Bright Orange for the Shroud by John D. MacDonald Page B

faint it was not actually a sound, more a rhythm sensed. It is a bed rhythm, strangely akin to a heartbeat, though softer. Whum-fa, whum-fa, whum-fa. As eternal, clinical, inevitable as the slow gallop of the heart itself. And as basic to the race, reaching from percale back to the pallet of dried grasses in the cave corner. A sound clean and true, a nastiness only to all those unfortunates who carry through their narrow days their own little hidden pools of nastiness, ready to spill it upon anything so real it frightens them.
    Heard even in its most shoddy context, as through the papery walls of a convention motel, this life-beat could be diminished not to evil but to a kind of pathos, because then it was an attempt at affirmation between strangers, a way to try to stop all the clocks, a way to try to say: I live.
    The billions upon billions of lives which have come and gone, and that small fraction now walking the world, came of this life-pulse, and to deny it dignity would be to diminish the blood and need and purpose of the race, make us all bawdyclowns, thrusting and bumping away in a ludicrous heat, shamed by our own instinct.
    Hearing them I felt placidly avuncular. Enjoy. Find that one time that has no shred of self or loneliness. Seal it so that from now on McGee is the third wheel, all interrelationships solidly structured from now on. Celebrate the “nowness” of it, and subside into affections.
    The almost inaudible pulse hastened, then slowed, and ended. I heard the faroff drone of a marine engine, fading into the distance, a commercial fisherman perhaps, heading for the grounds off East Cape. Ripples slapped the hull. What assurances, gratitudes, immediate memories were the lovers entwined whispering to each other? Did they listen to the slowing of their hearts? Were there little catches at the end of those long breaths that were deep as sighs? Was it beautiful for you too, darling?
    When I awoke again it was with the sense of total well-being I had been aiming for. The pounds were gone. A few slight areas of muscle soreness were not enough to diminish that good feeling of resiliency and vitality.
    The body, once you are old enough to stop taking it for granted, becomes like a separate entity. The way it will endure neglect makes you feel guilty. Having survived trauma, and being still willing to carry you around after healing itself, it deserves better. Cherishing it and toughening it is an act of appeasement for past omissions.
    In my line of work, neglect was especially asinine. Like being a front-line type with a rusty rifle, or a neurosurgeon with a hangover. One half step, or one twentieth of a secondlag in reaction time can make the difference. Any violent necessity is usually the result of something having gone wrong, a probable error of judgment. But the probability is always there.
    Now, with just minor versions of the total torture of the days past, it would hold its edge.
    My shower serenade did not stir the drowsy lovers, nor did the banging of pots. After breakfast I broke out a small spinning rod, rigged it with a yellow jig, installed sail, rudder and centerboard on the dinghy, and went off to circle the edge of distant grass flats. I released a couple of small jacks, one weak-fish, and then, just as I was coming about, hooked into a stranger, a stray pompano who didn’t belong in that kind of area. He ran better than three pounds, and I had him split, buttered, and on foil under the broiler as the lovers came fumbling, blinking and yawning out into the daylight. Call the pompano a sacrifice on a special altar. They claimed nothing had ever tasted as good. They finished him, every crumb, while I stood smirking like a kindly old aunt in a TV commercial.
    All her actions toward him that Wednesday were precisely as on the day before. But without the Charge Nurse flavor. She had a doe-eyed glow, a lazy smugness. The gestures were returned in kind. I was the outsider. Arthur had his chin up, for a