Free The Wilding by Benjamin Percy Page B

first in months.
    He walks from the living room down a narrow hallway and into his bedroom. There is a full-length mirror mounted on the closet door and he studies his reflection in it. The only source of light is a 40-watt bulb glowing above him. It has about the same effect as a flashlight, throwing long shadows that squirm all over his body when he moves. He likes the way the mask fits snugly to his face, like armor.
    When Brian was young, his father took him to a Noh drama playing at the community college. The music was unlike any he had ever heard: the calm murmur of the bamboo flute backgrounded by the sometimes slow, sometimes manic tapping of the taiko drum. And he remembers, more than anything, the masks the actors wore.
    In every Noh drama there are five types of masks—gods, demons, men, women, and the elderly—meant to depict the essential spirit of the character. And these five masks were sold afterward in the lobby. He remembers picking up the demonic mask, with its red skin and bulging white eyes. A thin mustache framed its mouth, trailing to its chin. Horns rose from its forehead. In the way of little boys, he loved it precisely for its ugliness. He begged his father to buy him one as a souvenir, but they were too expensive, so he settled instead for a cassette that featured music from the production.
    He still has the tape. Its cover is faded and its sound is bothered by the occasional hiss of static, but it plays. His boom box from high school still sits on his dresser and he inserts the tape into it now and turns up the volume.
    The reedy whistle of a flute fills the room, followed by a gunshot chorus of drumbeats. He begins to dance. The hair suit weighs probably thirty pounds and at first he slings his arms and bends his legs with some clumsiness, getting used to this second skin—and then he becomes more comfortable, his motions more fluid. Sweat begins to trail down his back and stomach. Beneath the mask his breath is like a great wind.
    As the music plays, as he leaps about his room, there is a kind of darkroom going on inside his skull. Pictures get dipped in briny solutions. At first they are white. Then they darken in places to reveal a naked woman with a paper bag over her head, a pistol growing out of a man’s crotch, a Muslim laying down a prayer rug made of human flesh, a camel burning, a six-fingered hand giving him the finger.
    And then he goes to the boom box and hits the stop button and feels trembling all through his body a quiet sense of power. He pulls on a pair of white tube socks and then his combat boots, shined to a black gleam.
    “I’m going out,” he yells to the house and pauses a moment in the doorway as if awaiting a reply.
    Years ago, they decided to have a reunion, his friends from the war. They came from scattered corners of the state but they arrived in Portland at the precise hour—at 8:00 p.m., at twenty hundred hours—at the Irish bar called the Book of Kells whose vast, dark-wooded interior reminded Brian of the belly of a ship. All three were members of the same unit, and though they had not seen each other for many months, they felt instantly comfortable for the history they shared. Two-handed handshakes gave way to hugs gave way to meaty backslaps. Jim was a round-faced man who worked for the Tigard postal service and kept his head shaved and offered an apologetic laugh at the end of every sentence, while Troy was tall and slight with his receding hairline pulled back into a weak ponytail, with punch-colored pouches under his eyes from the long hours he worked as a manager at Kinko’s. They said, “So how the hell are you?” and “You’re looking good,” when they worked their way through the bodies and the tables and found a snug at the back of the bar. A dim light hung over the table and made their skin and their teeth appear yellow.
    A waitress in a black skirt and a white collared shirt asked them if they needed a menu and they told her please and