Page:Jay Little - Maybe—Tomorrow.pdf/272

 to steady it. "Bob … Bob … I love you," he hysterically muttered, the roaring water drowning the words, filling his open lips. "Why," he coughed, "didn't you say you loved me? Why? … Why? …"

A feeling possessed him of the fragility of his life on the earth and of the transiency of all human habitation. The thought reminded Gaylord of the mashed squirrels he had often seen lying on the roads around Cotton on autumn mornings. It was shocking to soak in, all in an instant, the fact that people are as soft and destructible as squirrels.

He had a sensation of long absence and return, or as if he had awakened into some earlier time. Suppose he had lived in the time of Louis IV? Would things have been different? Suppose he had been a queen? He had heard somewhere that Queen Elizabeth was really a man. He wondered about it remembering Dusty. Dusty looked more like a woman than Queen Elizabeth. She certainly wasn't beautiful or feminine looking from the pictures he had seen of her.

The water chilled him and now goose bumps covered his body. I'm cold, he thought, and abruptly came back to his own. And he wondered at the miracle by which he had been spun into that era that had nothing to do with him.

"I think of the craziest things," he said, drying himself. "I guess I really am queer." He sighed deeply … "Queen … Paul said that's what the queer boys called themselves … Queen … Queen Gaylord Le Claire … I'll never call myself a Queen …"

After the shower, Gaylord wrote to Paul Boudreaux.

Dear Paul:

First, I want to thank you for the wonderful time you showed me while I was in New Orleans. I know if it had not been for you the whole trip would have been a failure. You showed and told me so many things I had no idea were going on in this old world of ours. Things that have become clearer to me now. Your letter was sweet and I thank you for the things you said and the way you expressed your feelings toward me. Forgive me for not obeying you and tearing it up 262