by Barry Hannah
Sunballs! Sunballs! hefting the Mauser, Lester Silk just behind him a foot shorter and like a wet rat with his big nose. Swanly stood in patient beatitude but with an itch on, Arden Pal and Bean away at the bluff. You been wantin’ it, Sunballs! Been beggin’ for it, called Silk.
Come get some! cried Bean, at that distance to Walthall a threatening hood ornament.
None could be heard very far in the noise of the river.
Tuck, who had followed in his car, did hear them from the bridge.
What could they want with that wretch Sunballs? he imagined.
He was not without envy of the hermit. What a mighty wound to the balls it must take to be like that, that hiding shuffling thing, harmless and beholden to no man. Without woman, without friend, without the asking of lucre, without all but butt-bare necessity. Haunt of the possum, coon, and crane, down there. Old Testament specters with birds all over them eating honey out of roadkill. Too good for men. Sunballs was not that old, either. But he was suddenly angry at the man. Above the fray, absent, out, was he? Well.
Tuck knelt beneath a cluster of poison sumac on the rim of the bluff. He saw the three naked in the water. There was Swanly in the pool, the blond hair, the tanned skin. Who dared give a south Mississippi pissant youth such powerful flow and comeliness? Already Tuck in his long depressed thinking knew the boy had no good father, his home would stink of distress. He had known his type in the Scouts, always something deep-warped at home with them, beauty thrown up out of manure like. The mother might be beautiful but this lad had gone early and now she was a tramp needed worship by any old bunch of rags around a pecker. A boy like that you had to take it slow but not that much was needed to replace the pa, in his dim criminal weakness. You had to show them strength then wait until possibly that day, that hour, that hazy fog of moment when thought required act, the kind hand of Tuck in an instant of transfer to all nexus below the navel, no more to be denied than those rapids they’re hollering down, nice lips on the boy too.
You had to show them something, then be patient.
They hated Sunballs? I could thrash Sunballs. I can bury him, he thought. I am their man.
Tuck was angered against the hermit now but sickened too. The line of pain over his thorax he attributed now directly to the hermit. The hermit was confusion.
I am a vampire I am a vampire, Tuck said aloud. They shook me out of my nest and I can’t be responsible for what might happen.
He knew the boy would be back at his store.
The storekeeper’s sons were grown and fattish and ugly. They married and didn’t even leave the community, were just up the road there nearly together. They both of them loved life and the parts hereabouts and he could not forgive them for it.
The boy would know something was waiting for him. It would take time but the something was nearly here. There had been warmth in their exchange, not all yet unpromising.
That night in another heat his wife spoke back to him. You ain’t wanted it like this in a long time. What’s come over you. Now you be kindly be gentle you care for what you want, silly fool.
As he spent himself he thought, Once after Korea there was a chance for me. I had some fine stories about Pusan, Inchon, and Seoul, not all of them lies. That I once vomited on a gook in person. Fear of my own prisoner in the frozen open field there, not contempt as I did explain. But still. There was some money, higher education maybe, big house in downtown Hawaii. But I had to put it all down that hole, he said pulling back from the heat of his spouse. The fever comes on you, you gasp like a man run out of the sea by stingrays. Fore you know it you got her spread around you like a tree and fat kids. You married a tree with a nest in it blown and rained on every which way. You a part of the tree too with your arms out legs out roots down ain’t going nowhere really even in an automobile on some rare break to Florida, no you just a rolling tree.
