To Be Holding the Eye

To the reader: A federal coroner was in town for the weekend recently. She was caught short with a steep bar tab. The editors were only too happy to help out, and received this manuscript as a token of gratitude.

In terror I... beheld the living machines
of my mates standing before me.

In 1954 there was an atomic test that was part of Castle Project. It was a 13.5 megaton device called Yankee Shot, and was discharged somewhere in the Pacific Proving Ground. That it happened, of course, is of some importance, but for the sake of my story it is but one brief shining silent instant.

I was a Radio Engineer for the Navy. We were to witness the blast topside, standing at attention, with a hand covering our eyes, in some grim salute. At the time of the blast, for a frightful moment I could see not only the bones in my hands, but the network of nerves and blood coursing through it. In terror I dropped it from my face, and beheld the living machines of my mates standing before me.

I was dispatched to one of the decommissioned vessels that had remained afloat, to test the electronic equipment. This test was intended to be done on merely a pass-or-fail basis, the idea was to get in and then get out fast before things got too hot.

My preliminary testing showed that most of the gear's internal resistance had dropped to zero. This, of course, was impossible, but even my meters were cased in lead, so I trusted the reading.

I decided to extend my stay to pursue this theory, as I was bucking for a commission and transfer. In the middle of my testing, I heard a squad hit the deck hard, and quickly descend the stairs.

"Jumpin' Jay-hoo Mister! Ain't your brain getting too hot down here?" It was Commodore Bracken, an egghead, and some MPs.

"Sir, no sir. I was running some tests on the suspected zero internal resistance of the radio equipment, sir."

"Well sir, you can suspect your ass is going to experience some zero internal resistance with my boot if it doesn't get topside stat."

"No, let him speak." The egghead hissed like a goose in his white protective gear. He was the only one of us decked out for the holiday. As Bracken glared at him, the ever helpful MPs roughed me up the steps.

Anyway, after getting out of a failed career in the Navy, I wound up repairing appliances for some slave-driving company in Poughkeepsie. I had some innate knowledge in the field of fixing washing machines, refrigerators, and dishwashers. I'd just look them over, make some polite chit-chat, and be outdoors, fending off the appreciative thanks of bored homemakers.

Some portion of the good sense of duty that I had managed to glean from the Navy kept me pretty square until about the summer of '66.

I was at some place on Lawndale, which was inhabited by the wife of some pawn-broker, by the look of all the gold dripping off her. She answered the door draped the doily from the end-table, and was smoking a 120mm cigarette whose last half was stained red with lipstick.

I was hungry and grumpy in the humid afternoon, with donuts and coffee straining in my abdominal cavity. I was going to play this one.

"Howdy, ma'm."

Disinterest.

"Mighty hot today."

Apathy.

"What's the problem?" Entering the kitchen, I saw it was the fridge and only a fuse at that.

"Fridge." She said, squinting through cobalt eye-shadow. "Want a drink?" She was a bit puckered.

"That would be mighty kind of you." I palmed a 600 amp cartridge in one hand. Pulling out the appliance out a few inches, I popped the dead fuse out, and slipped in the new one. It hummed alive.

"Yay..." she intoned flatly, handing me a Bloody Mary. "My husband...," she said the word with disdain, "...will be very happy. Cheapprick!"

She trotted back to the counter, boozy on high heels, and put her big ass up on top of it. She fished out another cigarette while giving me a kind of "get to work" look.

"Will your husband be home soon to thank me?" My professional pride was hurt. I stood and began unzipping my coveralls, which were older than me, and stank of sewage.

She stuck most of the butt down her throat and sucked hard. The pigments in her heavily painted face irradiated, glowing under the sudden flush of blood in her heat.

"He told me to thank you myself."

Eventually I built enough of a clientele to open my own business. "The Yankee Repairman, 'Let's have a shot at that project in your castle.'" It was a risky thing to do in those days, in more ways then one.

Basic probability and audacity were netting me too

much silver, too fast. I was getting good... Too good.

A city alderman caught me plumbing his wife, and filed for both a divorce against her, and a complaint against me in regards to the validity of my contractor's license.

I split to Las Vegas. My intuition was growing. At games of pure chance; the horses, dogs, roulette, and craps, I wasn't so good at. But blackjack and poker, those were my games.

I could almost see the cards the dealers drew from the shoe. I knew when to call, bluff and fold. Basic probability and audacity were netting me too much silver, too fast.

I was getting good, the cards might as well have been dealt face up. Too good.

I was at "The Nugget," a little cocked to give the house an advantage. Two big guys in silk suits, one hulk in purple, and a smaller one in mustard, caught me in the bathroom while I was leaning up against the wall pissing into the urinal.

They waited until I had finished and zipped up (it took awhile) before slamming my head into the wall and shoving me into a stall. The purple hulk held me in a headlock, while Mr. Mustard smoked a Chesterfield King too close to my nose. The ember burned too bright, scarring my retinas, while a mushroomic cloud rose up.

