One to Count Cadence Read Online Free Page A

son. You’d best watch it.”
    “Ha, ha. You been seeing too many movies, fellow.”
    “Perhaps, perhaps so, young man. That may well be the case. But the visualization of a dream certainly does not alter the essence of its reality; it enhances the reality.”
    “You really are crazy, aren’t you? I guess you look sort of crazy.”
    Ah ha, I thought, a nonbeliever, a discounter of dreams. And a warrior must dream. “I’m warning you, watch that hand.”
    “You better stop going to those movies. You’re liable to get hurt,” he chuckled as the doctor entered, brisk, impatient, another blessing in hand.
    “Away! foul son of Priam or be split asunder,” I shouted, waving my arm. “And the smoke of your pyre will trample the night like the hot, raging breaths of a stallion and the flames lick the sky like the hounds at his flanks.”
    “Jesus,” the doctor said.
    The AP laughed and stepped to the side of the bed. “Okay, sir, I’ll handle this crazy bastard,” he said, smiling just enough to bend the line of his mouth. I sneered, bunched my arm on my chest. He reached for it, then hesitated and shook his head like Larkin, then reached again.
    But it wasn’t there. It had sped like a spear into that soft spot below the sternum, in, in to the knot of nerves, and quivered there. His eyes opened in the shadow of his visor. I had only intended a poke, a tap to let him know that I could, but my arm raised a soul of its own and spoke to something in mine. Again, swifter than thought, strengthened with a short grunt of nervous energy, my hand rejoined the battle. The AP’s mouth opened, though not in laughter, and the upper half of his body tilted over the bed. I raised the cast-bound arm, serious now, and swung, remembering a Paiute ghost dancer granted invulnerability by Wovoka, a Bulgarian under Krum seeking a Byzantine skull for his drinking cup, remembering every violent image dredged from the limitless memory of man, and the ghosts lent me strength. I took him on the side of the head above the ear. His cap flew away; his head and shoulder crammed against the wall, shattering plaster. He shivered in a spasmodic dance, then his eyeballs, visible now, rolled, and he joined Larkin on the floor. I, purged, lay back to ease my ragged breath. Then the pain came from my leg, twisted and sucked my soul back into the void, and I went thankfully away.
    * * *
    There was a bird, a woodpecker, standing on my head, pecking my nose. I clenched my eyes and rolled my head, but he kept up that incessant pecking. Each one came as a bright flash, tapping me out of the peaceful darkness. Goddamned bird. He wouldn’t get off my nose. He pecked exactly where it had been broken once, right in the tenderest spot. I strained to get my hands on him, but they would not move. Then a phrase from a bad Tennyson sonnet jumped into my head, something about a “still-recurring gnat.” But it wasn’t a gnat, it was a vulture… Then I woke.
    Another Air Policeman, same size, etc., leaned over me, hitting the bridge of my nose at perfectly regular intervals with his billy, very light blows, only slightly heavier than a raindrop. He was good. No matter which way I turned my head, his baton was waiting there to keep up the beat. Tap! Tip! — ha, you Tap! missed Tap! that one. Tap! But only that one. Jesus, I thought, this is getting damn repetitious. I pictured an unending line of APs waiting outside the room. Surely twelve trials would be enough, I laughed to myself, But will this ever stop? Does a wave ask the circle of the sea for the shore? I laughed. Straps held my arms and I moaned. But the beat still went on. With a chant now, to my open eyes, “Tough guy. Tough guy. Tough guy.” I snarled at him, a growl, a lion harassed by the beaters: “Yaaaawwwwllll!”
    The cadence stopped blinding my eyes, and I saw that he had stepped back. He was older, tougher than the other one, and informed me in a quiet voice how happy he would be when I