The Fourth Angel

by John Rechy

  Now Manny, Cob stand before Jerry, all giggling recklessly like children sharing a joke only they understand.

  ‘Tell me!’ Shell insists.

  ‘No, man,’ Jerry laughs. Shell's gentle face holds. ‘It's beautiful,’ he tells her.

  ‘We're all beautiful!’ Manny reminds them.

  ‘And now what is it doing?’ Shell continues. ‘Is it changing?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Jerry says in amazement. ‘It's … like it's peeling off and changing colors! And your eyelashes are fluttering like butterflies!’

  ‘What's mine doing?’ Manny asks delightedly.

  Jerry studies Manny's face. Just the subtlest shaded distortion, as if a light is moving back and forth on him. ‘Yours isn't doing too much,’ Jerry confesses.

  ‘That's because there's only one Manny, and many of us!’ Cob laughs.

  Manny makes extravagant monster faces, twisting his mouth, pulling his eyes. ‘Now?’

  Jerry roars with laughter. But suddenly, a moment that occurred without transition, he and Cob are looking steadily into each other's faces. Jerry sees again the anxious lost child.

  Whether because he senses what Jerry is seeing in him or because of what he sees in Jerry's own tumbling face, Cob covers his face quickly with his hands.

  ‘Look at me, look at me!’ Manny shatters those strange moments. He's fashioned a ridiculous pointed cap, like a wizard's, from colored paper; and he's hopping about the room.

  Shell shrieks with delight.

  ‘Awoooooooooooooooo!’

  ‘What's that?’ Jerry asks apprehensively. A coiled spiral of sound without definite source surrounded him.

  That was just Manny howling.’

  That

  just

  was

  Manny

  howling.’

  Shell's voice tumbles into many throughout the room, like colored play blocks.

  Suddenly Jerry is standing before a mirror staring at his own face. He focuses on his eyes. The boundaries of the mirror flee; his face, his eyes expand; they fill the world. He plunges past them. His body melts into pure being, lunging, he knows, into the universe, rushing toward the revelation of life's most beautiful, terrible secret … He turns away quickly, not yet ready to receive it.

  He's facing the others: ‘Is my face changing too?’ he asks them earnestly.

  Shell studies him seriously, her laughter stops abruptly. ‘You look … like a sad angel,’ she sighs.

  ‘The fourth angel!’ Manny reminds them gleefully.

  ‘Yeah, man,’ Cob says earnestly to Jerry, ‘why are you so sad, man?’

  ‘I'm not sad!’ Jerry laughs at their momentary seriousness. ‘Look! I'm laughing, man! Listen!’ He roars with laughter. Yet when did it stop? Or did it? Is he still laughing? Then why is he aware of moisture in his eyes, on his cheeks? Tears? As if they merely formed on his face. Tears!

  Cob turns swiftly away from him.

  Then pulled from reality, the voice of Shell comes harsh, uncompromising, angered. ‘Don't fucking cry!’

  ‘I'm not crying, I'm laughing,’ Jerry insists.

  ‘Sure, the dude's like just laughing,’ Manny says.

  ‘Yeah—he's laughing so hard he's crying!’ Shell welcomes happily.

  Suddenly the mirth returns.

  But Jerry turns silently from them. He moves, swims through the shifting sea of colors and sounds. Into Shell's room again. He's standing before one of the prints he ignored earlier. A shimmering Shangri-la. A golden palace surrounded by flower-lit trees, birds with rainbow plumages. A burst of sun. A streaming river. The water moves, the birds soar, and the sun…

  The sun shatters in yellow blood on the river.

  Yellow blood. Blood. And then like a physical object, the memory of his mother as she lay dying surfaces totally. Mother, his heart receives the memory. But the shining Shangri-la of the drawing—rendered powerfully magical by the drug—forces him, gradually, gently, to look beyond the pain. The yellow sun, the blue river. The river will carry the yellow blood to its primal origin, he thinks easily. Away from the thought of death, the drug has not only pulled him into the paradaisical whirlpool of the mythical kingdom of colors but it has expelled death.

  Then, scenes—reality—shift, change without transition in abrupt flashes.

  Flash! He's standing before Shell. ‘I don't want it to end,’ he hears himself say.

  ‘It won't—for a while,’ Shell assures him.

