Waste Land to a Scream: A Gay Science

Novel 011

11. “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.” Nietzsche

Trieste, June 24, 1915 Night time.

The tire banged on the dirty dirt road with a thump that said that it had wheezed out its last breath. It was the whaling of the last huzah. His boot kicked open the door with a solemn hulahing as if a hallelujah was to follow. You could not see anything real only the hallucination that might be a sign of the callow door pimp but he was not sure of that. He was dressed in some kind of uniform though not a military one that all of the finery or as they went off to die. There was an on his head that said he had some modicum of authority but only just. His green shirt and green pants said he was not even a medic but simply a driver from hither to yon and back again. The only thing that one could see was that he had a fuzz that was just beginning to fill out as a beard.

That is to say, he was young, even on the young side of being young. The only accouterment he had was a field medic kit on his belt, which allowed him to administer some kind of medical care. However, one didn’t know if he actually had any training in it.

He pushed his boot out and was about to exit it when he noticed that the next step that he took was 20 meters into the void. The truest form of truth - straight down. It needed bodies. He would supply some on take two. Just after the pit of his stomach stopped growling.

Then it finally registered on his nogging that down really meant down. The crack of the lightning broke free and went down to some branches that were long too long down. And ended with a crash. Babump-Crash.

That would have been the end of that, he slowly realized. While he was bright it was not his brain which got him the job on the ambulance truck. In fact, it really wasn’t even his job. He had reported one fine sunny day to the camp where the somewhat living waited to be shipped off to be dying. He did not see very many Officers and they were extremely busy. But then he noticed that the women were basically in charge of shoveling bodies from living to dead and occasionally rescinding their decision and then packing them up to horses and occasionally the automobile buggies when it became important for the person to have a chance of living or dying.

He kind of made a kind of dopey grin and then one senior nurse looked at him. She was going to look away but then she realized that a younger nurse was also looking at him in a way that she knew what her intentions were to him. One and one still makes three. And she could hear the motor running in two cylinders. It had a kind of wheeze to it which the head nurse recalled all too well.

And so he was given the keys to a truck and some maps to show the end of the line. He was told, repeatedly, to run up to be base and carry down all of the men that he could trundle, then load them out and do this all over again for about 16 hours a day. He saluted the nurse and then got into the truck and realized that there were holes in the grate. And occasionally holes were kept inside the floor. He wanted to ask for some different job but then he saw the young nurse twinkle at him and he knew that if he wanted to be with her he had to do whatever she wanted.

However, what he actually had to perform was still a mystery. He would have to improvise, and he had reasons for this.

So there he was keeping over the whole of the truck with splattering of blood dripping down from the back wondering what to do next because there was no manual for this.

He realized that he was in a fix because his butt was hanging in midair and slowly sliding down towards the gulf down below. The sweat oozed from his face and torso and at that moment he realized that his life was in danger. Was a cleanly cooly decision as if he were looking at it from some random objective decision. Almost as if the cerebral mind could analyze just what chances he had for living for another few seconds. The bowels churned in an almost clinical way. It was as if he were detached from the Modus operandis.

So slowly he inched his way up the driver's side and crawled up until he could be said to be sitting in some lackadaisical way. and slowly he managed to approximately sit. but he was still easily over the edge of the cliff and there seemed to be no way to extricate himself. but then from above came the next driver and he was a bit more circumspect in his driving. the other driver slowed down to a stop gradually halted his truck trundled out and saw his predicament.

"Do you need some help here?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Came the swearing.

"Alright, alright. I'll have you out in a minute. You just need to know that there are a few twists that will kill you if you are not paying attention. What's your name?"

This confused the driver but he whelped back "Gene." He was trying that on to see whether it fit because everybody in his adolescent world called him "Eugene." Was it truer than true?

And with that, the other driver did the things that righted the range.

An hour later Eugene was fast asleep in the dark, wondering whether he was alive or dead, on a cot, with a younger nurse, wondering if this was all that there was in the sun also rose.