Barry Hannah - Ray

This was a friendly city, Tuscaloosa, though there were sirens to be heard most parts of the day and the state asylum across the way was full. On the streets you might see such as this: a small man wearing a football helmet, walking in front of a man in a black suit and white Panama hat, the larger man in black frequently striking the smaller one over the helmet with a broom handle. They were inseparable companions, and the man in black always tipped the clerk five dollars for a Coca-Cola at the Jiffy Mart.

But we were talking about this time in the morning, 7:45. And here comes Mr. Wently by DeSoto’s house. This time DeSoto more than ever wanted to slay Mr. Wently. Wasn’t there an old bow and arrow in the house somewhere? The hatchet — where was it? Quick!

The dog, Albert, from the lesbians’ house attacked. But Wently’s routine allowed him nothing but routine, and DeSoto’s rage allowed him nothing but passion. It is terribly, excruciatingly difficult to be at peace, thought DeSoto, when all our history is war. Look at that whining half-poodle, half-schnauzer Albert. Half-bred to sit at home, look elegant, and eat and fart. Half-bred to throw its vicious teeth into the unknown villain. Wently is killing everything.

DeSoto called in to the soap factory to say he was sick, which was true. He was sick with thought. He lingered awhile, watching a few joggers pass his house — healthy, harmless, in love with the thought that health promised the whole thing — bigger breasts, penis, chest. Endurance. That’s it. If you can cut through it with peace and joy. If you can give health to those around you. But DeSoto didn’t feel like it just now.

I want Wently, thought DeSoto. I want to purchase his death.

Maybe there are worse guys than me, he said to himself. For example, the guy from Minnesota who hummed all the time. He seemed to be furnishing the score for every puny adventure of his life. Always the hum, tunes various, dense, thin, largo, allegro. A trip to the café would take him through a sonata. There was a tune for feeding his cat, another for his goldfish, another for watering the plants in his crummy color-clashing apartment. He had no radio or phonograph. His time with women was limited — by them. But on he hummed incessantly, arrogantly, until somebody broke his mouth at a graveside ceremony one afternoon. DeSoto played Ping-Pong with him once. The hum was infuriating. They were odd tunes, nothing familiar. This man’s game was mediocre, but it must be sung about. Every gesture must be styled by the hum, every blazing inconsequential adjustment had a song. Maybe he had been to too many movies, watched too much television. But the hum incensed Charlie DeSoto even more than Wently incensed him.

He got out his French horn and played a few quick scales, then an inventive cadenza, to impress himself with his culture.

The next morning there was Wently and there went Albert pretending to be at him again. DeSoto was sitting on his front steps reading the paper and Wently passed within three feet of him.

“Hello, damn it,” said DeSoto.

The old guy neither replied nor missed a stride. The cane clicked, the shoes, which were rubber-soled, flapped through the leaves on the sidewalk.

DeSoto went to the soap factory, but he was in a state. The workers under him wondered what had happened. He drank on the job, cursed, was loud and impatient, lit and stomped out many cigars. A handsome young man of thirty-four, Charlie was beheld a despot of years. Usually a well-groomed and soft-spoken fellow, today he wore slovenly pants and shouted.

His girlfriend, who was Eileen and was his secretary, almost called the doctor, who was me. But instead she locked the door to the office and faced Charlie.

“I’ve got something temporarily that not even love will cure,” he said.

The next afternoon he walked around the block to see where Wently lived. He had never known exactly. It was a tall green house with a splendid porch. Wently was rocking in a rocking chair, pushing himself with weak jolts of his cane. He was wearing the three-piece suit. He must have been a man of some means. Big oaks and an enormous magnolia comforted his yard. In a chair next to him rocked a younger man who held his face in his hands, as if in anguish. Wently, decided DeSoto, was also driving this fellow crackers. The two were not speaking. Wently was staring ahead serenely, fascinated only, it seemed, by himself and the system of his rocking — not even by the weather, which was medium blue and fine.

DeSoto observed the grief of the younger man — Wently’s grandson? his nephew? Then he walked back home and inquired among the neighbors. It was Wently’s grandnephew. DeSoto had been in there right on it.

At 7:40 the next morning DeSoto began his own walk around the block. He was wearing a headdress, cheap, from the K-Mart, and he carried his French horn with him. From thirty feet away, he saw Wently coming toward him on the walk. Should he? Yes. DeSoto played a chain of blats in the high register. Maybe Wently was deaf, but he was not blind.

Anyhow, the old man just passed him.

“Jesus!” cried DeSoto.

A woman professor he knew was just leaving for work in her car, and she saw and heard it all. I’m making a donkey out of myself, thought DeSoto. For the rest of the day he could not eat, and he practiced self-abuse in all possible ways, sort of living in the toilet at the soap factory, moving from stall to stall so as not to invite the looks of the curious and their hellos and how-are-yous.

In the night DeSoto studied gentle thoughts. He attempted to dream of his sweetheart and her delicate parts; of light pleasures he had known, such as reversing the clock an hour when daylight saving time was over; of healthy food; of morning light on the small green ears of corn in his patch last summer. He hummed the placid tune “Home on the Range” several times through. But sleep would not come. He poured himself a tomato juice and took five B-complex vitamin pills, which were supposed to be settlers. But eventually he found himself sitting furious and awake in a chair that faced the window to his backyard.

He was there an hour, through some ten stale Lucky Strikes he had found in a drawer, when he saw the figure slough across the fence in the light of the moon. There was no doubting it was a man, a whole man. DeSoto watched him roll onto the earth and begin squirming on down the lawn. DeSoto was transfixed by the man’s progress. When he saw him reach the driveway, DeSoto stood up from his chair. He hurried out before the man could reach the next yard.

“What’s with you, fellow?” demanded DeSoto.

The man rolled toward him. DeSoto recognized his body, perhaps his face from their first encounter, the set of hair and forehead from their second. It was old Wently’s grandnephew. The neighbors said his name was Ned, a namesake of Wently, who was Edward. Ned was around thirty, but his face was haggard, his eyes heavy with bags and his mustache scraggly and askew, as if false and pasted on at a wrong angle. DeSoto had brought his flashlight.

“I say, what’s going on?” he asked again, as Ned Wently blinked his eyes in the light.

“I’m trespassing, señor. Better let me have it.”

“What’s this señor?”

“Aren’t you Spanish?”

“It’s a lie,” DeSoto said. “Now answer my question.”

“I finally let him have it,” the Wently fellow said. “He never knew what hit him. They took away my liquor, my dope and my piano, and they sent me to live with him. I’m interviewing for one dumb job after another. Got one tomorrow at the fucking soap factory. That hideous, fucking soap factory that’s screwing up the river?”

DeSoto switched off the flashlight.