by Barry Hannah
“Your voice.”
“Canadian. Quebec. World citizen. You all sound like the nickras down here. Who taught who to talk? This man I paid out of jail today down over Lexington, he hates the nickras too, but I ask him why does he talk like them then?”
“What was he in for?”
“Throwing things in the night. Fireworks.”
“Disturbing the peace?”
“More keeping. Believes. Depends on what you believe. But dumb to get caught. More of the white trash. Lumpen.”
On the dresser were several long steely pins. I went over and picked one up. They were too long for hairdos. It was extremely sharp on the end.
“Medical,” she said. “Look but don’t touch, if you please. Acupuncture, for relief. Go ahead. The man out of jail didn’t believe in them either.”
I wondered if she was practicing some kind of voodoo surgery. Those signs you see along the road in the country, on the outskirts of town. SISTER GRACE, PALMS. You sometimes feel your blood go darker, and I was feeling it here, more excited than disapproving. This world was fetched in fresh just for me, but I could never tell Horace. I was greedy for all her details. She was European, ageless, a brunette Marlene Dietrich with those long legs.
It was then I saw a Klan robe, a green rounded cross on the left breast, all white otherwise. It had a small ladies’ hood, cut to fashion for her, or so it seemed. The closet door was half open and she didn’t mind my seeing. It all was like stumbling into an alien person’s attic. My people hated the Klan, and I did too, I thought. But there is an undeniable romance, maybe adventure, to hating a whole race of people: it had its sway. Recently in Bay St. Louis, I had left a beautiful girlfriend to go to New Orleans. I did not get much of anywhere with her, but she’d talked affectionately with me. As I was leaving, she said, truly caring for me, I thought, “Oh George, do watch out for the nigguhs in New Orleans. They’re all loose and free over there and they’ll just do anything.” She had seemed lovely in her need to be protected from the dark hordes. I was taken very warmly by this problem, and went off like a knight of the streets, full of romantic charge, with something to prove. I’d been at the closet door overlong. The hanger next over held a great length of dog chain with bracelets at both ends. I supposed she wore this around her waist, like medieval women in the “Prince Valiant” comic strip.
When I turned to her, she could see my face was different, even though her eyes were blurred and she looked ready to sleep.
“I told you thas too bad. You’re decent. I’m not, young boy.”
“But not really—”
“Don’t tell me. I know decent from the other look. I can sort them. You’ve got that decent polish on you. You are decent, and you will just go to sleep with fairy plums in your head, not like me.”
“That’s not a church choir gown. I know that. Still—”
“You have to go. Somebody is coming. You don’t want to see him.”
“The man from jail?What’s he . . . It’s late. Why’s he coming?”
“Why to frig me, I’d imagine. Out of here, Tom Sawyer with your neckerchief. Put all those nice muscles to bed.”
She was right that I didn’t want to see the man. I closed the door with my head flaming, confused. But I was not disgusted. I wanted to save her. You could see she was too good for anybody around here. Forces were martialed against her.
I couldn’t go into my room. I put my hand on the knob of the room next to hers. It was unlocked. The room inside was made up, unused. I crept in and waited, dark in my head, forcing myself toward love of her. Even the muscle lines in her face would go away if I loved her right.
I lay on the bed without moving a spring. Then I crept to check for a hole in the wall. There was none. But I edged up the window so as to listen around.
Not five minutes passed before there were steps on the stairs, very slow and dramatic, you knew it in the rickety floor. He went over the carpet and opened her door without saying anything. She knew him all too well. Nothing, not even muffled, came through then. I lay half sick waiting for sounds of protest and struggle, and when they failed to occur, I knew the drug was used to smother her will. Mute things were proceeding as in a film so bad I might have written it myself.
