What did it matter?
He began to walk - stagger - toward the verge of the jungle. He was light-headed with hunger. The sound of the surf boomed hollowly in his ears like the beat of crazy blood. His mind was as empty as the mind of a newborn child.
He was halfway to the edge of the deep green when it parted and three men came out. Then four. Then there were half a dozen.
They were brown, smooth-skinned folk.
They stared at him.
He stared back.
Things began to come.
The six men became eight. The eight became a dozen. They all held spears. They began to raise them threateningly. The man with the beard-stubble on his face looked at them. He was wearing jeans and old sprung cowboy boots; nothing else. His upper body was as white as the belly of a carp and dreadfully wasted.
The spears came all the way up. Then one of the brown men - the leader - choked out one word over and over again, a word that sounded like Yun-nah!
Yep, things were coming.
Righty-O.
His name, for one thing.
He smiled.
That smile was like a red sun breaking through a black cloud. It exposed bright white teeth and amazing blazing eyes. He turned his lineless palms out to face them in the universal gesture of peace.
Before the force of that grin they were lost. The spears fell to the sand; one of them struck point-down and hung there at an angle, quivering.
"Do you speak English?"
They only looked.
"Habla espa?ol? "
No they didn't. They definitely did not habla f**king espa?ol.
What did that mean?
Where was he?
Well, it would come in time. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor Akron, Ohio, for that matter. And the place didn't matter.
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.
"Parlez-vous fran?ais? "
No answer. They stared at him, fascinated.
He tried them in German, and then bellowed laughter at their stupid, sheepy faces. One of them began to sob helplessly, like a child.
They are simple folk. Primitive; simple; unlettered. But I can use them. Yes, I can use them perfectly well.
He advanced toward them, lineless palms still turned outward, still smiling. His eyes sparkled with warm and lunatic joy.
"My name is Russell Faraday," he said in a slow, clear voice. "I have a mission."
They stared at him, all eyes, all dismay, all fascination.
"I have come to help you."
They began to drop on their knees and bow their heads before him, and as his dark, dark shadow fell among them, his grin widened.
"I've come to teach you how to be civilized!"
"Yun-nah! " the chief sobbed in joy and terror. And as he kissed Russell Faraday's feet, the dark man began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed.
Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long.
And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.
February 1975
December 1988