Barry Hannah - Yonder Stands Your Orphan

Like many another reformed smoker, he had returned to the habit twofold. He smoked incessantly and drank nearly a gallon of thick coffee every day. Because the minister smoked openly, he could not have a denomination, only a flock. He knew smoking was wrong, he was weak. He was positive the Lord frowned on it. Some things were sin and others just math. You smoked a number of cigarettes and then you got ill. You watched television a number of times and then you were a television, empty until turned on again. The casino was math become a monster. But even with wrestling and prayer, even tears and spasms into the wee hours, he could not quit cigarettes. Maybe a sign to the weak ones they would be let in and forgiven too.

He felt sin more deeply than the rest because he had seen it from its early infant sleep. And bliss too, the bliss of relief from his sour burdens. A bliss next to flight itself. Dear old Ulrich, Egan had tried to tell him this, but the warrior soul of the man was still angry about Feeney, his pal, and sad past words. Egan and Ulrich sat long on the end of the pier watching the ring of red around a cold moon. Ulrich told him he must love the animals even more and help them. Yet Egan thought the heart could stand only so much concern. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, no more.

He took the broom and began sweeping in the pale glow of the altar lamp. He did not want lights overhead yet. He wanted silence and shadows and the rain outside on the roof for a while. Then he found the torn page with the note on the altar.

I AM YOUR SERVANT CALL MAX RAYMOND.

The number beneath it.

Egan had seen Max Raymond and his band, especially the wife, performing in a casino where he had once dearly loved to gamble and walked trembling past the tables still, his pockets full of stiff little cards. John 3:16 on one side; YOU ARE IN HELL on the other. Quietly handing them out to the annoyed and angry, some frightened by his cheek tattoo. When he came into the music hall through which Cuban jazz was throbbing, he saw there were not many revelers at the tables. Few dancers. He saw the Coyote onstage, curved around the microphone like an old torchess, and straightaway coveted her, sailing into fantasies so sweet they seemed beyond heaven or hell. He whispered his thanks for her existence, then departed quietly.

But he asked questions later, came back to the casino, his ministry bent somewhat to the earthly appreciation of Mimi Suarez. Who was the husband with such luck? He saw him, heard him play the horn and could not understand.

In the church he turned on the overhead fluorescent bar. He continued sweeping into the corners, invigorated by the cool drafts. For all his philosophy, he avoided looking at the pile of bone shards on the porch. Then a voice called from outside. The man was still in his car, leaning out. Byron Egan stood on the threshold.

“Oh Pastor?”

“Is that you, Raymond?”

“No, no.”

“Are you with the bones?”

“I am related to the bones.” A bent man stepped from the car and stood at the bottom of the steps. He seemed unmindful of the mist on his face.

Egan recognized Mortimer. “What are you wanting?” he asked, shaking, holding the broom.

“Oh, my money, but no idea after that really. I just seem to want to go a lot of places,” said Mortimer.

Egan dropped the broom and whipped out a great switchblade, nearly a bowie, from the hip of his jeans. The blade jumped out with a loud click and lock. He waved it beneath the porch light.

“Why Pastor, I been sick. I know not what I do. What could have happened to your face?”

“I could see you now a hundred yards off. I lived in sin an age and I know you well.”

“You look a devil yourself. Like you in some far pirate tribe. Old Burt Lancaster swinging from the ropes on a boat. But they’re doing not a half-bad job on it.”

“I am the Lord’s servant, branded.”

“I’m taking these old scraps of bone off with me. But they might be employed again. I’m getting to be the caretaker of these slivers, looking for the owner.”

“Get out of here. You’re the black seed itself.” Egan thrust the money at Mortimer, who gathered up the bone sticks haphazardly, dropping pieces, unmindful. Then he got in the car and went.

In this life, last things are never said, nor can they be. The preacher pocketed the knife. His knees were weak, his neck stiff. He was certain the Lord moved in his fingers and did not understand this fear, or even the words he had just uttered. He thought he heard a crackling, or a sigh, just outside the south window, and he watched out for what glistened in the mist. He listened for the living sigh of evil, if it was bigger now. Echoes from the casino were all he heard.

Then Ulrich’s old woody wagon rolled up to the church, glistening. Both ancient and new, phantom of a heavy past but joy manufactured right into it. First Ulrich climbed out slowly, then on the other side Max Raymond. Egan was very happy.

“We’ve come to worship, to discuss, to live,” said Raymond, somewhat practiced, Egan thought.

“I’m scared, I’m alone. I’ve come to ask you to let me move in with you and the dogs. I’ll be no bother. I must be close to Feeney’s dogs. I’ll clean and watch the house for you,” said Ulrich.

Egan did not doubt he was given two miracles. He loved the old man. The man needed him. The dogs needed Ulrich, even with his oxygen and nose tube. The man who had once flown and dreamed himself away all his life afterward.

Egan himself was suddenly wrapped twice by a high lonesome and a circle of fear. But this night was good. The wine of gentle conversation, other like spirits directly near to hand in the nights. Good, good. The old friendly strength came back to him.

“I want revenge,” said Max Raymond. “I’m a dog myself, the dog of a zombie.”

“Come in, come in. What we have is one old sinner out there trying to be legion. He doesn’t even trust his help anymore. He is nearing his breakdown. He took my money and drove away muttering, afraid of my knife.”

“You are an armed Christian?” asked Raymond.

“I believe the Lord approves if they get you in the face. And no little slap on the cheek. I don’t think the Lord is training any knife bait no more.”

“He called my home and offered my wife a job as queen of whores if her performance with him was sufficient,” said Raymond. “Said she needed breaking in a little and English lessons.”

CUBANISMO! GOT TO HAVE IT! read the flyer.

The band blared and chopped along, aroused by itself, uncertain of ever descending. The weekend crowd was big, less derelict than usual. A few college people, a bus crowd from Wisconsin, stunned dentists and their strap-shouldered wives, some of them without a social event since high school. Lone dancers from dead Protestant crossroads where meager churches jutted like tombstones with steps. Ignited, undulant, gay, half drunk, friendly. The rage of the casino just behind them, red and gold, a lost football crowd.

The wives and husbands were startled by the Coyote, who shimmered under her black ringlets, curved in her gown like promise itself. The women wanted her for a pet, the men to be an anonymous head eating away at her. Many changed race. Some tried to have ecstasy in Spanish. The band made them doubt there had ever been another life.

One who danced alone was John Roman, who could no longer stand the pain at home. His shoulders went up and back. His gray head sweated, his eyes closed. He wanted down the river of trumpet, saxophone, trombone, the raft of rhythm underneath him. Dance some of the gray sick off me, he prayed.

Max Raymond searched the crowd even as he played the horn. This was half impossible for the spotlights. He did not play so evilly tonight. His playing was not firmly anything. His coveted wife was nothing to him now, his horn nothing, he was not certain he was clothed. His entrances and choruses with the trombone and trumpet were tepid, staggering, reeling without heart, like a tune wounded but still carrying on down the road in bedroom slippers. It was Costume Night, and many of the crowd were wearing masks. The Coyote was always in the contest, he thought grimly. In her natural stuff, the minimal mini memorable, her legs. We have a winner.