Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

“I don’t think you’re going to get much out of him. Your boy doesn’t like me,” said Harley. He and the old man laughed.

“But now, Harry and I know each other from way back. I and he were introduced one evening he was throwing fire-crackers. He was having lots of fun.”

The old man bent his brows impishly. I couldn’t tell whether he knew what Butte was talking about. It’s among the old man’s habits of snobbery to make out like nothing is unknown to him. I began feeling watched, or worse, spied upon, and went home.

Butte is a spy in the old man’s hire, I thought. I was out-raged. What else has the yellow son of a bitch seen? How long has he been watching? Then I imagined that unlikely scene with the old man and Ann again, such things as his saying, “Come here, my pet, and sit on my lap,” with him sitting in nothing but an underwear shirt, and Harley Butte smiling cynically at the window, every now and then lifting up binoculars to spy out for me. It all a depraved inside joke on me.

Put some shotgun holes in that yellow son of a bitch, then he can sigh and play his intestines like a flute, I thought. Then I regretted dismally that the old man had been able to make me give up Ann so easily. Something filthy had been going on against me.

I went to bed and lay there. I had the phonograph way up loud on an old record of marimba music. Looble Loo Loo Loooble Boooble Looooo Loo Pi Pi Looble! “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket …!” was the tune. Ordinarily I detested this record, but now it evoked bereft, dispossessed emotions in me. I imagined that it was the musical version of the cliffs and seascape of Malibu, California, where I had wanted to take Ann. I saw the National Geographic picture flood out of its frame in thick gorgeous colors of blue, wheat, and green, and I saw the cottage sag into rivulets of white. It was dripping away, all gone: Loo Looble! And I was left floating on this bed somewhere between Dream of Pines and Malibu, alone, Harry tragic. The suitcase was still in the car, the silver ballpoint which would have signed for the release of my money was in my hands.

Ann, I whispered. Ann, Ann, Ann. You were going to be so sweet at Malibu. You were going to have a clean white tee shirt and be always just coming out of the bath. You and I were going to wait until your red bangs grew out and there wasn’t any more of that yellow peroxide in your hair. We would have gone swimming and one day I would give you a mild kiss on the foot and love would grow gradually from there. Maybe one day you would come in with your tee shirt rolled up coy so I could see your navel. Another day I might come in mistakenly and see your bare breasts. I know they look like crushed ice with rubies on top. Another day I would accidentally get in the shower when you were already in there and you would say, “Oh, you silly thing,” and then we would have love, with you moaning against the shower wall and water droplets on our faces. We could not help it, all the forces said “Love.” But you had been my legal wife for all this time and I had held back like a shy hero. Ann. I loved you.

But I did not love her any more. She was a whore in the comic strips. She probably took money from beasts who smelled of the locker room and the paper mills.

Thank the old man for reminding me of that I hated him. I saw him in his undershirt having his way. Vomit fumes came up in my throat. And I thought I could taste in my mouth the body of a yellow nigger; he was standing, pressing spread-eagled against my esophagus walls; his eye-balls boiled out a rancid muck which dripped down to my lungs. He had the rubbery smile of a minstrel entertainer from the old days.

I didn’t know I was taking the flu that night. At around five in the morning, one eye seeped out a tear, and then the other began raining down my cheek. I thought it must be sadness over Ann, so I just let go and let the disease of my world have me.

It turned out that at the last football game of the season I was too dejected to be held back any longer. I was sitting high up in the bleachers beside the band with the same bud-dies, and we were making up original profanity about how bad the band was while we took the Coke cups into our jackets and sneaked a dip of Dom Pedro muscatel into them when the other team made a touchdown and every-body stood up to despair over it. I don’t know of another evening when defeat was so totally evident in the air. You could smell it. The rain was coming down in a frigid mist, our team was being swept away by an old rival team from Alexandria that seemed to achieve some advantage of grip on the mud, the drums of the band sounded like clubs against sodden paper, and Dom Pedro with Coke made the worst toddy perhaps in the history of alcoholic mixtures. The other two guys had hung beneath the bleachers to throw up once already, but I was more stubborn. I had my eye on a small trumpet-player in the band and kept down all the booze in me I could to prepare for what I was going to do at half-time.

The band went out dutifully at the half and fell apart in some unrecognizable formations and music as the home crowd drizzled out of the bleachers to leave for their homes and fires, until only about twenty folks were left. The band came back, the members wiped off their horns and put them in their cases; the old bald-headed man who led them told them he wanted them back in ten minutes. They swarmed off toward the masonite blockhouse where the concessions and restrooms were. I noted with pleasure that the boy I was watching took his horn with him. I dropped below the bleachers and followed his legs through the tiers to the blockhouse.

He only wanted to pee, and there was a tremendous line outside the restroom door. He waited a minute, then swerved off, looking all around him, and walked up the clay bank behind toward the woods on the edge of the stadium. He got in the shadows of the pine scrubs and then darted into them resolutely. I followed him. Ten feet into the woods, he had his striped uniform pants down and was making water. In one hand was his golden trumpet, with its march music stuck on a little wire clamp protruding from it.

“What you think you doing, boy?” I sounded like a deputy sheriff. “Just hold it right there, band boy.”

The little man — he must’ve been twelve or a small thirteen — jumped when he heard me and went into a spasm trying to hustle his pants up. I knew his name; it was Lloyd Reese, Tonnie Ray’s little brother. He was the brother of a roach. I didn’t think he knew me, though.

“Harry. I thought it was somebody … You’re Harry Monroe, aren’t you?” Lloyd said when he finally buttoned up and turned to see me.

“Give me the horn, you little fart” I grabbed the trumpet but Lloyd held on, unexpectedly, with his skinny crab-like hands. I hit him in the mouth. His march music flew everywhere and he crumpled back ino a huge weedplant. Lloyd howled like a wounded cat. I grew panicky thinking he might be heard down in the stadium and charged into the weedplant thinking to calm him down with a few blows. I hit at his face a couple of times, and sure enough, he got quiet. But he began whimpering and I felt pretty sorry about that. His tiny pointed kneecaps showed under his pants; his uniform was covered with wet grass crud.

“Now look, Lloyd. All I wanted you to do was give me a lesson on this old horn. I’m interested in playing it. Lloyd? You hear?”

“You hurt my embouchure,” Lloyd whimpered, putting his hand to his lips. I didn’t know what embouchure was, but guessed of course that it was a diseased condition of Lloyd’s and got very afraid of him dying on me.

“You’re all right, Lloyd,” I pleaded. “Give us a tune, buddy.” I gave him back the horn and Lloyd played an airy little version of “Lady of Spain” with no hesitation, sitting down, rather pitiful in his rumpled orange uniform and with his brown hair jagged on his forehead.