murdered piano player. Side One: 'These Foolish Things'; 'But Not for Me'; 'Someone to Watch Over Me'; 'Star Dust.' Side Two: 'It's You or No One'; 'Skylark'; 'My Ideal'; ''Tis Autumn'; 'My Romance'; 'Blues for James.'

4

When I emerged from the trance induced by Li Ly's cigarettes, I found myself seated on the floor of the shed beside the desk, facing the open loading bay. Di Maestro was standing in the middle of the room, staring with great concentration at nothing at all, like a cat. His right index finger was upraised, as if he were listening to a complicated bit of music. Pirate was seated against the opposite wall, holding another 100 in one hand and a dark brown drink in the other.

'Enjoy the trip?'

'What's in there besides grass?' My mouth was full of glue.

'Opium.'

'Aha,' I said. 'Any left?'

He inhaled and nodded toward the desk. I craned my neck and saw two long cigarettes lying loose between the typewriter and the bottle. I took them from the desk and put them in my shirt pocket.

Pirate made a tsk, tsk sound against his teeth with his tongue.

I squinted into the sunlight on the other side of the bay and saw Picklock lying in the bed of the truck, either asleep or in a daze. He looked like an oversized dog. If you got too close he would bristle and woof. Di Maestro attended to his imperious music. Scoot was ranging back and forth over the body bags, humming to himself as he looked at the tags. Attica was gone. Ratman, at first glance also missing, finally appeared as a pair of boots protruding from beneath the body of the truck. One of the bottles of Jack Daniel's had disappeared, probably with Attica, and the other was three-fourths empty.

I discovered the glass in my hand. All the ice had melted. I drank some of the warm watery liquid, and it cut through the glue in my mouth.

'Who lives outside the camp?' I asked.

'Where you were? That's inside the camp.'

'But who are they?'

'We have won their hearts and minds,' Pirate said.

'Where do the kids come from?'

'Benny's from heaven,' Pirate said, obscurely.

Di Maestro lowered his finger. 'I believe I'd accept another cocktail.'

To my surprise, Pirate got to his feet, walked in my direction across the shed, and put his hand around a glass left on the desk. He poured an inch of whiskey into it and gave the glass to di Maestro. Then he went back to his old place.

'When first I came to this fucking paradise,' di Maestro said, still carefully regarding his invisible point in space, 'there must have been no more than two-three kids out there. Now there's almost ten.' He drank about half of what was in his glass. 'I think all of 'em kinda look like Red Dog Atwater.' This was the name of our CO.

Scoot stopped humming. 'Oh, shit,' he said. 'Oh, sweet Jesus on a pole.'

'Listen to that hillbilly,' di Maestro said.

Scoot was so excited that he was pulling on his ponytail. 'They finally got him. He's here. The goddamn son of a bitch is dead.'

'It's a friend of Scoot's,' Pirate said.

Scoot was kneeling beside one of the body bags, running his hands over it and laughing.

'Close friend,' said Pirate.

'He nearly got in and out before I could pay my respects,' said Scoot. He unzipped the bag in one quick movement and looked up, challenging di Maestro to stop him. That smell that set us apart came from the bag.

Di Maestro leaned over and peered down into the bag.

'So that's him.'

Scoot laughed like a happy baby. 'This makes my fuckin' month. And I almost missed him. I knew he'd get wasted some day, so I kept checkin' the names, but today's the day he comes in.'

'He's got that pricky little nose,' di Maestro said. 'He's got those pricky little eyes.'

Picklock stirred in the truck bed, sat up, rubbed his eyes, and grinned. Like Scoot, Picklock was generally cheered by fresh reminders that he was in Vietnam. The door at the far end of the shed opened, and I turned around to see Attica saunter in. He was wearing sunglasses and a clean shirt, and he brought with him a sharp clean smell of soap.

'Chest wound,' di Maestro said.

'He died slow, at least,' said Scoot.

'That Havens?' Attica's saunter picked up a little speed. He tilted his head and tipped an imaginary hat as he passed me.

'I found Havens,' Scoot said. There was awe in his voice. 'He almost got through.'

'Who checked his tag?' Attica asked, and stopped moving for an instant.

Di Maestro slowly turned toward me. 'On your feet, Underdog.'

I picked myself up. A fragment of that peace that had altered my life had returned.

'Did you check the tags on Captain Havens?'

It was a long time ago, but I could dimly remember checking a captain's tags.

Attica's rich dark laugh sounded like music—like Glenroy Breakstone, in fact. 'The professor didn't know shit