by Barry Hannah
My old girlfriend married the Texan. In the fall I got a call from my nephew who had heard from a musician that she was killed in a robbery of her bank in Jacksonville, Florida. Killed by crack people. She was no doubt in her smart executive suit, all bright and cheerful. New leaf, new man. She was not good with people, she once told me. Maybe a bit of a snob. I understand the new breed of crack killer is much concerned with respect. Something in her eyes, maybe. Maybe nothing at all, she was white and too lovely. She was there. I thought of her father, the dour banker on that hill in the east Texas town, her tiny thin mother. One of their daughters was a lesbian psychiatrist and the other was now dead from banking. He hustled peas in the Depression and now he was in modern life, on the hill there with the wind blowing the last of his hair.
Nevertheless, it is said we are predators, eyes forward, and we go on towards the hunt, as if nobody had eaten it all before us. As if just around the corner is the really fine feed, the really true woman, the world that will call us son. Somebody is missing to our left but we only sniff deeper, it must be there, there.
I was doing this in the aisle of a small local grocery when I turned a row and was shocked chilly, down to the bones of my hands, nearly crippled from a swat of cold nerves into my thighs and scalp. It was a very tall man all naked, in a large hat. He had a long gray country face I was certain I knew, a man confined somehwere too long.
The crown of the hat was above the top shelf of cans. He was turning my way to look but I did not want him to look at me. Then I noticed he was in a bleached pink set of long underwear, not naked, but the possibility was so close it was jolting. He opened his mouth. I ran away with my hands and groceries in my ears, with his lips twisting up there over me.
I went out in the street with the groceries still in my hands. Nobody called me back. I was well home before I was aware I had them, still locked in my fingers. I had no excuse for running out with them, for running away, nothing manly anyway. My act could not be explained. I was ill and ashamed, and jerking with breaths.
Next day I got a letter from the woman—now twenty-five—in Tallahassee. My hands still shook a little and my breathing came hard. I was without sleep because I didn’t want to dream.
She wrote that things were not going very well. She lived with her mother, but Satan, her father, lived close by. Not going well. Too close, this man. As if he could move away but not very far. It felt like forever. It hurt to discuss certain things.
She asked me to forgive her. She had visited me with her winter pounds shed and with a dark suntan so as to hurt me, in her vanity. To make my mouth water. But yet I was her friend and this could no longer go unconfessed. She had wanted to change and ruin me for a while, with her beauty. It was an unfortunate trait. Her father had accused her of it all her life, but only now she was truly adult could she admit she enjoyed inflicting pain this way, always had. Her mother, a beauty, was fast losing her looks and was always in a state, afraid to go out with anybody new. She and her mother spent the days simply keeping a watch on each other. They had begun going to church together. Even there, they knew the great Satan was in one of the cars in the parking lot, watching them.
You must never write about me, she wrote. You think I am special but I am not. I am to be forgotten, do you understand. We have had a bad house, wherever I am is a bad room.
A week later I won an award from the governor. My old parents were there glowing in the mansion. I was in a suit, now a goodly time healthy, but in my short acceptance speech I was conscious of sneering ironic people somewhere in the crowd. When I looked at the rear rank of those standing I did see three hats way above the rest and flashes of beige skin. I may have broken all forms for modesty, unwilled actually, but from a diminished heart, and held my work in an esteem equal to that of a scratching worm drowned in ink and flung against a tombstone. Through all this too I confess I was coming on to the governor’s wife—helplessly, God—and finished in a burst of meekness coupled with hideous inappropriate lust. I could hear the laughter and was led away.
I was looking at the plaque and stroking myself a couple days later as the phone rang. A voice I could not remember began. At once I could feel the black wind of North Dakota between us on the lines. She was a friend of the Florida girl. I had not seen her since I chatted with them at that bar near the Minnesota line. She was clear for a while but then started sobbing and stalling. Her friend. Our friend. You were kind to her, she said. Always she mentioned your kindness. What?
