HOW ODD MY
GRAVESTONE

by Gardner Peachpit

as told to Det Etihw

His embochure tightened. Sweat beaded on his forehead, gathering into miniature rivulets, and trickled into his eyebrows and down the sides of his face. Sweat hung in a droplet, as if gathering momentum, at the tip of his nose. He played a triplet and yanked the reed from his mouth, sweeping his sleeved arm upward and tilting his head, swiping at the side of his face with the soiled white shirt. Ugh-ugh-ugh-ugh--ugh! -- and a sudden shattering cascade of dotted-sixteenths spun out of the tarnished bell of the alto. The audience was hushed for a moment, still caught in the daring of his dramatic pause to wipe the sweat from his glistening face. Then the applause swelled up and the laughter of relief -- Ghoddamn! He really did it that time! Shee-it! -- but muffled, almost lost in his concentration and the piercing babble of sounds pouring out of him, out of the metal appendage that was his physical extension. Can ya dig it, Bird?

#

Apprehension curdled in his stomach and his finger went white ahainst the trigger guard. Not yet for him the spasms, the chattering teeth. He fixed his mind upon the immediate, sighting through the telescopic sight the corner around which the Presidential cavalcade must come. Behind him. the thick cord twisted like a snake through the deserted offices. Two hours to find the main circuit and patch it in. Two hours! Mouse-like, his thoughts skittered past the contemplation of the act itself ... toward the consequences.

"You gotta remember," the black-browed man had told him, his breath a fetid stench in the small closed space. "A hit like this is the easiest thing in the world. It's getting away afterwards that ain't so easy."

"Oswald ..."

"Oswald, my ass! A nut! Forget him." The man leaned closer, his breath the smell of death and decay. "The simplest way -- you know what the simplest way is? You load a guy up. You make him into a walking bomb. And you send him up to shake hands. You know what I mean? He just shakes the guy's hand. His fucking hand," he repeated, shaking his head in rapt fascination with his own metaphor. "And -- he's gone. Wiped off the land. Course, so's our guy."

"Not me." Positive. Empty. He'd do as he was told ...

... had done as he'd been told. A sinple hit: the pulse-laser was all set up. No problems with distance, windage. No noise. He had a chance -- just a bare chance.

He ducked his head under his arm and scraped the sweat from his face.

#

He stood there, staring at it, dangling in his hand. He jerked at it, his bladder straining. Oh, Christ! He needed to piss so bad! Why was it he could never get it started here in the subway toilet?

He tried visualizing a running fawcet, water gushing out; tried to summon up the sounds, the familiar sounds of his own bathroom sink, when he turned on the cold water too quick, wash away the tell-tale yellow stains of his impatience. Easy to do there, in the security of his own home, behind two locked doors -- three, if you counted the downstairs door that was always out of order, the buzzer not working and old Fritz the super setting the lock so it wasn't locked because he hated to go out and open it each time someone buzzed -- the police lock secure on the apartment door, and the push-button pushed in on his bathroom door each time he came in even though he was the apartment's only tenant.

He looked down at the tile floor. Smears of dirt, pushed futilely around by a hasty mop. Wet spots: saliva or urine. Cigarette butts, mute witnesses to illegal goings-on. A wad of toilet paper someone had dropped and stepped on.

The toilet was filthy. Crusts of sssscum coated its bowl. The seat was a patchwork of stains. He wouldn't sit on that seat, not once in a million years. Not even covered with toilet paper. The stuff was so flimsy you could see through it; less than useless. But if he didn't sit down, get the weight off his legs, ease the strain out -- if he didn't gain the security of pissing against the silence of the side of the bowl and not loudly into the water -- he wasn't going to get any piss out at all. Already his bladder was painful. He knew he'd never get home on the subway. Not in rush hour, standing up, knees locking, thighs pressed vainly together, not all the way out to Flatlands. A drop of sweat fell from his slumped head into the toilet bowl. He didn't see it.

#

He watched the two girls down at the opposite end of the bar and wondered why his palms had gone sweaty.

-- Ted White

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"We all know evils to some can cause good to others; but to leap from what may be true of the whole, or true of any given action viewed historically, to the theory that the individual can be excused any moral concern about his actions is to fall into the fallacy that what is true of an action must be true of the enactor. A man must finally do good for his own and his society's health; not for good's sake or the action's sake."

-- John Fowles
THE ARISTOS

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Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan

Data entry by Judy Bemis

Updated August 29, 2002. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.