Barry Hannah - Ray

“Let him have it, did you? Never knew what hit him? Come see me. I’m a foreman at the factory.”

The younger Wently did not respond. He crawled off the driveway and through a hole in the fence of the neighbor’s yard.

“Why are you crawling ?” Charlie called after him, to no use at all.

DeSoto was early on the job, at 6:30. He had to open a lot of the doors himself and his only company for a while was the maintenance and sweeping crew. The fumes of the place were violently sweet and sour. He was hungry, horny, happy, and handsome, and he made up a chant to life and himself. I am Charlie, he sang. Hai hai, hai, hai hai, hai!

Charlie DeSoto had had no sleep, but he was elated. He sat behind his aluminum desk, speculating on the gross points of the homicide. Let him have it would indicate a gun, or maybe poison. Truly, it could be anything when you put it together with Never knew what hit him. Ned would cover it. DeSoto would help him if he had to.

Eileen arrived earlier than usual, and she was all worn out. The old DeSoto car, which she had bought just as a flirting joke to please Charlie— though the orange leather interior was nice — was smoking and stalled at traffic lights. And the driver’s door would not open because of some fault in the lock.

She was confounded and thrown into a perilous dither by Charlie’s alterations. Moreover, she had cheated on DeSoto the previous night. The man was not nearly as handsome as DeSoto, but his desire for her was constant, soft, a genial tribute to the shrine of her body, and she recalled even the Bible said that was okay. She had allowed the man everything. Now nothing assuaged her guilt. Poor Charlie, poor Charlie, she muttered, sleepless and insane with contrition.

She had to arrive early and make his appearance at the office comfortable. Also she was very erotic, and her satisfaction was not close. She had driven by Charlie’s house earlier in the morning. He was not there. The mystery was compelling a storm of expectation. Here was his car in his parking slot at the factory. She hurried in, her body showered but slick again with a new sweat of the day.

She looked pretty and clean by the time the plant air conditioning had cooled her down. DeSoto responded to her chic wool skirt and satin blouse, and, as always, her dark trim ankles and sandals. She was about a quarter Lebanese and it seemed that all the best traits of that race had sprung up in Eileen suddenly.

They were alone in the office.

What happened behind the locked door was sacred to them both. It was a drunkenness of the bodies. DeSoto was charming and expert at his job, as was Eileen, and DeSoto could bear the fact that, minute after minute, Ned Wently did not appear for an interview with him. DeSoto had looked up a real job for him. It wasn’t a make-work job. Ned would have a small, quiet office near the truck docks, a supervisory position. Something higher than he should be hired at, really, but DeSoto would bring in the muscle to make it possible.

As for DeSoto’s early morning, it was exalted by the absence of old Mr. Wently on the sidewalk at 7:45. The day was clear and merry without him. DeSoto met the loud bark of Albert with an understanding smile. He also saw the pet monkey come out of Lester’s house next door. DeSoto went over and took the morning paper out of its paws, speaking to the monkey, whose name was Amy, in monkey whispers, and taking the nice animal back to his own kitchen, where DeSoto made a huge breakfast. He peeled a banana and opened a can of sardines for Amy, put them on a plate with a napkin nearby.

There was nothing about a death on the block in the newspaper.

Now the office door was locked and DeSoto was near to entering Eileen, with her skirt around her blouse and the tops of her stockings close to her sex. Charlie adored this half-clothed demonstration of lust almost better than anything. There was a call in, however, that a Mr. Ned Wently was waiting outside to see him.

Eileen stood off to the side. She shivered when Wently came in.

He was garbed in a rough tweed suit. His hair and mustache were combed a little, but he still looked disoriented, worse in daylight. The bags under his eyes were dark. His shoulders were wide, but his legs were bowed and thin. The stain of some red sauce was on his neck.

Wently looked at Eileen. His eyes lit up with the normal sex-crazy look of a man. But then he threw his weak gaze at DeSoto, and Eileen left the room.

They sat down, DeSoto and Wently, the desk between them, and were quiet for a spell.

“I’ve got something for you,” said DeSoto at last.

“And I’ve got something for you,” said the younger Wently.

He pulled out a small silverish.22 automatic pistol. DeSoto regarded it. It looked like the foetus of firearms.

“You let him have it with this?”

“I didn’t even have to after you scared the fuck out of him with the headdress and that horn. He already had a big cancer and heart disease. You took him to the edge, man. With peace and routine, he would’ve lived forever. So I never had to fire a shot. Just pointed it seriously.”

There was a long silence.

“Then all we needed was the ambulance.” Wently’s eyes were welling with tears. “Thing is, he loved me. He willed everything to me. I broke his heart when I pulled this thing on him.”

Wently began openly weeping.

“But he owed us one, my daddy and me. My daddy was swamped with debt and in precarious health when he was supporting us and my grand-uncle Edward. Edward didn’t always live in that big green house, you know. He’s sucked off the family with his goddamn routine and righteousness for years. Until he had his own stack of green and a place. Tell you what, man. These people, these peaceful people leave as many bodies behind as those big war copters in Nam, where I also had to go.”

“Then you feel justified?” said DeSoto.

“No!” Wently stared at DeSoto. Then he bent and put his face in his hands, as DeSoto had seen him doing on the porch of the Wently house. “I feel awful guilty. I put him in the ground.”

“Come on. Get out of it,” DeSoto said.

“You get out of it, DeSoto! Have you seen the crap spilling out of those pipes from this puking factory into the river? Where I used to fish when I was a little boy, there ain’t nothing but nasty white soap twenty feet down.”

“Shoot me in the thigh,” DeSoto said. “If you shoot me in the thigh, I’ll get you a job,” said DeSoto.

“I don’t need it. I got his will money.”

“Then just shoot me in the thigh. I need some of the pain.”

DeSoto put his foot on the desk. Wently shot off one low in his thigh.

Wently went away with a new perspective.

That was all by way of showing you how I come to know Charlie DeSoto and some others. Because I met DeSoto and Eileen in the emergency room. Nowadays, DeSoto fakes a limp, happily. The bullet is in there so deep and harmless and near the bone, cutting for it would be a shame.

Eileen came by to see me by herself later. She was really something to grab, after you got through the usuals. But I liked Charlie and I had rules.

This was all when I was thirty-three and divorced.

LAST year I won some awards for my papers at the conventions: “The Nervous Woman and Valium,” “Three Seraxes a Day for the Alcoholic,” “Satyriasis and Acute Depression.” But I quit flying the jets for anybody. Too many pilots around today, especially in the rich class. Some little eleven-year-old will crawl up in the cockpit with you and describe not only the whole panel but continue about your life and your girlfriends, know your astrology sign like the back of his hand, and scold you for lighting up a Kool at the point you’d like to light him up, open his door, and let him deal with the suck at twenty thousand feet.