drawing was colored pencil, of The Original, Uncle George,
and me, sitting on the porch. I remembered the night Jesse
had hung around with his camera, taking pictures. Across
the bottom, he wrote,
this is a picture of the three men I love.
I set it up on the kitchen table, propped up between the
napkin holder shaped like a chicken and the salt and pepper
shakers. The old man read the letter, then he sighed and
studied the picture. “He’s okay. He’s in New York, doing
some crap for the museum. He says he’s going to that big
peace rally that’s being held in Washington in a couple of
weeks. He’s speaking the day after the
Time
cover comes out.
He asked me to let you know.”
“It’s that fuckhead Sam who’s arranging all this?”
“I think so, but he didn’t say. I don’t know how much of
it’s the museum, asking him to do things. He was supposed
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to be working on the rest of the paintings. I got the feeling
they bought the first one, with a rider they could have all of
them. They’re probably asking him when he’s gonna get back
to work.”
I had been out to the studio. It looked forlorn,
abandoned, and the pile of his ripped and torn canvas had
been hauled off by the trash men before I’d pulled my Bambi
behind the house and parked it.
The Million Man March for Peace was being sponsored
by a couple of the vets’ groups, as well as the usual doves.
The plan was for a rally on the Mall in Washington, and
there were three days’ worth of speakers. Jesse was
scheduled to speak about his painting on the first morning.
He called The Original, told him about it. I stayed out on the
porch, and he must not have asked to speak to me, because
the old man was off the phone when he came out to sit with
me. “He says he wants you to watch when he talks, Lorenzo.
He has something to say he needs you to hear. They’re
gonna show a copy of the painting. He wanted me to tell you.
He says as far as he knows, no one has identified you as the
man in the painting, but he doesn’t know how long that’s
gonna last.”
“I’ll watch it with you.”
“It’s gonna be on CNN.”
We both got up early, had our bacon and fried egg
sandwiches in front of the TV. It was the only time I
remembered the TV being turned on since I’d been there. He
turned the channel to CNN, and we watched footage of the
National Mall filling up with men. There was a stadium set
up at one end, shaped like a clamshell, with the Washington
Monument as a backdrop, and a big screen for video. Oh,
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God. It must have been forty feet high. There was a
broadcast message from the President, then a retired general
came onto the stage and spoke about how peace starts in the
home. Jesse came next.
He was dressed in his brown jeans and boots, with a
silk shirt the color of his eyes, stormy blue-gray. He had
been to the barber, and his hair was cut short. He looked
tough, with none of his usual silly gay boy. He looked out
over the audience and spoke into the microphone. “My name
is Jesse Clayton, and I’m from Marathon, Texas.” A big cheer
went up from the crowd, and the camera panned to a group
that was heavy on the cowboy hats and Lone-Star belt
buckles. They cut back to Jesse. “I want to tell you a little bit
about my family.” A picture flashed up on the screen behind
him, of a young man in jungle fatigues, the backdrop
unmistakably the jungles of Vietnam. “This is my
grandfather, Staff Sergeant Jesse Clayton. He served in
Vietnam in 1966 and 1968 with the Third Marine Regiment.
In Khe Sanh, for those of you who remember, and know
what that means.” A new picture came up, a handsome man
in a flight suit, with Jesse’s blue eyes, leaning against the
door of a SAR helicopter somewhere in the desert. “This is
my father, Captain Jesse Clayton. He was killed in Iraq in
1990.”
I remembered telling him he didn’t understand what the
uniform meant, that he didn’t know what it meant to serve.
The old man reached over and took my hand, and the screen
behind Jesse filled with an image of
Death
of a Grievous
Angel.
As I feared, it was forty foot tall, and even more
shocking than it had been the first time I had seen it. The
crowd was stunned into silence. Jesse waited for a moment,
then he spoke again. “My name is Jesse Clayton. I painted
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Death of a Grievous Angel
. Like my father and grandfather
before me, I serve the cause of peace….” He made a sound
like a hiccup, then he put his hand up over his chest, like he
was touching one of my shrapnel scars. The old man next to
me had his head down, and he didn’t look up until the
pressure of my fingers on his hand got painful. Jesse
coughed, and blood was leaking between his fingers,
dripping down the front of his beautiful silk shirt. He
swayed, then dropped to his knees, and somebody started
screaming, and the image of the painting on the screen never
moved.
I WAS driving hell-bent for leather toward Odessa. The
Original had a map and a phone open against his ear. “Get
the plane fueled up, son. We need to leave soon as we get
there.” He listened, then, “No. No stops. Just do what you
have to do, and get me the fuck to Washington DC,
understand? You can call anybody you need to call once
we’re in the air. Right. Now step on it, boy.” I didn’t know if
he was talking to me or the pilot, but we were already
pushing ninety. “Okay, Lorenzo. Once we get into Odessa,
we’ll follow the signs for the airfield. I know where to go. You
just drive.”
“You got the fuckhead’s number? He might know what’s
going on.”
The Original flipped through the pages of a tiny address
book he’d stuck in the breast pocket of his shirt. He dialed,
listened. “It’s going to voice mail.”
