Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

Fleece’s green irises lit up with a sort of bleak cheer. I asked him if any of his stories ended any better than that.

“Yes. I have some other endings now. I was looking at hairy Allen Ginsberg, in The New York Times , thinking of myself in the garage, naked, seeking ecstasy like him, about how publicly I sought it, what Creech would’ve done if my mother hadn’t taken such care to quieten it, even while calling one of the three psychiatrists in Jackson, who later called the house because I didn’t show up; add to that the minister that I was at least supposed to see. I turned off the lights in the living room, loving the dark — it was three in the morning — although catching a cold; it was chilly. I drew out old pedro and let him lay in the air on my thigh in a sort of warming-up ceremony to the second anniversary of the afternoon in the garage. The thing perked up halfheartedly, while I was thinking about Bet Henderson, this huge girl who takes the zoology lab I teach; she — at first, I didn’t think it could be true — seems to be making a play for me….”

I turned to my wall. At the wall I grinned and winked like a fool. I knew who Bet Henderson was; had an English class with her. I saw her in the Fine Arts Building, too. She was taking private voice lessons. The girl was one of those larger-than-life statues of a woman, at least six feet two. Perhaps if I called on her with Fleece riding piggyback, there would be enough man for her. She smiled at me; the moments passing her were full of puny wanting. Fleece, I pictured then; he would drown in her breasts. She went around with a group of three troubled-looking small men, one of them a real auntie sort, who seemed embarrassed that you might think they were adventuring with her in a romantic way. Her shoes, I’d noticed, were in the mode, but were such long, huge things they looked like some specially manufactured travesty of the mode. The same thing was true of her dresses. Me oh my! Right in style, Villager prints of geese and weathercocks, but an almost absurd expanse of cloth. I don’t mean Bet was a laugh. She was well-made; her ankles were dear long things; her lap, when she crossed her legs, was a trim valentine of muscles, which the cloth could not hide. She had narrow, damp eyes, and gazed mainly at her own lap during classes. Her nostrils were large and exciting; and her lips pouted out like a red cushion some fevered boy could lay his head on. She was shy! And she was an agony. It was as if, being horny, you had had a chance to blow up your dream-object of lust in the form of a balloon and blew it up, what a shame, just too big. I remembered particularly the day in English 101 when I saw her smile at me with a sliver of tongue between her teeth. As a matter of fact I had thought of calling her up to meet me at some withdrawn place. Fleece was ruminating on about her making a play for him.

“I know who she is,” I said. He was explaining her to me as if reporting on the wilds of some lost geographic scape. “Don’t be overexcited. She smiled at me the same way, tongue between the teeth. I think she wants a team of us.” He ignored me.

“I didn’t encourage it at first. I thought she was simple-minded, this huge girl making her need for me so apparent She’d stay late and watch me smoke a cig. Then one day we found out talking together that that naked girl I saw doing the Twist through my telescope was her! I perspired. I knew then she was saying take it or leave it. I left it like that at Christmas. But back now, if I can get hold of this conversation: I was thinking of Bet in the dark, catching the Hudson Bay flu in only my pajamas, concerned about ecstasy, how going for that big girl was as public an announcement of seeking ecstasy as one could make. I stood up and I was dizzy. Stars were in my eyes and I accepted them as the stars I was among , being in a rocket of desire. I couldn’t breathe well. But I took this as a symptom of being in the stars above the atmosphere.

“I took a chance, Monroe. As I left my house, ill, I shouted, ‘I am on the make, Mother!’

“Either you have to live in the uterus, or you have to slam it shut with an uppercut,” he said after a pause.

Fleece told me a new story during finals about an “upper cut.” I doubt if he’d swung his arm ever in his life in anger, but he was taken by the image of an uppercut, and I think he wanted to drag it back to his past to see if he could get some theme out of his miserable life with it.

The time was a couple of years ago at that red brick Baptist church that he was expected to attend. The invitational hymn started, and he sneaked out to the front steps in a sort of adventuresome hate of the music and everything. He fell upon these redneck children who had sneaked out of church before him. Their shirttails were ripped out and their hooked-on neckties were barely hanging on, because they were going crazy tearing the berries off the nandina bushes and throwing them at each other. Fleece took offense and demanded that they stop, but they wouldn’t One of them threw a wad of berries in his face. He could not help himself. He dove at the child and crushed him with a tackle. The others came up, thinking it was a game, Fleece all dusty with one shoe off, but he was for real. He hurled a smaller one back in the bushes, and, spotting some long white neck, he drew back and hit this boy’s chin with an “uppercut” in a full wheel of his body. As he did that, church was over and General Creech and his mother were the first out on the steps. Hence, they saw him socking heedless at the children. The pastor came out and separated the angry parents of the children from Fleece. Fleece maintained that he would fight for the beauty of the nandina berries, and that he would hit other children and their parents if anybody wanted to tear off any more berries.

When he finally got to the car, with his lost shoe, his mother was crying piteously. She wanted General Creech to leave her and Fleece at the church so that they could see the pastor, who might, she cried, if it was not in the realm of the spirit, arrange a psychiatrist for Bobby Dove. It was then that Creech came through on Fleece’s behalf, suddenly and strangely. He explained to her a rule of life; number one: Contention is always going to break out . Number two was a point of legal description: there were many against one. True, Bobby was almost an adult, but opposing him had been at least seven human beings, small, but army ants are small and so is the coral snake. His mother dried her tears to this speech.

“And here I drive in that priceless free ‘uppercut’ to that kid,” said Fleece. He demonstrated the actual “uppercut.” It was a stilted, finicky gesture, but there was great passion in his eyes. His glasses had slipped down to the end of his nose, uncaging the happy evil in his eyes. I thought he looked like a puppet, again, some renegade puppet which had begged for human life so persistently that he got it.

Then later, in February or March, all clear of the Hudson Bay flu, he brought in a bottle of Mogen David wine — tart & greasy — and some paper cups. We drank the first glass, and he took off his Japan coat.

“Why are you here? I thought you practiced your horn this time of the afternoon. As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to share this wine. Didn’t want to open it yet, really.”

“I hate it, practicing any more. Give me another dip there. It’s not good but you feel it already.”

“I can’t . It’s for later tonight, with someone else.”

“Gimme some, you bastard. I need it. We finish this, then I take you out and I buy something else. I know I was rude last week when I said I didn’t want to listen to you any more. And listen, you’re not a bore. You’re interesting . C’mon, gimme. I think the problem is, you … speak above me. Hand her over, swear to God. You can say anything. I’ll just listen and drink.” I’d been thinking for an hour, all dry and bored.