  ‘I never want it to end!’ Jerry repeats, fleeing—suddenly—crushed memories which now, in the magic-touched world of the drug, exist like ghosts.

  ‘It's got to end,’ Shell says slowly.

  ‘No!’ Jerry protests.

  In the kitchen Shell peels an orange, she puts a section of it in each of their mouths. The taste of its beauty, its magnificent sweetness, enters Jerry's body sensually.

  In the living-room, howling with laughter, Cob, Manny, Shell lie on the rugged floor, a three-pointed star. Jerry stares down at them. Suddenly he feels a sharp terror.

  ‘Don't die,’ his voice says urgently.

  ‘Nobody's dying!’ Shell says happily. She pulls at Manny and Cob. They whirl around in the formless dance of children.

  Jerry wants to join them, but he can't. Why? His perceptions zoom backwards, inward, like a searchlight exploring him. He sees himself, alone, outside their circle, which he wants to join, but dare not.

  They're outside. They're standing on the small balcony facing a vista of mountains and desert. Silently they stare at its iridescent splendor.

  Jerry can see a single grain of sand separating from the others in that sea of sand; it gleams with its own identity. And, a sheet of paper in the wind—he sees its every twist, its every light movement in the breeze. A waltz of magnificent beauty. The outrageous, unbelievable splendor of this drugged world. Always there? Unseen till now? Hidden until the magic acid lifted away a heavy curtain of reality? Reality. This? Or the other? Can there be death in this world of vibrant colors and living beauty? And horror? And cruelty—can it exist here? The remembered savagery of yesterday with Stuart, the others trapped in the ugly dark house by them, stabs at his mind, but those memories are devoured by the shattering visual beauty surrounding him.

  Took, look!’ Cob points to a bird.

  They watch in awe. It soars magnificently within a visible breeze, which is blue like a satin ribbon.

  They're standing in the desert, the balcony behind them.

  Manny runs into the sand, throws himself on it, rolling in the myriad diamond grains like a freed young animal. The others join him, bathing deliriously in the sand.

  Jerry looks intently at the sky. He's alone. The others are back in the house. How long has he been staring fascinated at the mysterious sheet of azure? A moment? A minute? An hour? The sky opens in blue shifting panels, like ice thawing gracefully on a blue lake.

  Slowly he returns into the house.

  He's standing in Shell's bedroom again, before the printed cards tacked to a door: Colored line drawings, delicate, fine—of trees, flowers; mystical Indian aphorisms.

  He reads aloud from one. ‘Even the severed branch grows again…’

  The infinite secret of life's cycle! The liberating discovery! A branch, merely separated, but carrying a part of the whole that produced it—one life flowing into another, erasing death! He hears his voice full of joy—as if all pain—an enemy—has withdrawn:

  ‘I'm going to grow again!’

  10

  Suddenly for Jerry the magic retreats like a wave from the seashore, and he's marooned again in reality, sorrow, death. Even the severed branch grows again! He grasps desperately for the words still floating on his mind, pulling them determinedly from the drugged illumination, as if to retain them like an anchor out of the magic; and the sea of the drugged world rescues him powerfully once more, the magic returns in an inundating wave; it carries him back to the living-room, where:

  The four stand in a rectangle lo
oking at each other for minutes; and each feels as if the others’ world contains him, as if his contains the others. And then they turn away, quickly ending the crushing closeness.

  ‘Let's go to the river!’ Cob says.

  ‘Shit, man, who can drive?’ Manny reminds. ‘We're too ripped!’

  ‘I can drive!’ ‘I can drive!’

  ‘I can drive!’

  But they know they can't.

  ‘We'll hitchhike,’ Shell offers.

  ‘Outasite,’ Manny agrees.

  No further deliberation needed, they walk out of the house, like silent pilgrims.

  Outside, a magnificent breeze. Jerry smiles, raising his hand to capture it.

  Then the others raise their hands gently, to capture their own share of the breeze.

  ‘I caught it!’ Manny announces in surprise.

  ‘I caught it too,’ Cob says, holding up his hand as if to exhibit the captured breeze.

  ‘And I've got it too! ‘ Shell exults.

  ‘Me too!’ Jerry says. He feels the breeze stirring restlessly in his hand. And then after moments of silence he says, ‘Let's let it go—it's got to be free if it's a breeze.’

