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Gamma
Bomb Gamma Bomb
by William Faulkner
It was her father (General "Thunderbolt" Ross) who knew the
story best. When the stranger appeared in Yoknapatawpha, he had with him
a white lab coat and shirt, a pair of spectacles, a pair of purple trousers
which would have raised little alarm in the streets of Paris, and the
honorific Doctor, though it was widely held that he was no doctor of any
healing art, rather some more esoteric researcher. General Ross predicted,
and years later would confirm, that these garments were Banner's signal
and solitary possessions.
It seems this demon (man-ogre-demon) -- his name was Banner --(Doctor
Banner) -- Doctor Banner -- he come out of nowhere with his dark-grey
notslave notman, and that notman and Banner's will alone cleared them
hundred square miles to make a plantation --(Banner's Hundred) -- Banner's
Hundred. Banner would go into town never taking his man-beast with him.
The twain never to appear together. Banner's uncompanioned appearances
in town were enough to set it astir. Banner would brook no query to his
origin, intention or enterprise.
Attempts by the General and other men of town to engage him in debate
and discourse were met with the resolution that the doctor disliked debate
as it was prone to stir him to anger and none gathered would like to see
him in that state. In fact at such times there was a lambence in his eyes,
so fecund-fertile it seemed even an adumbration of the men's dubiety would
be a Hephaitosian blow to his skull, releasing his demons Athena-like,
whole and armored.
The brute, his ogre-faced notslave, always shirtless and unshod, wore
pants a shade of purple identical to Banner's, an aphotic cousin of the
wistaria which bordered the fields. The durance of those pants was scarcely
enough to fetter the monster muscles beneath as he tore violently at the
land.
Why Miss Ross, so late in life, chose to break her effluvium of lugubrious
silence and oblige him (Quentin Jones) to hear this tale, he couldn't
guess. Some would say it was because Banner had saved the life of his
father Rick Jones once, and Rick Jones was the nearest thing to a friend
Banner had.
The chief quandary in all the lore of Banner's Hundred was where he came
by his colossal ashen notslave, and why the two had such an inseverable
bond. Miss Ross alone held insights to this. Her brother, now long deceased,
had journeyed to New Orleans and uncovered the dark secret Banner concealed
so well. It was war time and the doctor volunteered for the Army's
special weapons research projects. Banner developed a blasting cap hundreds
of times more deadly than cannon fire or dynamite. At its core was
a gamma irradiated ore. The weapon was used only once. It was that
blast meant to kill young Rick Jones. Instead Banner suffered the
blast and found himself married to a man-ogre-monster that would erupt
from inside him and subsume him.
Banner and his hulking notslave were one..
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