SAINT OR FOOL

 

Wherever we humans go, there seems to be only one business at hand—

that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.

Which Richard Blaine discovers anew as he tries to reason with one of his Spartan 300 and Churchill outside Time itself.

SAINT OR FOOL

“By God’s good design and metaphysical dream of the world I am here. Where is here, by the way?”

 – Richard Blaine

 

The four points of the compass are logic, knowledge, wisdom, and the unknown.

Some bow in that final direction. All of us advance upon it.

To bow before the one is to lose sight of the other three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool.

 I have been both … but only in the eyes of those who did not know me.

I looked up as Cloverfield mocked me. Sentient, for some reason known only to her, touched my eyes or my awareness or my senses.

My vision seemed to cut through the atmosphere, and I saw the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.

My mind, more than my body, yearned for sleep.

Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day.

If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today.

If it happened yesterday, though, you nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time.

I longed for that other island in Time.

Cloverfield interrupted my musings. “Speak of the Devil. Here comes reporter Cronkite down the walk. And he has the Temptress with him.”

I followed his gaze and saw Nurse Reynolds, worry etched on her aquiline features, walking beside the journalist. I smiled drily. The man was dressed as if on a forest picnic, in a plaid shirt and quilted vest.

“That is Sgt. Savalas’ lady, James.”

He snorted good-naturedly. “It sounds so natural when you say it.”

“In the Spartan 300, we have each other’s back.”

Cloverfield grinned, “You sure Reeves knows that?”

I felt my face become stone. “I’ll explain it to him.”

He asked, “Are we ever going to see your lady, the mysterious Helen Mayfair?”

“Hopefully, not.”

His face darkened. “You don’t trust me?”

I smiled ruefully. “Oh, I know your reputation with the opposite sex, James. But it’s not that. The farther she is from me, the safer she will be.”

Churchill studied me. “So, she is a fragile flower, then?”

“Quite the opposite, sir. She carries the daintiest revolver you ever saw tucked under her belt at the small of her back.  If you had a wad of gum in your mouth for every man I have seen her kill with that gun, you would look like a chipmunk smuggling walnuts in its cheeks.”

He laughed, “Up until I started losing weight from this cursed war, I had started to look like that.”

Cloverfield said low, “Weapons can be taken from you.”

I nodded. “Which she found out when she was kidnapped to be sold to a near-by house of prostitution.”

Churchill exclaimed, “By the good lord, such things transpire in New Orleans?”

“All the time, sir.”

“What happened?” frowned Cloverfield.

Making a long story short and much less colorful, I said, “I happened.”

I made a face at the taste of bad memories. “That is when Sister Ameal took her under her razored wing and taught her how to kill with most every part of her body.”

Churchill snorted, “A nun?”

“Before entering the convent, she was the highest paid assassin in Portugal.”

Cloverfield smiled wide. “Sounds like she would fit in quite nicely with our band.”

I shook my head. “She would, but I do not know how well we would fit in with her.”

“Prim and proper now?” asked the Prime Minister.

“No. Deadlier than ever, her sails steered by winds whose source I cannot decipher.”

Cloverfield stiffened and pointed to our left. “Speaking of not being able to decipher ….”

I followed his forefinger. Merde. A disheveled, capless General Omar Bradley stood in the middle of the walkway, looking stunned and holding a telephone receiver to his ear. A receiver from which dangled a severed phone cord.

I drew in a deep breath.

Life is a deadly jester for the court of chaos.

It is also full of barbed surprises. What some misguided fools from the sidelines call “the adventure of life.”

 The thing is, chaos doesn't allow us to enjoy the adventure.

Sometimes it kills us.

“History is full of surprises, and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often quite unimaginable the next.”

– Adolph Hitler