  Slowly all four open their hands, releasing the captured breeze, which seems to glide to its flowing origin.

  That moment, it wafted them with a touch of sorrow. Four figures on the street, outlined so small against the desert mountains, they stare into the vast sky after the lost, freed breeze.

  The sky. A breathing presence. Jerry whispers to it the reverberating conjugation, I love, you love, we love.

  Manny stands in the middle of the street, his hands stretched as far as they'll reach over his head, as if to grasp the sky. ‘I want the sky to see me!’ he announces joyfully.

  ‘Me too!’ ‘Me too!’ ‘Me too!’

  They all stand in the middle of the street, their bodies stretching toward the sky.

  Now they're walking toward the highway, down the hill. The street curls, shortens before them, now it stretches, lengthens. For blocks they walk along a beautiful, warmly frozen eternity.

  Then they stumble on a jagged, patched shadow. They peer at it with profound interest. Separated curiously from its origin—and they do not search for it—the shadow spills sinisterly.

  ‘Is it pretty or ugly ?’ Jerry asks.

  ‘Ugly,’ Cob decides.

  They abandon it quickly.

  ‘I'm hungry,’ Manny says, spotting a supermarket nearby. Within the drug's overwhelming clarity, the store looks improvised, fashioned out of flimsy colored blocks.

  Without pondering the decision, they walk into the supermarket, exploring the aisles. The store tilts, heavy with cardboard colors. Before the dairy products, Jerry reaches easily for a container of sour cream. Opening it, he scoops it out with his hand, eating it happily, now offering it eagerly to the others, who scoop the cream with their fingers. Cob goes to the meat counter, opens a package of cold cuts, generously passes pieces to them, and they eat happily, responding naturally and without inhibition to the need of their hunger.

  Now Manny is holding a can of whipped cream. He's explaining: ‘The first hit is like laughing gas, man—but it's got to be the right brand of whipped cream. Then you hold this end to your nose, press the little dude, and hit; it gives you an outasite rush.’ He inhales the gas, begins to laugh. ‘Pow!’ he indicates it hit his head. Now he holds the can to Jerry, who imitates the motions. But only whipped cream gushes out, coating his nose like cotton candy.

  A woman in grotesque curls stares at them aghast. Enraged, despising their innocent freedom of these moments, she holds her shopping cart like a weapon ready to run them down.

  ‘Want some?’ Jerry earnestly offers her the sour cream.

  The woman turns fiercely from them, driving the cart like a tank. But in those moments, Jerry saw her mean face crumbling before him, folding over into a hideous, tortured rubber mask, melting. The curlers transformed into rolled horns pasted on her head, her pores opening ferociously, she had become a violent, irrational—yet strangely frightened—animal.

  As they walk unperturbed out of the store, Manny says, Thank you,’ to one of the checkers.

  Casually holding out their thumbs for a ride, they walk along the highway.

  A ride. A youngman. ‘Where are you going?’

  To the river,’ Shell answers.

  To the river. Jerry feels himself flowing. The river. The revelation of the stunning secret! The river in the paradaisical drawing in Shell's bedroom—he remembers it. Blood on the river: blood, river, sea. Ocean…

  They get into the car.

  Jerry catches an image of his own face trapped in the rear-view mirror. A violent stranger suddenly! His eyes look sinister to him. They must have looked like that to Stuart out of the darkness. Turn away! To: a cactus by the road, it grasps his attention totally even as the car speeds by it. The plant stands erectly young, sighs, folds over, old, crumbles. Dies. Dies … His mother had resisted death, and he had sought to pull her away from it by clinging to her hand and pushing his breath into her. The severed branch! he grasps. But his mind pulls. At the point of inevitable surrender to the tide carrying her away—where?!—what did she think? Again he grabs the anchor from the magic world. Even the severed branch grows again! And blood and the river flow…

  ‘I'm going in the opposite direction,’ the driver of the car is saying, and they're getting out.

  The opposite direction. Jerry frowns, feeling a great heaviness. No! I want to flow with the river, he thinks.

  Again casual thumbs. Another ride. A jovial middle-aged man. He sighs wistfully as if to himself: ‘I wish I was as free as you.’

