February 16: Big Bronze Gong, "Freak Show," Ballroom

"Here he is, boys," said Weary.  "He don't want to live, but he's gonna live anyway.  When he gets out of this, by God, he's gonna owe his life to the Three Musketeers."  This was the first the scouts had heard that Weary thought of himself and them as the Three Musketeers.

Billy Pilgrim, there in the creekbed, thought he, Billy Pilgrim, was turning to steam painlessly.  If everybody would leave him alone for just a little while, he thought, he wouldn't cause anybody any more trouble.  He would turn to steam and float up among the treetops.

Somewhere the big dog barked again.  With the help of fear and echoes and winter silences, that dog had a voice like a big bronze gong.

Roland Weary, eighteen years old, insinuated himself between the scouts, draped a heavy arm around the shoulder of each.  "So what do the Three Musketeers do now?" he said.

Billy Pilgrim was having a delightful hallucination.  He was wearing dry, warm, white sweatsocks, and he was skating on a ballroom floor.  Thousands cheered.  This wasn't time-travel.  It had the craziness of a dying young man with his shoes full of snow.

Both Roland Weary and Billy Pilgrim are hallucinating.  Roland believes he's a war hero, and that he and the scouts are something like the Magnificent Seven (minus four).  The Dirty Dozen (minus nine).  You get the idea.  Billy is simply hallucinating--freezing cold and on the brink of death.  Having a dream, skating across a ballroom in his stocking feet like Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

I was incredibly tired this morning,  I stayed up late with my daughter watching the last episodes of American Horror Story:  Freak Show.  It was after eleven o'clock when I started blogging, after midnight by the time I finally got to bed.  And then I was up at four o'clock in the morning for work.  By about 3 p.m., I was so tired that I thought I was hallucinating.

It has been kind of a crazy week, what with the announcement of the Poet Laureate on Tuesday and Valentine's Day and teaching.  I am ready for the weekend.  Tomorrow, I have a dentist appointment.  I'm getting a crown put on a tooth.  Then, tomorrow night, I have to go to a basketball game to see my daughter play in the pep band.

I don't know how long I'm going to be able to stay awake tonight.  I'm supposed to do a little house cleaning,  Might not happen.  My energy is at a low ebb.  I may just sit on the couch and dream about skating across a ballroom floor in my sweatsocks.

Yes, this entire post is about being tired.  That's all I got.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for pillows.