Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

We were coming back one night when we hit the stop-light by the library and I thought of the books all of a sudden and jumped out of the car, telling Fleece to take it on to the dorm.

“I can’t drive,” he said.

I shouted for him to just ease down on the gas and keep a foot on the brake, everything was automatic. Bobby Dove flapped and protested, but I saw the car buck around the campus turn all right.

There was a mean gloom in the library; huge plaster rooms, green tiles on the floor. There were a lot of older night-school sorts here. I was about to burst. I wanted the basement restroom primarily. However, it was my idea to swoop across in the basement stacks and pick up the books on Geronimo, take them into the restroom with me, read about the old rogue in the ecstasy of relief, then perhaps climb out the restroom window possessing the books forever.

By the time I went down to the right row, I was humbled by agony. I gimped down the row, holding on the tier, and started parting the books. They were gone. I wanted Lieu-tenant Britton Davis’s Geronimo and Betzinez’s I Rode With Geronimo , and Geronimo’s Own Story . Somebody had them. I broke wind incredulously.

“My word,” says a prissy voice from one of the carrels at the end of the row. The sound had not been moderate. I was in sublime comfort. I mean the comfort of a wiener who has been a balloon. I made my way toward the voice.

“And who are you ?” said the round monk graduate student. You knew none of the graduate students were any ac-count or they wouldn’t be at Heder man sever.

“What kind of person are you ?”

He had my books. The red beans and rice had resurged with a little pain to me. I told him the books he had were mine. Including that one in his hand.

“I happen to be entertaining myself with the exploits of an Indian who may figure into my Master’s thesis. As a matter of fact I think I will use him.”

“Give. C’mon. I’m in a hurry.”

“Shall I see Mrs. Finger about graduate student priorities?”

“I’ll hit you in the face unless you give me the books.” Fair deal, he seemed to agree. He handed them over in a wise flabbergasted way.

“One bully after another,” he sighed. With this I knew he was queer. Just about bald, ring on his finger — a wife, kids, all of them bullies. Taking the Master’s degree just to get out of the house. Being argumentative in class, being as British and sardonic as he could be, trying like hell to abolish his Mississippi accent. I didn’t know all of this then, of course. But I sat down with the same types in my later schooling.

I had my thrill in the restroom, climbed out the window, stole the books. A campus cop would’ve had a nice shot at me as I was wriggling out of that roll-out window. That was hard. I got down and ran through the Fine Arts parking lot. Livace’s old DeSoto was there. I spat at it and crossed the highway. I think this was a high point in my physical health. I felt clean, fit, and mad as an elk.

Up a hill was the century cedar, a dull evergreen hanging shaggy, as seen in the lightpost glow in the middle of it. Underneath was a stone lovers’ bench. I burst right in on a couple, who were going to it with all the lust a mouth can get at. They got up and ran off together. The girl, Blakey Newman, so I saw by her name inside, left a book, The Story of the Old Testament , on the bench. And on it was a flattened Doublemint wrapper, which I used as a bookmarker later along with the book, and made a B in the required Old Testament course.

I did have quite a pile of books in my hands now. I seemed to be gathering an energy from them as I sat on the bench I’d won by ambush. I turned to the picture I hadn’t seen in a while. There he was, captured by the camera. Preserved by the saltwind off the Gulf in Fort Pickens, on the island of Santa Rosa. I put my face on his outraged face and looked cross-eyed at him. Hard as it was, I bent my eyes and laid them on the rifle in his hand. It was close and dark with my face on his picture like this. In this dark there were no friends, no women, no speaking, no songs, no tobacco, no drink, only the cheated anger, the unused bullets, and cutthroats and spleenstabbers in every corner.

What I especially liked about Geronimo then was that he had cheated, lied, stolen, mutinied, usurped, killed, burned, raped, pillaged, razed, trapped, ripped, mashed, bowshot, stomped, herded, exploded, cut, stoned, revenged, prevenged, avenged, and was his own man; that he had earned his name from the Mexicans after a battle in which he slipped up close enough to shoot their senior officer with an arrow; that the name Geronimo translated as “one who belches” or “one who yawns” or both at the same time; that he had six wives all told; that his whole rage centered around the murder of his first wife and three children by the Mexicans; that he rode with the wind back and forth across the Rio Grande and the Arizona border and left be-hind him the exasperated armies of the moonlight. I thought I would like to go into that line of work. I would like to leave behind me a gnashing horde of bastards. And I did have on my action boots.

I stood up. The campus was meek and depopulated. Then I saw the cars packed along the curb outside the auditorium. Something special was going on. Lights were on in-side it The bigwigs, the trustees, and the constant preacher-saviors of the college, the ashen-cheeked deans, were in meeting, I thought. But the administration office lights were not on. Only the auditorium was lit. I thought I heard a piano inside. I was standing beside a skyblue Cadillac. You pretentious whale, you Cadillac, I thought.

I jumped up on the hood of it I did a shuffle on the hood. I felt my boots sinking into the metal. “Ah!” I pounced up and down, weighted by the books. It amazed me that I was taking such effect on the body. I leaped on the roof and hurled myself up and pierced it with my heels coming down … again, again. I flung outward after the last blow and landed on the sidewalk, congratulating myself like an artist of the trampoline. I spun to the next one, a Lincoln. With my boots only I stove in a fender, flamp, flamp . The paint came off inflakes. Once more to see the top of a car. I was dancing for real now. Doing the spurs. The dance floor bent and gave through, raw blades of tin reared up. I pounced off all the way over to the grass. The Lincoln looked diseased … caved-in, speckled with leaden marks. Hundreds of dollars’ worth, already. I hiked along jubilantly. I simply walked over the Buick. I mounted it at the rear bumper and tramped into the back windshield. The safety glass popped out in a web, no shattering, just a hole and a burst of crystal. I gained the top. I had another floor. My boots did their duty. The steps that cost. Five dollars a heel and toe, at least And at that rate, I planted my boots down on the top and held my books to me, looking at the stars. There was no paint left when I sprang off the hood. I kicked out the lights with happiness and faced the next car. It was an older Chrysler, white, dirty, with sailfish tails and a sunken trunk, a ‘59 model. What did it deserve? What could I treat it to? I was a little out of wind, but stepped up on the trunk. I squatted down. This trunk was a little sturdier than the others, with the sunken continental kit.

A good thing I looked through the rear windshield. Somebody was on the front seat, asleep, perhaps waking now. I slipped off the trunk. The man was already looking around. He knew someone had been on his car, damn every-thing I could do slipping off the trunk. He opened the door, and there we were looking at each other across the roof of the Chrysler. I spoke first, in fright.