Barry Hannah - Airships

“Oh, hi!” I called. “Come in the house now you’re here!”

They came in the front room. His sister shook hands with me. She had blue fingernails, long ones, and that African jewelry all over and some new elevated nigger sandals and her toenails were blue too. When she walked, she rattled like a walking chandelier. The guy had on a plain shirt and just looked like an ordinary nigger. He went straight for the fridge.

“You got any soda or yogurt around?” he said.

“Hold on. This ain’t a delicatessen,” I said.

“It for straight sure ain’t,” his sister said. “You got a hole in your porch. Hey, look at the flowers!” she said. She went over and picked up one of the flowers out of the water. “I get off on flowers,” she said.

I was so pleased, I guess I blushed.

She called her brother Rip or Reap, I couldn’t quite make it out. He never called her name.

“Man, look at the number of these beers! Are you some kind of beer salesman?”

“I keep it for friends who drop by,” I said.

“Ain’t nobody drop by here,” he said. “You got some handsome steaks in there.” He made a motion for me to move aside so his sister could get a view of the fridge. “Look at them steaks,” he said.

“I get off on big old steaks,” she said.

“We’re gonna get those on the grill in a couple of hours. Let me put on some music and you people sit down and relax.” I put the two records on. “I got some dope if you. .”

“You what ? We don’t use no dope! We don’t like no rock-and-roll music, either,” he said.

“I get off on Ralph Vaughan Williams,” said the sister. “You got any Ralph Vaughan Williams?”

“Come out here, look at his barbecue,” the dude said to his sister. He was looking out the back door of the kitchen at my unit. “That a space-age model, ain’t it?”

After a while they said they were going out and sit in the Chrysler for the air-conditioning. I thought it was a ruse to leave for good. When they shut the door, I had to call back this yell that was coming out my throat. It was a yell that if it had come out would’ve been the weirdest sound I ever made.

I knew I’d hear the motor start. They were out there fifteen minutes. I couldn’t stand it. I went and got a beer in each fist and killed them in four minutes. I pushed the curtain to the side.

The nigger was working on another banana and talking to his sister. She sat in the driver’s seat looking like she was really grossed away by his eating etiquette. They got out and opened my door again.

“Get cooled off?” I said.

“We’re out of gas,” said the nigger.

“It’s cooling down some now. We can get those steaks on in half a sec. The other side of that record isn’t so much of a roar. I turned it down. It’s got some nice soft licks in it.”

“I’m a vegetarian,” said Rip or Reap.

“He’s lying through his face, Ellsworth,” said the girl. “This family man in Baltimore, he came out on the parking lot with two buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken on his arms. He”—she pointed at the nigger—“cruised by and robbed them right off the man. He put his face in the bucket and eat that chicken out just like a hog.”

“Beauty ain’t gone keep you well forever,” said the nigger to her.

“He had slaw on his nose,” she said.

The nigger made a move at her.

“Freeze, buster,” I said.

“What you got can stop me?” He looked around.

I ducked in the back room and got that UHF antenna I messed up Oliver Darling with. By that time he was halfnelsoning his sister.

“Leave off, Rip, Reap!” I shouted.

He sprung off her and came out with something yellow from his hip. It was a banana. He was a larger-looking nigger now and he raced over and beat the damn light out of me. When I woke up, he was still laying on my burned leg with what was left of the banana, these peel fibers. They stung in a vicious way.

“Stop it, stop it!” his sister was saying. “You woke him up, for Jesus’s sake!”

I washed up and after we’d eaten the steaks, with light bread and ketchup, we were all lying around pretty sleepy. The girl drank half a beer. I’d drunk five or six for pain. The girl stood up and went to use the bathroom.

“Say,” I said to the nigger while she was out. “I’m kind of in love with her. I know that’s not the right thing to say now. It’s just my feeling talking.”

“You what ?” He got wall-eyed like a joke nigger.

“Got a crush on your sis. Don’t come at me again. You don’t need to get tough on me. Thought we could talk this out. You think I’d have a chance with your sister?”

“Yeah. Cause you’re white and she’s terrible tired. You weren’t too bad-looking till I blued you all up in the face.”

She came back and sat down on the floor. Pretty soon she was fast away asleep.

“I’ll tell you,” he said softly, “you can’t get away from people bothering you anymore. People coming by laughing at even what you eating. Don’t move,” he whispered, and eased out of the room.

She had a certain smile that would have bought her the world had the avenue of regard been wide enough for her. They loved it at the Bargain Barn. But the town was one where beauty walked the walks as a matter of course, and her smile was soon forgotten by clerk and hurried lecher on the oily parking lot. She never had any talent for gay chatter. She could only talk in brief phrases close on the truth. How much is this? Is this washable? This won’t do, it’s ugly.

It hit ninety-eight degrees and the parking lot of the A & P was the worst, with heat rays thick over the black pavement. There were four Cadillacs out there with the rabble of other cars. She got in the Chevy Nova, no air-conditioning and failing muffler. Her husband was an intellectual in real estate. He was such an intellectual he never sold anything. He had a huge habit of honesty and viewed everything being built or traded as pure overpriced dung. Forty-eight thousand got you a phony shack with no trees and tennis privileges. Don’t buy this turkey, he told the couples who were new in town, let’s look for something good. But he never could come up with anything good. All the good stuff was held down by old people with oaks and magnolias in their yard. He sold a few grimy houses to hip people who didn’t mind niggertown.

So Minny and her husband and their four children squeezed by on nine thousand a year. They were in hock up to their hips. They owed everybody from Sears to Saks in Atlanta. The letters from Saks were so gentle and decent. She loved Saks. The requests for payment approached the condition of love letters to her, which nobody else since she was in college had written her.

She remembered the one from Harold, who had taken her virginity.

“Gosh. Thank you, thank you. If you aren’t heaven, I don’t want to go there. You didn’t have to but you did. I love you so much it hurts my chest bones. Thank you, thank you.” Just as if his voice were speaking it to her now.

She drove her Nova around town, delaying her arrival at home, though she was suffering from the heat. The children were out in the garage with a hammer, sharing it. They were using the hammer to smash the pictures she’d hung in the garage. It had been her idea to dress up the garage. To her mind, there was no reason the garage need be an ugly slot to park your car. The garage could be beautiful. She was a major in art in college, and though she was no great shakes as an artist, she loved beauty and fitting colors. Minny painted the telephones in the house yellow.

But at night, when the kids were asleep, her husband took pictures of her naked with a Polaroid camera ordered from Sears on the easy-pay plan. One of his rare big cash-on-the-barrelhead buys was a six-foot mirror. He took pictures in the mirror of her with him. He couldn’t believe she was submitting to these things and wanted to capture it for immortality. The pictures showed a middle-aged man in all sorts of postures with a shy zestful woman, the man joined to her and aiming the camera. The pictures he kept high on a shelf and called his “studies.”