"I don't know what kind of grift you're working, or what your deal is, but you've been hitting too hard, Highroller." Mustard softened the sinews in his turkey neck. "Its time you took a break."

He left and the hulk released me, dug into his tight jacket, and pulling out three one hundred dollar chips, threw them at my prostrate, bowl-hugging form.

"Rent a car and drive it to the desert, so we don't have to give you the ride." He then scuffed his fine Italian wingtips with a kick in my ribs.

I hit Atlantic City, but some arms have a real long reach. Soon I was at the bus-stop nursing a black-eye and swollen nose.

I was squatting on the curb when a Lincoln pulled up. Three guys got out, they looked cocky, walked cocky and dressed cocky. I could only guess what they wanted with this old man. I could tell all of them packed.

The most psychotic, therefore the leader, crouched down next to me.

"Hey Mister, Heard you can fix things even if the ain't broke." He stuck out his hand. I hesitated to take it.

"Junior this guy ain't worth it," the smaller guy whined.

"Wicked," Johnny called coolly, and smiled slightly as the bigger goon dealt a practiced backhand upside the whiner's face, who took it just as practiced. Must have been a regular occurrence
.
"Dummy," Johnny continued, "I told you never to call me Junior on business. So dummy up, Dummy."

I ended up taking a ride with Johnny the Junior, Wicked Tony and Dumb Jerry. They wanted to do a few afterhour pharmacy jobs, and needed someone who knew about alarms and safes.

I told them I didn't know were to look for such a person. Junior rode up front next to the hyperactive Jerry who managed to break every moving violation on Jersey's books. Junior whipped out a nickle-plated automatic, and stuck it in my face sideways. I knew this bit of drama. I was supposed to just see my reflection in the plating along the barrel, but all I could concentrate on were the three rounds, and one in the chamber. These guys were psycho small-timers.

We hit pharmacies fifteen minutes after the bars closed. While the cops where busy with drunk drivers and fighting rowdies, we cleaned out the drugs and got away in separate cabs, which crawled the streets like pervos at a cheerleaders' tourney.

I would pick the backdoor's lock, disable the alarm, and open the narcotics lockers in less time then it took most people to check their mailbox. The loot was mostly small specialty stuff and was stuffed into the pockets of specially tailored suits, thanks to dumb Jerry's father who, it turned out, wasn't as dumb as his son.

Johnny the Junior wasn't too swift either. He got busted shooting a fifteen year-old girl full of Laudanum at the Milner Hotel. More drugs were found in the hidden pockets of a suit, with a tag from Dumb Jerry's father's tailor shop.

Everyone went down quick, as they didn't have the sense to keep of the streets. I was more reclusive now, staying in basement apartments, because the mechanics, the plumbing and duct work of a building were preferable to fifty to seventy-five ally-side neighbors that I got to know a little too intimately.

I never cared for traveling on a bus, so I took a hackney cab to New York City. I could no longer drive. Cost me a grand, and I threw the guy five yards on the mum.

In a New York tailor shop I dropped Dumb Jerry's dad's name. I walked into the shop and asked, "Can you clean this jacket?," while pointing at the label. They hooked me up on the ninth floor of some huge apartment building. My pad overlooks an alley, and has no view to the normal eye, but to me it is too much.

After a week of being holed up I couldn't take it anymore.
Holed up in the brightest darkness I could stand...

People who are under the mania of having ther thoughts read, should consider the feelings of their friendly, neighborhood mind-reader. So it is with me. Having to view the daily, continuous, pathetic soap operas of those around me, paralyzes me.

The chick upstairs from me does sailors in a train, at a group discount. Cars fart and wheeze in percolating combustion. People talking, spit pins into the faces of one another's faces. The sun's rays are a rapidly descending escalator that slams into the asphalt, causing the effervescence of trash and piss to rise heavenward.

After a week of being holed up I couldn't take it anymore. Holed up in the brightest darkness I could stand, I wrenched my eyes from their sockets, and held them in my hands. Reflexively, I attempted to look at them, with twitching optic nerves. I saw, no, perceived them in my hands. Two egg shells of tough skin, and deep inside the jelly were two yolk-like tumors.

My eyes went dead along time ago, and to replace my vision, my perception had mutated in accordance. Furthermore, it had developed zero internal resistance.

These words, it is so hard to to catch an atom of pulp and tattoo it in the snail trails of smoky pigment, like some manic pontilist. Blind to walks in the park and dappled sunlight, yet the immaculate beauty of diffusion of scent perfume from an animate vivisected corpse, coursing corpuscular. Bilious, rolling clouds of carbon, from an arc-light ember, while the voice cracks the larynx like lightening flashes, horribly brilliant in brilliant horror.

The leaden round looks so much soft against the rigid steel chamber and barrel that will paint my palette red. These are not things that any man should see, they are what he should not perceive.