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Faggot - 1965
- West Virginia University Press
- Chapter
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134 1965 Faggot There is the black silence of midnight in a stinking flophouse. I don’t know how long there has been silence. It bothers me. Where are the snoring sounds of the others? I lie there in the bunk, trying not to breathe the stink that slides through the air like oil, but too full of hurt to get up. I am motionless, almost asleep, trying to let my body purge itself. Confused images float in my mind, twisted fragments of rainstorms and slick city streets, of cars and fire and doorways. I hear the Indian twitch on his bunk next to me and I roll slightly to the side, trying to see him. My shirt is gone and as I roll I can feel my naked skin sticking to the damp, grimy mattress. Wendell Klah lies flat on his back. Just from the look of him I know his mind is not here, in this room. It is probably back in New Mexico, lost in his being, floating on the winds and soft lights of the mesa. He is not here, not in this room with its stink and its dirty bodies. Wendell does not hear the soft, fat, shuffling bare feet as they come to the side of his bunk, does not really feel the eyes on him, does not The Pale Light of Sunset 135 smell the stink that grows more acrid as it flows down from the huge body and across Wendell’s face. But I hear the feet and I smell the stink and I gape at the size of the hulk that looms over Wendell’s bunk. It’s just that my muddled mind will not accept what I see. Wendell does not see him, the hulk, but I know he feels the hand. He feels it when it clamps his throat, feels it as it expertly cuts off his breathing, feels the fingers tighten around his neck. And then an arm, an arm the size of a leg, rams under Wendell’s back and he is lifted as easily as a doll. And I think Wendell Klah is going to die. I raise myself on my elbow, trying not to attract anyone’s attention. I can see Wendell more clearly now, but I cannot see him breathing. His back rises slightly from the mattress, lifted, bowing upward, leaving his feet and the back of his head on the bunk. It is as if his middle body had decided to rise, to leave, without taking the other parts with it. In the gloom beside Wendell, a mountain of flesh moves slightly, a log-like arm under Wendell’s back, lifting. I can see a hand the size of a prime ham sticking out from beneath Wendell. The mountain of flesh, the hulk, is a giant, a towering mass of blubber. The giant leans over the Indian, gripping him, turning him like a sack of laundry, one huge leg lifted to the edge of Wendell’s bunk. Except for a filthy, sagging sweatshirt, the arms cut off at the shoulders, the giant is naked and his trunk-like leg toys with the edge of the bunk, tilting it. Behind the giant, outlined against the light, a tall, thin man stands, shifting back and forth on pole-like legs, dancing from foot to foot, elbows flapping, his hands held up in front of him like a fighter, fingers curled, except, oddly, his palms turned forward. A stickman. I wonder why Wendell isn’t doing anything. Why is he just lying there? What the hell is this? Wendell’s an Indian—maybe this is one of his angry gods? Okay, god, whichever one you are, we won’t ever drink that [18.206.76.45] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:48 GMT) Lee Maynard 136 much again. I promise. But, god or no god, I’m not making any promises about fucking. Wendell brings his hands up to his throat, trying to pull the huge hand away. Both Wendell’s hands did not really fit around the hand that is there, choking him, a hand that seems to fit around Wendell’s neck like my hand would fit around a broomstick. Wendell tries to pry the fingers away, but can’t. I know that if he panics, jerks, thrashes around on the bunk, his neck will break like the stem of a wine glass. I can hear him making tiny strangling sounds. My mind...