Chapter 4

Occupation

One by one the dead infiltrated the living. Those killed on his birthday were resident before he finally went to school. His memory ... although there was that one complicated day of extreme joy ... the day of victory over Germany ... lacked the day of victory over Japan. Perhaps it was the sudden entry of soul/spirit/being that overwhelmed him, but those individuals now continuing their lives in his had a different mindset. They would have to adapt to him rather than he to them.

The violence of the deaths of the Davids ... one shot by the German soldiers in Holland in their anger and loss, the other dead by having his skull smashed against the house door frame because he tried to protect his mother ... was traumatic for the Michigan David. He lived their deaths. The Scottish David was particularly difficult ... parts and pieces of the shattered soul/spirit/being filtered in as they sought coherence, they were, after all, seeking their way out of a multitude of other parts of victims destroyed at the same time.

Then there were the others, The Finnish boy killed by a Russian sniper ... the Russian soldier blown to shreds by the stick grenade thrown by the Finnish boy milliseconds before his death ... the Belfast Protestant school girl shot down in the street by the Catholics ... the Polish Jew child who died seconds after being pulled from the furnace by an American soldier ... older children, killed, or murdered ... violent ends all.

Later, as he grew ... and the dead grew with him ... others found their way in. Sometimes the others were handy ... he needed a frenchman, a Devils Island Convict, for a play ... one showed up.

He needed an inconvenient Siberian internment camp guard, an ignorant fool, the Russian had the proper qualifications ... and an interesting accent.

A high school play demanded a villain ... the one pulled from the many was so villainous the second appearance on stage he was soundly boo'ed by the audience ... that one took weeks to stuff back inside ... English class demanded a Falstaffian voice ... one showed up. The next day Macbeth needed an angry but remorseful reading ... spot on.

All these voices (people) continued to LIVE in the boy. With difficulty ... his mother was incensed that the voices sometimes came out ... usually at inconvenient times and with company present ... with difficulty, he learned to suppress them. That's not to say they went away ... no, they grew right along with him ... it was in art class that the evil ones appeared.

"Very disturbing, David," Mrs. Neirgarth, the art teacher, complained. The work she was looking at was the clay ashtray he had made. "There's only the eye sockets to stub out the cigarette. As for the rest of it ... it gives the impression that the flesh is melting off the bones of the face."

David smiled.

"Sure you don't want to change it before it's fired?"

"No, Ma'am. It's perfect."

Glazing colors are very difficult to judge before they're fired. When it finally came out of the kiln the Monday after a weekend firing, the colors were perfect. The blood splattered peeled forehead and the sagging flesh with runnels of pus and gore was exactly the thing he was looking for. Two of the more queazy girls in class barely made it to the lavatory. Success!