Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

The band on the balcony of “Harlem in Havana” was careless and shrill, playing the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” while three girls in wraps and brassy sandal highheels shuffled in unison on the stage below, to warm up the crowd for the midnight show. The crowd below the stage was so thick I couldn’t see anybody in particular. When the barker announced that tickets were now on sale, you had to move with the mass, up the steps toward the ticket counter. A quiet mob, is what Fleece and I were in. Buying my ticket, I saw a face close to the right edge of the stage. This was Lock. It was the man who had been run over by the float last Christmas. I had thought that was probably who Lock was. I searched the space around him for Catherine as I walked on the stage into the show. Lock pushed back from the stage and took me in. We were six feet apart All I saw was his head and his hands on the edge of the stage.

“I know who you are!” he yelled.

“Where’s your sweetheart?” I yelled back. Then Fleece pressed me from behind; people were waiting behind him.

“That was Lock. I have seen him before,” he said.

We sat down next to a man and his wife, a young married couple. The wife was complaining about the seats, which were simply planks bolted to supports, sawdust underneath. It was the same long tent, maybe bigger, of the Harlem in Havana show back in Dream of Pines. The lights went down, the spotlight centered on the meeting of the curtains, and a master of ceremonies, who was white, darted out of the curtain, took the mike, and straightaway told the filthiest joke I’ve ever heard. ‘There was a girl from Seattle/ Who loved to fellatio cattle” and worse. The wife next to us stood up and pulled her husband along, and they found their way out.

Then there appeared a line of yellow girls in these sort of tinsel bathing suits. They danced well and seemed to know about the extra price of the tickets. You could see their navels jump out from under the tinsel. They were so smooth as a group, it was impossible to pick out the one who aroused you the most. The band was also good, playing on a stand to the right of the stage — a big deep band of some twenty Negroes. When the girls left the stage, the spot raced to one side and planted on this man standing up, taking the solo on trumpet.

“He’s good, isn’t he?” asked Fleece.

For ten seconds he had been good, many high blue notes to the measure, but the same moment I recognized him as Harley Butte, in a blue satin jacket like the rest of the band, he began failing on the solo. He punched out a few very high notes, which would impress a musical amateur like Fleece, but he folded all of a sudden from even doing that. His face looked hurt as he put the horn down. I know I saw tears on his face, and he sat down, or fell back in his seat right in the middle of his ride, as if struck by some-thing. Even Fleece knew something had gone wrong. Only the rhythm and piano were going, and the spotlight ducked off of Harley and went back to the bare black center of the curtain. It was a collapse in a show everybody had paid for to be gorgeously slick. The crowd murmured. I saw Harley get up and jump off the back of the stand in the shadows. The band picked up again. Me, I had gotten off my seat and was walking toward them, and Fleece was trailing me, calling to me. I got the blast of the band right in the face, heard the keys of the saxes clicking, saw the Negroes bearing down on the mouthpieces. When I passed the band a lone girl was on stage. She was rolling her stomach out with enough violence to throw her organ right off her and into the audience.

Harley was under the bandstand putting his horn in its case. The band grew mellower over us. They were doing a snaky Turkish number now. The only light we had was the overflow from the spot and the yellow dimness cast down from the bandstand lights. The bandstand was a unit of mo-bile bleachers, and you could see the shoes of the musicians.

“Harley Butte?” I whispered.

“You got an aspirin? You got to have an aspirin. I got a headache.” He held his hands to his ears.

“This is Harry.”

“My ass. Oh, my ass. You aren’t wearing the beard any more. Do you just have an aspirin?” He jerked his thumb up toward the band. “That’s a whole drugstore up there, they got anything you want. But all I want’s an aspirin. I’m the only healthy one here, and I’m sick.”

“It’s hard to believe,” I said.

“Nothing’s hard to believe.”

“I have two aspirins,” said Fleece, reaching in his coat pocket. Fleece was always having headaches. Harley took them down dry. He stood up and we walked toward the back of the stage. Back here there were a lot of trailers with wooden steps at their doors. In one of the trailers I saw a number of girls in bikinis and robes and caps with huge peacock feathers attached.

“I’ve got a gfrlfriend in that trailer. I don’t believe it, but I do,” said Harley.

“Monroe.” Fleece nudged me. A man was coming to-ward us around the narrow walkway behind the backdrop; he came down the stairs like he had urgent business with me. He was white. Harley said that this was the road man-ager.

“Back up front, up front, boys. Is this man pimping ? What are you pulling, Butte? Why aren’t you in the band? Mother Nature. Shit.”

“Get your finger out of my face,” said Harley.

“This thing is going to fall apart if we don’t have rules, Mr. Butte. I thought you were one of my leaders. I trusted you.”

“I’m quitting.”

The man looked at me angrily. “What’s your business with this man? Butte, do you know where you are ? You can’t just jump off the tour. We need you. Please.”

“I live near here. I got a wife and kids in this state. Don’t touch me, Shamburger. I got an awful, awful head-ache.” The man looked even more hatefully at me and Fleece.

“What kind of deal have you made here? Are you using this man’s wife and children?”

“Not making anything,” said Harley. “Getting away to the place I won’t have any more headaches like this one. Get out of the way.”

About that time a long line of girls came out of the trailer weiring those skullcaps and plumes. They mounted the steps and one by one broke out to the stage through the flap in the backdrop. The manager went over to time them. The band was popping and screaming now. Harley put his hands to his ears as we made our way around toward the exit. I carried the horncase. He was really hurting. He stopped. “Come on, aspirin,” he said. Apparently he couldn’t go any farther. “Come on.” You had to root for the aspirin.

Five minutes later the girls poured out of the flap and across the sawdust to the trailer. Last of all came a mulatto woman with paint melting off her eyes. She was greasy with sweat. She had gotten a robe on but wore it negligently. It parted and showed her totally bare. Her feet were veiny and dirty. In her hand were two silvery high heels. Then she went on into the trailer, taking her time, not noticing us. Fleece uttered a wounded sound.

“Well, that was a buck’s worth, about, I guess.”

“Ahhh! Land of Jesus! Come on, aspirin!” Harley was getting relief from the aspirins. He still had the jowl beard and the mustache and looked like a man in a drug ecstasy now. Around the way, you could hear the people filing out.

“Let’s go.” He took off the coat and tossed it on the stage, leaving himself in white ruffled shirt and bow tie. The show was over and we were the last in the exit. It was weakly golden here, the lights were down, and the ropes around us were still vibrating in a lingering effect from the show. The sawdust was much-trampled and compact, in the exit.

Gillis Lock was waiting for us, and standing by him, Peter. Otherwise, the fair was dead at this end; the ferris wheel had stopped, the freak show lights were out, and far away you could hear a forlorn calliope, like a lone berserk bagpiper.