Free Whipple's Castle by Thomas Williams

could never, ever possibly be repeated, the ice flowed into the very center of the sun.
    And then she was herself, quenched, turned inside out, the way she wanted to be, and would be until he withdrew, cruelly, selfishly pulled away from her and turned her back into thinking and having parts and limbs, while he lay enclosed in himself, enclosed in his selfish sleep. Which she forgave before she breathed, before she thought of anything but the sorrow of his growing lightness and departure. And she knew, forgiving him, that it hadn’t been anything like that to him. Oh yes, it was good. Yes, it was great. That was a good one, he might mumble, but she suspected that he had been thinking of her as Woman. Not even her, far less the losing of himself as himself. He was Harvey Whipple, and she was Woman, who, as was his right to expect, had before him lain back and taken. Oh, great honor! But she forgave him that.
    â€œTingalingaling,” he said. “My goddam ears are ringing.” His hand on her bare skin was dead to what it felt, she knew. Sometimes they tried, but now it was so much more than just the pain. He was beginning to see himself as a cripple, and even deep inside, where she knew he tried to protect what he used to be, he had begun to lose the idea of Harvey Whipple the God-given answer to women. Harvey Whipple the great stud and servicer of females, the great bull-deliverer of their allowances of pleasurable moans. Now he had begun to see, deep in there, what he saw in the mirror.
    She reached over and touched his face, the skin soft, the whiskers in little holes now, where they used to stand hard as cactus. He didn’t move; he would never accept a gesture of pity. Soon he was asleep, or pretending to sleep.
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    Harvey Watson Whipple. Whipple the Cripple. The nudge of pain was receding notch by notch, with just the slightest little increase before each notch, at his pulse, like an automobile jack being lowered. He was sure he could sleep, if he had anything to sleep for. But why did he need the rest? The past, where his only happy thoughts could go, was no place for a man’s thoughts, but if he didn’t sleep, the past would come back to bother him, and tell him that all his triumphant memories were finished, because there was only the past. He would try to get rich, now, but what did that matter, really? What good was it to have money? No, he shouldn’t jump to that conclusion; tomorrow those columns of figures would be as fascinating as ever. But now, at night, it was hot sun and bright days that he couldn’t help remembering. Always in the daylight. That time: yes, here came a memory of not so long ago. The sun grew over him, over the baseball field, and the clean dust around home plate, the yells of his townspeople behind him, the tense Northlee players who had, for him, shifted their positions radically, and they knew that no matter what they did, he was dangerous. The outfield had gone deep, but the infield didn’t know what to do. One player hollered to do this and the coach hollered to do that. Northlee had a new pitcher named Worthington, who had a fast ball, the fastest in the league, and he’d put two of them in a row just outside, and Harvey swung on both, and missed. Two strikes, and then he thought: He’s going to do it again, because my bat’s too light. I can see his pitches are fast, and I swing too hard, and with this light bat I’m pulling in away from the ball. So he got George Fellows’ great heavy bat that seemed to weigh as much as two ordinary bats. He slowly left the box and walked over and deliberately picked the monster out. How Northlee heckled him then! But they were worried. So was he. And on the next pitch Worthington put a fast ball down the outside and that was the last feel they got of it, because it hit a boxcar on the Cotter & Son siding, four hundred feet away. Northlee didn’t say much as he loped around the bases, and