Barry Hannah - Yonder Stands Your Orphan

“They kept Gene and Penny on the movie stage and accused them of being depraved. Penny began weeping, then told how much they had sacrificed, her and Gene. ‘You are the child we lost, come back to us in many souls.

“‘You done tore each other up getting your piece, which is slobbering on each other in front of children,’ said the white father-killer. Then they nailed Gene and Penny in their room and began starving them.

“Then the three boys walked up on poor Malcolm. They hanged him on a tree right in the horse yard, but they were sloppy and Malcolm pulled up and hung on the limb before he choked. But hanging there was bad enough. They let him crawl down and live like it was what they meant. But he better never make a whimper. And he wouldn’t.”

“What were you doing while all this was going on?” Egan asked.

“I would say I was a mascot, too old for them to blame for anything. All I can brag to is I was around, in a corner or under a stage or in the projector room or the broom closet, and sometimes I held the scareder little ones on my lap.

“I don’t believe the orphans are the ones who cut Penny’s head nearly off. I was in the building where her and Gene’s room was. I think it was Man Mortimer.”

“Mortimer?” Egan shouted. “He was here?”

Wren said, “He was here, walked right through everything like a floating head of hair protected against gun lead and explosives. The orphans saw the pleasure boat approaching and opened fire, and the white father-killer had taught them how to shoot. Dr. Harvard was driving the boat with Mortimer and his mother in it, but he didn’t seem a willing pilot. Large Lloyd and Edie were aboard too, Edie holding a derringer on Harvard. Harvard had an old shotgun with him and a few shells, and there was a snake pistol and flares in the survival locker. When the shooting started, Mortimer and Lloyd and Edie hit the deck and returned fire as Harvard tried to turn the boat around again, but Mortimer jumped off the boat and waded to shore. He didn’t turn back as his mother fell dead on the bow.

“The older girls, that first pair in trouble with the video lesbian girls thing, were snapping those guns, one with a telescope on it. They wanted to hurt Mortimer personally, owed him. But he walked right ashore, and I can’t imagine them not having a clean shot.

“It got to where I was making peace, I was a peacemaker. I brought back peace and trust in adult humans, kept them from setting the pleasure boat on fire a second time. I helped them out when it started settling down a little, waiting for the law, gathering ammunition, food and explosives, gasoline, moving barbed-wire fences. Even setting the moat on fire at one point because they’d seen it in the movies right there. You’re the first person to come.”

Egan took Wren back over the bridge and drove for Sheriff Facetto.

TWO MONTHS LATER FACETTO PULLED OUT THE ELECTION over “Who” Hooks, mainly because even the slow caught on to Hooks’ own private hysteria toward the end, wherein he fired off a Glock automatic during a rally for crime-fighting. This was too ardent, and Facetto began looking sane.

Melanie was not in love with the man anymore and considered him an inept coward. She was annoyed by his breathy dramatic pauses and rises when he told her about arresting Mortimer and taking a deposition from Wren. This community’s nightmare treated as if it were some trivial dramatic work that had floated past a theater workshop he was in. She told him he was childish and she did not want a child in the house anymore.

Sheriff Facetto was more than disconsolate. He ceased being.

On the complaint of the body-shop man Ronny, Facetto’s deputy Bernard arrested Man Mortimer at his junkyard. Mortimer was looking for something among the wrecked cars. He told Bernard this arrest was impossible, since the whole county worked for him. Yet he was led away in cuffs as his father and Peden looked on.

Mortimer began telling his whole story then and would not be quiet.

Facetto would not look at his face during his confessions at the station. Looking at the ceiling, the sheriff at last told him to please be quiet, please.

“Nobody is listening to you anymore,” said Facetto.

“But I am, sir,” said Bernard.

“We’ve got plenty. Make him quit talking.”

Facetto soon left town for a far, far state.

Mortimer would not stop talking in Parchman Prison, either. Nobody wanted him near them. The thing that was hardly anything but a big head with a mass of white hair on it kept reciting his misdeeds. And further, the discourtesy and irony you found so widely practiced. In all his years at the prison, he never got up to the death of his mother or walking through all that lead until he freed Gene and Penny. Nor Penny’s death. The new sheriff was willing to accept the town’s certainty that Mortimer was the killer and left it at that.

John Roman and Max Raymond drew closer together, but Roman did not want anybody talking with him while he fished, and he did not like talking God at all. His wife Bernice was well. He loved God cautiously. He did not know how long this love would last.

Harvard and Melanie were married by Peden on the pleasure barge. Their marriage was that of pals after a fight and long silence. It had become too late in time for fights, and often even memories. They clung.