Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

In honor of me as a college man, there is beer in the refrigerator, for the first time ever. My brother, my foster-brother, my sister, and their families are here. The house is crammed with wonderful people and greenery and candles, the children are surging, and my old man is about to crack with pride. It’s me , it’s old wild Ode Monroe that filled this house up like this! he seemed to mean, wearing the Christmas sweater from me. I loved him. I had a four-beer glow on, but I would’ve loved him anyway. I loved him in his age. He had put on five years in the four months since I’d seen him. But he was a man. He could bear it.

My mother was pretty all over again. But though she still looked something like Elizabeth Taylor, she had aged and was on the down side of Liz Taylor’s beauty. I trailed her. I saw her in all the lights and shadows of the house. I couldn’t quit staring. I became long and rude in my stares. She didn’t understand me. She lowered her eyes, embarrassed at me. I was embarrassed at me. She sighed, she told me that smoking cigarettes made me look like a hoodlum. The fact was I couldn’t stand to see her lose out to that old simpleton Father Time. I hated it I hugged her and hugged her, at every decent opportunity.

When the rest of them left, and I was still there, it was hard to make talk at all. I took the pistol out in the back yard, and before I knew what I was doing, I was shooting at birds. The birds — robins, sparrows, thrushes — alit on the bare gray limbs. They weren’t used to being shot at. So even with the pistol I killed three of them. They would stay on the branch after I missed a shot, not understanding. I was learning the weapon. The last one I killed I hit him shooting four times from the hip. He burst apart in feathers and fell ten feet from me with feathers floating around his corpse. I reloaded and shot at the corpse in rapid fire from the hip. The corpse jumped about, its head vanished, sod flew up. I had the scarf and boots on. The old man had come up behind me sometime during the blasting. I never heard him.

“I believe he’s dead. What do you think you’re doing?”

“There’s nothing else to do,” I said.

“Do you realize that bullets travel? You shoot a twenty-two bullet in the air, it goes a half-mile until it hits something. I just got a phone call from Oliver Sink. One of your bullets came through a window in his dining room. Now isn’t that nice? He’s just a little damn bit upset.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry. God knows. Listen. I’ll just leave. I’ll leave, go on back to the college.”

The old man told me he didn’t want me to leave. This was an accident; he never meant for me to leave —looking at me uncertainly. We could talk . We could get along fine. I drank beer and skipped supper. When he came in the den I was tight enough to call Lala Sink, see if she was home for Christmas. I was at the phone when the old man came in. The Sink’s phone was ringing; but I hung up.

The old man told me a couple of whore jokes. I thought they were corny, but I laughed. Missy and her missing husband, Edna in the barrel at the dude ranch, etc. The tone was ribald, words and laughter were passing between us. I told him one. It was one of the jokes from the front-steps crowd back at Hedermansever. After the punch line, I looked at the old man and knew I had crossed the line.

“ What did she say?” asked the old man.

I knew I couldn’t do the old woman’s line again, and the trembling voice was important. I repeated the line flat: “Them weren’t no sack of potato chips. Them were scabs off my—”

“You think that is funny? My lord!”

“I didn’t make it up.”

“Think of this: your mother was in the house when you told that story.”

“But.. aw, Happy New Year, Father.”

“Are you drunk ?”

Since then, very little has passed between us except money.

Fleece was late coming back to school. We were well into “dead week,” the free time before final exams. A boy from Morton whose father was a pharmacist was selling amphetamines in the hall. He wore a canvas jacket with the hide of a yellow cat — house cat — sewn on the back. Above the hide, written in Magic Marker, was “Dead Cat,” with quotation marks, just like that. Morton, Mississippi, was a nasty mudflat where they killed chickens and drove them out in trucks. So I don’t guess the fellow could help it. He pointed to one vial of yellow pills bigger than the rest. They cost two bucks. “Them are the Cadillac of bennies,” he said. Truck drivers were known to take one of these and drive from Morton to California and back without shutting an eye. I bought one of them off him. I was behind in everything except drama class. He noticed me eyeing him. He stunk, as a matter of fact. I don’t think the cat hide had been tanned well.

“I don’t smoke nor drink,” he said.

“You killed that cat ?”

“My front yard right at noon Christmas day. I hate a cat. Now I love a dog, but I hate a cat.”

“Did you shoot him?”

“Naw. I choked her — it’s a female — I choked her with my hands. We had two birds, two bluejays which we made a feedbox for in our yard. She killed one of them birds which my mother loved” . He saw my disgust. “It didn’t hurt. I didn’t choke her all the way. I hit her head on a phone pole. She was scratching me something terrible. That did her.”

“It was a pretty cat.”

“I know it. I sewed her right on. I know it’s pretty.”

I was looking out the dorm window when Fleece entered the yard. He carried his suitcase. The rain was drizzling down. His suitcase broke open. A gift in Christmas paper tumbled out, with some clothes. He cursed and hurled the clothes back in. The gift he kicked. It scudded and broke apart, trailing the ribbon. Leaving it, he sloshed on into the dorm.

“Your present is getting wet,” I said to him. He didn’t even say “hidee” like he used to. He went straight to the bed, snorting and hacking. The Hudson Bay flu was on him. “I’d better go get your present.”

“You can have it. It’s your sort of thing.”

I put on my raincoat, went down to the muddy lawn. There in the rain was the mess of cardboard and ribbons and poking out of it, a.22 long-barrel revolver, black as coal. I presented the gun to Fleece. It was the kind of gun which if you missed your shot, you could go over to what you were shooting at and whip it to death.

“I don’t want the bastard. My grandmother gave me fifty dollars for Christmas. We went to Florida again. General Creech hauled me downtown to buy something with it. The pistol seemed to be the best bargain in town. It’s of some faultless German make that pierces the heart of a chipmunk from eighty feet. I tried to look fulfilled when I gave them the fifty. The goddam Christmas carols on the store radio were donging my head off. I finally made it as a son to General Creech at that moment, I did. Lucky me. I’m sick. I’ve been faking good health for six days so my mother would let me come back.”

“I can’t just take the pistol.”

“Yes, you can. I don’t want it. I’m sick, but I’m happy, in a way. Listen: When we were in the house in Florida, Creech’s glasses fell off in the commode. He was drunk and didn’t know it; he sat on the pot, flushed it, and the glasses caused a stoppage. His own horrible sewage backed up on him and filled up the bathroom. He wouldn’t let any of us know what was happening. He said he was taking a shower. I saw his fingers covered with toilet paper wiping up around the slit under the door. The odor coming into the house was dreadful. He was completely blind and didn’t even know where or what he was wiping up. But all the while he was yelling to us that there was no trouble, he could take care of it, even though he was blind. And he did. He found the PineSol in some cabinet, reached down the commode and drug out the clot, including his glasses, put the glasses back on, and by the time he opened the door, he was standing there normal as ever. The bathroom was clean as a pin and threw out a vapor of PineSol that would murder any germ from a mile away. Go ahead and laugh. I myself had to admire him a little.”