Felicia's Prince of the Morning Star

In these days Vidol worshipped images, “Jesus at Gethsemane” hung against the south wall, the “Black Stallion” she touched as she headed towards the game room, and “Wisdom” graced the living room entrance, the old man’s white beard and soft words flowing past her tears. She had elements of Angelo’s life around her, and knew by heart the white expanse that surrounded his eyes, the dimpled shoulders that touched her thighs as she scratched his scalp. He had once come in silence from the depths of her womb, closer to death than life, a wet crimson figurine dangling between pyramids. He had left everything behind, and walked off into the bowels of a war, to a time of dysfunctional pendulums. His soiled laundry still lay at the bottom of the hamper, the sweat of his slender body captured in artifacts. “Should I wash them, or keep his scent intact?” Images, she worshipped images and tokens now, and even memories. Had she separated from Moses like the others and begun to stray? Or was she just facing reality, or uncertainty, a level of disgust? “What sort of nation sends its children to a far away land to squabble and die in the mud, under a canopy of darkness?” she demanded to know. * * * Broken women regain their composure with silver. Vidol stood at the sink drying a spoon. It had been dry for quite some time, but she just stood there with the window before her. A manzanita colored matriarch with metaphoric light cradled in her bosom. Beyond the window she studied a figure, her stare beyond delight as she sees her oldest boy in sheets of pastel light as he steps from an ostrich eggshell, being reborn. He had the three assegais of a Zulu warrior, and she knew then that he had taken the right path. Angelo would never have survived the riots, not with his intensity and fighting spirit. There were more and more demonstrations in the states every day, and young black men were being carted off to prison in record numbers as political prisoners. Whites were preaching love thy brother in the streets, but across the country the fallopian tubes of poor black women were being tied without their consent by right-wing physicians. Young black men were being killed and imprisoned because they wanted freedom. * * * “Angelo, report to the mess hall as ordered and log in. Okay?” Craig said and then stormed out the screen door. The first few days of mess-hall duty were exciting. Angelo signed the logbook on time, organized most of his gear, reread old letters, and on the third day Simon appeared at the screen. Angelo is a dreamer and not quite able to touch life, but Simon is practical, earthy, and affectionate. He hugged Angelo immediately, his hands touching his shoulder blades like a hunter holding the wings of a bird before he clips them. “Just got back off patrol in the valley, man. Brought pictures of my new woman, Angelo. You got to check her out.” “No problem!” “I’ve already taken pictures on patrol, man. Look at these.” Simon had a little color in his skin, his face was rough, his boots shining and his uniform starched and ironed. He was always neat, and paid the Mama San for keeping his clothing and boots squared away. His large hands were covered with cuts. He laid the photo on the bed. “Check this out, man.” It showed Simon kneeling before a dead gook, he was holding the man’s brains in the palm of his hand, and he was smiling in the picture with his M-60 to his side. “Hey, man, we were dead north not far from the Rock Quarry. The bushes were high, I’m running point, sweating, I knew some shit was about to happen. Every time we got in a firefight I could feel it coming. You open a curtain and someone’s behind it. My shoulder straps were tearing the meat off my neck, my M-60, my finger on the trigger, my thumb at the safety. These scars on my face are from those bushes, they’ll cut you, always around the eyes. And there he was, the Vietcong bastard, hugging an A-K 47! I startled him, I fired. Hit that punk right between the eyes. He dropped like a coat from a hanger. I sent a copy of this picture to my grandmother and told her not to worry. That I would be coming home. There were some other gooks with them, and they ran until we caught them. Stanley beat the shit out of one.” “Deep shit, man!” Angelo says. “Look at my girl, man. I’m supposed to write her a letter. You think you could write it for me, Angelo, like those letters you wrote to Geraldine? You can write that sweet shit,” Simon said. “Do I get to sex her too?” Angelo teased. Simon was happy to see his friend again. He noticed his pearly white eyes, the eyelids at half-mast, a man inside of himself, Angelo was. “I’ll see what I can do,” Angelo said. “Hey, man, Reggie and the guys want to see you!” Simon said. “What is he talking about, man?” “Racism, the struggle, and he’s resting up too. The bush can get to you. He’s going on another patrol tomorrow.” Beulah was fat, Angelo noticed in the photo, with nocturnal skin. “She’s an angel, you just don’t know how much I love her. So when is your court-martial?” “I don’t know. I talked with a couple of officers about it. Maybe a month or so,” Angelo replied. “There’s a boxing tournament later today, you want to join? About 1500 hours,” Simon says. “Yeah! I might check that out.” His brown skin felt crowded under the open gravity of the hut. He had taken a writing tablet from his footlocker and opened it before him. Simon paced about, throwing missile punches into the silence of the room. “They know they’re wrong about the way they’ve treated you. It’s racism. I talked to a lot of white boys in camp. Some of them just want to make you pay ’cause you are black. I talked to the captain, walked right up to his office and requested to speak with him. He knows it was illegal to bring you here without a court-martial. Winston says the same thing I say. You guys were in a fight, Marine Corps policy, you have a right to protect yourself. He had the knife, and everyone knows that. A lot of white boys that I used to hang with won’t speak to me ’cause I told them, ‘you punks are wrong’,” Simon said. “We are in a revolution, with war on all sides. You can talk and you can pray, but action changes things. I know they’re wrong, and that’s why black men should stick together. All we have is ourselves. Look at the white boy who says we should get an education—he’s got everything and is still complaining, like someone’s discriminating against him. Read Franz Fanon, Malcolm X.” “I’m with Martin Luther King, man. I treat people the way they treat me,” Simon says. “I have some damn good friends.” “Yeah! As long as you are clowning and not about to date his sister, you’re all right. Back in the States, after the war, those white boys will deny you. There’s some blacks talking ’bout going back to Africa. I mean, is that absurd? They sold us to America. The black American is an island unto himself. An orphan, or a homeless child. We’ve been raped, and had our languages taken from us. Our families are dysfunctional because we’ve been separated. There was no documentation, because we had no rights. What I’ve learned Simon, is a man can take material things away from you, even your physical freedom, but he can’t control your thoughts. In prison each day I look up at the sky and I know I’m free. I know that until we stand and fight, not a civil war, not that north-south shit, but stand and fight for ourselves, stop snitching on each other, stop taking tokens and selling our people out. Just think, how can another human being give you your freedom? God gave me that.”