Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

I began seeing in my mind Mr. Wrag at the reservoir. He fell backward and hit his head on the rocks of the shore-line. He did it again and again. Then I saw Mr. and Mrs. Wrag. Mr. Wrag slumping between Mrs. Wrag and the doctor, walking up the slope toward me, toward the Volkswagen with fishbait in the back seat. Then Catherine, walking beside them in her sports outfit. Seeing me and waving to shoo me away, again and again. The chilly “breeze from the water mounting and falling. Doing it again and again. Now I began seeing the sunburned little forearm of Catherine, covered with goosebumps. The putting of the lab coat over her shoulders. “You silly old boy.” I saw it over and over. I began heaving and sobbing. Someone wanted in the rest-room. I went back to my seat. When I sat down I saw her all dolled-up for the last date, her foot in the shoe with one strap across it. I saw her singing in a minor role of the musicals. “She’s dead, dead.”

“Did you love the girl?” said Lariat.

“For a few weeks.”

When I looked at Lariat, he was staring out the window. He was slightly red-eyed himself. “Look at the sun in those clouds,” he said. “Oh God, if there is a God. That’s what my wife used to say. ‘Oh God, if there is a God!’”

In Jackson it was twilight The cabbie took us to the fair-ground gates. They were locked. We climbed over. We walked through the field to the kudzu vine cliff in back of Mother Rooney’s.

“You can’t climb that,” said Lariat.

We made it foot by foot on the ridges. At last we obtained the back yard. For me it was no easy thing, with the raincoat I had. After we got our breath, I eased around the side of the house and yes there was Peter’s Buick parked directly across the street from Mother Rooney’s sidewalk. I told Lariat. I knocked quietly at the back door. The house was alight in both towers but dark in Mother Rooney’s quarters. Nobody came. I saw a candle, held by someone, cross the archway to the dining room. We were on the tiny back porch behind the kitchen. We kept waiting at the door. I looked for the candle to reappear, but it didn’t. Fleece was telling the truth about the neighborhood. All the big houses on Titpea were closed up. No light came from them. Only the streetlights, making a fuzzy ribbon of illumination around the roof and edges of Mother Rooney’s house, and the yellowish light coming out of the window shades of the tower. Then I went back to the porch and knocked again. I knew I had seen a feeble light going around in the downstairs area. The porch was pitch dark.

“Kick the door in,” said Lariat. “Let’s take a chance. Wait. I’ll kick it in.” I took hold of the gun in my raincoat.

Just then we heard somebody trying to turn the lock. This door had only a small pane of glass at head level. You could see into the kitchen through the glass, but there was nobody to be seen. The doorknob was turning, and the door swung out.

Fleece was hanging on the inner knob. He fell out on the porch. I couldn’t see much but I knew it was Fleece. Something hard hit the floor alongside him.

“Get it,” he said. I bent down to him. He whispered again. “Get it.” He was hoarse. Lariat picked up the thing he was talking about, which was the Italian pistol. Now I could see his face. He was without his glasses, which meant that he was blind and that the moment was grave. He looked terribly pale.

“He killed Mother Rooney. I had my finger on my pistol when he came in the front door but I couldn’t pull it. Damn me. Couldn’t.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Twice. He shot me in the leg and in my back. I had my pistol.”

“Is that him with the candle?”

“Shhhhhl Not loud. Yes. He just went back to your room.”

I picked up Fleece’s arms and dragged him out, down the steps, to the back yard. Lariat came along with his feet.

“He shot her in the forehead. She’s lying by the telephone nook in the hall. First he shot me in the leg. Then he saw her with the telephone in her hand and shot her. I had turned away but I heard her being shot and I went over to her. He shot me again in the back while I was holding her. I passed out … when I came to I was lying on her face…. Who is that?” he asked.

“Dr. Lariat.”

“A doctor?”

“Professor of Literature.”

“Aw Jesus. Why did you bring him ?”

Lariat did seem awfully useless at the moment. I took out the long cowboy pistol I’d brought down with me in my raincoat and gave it to him. Fleece’s big unshot pistol. I told Lariat all he had to do was pull the trigger.

“That’s right!” said Fleece. “Kill him. He’s looking for you, Harry. When I came to, he was talking to me. All afternoon he wants to know where you are. He sat on the floor and talked to me in this squeaky little voice. I asked him to call the hospital for me. He never even heard me. He looked at Mother Rooney. He kept squeaking for the night to come, please come the night, he said. Her corpse was driving him crazy.”

“The gun you gave me isn’t loaded,” said Lariat. Fleece lifted up one hand and gave Lariat several wet cartridges out of his palm.

“Well, is this one loaded?” I asked him.

“Oh yes. I had plenty of ammunition. I just couldn’t pull the trigger.”

“Peter doesn’t have the shotgun, does he?” I asked Fleece.

“Just a pistol. A black pistol, I hope it was only a twenty-two. I don’t hurt all that much.”

“I’ll get the ambulance here.” I knew I was the one. I ducked up to the porch and crawled in the house itself. I was hit by a cold wind at the kitchen door, but this was only my nerves spraying out all over me. I waddled across the kitchen floor to the cornice. I peeped around it to the hall. All was black, and smelled musty. I crept on to the tele-phone nook. I heard nothing and saw nothing, so I stood up and tiptoed two huge steps and put my hands on the phone. The receiver was not on the cradle. I picked up the wire and tried to lift it. It wouldn’t give. Mother Rooney had it in her hand. I reached down and felt the plastic and jerked the receiver out of her grip. I dialed the operator and whispered to her. The ambulance people said they would be over.

I suppose I was in a daze, looking down at the form of Mother Rooney. “Now get him,” said a voice, loud. “Don’t let him get you. Don’t lose your life to the man.” I knew the old corpse who was speaking to me. I knew I had left him behind in this house. His ghost, or whatever, rose and gasped from a corner of the living room: Geronimo. I heard the real noise then. I saw the glow of the candle filling out the room. Peter walked into the room holding a candle on a plate in one Land and a pistol in the other. “Help me, Indian!” I shouted. Peter careened toward me. I unloaded on him, right in his face. It seemed to me stray sparks and cinders jumped out of my wrist at him.

He bucked to the floor. The plate arid candle flew away; the plate shattered. He bellowed and writhed. When the gun was empty I threw it at him. My legs went useless and I fell down hard; I knelt there for a minute in the dark. Then I yelled for Fleece and Lariat to come in. They were already on the porch. Came the sound of a clearing of a throat, and a faint inquiry.

“Who got who?” said Lariat. But they kept coming. One of them hit the light. Fleece walked in bent over, Lariat helping him. Peter lay out in the middle with his hands flung out. He was bleeding from the neck, and the blood was pooling. His face looked at the floor. His hair was a shredded waxy yellow. I looked down the length of his body — a pinkish-tan suit, brown shoes — for other marks of blood. There weren’t any.

“You got itl You got it! You see! Here Harry was! You found him,” Fleece screamed at Peter. There was blood all over his left pants leg. He sat down on the couch. Peter raised his face.