In Tallahassee the father had run her over in her own living room and killed her. The car came in through the bay window and crushed her as she sat on the couch in her bikini swimsuit. Her mother, also in a swimsuit, was broken up badly but would survive. Abruptly after the collision, the father, still in the driver’s seat, put a pistol to his ear and destroyed himself. The women were having lunch after sunning. He must have known all their moves. You are a good person, the woman said—a scrap of memory through the black air of days and days ago—and I had to tell a good person. Somebody who knew her.
I am not a good person, I told her. This is too awful.
Do you believe in God?
Foxhole Christian. When all else is lost.
Nothing else was said and she hung up.
I was suddenly something fresh to her, a way I did not know. Then she was destroyed by a monster I had never believed in, who was true. My pity was so confused I could not accept I was even worthy of having it, for weeks. Or worthy of her, or my former girlfriend.
It is true now that, years later and desperately married (to the daughter of a World War II pilot named Angel), whenever a flute plays I have the woman sweet in my ears and think of our laughter. Wherever I see a headline beauty I brag quietly: Come on, I had a better, with a sad smile, I’d imagine, that fine appreciation of ourselves when we have bittersweetness right on time.
I have not had that many women, is the truth, and this, pal, I know seems crammed with serial romance and grief, but I’m not quite through, and you will understand me at last as more that poor man on the east Texas hill with the wind in his last hairs, too thick in modern life, too thick in dream, too sad for years now. Maybe the girl in North Dakota mistook my sadness for kindness; defeat for gentleness. I look at an old photograph of myself at eight when I was just a boy and his dog under a cowboy hat. I was looking at the world across the cornfield, all ready to touch it all under the shade of my tall Hoot Gibson. Now I understand I have been witness to the worst fifty years in the history of the world. A tragedy that might make Caligula weep in commiseration. And I have had, you know, a relatively pampered life, although you see me puffing away on my smoke like a leathered vet, a tough cookie.
I used to be a considerable tennis player. So in my health I took it up again and got the game back quickly. I just had a tough time giving a damn about the score. Once I was playing with a friend and noticed a very tall pale woman through the fence on another court. She had her back to me. I saw she struck the ball with authority and grace. I wanted her within seconds of seeing her. I needed her. I had never had a tall woman, blond, and I was already in my mind rocking with her in great abandon like a dying cannibal. The nourishment would be endless, so generous.
My friend and I played well. We sat down exhausted in that fine chill of Southern twilight that heaven might be. I looked to my right and somehow, in the flesh, the tall pale woman was sitting between us. You never see that kind of European paleness in women on a Southern tennis court. I was amazed at her musculature, like strands of soft wire. Then I saw the hat. She had been wearing a big unusual hat that must have given her seven feet in height. She was looking toward my friend. I had never seen her face. When she turned I looked away and in great fear I stared through the woods. I wanted her more than ever but I would not see her face. I heard her voice, though, just the once up close.
I believe I’ve got something you want.
I grabbed my bag and got in my car and was almost home before I remembered
my friend had no ride home, a long way. But I couldn’t go back and I almost threw up.
He called me, however.
Man, the woman was fast on you. What the devil, did you see all of her, fool? I’m much the better-looking, but all she gave me was a pouting ride home.
Who is she?
Somebody’s relative. Can’t remember. Too busy stealing looks. That’s quite a drink of water, long and cool, old son. You never knew her?
Never set eyes on her.
You’re an uncommon fool. And sober.
She has been around town now for a couple of years. I see parts of her here and there, but I walk or drive right away. I don’t intend to see her face because I know I’ve already seen it. When we touch one of us will die and be in the other’s dreams.
I am not insane. My affairs are composed in vicious sobriety. I did not see my tennis partner either for several months. Then he called at the end of the summer.
You don’t play anymore?
A few times, other places.
