by Barry Hannah
Carlos winced. He wanted something gravely miserable. He had once married a girl from Grand Forks. They were both fat. She had hair on her back and her toes were black with fur. In fact, she was almost a man, seemed to have missed it by one flick of agitation of a gene. She dressed in cowboy fashion, jeans, boots, thirty-dollar hat now that she’d married a guy in the money. Carlos was a Presbyterian then, trying to be a preacher in Tucson, where Navajos started a fistfight during Carlos’s sermons and the women simply fell dead asleep, this being their only period of rest in the week. His wife ate near five pounds of food a day. She was a wonderful cook, but mainly for herself. She ate directly out of the big iron pots while the food was still steaming, using a big ladle. There was just enough left for him, time it got to the table. Sunday afternoons she would come in, no regard for his weariness after his sermon and the meal. Food gave her an insufferable burst of energy, as if she’d swallowed a pound of drugs. Carlos would be thinking about God, about what a wretched nasty trip it was in this world of clumsy sorrow, about the holiness of the Law, about converting to Catholicism because of its stubborn travel throughout history. She, who was dead now by heart attack in the act of fornication, would roll and swagger into his bedroom. “Get them trousers down, you little dude. Old Nancy needs some fun.” She outweighed him by fifty pounds. As she swelled to hard flab, her desires and etiquette became a miracle of irritation to him. She made him despise his own flesh, and drove him further into his meditations in the desert. Once he prayed the Lord to shorten his member and turn his testicles to ash. He viewed her as a sort of rabid hippopotamus cornering him in one bad dream after another. And she smoked five packs a day, often as not an ember between her lips as she rutted above him, spitting out fire all over him on the arrival of her moment. The last horror was when she thought she needed a child. She wanted to call it Buck or Francine, depending. She got melancholy and cried huge tears because nothing “took.” She had her heart attack trying again. Not only did she die on the spot, but he thought she was asleep, and suffered her weight until he smelled something odd.
When he knew she was dead, Carlos smiled. Then he walked out of the house in a rampage over the idiocy of this earthly toil.
Then he became a priest.
He got fatter and went without a shirt, proud of his fat because it proved how vile the flesh was. And in five years he became very important. The dead spirit of his wife entered him, and he was conscious of two souls in his single bosom. At strange moments he would smile and find himself in love with the memory of his old Nancy. I have been through so much, the very limit, Carlos told himself.
They had let him put five Significant Persons on the ship’s roster. His hand had formed their names with his fountain pen. But two of them had killed themselves last Saturday night. There were two more places aboard, though she did not know it.
Please let me see the ship, she said.
I’m sorry, said Carlos. He hated her because she reminded him of the old world of small desires and petty nostalgia. He hated her also because she knew that he chased women, made gossip and was a sorry priest. In fact, she could ruin him if she wanted to.
We want to live, Carlos, she said. How can you kill us? I was your friend. It’s murder.
There is one place, Carlos said. One place. But not two. Robinson can’t go. . . . For auld lang syne, I can get you on. Provided.
Yes, all right. Robinson says he’ll live or die by the seasons.
Look at the seasons, said Carlos. In August it’s a hundred fifty degrees. In December it’s minus twenty-five and three feet of snow in Mississippi. In April the big trees explode.
We know all that. Listen: why didn’t you put us on the list? she said. We weren’t bad.
I thought you lacked a basic seriousness about life.
But I’ve always been very serious.
You always gave me the sense that you were winking at everything. Nothing seemed deep to you.
What do I do? she said.
Lick me with your tongue all over my body. Suck the hair curls on my ankles, said Carlos.
She knelt down and pulled her hair back. She closed her eyes and her tongue appeared, red as a flame. Carlos saw the sweetly ordered blond hair, given a natural part by nature. She was beginning on his kneecap.
Are you serious? demanded Carlos.
She halted and picked a hair from her strawberry lips.
Oh, Carlos, I’ve always been serious, she said.
