Padgett Powell - Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men

This remark had the effect of liberating the other students from staring politely at her. When they resumed their fond gaze at the professor, Mrs. Hollingsworth left the room. In her one hand was the FRIEND button, in her other hand her purse. She had a headache and was breathing hard.

Now she understood a few things: that the American academy, which one might have thought the place to defend freedom of speech, had been the seat and soul of abrogating freedom of speech, if the first assault on its freedom can be said to be restricting, or handcuffing, speech. The day she heard “redneck” on NPR, she turned NPR off, not because broadcasters were still using the term, but because she knew one day they would not be. In fact, she had a vision of the quiet moment backstage at a Boston studio when a good, surprised correspondent was let go for saying “redneck” the last time it would be said.

Her getting stranger had something to do with this truly getting stranger the nation was about. She wanted to be somewhere else, so she was making her list.

Forrest and Bobby Lee

— Bobby Lee, let me ast you, friend, what you boys upair in the high cotton wrapping up cigars in you battle orders and droppin em behind enemy lines for? I find fightin hard enough without that.

— That? That warnt but a thang.

— Warn’t but a thang? Put some boy bones in the ground, din't it?

— Yeah. Yeah it did.

— Well then it warn’t just no thang, Bobby E. Lee. I got outright queers on my back down here and it cost me boy bones all day long and it ain’t just a thang. We ain’t got no cigars down here. And it ain’t just a thang down here.

— You do go on, Genel.

— Do I, Genel? Where boy bones is concerned, I don’t hold with the luxury of cigars.

— I take your point, Genel. I take your point.

— You keep on takin it, Genel.

Mrs. Hollingsworth wondered if this item were not too obscure for even a hungry fool to understand. That is probably because it is real, she thought. Few people could credit that the War might have been over had not battle orders from Lee been found wrapped around cigars and given to McClellan in time to avert Lee’s annihilation of him in the Valley campaign. That was harder to believe, she thought, than that, say, a media mogul might try to produce a species of media baby and fight the War again. She was having these vague visions of television technology and Forrest and a new soldier, a New Southerner. All of this, she thought, more probable than battle orders wrapping up cigars in enemy territory, a sad and ineluctable fact of history. She liked the day that allowed you to say “ineluctable,” and also “eponymous."

Funeral

The man who could see Forrest and who would see a yellowtail in a lake and who had known love when he was Lonnie and saw Sally, and who had not known it later, wont to the funerals, one hard upon another, of his mother and his lather. Both of them were held in desertlike heat.

At the funeral of his father, to which he was late he had to have them open the coffin at the cemetery so he could see him. He had never seen a dead man before. He said to his father, “Hey, bud,” a thing his father had said to him, which he had never himself said. He held his hand. He kissed him on the cold meat of his forehead. No one at the cemetery saw this. In the heat they were now concentrating on trying to leave. Deer flies and sportcoats and good cars and some women who had liked his handsome father were by the cars, ready to leave. He could have joined his father in the expensive box that was designed to turn his father into slime and for which he felt most sorry for his father, and they would not have seen this either,

At the funeral of his mother, he was not late, and he did not have to have the coffin opened because it had not yet been closed. He said, "Hey, Mom." He did not touch her. If he did, he cannot remember, but he can remember thinking he was probably not going to want to, and he does not remember any change of emotion when he saw her, so his memory that he did not touch her is probably correct.

Inside the funeral home at his father’s affair, where he discovered his father already removed to the cemetery, was a vulgar employee whom he should have assaulted but did not. The man said, "Y’all come back tomorrow, y’heah?" and got away with it.

He walked out into the heat then, and saw Forrest for the first time. Forrest slapped at a prickly pear cactus with the flat of his saber, and the man might have thought of his father’s mother slapping his father with the flat of her carving knife, but he did not. It was too hot to think. He then saw Sally at the grave and did not remember her. She introduced herself, and he said, “Oh, yes. Of course.”

Gizmo

The woman with taut vanilla flesh sits on the black chair and regards the courthouse lawn. I don’t see them, she says.

— Who?

— The redhorse suckers.

— Why should you?

— They went out this window.

— Oh.

She watches the square. Something odd catches her eye in the shadows. She looks at the black men, who see her. She looks back to the odd thing, under a store awning.

— There are two men watching this window.

— The sages?

— No. These are criminals of some sort. White. Looking at us with a gizmo.

— What kind of gizmo?

— High-tech gizmo.

— I am not worried about no high-tech gizmo.

— Well, these are pretty low-tech-looking boys wielding the gizmo, if that makes any difference.

— Might. Just might.

Scientists

— I caint quite tell if she can see him or not, Hod. I know he can.

— Whyont you run Forrest now?

— Shit, Hod, em nappy pappys already actin spooked. I run him right through them last time, they so whooped by it one of em says he smellin bream beddin!

— Naw.

— Swear to God.

— Well, all right. We got what we want anyway. If she can see him too, that a extra. Mr. Roopit Mogul gone be very pleased with his field hands, I’d say. The New Southerner to order! Man who caint remember who he is, one; caint forget who he supposed to be, two; can see Forrest and be spooked by it and have half a idea what the hell it is, three: that was our orders. And to boot, to judge from the looks a her, he aint queer—

— That’s a miracle, way it going.

— Theys more wrong in the world than being queer, Rape.

— They is? Like what? You hidin something from me, Hod?

— No. It aint nothing but a thang. Now see can she really see him. Put him on Talk. I bleve we in position for a bonus, Rape, Mr. Mogul find out we got him a mating pair. Don’t run him through them old men no more. No telling what this does to people.

— Fuck people up when they see it, I'd say.

— Yeah, but I mean when they don't.

— Make em smell bream when they don't. That much we know.

— Yeah, Rape. We a couple reglar scientists.

— How reglar we got to be, working for a dude nauno Roopit Mogul? That wife of his..

— All rich fucks got women look that good, Rape. its the law.

Dandy

The woman who no longer is Sally, if she ever was, pays oblique attention to the two men under the awning who are pointing something around the square. Those are as solid a pair of ne’er-do-wells ever scuffed shoes, she says to the man.

— I’m tired.

— I’m tired too, love. But it’s Ted Bundy and Lee Harvey Oswald down there aiming a ray gun at this window or I’m a coot on duck day.

And then she sees Forrest — of this, from her expression, there is no doubt in the minds of those who witness her seeing him.

Forrest appears unmounted, natty in shirt garters and whipcord trousers, not his riding attire, and wearing silver spurs. He takes a position near a granite pedestal bearing a likeness of himself. He disregards it. He says, in a voice surprisingly high and piercing, "I jingle when I walk in these things. They become me, if I am a dandy, and I become a dandy when I walk. That is why I ride fist skull stomp gouge and resent the everliving shit out of appointed leaders who dick around with cigars and bury boys. The bones of boys, mark me, will mark us forever. I am fire."