Barry Hannah - Airships

The thing was still alive. It was staggering in the doorway. Its limbs were naked and blackened. Its breasts were scorched black. It was a woman, hair burned away. False Corn kicked the thing in the thigh. It collapsed, face to the floor.

It was Tess, his wife. She looked at him, her mouth and eyes alive.

“I was your wife, Isaacs, but I was Southern,” she said. By that time a crowd of the sorrowful and the inept had gathered.

I went by this Chrysler on my Honda the other day. It was a sort of cold green car, in front of the bank. This nigger was eating a banana, hanging his leg out the front seat on the curb. He didn’t have socks. He was truly eating that banana. Eating it was giving him such pleasure, I rounded the block and came by again to see him finish it off. By that time he was throwing the peel in the gutter.

I shut off the bike.

“Hey, man! You can’t foul up the streets like that!” I said.

He looked at me awhile and then got out and picked up the peel.

“Who’s that car belong to?” I said.

I’m a very slight guy and about that time something embarrassing happened. The motorbike fell over on me and I couldn’t squirm out from under it before the muffler pipe had burned the dook out of my leg through my jeans. I pulled my leg out of the bike and jumped around on the walk. One of my old girl friends walked by and I was humiliated.

“My sister,” said the nigger.

“You just sitting out here eating a banana waiting for her?”

“Correct.”

“Oh ho. You been educated.”

“Junior college.”

I was still hopping around somewhat.

“It hurt, don’t it?” he said.

“Somewhat.” My leg was about to go over the border into some kind of new state of pain.

He had him another banana by then.

“You wearing a nowhere helmet, baby,” he said.

“What’s wrong with my goddamn helmet?”

“Look like some other person ought to be in it. That’s some kind of airplane orange, ain’t it?”

“Lets ’em see you at night, brother.”

“What you come here criticizing my bananas for?”

“There was a way you were doing it, eating. Your eyes were big and your jaw humped out. You were really having fun. It’s not the same with the one you have now. You’re doing it more casual-like now, little bitty bites, more civilized.”

“I never came in your house watch you eat,” he said. “Tomorrow I’m coming over your house watch you eat. I’m gone drive my sister’s Chrysler into your house and hang out the window watch you eat. Where you live?”

“Wait. No offense. I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said.

“Where you live?”

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

“This Chrysler is my home. It’s me and my sister’s home. Where you live?”

“Three oh four Earnest Lane.”

If I hadn’t been in such pain, I’d never have told him.

“This car’s the only home we got,” he said. “We be by your place tomorrow.”

His sister came out of the bank. She had on stilt shoes and this African jewelry all over her. She got in the Chrysler. I heard her talking to him.

“They turned us down for the loan,” she said.

He never even looked my way when they backed out and drove off. I was trembly. My stomach was upset, and my leg had never quit hurting. Another thing. I’d been driving my bike around town thinking things over about reality and eternity and went by the Baptist church several times reading the marquee. It said: Pay Now, Fly Later . I’d decided I was going to quit fucking around and be a Christian.

So right in front of the church there’s Dr. Campbell, the minister of that church, a big guy with not much hair left and old acne marks and a look in his eye like he’d never thought about nooky one way or the other and had had his children by a holy accident. We all have our flaws. I walked over to him.

“Say, Doctor Campbell, I’m surrendering my heart to Jesus.”

He laid scrutiny on me. The few hairs he had left were oily and carefully set in a dramatic way.

“Tell you what, my son.” He laid hand on my shoulder. He whispered. “I’m not the person to talk to. I hate your guts, after what you did to that poor disk jockey.”

“He was a queer and it was an even fight,” I said. “He had a baseball bat and I had a TV antenna. On the roof there wasn’t anything else.”

“He’s still lying out in Druid Hospital.”

“I know where he is. I take beer to him under my coat. What about Jesus? I was surrendering my heart.”

“I’ve got to this position, Ellsworth. I don’t think Jesus wants you. He’s too dead to want. He was a hell of a sweet genius guy, but he’s dead. The only thing left is humanism. Are you humanistic?”

“Right on.”

“Precious are the hours we touch one another,” the son of a bitch said.

The Honda had hurt me so bad I was sort of timid about getting on it again, but it took me home. I sat in my house and listened to the two records I own on my Sears stereo. Three years ago my wife left this place. All the pictures she hung and the decorations she did are still around. Sometimes late at night on the phone she says she might come back. She says her condition is one of constant pain. She’s been in constant pain in St. Louis, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Mobile. A guy in Fayetteville called me one night at one o’clock. He said, “Who’s this, is this the authentic Ellsworth ?” Lots of people were in the room he was in and I could hear they thought my name was funny. “You know what I just did with your wife, Ellsworth?” said the guy. “What I did was get in an Ellsworth costume and have sex with her — har har har,” said the guy.

“Why’re you calling me?” I said. “I loathe her and don’t give a spit for her career. She was something I screwed and nagged me into marriage. I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, however. My name is Ellsworth and I don’t know what yours is, but I don’t like this laughter about my name. You and me, phone person. Just give me your name and I’ll be in Fayetteville to take care of your number.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” said the guy. “We knew you’d be like that.”

You could hear my wife among the tittering.

Actually it tore the last shred out of my bosom. I don’t love her, but she was mine, and I don’t want anybody else to, either. She knows that, that’s why she called. She wants me to join her in constant pain.

I set three places on my table and swept up the house. I was sweeping the front steps when my leg, the one that was burned, went through the top step and I was up to my hip in my porch. I wish my landlord could’ve seen that. Maybe eighty-five per shouldn’t get you a palace on the moon, but goddamn, it ought to get you something . It sprained the hell out of my crotch muscle, plus tore my boot.

The rest of the day I just lay around and swore. I didn’t even get a beer out of the fridge. After you’ve drunk a hundred fifty thousand Falstaffs, the taste goes on you.

I made sure the house stayed clean. About midnight I went out and looked over at Mrs. Earnest’s flower tree. All her lights were out. I stole about fifteen blooms off her tree. Then I got this pussy-looking green dish my wife bought and put the flowers on the table. I bought some steaks in the morning. I didn’t have a barbecue, so I got a hub cap and pulled the grill out of the oven to go over it.

About three in the afternoon, they showed up in the Chrysler. I looked out and they were looking at the house, engine running. The spade had another banana he was chewing on. His sister was driving. I went out on the porch as if to check out the carb on my Honda.