But through the window I heard the clink of, yes, it had to be that dog chain, and then soon with it, at first unaccountable, but there was no mistaking it, the whir of the bicycle being pumped and clanking just a little. This went on a long, severe time. Through the window this was quite clear. I was thinking of creeping out there, but then the man’s voice said short things, low and anxious, while the bicycle kept up. It was moaning, pathetic, but fearful at the same time. At first I thought it was the woman. Only her voice, in a dismayed faint gasp was heard then, and this was unbearable. It seemed as though she was afraid that he would hit her. He moaned shortly again, but not in sex: it sounded like encouragement in another language. The whirring slowed, and I heard his big steps, the knocks going through the carpet in my room. I waited and waited, waiting for bedsprings and weeping, but I never heard them. The silence became deader than quiet, and then Now here it is! the man said very plainly. But there had passed an enormous amount of time. Only my head was racing, flushed, ahead of the seconds.
Then I heard nothing for so long I fell off asleep very deep into the night, close to dawn, I think. I woke when the light came in gray and went back to our room. I stared at the ceiling, and that day at the bricks, a moron’s job, I was worthless. Horace wanted to know what had me all blown. We’d eaten in the hotel dining room, but we were the only ones there. He wanted to know what I was watching for, what was ailing. I kept going back to the hotel all day, telling him I had a bad stomach. I was really letting him down on the work. The old man still sat there, but once, for the first time, he was gone. I couldn’t tell if anybody else was around. So I knocked on her door, worn out and shucking my labor.
She was having a nap and was fresher than last night, no blur to her, and in a homey wrap. She didn’t mind at all I was there. I asked if I could get her anything. She said well indeed I could get her two Coca-Colas with ice. I was so fast at this, down to the dining room, troubling the one harried fat lady—though she was doing nothing else—and back, it had to be a record for service. She’d brushed her hair (I mattered, she cared) and her face was not so tired.
“I have the feeling you could use a friend, miss.” I had rehearsed that all day.
She put her head down, then sat. I was sure she was crying. Her eyes blinked pink at the rims when she lifted up, and I was gone for her, out of my depth. The other Coke wasn’t for me, though. She poured from a new paregoric bottle on the dresser into one glass and added Coke, storing the other one. Then she drank.
“Much better. It gets hard alone. This is a clean drink. All this is very clean. With your Tennessee whiskey it gets sloppy and all ragged. This is dry-cleaned magic. Not so bad.”
“I guess the nerves never leave you.”
“Never. I had a husband and you aren’t like him at all. But it’s the youth, the age we met, nearly the same. You get to me, neighbor. It’s clean, the look. Washed and pure in the blood, that lucky color. I’ve had it.” For the first time, she smiled. Her teeth were not that bad, a maturer gold was all. My dentist could brighten them right up.
“Tell me. Why did you yell waiting down to him last night? He thought you knew all about him. He was very disturbed.”
“That old man.” I was struck cold and wretched. “Him? You waited for him last night? I don’t believe it.”