The tall one was back on the courts the other day. I swear, fool, she’s like something from the heart of winter in a foreign land. Same old story full of wolves where you’d stumble into a woman lying in the woods. I’m going to use a word. Alabaster.
I swallowed. You mean living or dead?
I’m not sure, mister.
Wolves.
I wonder, when she dies, likely by violence, will she be named like the lesser creatures in that story? Certain people believe all are given names when we die, not at birth.
The creature goes to heaven very baffled.
My God, what was all that about? it asks.
God says: Well, you were a wolf.
I see, says the wolf.
I wonder will it be that simple for her, or for me.
The Ice Storm
MOST OF THE LEAVES ARE FALLEN AND THIS PLACE LOOKS bombed all over again. Last February the ice storm of the century passed through the Arkansas delta into north Mississippi and lower Tennessee up to Nashville. Eleven at night, I was out in the front yard waiting for it, led by a special alarm, even horror, in the voice of the television weather-caster. Like a Jeremiah just miles ahead of the storm and pointing backwards down the road, raving. The edge of the storm came on in feather-light little BB’s, then began to drive and pile. The glass on the west of the house went pecking as if attacked by a gale of birds. Under the streetlights the swirls of white-silver turned almost opaque. It was a determined blizzard. A Southerner doesn’t see such driving ice more than twice in a lifetime. But at one I went to bed pleasantly aroused, rich as a caveman with the weather outside.
When my wife and I awoke, civilization as we knew it had mainly shut down. Luckily we had gas heaters. All electricity and water were gone; no telephone, all local radio stations kaput. Outside, the trees were draped sculptures in white, but in their quietness, a whole new storm of ghouls.
I am an addict of great weathers. Had I been in Hurricane Camille, which struck the Mississippi coast in 1969, I would be dead. I would have been the leading fool in some motel party hoisting a silver mug, crying havoc, hailing and adoring the wind until blasted off like a kite. Twelve years ago I decided I wanted Oxford for my home when I was having coffee at the Hoka, a café in a warehouse with a tin roof. A violent rainstorm came up. The sound of it thrashing on the tin moved something deep within me, a memory of another storm, my pals and me in a barn sleeping on hay when I was a boy: That tin roof was the margin against everything dangerous.
But at noon when limbs and then whole trees began falling around me, nothing was nice. The picturesque had turned into terror. Whatever we were, whatever good and rotten had transpired in this, our little jewel of a city, these trees had witnessed it. Now they were splitting apart and falling wholesale with mournful cracks and awful thuds. They were coming in the window glass like dead uncles. Next door, an eighty-foot tree fell on a neighbor woman’s Mercedes, the fetish of her life. She came out into the driveway wailing as I’ve never heard a white person wail. But you see a whole tree go over like that, and your grip on the universe goes. A small mob of slackers came down the block and stood around the big tree over the Mercedes. They grinned, sort of worshiping the event. But the woods running down a hill to the east went into an exploding mutual collapse too much like the end of the world, and everyone fled back inside.
All these old trees were like family in the act of dying; their agony was more terrible than the storm itself. We had been confident, even arrogant, with them around us, I realized. They’d been comforting brothers and sisters. Now the town was suddenly half as tall.
In the next weeks, trucks and electricians from four states poured into town. You would drive around very stupidly and like a zombie point to another great oak down, another smashed roof: Look at that, Sue. A vast pile of debris burned like the end of a war out on the west edge of town.
You hear a fatuous volume about growing, nurturing, and blossoming as a person nowadays. But great subtractions must be granted too. There is not always more of us, growing, flapping leaves around like idiot vines.
Here under a rare storm of ice we got our come-uppance. The leaves are gone, and we see it all over again. Lessness rules.
