Barry Hannah - Ray

Sabers up! Get your horses in line! They have as many as we do and it will be a stiff one. Hit them, hit them! Give them such a sting as they will never forget. Ready? Avant! Avant, avant, avant! Kill them!

Horses gleaming with sweat everywhere, Miniés flying by you in the wind.

Sometimes there is no answer from your wife, even when you’re sweet as pie. Sometimes there is no answer from the world. The trees are furry with green, the beach is rolling, the old houses stand straight and thick in the shade of the oaks. And Sister and I are in love.

I read the paper as I was waiting in the emergency room. Sister is dead, and they have Maynard Castro as probable cause. Three times through her precious brain. Maynard just could not take the beauty. Not a sign of sexual molestation. No sign of nothing except an outright shooting in the nightclub where she sings.

He couldn’t even wait for her to sing at the Youth Impact.

Lewd stories came out about him, as told by his wife and others. Repressed sexuality that finally pitched him over into total craziness.

Sit on that, Ray. Your left arm is gone.

THE gulls are coming in to the dock and fighting over the can of sardines I left out for them. I couldn’t finish it. I should eat. Sweetest Sister is gone and Westy is gone, and it is hard to swallow a cracker. Out in the gulf you see the edge of your world, many boats, and people falling off, silhouetted by the sun. Arms up, screams, goodbye. The moon is coming in red. Small-craft warnings are out. Over the crumpled horizon the moon seems to roll away the clouds and be a great ruby marble.

Barry and I are here. We aim to catch some fish.

Lee and Barry are also back here in Tuscaloosa with me. Hold old Ray close, everybody, for he is estranged from the clear home that he once knew.

I almost forgot. My dogs are here too. We’re all in here now and we are having fun pitching pennies in a minnow bucket. We are about to eat the delicious ribs from Archibald’s — happy nigger that smokes them the best — and my daughter Lee and I have had a good time at the university pool. She comes down the slide hollering with glee. She’s a water lady of nine years. We go off the diving board together in a backflip. Through the water and swimming forward.

This is me at the trial.

“Doctor, did you ever hear Doctor Castro threaten the woman?”

“No.”

“Did you yourself ever have sexual relations with the deceased?”

“No.”

“You are under oath.”

“The answer is no.”

“Semen was found in her vagina.”

“Not mine.”

“But Doctor Castro has alleged that he saw. .”

“I’m not on trial here.”

Maynard stood up, crying, and confessed. You couldn’t understand too much of what he said through the weeping. But there it was. He rushed over to me and hugged me. I came up with a quick stroke from the old Navy practice and sent him sprawling back to his lawyer.

In their secret hearts, such perversities as Maynard know there are things they can never have, things they have wanted with all their hearts. So they kill them. Most preachers are this way. Their messages seem benevolent, but they are more evil than the rest of us walking pavement.

When I fly again, it will be against the preachers.

AFTER the trial, this man comes up to me. I’m so full of trouble I don’t even recognize him. Holy God, it’s one of those students I taught in that American Civ class. He wants me to read his poem.

Certain Feelings

I have certain feelings about this room

I have certain feelings about doom

I have certain feelings about trees and gnats

I have certain feelings about this and that

I have certain feelings about firearms

I have certain feelings about the girls and the guests

I have certain feelings about firearms

I have certain burglar alarms

I have certain strains of Mozart in my soul

Certain helplessness I cannot control

Though I guess when all is said and done

I have certain feelings

They always say Southerners can write. So I slugged this skinny lad. I laid him down the steps. They took this on the local TV, and I watched it with Westy. I was in my white suit and I duked away this harmless poet. He tumbled down a lot of steps and his family is saying they’ll sue.

No matter. I’m in Westy again. The thing seemed to have turned her on. Not the violence, but the lonely trouble. Cornelia Wallace called me up about publishing her novel. Fame on the TV got me back to Westy.

She covers me with kisses. Tears running down. Ray heaving, wife receiving. Hear me, poets. I have certain feelings.

IN the moon that comes over Dauphin Island, over the bay, we see the gray-blue chariots of the gods move across its face. The wind is running from the south. The night is clear. The blinking lights of the airport tower are throwing out against the color.

The hurricane is over and many people are dissatisfied that it killed no one. Bob the hurricane came in and just sort of raised the water, blew a few phony cupolas off the houses.

Ray meets one of the detestable children of the modern day. I delivered her baby and now she’s delivered her modern self onto the world. She was at the 7-Eleven when I was buying crab bait.

“Are you, I’d guess, a Taurus, Doctor Ray?”

“Yes. Nice to see you.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Fishing with my father and my son.”

“Oh, how macho. Just like a Taurus.”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

“I’m divorced now.”

“Oh.”

WESTY and I are hugging. The thrill goes all around the world. I seem to have made her pregnant. Westy is worried about having a retarded idiot at her age, and we have too many children already. But I want it, moron, imbecile, whatever’s in the cards.

Come forth! Take flight! Son or daughter of Ray and Westy!

When the day is done, I have seen ten patients and the sun is setting out over the trees. Westy sits on the bed crying, face in her hands. She doesn’t know what to do about the baby. She is scared of it. Another thing to fly and die.

Dr. Ray breaks into tears himself. He washes them away with cold water, but they flood again. The baby in Westy’s womb looms up like the huge fetus at the end of 2001. Our baby, our baby.

Two more days and it turns out she wasn’t pregnant, after all. My brain was in squalor and torment. But now it’s like another friend I lost in Nam.

“Edward, what you got?”

“I’ve got something, something on me!”

Then I saw it, the SAM missile go into his exhaust. It was a big white flower spraying in the night. There was Edward, lieutenant commander from St. Paul, Minnesota, a nigger who saved my life twice, falling to pieces. There he goes.

I should have delivered him. I should have been awaker.

Mr. Hooch was at the funeral, of course. Sister was lying all fixed up in the coffin. I couldn’t go by to see the body or smell the bank of flowers. Mr. Hooch is a strong man. His wife trembles and smokes. The Hooches have lived in CM (Constant Misery), and now their first claim to fame is dead.

I was shivering. Westy was holding me with her slim arms.

“You really loved her, didn’t you?” says Westy.

“Yeah. Westy, I’m sorry, but I did.”

“She was lovely. But don’t you think I’m lovelier?”

“Yes.”

“Is everything just sex and music?”