FSF, March-April 2010 by Spilogale Authors Page A

overwhelming rage that he had to perish with his life unlived.
    Perhaps his rage was what saved him from dying completely. Anyway, he awoke far down in the murky river, tumbling seaward with the current while an immense shadowy fish—a giant river cat, maybe—nibbled at his bare feet. He kicked it away, and discovered that he didn't need to breathe any longer. He was a corpse, and yet could move and even think. Could Letourneau, he asked, possibly understand that?
    Letourneau could. “I've always been like that,” he said.
    "You feel alone, do you?"
    "Yes."
    "I can help you find a companion. Come with me. And bring your blade."
    They walked together into the riverside slums, where water gushed from clay pipes and the gutters whirled rubbish away like millraces. Soon they spotted a woman, clearly a “hooker"—a streetwalker in the slang of the time—who'd taken refuge in a doorway while waiting for the rain to pass. She was holding a wad of newspapers she'd been using as an umbrella and she peered shortsightedly into the street. Morrow took the cane knife from Letourneau's hand and backed against the nearest wall.
    "Call her over,” he whispered. “She's hungry, I can feel it, so she'll come out, rain or no rain."
    Letourneau did as he was told—Letourneau always did as he was told. The woman stared at him, then lifted the newspapers over her head and stepped into the street. Coming up behind her, Morrow swung the blade with his right hand and with his left caught her head before it hit the ground. He picked up the sodden paper, wrapped the head in it, and gave the bundle to Letourneau, along with the cane knife.
    "The soul lives in the brain,” he explained. “When you take the head, you take the soul with you. I've done it often. Of course the brain doesn't last long, and when it decays the soul escapes. But then you can always take another."
    The rain began to slacken, and Morrow said he had to go back to the river, explaining that if he dried out he'd die for good. “I wish I could come ashore oftener. I get lonesome down there with nothing but the mud and the fishes. Then I want somebody I can talk to, if only for a little while. Maybe I'll see you again."
    Letourneau walked home in a dream. In his room he carefully dried the cane knife and oiled it to prevent rust. Then he unwrapped the woman's head and put it into a cupboard, because he didn't know what else to do with it. He hung his sodden clothes outside on the rickety gallery that ran past his room, got into bed, and pulled up the tattered coverlet. He was lying there, shivering, when the head began to sing.
    The voice was a little weak, but sweet, like his mother's when he was a young child. Back in those days, when she brought a customer home she'd take Gabriel out of the bed and lay him on the floor, wrapped in a quilt. After the man had finished and gone away, she'd bring him back into the bed, which still smelled of the stranger, and sing him lullabies until he fell sleep.
    Letourneau thought the woman in the cupboard must have a nice soul, because instead of bawdy songs she sang sweet old ballads like “Green Grow the Rushes” and “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.” He went to sleep and slept longer and more peacefully than he had in many years. The next night had been the same, and the next. Then the head fell silent. He ought to have buried it, but couldn't bear to part with it, and that was why he'd been arrested and wound up in Fort Clay. He'd never seen the drowned man again, and hadn't told the provost marshal about him, because he knew he wouldn't be believed.
    Then, saying he was feeling tired, he told the soldiers good night. He wished them pleasant dreams.
    All of this Schulz wrote down, and had Quant sign the record as witness. For a while they drank together, back in their quarters, listening to the rising wind outside, and arguing about their prisoner. Schulz thought him a dangerous lunatic, but believed that sixteen strong and