Barry Hannah - Long, Last, Happy - New and Collected Stories

“Hardly. Just a watcher. Lifelong.”

“Order you a drink?”

“Too early. Perhaps a tonic with lime.”

“We’re just talking about the rumors that God is a woman. What do the literary people say about that?”

“When wasn’t it? It’s a neurotic hag demanding worship while it lays a pox down. An obtuse monster, a self-worshiping fiend. I know gods, Doctor.”

“Should have guessed you’d have an opinion. This is Riley Barnes, Coots. Barnes, the author. Barnes knows your work. I’ve been reading you. Some difficulty, I confess, for an old sawbones. I liked the surgeon using the plumber’s friend in a heart operation. I’d suppose you’ve known some awfully bad doctors. So have I, but—”

“You have literary interest?” Coots asked Barnes. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”

“Yes sir,” said Barnes, knowing Coots too. “I’m a stevedore. The docks.”

“You know, I’d spotted Riley. Somehow I thought I must meet him. So I did. Very fortuitous circumstance. I watched him through a telescope. How could I have guessed he was a literary man and wild for billiards? The city always surprises you,” explained Latouche.

Coots had written about men like Barnes, one of his physical type of boy. He had them falling through space, ejecting incandescent sperm while being hanged by the neck. . Old duffer consuls would gobble it up. Sacrifice of the young to evil, entrenched needs. The way the world worked.

“You and your friend bought. . commodities down there. I was in different clothes,” said Barnes. “Didn’t think you’d recognize me, sir. Anyway, it’s an honor. I know people who’d pay to be here.”

“Go on with your game, please,” said Coots to the young man. Was he in his late twenties? Coots wondered. Straight. Off a mural of American Labor in an old union hall, dusty hoarse Commies around being ass-fucked by shark-skinned fat union bosses with stogies. Brando, On the Waterfront . What we pansies would have given to jump his bones. Stop. Latouche is the mission. The doctor did seem a little depressed, anxious, behind the jolly front. In the old days I’d have shucked him for drugs. Exactly the kind of croaker we’d set up till thoroughly burned down. Some of them were so stupidly moral they believed they were helping my endless kidney stones. Could be literary because I was so good at those riffs. Multiple personalities I developed. Then no personality at all when sick — protoplasm, whimpering, completely dishonored. Working the subways for drunks, at my best. New York, New York! Never again, knock on wood. Paper cup of coffee dissolving at the edge with spit. Ketchup on crackers, free at the Automat, for weeks. Harvard education. Unfit to attack Hitler or Tōjō, thank God.

“How’s your dog, Doctor? It isn’t here?”

“No.” Latouche looked guilty, furtive. “Had to bury her. She got something, poor girl. They didn’t know what.”

Coots came alive, took a seat in a padded drugstore chair copied from the thirties.

“Was a Hungarian breed, something, wasn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t talk about the dog, Mr. Coots,” interjected Barnes. Latouche was his charge, then.

“It’s fine, Riley. Really.” Latouche grasped the billiard table, his fingers going white over the felt edge.

“I’m a cat man, myself,” said Coots. Could he now detect Latouche trembling, his eyes rolling back into his head? Delicious, better than his first horror movies with Lon and Bela in St. Louis.

“Can’t stand them!” yelled Latouche. He shot back — reloaded, rather, thought Coots. “Sneaky, conniving!. . the odor of cat piss! Doesn’t that tell you something?” Agitated, pushing the insane, this beat the medical libraries cold. (“A death”?) But I don’t have the full persuasion for a spell, really, Coots decided. What do I hate about the man? My own grandfather? Grand patricide? Biting the hand that.

“I’ll have to ask you, Mr. Coots.” Barnes again. My word, so rapidly the nurse, all the jargon.

“No. I want this resolved and confessed!” shouted Latouche. “Secrets are killing me!”

The cue stick, released, fell over, plump , on the rug. Both his hands were on the table now.

“I buried Nana, I had Nana buried with my wives, between them, in Forest Hills cemetery! Riley did it for me!”

“That isn’t so bad, Latouche. Isn’t there a law, though? The Indians, you know. . the Egyptians. .”

“We didn’t ask. I did it at night,” said Riley Barnes.

“He’s got grofft, doesn’t he?”

“How’d you know?” Barnes bolstered Latouche. “Oh yes. Your travels. Would you know how it’s treated? Dr. Latouche, bless him, believes he can just ignore it away.”

Latouche was slavering and attempting to drop to the floor, while Barnes was resisting, gently, though all his big muscles were needed. The doctor certainly had his right man. Barnes seemed to care deeply for him. Coots smiled less than he wanted to, hands crossed on his stiletto cane in front, the boulevardier.

“I don’t think this is a mind-over-matter case, Barnes”—Latouche actually whimpered like a dog now—“though by what I’ve observed, the doctor has civilized the disease. Perhaps strength of character. Or just being un-Indian, highly Western. I recall the smallpox didn’t kill that many of us, but wiped out whole tribes of the Sioux. We’ve antibodies, but—”

Barnes sadly let the doctor go and raced to the door, pulling it to and locking. The doctor went around the table on all fours, sniffing and pointing, heedless of them. Why was this, Coots asked himself, so charming to him?

Why did Latouche pique such high disgust? Was he an old lifetime closet fairy and Coots knew it? Many great professionals were, no great mystery. Then was it the hypocrisy Coots loathed? The laurels and friendships gained by an, at least, eighty-year false front? But he did not really think Latouche was gay. Some deeply sick, hidden gays were fascinated by weapons, especially on the right wing, the loud NRA and all that, but not Latouche, who loved the technology more than the blast. Latouche acquainted himself with past heroes in dangerous times, as did Coots, who owned in his locker one of Billy the Kid’s purported old irons. But Latouche liked to balance the loads, better.

Latouche was all around the room now, scraping at the door and whimpering urgently. Something was out there he had to hunt. Coots thought of a feverish liver-spotted thing whirling in its cage, wanting the quail fields. He had witnessed that once in Texas when he was a failed marijuana farmer. The face of the doctor was working classically, too. His cheeks closed forward, lupine, more than could be done by a well man. Then came the barks and worried low growls, the mutter of need, almost ecstatic.

“How did he get into the Honduran wilds?” asked Coots.

“He didn’t. I went for him. The Indians were known for prodigious strength. Please don’t let on, Mr. Coots. You’re a man of the world, the cosmos. It shouldn’t shock you. I’d found a healthy young Indian, I thought. He’d had a fatal accident. I took his blood and brought it back chilled. We transfused Dr. Latouche.”

“Extraordinary. Why?”

“It had worked for one of his old colleagues. The man’s ninety-five now, in glowing health. Down there, the laws. . deep back in there, there are no laws. You can buy somebody. Never mind, I had the boat connections and the way, so I did it for him. There aren’t many Latouches in the world. Like there aren’t many of you. He’d been low, depressed, feeble, didn’t believe in drugs. This is corny, but he’s the grandfather I never had, and the father who left me. I didn’t want to lose him right after I’d found him.”