Barry Hannah - Airships

When he knew she was dead, Carlos smiled. Then he walked out of the house in a rampage over the idiocy of this earthly toil.

Then he became a priest.

He got fatter and went without a shirt, proud of his fat because it proved how vile the flesh was. And in five years he became very important. The dead spirit of his wife entered him, and he was conscious of two souls in his single bosom. At strange moments he would smile and find himself in love with the memory of his old Nancy. I have been through so much, the very limit, Carlos told himself.

They had let him put five Significant Persons on the ship’s roster. His hand had formed their names with his fountain pen. But two of them had killed themselves last Saturday night. There were two more places aboard, though she did not know it.

Please let me see the ship, she said.

I’m sorry, said Carlos. He hated her because she reminded him of the old world of small desires and petty nostalgia. He hated her also because she knew that he chased women, made gossip and was a sorry priest. In fact, she could ruin him if she wanted to.

We want to live , Carlos, she said. How can you kill us? I was your friend. It’s murder.

There is one place, Carlos said. One place. But not two. Robinson can’t go. . For auld lang syne, I can get you on. Provided.

Yes, all right. Robinson says he’ll live or die by the seasons.

Look at the seasons, said Carlos. In August it’s a hundred fifty degrees. In December it’s minus twenty-five and three feet of snow in Mississippi. In April the big trees explode.

We know all that. Listen: why didn’t you put us on the list? she said. We weren’t bad.

I thought you lacked a basic seriousness about life.

But I’ve always been very serious.

You always gave me the sense that you were winking at everything. Nothing seemed deep to you.

What do I do? she said.

Lick me with your tongue all over my body. Suck the hair curls on my ankles, said Carlos.

She knelt down and pulled her hair back. She closed her eyes and her tongue appeared, red as a flame. Carlos saw the sweetly ordered blond hair, given a natural part by nature. She was beginning on his kneecap.

Are you serious? demanded Carlos.

She halted and picked a hair from her strawberry lips.

Oh, Carlos, I’ve always been serious, she said.

Robinson was out at his nice big house running the push mower over the grass the Sunday afternoon when the rocket went up in the air. The grass was growing a foot and a half overnight, and vines and cane took root and burst out of the soil if you went in to have a drink of water. The rocket made a magnificent yellow and purple wash over the entire western sky. Robinson barely looked at it, though he knew his wife was aboard. He whistled for Oliver, a very old and decrepit Dalmatian, the same dog who had lived in the dorm with him at Yale. Last night Robinson had forgotten to let him in, and the poor dog had slept on a patch of cane shoots. Robinson remembered his dog at five in the morning, and went out in the backyard looking for him. Robinson heard all quiet except for the cracking sounds of growth in the hedge, which was thirty feet high. He heard whimpering sounds above him. The cane had grown under the dog and lifted him up eight feet in the air. The dog was looking down at him. Robinson met the dog’s look. We love each other, Robinson said. Don’t be afraid. He got his ladder and lifted Oliver down from the cane tops.

Love slays fear, said Robinson.

She was surprised by all the maritime terms they used. Then Carlos took her to the center of it. She thought it was a museum in the center of the ship here. She couldn’t figure why they’d put the thing in here, taking up so much room.

You little silly, said Carlos. Here’s where we’re all going to live.

Everybody on board was naked by then.

Say, he said, could you get a lick job in before vespers?

My ears hurt, she said. When do we get to outer space?

What outer space? Nobody has that much fuel left, Carlos said.

They hit down on a swamp near Newark.

It was a short ride, like all the last ones.

“Who is that ?” hissed the woman at the corner. Pete and Tardy were necking. They could never quit. They hardly ever heard. The porch where their bench was was purple and smelly with creeping pot plants. Their child, who was thirty, rode a giant trike specially made, he being, you know, simple, back and forth on the walk, singing: Awwwww. Ernnnnnn. Oobbbbbbb.

The man, remarked only by the hissing woman at the corner, who was Tardy’s mother, walked, or rather verged, here and there, undecided, froth running down his chin and a dagger in his hand. He had an address printed on some length of cardboard. His fingernails were black.

“Out! Out of here, you mange!” shouted Tardy’s mother.

“In, in, in!” the hairy man in the street shouted back.

Pete looked up. “It’s my old college roommate. Lay off, Mama,” Pete expressed, rising.

The fellow in the street straightaway made for Pete but got caught in the immense rose hedge. “I knew I’d find you! Peace! Joy! Communion at last!” the filthy fellow shouted as he writhed, disabled.

“Son of a gun!” roared Pete. “Look here, Tardy. It’s old Room Man!”

“Jumping Jesus, do these thorns hurt!” shouted the filthy hairy fellow. He’d lost his dagger in the leaf mold. That hedge really had him.

“What say?” shouted Pete.

“I got no more discretion, Pete boy! I’m just a walking reminiscence! Here I am! I remember you when you were skinny and cried about a Longfellow poem! Your rash! Everything! Edna, Nannie, Fran! Puking at the drive-in!”

“I thought so,” said Pete to Tardy, low, his smile dropped aside. “Would you get me my piece, my charm?”

“Your spiritual phase!” the filthy hairy fellow was screaming. “Your Albert Schweitzer dreams! Signing on the dorm wall with your own blood!” shouted the awful man who was clogged in the hedge.

“Yes,” Pete said, lifting the weary corners of his lips.

Tardy lugged out the heavy piece.

Pete took it and jammed home the two big ones.

“Remember Juanita and her neat one? Played the cornet with her thing and you did the fingering?” screamed the wretched fellow all fouled in the hedge.

Yes .

He cut half his hedge away when he fired the double through it. The dagger blew out in the street along with the creep that held it. All the while Tardy’s mother stood with crossed arms.

The son stopped his giant trike. He said, “Ernnnnn,” to his dad on the porch.

“Albert,” said Pete. “Take care of the stuff in the street,” and within minutes the son was back with the wagon attached and the scoop.

“It makes me not hardly want to kiss anymore,” Tardy said.

In the alleys there were sighs and derisions and the slide of dice in the brick dust. His vision was impaired. One of his eyes had been destroyed in the field near Atlanta as he stood there with his binoculars.

Now he was in Richmond.

His remaining eye saw clearly but itched him incessantly, and his head turned, in necessity, this way and that. A clod of dirt struck him, thrown by scrambling children in the mouth of the alley he had just passed. False Corn turned around.

He thanked God it wasn’t a bullet.

In the next street there was a group of shoulders in butternut and gray jabbering about the Richmond defenses. He strolled in and listened. A lieutenant in his cups told False Corn what he wanted to hear. He took a cup of acorn coffee from a vendor.