But you get some scot-free thief of time like Sunballs, he thinks he don’t have to pay the toll. You know somebody else somewhere is paying it for him, though. This person rooted in his tree sweats the toll for Sunballs never you doubt it. That wretch with that joker’s name eases in the store wanting to know whether he’s paying sales tax, why is this bit of bait up two cents from last time? Like maybe I ought to take care of it for him. Like he’s a double agent don’t belong to no country. Times twenty million you got the welfare army, biggest thing ever invaded this USA, say gimme the money, the ham, the cheese, the car, the moon, worse than Sherman’s march. The babysitting, the hospital, throw in a smoking Buick, and bad on gas mileage if you please. Thanks very much kiss my ass. Army leech out this country white and clay-dry like those bluffs over that river down there. Pass a man with an honest store and friendly like me, what you see is a man sucked dry, the suckee toting dat barge. The suckers drive by thirteen to the Buick like a sponge laughing at you with all its mouths, got that music too, mouths big from sucking the national tit sing it out like some banshee rat speared in the jungle.
Tuck had got himself in a sleepy wrath but was too tired to carry it out and would require a good short sleep, never any long ones anymore, like your old self don’t want to miss any daylight, to lift himself and resume. That Swanly they called him, so fresh he couldn’t even handle a Pall Mall.
There he was, the boy back alone like Tuck knew he would be. Something had happened between them. No wonder you kept climbing out of bed with this thing in the world this happy thing all might have come to.
It ain’t pondering or chatting or wishing it’s only the act, from dog to man to star all nature either exploding or getting ready to.
Tuck had seen a lot of him in the pool, the move of him. This one would not play sports. There was a lean sunbrowned languor to him more apt for man than boy games. It went on beyond what some thick coach could put to use.
A sacred trust prevailing from their luck together would drive them beyond all judgment, man and adolescent boy against every ugly thing in that world, which would mean nothing anymore. He would look at fresh prospects again the same as when he the young warrior returned to these shores in ’53. It would not matter how leeched and discommoded he had been for three decades. Put aside, step to joy.
You boys getting on all right sleeping over there? Tuck asked Swanly.
Where’d you hear we slept anywhere? The boy seemed in a trance between the aisles, the cans around him assorted junk of lowly needs. His hair was out of place from river, wind, and sand. Smears of bracken were on his pants knees, endearing him almost too much to Tuck. My dead little boyhood, Tuck almost sobbed.
I mean is nature being kind to you.
The boy half looked at him, panting a bit, solemn and bothered.
Are you in the drama club, young man?
Swanly sighed.
You sell acting lessons here at the store?
Good. Very quick. Somebody like you would be.
You don’t know me at all.
Fourth year you’ve been at the river. I’ve sort of watched you grow at the store here, in a way. This time just a little sad, or mad. We got troubles?
We. Swanly peeked straight at him then quickly away.
When I was a little guy, Tuck spoke in his mind, I held two marbles in my hand just the blue-green like his eyes. It was across the road under those chinaberries and us tykes had packed the clay down in a near perfect circle. Shot all day looking at those pretty agates. Too good to play with. My fist was all sweaty around them. I’d almost driven them through my palm. The beauty of the balls. There inside my flesh. Such things drive you to a church you never heard of before, worship them.
I have no troubles, the boy said. No we either. No troubles.
You came back to the real world.
I thought I was in it.
You’ve come back all alone.
Outside there’s a sign that says store, mister.
Down at the river pirates playhouse, you all.
Where you get your reality anyway? said the boy. Gas oil tobacco baco
n hooks?
You know, wives can really be the gate of hell. They got that stare. They want to lock you down, get some partner to stoop down to that tiny peephole look at all the little shit with them. If you can forgive my language, ladies.
So you would be standing there ’mongst the Chesterfields seeing all the big?
Tuck did not take this badly. He liked the wit.
I might be. Some of us see the big things behind all the puny.
The hermit Sunballs appeared within the moment, the screen door slamming behind him like a shot. He walked on filthy gym shoes of one aspect with the soil of his wanderings, ripped up like the roots of it. You would not see such annealed textures at the ankles of a farmer, not this color of city gutters back long past. All of him the color of putty almost, as your eyes rose. The clothes vaporish like bus exhaust. The fingers whiter in the air like a potter’s but he had no work and you knew this instantly. He held a red net sack for oranges, empty. It was not known why he had an interesting name like Sunballs. You would guess the one who had named him was the cleverer. Nothing in him vouched for parts solar. More perhaps of a star gray and dead or old bait or of a sex organ on the drowned. Hair thicket of red rust on gray atop him.
