Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

“And her husband, if you can trust her, I’ll bet it’s been a cruel world for her. He was a plumbing contractor. His father and he had come from Ireland to Jackson. When his father died, Hoover was so crazy disoriented that Mother Rooney made him build this house so he could look at it and not mistake it for any other place in the world. And we’re living in it.”

I heard Silas coming down the stairs to my room. He called me. I went up, and Fleece followed.

“I’d like to speak to Monroe alone,” said Silas.

“We were talking,” said Fleece.

“Yes, you’re always talking, but I have something to say .”

Fleece framed Silas a moment with his glare. Then he went back down to his room.

Silas was almost berserk with information. He’d just recalled where and when he’d seen Whitfield Peter before. It was early in the morning at Oxford, Mississippi, the home of Ole Miss. It was the morning after the night when the FBI brought James Meredith, the first Negro to enter a white college in Mississippi, on the Ole Miss campus. Silas had driven up to see what was going on. Two men had been killed in the riot during the night. Random cars were burned. There was nothing especially new about what Peter was doing: Silas saw him dropping crossties off a rail bridge onto military trucks. Or rather, Peter was supervising the act. The story only made me want to see Catherine more. I’d been spying at her now for four or five months.

When my beard was out full, I got myself a pair of cosmetic spectales from Sears.

In early December I stood on their lawn. The trees were bare and looked outraged. I looked for the cops around the palm trees next to that garage with its bell tower. I carried no weapon. The house was as white as a bone and jarred out at me. It was Saturday, the deep edge of twilight. I felt all mushy and electric inside, this near it again. I had a keen feeling, too. I felt like only the eyes of a face hidden in ambush. Then I felt the presence of another face, not mine, waiting with me. I closed my eyes.

“Who is it?” Nothing moved. I thought for certain some person had the drop on me. A voice spoke in my head: “You’ve made one mistake. You may get in the door, friend, but you should never believe in yourself so much that you leave your weapon at home.” It was Geronimo. I hadn’t seen him or heard from him for months. He’d been lounging a long time inside me, and now he stirred. I loved him. The grunting old pouch-face. “Get on up to that door.” His voice carried with the melody of a raunchy old chum.

Catherine answered the door. I smiled and tried to be droll. At last she recognized me. She wanted to know what had happened to me. I asked her what had happened to her . I told her a friend of mine over at Heder man sever had given me her address. She was stunned.

“What friend?”

“I can’t tell you. Somebody who’s been sweet on you but didn’t have the nerve to come himself.”

“That’s some larkey.” She was teased. I told her I’d tried to look her up in the phone book but couldn’t remember her last name.

“All I remembered was Catherine . That was so pretty I couldn’t remember the rest.”

“Wrag,” she said.

I closed the door and we were in the dark vacant front room. There was a rug, and pieces of furniture sat twisted the wrong angle to each other in brown wet shadows. I followed her through a gangway to the rear of the house, passing over a furnace grate in the floor. The house was overheated. It got even warmer toward the back. We came into a small library sort of room with only one tiny window in it. Peter sat on a couch away from the window. The walls were palate-smoothed plaster, showing swirls and solid drops. This room, with the tiny window in the corner, looked like a fort. Peter lifted up a leg and put it over the other when I came in. He wore a yellowish robe but had on a white shirt and a black tie at his neck like a snake assaulting him. His hair was a shock of lightning gray-tan thrown back so as to make the face come forward like a wooden mask. I couldn’t look at the face yet. I saw his feet — thin socks in orange leather house slippers. He got up and walked into the kitchen.

“Who was that?” I asked her.

“My uncle.”

“Is he upset?”

“He’s been sick. Listen, did Gillis Lock tell you my address?”

“No. Who’s that?”

“He went to Heder man sever one semester. He known me. I had a speech class he was in. He calls me up all the time.” We sat on the couch Peter had left.

“Catherine, I’ve missed you so much. I’ve seen you.”

Suddenly her uncle was at the door again.

“Fidel?” he said.

“Sir?”

“Are you kin to Fidel Castro?” He thought this was rich. He was holding in a giggle. He stepped on into the room. He meant my beard and glasses. His hands were on his stomach. He was about to break a rib, laughing. When I caught on, I looked up smiling, but he was gone.

“Do I look like Fidel?” I asked Catherine.

“Naw. You look smart.”

Then he came back and stood in the door again.

“So you’re Mister Lock,” he said.

“No, sir.”

“He’s Harry Monroe. This ain’t Gillis,” said Catherine.

“That scoundrel has telephoned us. I finally told him off, myself. I said, ‘Boy, if you don’t have spunk enough to let us even see you, you’d better hang yourself up for good. I suggest a pine tree and a good rope.’ That’s what I told him.” He crouched, laughing again. I got the feeling he would drown you with jokes like this if you ever gained his confidence.

“I’m from pine country,” I told him.

“Fidel?” he said. “I grew a beard once at the University of Massachusetts. I wanted to look like my professors from Europe. I took myself to the barber within an hour of being apprised that the Jews and communists made themselves known by wearing beards.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. It seemed the thing to say. I looked at his face straight-on, getting courage, and saw the friendly smile out of the bleached hawklike features, with purple around the mouth and eyes. Then he left again, using his cane. “You finish supper, child. I will be back after I’ve had my medicine. You stay for supper,” he said in the next room, which was the kitchen; we could hear him creeping stridently away.

I went with Catherine to the kitchen, where pots were on the stove and the oven light was on. Some greens and peas were smoldering in the pots. She saw to them. I mentioned that home cooking was a wonderful new smell to me.

“I do it out of them frozen plastic bags.” She held up a dripping plastic sack from the top of the garbage bucket.

“He said for me to stay, but do you want me to stay?”

“I’s thinking I wouldn’t never see you again.”

She spoke with her back to me; she was at the sink. I was looking at her small shoulders. The dress she wore was a neat brown thing that touched her bottom alluringly.

“I’d be a boll of cotton if they made me into your dress,” I said.

“Oh lissen at Mister Mouth.” At least her voice was softer than I’d remembered.

“Your uncle stays on the move, doesn’t he?” I heard him easing around through the doors.

“He’s scared to death. Somebody likes to shoot at him. It was in the newspapers. Last year they shot ’at window in there all to pieces and hit him in the knee. Did you see his cane? The police didn’t turn up nothin’ at all. If somebody is drawin’ a bead on you, there isn’t nothin’ the police can do about it. The first house we lived in, they blew up his car and set afire to the house.”

“What did you do?”

Peter entered the kitchen. He dragged his knee behind him nimbly. He was adept at shooting the point of the cane out to hoist himself along. He passed into the forward room and threw a hand out to flick on the light. A plump round dining table sat in there. He caught me staring at him.