Free Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton Page B

Africans."
    "You are telling me,
Bruce...”
    "Yes, I am telling you that we are different
souls—a different order of souls trying to fit ourselves into this
crazy world. Aliens, if you will, aliens...trying our best to find
a fit where no fit is possible. Not possible, that is, the way the
rules of the game have been rigged against us. It's like decreeing
that no Africans may fall in love."
    "That's an interesting concept."
    "It's much more than a concept, I'm afraid.
Luckily I have found the truth for myself. But for each one like
me, there are thousands like poor Herman."
    "You knew Herman, then? We're talking Herman
Milhaul? Somehow I got the impression that you hadn't—when I
mentioned his name the other night you acted dumb."
    "I knew him vaguely. The name didn't ring a
bell right away. I'd heard—but I could not help him. He was too
lost, too confused, poor soul. Well, he's getting the dickens for
it right now."
    "Where uh, where is he getting that?"
    "Another realm. He'll be given time to
straighten it out, then he'll have to try again."
    "He'll be born again?"
    "Yes."
    "Same as before?"
    "Considering the record this last time, yes,
I'm sure of it."
    "You're saying he has no sexual choice."
    "At this stage of his evolution, none
whatever. He's been through all the rest and mastered it. Now he
must master this."
    "You mean that he has evolved into a gay
soul?"
    "That is an amusing idea.
But it's not too far from the truth, at that. For want of a better
name here on earth, yes; I suppose you could think of him as a gay
soul."
    "Is there a name for it in that other
realm?"
    "Yes, there is. But there is no exact
correspondence in our language. There is a word, however, that is
very close."
    "Which one is that?"
    "Angel."
    "Angel?"
    "Close enough, yes. Close enough."
    I must interrupt the
transcript at this point because it is here that we begin to veer
away into the other stuff and I wish, for the record (same as I did
for Clara), to place Bruce into proper perspective. Here are just a
few of the more familiar names of those who might sympathize most
strongly with Brace's struggle for understanding: Alexander the
Great, Horatio Alger, Hans Christian Andersen, W. H. Auden, Edward
II (English king), Gaius Julius Caesar, André Gide, Nikolai Gogol,
Hadrian, Henry III (French king), Rock Hudson, Alexander von
Humboldt, James I (English king), John Maynard Keynes, Leonardo da
Vinci, W. Somerset Maugham, Michelangelo (Buonarroti), Montezuma
II, Plato, Cole Porter, Marcel Proust, Richard I (the
Lion-Hearted—English king), Arthur Rimbaud, Camille Saint-Saëins,
Sappho, Pope Sixtus IV (Francesco della Rovere), Socrates,
Sophocles, Gertrude Stein, Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky, Walt Whitman,
Tennessee Williams...
    Angels all, perhaps, if Bruce is right.
     
    "How widely is it known, Bruce, that Annie
is—how would you call it?—sort of like your stepmother."
    "Who told you that?"
    "I picked it up. Is it truer'
    "It's a ridiculous thought. First off, she
is only a few years older than I. Secondly, no man ever formally
acknowledged fathering me; not to me, anyway. But if you are
alluding to the fact that Annie married a man of advanced years who
virtually on his death bed claimed to be my father, no, we do not
talk about that."
    "Have you ever discussed it with her?"
    "Well of course I have. It was she who
sought me out and brought me to his deathbed."
    "I understood that he died from a fall in
the bathtub."
    "He died from injuries sustained in that
fall. He was in his death coma when first I learned of him."
    "So you never really had a chance to talk to
him."
    "It's just as well. I probably would have
cursed him. I was not as enlightened then as I am now."
    "How old are you, Bruce?"
    "Well now, that is a rude question."
    "Fuck it. How old are you?"
    "I'm twenty-eight. How old are you?"
    "Older than that, but not much. I never knew
my dad either. Not even on his deathbed. My name is Ford by pure
chance and my mother's wit. I was