Ray

by Barry Hannah

  Harry King was flight control one night at the Tuscaloosa airport and brought Don in on autopilot from Chicago after he’d turned the plane in a storm and fainted.

  Ray is out here with his beeper on his leg, just watching the planes come in over the blue lights, for no reason except to find my meditation again. Somehow the AM waves are getting into my beeper and I hear “Eleanor Rigby” from the Beatles. Where do all the lonely people come from? Ray is starting to sound like a man who was once a disk jockey. Because he’s run-down. I’m full of dopey tears and just as groping and lousy as the next citizen.

  So I just wander into flight control. Harry’s very lonely with all the Teletypes. What in the hell comes in but an F-4 from the National Guard in Birmingham. He touches down, then off, wheels it out, gone at five hundred miles per hour. Beautiful Phantom.

  “How you been, Harry?”

  “Ray! Goddamn, you’re here I”

  Here looking at the flat charts of the flight territory all over the world and Harry, still wearing his tie from WW II. He’s driving his crummy Toyota since the gas crunch and we talk about that. We share one of those huge TV dinners made for two. Not much to do here now.

  The beeper sounds and it’s Rebecca.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, really,” she says. “I handled it. I’d just sort of like you to run back here and dick me.”

  “I don’t have it in me,” I say.

  “Okay. There’s another message, from Westy.”

  “Put her on,” I say.

  “I just cured three creeps with a light assist from your buddy, Doctor Litchens. You can’t imagine the swine I’m going to have to do a number with tonight.”

  “Put Westy on.”

  It was fifteen minutes. Harry and I were finishing up the chicken on the plate when she called. I hadn’t heard a straight and clear message from her in three months.

  “Ray? Raymond Forrest?” My first two names.

  “I hear you, darling.”

  “Ray. We can make lovesies again.”

  “Holy Christ!”

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to be lovely all over you again.”

  I was so entranced I forgot Harry King was right there beside me. You never get a whole conversation over the beeper like this unless you got somebody relaying it. Rebecca did it and was listening in.

  XXVI

  I NEVER woke up feeling better. Made coffee, eggs, bacon for all my six children.

  No complaints.

  XXVII

  THE beeper goes off when Westy and I are doing something. We have our tongues so deep into each other’s and I am sucking her beautiful feet. It’s Rebecca.

  “Mr. Hooch and Agnes bought a propane lantern and it exploded. He’s almost dead from burns, Doctor. She has second-degrees.”

  Hooch was burned to a crisp and he weighed about a hundred pounds. His system was so exasperated, it was a total moan. The protein and the platelets and the nerves were wrecked and closing. His kidneys were going out. His liver count was as high as a man’s who hadn’t eaten in three months. The calcium was not protecting his lungs. Yet on fruit juice and plasma, his mind stayed. Even brighter. What an organ. You got a third of it left and you can still be a genius. For a while we couldn’t even get creamed field peas down him. He was burned down to the condition of the inside of a steak as Texans like them.

  “You tried to kill yourself, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you did. You know better than to light up a leaking propane tube.”

  “I get tired of my wife and me. There ain’t much going on since Sister except my mouth.”

  “Gimme a poem, Mr. Hooch. Let’s hear the best.”

  One of the humiliations of my life was that my own secret poems never touched the poems of this old fart. All his genes must have run a pretty direct route into Sister.

  Fire at Night

  by J. HOOCH

  Fire at night and it’s me. I’ve been born with pain

  So this is sort of the same.

  Agnes talks about forty years ago.

  Her love is around, but I never got her mind’s number.

  Love is above and behind you,

  But someday, honey, I’ve got to find you.

  We bad luck together and it ain’t ever going to get better.

  We worse when we try to get better.

  We got the jinx and the voodoo visited upon us.

  But it’s New Year, so I’ll light myself up

  With a cup of gas.

  It’ll be a hell of a feeling,

  And this one will really, really be the last.

  “Not bad,” I say.

