Yonder Stands Your Orphan

by Barry Hannah

  He felt he reigned in a county which everyone of worth should have left decades ago, all breeds. He dealt with refuse, squatters, the ones gathered around their own nastiness, their own echoes, like night dogs.

  Max Raymond returned to the church in the glen where Egan had beat his fists, demonstrated his hypodermic, tossed his ponytail. It was empty but open and he walked to the pinewood altar. All was poignant since Egan’s uncle had died and Egan’s face had been mutilated. Egan still refused to name the mutilator. Raymond remained silent as well, the bones, his disgrace, the stab wound, which still throbbed in his buttock when he walked or played the sax or even stood too long.

  Rain hit on the tin roof. Early shots from the pickets before main engagement. The rain pleased Raymond immensely, as it always did. It whispered, cancel your duty to the outer, get fetal, think of caves. He had loved it at Tulane, where he went to school forever, it seemed. Rain out of Texas and the Gulf. Twilight now, the last of radiant heat sweeping out in the new breezes under the cracked windows with their purple and green glass. Last swirls of color before you drowned, maybe. You could imagine yourself purified by them, you wanted it. Clear this mess, Lord. Save me while you’re at it.

  Raymond waited and then picked up a hymnal. The altar was lit by a single bulb in a reading lamp. He was about to tear out a page and leave a message to Byron Egan.

  Outside, a car crunched alongside the church on the pea gravel. He went to the window and saw two boys in an amazing automobile, a 1948 Ford coupe in deep red with a gold hood. The driver could barely see over the panel. The driver did not cut off the engine. The car pushed out a considerable white cloud from the rear. Perhaps blown or crippled by a break. But the thing kept throbbing. The boys seemed to have been stolen by it and made to do its will. Well, if you can shoot and drive at ten, then it’s still the South, Raymond thought. He raised the window and leaned out as Egan had done many nights ago and lost his face.

  “Are you the preacher?” asked the boy behind the wheel.

  “No.”

  “Are you his friend?”

  “I think so.”

  “Tell him we wanted him to do this thing right. We gone to have some fun. Might even shoot somebody if we can get him to follow us. We think he seen us and took the bait all right.”

  “Stop the car and come in. Don’t be rash or dumb now.”

  “We carryin’ his own pistol. Mortimer’s.”

  “That’s what I mean. No reason to make more trouble.”

  “You think the preacher’ll be back soon?”

  “I imagine. It’s Wednesday night. Prayer meeting.”

  “You know any other preachers that smoke cigarettes, mister?”

  “No I don’t, not right off.”

  “That’s why we chose him. We like him. But we gonna come back when we see his car here with yours.”

  They were underage, undersize, underfed even. But in the vehicle they had dignity, and you did not think of children but grim little men. Wild smoke out the back and the two meager heads, pledged to this red and golden absurdity. A casino roundup car. They drove off very solemnly with the bad shifting. The car lurched from its own colors, then went smoother in the third gear.

  He waited for the preacher a while longer. Maybe there was no prayer meeting here. Or canceled while Egan was mourning for his uncle Feeney. Yet Man Mortimer might be close to the boys. Raymond could stand being a coward only just a little bit longer. He left.

  When the preacher did come a half hour later, there was a pile of crushed bones on the top step of the church porch. He knew at once what they were. He had money in his pocket for an installment on his loan. Mortimer did not need to go voodoo on him. But the man was apparently enjoying the reach of his evil now. Rushing into symbols, always a sign of some disorder, decided the preacher, much reformed since those years of the Maltese crosses and crossbones of the bikers. He wanted to ride, to drink, to smoke. He had started smoking again several weeks back. Nobody liked it, and he tended to hide his butts like a schoolboy would. In trees, rest rooms, the cup of his hand.

  Egan was not too mournful. Taking Uncle Carl Bob to Onward would have been sadder. Now he had a surplus of money, really, a home, dogs, cats, land. Two priests had attended the small funeral in Vicksburg. They were nice gentlemen, fond of Brother Carolus Robert still. This helped Egan’s heart.