“Tell him to call us, okay?”
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“I got a better idea.” He dialed again. “I’ll call Jesse’s
number.” He waited for a moment, and I pushed the truck a
little faster. I thought I could smell something burning from
under the hood. “Yeah, Sam? This is Jesse Clayton. Where is
he, son?” He listened for a couple of minutes. “Okay. You
stay with him. Don’t leave him there alone. We’ll be there as
soon as I can get a plane. Yes, we. Me and Lorenzo Maryboy,
who the fuck do you think? You tell Jesse that we’re coming,
you hear me? You tell him hang on till we get there.” He
closed the phone and looked over at me. “He’s alive, in the
trauma unit at Washington Hospital Center. He’s going into
surgery as soon as they get some blood in him and get his
blood pressure stabilized.” He reached over and patted my
thigh. “He’s not going to die knowing you’re coming, Lorenzo.
Don’t you know how hardheaded that boy is?”
We got to Odessa without the highway patrol running us
in, which I thought was a miracle, and the plane was ready
to take off as soon as we got to the airport. We couldn’t get
any news while we were in the air, but I just assumed the
old man was right, and Jesse would not dare die when he
knew we were coming.
The airport in DC was crawling with men in uniform,
and they ran us through metal detectors and shoved
paperwork at us before The Original lost his cool and started
shouting. Jesse was alive. That was the first thing they told
us. I don’t know what branch of the government it was who
eventually put us in the back of a black sedan and took us
to the hospital, but I got a couple of careful looks from the
men driving. The Original gave me an elbow. “They were
probably staring at that picture of you for ten minutes before
somebody thought to shut it off. It’s been on continuous loop
on CNN for eight hours, Lorenzo. I would say at this point
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every person in America will be able to identify you without
your clothes, if you happen to be wearing boots and a
cowboy hat, and hanging from a cross.”
“I estimate that projection made my dick seven and a
half to eight feet long.”
“Yep. You may be right. I would say that’s some false
advertising, son.”
We had to look out the windows to keep from falling
over in hysterics. The Original got back on the phone. “We’re
in DC, on the way to the hospital.” He listened, then, “We’ll
be there in a few minutes. You can talk to him then.” He
looked over at me, tucked the phone into his shirt pocket.
“He wants to talk to you.”
“Yeah? I want to kick his sorry ass back to San
Francisco. What did he say about Jesse?”
The Original had tears in his eyes. “He’s out of surgery.
He’s in the intensive care unit.”
“Okay,” I said, taking his hand. “Okay, that’s all we
need. He’s alive. Just give him a chance.”
I WAS standing outside the glass door of Jesse’s room,
watching the equipment that was breathing for him. He had
a plastic tube down his throat, and some machine was
pushing breaths of air down the tube. I started breathing
with the machine, like I could keep all those monitors quiet
and running, if I could breathe for him. The Original was
standing next to me.
“You make sure somebody’s got his boots. He is going to
be so pissed off if somebody makes off with those boots.”
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“I’ll take care of it.” He put his hand on my shoulder.
Sam was in the waiting room behind us, giving updates to
the reporters who were calling. He kept staring at the back of
my neck. I turned around, looked back long enough so he
knew I was thinking of ripping his throat out with my teeth.
A nurse came around the corner, wearing blue scrubs, her
face tired. “Okay, when we go in, you’ve got just a couple of
minutes. He may be able to hear you. You can touch him,
hold his hand. Who do we have? Grandfather, and who’s his
partner?”
Sam stood up, and I snarled at him before I could stop
myself. “You can sit the fuck back down.” I turned to the
nurse. “I’m his partner.”
She looked at me for a moment, then her face cleared.
“Oh, right! I saw the painting.
Death of a Grievous Angel.
Brilliant.”
His eyes were closed, the tape holding the tube in place
obscuring the lower half of his face. There was a smear of
dried blood on his forehead. I couldn’t make myself look
below his neck. The Original took his hand. “Hey, Jesse. Me
and Lorenzo are here with you, son. We’re gonna stay with
you, then you come on back down to Marathon with us when
you get out of the hospital. We’re lonely for you, Jesse. We
want you to come home.” Then the old man had his head
lowered and was weeping silently, still holding Jesse’s hand.
I found a wet wipe on the bedside table, scrubbed the
blood off his forehead. He had a little monitor on his
fingertip, and I saw it move. I watched it, and it moved again,
so I took his hand. There was dried blood on the palm, and I
scrubbed at it. I couldn’t stand to see this, him lying there
with blood on his hands, blood on his chest. After I had his
hand clean, I reached up and pulled the sheet down just a
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bit, until we could see the bandage on his chest. There was a
thick tube coming out from under the gauze, and it was
draining blood into a bubbling plastic box hanging next to
the bed. “He’s got a chest tube,” I told The Original. “I had
one when I got the shrapnel in my chest. They hurt like a
bitch.” I studied the bandage, but I couldn’t see anything
else, and when I looked back up to his face, his eyes were
open.
I didn’t know if he could see me. He looked scared,
confused. I leaned over until my face was over his. “Jesse.”
He blinked, and I waited till the machine had delivered its