Sam and the sarge were actually starting to develop what could almost be called an interpersonal relationship. They shared a humanizing bedtime scene, during which Spikey opened up and revealed something true and human about himself by means of piquant dialogue.
It was nighttime in the Wamsutter family living room, and the television was taking a much-needed rest. Shanny was upstairs, probably sucking her thumb, bunking alone in the guest room at her Auntie Mae Bell's tacit insistence. She had come down a bit earlier wearing some silly Bambi peejays on her body and a mock-chaste expression on her face, and had said night-night to everybody. Like a child she'd dealt out little kisses all around the living room, a furtive tongue pushed under her English instructor's big harelip. Gidget grows gonads.
Now Sam was alone in the dark on the couch, wadded up double between the doilied—rather antimacassared—armrests, his head between his knees, expected to go to sleep amid all the weird wheat-rustlings and dog-yippings of Kiev. And the cricket noises—Egypt must've sounded like this just before Moses left.
When she was certain that everybody had gone to bed, Shanny sneaked back downstairs and tucked him in all snug among the pastel sheets. (It was the first time since leaving his parents' home that he had slept between such things: they were slick and chilly, and they bristled his thigh-hairs with turquoise bolts of static electricity.) Shanny stalked around and around the couch, poking her little hands between cushions, making sure that no air pocket remained between her man and warmth.
In a wicked little whisper she sang a damp lullaby into his ear: "We're in the money, we're in the money." And, just to see the teepee in the middle of the blankets get taller, she sang it again, this time inserting a naughty word that she rarely used under normal circumstances. She stuttered in her excitement and sprayed a little bit of spit into his ear. "We're in the f-f-fuckin mon-n-ney," she sang, and started to laugh too loud.
They heard a noise in the hall. Shanny ran upstairs giggling while Sam tried to fold his boner in half.
Sgt. Spikey came in. His peejays had no Bambis, but there were handsome sergeant stripes on them. Sam also noticed an arm band made of yellow ribbon, the insignia of a local rightist paramilitary organization that had been currying the Marine's favor since his release from Tehran. Presumably they coveted him as a figurehead. Rally 'round the hostage, boys. And Spikey was so proud to be a mascot that he wore his identifying mark to bed.
Spikey seated himself on a footstool directly in front of the couch in a patch of moonlight from between the curtains. He peered through the gloom at Sam's bedding, all tucked mysteriously tight around the giant body like a flannel and linen straitjacket.
"Can I say sumpun? Off the record?" asked Spikey. He looked shyly down at his tiny feet, which barely reached the rug.
"Of course, Spikey," said Sam, reaching under his pillow and switching on the Sony micro-cassette recorder. He'd stowed the contrivance there precisely for such an eventuality as this.
He knew that if the sarge ever did open up it would be after dark when the womenfolk were in dreamland, and just the two of them could talk, man-to-man. Wasn't that how it always was in those Henry Aldrich movies which Shanny had been watching ceaselessly on daytime TV ever since they'd arrived in Kiev?
While Sam had given up on the book itself, one never knew when a recording of someone saying surpassingly indiscreet things about himself might come in handy.
"Fire away," said Sam in a seductive tone of voice. He tried to bring the Sony up close to the surface of the bedding so the sound of the thin, nasal voice would come through. He was very careful not to allow the little red pilot light to shine through the percale and catch the Marine's eye; another blow to the nose like the last one could be fatal.
What follows is a complete and uncut, gapless transcript of the tape (with a few stage directions tossed in here and there for clarity's sake, plus an occasional surmise as to what may or may not have been going on in Spikey's "mind"):
"I never told nobody this. It's the kind of secret thang that you can only tell to another man, and I never had no brothers, and I never could talk to my dad at all, and, seein as how you're 'bout to become my new bro-in-law, well sir, I figgered—"
(Ear-splitting rustle of Mae Bell's starched sheets against mike drowns out next few words, as Sam eagerly scoots forward, famished for dirt, carrion.)
"—and, god-dammit, I gotta tell you I was scared over there in Eyeran. Not for my life. Hell, I don't mind dyin. But I was scared at what I was turnin into." (Pause.)