Robinson was out at his nice big house running the push mower over the grass the Sunday afternoon when the rocket went up in the air. The grass was growing a foot and a half overnight, and vines and cane took root and burst out of the soil if you went in to have a drink of water. The rocket made a magnificent yellow and purple wash over the entire western sky. Robinson barely looked at it, though he knew his wife was aboard. He whistled for Oliver, a very old and decrepit Dalmatian, the same dog who had lived in the dorm with him at Yale. Last night Robinson had forgotten to let him in, and the poor dog had slept on a patch of cane shoots. Robinson remembered his dog at five in the morning, and went out in the backyard looking for him. Robinson heard all quiet except for the cracking sounds of growth in the hedge, which was thirty feet high. He heard whimpering sounds above him. The cane had grown under the dog and lifted him up eight feet in the air. The dog was looking down at him. Robinson met the dog’s look. We love each other, Robinson said. Don’t be afraid. He got his ladder and lifted Oliver down from the cane tops.
Love slays fear, said Robinson.
She was surprised by all the maritime terms they used. Then Carlos took her to the center of it. She thought it was a museum in the center of the ship here. She couldn’t figure why they’d put the thing in here, taking up so much room.
You little silly, said Carlos. Here’s where we’re all going to live.
Everybody on board was naked by then.
Say, he said, could you get a lick job in before vespers?
My ears hurt, she said. When do we get to outer space?
What outer space? Nobody has that much fuel left, Carlos said.
They hit down on a swamp near Newark.
It was a short ride, like all the last ones.
Pete Resists the Man of His Old Room
“Who is that?” hissed the woman at the corner. Pete and Tardy were necking. They could never quit. They hardly ever heard. The porch where their bench was was purple and smelly with creeping pot plants. Their child, who was thirty, rode a giant trike specially made, he being, you know, simple, back and forth on the walk, singing: Awwwww. Ernnnnnn. Oobbbbbbb.
The man, remarked only by the hissing woman at the corner, who was Tardy’s mother, walked, or rather verged, here and there, undecided, froth running down his chin and a dagger in his hand. He had an address printed on some length of cardboard. His fingernails were black.
“Out! Out of here, you mange!” shouted Tardy’s mother.
“In, in, in!” the hairy man in the street shouted back.
Pete looked up. “It’s my old college roommate. Lay off, Mama,” Pete expressed, rising.
The fellow in the street straightaway made for Pete but got caught in the immense rose hedge. “I knew I’d find you! Peace! Joy! Communion at last!” the filthy fellow shouted as he writhed, disabled.
“Son of a gun!” roared Pete. “Look here, Tardy. It’s old Room Man!”
“Jumping Jesus, do these thorns hurt!” shouted the filthy hairy fellow. He’d lost his dagger in the leaf mold. That hedge really had him.
“What say?” shouted Pete.
“I got no more discretion, Pete boy! I’m just a walking reminiscence! Here I am! I remember you when you were skinny and cried about a Longfellow poem! Your rash! Everything! Edna, Nannie, Fran! Puking at the drive-in!”
“I thought so,” said Pete to Tardy, low, his smile dropped aside. “Would you get me my piece, my charm?”
“Your spiritual phase!” the filthy hairy fellow was screaming.
“Your Albert Schweitzer dreams! Signing on the dorm wall with your own blood!” shouted the awful man who was clogged in the hedge.
“Yes,” Pete said, lifting the weary corners of his lips.
Tardy lugged out the heavy piece.
Pete took it and jammed home the two big ones.
“Remember Juanita and her neat one? Played the cornet with her thing and you did the fingering?” screamed the wretched fellow all fouled in the hedge.
Yes.
He cut half his hedge away when he fired the double through it. The dagger blew out in the street along with the creep that held it. All the while Tardy’s mother stood with crossed arms.
The son stopped his giant trike. He said, “Ernnnnn,” to his dad on the porch.
“Albert,” said Pete. “Take care of the stuff in the street,” and within minutes the son was back with the wagon attached and the scoop.
“It makes me not hardly want to kiss anymore,” Tardy said.
