Page 157

By Jack Joseph Smith

I said in a sincere frantic, let's stop this hell and take care of this guy. He is hurt bad. I looked up at O'Dandy and then at Murphy. They looked like white skulls prowling through the unforgiven. There was no pain in my fist, but where had the sound come from? Surely from me, I had thoughts I was the last to see him before he fell. But the unity of pain and sound agony was in everyones mind. How else could it be, when everyone was in the wild depth. Everyone was in an unconcious state, without any prethought reason or direction. Our instincts were together in the flow of death. There were no sides. There was only rage and the blinding ego, that demanded that all take it all the way. But sound had crumbled a spirit, and through it, we could all feel it. Who had really hit him? Had I passed him on to Murphy, or had Murphy passed him on to me. I didn't know now, but I wanted to so despertily. His head had been swimming through the slaming claws of madness. His vision had been taken away, and so had it gone from those behind the claws. Dis truction was vast in the minds of both. No one could see the other, and no one could see themselves. Put desire through a hell storm and kill it. This is the only way when frustration is raging. The emptyness had to be filled, and now seeping into my guts were his seighs. I thought I was on the road leaving this moveable torment. Now, yes, once again, it is kissing my bowles with the sickness of a serpent, and making them spill the sour juce into my veins. My heart is pumping with the mad love of the forgiven. I forgive him for his rushing, but I can't forgive myself, for I am questioning my sin. God, his moan is low. Deep, and lost of bitterness. Only wishing for a newness. A beginning from this point on, with nothing to remind him of his birth. Take the pain away, and I will be good. Let me speak, without the movement that constitutes sound tearing my words apart. I heard a car and turned to see a red light turning and a white light streaming

Original Scan

Page 157

AI Interpretation

GPT

Kneeling beside the badly hurt man and hearing his low moan, Michael is overtaken by guilt and confusion just as the police lights come across the meadow and he and Murphy are identified, cuffed, and taken away.

The voice turns inward fast here, and for once the fight is not being narrated as excitement but as contamination. The arrest lands almost as a relief because it interrupts the moral panic already taking hold in him.

Claude

The narrator pleads 'let's stop this hell... He / is hurt bad,' seeing O'Dandy and Murphy as 'white / skulls prowling through the unforgiven,' and the page turns into a sustained meditation on shared guilt: in 'the wild depth' there were 'no sides... only rage and the blinding ego,' so that the unanswerable question - 'Had I passed him on to / Murphy, or had Murphy passed him on to me' - dissolves into a single collective wound. The injured man's moan seeps into his guts 'with the sickness of a serpent,' and he lands on the asymmetry of forgiveness - 'I forgive him for his rushing, but I can't forgive myself, for I / am questioning my sin' - as a red light swings across the meadow and headlights stream in.