Barry Hannah - Airships

“Yessuh,” said George.

“Do you want to apologize to Corporal Ainsworth?”

“I real sorry. I don’t know what I say,” the nigger said to me. “General Jeb taught me how to talk and sometimes I justs go on talking to try it out.”

“Ah, my brother George,” Jeb suddenly erupted.

He rushed to the nigger and threw his arms around him. His eyes were full of tears. He embraced the black man in the manner of my dreams of how he might embrace me.

“My chap, my chum. Don’t get yourself killed,” said Jeb to George. “Try to look ignorant when you get near the road pickets, same as when I found you and saved you from drink.”

“I loves you too, General Jeb. I ain’t touched nothing since you saved me. Promise. I gon look ignorant like you say, tills I get to Richmond. Then I might have me a beer.”

“Even Christ wouldn’t deny you that. Ah, my George, there’s a heaven where we’ll all prosper together. Even this sissy, Corporal Ainsworth.”

They both looked at me benevolently. I felt below the nigger.

George got on the horse and took off South.

At five the next morning we came out of a stand of birches and all of us flew high over the railroad, shooting down the men. I had two stolen repeaters on my hip in the middle of the rout and let myself off Pardon Me. A poor torn Yank, driven out of the attack, with no arm but a kitchen fork, straggled up to me. We’d burned and killed almost everything else.

Stuart rode by me screaming in his rich bass to mount. The blue cavalry was coming across the fire toward us. The wounded man was stabbing me in the chest with his fork. Jeb took his saber out in the old grand style to cleave the man from me. I drew the pistol on my right hip and put it almost against Jeb’s nose when he leaned to me.

“You kill him, I kill you, General,” I said.

There was no time for a puzzled look, but he boomed out: “Are you happy, Corporal Ainsworth? Are you satisfied, my good man Deed?”

I nodded.

“Go with your nature and remember our Savior!” he shouted, last in the retreat.

I have seen it many times, but there is no glory like Jeb Stuart putting spurs in his sorrel and escaping the Minié balls.

They captured me and sent me to Albany prison, where I write this.

I am well fed and wretched.

A gleeful little floorwipe came in the other day to say they’d killed Jeb in Virginia. I don’t think there’s much reservoir of self left to me now.

This earth will never see his kind again.

I’ll never forget the summer old Lardner went up to New York with forged credits as a psychiatrist. He’d been studying in med school with designs of becoming a psychiatrist. Then he got into the modern psychiatric scene, had enough of it, and having no other employment for the summer, he went up to New York all fit out with thick glasses and a mustache and an ailing gnarled hand, which he was of course putting on too. He said people in therapy got close to a shrink with an outstanding defect. He had a few contacts, and before you knew it, he was all set up in his office, five phony pieces of paper on the wall.

Old Lardner, I never knew what his real voice was, he had so many, though I knew he came from Louisiana like me. He loved Northerners — Jew, Navajo and nigger alike. He was a broad soul with no spleen in his back pocket for anybody. Except whiners who knew better. You ought to hear some of the tapes he brought back. He never taped anybody without their knowledge of it.

All of them liked to be taped, Lardner said.

It was their creativity.

They went like this:

Patient: I feel ugly all the time. I can’t quit cigarettes. The two Great Danes I bought won’t mate. I’m starting to cry over sentimental things, songs on the radio. Is it basically wrong for a man to like macramé? I never feel intimate with anybody until we talk about Nixon, how awful he was. My kid looks away when I give him an order. I mean a gentle order. Let me take a breath.

Lardner: Jesus Damn Christ! What an interesting case! Your story takes the ticket. This is beyond trouble, Mr., ________________ this is art !

Patient: What? My story art ?

Lardner: Yes. You are ugly. But so very important.

Patient: You think so?

And so on.

The next one might go:

Patient: I’m angry, angry, Doctor Lardner.

Lardner: Why?

Patient: Because I’m a woman. I’ve taken such evil crap over the years.

Lardner: Why?

Patient: I thought you’d want to know what .

Lardner: You got the wrong doctor. Down on Fifth Avenue, about a dozen doors away, there’s a good what doctor. A little more expensive.

Patient: I’m so angry at men everywhere. Nothing will ever cure me of this hatred.

Lardner: You’re wasting money on me. I’m a man.

Patient: But with time, you and I might produce a cure for me.

Lardner: Well, we can start with your basic remedy and work out from there. How about a glass of pure gin on the rocks and a hard dick? ( Sounds of fistfight between Lardner and patient .) You hit my gnarled hand!

Patient: Oh, I’m so sorry! Christ! I didn’t want to.

Lardner: I think you did.

Patient: I. . yes! I did! We’ve produced a cure together. You work so fast. ( Sounds of slipped-off panties .) Have me, have! Let me make up for the hand!

And the only other one I recall:

Patient: It’s the end of the world. It’s the Big Fight. I read the Times on the subway, and think about my people, the Jews. I think of my good job and prosperity. The oil issue is going to wipe Israel out in ten years. There won’t be an Israel. My people will be raped and burned over. And I want to fight. I want to leave Westchester County and fight. I want to bear arms and defend Israel. How can I stand walking around the streets of this town, this loud confusing city, when there are issues so clear-cut?

Lardner: Shit, I don’t know. Why don’t you fly out tomorrow morning?

When Lardner came back home to the South, he invited me over for a drink in his backyard at Baton Rouge. There’d been a storm in the afternoon and it had made June seem like October all of a sudden when it left. Here he was asking me whether he should go on and finish med school or not, and then he played me the tape recordings.

“The only thing we’re sure about anymore is how much money we need,” said I. “That’s about as profound as I ever get. I’ve got a wife and two kids. Me and the wife drink a great deal in the evenings of Baton Rouge. We’re happy. The great questions seemed to have passed us by. I’m a radiologist. All day long I look for shadows. We’ve got two Chinese elm trees in our backyard and a fat calico named Sidney. Our children are beautiful and I’ve got stock in Shell.”

“You’re right,” said Lardner.

“Every man can be a king if he wants to,” I said. “That’s what my father said. He had harder times than me or you.”

“That’s true,” Lardner said.

The last thing I heard about Lardner, he was on a boat out of New Orleans headed for Rio. From there he took ship to Spain.

I don’t know another thing about him.

Carlos, please put me on the Significant Persons list, she said. We didn’t know you had any faith. You never acted like a Catholic. You swore and whored and were petty like the rest of us. Please, please let me and Robinson on your ship. Robinson is always religious when he has a hangover. I myself had a suspicion there were some old verities. We used to go down to the pond and throw bread at the ducks. They always reminded me of the old verities, so white and natural. Robinson even at his worst claimed he was wandering toward the ancient basics, but he was scared numb that he might have found them already. The point is, we always meant well, Carlos.