(Sam's voice): "Yeah? What were you turning—"
"A god-damn homo. Kinda. I mean not in the sexy way. But, you know, after a few months I started lookin at them sand-niggers, you know? With all my attention I looked at 'em. I tried to second-guess what they'd want so I could fetch it for them before they told me. I was tryin to please them little students. I began to see their point about the Shah and all, and in them all-night 'doctrination sessions I sometimes yelled their bullshit right along with 'em. And I hope to Christ the other hostages don't say nothin 'bout that to the media, cause I was out of my mind, like one of them damn love slaves you see in the dirty leather movies over to Lincoln, you know? They get off on havin that red rubber ball stuffed in their mouth and chains tied around their dick, you know?"
(Another pause, followed by a soft grunt from Sam.)
"I began even admirin them a little bit. The way they strutted up and down the compound with our weapons on their hips. Real slim these Eyeranians are. And, after a couple months, when they came at me with the god-damn cattle prod, I started liftin my bare butt and nuts to meet it, cause I liked the pain! Ain't that like some kind of freak? Like some kind of damn homo?"
"Why're you asking me?"
"It got so's I was gettin into bein a prisoner,just layin back and bein fed. I even stopped exercisin for a while, and shavin too. And brushin my teeth. It got so's I dreaded the thought of bein sent free. I used to squeeze off at night and at the same time imagine myself crawlin on my belly to this one real young Eyeranian kid who I was sorta buddies with. Crawlin on my belly and lickin the sand out from 'tween his toes."
(Short pause while one or the other of the young men has a coughing fit. Spikey continues.)
"You know, a couple days ago I watched our neighbor lady with her two babies. The youngest is her favorite, and the oldest knows it, so the oldest is always lookin up at the mama's face with these big eyes, tryin to figger out what Mama will want next, tryin to please Mama, just a little bitty baby. And all it gets in return is a whack upside the head, cause it's the unfavorite baby. Except it still looks at the mama all the same, with these wide-open eyeballs. Well, that's the way my eyes was all the time in Eyeran. When I seen them videotapes of us last Christmas, I didn't see my face on my head. I seen that little neighbor baby's face. And it scares the damn out of me. It embarrasses me in front of all the contiguous United States of America. I wanna make our book cover that all up. I wanna tell a story in our book, and make it a strong story, you know? Like in them fine old Audie Murphy movies? Will you help me, Dr. Edwine?"
(Noncommittal grunt emanates from underneath blood-soaked Ace bandage over Sam's face, a grunt which Spikey eagerly misinterprets as hearty affirmation of sympathy. The Marine rises up, hand extended. Sam cowers for a second before he realizes the hand is to be shaken.)
(Spikey's voice): "You a hell of a dude after all. Welcome to the family, pilgrim."
(Couch springs squeak vigorously for whole minutes.)
(The sarge retires, his crisp military steps echoing down the hall. Sam rolls over in a warm glow of brotherly camaraderie, a deep glow of human communicativeness, a green glow of hundreds of thousands of impending New York dollars. He counts them, in bundles of fifties, like sheep, and lulls himself to sleep in this way. Tape rolls on.)
He had found himself a home.
Acting Alone is available from The Drill Press.
Tom's latest books are Family Romance, a novel illustrated by Nick Patterson (Jaded Ibis Press), A Pleasure Jaunt With One of the Sex Workers Who Don't Exist in the People's Republic of China (Neopoiesis Press), Bomb Baby (Enigmatic Ink), Vital Fluid (Crossing Chaos), Even the Dog Won't Touch Me (Ahadada Press), Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch (Dog Horn Publishing), My Hands Were Clean (Unlikely Books) and Put It Down in a Book (The Drill Press), which was named 3:AM Magazine's Non-Fiction Book of the Year. His newest novel, with secret name and hidden nature, illustrated by David Aronson, is coming soon from the occult publisher Mandrake of Oxford.
Further curiosity can be indulged at TomBradley.org, and check out Tom's pages at Unlikely Books and Smashwords.
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