  He’d come to sweep the church and check the space heaters and radiators because the cold was on. But he would preach if any showed. The rain chill lay in him still. The heaters were old donated units, probably illegal. The clay grates red with heat. They ran off a propane tank behind the little church. He liked them because you saw immediate hell in them. Hell was loose in the world and it had its colors. Beings came up from its reaches in a reverse resurrection and got among what righteous flocks remained.

  He knew he had no more life span than a dog’s left to him, and his face might ruin his chances for marriage, but he would bring a righteous posse into this fight, beginning tonight with even one sheep. These bones were merely death, reminders there was only one road and the road never changed. They were only the last litter of life. Perhaps his methedrine run seven years back was meant to show him this. Here they were where they belonged. He might preach about them. Or lacquer them for display in the chapel, carrying them with him to his other ministries. He did not quite understand yet his duty to them, but on the other hand he had not known what day would follow the next since he surrendered himself to the Lord Jesus Christ.

  Serving his Lord had been a joy and not insanity at all. It was joy even when none listened, even when he was cursed for a Christer in the casino aisles. When the right triumphed, Egan knew they would build cancer centers and Christian motorcycle-repair shops, and bookstores and even colleges from the casino buildings. He was not waiting, he knew there were others of the same mind. They would see the tails of the godforsaken backing out the greasy way they came in, Donald Trump, Harrah’s, whoever thought they were at home here. He had heard Russian Mafia too. Wherever it went, you knew the money was siphoned off to out-of-state, out-of-grace pigs somewhere, not into an education fund for small children as they boasted. And Lord, he whispered, I know these counties better than any living man. I rolled in sin in every quarter, every dark province. Even Moses wandered in the desert forty years. To compensate for former lost years in narcotics, I have been blessed.

  Like many another reformed smoker, he had returned to the habit twofold. He smoked incessantly and drank nearly a gallon of thick coffee every day. Because the minister smoked openly, he could not have a denomination, only a flock. He knew smoking was wrong, he was weak. He was positive the Lord frowned on it. Some things were sin and others just math. You smoked a number of cigarettes and then you got ill. You watched television a number of times and then you were a television, empty until turned on again. The casino was math become a monster. But even with wrestling and prayer, even tears and spasms into the wee hours, he could not quit cigarettes. Maybe a sign to the weak ones they would be let in and forgiven too.

  He felt sin more deeply than the rest because he had seen it from its early infant sleep. And bliss too, the bliss of relief from his sour burdens. A bliss next to flight itself. Dear old Ulrich, Egan had tried to tell him this, but the warrior soul of the man was still angry about Feeney, his pal, and sad past words. Egan and Ulrich sat long on the end of the pier watching the ring of red around a cold moon. Ulrich told him he must love the animals even more and help them. Yet Egan thought the heart could stand only so much concern. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, no more.

  He took the broom and began sweeping in the pale glow of the altar lamp. He did not want lights overhead yet. He wanted silence and shadows and the rain outside on the roof for a while. Then he found the torn page with the note on the altar.

  I AM YOUR SERVANT CALL MAX RAYMOND.

  The number beneath it.

  Egan had seen Max Raymond and his band, especially the wife, perfor
ming in a casino where he had once dearly loved to gamble and walked trembling past the tables still, his pockets full of stiff little cards. John 3:16 on one side; YOU ARE IN HELL on the other. Quietly handing them out to the annoyed and angry, some frightened by his cheek tattoo. When he came into the music hall through which Cuban jazz was throbbing, he saw there were not many revelers at the tables. Few dancers. He saw the Coyote onstage, curved around the microphone like an old torchess, and straightaway coveted her, sailing into fantasies so sweet they seemed beyond heaven or hell. He whispered his thanks for her existence, then departed quietly.

  But he asked questions later, came back to the casino, his ministry bent somewhat to the earthly appreciation of Mimi Suarez. Who was the husband with such luck? He saw him, heard him play the horn and could not understand.

