Barry Hannah - Yonder Stands Your Orphan

“Ireland. All their broods and terrorists. Well.”

“Anyway, we wondered if you could put a trace or stop the calls.”

“This isn’t my county. I don’t know who’s calling, either, or I’d act on it. Sorry, friend.”

Facetto drove off. He felt pulled by dread to nowhere. He’d never even gotten out of his car and had spoken only through the window. He might wobble if he walked, or thrust headlong like a swimmer through this fog. Next week he was onstage again in a production of the Vicksburg Theater League. Now he couldn’t remember who he was playing, or what he spoke.

He acknowledged he was a fearful man, but why had this Uncle Ricky call shaken him so much? Horrible laughter and Facetto’s ruin were in the voice over the phone. That specter every man might feel at his shoulder. You would turn and here was the shape and face, the awful laughter, the thing pointing at you. It knew who you were and had caught up with you at last. It had seen you faring back and forth in that old woman. Hot Granny. Pulling a long one out of Granny. Hiding her false teeth. He needed sleep. He needed to be out of love.

He felt he reigned in a county which everyone of worth should have left decades ago, all breeds. He dealt with refuse, squatters, the ones gathered around their own nastiness, their own echoes, like night dogs.

Max Raymond returned to the church in the glen where Egan had beat his fists, demonstrated his hypodermic, tossed his ponytail. It was empty but open and he walked to the pinewood altar. All was poignant since Egan’s uncle had died and Egan’s face had been mutilated. Egan still refused to name the mutilator. Raymond remained silent as well, the bones, his disgrace, the stab wound, which still throbbed in his buttock when he walked or played the sax or even stood too long.

Rain hit on the tin roof. Early shots from the pickets before main engagement. The rain pleased Raymond immensely, as it always did. It whispered, cancel your duty to the outer, get fetal, think of caves. He had loved it at Tulane, where he went to school forever, it seemed. Rain out of Texas and the Gulf. Twilight now, the last of radiant heat sweeping out in the new breezes under the cracked windows with their purple and green glass. Last swirls of color before you drowned, maybe. You could imagine yourself purified by them, you wanted it. Clear this mess, Lord. Save me while you’re at it.

Raymond waited and then picked up a hymnal. The altar was lit by a single bulb in a reading lamp. He was about to tear out a page and leave a message to Byron Egan.

Outside, a car crunched alongside the church on the pea gravel. He went to the window and saw two boys in an amazing automobile, a 1948 Ford coupe in deep red with a gold hood. The driver could barely see over the panel. The driver did not cut off the engine. The car pushed out a considerable white cloud from the rear. Perhaps blown or crippled by a break. But the thing kept throbbing. The boys seemed to have been stolen by it and made to do its will. Well, if you can shoot and drive at ten, then it’s still the South, Raymond thought. He raised the window and leaned out as Egan had done many nights ago and lost his face.

“Are you the preacher?” asked the boy behind the wheel.

“No.”

“Are you his friend?”

“I think so.”

“Tell him we wanted him to do this thing right. We gone to have some fun. Might even shoot somebody if we can get him to follow us. We think he seen us and took the bait all right.”

“Stop the car and come in. Don’t be rash or dumb now.”

“We carryin’ his own pistol. Mortimer’s.”

“That’s what I mean. No reason to make more trouble.”

“You think the preacher’ll be back soon?”

“I imagine. It’s Wednesday night. Prayer meeting.”

“You know any other preachers that smoke cigarettes, mister?”

“No I don’t, not right off.”

“That’s why we chose him. We like him. But we gonna come back when we see his car here with yours.”

They were underage, undersize, underfed even. But in the vehicle they had dignity, and you did not think of children but grim little men. Wild smoke out the back and the two meager heads, pledged to this red and golden absurdity. A casino roundup car. They drove off very solemnly with the bad shifting. The car lurched from its own colors, then went smoother in the third gear.

He waited for the preacher a while longer. Maybe there was no prayer meeting here. Or canceled while Egan was mourning for his uncle Feeney. Yet Man Mortimer might be close to the boys. Raymond could stand being a coward only just a little bit longer. He left.

When the preacher did come a half hour later, there was a pile of crushed bones on the top step of the church porch. He knew at once what they were. He had money in his pocket for an installment on his loan. Mortimer did not need to go voodoo on him. But the man was apparently enjoying the reach of his evil now. Rushing into symbols, always a sign of some disorder, decided the preacher, much reformed since those years of the Maltese crosses and crossbones of the bikers. He wanted to ride, to drink, to smoke. He had started smoking again several weeks back. Nobody liked it, and he tended to hide his butts like a schoolboy would. In trees, rest rooms, the cup of his hand.

Egan was not too mournful. Taking Uncle Carl Bob to Onward would have been sadder. Now he had a surplus of money, really, a home, dogs, cats, land. Two priests had attended the small funeral in Vicksburg. They were nice gentlemen, fond of Brother Carolus Robert still. This helped Egan’s heart.

He’d come to sweep the church and check the space heaters and radiators because the cold was on. But he would preach if any showed. The rain chill lay in him still. The heaters were old donated units, probably illegal. The clay grates red with heat. They ran off a propane tank behind the little church. He liked them because you saw immediate hell in them. Hell was loose in the world and it had its colors. Beings came up from its reaches in a reverse resurrection and got among what righteous flocks remained.

He knew he had no more life span than a dog’s left to him, and his face might ruin his chances for marriage, but he would bring a righteous posse into this fight, beginning tonight with even one sheep. These bones were merely death, reminders there was only one road and the road never changed. They were only the last litter of life. Perhaps his methedrine run seven years back was meant to show him this. Here they were where they belonged. He might preach about them. Or lacquer them for display in the chapel, carrying them with him to his other ministries. He did not quite understand yet his duty to them, but on the other hand he had not known what day would follow the next since he surrendered himself to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Serving his Lord had been a joy and not insanity at all. It was joy even when none listened, even when he was cursed for a Christer in the casino aisles. When the right triumphed, Egan knew they would build cancer centers and Christian motorcycle-repair shops, and bookstores and even colleges from the casino buildings. He was not waiting, he knew there were others of the same mind. They would see the tails of the godforsaken backing out the greasy way they came in, Donald Trump, Harrah’s, whoever thought they were at home here. He had heard Russian Mafia too. Wherever it went, you knew the money was siphoned off to out-of-state, out-of-grace pigs somewhere, not into an education fund for small children as they boasted. And Lord , he whispered, I know these counties better than any living man. I rolled in sin in every quarter, every dark province. Even Moses wandered in the desert forty years. To compensate for former lost years in narcotics, I have been blessed .