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By Root 9056 0

of symbols. Wilson was the object he could not release. Goldstein was bound to him by a fear he did not understand. If he let him go, if he did not bring him back, then something was wrong, he would understand something terrible. The heart. If the heart died. . . but he lost the sequence in the muck of his labors. They were carrying him on and on, and he would not die. His stomach had been ripped apart, he had bled and shit, wallowed through the leaden swells of fever, endured all the tortures of the rough litter, the uneven ground, and still Wilson had not died. They still carried him. There was a meaning here and Goldstein lumbered after it, his mind pumping like the absurd legs of a man chasing a train he has missed.

"Ah like to work, Ah ain't a goddam fug-off," Wilson mumbled. "If you're job, do goddam thing right, that's what Ah say." His breath was gurgling again out of his mouth. "Brown and Stanley. Brown and Stanley, shit!" He giggled feebly. "Little ol' bugger May when she's a kid, always crappin' her pants." He rambled through a cloudy memory of his daughter when she was an infant. "Smartest little devil." When she was two years old she would drop her faeces behind a door or in a closet. "Goddam, step in it, git dirty." He laughed, only it sounded more like a feeble wheeze. For an instant he recalled vividly his mixture of exasperation and merriment when he had discovered her leavings. "Goddam, Alice'd git mad."

She had been angry when he had seen her in the hospital, angry again when they discovered he was sick. "Ah always say a dose ain't gonna hurt a man a goddam bit. What the hell's a lousy little dose? Ah had it five times an' it never came to a goddam thing." He stiffened on the litter and shouted as if arguing with someone. "Jus' get me some pyrdin whatever the hell y' call it." He twisted about, managed almost to prop himself on an elbow. "If goddam wound gits y' opened maybe Ah won' need the op-per-ration, jus' gits rid of all the pus." He retched emptily, watching through dimmed eyes the blood trickling and spattering out of his mouth onto the rubber fabric of the litter. It was so distant and yet it sent a shudder through him. "Whadeya say, Ridges, does it git rid of it?"

But they hadn't heard him, and he watched the blood fall in droplets from his mouth and then lay back again moodily.

"Ah'm gonna die."

A shudder of fear, of resistance rippled through him. He could taste the blood in his mouth, and he began to tremble. "Goddammit, Ah ain't gonna die, Ah ain't gonna," he wept, choking on his sobs when some mucus clotted his throat. The sounds terrified him; he lay abruptly in the tall weeds, his blood sopping into the sun-warmed earth, the Japanese chattering beside him. "They're gonna git me, they're gonna git me," he shouted suddenly. "Jesus, men, don' lemme die."

Ridges heard him this time, stopped lethargically, set the litter down, and unyoked himself from the pack straps. Like a drunk proceeding slowly and elaborately to unlock a door, Ridges moved over to Wilson's head, and knelt beside him.

"They're gonna git me," Wilson moaned, his face contorted, his unconscious tears slinking out of his eye sockets, racing down his temples to become lost in the matted hair about his ears.

Ridges bent over him, fingering numbly his own scraggly beard. "Wilson," he said hoarsely, a little imperatively.

"Yeah?"

"Wilson, they's still time to turn."

"Wha. . . ?"

Ridges had made up his mind. It might not be too late. Wilson might not yet be damned. "Y' gotta return to the Lord Jesus Christ."

"Uh."

Ridges shook him gently. "They's still time to turn," he said in a solemn mournful voice. Goldstein looked on blankly, vaguely resentful.

"Y' can go to the Kingdom of Heaven." His voice was so deep that it was almost lost. The sounds quivered heavily in Wilson's head like the echo of a bass viol.

"Uh-huh," Wilson mumbled.

"Y' repentin'? Y' askin' forgiveness?"

"Yeah?" Wilson breathed. Who was talking to him, who was bothering him? If he would agree they would let him alone. "Yeah," he mumbled again.