Flash Gordon Read Free

farmers. He heard the children’s dim laughter as they sprayed each other with water from a hose. He heard the whine of a harmonica, the beating of hands and the stomping of feet. He climbed fences until he no longer saw the shanties, until he no longer heard the laughter or the harmonica.
    He walked into the forest, into a peaceful world of shady trees. Part of his soul—he supposed that was what it was, he possessed no vocabulary through which he could analyze his spirit—embraced the essence of the silent trees. They became mysterious creatures somehow gifted with peace and long life and wisdom. The dark shadows eased the maniacal quality of his personality which forced him to throw footballs through a tire for hours. He was temporarily freed from the desire to excel and to justify the existence that had caused his mother’s death and had ruined his father’s life. In the forest, life and death mingled with the logic of the inevitable, and he pursued his communion with nature with his usual single-mindedness.
    And the Forest in turn embraced him. Birds alighted on his shoulders. The coon and the possum did not fear him. Bucks ate leaves from his hand. Rabbits hopped behind him and the porcupine did not bristle as he walked by.
    As he studied the silent, eternal battle of the plants, slowly strangling one another in the quest for growth and life, Flash realized death was not to be feared; nor was the death of those close to him to be mourned for years. During these trips to the woods, Flash exorcised himself of demons of which he had been unaware. And as he grew older, he always carried something of the tranquillity of the woods with him, a tranquillity never more potent than during those situations demanding the utmost of his physical skill, intelligence, and composure. This ability served him well during the months he played high-school football. He won a scholarship to the University of Alabama and eventually a position as starting quarterback for the New York Jets.
    This inner peace served him when his aunt Candace died in an automobile accident, leaving him truly alone for the first time. It served him during the tumultuous political events of the sixties and during the gloomy aftermath of the seventies. It helped him to grow into a tall, strong man who carried his bulky muscles with the grace of a gymnast. His hair and eyebrows were blond. His dark eyes possessed a sensitivity and capacity for compassion one did not normally expect of a high-salaried football player; they marked a man who analyzed emotional and spiritual matters as well as the corporal. His handsome face, unscarred by the rough-and-tumble years of football, radiated something of the romantic poet, who perceived eons of evolution in the shape of a rose and who bowed to eternity beneath the canopy of stars. If it had not been for his childhood dreams, Flash never would have been a football player. He liked the game and his skill was unparalleled, but he disapproved of brutality for its own sake; he would have broken his contract and quit the team of a coach who said, “Winning’s the only thing!”
    Sportswriters were not the first to notice these unusual qualities in Flash Gordon. Women from every walk of life noticed them at once, and they responded deeply, while men could but react with confusion. However, the unattached women who appealed strictly to Flash’s sexual instincts were invariably disappointed. Although Flash enjoyed the physical sensations of sex, its main attraction for him was the spiritual bond enjoyed by the participants. He had the reputation of being a playboy, a reputation fostered mainly by People Magazine and its ilk; he did little to perpetuate it.
    However, the complex components of his personality and his convictions conspired to foster his reputation of having a temper which occasionally exploded.
    “Damn it, Guiraldes!” exclaimed Flash. “You didn’t have to do that!”
    There were two minutes and ten seconds