Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

“That’s fine, Lloyd. You really get in there with it, buddy.” Actually it had been rotten playing, but I appreciated the fact he thought I would kill him if he didn’t play something.

“My embouchure is ruined,” said Lloyd.

“Nawww! Now look. I want you to teach me the keys. I’ll blow on it and you make the notes for me.” I eased the horn out of his hands.

“That’s silly,” little Lloyd said.

I looked down at him from my height and he didn’t think it was silly any more. I sat by him and pursed my lips on the mouthpiece as I’d seen him do. I blew and a rugged whiff came out. He reached over and began fingering the scale for me. I was surprised to see there were only three valves. I’d always thought there were more — I mean, for all the different sounds.

“No valves down for C,” Lloyd said. “First and third down for D. First and second down for E; only first down for F.” I felt the tones go up in a grand ascension. “Don’t blow so loud!” said Lloyd.

In ten minutes I could play a few bars of “The Marines’ Hymn.” I played it over a couple of times and then began to give it a little finesse and surge, delaying the notes jazz-style and bellowing on the tones when I finally hit them. Wild Jesus! I knew I had been made for this horn, or that it had been made for me — whichever! Look how I was coming along in ten minutes.

“Say, Lloyd. Aren’t I doing pretty good?” I said. I really enjoyed the taste of metal on my lips.

“My band has started to play. I’m supposed to be with them, you know.”

So they were. It must’ve been the fourth quarter by then. The frosty rain was drilling down on Lloyd and me up here in the weeds. A giant oak stood right behind us. Its big leaves were clattering under the rain; it might have been sleet. The band, however, was cutting right through it with a brassy grunt.

“Look, Lloyd. Wouldn’t you agree that I was exceptional as a beginner?”

“I’m going to be in big trouble now,” Lloyd said. He had a spindly crooked nose that seemed to seek a less trouble-some life.

I gave him back the horn and he collected his wet sheets of music in the weeds and left for the stadium. I yelled to him when he went down the hill that I thanked him very much. Then I drove home, ignoring my buddies, and got in the bed. I needed no phonograph music. The sound of myself on trumpet was good enough. I loved that trumpet. I wanted one of my own.

As my luck would have it, that little Lloyd Reese turned out to be a genius. He is studying anthropology at Cam-bridge in England as of this date; this will be his second Ph.D. and I think the small fart even has two or three books out by now. How could I know who I was messing with?

He got back to the bleachers in an unbelievably disheveled state and with no horn. He had tears running down his cheeks and there was something pronouncedly wrong about the way his fly was buttoned. The little snake stood in front of the band and declaimed about how I had beaten him, stolen his horn, and further, how I had threatened him until he had to agree that I could molest him. He shouted this out so a few townsmen nearby and some of the sub football team could hear him. Then he fainted, and there was a big scene where his sister Tonnie Ray ran out of the stands and supported him in her arms. What a hell of an actor Lloyd was. He knew what crowd to speak to. The townspeople who remained in the rain were the violently loyal to Dream of Pines; the football subs would kill out of pure mean frustration.

Things were not rosy for me in Dreams of Pines for a few months. Half of the high school thought I was a violent homosexual and the other half didn’t know for sure. I was the first even suspected case at Dream of Pines. There was suspicion at home the Saturday morning after I’d first played the trumpet. I remember the phone ringing early in the morning, but I didn’t know what was happening when the old man replied into it with sleepy surprise. To the lasting credit of the Reese family, it was not Mr. Reese calling the old man at this hour. The Reeses probably knew what a smart fraud Lloyd was and had found out the truth some time during the night. But they were, on the other hand, a gutless family for never denying Lloyd’s accusations against me. They were a family in one of the subdivisions and I have no doubt they were trying to be as quiet as possible about Lloyd, who was not yet so known for his aberrant lying as he was later.

It was broadcast throughout Dream of Pines that I was a desperate queer.

The old man woke me up at eleven with a sad look on his face. I’ve never seen him so miserable. My mother was standing at my door, already preparing to intercede on any brute thing her husband might say to me.

“I am always here to give you anything,” the old man announced. “I always have been.” He was crazy with nervous confusion. I didn’t know what this was all about, but he approached me at a time when I was voraciously greedy.

“I want a trumpet,” I began. His eyes widened. I know now that, according to what he knew by the phone call, all the evidence as to my being homosexual was in.

“Don’t you already have a trumpet in this room?” he asked.

“No. Are you nuts? I found out just last night that I wanted a trumpet.” The old man blushed. I swear it.

“I want a trumpet I want the title papers for the Chevy wagon. I want a hundred dollars. I want a private tutor to teach me trumpet. And I want… a pistol.” I threw that in because it was the only thing I could think of on the moment that was shiny and expensive.

“You can have all that,” my mother said. My father looked back at her mournfully.

To this day, the old man doesn’t know but that the sordid story about me he heard over the telephone is partially true. Who could have, would have, called him? I keep asking myself. I think it was Ollie Sink or his wife. They were there during the rain at the game, and lately they had be-come members of the Baptist church, in a deep vengeful sort of way. Ollie had mailed some tracts about the end of the world to the old man. Without postage, that is. I saw Ollie putting the envelope into our mailbox while I was reminiscing around the cane one afternoon.

I got the pistol first. I’m sure the old man thought it was the most manly thing to give me. It was a miniature snub Italian-made automatic; it was heavy, a.22, and was a smooth brute that shot with a loud sound. Next he told me informally that the Chevy was mine for keeps. Next he told me I had another hundred dollars in my savings account. This was toward college, he made me under-stand. Next he gave me a piece of property in southeastern Texas that I have not to this day seen. He assured me it was a nice wooded bluff from ten acres he had bought and would make a splendid site for a house in the event I got a wife in the next ten years. How he did emphasize my getting a wife. Last came the trumpet, which not he but my mother brought into my room one evening. It was a brass and silver plated beauty lying in an alligator case of blue velvet fur. Mother had picked it up on a secret trip to a music store in Shreveport The horn was a Reynolds Contempora model exquisite by even professional standards. I didn’t know that and only said, “Thank you very much,” to my mother. Bless her heart, she had gotten me on purpose the finest horn in Louisiana.

It was well known in Dream of Pines how miraculous Harry Monroe became, in such short time, on trumpet I had a private tutor all right, but that doesn’t explain it. My mother got me a weird old fellow who had played for years in a Shriner’s band. He was retired from the automobile trade and never went anywhere without a can of beer, but I don’t want to take anything away from him; he played trumpet terribly well for a guy his age. He’d had lots of practice playing fast circus music, and he could still cut away with a solo of high-ranged brassy spunk. His name was Ralph Medford; I think he had been in the First World War; he called the trumpet the long horn, as opposed to the shorter cornet And as a teacher, after he got through wandering around and admiring the pieces in our house, he was competent: stiff on my learning the scales, stiff on my never playing over phrases and tunes I had already mastered; when I learned something, I got no praise — Mr. Medford just lost interest in the exercise altogether, and gave me to know I ought to do the same. He had eyes that reminded me of broken grapes and a handsome tanned scalp where he’d grown bald. His car was one of those old Hudsons that looked like a zeppelin somehow incapacitated and made to creep along the earth; it made a sucking sound coming in the driveway and going out it, to wherever he lived in Dream of Pines.