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

“Then who would you rather have been, Latouche? Please think.”

“Umm. Well, actually. . Methuselah. I’m not ready to go. I’ve known hardly a day I’ve not truly enjoyed. Even the war, I was always up bright and early. Even, do not mistake me, the morning of my wives’ funerals. You’ve made me honest. Is that your function?”

“But, my man, you have. .” Coots reflected and checked on Riley Barnes, who was writing something down on a billfold tablet. “You have grofft . The only man in North America.”

Barnes flashed up, eyes sorrowful. He might want to strike Coots. When he masturbated, looking in the mirror, did he insert his finger in his anus to intensify it? Could he entice women into rim jobs? Many muscle men— vide your obsessive weightlifters in the big house — were “anally retentive,” thanks, Sigmund. And sex was a way of keeping, owning lovers, having them to play with in the bank vault later. As opposed to the looser lostness of the mere pussy, which invited death and servility. Barnes’s big stevedore’s hand was on Latouche’s wrist.

“Yes, I have it. But luckily, it seems, just a mild touch. I’ve not been on all fours yet. No barking. Riley watches me honestly.”

As with a thirty-year quart-a-day man he’d once met at the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans: “I have no drinking problem, Coots.” Skin flaking off from the burst veiny patches of his face, yellow as a crayon, and his tongue black.

“Then Tuesday night at seven, Latouche.”

“Delighted. I’ll have Riley bring me around in my vintage Hudson. Now there’s an item you might like. Spotless. Forest green. Purrs like a”—Barnes harder on his wrist—“sewing machine.”

“The Hudson and Billy the Kid’s gun,” said Barnes in wonder. “A great American evening.”

A couple days later Coots flew to Kansas with his amanuensis, Horton. They planned to live there soon, and had already bought a small clapboard house with a picket fence and a porch in the university town. Coots hoped he might teach a class there, though there was some lack of enthusiasm from the older faculty, to whom he was a profane dope fiend and pederast who wrote gibberish. His secretary friend was attempting to broker him into a place. Coots could use the money. It was a sorry scandal that they would exclude him. In several apparent ways he was a conservative. He loved the plains of the Midwest and was fascinated by the Old West and its worthy guns. He knew Native American culture (Custer’s stuffed horse, Comanche, was in the university museum); had the notes for two large books wherein he would explore the West in space-time narratives and by way of his “cut-up” method — not montage, he insisted, but more: common threads of magic in random clippings from various sources, sometimes announced into his tape recorder and retranscribed. He’d not yet got all from cannabis that he intended, either. Coots was a hard worker, putting to shame the energies of the senior faculty, with their emeritus rose beds and sailing vacations.

It was hard for Horton not to get angry about the matter, though Coots accepted the landscape and l’état gladly as they were away from wearying, impolite and expensive New York. The main point was he was old, damn it, and had been everywhere. He’d never had a thing against roots and a calm place, there was no crime in that. And there would be wide and free places to shoot. He could have a cat or two, his favorite creatures. He was so much like them it was nearly like having children. “The furred serpent,” Egyptians called them.

He did not tell Horton about Latouche.

Lawrence, Kansas, occupied them. Coots breathed in his “square” neighborhood: perfect, superb. The air might give him a few more years, a few more books. The scratchy, potent West. The “Johnsons”—trustworthy, minding their own business, nonjudgmental, quick to ally with a fellow in trouble, salt of the earth, loving of land, their house was yours, etc. — Coots had the forgotten shock of being waved at by citizens who didn’t know him from Adam. Howdy. Partners in the given day. Suitably, it came a “gusher” while they were there. The rain smelled sweet, rich. Thinking of the golden wheat lapping it up, breadbasket of the world, amber fields of, sun-browned boy with a string of bullheads, home-dried cut cane pole with black cotton line, drilled piece of corncob for a bobber, Prince Albert tin with nightcrawlers in wet leaves for bait.

Horton liked seeing the old fellow this happy.

They were out in Latouche-land too. Latouche was originally from Ellsworth.

It was the land of generals — Eisenhower, Bradley. And Frank James rode through Lawrence itself with the guerrilla slaughterers and Quantrill. Then Coots and T. S. Eliot over in St. Louis, not far from Twain. Ah, dreamed Coots on his porch, his thin hair blowing, to have fucked Huck when the country was young, about to strangle itself in the Big One, sun-swollen teenage corpses in the cornfield. Sherman sodomizes the South. John Brown began here first, Kansas, bloody Kansas, my Kansas. What did Latouche think of it? Had Latouche ever thought much at all?

The doctor was at his door and they walked out to see the Hudson purring at the curb. Barnes, in gym suit, was at the wheel saluting him. The Hudson was a gem all right. A space fiction of 1950, drop-shaped, chubby, svelte too. Barnes yelled something about being careful, he’d see Latouche at midnight. Coots noticed his massive legs. That boy could really hurt you if he wanted. Without him, the car gone, Latouche seemed smaller, with snowier hair, cautious and unbalanced. Coots helped him down the stairs to “the bunker,” leaning on the sharp door — like a vault door. Coots gasped, weak himself. Safe inside, Latouche took the sofa and looked about, out of his overcoat. They were alone. Horton was away for the night.

“I’ve brought this mini — tape recorder, if you don’t mind. It’s for Riley’s sake,” said Latouche.

Coots minded. His words were worth a great deal lately. The BBC thing, and NPR. He was to play a junkie priest in a movie soon too. Might as well ham it up toward the end.

Something had clicked one strange tired morning a month ago — he’d been very, very tired, from no direct cause. Coots was going to die soon, the fatigue told him quietly. Some ancient soft voice like that of the unknown man in the pool hall, but this was not an “episode.” This was the dead and dry tone of the inevitable. He didn’t know when he’d die, but something announced the beginning of the last lap. The public flies were on him, even worse.

“I thought you’d bring your forty-four/forty-five,” he said coolly. Coots could wither, with his scratchy voice and small eyes.

“But I did, in the other pocket.” Latouche drew the handsome brute out, size of a good man’s organ, laying it on the coffee table next to the minirecorder, a Toshiba. He punched it on. Coots’s anger left when he spied the weapon. Lovely little highwayman’s surprise, lovely.

“I’ve loaded the thing. Can’t quite figure why,” said Latouche.

“The mean streets. It’s a bad area.”

“No.” Latouche stared at Coots as if lost. He seemed really to have no idea why the thing was loaded. Septagonal barrel?

“Barnes knows you have a loaded gun?”

“No. He’s a deep pacifist, for gun control. New York law, of course.”

“I think he killed an Indian for you.” Coots smiled at the little reels turning inside the machine.

“He told you?”

“I gather things. Pretty nasty, and unethical, medically speaking, you know.”

“Oh, I do. It’s all a bad mysterious thing. And my fault. I found out that Riley has a dangerous loyalty to me. Almost an innocence. If only I could take it back. I’m very shallow with people, I’m afraid.”