Arcadio by William Goyen Read Free Book Online

couldn’t give it up, slave of being wanted, and wanting the feelins, esclavo of being a special piece. I was an addict, I uz doped, crazed, I uz in a cyclone of sex I uz in a coma of sex, I uz drenched in it soaked in it, you wan hear it you wan hear it? Oh I may go back, I may go back to the Show, I just may, the life I’ve led. I may go back to the glass jewel wagon and the golden chair of silence and gazing, give up words give up the telling of tales fantásticos and the mouthing of words, give up la grandeza and la belleza , and speak no more.
    One early morning I run out of Shuang Boy’s. By dawn I was out of town in a cowboy’s clothes. I was worn out and ashamed I was sick to death of my body and of my feelins, sleepin in the weeds outside of towns and cryin in the grass. One day outside of a town, because of my unbearable feelings, I tried to fix myself with a piece of glass but couldn’t get the courage to do it—and to tell the honest truth I couldn’t make up my mind which of myself to try and eliminate, I had no favorites, my lifelong problem in that terrible night of dying in my soul Jesucristo come to me and told me to accept myself just as I was, that He had made me as He had made all things and would be my companion from then on, wherever I went if I would have Him. Oh Jesus Jesucristo , I said, are you like me? Like you, said Jesucristo; and in the morning in peace I got up out of the weeds of the field and started on my way of acceptance, wanderin and abeggin at back doors. Little did people know that Jesucristo was with me at their back door, knockin, and when they come to ask what I wanted and saw me hungry and heard me ask have you got anything to eat? they give me some bread and they was afeeding Jesus Christ our Lord. I’m only tellin you what happened. If you wan hear. That’s all I’m singing you.
    Oh twas people in cities still tried to pay me to do things, as of yore in the house of Shuang Boy, in the China Boy , to come to a hotel room and lay on a bed while they all looked and watched and drank, but I would not; and some rich men in Fort Worth offered me a whole lots of money to come away with them to a huntin lodge and let them all have a party with me. But I would not. Was the love of Jesucristo saved my soul and saved me from lecherousness, from just going down into the dirt for love of the flesh and the feelins and just not caring; Jesucristo’s love kept me from feelin I was a freak, a Sideshow like Old Shanks called me, old bastard, and thrown back by the human race, give me some human dignity. Else I would have fallen low again cause of my special flesh I was born with and was put on me to test me, though I had temptations more terrible than could be told, and tis true that I had given in to all I told you when I was young and couldn’t stop. Oh I did some things, have to admit, got off with the wrong people a few times and let em have thei r way. Twas because I was so lonesome and in my lonesomeness remembered those feelins from what Shuang Boy’s house shown to my body, back there in those days I have described to you, in the China Boy . Such feelins come over me sometimes that I didn’t know what to do, thank God they’ve all gone by the wayside, majority of em, and I got some peace from that hellfire of feelin come over me when I let them have their way. Twas from those hellfire of feelins that I almost lost my way. I would wake up naked in the moonlight laying hurtin and thinkin Lord God Jesucristo what’s happenin to me am I bein stabbed am I bein stung am I goin to bust open what is drenchin me and burnin me and meltin me, I got all this on me, all this, and wish I’d never found out what it could do to me, what feelins it could give me, cause now I don know how to forget them, can’t stop them, cause now I know and have been hurt crazy by these feelins and I can’t get away from them now they have been