  ‘Sometimes we're not free,’ Jerry hears his pensive words, and he remembers last night—a blackness, that's all.

  ‘We're always free,’ Cob asserts.

  ‘Free!’ Manny's arms attempt to imitate a bird's wings.

  ‘As free …’ Shell says slowly, ‘… as free as the breeze we captured.’

  At the crossroads, the man lets them off.

  ‘What are you doing, Jerry?’ Shell is roaring with laughter.

  ‘Hugging this tree!’ Jerry answers, his arms embrace an enormous, green-leafed tree.

  ‘Let me! Let me!’ Cob hugs the tree tightly too. Jerry's, Cob's hands link in a circle about the tree.

  ‘Me, too!’ Manny joins them eagerly—and then Shell.

  All four hug the tree tightly. Then slowly they drift away from the tree and each other.

  A van picks them up immediately.

  Now, the river. The Rio Grande. The four get out of the van.

  The river!

  Jerry stands looking at it. It courses like a wild young animal—dark, vibrant water flows freely. Jerry holds his breath in wonder.

  Along the levee, bands of stray young people, barefoot, long-haired, semi-nude, camp in tribal clusters. Some wear beads like pretty badges on brown exposed bodies. Headbands contain flowing hair. The new Indians. Several hundred young color-splashed, sun-loved exiles fleeing the gray straight world. Some naked youngmen and girls swim unselfconsciously in the river. Wine bottles passing communally from mouth to mouth gleam purple, green, like precious jewels capturing the sun's rays. The pervasive odor of smoked grass wafts the country air delicately. The mellow sound of guitars holds its own against the rock sounds from radios, tapes in cars—some cars new and expensive, some studiedly old, decorated with flowers and splashed colors, all parked at odd angles as if abandoned within the happy carnival atmosphere of the levee. Pastel laughter joins soaring frisbees like colored moons slicing the air. A lingering beauty exists on the banks of the river.

  But Jerry's eyes will not yet budge from the mysterious alive water.

  Manny is taking crazy giant steps along the bank, studying the imprint of each foot. Each time he places his foot down, he creates a fascinating hollow, quickly filled, the sand trembling into complex, strange shapes. Stilled motion! He turns to the others, smiles,
certain they, too, sharing the drug, share the mysterious worlds his footprints are uncovering.

  Now—is it possible in the clear afternoon?—did time merely hop from here to there?—a vagrant cloud has crossed the sky, shedding tiny drops of rain. The sun still shines around it. For seconds it rains sun and water. The four feel the rain as they never felt it before and they rub it into their bodies. Then the shower ended, merely enough moisture to set the ground steaming in sighs, barely visible ghosts.

  Long hair flowing like a dark Messiah's, Cob swaggers alongside the river. His smiling face tilts, welcoming the moist heat.

  Jerry wrests his look from the river.

  And the four idle along the levee, stopping occasionally to gaze at a vagrant river flower sputtering like a dyed flame, or at long, long blades of wild grass which reach their knees along lush patches adjoining the water. The four study each object raptly, sharing its shape, its scent, its color.

  Here and there, familiar faces call out to them, they pause, nod, smile, move on to another cluster of often-stoned smiles. Somebody lights a number, passes it to them, but, now, they reject it. It may bring them down from the acid peak.

  The trees. On the opposite side, on the bank across the river, they grow thickly, a tangle of green like a misplaced forest lost in the miles of desert beyond. Delicate lace fans of leaves whisper, seem to move close to Jerry from across the fantastic river. But his eyes compulsively shift slightly away to a strait scorched by a recent fire. And the trees there are smoke-blackened and desolate. Suddenly to Jerry they're the props of a sinister, forbidden country. Death could crouch there in ambush, fleeing the drug's powerful expulsive magic. Quickly he seeks out the river. And the anxiety withers. The river! It stretches to infinity. Infinity, a gentle, flowing river.

  A red frisbee sighs weightlessly over them. They all look in unison, holding their breaths at the beauty of its slow weight-less motion. They nod silently: Yes!

  Then again: flashes!

  A stark, incongruous woman, much older than the others here, is marching from a car defiantly like a hostile general invading peaceful territory. In giant strides, she leads a dog by a leash. She wears goggled glasses; flaming auburn hair is piled on her head like a barbarous trophy … All four turn quickly away from her.