Barry Hannah - Airships

He calls himself JIM, I mean loud and significantly, like that.

Says he knows the game world. When we walked up on that big wild turkey just before we found Mrs. Neap’s house, I watched that sucker fire off three different arrows at it. The turkey stood there just like the rest of us, unbelieving. At this point I sicked soft-spoken Vince on the turkey. Vince is so patient and soft-spoken, he could talk a snake into leaving his poison behind and pulling up a chair for stud or Go Fish, whatever you wanted to play.

Vince talked the turkey right into his arms.

Then came the last arrow from JIM.

It went through Vince’s hand and into the heart of the turkey.

We didn’t need this. You can’t get medical help. There’s nothing left but home remedies.

We started despising JIM right then and there.

But Vince’s hand healed and is merely unusable instead of gangrenous.

“My God, one of them jumped off,” says Mrs. Neap.

I saw. It was an Oriental.

He is wobbling on the gravel in front of the yard. I pull my knife. This close in to a town you have to perform the law.

But one of the wardens in the air-rider cages shoots at him — then the next one, who has a shotgun, really blasts the gook.

The guy lies down.

I couldn’t tell whether he went to the dirt before or after the gun blast.

Mrs. Neap kneels down with delicate attention to the dead man. With her cracked lens, she seems a benevolent patient scholar.

Mrs. Neap says, “He’s a handsome little man. We don’t need to call the coroner about him. Look at the muscles. He was well fed. I wonder why he come running toward the house. I guess he wanted to end up here. He chose,” says Mrs. Neap.

“I’ll get the bike and tell the coroner,” I say.

“I said not get the coroner. This is my property. Look. His head is across my legal property line,” says Mrs. Neap.

Say I, “Let’s push him back a few feet. Then he’s the city’s. There’s no reason for you to take the responsibility or cost of burying him.”

The old lady is intent. She’d been through the minor Depression in the thirties. She’d seen some things, I guess.

“Have you never?” says Mrs. Neap.

Her spectacles are flaming with the rising sun.

Say I, “Have I never what?” slipping my knife back into my hip scabbard.

“Eaten it?”

“ It ?”

“Human being.”

“Human being ?”

“Neither have I,” says Mrs. Neap. “But I’m so starving, and Orientals are so clean . I used to know Chinese in the Mississippi delta. They were squeaky clean and good-smelling. They didn’t eat much but vegetables. Help me drag him back,” she says.

She didn’t need help.

She has the man under the arms and drags him at top speed over the scrub weeds and onto her lawn. Every now and then she gives me a ferocious look. There is a huge broken-down barbecue pit behind the house. I can see that is her destination.

I go up the front steps and wake up our “family.” Vince is already awake, his hand hanging red and limp. He has watched the whole process since the gook jumped off the train.

JIM is not there. He is out invisible in the woods, taking dramatic inept shots at mountains.

(To complete his history, when we move on, after the end of this, JIM kills a dog and is dressing him out when a landowner comes up on him and shoots him several times with a.22 automatic. JIM strangles the landowner and the two of them die in an epic of trespass.)

My wife wakes up. Then Gardiner, the chemist who keeps us in booze, wakes up.

Vince has grown even softer since the loss of his right hand. Larry (you don’t need to know any more about him) and his girl never wake up.

“Mrs. Neap wants to cook the man,” I say.

“What strength. She did a miracle,” says soft Vince.

When we get to the rotisserie, Mrs. Neap has the man all cleaned. Her Dobermanis eating and chasing the intestines around the backyard.

My family goes into a huddle, pow-wowingover whether to eat the Doberman.

We don’t know what she did with the man’s head.

By this time she is cutting off steaks and has the fire going good.

Two more tenants come out on the patio, rubbing their eyes, waked up by the smell of that meat broiling on the grill.

Mrs. Neap is slathering on the tomato sauce and pepper.

The rest of the tenants come down.

Meat!

They pick it off the grill and bite away.

Vince has taken the main part of the skeleton back to the garage, faithfulto his deep emotion forgood taste.

When it is all over, Mrs. Neap appears in the living room, where we are all lying around. Her face is smeary with grease and tomato sauce. She is sponging off her hideous cheeks with a rag even as she speaks.

She says, “I accepted you for a while, you romantic nomads. Oh, you came and sang and improved the conversation. Thanks to JIM for protecting my place and my dried-out garden, wherever he is. But you have to get out by this afternoon. Leave by three o’clock,” says she.

“ Why ?” sayI.

“Because, for all your music and merriment, you make too many of us. I don’t think you’ll bring in anything,” she says.

“But we will ” says soft Vince. “We’ll pick big luscious weeds. We’ll drag honeysuckles back to the hearth.”

She looks around at all of us severely.

She says, “I hate to get this down to tacks, but I hear noises in the house since you’re here.” This old amazing woman was whispering. “You know what goes in America. You know all the announcements about food value. You, one of you, had old dangerous relations with Clarisse, the tenant next to my room. I heard. You may be romantic, but you are trash.”

She places herself with her glasses so as to fix herself in the image of an unanswerable beacon.

She says, “We all know the Survival News . Once I was a prude and resisted. But if we’re going to win through for America, I go along. Only oral relations are allowed. We must not waste the food from each other, the rich minerals, the raw protein. We are our own gardens,” Mrs. Neap says, trembling over her poetry.

It costs her a lot to be so frank, I can see.

“But you cooked a human being and ate him,” say I.

“I couldn’t help it,” says she. “I remember the cattle steaks of the old days, the juicy pork, the dripping joints of lamb, the venison.”

“The what ?” say we.

“Get out of here. I give you to four o’clock,” says she.

So the fourof us hit the road that afternoon.

We head to the shady green by the compass in my head.

I am the leader and my wifeis on my arm.

There are plenty of leaves.

I think we are getting over into Georgia.

My wife whispers in my ear: “Did you go up there with Clarisse?”

I grab off a plump leaf from a yearling ash. In my time I’ve eaten poison ivy and oak too. The rash erupts around your scrotum, but it raises your head and gives you hope when the poison’s in your brain.

I confess. “Yes.”

She whispers on. “I wanted JIM. He tried. But he couldn’t find my place. He never could find my place.”

“JIM?” say I. “He just can’t hit any target, now can he?”

“I saw Clarisse eating her own eyelashes,” she whispers, from the weakness, I suppose.

“It’s okay,” say I, wanting to comfort her with an arm over to her shoulder. But with that arm I am too busy taking up good leaves off a stout little palmetto. And ahead of us is a real find, rims of fungus standing off a grandfather oak.