  I go back to the dinette and sit with Rebecca. I smoked about four Luckies in a row and looked into her face without saying anything for a while. Rebecca’s face is a charm. She goes heavy on the blue eye makeup. Her neck is a longish classic from the old paintings of what’s-his-name. Her nose is forward and long. She lights a Lucky and the exhaust is gray through the large sensitive nostrils. She’s half-Jew, the rest Greek. Okay, now I’ve come back from the humiliation of never thinking up a better poem than Mr. Hooch. Then we go through two cups of coffee apiece. Modigliani.

  “No, he’s not, goddamn it.”

  “There’s not much here at the hospital.”

  “There’s the Freon tube.”

  “They won’t let us use it yet.”

  “I have a key that’s copper-colored in the far right drawer of the front desk in the office. There is a forty-five pistol right next to it. Put it, the key, in that little safe. If you can’t open it, get a pillow from one of the chairs, push it over the muzzle of the gun, and shoot out the lock. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  “The FDA won’t …”

  “Do it, bitch. Move it quick.”

  It worked. Then I sent him over to plastic surgery.

  XXVIII

  I BROUGHT a new Goliath harmonica made by Hohner into J. Hooch’s room. By then he weighed a hundred and thirty and was looking fairly decent.

  “Gimme that son of a bitch. Whose is that?”

  “Yours.”

  A month later he was back at the Hooch house. I would put the MG on neutral to hear the strains coming from Sister’s studio. His bed was there. He’s moved to it, all the guitars, the stereo around him. The old boy was playing the hell out of the harmonica. He was at a hundred and fifty and going normal.

  “I’ll be what my daughter was trying to be!”

  “What?”

  “Already got myself recorded. All I need is a drum. I read Sister’s diary! Goddamn it, I’m a great old son of a bitch!”

  The dirty dog was playing the harmonica every time I came by the house. I’d just shut the car down and listen to the tender sorrow coming through the forty-eight reeds.

  Then with duty on my mind, I go by the emergency room. Nothing. The usual hurt niggers, but all’s in control.

  I am late coming home and Westy is pissed off. Yes, I had some bourbons, and I guess I just sort of threw her nightgown up and tried to.

  Women enjoy conversation.

  Lube does not come in before talk.

  I got up to brush my teeth and prove I’m not drunk.

  All right.

  Afterward, I ate her slowly. I hadn’t eaten much all day.

  XXIX

  ERD. #92. #Doe4. Utap. At 40-50. Range. In Clear. Solid. Ventro.

  XXX

  THE other night one of the deranged creeps got out of his car at the emergency room, swinging a Magnum in his hand. He had already swatted his granddaughter in the head with it, plus shot his regular daughter in the tit.

  I had been shooting the .30/30 with my boy Barry that day.

  I asked him to ride into the back lot with me, because I was a doctor who understood him. Something about my stern eyes that calms even wild men down. He gave me the gun. We got way out there where nobody could hear. I played some country music for him while I pulled a towel over the barrel
of the .30/30 and rested it into his ribs.

  “What was you going to say?”

  “Light up a cigarette for me,” I said.

  While he did, I let one go through him.

  “What’d you do?”

  “Let out some of your spleen and piss,” I said. He fainted, of course.

  I took him back to the main entrance and kicked him out.

  Now he’ll live but be warned. I’ve still got his Magnum.

  XXXI

  Now I guess I should give you swaying trees and the rare geometry of cows in the meadow or the like—to break it up. But, sorry, me and this one are over.

  XXXII

  I GOT audited by the IRS because I hadn’t filed in four years.

  So I went up there to the Federal house. They had called me over the phone and finally got rude. I tend to procrastinate on business like this because I feel I don’t owe anything and already fought for the country. I’m for the straight ten percent. I’d file before anybody then.

