Padgett Powell - Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men

They thought at times that the impossibly beautiful woman they now saw in the window of the rented room was the same one they had seen at the funeral; at other times they were convinced it was a second impossibly beautiful woman.

The competing theories in this domain fought in the minds of Rape Oswald and Hod Bundy like two good dogs. If that sombitch could find 0ne a them purty as at, Rape contended, he

could find two. It was so impossible that even one woman so beautiful existed that the existence of two women so beautiful did not further strain credulity. The opposing theory was that she had been a waitress in the café below the room. If that the case, Hod Bundy wanted to know, how come she aint still the waitress`? She quit, Oswald told him.

She quit, Bundy repeated.

— Ats right.

— She dint quit, because she warnt there in the first place.

— I saw him atalkin to this girl in there.

— Well, was she a girl what suck the breath out your yinyang she so purty?

— No. Not as I recall.

— And if it was a girl that good-looking, she would not be here in a café. Hollywood would of come and got her.

— Well, if it’s the same girl, how’d she get here? How’d he get her here? He dint even know her like, at the funeral.

— That was maybe his strength. That what got her interested in him. It always pays to forget em. Run that thang one more time, Rape. I am heavy bored.

But Rape Oswald could not operate the machine as he looked at the woman, again in the window. Instead he began speaking, in an oddly high voice: Were they a God, Hod, he

would not allow the Tyranny of Pussy. He would not, not in no benevolent universe, give boys a dick so hard they make fools of theirself all their life for that right there.

— Give me the goddamn machine, Rape.

— You don’t know how to run it.

— You said yourownself they aint no operators manual.

Queer Friendlys

— Imone have to look at that woman along time, Hod.

— You already looked at her so hard she seen us. Why you wont to keep on?

— I got to see something wrong with her, get some relief. I could get aholt of her, it’d be like when they put Floyd dogs with Maurice bitches. Set a new pace in dogs they done that.

— Oswald, you is a dog. Take it or leave it, myself.

— What you got against dogs`? Dogs is good. You worry me, Hod. First the queer friendlys, and now you don’t even want that—

— The queer friendlys, as you put it, is just reason. It stands to reason some boys might see pussy aint all it’s cracked up to be. You said that yourself.

— No, Hod. I said God whupped us with the Tyranny of Pussy, ats—

— Okay, Mr. Buckley. Some boys just said no, like Nancy Reagan said they was suppose to, except they said no to pussy. I don’t see why a man need to herniate hisself over that.

— Maybe acause they said yes to dick? Could that be it, Hod? The, like, Bible and all?

— Swaggert under his glass table, you mean, telling us what’s wrong with queers, paying a girl sit naked on a glass coffee table`? You lost your goddamn mind, Oswald. And stop playin with yourself. Whole damn world see you got a rod on.

— I need her.

— Give me the machine.

— You don? know how to run it.

— You jack off, I’ll take the General out for en walk, see if that girlfriend of yours wants him or not.

— I got to look at her a long time, Hod. Got to be something wrong somewhere. That the only way you can survive them not wanting you, find the flaw.

— What is Skate?

— Aint no Skate.

— Yeah there is. Saber, Scream, Scour, Skate. I want to see the General can skate.

— Give me that thing.

— No. Set there and play pocket pool and don't mess with me.

— You messing with my hard, Hod.

— Boy, you all right?

Tongue

The man, tired on the bed, recalls the blackened knife his grandmother slapped his father with famously. He did not ever witness that, of course. He witnessed her carving pickled tongue with it, though. She kept entire beef tongues on plates and sliced the tongue meat off and made you a sandwich of it with soft bread and bright, tart, yellow mustard. They were extraordinarily good sandwiches until one day he saw the tongue itself, thick and furry on the plate, and cold, massive. Until that moment he had thought they were eating some kind of composite lunch meat, like Spam, spelled Tung. There was in fact a local product called tung oil from a tree called a tung tree, and there was a semipro baseball team called the Tung Nuts that his father had played on, but of this the man as a boy was innocent when he balked at tongue upon his discovery it was not tung.

Bundy has wrenched the ray gun from Oswald, love, the woman said. I believe Oswald is exposing himself to me. It’s picking up out here on the square. The nightlife is setting in. The warm golden light of the room, which was even warmer and more golden as the sun set in the west and shone in the window at this time of day, suddenly flared into something else. It was an electric — feeling light, like that before a tornado, with an odd pastel lilt to its edges, or where it illuminated the edges of things. The black — lacquered chair on which the woman sat looked as if it had been wet with gasoline. A caustic-looking rainbow of color shone from it.

A turbulent tan-colored air pressed up against the window, forcing the woman back from the chair. She had somehow felt a roughness from this air, as if it were strong wind, but it did not appear to be moving, or blowing, much. Nor was it like smoke, though there was a quality of semi-opacity about it. She could still see Bundy and Oswald on the square, though not clearly. Bundy had dropped the ray gun and stood aghast. Oswald was on the ground, masturbating, unless she had altogether lost her senses. She had never seen a man do that on the ground in public. The light made you unsure of things, as if you had taken drugs and now could not be sure whether things were suddenly strange in themselves — this happens, after all — or strange merely in your altered perception of them.

There was a noise almost surflike at the window, loud and abradant. A huge voice sounded outside. It had the impact of bombs, the woman thought. Or perhaps bombs would be sharper, but not as loud, she thought. The voice said, "I'd not have picked you wiggas, but you is volunteered, and you, I see, like to ride. Let’s us see how well wiggas ride. Mount your boards, boys!” And the roughened air got rougher, and the l bombing noises more bombing, and the town dissolved in the brown, tortured, tearing air.

Drive-in

— What the hell you doin, Oswald?

— Whippin puddin, what it look like. Better pay attention to your boy Forrest there. Sumbitch biggern a drive-in pitcher show. Looks like the goddamn Wizard of Oz.

— You look like a kid down there. I don’t believe you layin there on a sidewalk wanking.

— The mood struck. What, you only do it in bed? You romantic?

— I don't do it period.

— Oh. John Effing Kennedy. You are entirely fucking with my hard.

Forrest is five stories tall and on a skateboard. His dirty duster is backed up against the window, strafing it when he gestures to the crowd of hundreds of boys in great blooming pedal pushers in the town square. Each holds a skateboard at parade rest. Girls come from the edges of the square and give, each girl to each boy, a silver thimble. “These is non-issue helmets, boys,” Forrest says, “like my spurs. They will protect the pinky bone, but only the pinky bone. Your other bones you are to protect yourself at all times. I do not trade in the bones of boys, but some what I know do. So watch yourself. Now mount up. Ride, fist, skull, stomp, gouge, slay, skate!”