Behold the Husband in His Perfect Agony
In the alleys there were sighs and derisions and the slide of dice in the brick dust. His vision was impaired. One of his eyes had been destroyed in the field near Atlanta as he stood there with his binoculars.
Now he was in Richmond.
His remaining eye saw clearly but itched him incessantly, and his head turned, in necessity, this way and that. A clod of dirt struck him, thrown by scrambling children in the mouth of the alley he had just passed. False Corn turned around.
He thanked God it wasn’t a bullet.
In the next street there was a group of shoulders in butternut and gray jabbering about the Richmond defenses. He strolled in and listened. A lieutenant in his cups told False Corn what he wanted to hear. He took a cup of acorn coffee from a vendor.
A lovely woman hurried into a house, clicking her heels as she took the steps. He thought of his wife and infant son. They lived in a house in Baltimore. His wife was lively and charming. His son was half Indian, because he, False Corn, was an Indian himself, of the old Huron tribe, though he looked mostly Caucasian.
Now he wore a maroon overcoat that hit him at mid-knee. In his right pocket were the notes that would have got him killed if discovered by the law or the soldiers.
He turned and went uptown, climbing the hill from the railroad.
False Corn’s contact was a Negro who pretended, days, to be mad on the streets. At nights he poisoned the bourbon in the remaining officers’ saloons, where colonels and majors drank from the few remaining barrels. Then he loped into a spastic dance—the black forgettable fool—while home-front leaders gasped and collapsed. Apparently the Negro never slept, unless sleep came to him in the day and was overlooked as a phase of his lunacy by passers-by, who would rather not have looked at all.
Isaacs False Corn, the Indian, the spy, saw Edison, the Negro, the contact, on the column of an inn. His coat was made of stitched newspapers. Near his bare feet, two dogs failed earnestly at mating. Pigeons snatched at the pieces of things in the rushing gutter. The rains had been hard.
False Corn leaned on the column. He lifted from his pocket, from amongst the notes, a half-smoked and frayed cheroot. He began chewing on the butt. He did not care for a match at this time. His cheroot was a small joy, cool and tasteless.
“Can you read?” False Corn asked Edison.
“Naw,” said Edison.
“Can you remember?”
“Not too good, Captain.”
“I’m going to have to give you the notes, then. God damn it.”
“I can run fast. I can hide. I can get through.”
“Why didn’t you run out of Virginia a long time ago?”
“I seen I could do more good at home.”
“I want you to stop using the arsenic. That’s unmanly and entirely heinous. That’s not what we want at all.”
“I thought what you did in war was kill, Captain.”
“Not during a man’s pleasure. These crimes will land you in a place beyond hell.”
“Where’s that? Ain’t I already been there?”
“The disapproval of President Lincoln. He freed you. Quit acting like an Italian.”
“I do anything for Abe,” Edison said.
“All you have to do is filter the lines. I mean, get through.”
“That ain’t no trouble. I been getting through long time. Get through to who?”
“General Phil Sheridan, or Custer. Here’s the news: Jeb Stuart is dead. If you can’t remember anything else, just tell them Stuart is dead. In the grave. Finished. Can you remember?”
“Who Jeb Stuart be?” asked Edison, who slobbered, pretending or real.
“Their best horse general. If you never get the notes to them, just remember: Stuart is dead.”
False Corn stared into the purpled white eyes of Edison. One of the dogs, ashamed, licked Edison’s toes. It began raining feebly. False Corn removed his overcoat.
“All my notes are in the right pocket. Can you remember the thing I told you, even if you lose the notes?”
“Stuart is dead. He down,” said Edison.
Passers-by thought it an act of charity. False Corn placed the coat on Edison’s shoulders. What an incident of noblesse oblige, they thought. These hard times and look at this.
False Corn shivered as the mist came in under the gables. He chewed the cigar. Edison rushed away from him up the street, scattering the dogs and pigeons. Do get there, fool, the Indian thought.
