Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

All at once Whitfield Peter put his hand into the breast of his coat. I knew he was going for a gun; it did not occur to me that he could be reaching for anything but a gun, my forehead was hot with knowing this; but something could be done because he had missed yanking his gun out the first time, whereas I already had mine out and was almost to the middle of the street since I knew I could hit nothing from the distance I was from him on the sidewalk, and if I got there in time there might be no gunfire at all. Then Peter saw my gun out, and his not even drawn. Fleece was right with me—“Don’t! Idiot!”—huffing away. It was a mistake. Peter had nothing, or only a big handkerchief, on his second draw. Fleece knelt and pretended to be getting some camera shots of the Gladiator band, and I passed the gun very subtly back into my coat pocket. Apparently no one had seen. We faded back off the street. Fleece’s trifurcated chrome-ringed instrument aided in the ruse. He seemed to be railing technical observations to me, when of course what he was doing was scolding me to blister a slut I had nothing to say. There were cops all over down here at the end of the parade. They had billy clubs at the casual. Whitfield Peter was gone.

We made our way to the front of the King Edward. The Gladiators treaded time to the drums, whose volume ballooned out into the Illinois Central overpass. Finally they cut off, whoooommmpp! and you could’ve sliced the silence with a knife. Harley signaled the disbandment. The players turned toward us and massed at the hotel door. I couldn’t believe how ordinary and small they looked. They pranked around and barked at each other in that private nigger English you couldn’t understand. There were several girls among the Gladiators, too, jammed into green pants and double-breasters with the rest of them. The sweat on a couple of necks was another surprise. Then Harley came up. He held his helmet. With the other hand he had a euphonium-player in tow. The boy was telling Harley, “I gan outa control,” almost crying. “You little sonuvabitch, you’da been watchin the music … you don’t mind about me, you hear?” The boy was a head taller than Harley. Harley cast him away violently, and the boy ran ahead to the door. Harley turned back to look again.

I told Harley we’d seen everything. “He’s crazy. He’s been in Whitfield.” He seemed consoled a bit to see me. Then we went through the hotel door with him.

“Wherever he is, his head ain’t any better now. That boy busted him on it with his horn, I mean hard, and he fell down on the road and right on his head.”

“ You hit him,” said Fleece. “I took a picture of that” Fleece was only making a technical point, as he often did. But Harley looked at the camera distraughtly. “No, I mean he deserved it. I guess,” said Fleece.

“What the hell you mean by I guess ?” I demanded of Fleece.

“I didn’t know he was a white man till I hit him,” said Harley.

“All I meant was that a fight is unfortunate. Somebody’ll carry it on,” said Fleece, trying to make up. “This damn place was built out of long memory.”

“He knows. That boy knows,” said Harley. “That Whitfield man followed me for a mile screaming at me.”

“What’d he say?”

“Ah, all about my daddy, my daddy, who was my daddy? Everybody thinks they’re the first sonuvabitch to notice I’m not a true nigger.”

The pause after this was charged with gloom all around. Harley’s beard was almost black with sweat. The helmet seemed to hang at his leg like a wilted trophy.

“He was so crazy he was stone-deaf, that man,” Harley broke the gloom. “Anybody that heard that band, they couldn’t … You heard my band.” He smiled dreamily, beyond me.

“Yes—”

“Aw, my ass. Look in there.” He put the helmet on. What he meant was that his bandsmen were standing all over the edge of the lobby and jamming up the hotel walk-through instead of moving on to the buses waiting outside as they were supposed to. The Gladiators, tubas set on the floor and brass and woodwinds jabbing around, brown faces wandering, were crammed everywhere, back to the plate glass of the souvenir shop and down the granite hall flush against the registration counters, on back to the airlines service. We passed some white couples holding newspapers who were getting out, in a rage. Some of the girls sat in the old plush chairs and couches; a few bandsmen were flirting with the water fountains — for whites only, like the whole hotel. Harley found the drum major, a big boy with his fur hat still on, dragging his braid-wound baton on the carpet. He dressed the boy down in some quiet gnashing language. The boy blew the whistle and made an epical gesture with the baton, shagging toward the rear revolving door. The Gladiators gathered into file quietly; there had never been much noise, anyway. Now they were a sagging retreat of children barely able to hold up their brass. Harley seemed satisfied with them again.

We were next to the men’s room. The door flew open and Peter rammed out He’d cleaned himself up. His hair was oily with water, his nose was bright, but he was purple about the forehead and an ear. The big hat he fended about was more of a bag now. I wet my pants when he came out shouting.

“You fellows help me get these cooties out of this hotel. Do they think this is Washington Dee Cee? Kick into them. Thrust them!” he said, doing unfinished demonstrations of these acts. Then he saw Harley, whom he had overrun. He jerked back.

“Mutt! Treacle!”

He began swatting Harley with his hat “What did you say, you banjo?”

Fleece was at my ear, hand on my arm. “Don’t,” he said. The fact was it seemed like a sissy theater performance. Harley waved at the blows glibly, as if Peter was a gigantic gnat, but only a gnat. Some of the bandsmen were looking back and halting. At the height of the attack, Harley somehow jerked his head and they shuttled on.

“What did you say ? Liar! Smuthead! Coon-beard!”

“I said if you would turn around you could see my band was nearly ‘bout out of this hotel and I said I never meant them to stop here. And if you’ll put your hat back on your head, I’ll put mine on too and we’ll never see one another again, Mister White Man. I’m sorry that we ran in—”

“ That thing?!” shouted Peter, sneering at the helmet “Yes, do put that fancy thing on your head.” Harley did. “But did you hear the ed-u-kay-shun squirt out of the high-yellow tadpole? Would you look at that helmet? Look at that beard. This one’s hardly left a place for being a nigger.” He struck off the helmet with his hat. Harley caught the helmet. Six or seven white people were looking at them from the Delta Airlines booth. Harley began edging away. I looked beyond the people at the booth, and here were two cops coming in the front, being led by one of those women with newspapers. Peter saw them. He reached out and caught Harley. “No, sir, Mister Neegro. I believe you’ll stay until the police—”

“We can’t stay,” Fleece whispered to me. “You won’t keep your mouth shut and they’ll get you with the pistoL We can’t.”

I told him I was staying. Fleece hightailed it along the edge of the hall, then rode the revolving door out, disappearing like spun-off slat from the door — a hilarious thing, actually. But my own nerves broke with the cops approaching. I felt the gun was murmuring like a toad in my pocket I couldn’t wait here, not even silently. So I did much the same thing as Fleece, even more breathlessly, because I knew the cops were closer on my back. I was thinking about being caught by them in the slat position against the revolving door, maybe being unable to detach from the door and whirling around again, pistol slinging out and clattering right under their feet… but I got out free, and by the time I was out there, I was feeling utterly lousy about the whole thing. Fleece was nowhere around the rear driveway. I decided, all right, I’ll stay here. No further.