He poured over the tin tops in the manner of a devout scholar. The boy watched him in fury. It was the final waste product of all maturity he saw, a creature fired-out full molded by the world, the completed grown-up.
Whereas with an equal fury the storekeeper saw the man as the final insult to duty, friendless, wifeless, jobless, motherless, stateless, and not even black. He could not bear the nervous hands of the creature over his goods, arrogant discriminating moocher. He loathed the man so much a pain came in his head and his heartbeat had thrown a sweat on him. The presence of the boy broke open all gates and he loathed in particular with a hatred he had seldom known, certainly never in Korea, where people wearing gym shoes and smelling of garlic shot at him. Another mouth, Tuck thought, seeking picking choosing. He don’t benefit nobody’s day. Squandered every chance of his white skin, down in his river hole. Mocks even a healthy muskrat in personal hygiene. Not native to nothing. Hordes of them, Tuck imagined, pouring across the borders of the realm from bumland. His progeny lice with high attitudes.
Tuck saw the revulsion of the boy.
You ten cents higher than the store in Pinola, spoke Sunballs. His voice was shallow and thin as if he had worn it down screaming. A wreckage of teeth added a whistle at the end.
Tuck was invested by red blindness.
But Swanly spoke first. I warn you. Don’t come near me. I can’t be responsible, you.
The hermit whispered a breeze off rags where feral beings had swarmed. Ere be a kind of storeman take his neighbor by the short hairs like they got you dead in an airport and charges for water next thing you know.
What did you say? demanded the storekeeper coming around the register. You say neighbor and airport? You never even crossed through an airport I bet, you filthy mouthbroom.
Sunballs stood back from the beauty of Swanly but was not afraid of the anger of Tuck. He was too taken with this startling pretty boy.
Oh yes, my man, airport I have been in and the airplane crash is why I am here.
He pointed at the oiled floor swept clean by the wife who was now coming in from the rear in attendance to the loud voices, so rare in this shop, where the savage quiet reigned almost perpetual both sides of the mutual gloom, the weary armistice, then the hate and lust and panting. Only lately had her own beauty ebbed and not truly very much. She was younger with long muscular legs and dressed like a well-kept city woman in beach shorts. Her hair was brunette and chopped shortish and she had the skin of a Mexican. Her lips were pulled together in a purse someone might mistake for delight by their expression, not petulance. Her name was Bernadette and when Tuck saw her he flamed with nostalgia, not love. Brought back to his own hard tanned youth returned from the Orient on a ship in San Diego. Swanly looked over to her, and the two of them, boy and married woman, in the presence of the gasping hermit, fell in love.
What’s wrong out here? she asked gently, her eyes never off the boy.
Said they can have it if that’s what’s there in the modern world, continued Sunballs. It was a good job I had too, I’m no liar. They was treating me special flying me to Kalamazoo, Michigan, on a Constellation. We was set upon by them flight stewards, grown men in matching suits, but they was these beatniks underneath, worse, these flight stewards, called, they attended themselves, it didn’t matter men women or children, they was all homos all the time looking in a mirror at each other, didn’t stir none atall for nobody else in their abomination once the airplane began crashing. It took forever rolling back and forth downward near like a corkscrew but we known it was plowing into ground directly. These two funny fellows you know, why when we wrecked all up with several dead up front and screaming, why they was in the back in the rear hull a’humpin’ each other their eyes closed ’blivious to the crash they trying to get one last ’bomination in and we unlatched ourselves, stood up in the hulk and they still goin’ at it, there’s your modern world I say, two smoky old queers availing theyselve and the captain come back with half a burnt face say what the hell we got. Ever damn thing about it a crime against nature. No money no Kalamazoo never bring me back in, damn them, yes I seen it what it come down to in your modern world.
