Pool_1

Jazz Man, rhythm frozen in determined will, who bathed him in alcohol and ice for ten days to keep that killing fever down. A rolled cloth between the child's teeth spared them from shattering in the gnashing of the wild shakes that sprang the bed incrementally across the floor. Rigors so violent that they could not be held in check by the full body muscular embrace of a despairing father pounded the plaster wall adjacent the bed under a relentless crash crash crashing of the bed post. And there, a shrine, a hole the size of a shoe in the plaster was never repaired, a "monument to the hand of God" that delivered this child. Some delivery! Some God. Have you ever been bathed in iced alcohol? Nevertheless, Jazz Man stated, without explanation, that he now owed God "twice over" and that this child was his offering to heaven. This child was now God's child. Marcus never took that too seriously, until the cups, that is, when all this dismissed silly talk imploded on him. "God saved him for something," his mother would iterate, at the smallest provocation. "There will be a sign," she reminded as the frail youngster escaped to the basement. "Yeah, mom. A sign," then mumbling, "a chemical sign." The basement, below ground, was away from the deadly odor of fresh cut grass. But even so, sneezing could be heard from those depths for hours. Marcus sneezed over his chemistry set experiments, which his brothers were convinced were going to blow everybody to hell, but less so over the sound of his guitar, a reassurance that the place was at least - temporarily - spared. "Marcus! What is that smell?" Aldo called down the stairs where it was ominously quiet.