In the spring, I saw a histrionic young woman, the daughter of a highway patrolman, who had starred in one of Hood’s cheap movies. She was on her way to San Francisco. Enough of small-town life. I asked if she’d seen Hood. He hadn’t been on the courts this season. He was a decent player with a nice chopped approach shot. Hood too was Nordic and barely had an expression when he played. Once somebody asked me who was that frozen Swede I’d just played. But he had certain aggressions about his work and attended workshops for playwrights all over the country.
You didn’t hear? asked Shannon.
Hood had been in California during the earthquake last January. His apartment was all thrown around. For a while he tried to hang on in Los Angeles, but his nerves kept getting to him, so he moved back here to exercise his art on firm land. A generator came with his house, out a bit from town, and he was whistling about his luck after the ice storm, because most had no water and there were long lines of country and town folks down at the ice house, which had a natural spring under it. Hood was whistling in his shower, all loose in an orgy of steam, when an oak tree about the age of the Civil War fell down through the roof into the shower and broke his leg. He lay in his house for two days, phones out, until a neighbor’s dog came through the broken wall and the neighbor right after it. By then Hood was hoarse from screaming. His body, not just the leg, was poisoned green, black, and yellow.
In the fall, though, I saw him at the courts with another chum, and he seemed to be moving all right. Somebody had printed up T-shirts about the ice storm of ’94 and I was wearing one. Hood was not amused. We did play one night, but after just a few games he called it off. There was a real whine in his voice and a difference in his eyes. I had been serving very well, but my serve hadn’t frightened anybody since I was thirty. He didn’t say much, yet I heard another whine and this: “I can’t, I just can’t.” He got in his Jeep and pulled away, fretting. I’d liked Hood’s peculiarity. It was a shame to see him wussed.
I bought a video camera, my first, because I felt like life was getting away from me and wanted to shoot scenes of my wife naked or nearly so in compromising positions. I know this is the act of an aging creep who cannot understand his good luck, but I had ceased to care. I paid a great deal for this thing but what I could not buy was any desire to use it once it was in my hands. The first time I raised it I felt like an idiot and my wife ran away raving into the backyard. I just toiled there, whispering about my tender aims. Maybe I was in Hood’s world, a deeply wretched place.
I visited my mother a good deal that last year of her life. I did not know she was in the act of dying, wracked by the worst arthritis. But I worked close by her so we could chat occasionally. I was on the back glassed porch to keep the cigarette smoke away from her. I
was working very well, almost under a miracle burst.
We had got very honest with each other. The old black lady who spent the nights with her had seen the white horse of death in the sky after a recent funeral. We talked about this, Mother and I, and she told me the old woman had introduced herself by saying “Ma’am, I ain’t not rogue.” This was finally understood as thief. She was a true old-timey woman although a bit younger than my mother, in her early eighties. Each day now I watched the diminishing of my mother. She was tiny, that woman who had controlled so much.
I thought of Hood, just to speak of something.
In another playwrighting workshop at the university he had become an out-and-out bitch who led insurrections against the teacher. He never spoke in class but wrote notes of delicious scorn. The teacher knew nothing, nothing. The lively girls who had been in Hood’s movies avoided him, but Hood was unaware of this. The distance in his eyes was shortened. His art vision was gone, replaced by much sighing and staring at the floor.
A great Nordic bitch, I finished.
“Please don’t use that word,” my mother said, “What could it possibly mean in relation to a young man?”
“Well, the tree might have done him in.”
“That’s not a man, then, son. He would be grateful he survived, happy in his health, not angry he was hurt. Believe: Your mother knows whereof she speaks.”
Still, the biggest oak anywhere right through the shower.
Then we talked about the Mississippi flood of 1927. She was there, in Leland, about to leave for college. She was in it, child. Broken levees, bodies, rain and ruin. My poor daddy, responsible to everybody on the plantation. You can’t tell me.
Where I work men spent several months putting in a criss-cross graded walk for the handicapped in wheelchairs. It had blue iron rails and resting benches, very stylish. The thing was superior to the ordinary walks by far.
