I don't know why I'm telling you this, Jod. I don't suppose you can hear me.
(Jim Has drawn the Navajo rug away from Jod's face. The dying embers of his eyes can be seen but they no longer illuminate anything. In the darkness Jim trembles.)
I guess I'm just trying to explain to you how I feel. How cold it is without you. Without anyone. I guess there isn't any point anymore in covering you.
(Jim slides the Navajo rug away from Jod's still form and wraps it around himself.)
I'm sorry, Jod. I think I need this more than you do. It's so cold. It's so cold.
(Jim trembles and pulls the Navajo rug tighter around himself.)
Mindu wrote me. Said she's still not getting my letters. That's because I've stopped writing her. She told me about how she flew for the first time with Riane. The two of them doing 69 together. How high Riane flew, and how she enfolded her in her wings and the multidimensional orgasm she had.
She tried not to make it sound like it was better with Riane than it was with me, but I know. I've been with Riane. So high. The highest I've ever been.
Mindu had never experienced that before, and now she has. That never ends, that experience of multidimensional orgasm with Riane. It goes on forever. And now we're both experiencing it. Maybe that's why I lasted as long as I did before finally giving in and taking the Navajo rug away from you.
It's really yours. You made it yours the night you died. But I guess you can give it to me. And I'll tell myself that's what you've done. And if I survive this experience I'll have it, your final gift to me. Something to remember you by.
Warmth.
It's been so long since I've felt it.
I've been so cold for so long.
How many days now until the Assizes? How many days until I have to part from you? Not even a little gaboom, Jod? No last boomba?
I had a dream, Jod. I can't remember what it was, but I know I had it. In it maybe I was a child. Maybe I had a pet. One that I was afraid of. It seemed like there was an animal in this dream. Was it a cat? And it wanted to touch me. It wanted to climb onto me. But I was afraid. It had claws and sharp teeth. And it was seeking to comfort me. Or it was seeking comfort from me. That's what it was. It was seeking comfort from me. And that made me afraid.
Thanks for the Navajo rug, Jod. Maybe I won't feel as afraid of the scorpions I think Sam must be dropping in through the bars when I'm asleep, even though he seems so surprised by how they could have gotten here when I tell him about them in the morning, before he shoots them.
Let me ask you something, Jod. Do you think if the Comanches staged a raid, say after everyone was asleep, and took everyone by surprise, and went about the town killing and torturing and setting fire, and they came upon Sam sleeping on his stool in front of the jail house door, and when he woke up and realized what was happening he only had a few moments to draw his gun and kill as many of them as he could before they killed or captured him, do you think he would throw the keys through the bars so the Comanches wouldn't be able to get into the jail house and capture and torture me?
It probably wouldn't do any good if he did. They would probably just set the jail house on fire, or shoot their arrows through the bars at me, and I would have no way of escape. But maybe if I was in the corner near the door their arrows wouldn't be able to reach me, and maybe if they set the jail house on fire the Urp brothers would be roused in time to make a counter attack and drive them off with their Buntline specials and put out the fire before I was burned to death. And there Sam would lie, filled with arrows, with his hands and feet and nose cut off, and I would be saved.
Do you think he would, Jod?
Do you think he would?
(As Jim watches the light in one of Jod's eyes goes out. And now there's only the one ember half glowing. Not even half. And Jim shivers beneath the Navajo rug, but it is not because of the cold. The trembling doesn't stop. And when Jim speaks it's in a whisper.)
Maybe that's why I gave the Navajo rug to you, Jod.
So that when I was shivering I could tell myself it was from the cold.