Mr. Hevert (fifth installment)

Tom Sawbone thrust the tray of rations through the opening at the bottom of umma Obikhan’s cell door. He noted, as he always did, how the umma merely glanced at the arriving meal as if some unspeakable putridity were on display, taking time to whisper prayers of sarcastic thanks before delicately pulling the tray close to where he sat on his prayer mat, cross-legged in something akin to the lotus position Tom had learned in yoga class. He knew because of his Auntie Em how thoroughly blind people familiarized themselves with their surroundings by their other senses, and never felt any surprise when the umma’s eyes seemed to look at him, since blind people, or at least Auntie Em and her needlepoint circle of sightless friends, turned their faces to the person they listened to. Still, Tom couldn’t help staring into the umma’s lifeless eyes, it fascinated him, how somebody who couldn’t see had eyes in his head all the same. Umma Obikhan fixed the gangly, handsome youth’s glance with his Whirling Eye, while continuing to utter his prayers in a barely audible whisper. He had, in fact, completed his prayers, and was whispering something else, something Tom, spellbound, brought his face close to the cell’s bars to decipher. “See my Whirling Eye, Tom Sawbone, it is like a rainbow in the soft air that follows a gentle summer rain, is it not, Tom Sawbone? It is like the old swimming hole where you and Huck Finnish used to swing out over the water in an inner tube tied to a branch of a tall tall pine tree, it is like the refreshing cold water of the lake where you and Huck went skinny-dipping on a sweltering August afternoon after finishing your chores, is it not?” Tom experienced a sudden rent in the fabric of time: him and Huck were at the watering hole, splashing each other and dunkin’ each other’s heads, and then they swam out to the clapboard raft nailed up over a bunch of empty oil drums, buck nekkid as babes, then they was rough-housin’ on the raft after hoisting themselves out of the cool water, rastlin’ and rollin’ on top of one ‘nuther till that moment seemed alus to come when the rough-housin’ went all still and Tom laid on top a Huck, or Huck lay on top a Tom, or sometimes they was layin’ like two spoons in Aunt Em’s utinsil drawer, and Huck’s big warm thigmajig pressed up aginst the crack a Tom’s ass, and Huck’s hot breath panted into Tom’s ear, and Tom shot his tongue out and licked inside that ear and Huck’s big toe ran up and down the bottom of Tom’s long foot, and ‘fore you knew it Huck’s throbbin’ uncut ding dong greased up with a wad a spit pressed its head out a that clingin’ wrapper of loose flesh and Tom felt Huck’s thick shaft slidin’ up inside him Huck’s wide hairless chest pressed like Auntie Em’s steam iron up ‘gainst Tom’s back out there on Loon Lake with the wild geese wheelin’ overhead and callin’ each other in they matin’ cries… Somehow all the same time Huck was cornholin’ Tom as umma Obikhan sipped his tea all delicate and that Whirlin’ Eye showed Tom him and Huck fuckin’ nice and slow on that raft out Loon Lake, and all sudden like, Tom loved the umma for showin’ him that sweet pitcher of him and Tom locked together like that Huck movin’ inside him so nice and warm as a blueberry pie coolin’ in Aunt Em’s winda and Huck flippin’ Tom over on his back and grabbin’ Tom’s ankles, thrustin’ his long thick pumper deeper inta Tom’s insides & at the same time Tom was rememberin’ where they kept the Semtex in that locked-up shed behind the PX and figurin’ how far the distance was between that shed and the broke-down biplane hangar where they’d got all the AK-47s locked up in a long chest all full of excelsior with the ammo belts in a different chest other side of the hangar, now it was Tom’s turn to cornhole Huck, and Huck was already hungry for it when Tom spit into his palm and at the same time they was runnin’ from the Semtex storage shed to the biplane hangar and they was others with them too, Jones and Rafferty and Jimmy Johnson and the whole gang laughin’ and fuckin’ each other and runnin’ from one weapon storage billet to the other grabbin’ up all the ordnance they could lay they hands on…