  She was not so stern when she met me. I had all my forms. She went off in the room and talked to her boyfriend for thirty minutes. I went down to the first floor and got some coffee. Saw a nigger in a Federal suit and asked him if I could try out his gun. There was nothing else to do. Then I got some Nabs. Those are fun. I ate two and spat out the third. Welfare niggers who don’t work for a living are all over the place.

  Finally she got back to the desk. She had to make another call or receive one.

  This was enough. I went back in the other room, raised up her skirt, and stuck the meat in her. She was talking to her boyfriend and moaning.

  Now I am clean with the IRS.

  XXXIII

  ELEMENTS of protein float in. B-12 for sanity, vegetables, and Oscar, the mysterious warrior that sails in the bloodstream. Can be cancer or the warrior against cancer. I’m dreaming of this. I’m dreaming of the day when the Big C will be blown away. I’m dreaming of a world where men and women have stopped the war and where we will stroll as naked excellent couples under the eye of the sweet Lord again. I’m dreaming of the children whom I have hurt from being hurt and the hurt they learn, the cynicism, the precocious wit, the poo-poo, the slanted mouth, the supercilious eyebrow.

  Then I wake up and I’m smiling. Westy asks me what’s wrong.

  “Christ, darling, I just had a good dream, is all.”

  “I’ll bet it was some patient you screwed. You rotten bastard.”

  She hits me over the head with a pillow.

  Violence.

  Some days even a cup of coffee is violence.

  When I can find my peace, I take a ladder to the hot attic and get out the whole plays of Shakespeare.

  Okay, old boy. Let’s hear it again. Sweat’s popping out of my eyes, forehead.

  Let’s hear it again. Between the lines I’m looking for the cure for cancer.

  XXXIV

  LET’S get hot and cold, because, darling new thing, we’re going through the weeds and the woods and just the sliver of the moon comes in through the dead branches, and the running rabbits and squirrels are underneath and above. Henry David Thoreau is out there thinking, loping around. Louis Pasteur is out there racing with the bacteria.

  We went to the planetarium in Jackson, Mississippi, my hometown. Elizabeth, Ray, Lee, and Teddy. Elizabeth is on the couch with her crocheting. Lee is reading her new bible, Proverbs. It’s raining out. We’ve cut the yard in the front, and the train whistle is hooting.

  “A gentle answer quiets anger, but a harsh one stirs it up.”

  “It is foolish to ignore what your father taught you. It is wise to accept correction.”

  They say, “Dad, take it easy. Quit going so fast.”

  My daughter has a secret friend named Fred, and my son Teddy has a secret friend named Jim.

  We all sleep together in the big wooden four-poster where I grew up, tiny innocent arms and legs and imaginary friends on top.

  Ike, Ken, Carol, and Ginger are at my ex-brother-in-law’s place, and I join them to fish at the wide kidney-shaped lake at the bottom of their rolling lawn. Dr. John and Dr. Ray trade a few compliments. John would give you the shirt off his back. It’s a shame my sister, Dot, isn’t with him anymore. There were differences. His wife, Mindy, is sweet and has Buffy and Moffit. I forgot to mention my beautiful nieces, Hannah Lynn and Maribeth. Everybody’s around and we are flying kites over the tall oaks, the Black Angus cattle are roaming comfortably in the taller weeds, and the geese control their placid squadrons.

  Ike is a playwright and Ginger has just come back from Europe with her Gitanes, one of the essential deeds of young females. Looking back at the house, it’s a low wooden castle.

  XXXV

  THEY asked me where I wanted to go to graduate school and I said Tulane, for medicine. Finished in three years. Or maybe it was four.

  XXXVI

  ONE of the great bad strokes I did was marry the prettiest girl on campus. I was so horny and everything else was pretty nothing except red bricks and Baptists, a few queers in the drama and English departments. I got thrown out of my room by a senior who thought he could box. I knew nothing about boxing. This was supposed to be my roommate. He was a blond, acned guy, and he was punching me. So I said, “Stop.”

  He quit, though he was still shifting, bouncing.

  “My name’s Wild Man Thomas,” he said.