False Corn’s shirt was light yellow and soiled at the cuffs. On his wrist he wore a light sterling bracelet. It was his wife’s and it brought her close to him when he shook it on his arm and felt its tender weight. He plunged into the sweet gloom of his absence from her, and her knees appeared to his mind as precious, his palms on them.
In the front room of the hotel a number of soldiers were sitting on the floor, saying nothing. Some of them were cracking pecans and eating them quickly. There was no heat in the building, but it was warmer and out of the mist.
His eye itched. He asked where there might be water. A corporal, pointed. He found a bucket in the kitchen. The water was sour. When he finished the cup, he found a man standing on his blind side. The man held a folded paper in his game hand. His other arm was missing. The brim of his hat was drawn down.
“Mister False Corn?” the man said.
He shouldn’t have known the name. No one else in Richmond was supposed to know his true name. False Corn was swept by a chill. He wished for his pistol, but it was in the chest in his garret, back in the boardinghouse. He took the note.
It read: “Not only is Gen. Stuart dead. The nigger is dead too.” It was in a feminine script and it was signed “Mrs. O’Neal.”
When he looked up, the one-armed man was gone. False Corn pondered whether to leave the kitchen. Since there was nothing else to do, he did. Nobody was looking at him as he made his way out of the lobby. He had determined on the idea of a woman between two mean male faces, the trio advancing before he opened the door.
But he was on the street now.
Nothing is happening to me, he thought. There’s no shot, no harsh shout.
It will be in my room, decided False Corn, opening the door of the garret. Yes, there. There it sits. Where’s the woman?
A bearded man was sitting on the narrow bed, holding a stiff brown hat between his legs. False Corn’s pistol was lying on the blanket beside the man’s thigh. The man was thin. His clothes were sizes large on him. But his voice was soft and mellow, reminiscent.
“Shut the door. I’ve known you since Baltimore, my friend.”
“Who are you?” False Corn said.
“An observer. Mrs. O’Neal. Your career is over.”
This voice, thought False Corn. He stood carefully, a weary statue with severely combed black hair to his nape, center-parted. This man is little, he thought. I can murder him with my hands if he drops his guard, thought False Corn.
“You have a funny name, a big pistol, and you’ve bee
n quite a spy. We know all the women you’ve been with.”
“Then you know nothing. I’ve been with no women.”
“Why not? A man gets lonely.”
“I’ve been more hungry than lustful in these parts. I have a wife, a child.”
I can kill him if he gets too easy, thought False Corn.
“I think I’ll end you with your own pistol. Close your eyes and dream, Isaacs. I’ll finish it off for you.”
“All right,” False Corn said. “The rain has made me sleepy. Allow me to get my robe.”
He picked his robe off the hook without being shot. The robe was rotten at the elbows and smelled of wet dog. But it was familiar to him.
“What a wretched robe,” said the man in that reminiscent voice.
False Corn took a match off his dresser. Isn’t this just to light my cigar? There was a flat piece of dynamite in the collar of the robe. He bent to the side, cupping his hands, and lit the fuse. The fuse was only an inch long. He removed the robe.
“You’ve caught your shoulder on fire, you pig,” cried the man. But it wasn’t a man’s voice now.
False Corn threw the robe toward the voice and fell to the door. No shot rang out. He fumbled at the latch. He saw the robe covering the man’s face. The man was tearing the robe away. His beard dropped, burning, to the floor. False Corn shut the door and lay on the planks of the upper hallway.
There was a shudder and an utterance of rolling light that half split the door. False Corn’s face was pierced by splinters. His good eye hardly worked for the blood rushing out of his eyebrow.
The thing was still alive. It was staggering in the doorway. Its limbs were naked and blackened. Its breasts were scorched black. It was a woman, hair burned away. False Corn kicked the thing in the thigh. It collapsed, face to the floor.
It was Tess, his wife. She looked at him, her mouth and eyes alive.
“I was your wife, Isaacs, but I was Southern,” she said. By that time a crowd of the sorrowful and the inept had gathered.