Not only that but the man was her father-in-law, and French. Her husband had been killed with the French Legion at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The Communists did it. The father had lived in Saigon, wanting to be close to his son with the war on. She was Canadian French, going to school there. It was ballroom and ballet dancing, her whole life, until the war went bad. She’d not been married very long when Edouard was killed. His father had lost twice now from the “other sid
e.” He had been Vichy, was imprisoned after the war, but got out still vocal against Communists and Jews. France was inhospitable to him, so he went to Indochina, and made much money in rubber and tires. After the death of her husband she was lost and absolutely poor. Her parents had left for Canada. She did not think of the old man at all. She began dancing naked in a special club, full of opium and not knowing whether she liked it or not. The old man came in with some friends, he too in awful despair. He did not know where she was, nor did he know it was “Baby Doll”—her husband’s nickname for her—dancing. He watched her on the stage and she soothed his grief long before he knew who she was. He’d only seen her a few times. He went up to her afterwards, she in her silk cape and big shoes, stage-dancing whore shoes. They fell into each other weeping. But he was gone for her in no father-in-law way, and she had nothing. So he took her to Quebec where her parents guessed what was going on; she would not marry him nor did he seem to want it. Her parents told her to die in hell and never speak their name. The way he was about Communists and Jews and now nickras, the way he sent out very angry and offensive literature, got him shunned again but noticed by a visitor from the South in the States. There was much work to be done here after the Brown decision, integration, the last order breaking down in the last great power, and he would be most welcome down here, he and his money and organization. People were listening up. The public was for them, only the forms against. She did nothing but be his and run as a bag woman here and there at a necessary point. She could not stand the trash at the Klan rallies, and she never wore the gown or hood outside the room. As for the nickras, they were fine primitives and she felt sorry for them; some of the men were beautiful with their smiles and shoulders, and they were happy until the Jews and Communists ageetated theem. She had never met a Jew, but the Communeests, without a god they both could not bear a healthy white race, it was an abomination to them, and they owned entertainment, much of government, bragging always about how smart they were because they did not have hearts. Or guts. I mustn’t think too badly of the old man. Everything was wrong with him. Bowels, liver, arthritis, skin cancers, ulcers, psoriasis, piles. There was always a good room for her. This is the worst one she’d ever had. It was she I should think badly about. She was telling me all this because I was young, something was going to happen soon, and she had no church, nor any friends. Witness Albert, the father-inlaw, he had all theeeese tings eell and he took no pain medicine, compared to weak her, Felice, who had nothing really wrong and did not do much but whore for her kin. He was so unhealthy it didn’t take but once a month or so now. It took him that long to recover. It took him forever to . . . befit himself, a longer riding of the bicycle naked in the robe with the hood on, wearing the black boots, and racing with the skirt of it tied up, the chain from her wrist to his wrist on the bed, his face buried in half a watermelon, but peeping like a child at her pumping nether parts. She giggled. Something from his youth, she couldn’t know. I was not a man yet and I shouldn’t smile. One day odd things might overcome me in my despair, if I ever had despair. Sometimes she thought he was doing it to his own youth, or his son, or he and his son together, at the end long long long silence, his having got with her but demanding her to ride still until it was finished and he a dead ruin. It had crossed her mind he might die, and in ingratitude she had driven the bike faster and faster, hoping to bring on the classic champion’s death to him, but she didn’t know if his will was in order, she’d gotten that mean. But really there was a way of not even being there and responding that a man couldn’t know. Women got married and lived their whole lives doing that, absent and wild and pleasing all at once.
She’d finished two Cokes and the blur was on again. At one point I thought she was breaking down and crying, but I cannot remember at what point. There was sweat on her forehead, and her lips moving, I could swear she’d become younger and younger as her cheeks stretched, then got older at the end, the paregoric driving a hotter, duller black to her eyes.
“I need a bath. Sometimes seven or eight a day,” she said dully. “Don’t forget to be my friend, boy. I think I’ve done something to your youth. You don’t look so decent now.” She waved for me to go.
This had taken a long while, and when I went by the room, Horace was in it, asking what in hell was going on, the day was done.
I told him a person down the way had some medicine for me and that we had chatted while I got better.
At breakfast the next day, Horace and I were still the only ones in the dining room, and feeling obliged for detaining the help, I claimed stomach distress that was not completely a lie. I was too excited and too heavy in her story, like a walking boy museum, hebephrenic and bitten at the scalp and loins. I was up the stairs before I realized I had passed the old man, who was back in the chair, with a black suit on. I knocked and she met me in the door on her way out. She drew me in and shut the door.
“He’s down there, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said, all nerves.
“Albert is very jealous. You have to watch it. It’s the worst thing about him. We’re going out to see my dog in the country. A man gave me a Weimaraner dog, a real lovey. When Albert gets bad he threatens to kill it.”
“No. He’s a monster.”
“In jealousy, yes.”