  XXXVII

  IT’S quiet, utterly quiet, except for the air conditioner going in my room. The companionship is with the air alone. I am asking forgiveness for all my sins, on my knees. I got to get my mind in a higher sphere.

  XXXVIII

  I WAS treating a large old woman who spat in my face. I fell backward into the heater, face-forward. This is to prove that I’m not always the hero.

  XXXIX

  NURSES have saved me. I wander through the day like a horde often. I can’t hit the directional signal on my car. I trip over my unredeemable cockiness. I drop a can of 7-Up in the hall and fall down in front of Dr. Everything, the world surgeon I always wanted to meet and impress.

  One evening, late, I was watching a nigger up in a tree picking his nose. The nigger worked for the electric company and was apparently new. He’d climbed up the tree next to the light pole.

  “What you laughing at?” said another big nigger behind me, wearing a helmet.

  XL

  FOR no clear reason Ray will have it out with the plants in his place. His anger comes up when he looks around at the expensive greenery and all the deathly care people give to plants when, if let alone, all plants are fine. Plants can talk, he’s heard: “Eat me. Eat me.” That’s all Ray’s ever heard. Anybody besides Ray see Little Shop of Horrors? A great plant in some creepy Jew’s flower shop starts calling out, “Feed me, feed me!” He eats people. So the Jew goes and accidentally kills a number of people and their faces appear in the blossoms of the plant.

  Ray has lost it. He kicks over the plants and yells abuses. Mainly, it’s because his poems are not going well and he still can’t come anywhere close to old J. Hooch.

  Westy comes in. She’s disturbed.

  “Are you drinking, Ray?”

  “No. Get me a drink.”

  She’s wearing beige sandals and her toenails are maroon. She has a glass of milk with her, reaches back with it, pours it over the crease of her buttocks and fetches my tongue in.

  I’m as earnest as an evangelist when I mount her.

  XLI

  BILL, my dad, came over to check on me again. He’s been everywhere, from hard-crushing Depressionville to Russia. Got him the new Mercury that gets twenty-seven miles per gallon on unleaded, high visibility. He still looks handsome. Still the man who gave me life. Seventy-five years old. Afflicted only by deafness and arthritic feet. Always got money, maybe pull out a thousand of the five hundred of them he’s worth now.

  Bill roomed with Senator Eastland at Ole Miss. He and the great senator were going to be law partners. But Bill had to go back to Homew
ood, in Jefferson County, to support his family. Bill is a naturalist and is determined not to let Ray not listen to his advice now because he never had any advice for Ray when he was young.

  Bill looks good.

  He has the open, eager eyes of a man who has confessed and tried to put it back right. He always gave me the advantages.

  XLII

  COMING back from the convention in Omaha, I was thinking about my first wife. Because you have to be honest. You are packed with your past and there is no future.

  We got married stupid and frantic, Millicent and me. Things at one point were lovely. The children were lovely, and waiting for them was a miracle like the rainbow. And although you try to get shut of those gorgeous moments when we had nothing but good neighbors, the pines, and the sky to look at, it’s true, we had a sublimity. Our children are ready for the world, and they are handsome enough and know enough science.

  I have seen so many people not worth saving, not worth putting the tubes into.

  God jokes with his best ones.

  What release, to look into the past the way I just tried. A petrified log just rolled off my heart.

  XLIII

  CHARLIE DESOTO is in the office.

  “Ray, I’ve discovered that my wife is a lesbian, or at least so far divorced from usual commerce between us that love words do no good. Love-making hurts. It seems to be an inconvenience. It’s smelly, messy. She makes me feel like a raper. I can never satisfy her. This baffles this poor fool who married her and had so many, I can’t tell you, uh, loves with her. She prefers to sleep with her old coloring books. Nothing sensual I can say to her touches her. I’ve been drinking too much. I’ve used cocaine, LSD, listened for the phone, waited for her letters, since we’ve been apart. What do I do?”