Tuck watched Swanly and his wife in long locked estimation of each other, the words of the hermit flying over like faraway geese.
People is going over to the other side of everything, I say, and it all roots out from the evil of price, the cost of everything being so goddamned high. Nothing ain’t a tenth its value and a man’s soul knows it’s true.
What? Tuck said, down from his rage and confused by everybody. You ain’t flapped on like this in the seven years you been prowling round.
Sunballs would not stop. Old man Bunch Lewis up north in the state, he run a store and has a hunchback. The hermit spoke with relish, struck loquacious by the act of love proceeding almost visibly between the boy and the wife, each to each, the female lips moving without words. It behooved him, he thought, to announce himself a wry soldier of the world.
Fellow come in seen Lewis behind the counter with a ten-dollar shirt in his hands. Said Lewis, What’s that on your back? Lewis got all fierce, he say, You know it’s a hump I’m a humpback you son of a bitch. Fellow say, Well I thought it might be your ass, everything else in this store so high. What he say.
Neither the storekeeper nor his wife had ever heard the first word of wit from this man.
The hermit put a hand to his rushy wad of hair as if to groom it. The plain common man even in this humble state can’t afford no clothes where you got the Bunch Lewises a’preying on them, see. After this appeal he paused, shot out for a time, years perhaps.
This isn’t a plain common boy here, though, is he, son? Bernadette said, as if her voice had fled out and she powerless. The question called out of her in a faint tone between mother love and bald lechery. Is it real? Has this boy escaped out of a theater somewheres? demanded the hermit. His eyes were on the legs of the wife, her feet set in fashion huaraches like a jazz siren between the great wars.
You never even looked at my wife before, said Tuck. Pissmouth.
Hush everybody. You getting the air dirty, said Bernadette.
Her own boys were hammy and homely and she wandered in a moment of conception, giving birth to Swanly all over again as he stood there, a pained ecstasy in the walls of her womb. He was what she had intended by everything female about her and she knew hardly any woman ever chanced to see such a glorious boy.
Tuck was looking at her afresh and he was shocked. Why my wife, she’s a right holy wonder, she is, he thought. Or is she just somebody I’ve not ever seen now?
Out of the south Mississippi fifth-grown pines, the rabbitweed, the smaller oaks and hickories, the white clay and the coon-toed bracken, she felt away on palisades over a sea of sweet
ening terror.
She said something nobody caught. Swanly in shyness and because he could not hold his feelings edged away with a can of sardines and bottle of milk unpaid for, but he was not conscious of this.
I am redeemed, she said again, even more softly.
Sunballs left with a few goods unpaid for and he was very conscious of this. Tuck stared at him directly as he went out the door but saw little. It must have been the hermit felt something was owed for his narration.
The wife walked to the screen and looked out carefully.
You stay away from that boy, she called, and they heard her.
When Tuck was alone behind the register again he sensed himself alien to all around him and his aisles seemed a fantastic dump of road offal brought in by a stranger.
He was in the cold retreat from Chosin marching backwards, gooks in the hills who’d packed in artillery by donkey. You could smell the garlic coming off them at a half mile but My sweet cock that was my living room compared to this now, he thought.
All the fat on him, the small bags under his eyes, the hint of rung at his belt he summoned out of himself. He must renew his person. Some moments would come and he could do this simply by want. Tuck felt himself grow leaner and handsomer.
Walthall had wanted the peach wine to become brandy but alas. He brought his viola to the river camp and Pal his bass flute, two instruments unrecognized by anybody in his school, his city, and they played them passing strange with less artistry than vengeance sitting opposed on a sunken petrified log like an immense crocodile forced up by saurian times, in the first rush of small rapids out of the pool. This river in this place transported them to Germany or the Rockies or New England, anywhere but here, and the other boys, especially the hearkening beatific Swanly, listened, confident paralyzed hipsters, to the alien strains of these two mates, set there in great parlor anguish swooning like people in berets near death.
