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

Mr Simpson he would wear a gown or womens pedal-pushers, and highheel canvas sandals with bush socks, anything, so he wasnt one to pass judgment, but I was flickering with my eyes at old James wanting him to see the infant boots. Before he could two Ninis came in stomping snow off. They had on blankets and towels and you couldnt tell man or woman or two of the same. Mr Simpson spoke some Nini because he traded with them. One had on a beanie thing on its head with a rubber band under its chin, and it said something so Mr Simpson pointed and the two went back and sat on the one piano bench and the one in the beanie commenct playing the piano, Indian or bad, which was good for seventy-one out of eighty-eight keys. They took up some time from the Yarp question. You thought about the only one ever truly play that thing was away high and rich maybe on Mars by now, Len Simpson. The Yarp was closing his eyes like sweet music was alooning. I was trying to whisper Yarp to old James before that thing raised up his coat and made the geezer vomit and die. Gene James was a stubborn born liar, but I was the first to see the Yarp. Now someways out of my fear with four other rightly human persons, I thought I had evened with Deacon Charles. I had a true tale and would be the center of the lunch talkings for a long time. Gene James was only fifth or eighth on what he’d seen true, at eighty or more. The Yarp spoken again.

I’ve a great hard long love for Missus Skatt. Shes not always what she looks to you, a goat or crab scuttling down that hill of false diamonds from her house. That is a good house, built better than most in the county. And I don’t look like this all the time either. Her children is what I love, the young ones. She cooks a sumptuous venison and hare, and has a wheat patch, crushes her own meal herself for larripan bread. We have roasting ears and sweet potatoes right out of the wood ash. Im going to feed myself here.

Before no man could commence his tongue he had come back with a bottle of herrings and sour cream which he put upon a saltine and sucked in, not a crumb left on his palm.

Missus Skatt can lasso a deer. But its her children most I love.

She never had no children. Married but barren or maybe too foul to touch, said Mr Simpson.

She lasso them hares too, ho? said Gene James.

She stares them till theyr hearts break, said the Yarp. That fine house was built by her husband Andrew and shortly he fell dead.

We know all that, the two geezer spoken together.

But you know only a mite. I’m going to tell you of her children and her charming history which will explain why you are sitting here poor, ignorant and stupid with bad backs. For Missus Skatt she runs a sort of charm school you would call it in a town. Unknown to you she has raised every woman in this county. And before her another woman kin to her. While the Indians play that music that I love they cant understand me and even when they stop theyll just look at a mouth moving.

That one without a hat understands American, said Mr Simpson, eyes swole in the magnifying glasses.

But that Indian wont hear a thing. This isnt Indian business.

Then he told a long weirded thing such as I cant hope to repeat only relying on my memory with my simular attempt.

He says all the girl children is drawn to Missus Skatt and sneaks over to her they cant help it, when theyr ten or like that. This was even before the founding of the Ozarks with another woman. Why even right then a girl was hauling wood to her cause she knewn it was cold and she was near out of fuel. All around the girls and the womens learnt at her knee these things: how to pleasure a man so good hed cry for it, how to coy on him, how to get inside him like a mindful tapeworm, because she anointed them with special powerful sexual parts and strong soft arms and eary soothing voices. She coached them when to begin apleading for all they want within the county because they could never go outside the county ever and their men couldnt neither. And how to nag and harangue and beat down and whup their men not raising a little finger, and how to make him worm small and stuck to his spot. You take mind, the Yarp said, that this county aint forever had nothing but tired sorry men droven down like a stake to their patches. They never went off to fight a war even when the whole world needed them to fight evil. Nor none of them was athletes nor only feckless at lumbering or even executing in a automobile. And none ventured out or away and couldnt hardly catch a fish on a spring day with trouts leaping on the bank. Nor with cow nor horse nor goat (the Yarp kicked the goat and Mr Simpson and Gene James seen them whitish baby shoes of a sudden) any count. That they died not only before theyr womens but passed over like sissies mewling and pouting ten years afore they ever hit dirt. You notice how they are coming down level and under the Indians. The Yarp pointed over at the back of that Indian who was playing and sudden he began playing something ghostly like what were wrote by a man with a long beard in a Asian castle and sung by his beautiful daughter.

You notice too the crimes of murder and theft in the nights, all them I tell you now by her womens and girls. Not found by sheriffs nor nobody because the innocence is what she drilled in to them. Right now she is teaching that little wood-hauling girl how to be innocent and quick and steal, you bet. Its a thieves university, the womens, yes your wives too and your children-seeming girls has done it with bloody hand and prestidigitation of the fingers, theyr off with stolen goods, what theyr men dont get them. And sometimes they drop things like the watch Roonswent Dover found. He turned around and his eyes was yellow on me. I couldn’t look and down at his knees I see them thin chickeny legs cutting out under his black pants. I just gulped and he was around, said Now this! and he pushed himself right up to Gene James, pulled his coat out.

Old man James took a gander and begun vomiting and then he fell off his chair dead with a whitened head. I was holding my hand over my eyes and didnt know what he was after for a long second. Mr Simpson hed seen but he survived and got up and yelled to them Indians for help but they never even turnt around.

Yes her time has come. Its over for her now. One last night of pleasure and it will be done. This Im getting xactly I think.

You wont tell none of it Simpson because theyll think youve passed to senile and take away your store.

He turned to me. I was ten feet off. The pet goat was nuzzling my legs for comfort and baaing.

And if you tell anybody this you will die, Roonswent. You are going to know whats wrong around here but you cant do nothing about it and that is your eternal curse, which is like that of many a man. But I wont have to worry. Youre of the age where a woman has already touched you and touched you deeply. You think you are being so kind to your mommer taking her a fixed sewing machine but when she takes it you look deep like you’ve never looked, youll see what is there.

So Im up the hills and mounts, so give me this.

He took a fold-in plastic fishing pole off the wall. It made a stout cane. He went toward the door, red spots on the floor off his infant shoes.

Theyll be out tonight, but just your littler girls. Even I have to swat them off. Youd think not, but I tell you, even Ive been womaned. I aint half the Yarp (he said it!) I used to be.

Therell be a time when the Indians will get the courage too gainst us old white bones. The Yarp went out in the cold snow and turned toward the mountains wed left. But he didnt take all his smell.

Mr Simpson looked horrible miserable.

What did he show you? I asked him.

Miz Skatt’s head in his belly, cooking and hollering.

Later in the week me and two, Deacon Quarles and Chief Nini, clambered up the hill and went in the house. There was just, you couldn’t believe it, piles of jewelry, watches, radios, knives and ribbons, deputies badges and wigs. Missus Skatt were in her bedroom with a old head and a young body, all laid out nude and peaceful.