  In the church he turned on the overhead fluorescent bar. He continued sweeping into the corners, invigorated by the cool drafts. For all his philosophy, he avoided looking at the pile of bone shards on the porch. Then a voice called from outside. The man was still in his car, leaning out. Byron Egan stood on the threshold.

  “Oh Pastor?”

  “Is that you, Raymond?”

  “No, no.”

  “Are you with the bones?”

  “I am related to the bones.” A bent man stepped from the car and stood at the bottom of the steps. He seemed unmindful of the mist on his face.

  Egan recognized Mortimer. “What are you wanting?” he asked, shaking, holding the broom.

  “Oh, my money, but no idea after that really. I just seem to want to go a lot of places,” said Mortimer.

  Egan dropped the broom and whipped out a great switchblade, nearly a bowie, from the hip of his jeans. The blade jumped out with a loud click and lock. He waved it beneath the porch light.

  “Why Pastor, I been sick. I know not what I do. What could have happened to your face?”

  “I could see you now a hundred yards off. I lived in sin an age and I know you well.”

  “You look a devil yourself. Like you in some far pirate tribe. Old Burt Lancaster swinging from the ropes on a boat. But they’re doing not a half-bad job on it.”

  “I am the Lord’s servant, branded.”

  “I’m taking these old scraps of bone off with me. But they might be employed again. I’m getting to be the caretaker of these slivers, looking for the owner.”

  “Get out of here. You’re the black seed itself.” Egan thrust the money at Mortimer, who gathered up the bone sticks haphazardly, dropping pieces, unmindful. Then he got in the car and went.

  In this life, last things are never said, nor can they be. The preacher pocketed the knife. His knees were weak, his neck stiff. He was certain the Lord moved in his fingers and did not understand this fear, or even the words he had just uttered. He thought he heard a crackling, or a sigh, just outside the south window, and he watched out for what glistened in the mist. He listened for the living sigh of evil, if it was bigger now. Echoes from the casino were all he heard.

  Then Ulrich’s old woody wagon rolled up to the church, glistening. Both ancient and new, phantom of a heavy past but joy manufactured right into it. First Ulrich climbed out slowly, then on the other side Max Raymond. Egan was very happy.

  “We’ve come to worship, to discuss, to live,” said Raymond, somewhat practiced, Egan thought.

  “I’m scared, I’m alone. I’ve come to ask you to let me move in with you and the dogs. I’ll be no bother. I must be close to Feeney’s dogs. I’ll clean and watch the house for you,” said Ulrich.

  Egan did not doubt he was given two miracles. He loved the old man. The man needed him. The dogs needed Ulrich, even with his oxygen and nose tube. The man who had once flown and dreamed himself away all his life afterward.

  Egan himself was suddenly wrapped twice by a high lonesome and a circle of fear. But this night was good. The wine of gentle conversation, other like spirits directly near to hand in the nights. Good, good. The old friendly strength came back to him.

  “I want revenge,” said Max Raymond. “I’m a dog myself, the dog of a zombie.”

  “Come in, come in. What we have is one old sinner out there trying to be legion. He doesn’t even trust his help anymore. He is nearing his breakdown. He took my money and drove away muttering, afraid of my knife.”

  “You are an armed Christian?” asked Raymond.

  “I believe the Lord approves if they get you in the face. And no little slap on the cheek. I don’t think the Lord is training any knife bait no more.”

  “He called my home and offered my wife a job as queen of whores if her performance with him was sufficient,” said Raymond. “Said she needed breaking in a little and English lessons.”

  CUBANISMO! GOT TO HAVE IT! read the flyer.

  The band blared and chopped along, aroused by itself, uncertain of ever descending. The weekend crowd was big, less derelict than usual. A few college people, a bus crowd from Wisconsin, stunned dentists and their strap-shouldered wives, some of them without a social event since high school. Lone dancers from dead Protestant crossroads where meager churches jutted like tombstones with steps. Ignited, undulant, gay, half drunk, friendly. The rage of the casino just behind them, red and gold, a lost football crowd.