She was dressed in an innocent-looking country outfit, printed skirt and baby blue blouse. The little bow in her hair turned my heart around. Next she put on a raincoat I thought marked for French espionage. I was simply riveted to my stuttering place in awe.
“Visit me when you can, but be careful. Tonight he’s away.”
“Oh yes. I’m your friend. I’m hanging tough.”
That afternoon I worked twice as hard, owing it to Horace from yesterday. I was in the bricks so smoothly I might have been made for them. The sweat was pouring off me. I stood up and untied the kerchief to swab off. Horace was looking across the street.
“That old man, he’s watching you.”
He stood in front of the Baptist church across the road, hat in hand, and not looking at me as meanly as I had expected. He was standing just in front of the bricked marquee, with its message or sermon of the week: JESUS WEPT. COME AND GATHER. He was simply studying me mildly, almost kind in his face of red spots and rakeddown short gray hair. He was younger too, up and about on the pavements, the chair a whole other life dismissed with some strength. I mopped through to my eyes and peeked. His face buried in half a watermelon but peeking every now and then, I thought. My shirt was off and I felt small, a grimy peon.
“I believe he’s looking at your mighty build,” said Horace. “Must be the village queer. Let’s set him on fire.”
It is quite mature, I thought, to know everything and say nothing. I had not practiced this much in my life, and felt myself almost plump with rough wisdom, as the old man walked on.
I told Horace I was not wanting any supper that night, stomach knotted and butterflied. But I was her prized friend, heavy on the aftershave, the shave itself a ludicrous solemn wipe of the blade through foam. He went down to the John Birch diner with his Swann’s Way in hand, to give the shiftless owner more grief.
She was not right. Something had happened. There were five new bottles of paregoric on the dresser next to the long needles, the brush and the hand mirror. She stared at me with her mouth pinched and her eyes wary with fear and sadness. What is it? I wanted to know. You can tell me, in my last clean shirt, a blue one to match her blouse, telepathy.
“He took me to the field, the fence, and the dog was not there anymore. But he wanted me to look at the vacant field where it had been, I know it. The man in the house wasn’t our friend anymore, either, Albert told me, angry. He was a busybody, a turncoat, maybe a fellow traveler or a Jew.”
“You think he killed them both?”
“I don’t know. We go on a while and then there’s always some kind of rage or treachery.”
“Why don’t I take that Klan outfit and shove it up his ass for him
?”
“No,” she said quickly, head swung up to glare and then dissolve, back into her bewildered tortured beauty.
“But you have no real home and an awful life. I could get money. My father is well-off. By the end of this week I’ll have two hundred.”
“Very, very sweet. Hand me my dream bottle.”
I did, and went and fetched her two Cokes, lightning across the face of the piggish, unknowing woman alone in the dining room.
“You’re Peter Pan,” she smiled. “I think you remind Albert of his son.”
“Your husband.”
“He wasn’t so much older when we met. He liked my legs, even my poverty.”
“So do I, Felice.” It was rich and almost too heavy on my tongue.
“All I can do is drag youth down to indecentness.”
“No. You care. You’re in a trap. There’s a whole other world. There’s movies, and music, and poems, and fishing in a private place with cypresses in the water. You with me. You can’t tell. Time—”
“Oh, please shut up. I told you I didn’t need to know anybody else. I’m just sailing along the current in the rain gutter, a piece of nothing, nobody can touch me without drowning.”
I thought that was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
I was just on the edge of breaking into song with that great anthem of blind Christian affirmation of the fifties, “I Believe.” All jazz, Beatism, cattism had fallen away. By God, I was in Harold’s world, women with troubles, a spell of swooning charity on me.
“You’ve forgotten I’m your friend,” I told her.
“Well, that’s something. To know you’re not alone. A part of me must have that.”
I knew she was about to say a thing so sincere and poignant, from that bleak experienced face of hers, that it would be a sign for our parting, and she did.
“Even in hell the real part of me can carry that young face of you with me, friend George.”
