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113 27 Jimmy got phil o soph i cal, which made me worry about de men tia. An El Greco–look ing saint mut ter ing mys ti cisms. He talked about In dians—Chief Jo seph and Crazy Horse and Sit ting Bull—while we waited in clin ics with water bot tles and lit tle Play mates to keep food and med i cine cool. “Crazy Horse said two things it’s hard to for get. Hoka hey—it’s a good day to die—and when they tried to photo graph him: ‘Why would I let you take from me my shadow?’” “Do you think he said Hoka hey the day he died, Jimmy?” He looked at me. “They shot him in the back, Shame. He used to say Hoka hey when he went into bat tle, but yeah, I guess he prob ably said it every day when he woke up. You gotta under stand Zen to under stand Crazy Horse, I think. Hoka hey is like a koan.” “One can not under stand Zen,” I re sponded in my best Jap a nese Bud dhist monk mimic. He popped me lightly on the head. He’s not de mented, I thought, re lieved. His wan smile. I didn’t just lose Jimmy. He was torn from me, slowly, like how they took the land from the In dians. Some times I’d have much rather he’d gone off and died in Viet nam like my father. There’s a mercy in sud den death. But the slow re duc tion of life, like star va tion—he grew too thin to even have a shadow to take. 114 I re mem ber a sick man at one clinic, his lover like a Bir ke nau sur vi vor, shriv eled to a skele ton. “When they prove the govern ment created this dis ease, we’ll have our Is rael,” he’d said de fi antly. He was angry, and my throat caught to hear his de fi ance framed in the idea of a place of res pite; a sanc tu ary. It was the kind of anger that made me want to cry. I didn’t dare. Be cause I felt guilty. That I’d been spared. But I felt even guilt ier that I found the dying beau ti ful. And I don’t mean in some poetic way. I thought they were hot is what I mean. I tried to shake it out of my head. These tiny, shriv eled gray men, with big eyes (is it as sim ple as that? Hello Kitty?). They all looked like boys at the end. And all of them seem ingly aban doned—if not by fam ily, then by na tion, by his tory, by the fact that all their friends had al ready died. I don’t know, but I fell in love or lust a thou sand times in those clin ics. And Jimmy, I got hot ter for him as he with ered, and I couldn’t tell if it was love for his sweet, plump heart, or for the ap pear ance of those ribs that sur rounded it. I felt bad for being at tracted to him then. “I’m sorry.” “Why are you sorry? It makes me happy. We’re lucky.” Sweet Jimmy, who could no longer do a thing but lean against me as I’d spill all over him. “You’ll never not be hot to me, Jimmy. Never. You’re beau ti ful and the best luck ever.” His sigh ing smile. One fairer than my love? Nah, not gonna hap pen. Ever. ...
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