  The wives and husbands were startled by the Coyote, who shimmered under her black ringlets, curved in her gown like promise itself. The women wanted her for a pet, the men to be an anonymous head eating away at her. Many changed race. Some tried to have ecstasy in Spanish. The band made them doubt there had ever been another life.

  One who danced alone was John Roman, who could no longer stand the pain at home. His shoulders went up and back. His gray head sweated, his eyes closed. He wanted down the river of trumpet, saxophone, trombone, the raft of rhythm underneath him. Dance some of the gray sick off me, he prayed.

  Max Raymond searched the crowd even as he played the horn. This was half impossible for the spotlights. He did not play so evilly tonight. His playing was not firmly anything. His coveted wife was nothing to him now, his horn nothing, he was not certain he was clothed. His entrances and choruses with the trombone and trumpet were tepid, staggering, reeling without heart, like a tune wounded but still carrying on down the road in bedroom slippers. It was Costume Night, and many of the crowd were wearing masks. The Coyote was always in the contest, he thought grimly. In her natural stuff, the minimal mini memorable, her legs. We have a winner.

  Raymond began to relax during his break, when he did not see Mortimer in the dancers or tablesiders or anywhere costumed or uncostumed. He settled into a fine jar of Wild Turkey on ice, with a soda and lime to the side, and began his lean, bumped by a few fans, those angry and sullen laggards to whom he could play no wrong. Some of them had homemade CDs of only him. Anybody could make a disc now. Our great democracy. Perhaps he and the band were due one. This Latinismo thing would fail, he feared, but it would always be around as long as there were butts and rumbas. It was a shame these baby nihilists creeped him out so, with all their love, and always too early drunk, and their females too, little skanks latched on to the wrongest punks in town. He could not know he was looking straight at his own youth. All that was missing was a war and a pet wolverine.

  Beside him was a strange figure, unmasked, hooking his drink with a claw made out of only natural hand, and moaning, perhaps a jester ignored for all his private comedy. Except for some vision half suppressed since the awful night with the bones, Raymond was not aware that Malcolm was lakeside. Now, with a thrill to the pits, Max Raymond recognized him, accompanied by the leaner and sterner couple to his right. He turned away quickly. It was Mimi Suarez the three of them were watching, onstage alone now with piano, bass and drums. Malcolm was the only one who watched with love. The other two seemed saddened by her ballads and intent on suffering. As if they were reviewing their own lunacy, their own love, their own cause. They each seemed alone. Separately crucified once more. Penny and Gene Ten Hoor.

  Raymond would pla
y the rest of the night with his back to the audience, like an old idol of cool, Miles Davis. His punk following would think he had outdone himself. He hurried back to the stage now, through couples panting and sweaty. A college football man misunderstood Raymond’s need and slammed him across the shoulder. He went down into the legs of a screaming mulatto woman bigger than he was. He rose through her kicks while somebody screamed, “He’s with the band, bitch!” He wondered where this had commenced as her curses followed him through the crowd of masks, Reagan, Nixon, dancing together even without music. Donald Trump’s rubber face on a very short man. Even Alan Greenspan. Hillary Clinton pouting but with mouth open, perhaps raving, pop eyes. Momentum rang through him like an urgent telephone somewhere ahead. He rushed past John Roman with a handkerchief to his neck and then Man Mortimer. He could not credit they had been dancing together, but he did not slow. Drugged women passed like a discord of mannequins. Or was he drugged? When his head cleared, he was high but did not know quite what floor he stood on. It was the curling bandstand.

  As he held life dearly, so he also yearned to leave it. But now he would play himself somewhere on the instrument. Play it well, with heart and no more belly lint and asthma.

  Now, when the music began once more, it was John Roman, dancing, who was incredulous. His partner was Mortimer, uncostumed except in a silk bandit’s mask and the slick beam-shoed costume he felt compelled to wear against all contigencies. He raised his hands and shuffled violently, an enormous grin on him. “Can you boogie? Can you do the dog? Get down, get down, John Henry! Oldies but goodies. C’mon c’mon c’mon.” He was an uncommonly bad dancer, Mortimer, and here with a solitary black male with silver hair, he did not mimic one well either.