Ray Read online

  “No.”

  “You’re awfully down.”

  “I need more sex and music.”

  Mr. Hooch shook my hand and said, “We almost had a success with Sister. I told Agnes, ‘What the Hooches can’t help, they can’t help. People born on a bad wind just ride and take it.’ ”

  “That’s the thing to tell Agnes.”

  “We’ve seen Sister in one way, and now we’re seeing her another way. My daughter fell in with the wrong crowd. We all make mistakes. We didn’t know everything about the preacher. He didn’t know everything about himself.”

  I said, “My God, Mr. Hooch, that’s the way to talk.”

  He said, “It’s my only goddamn talent. When I quit talking, I’ll be as dead as my daughter. Hold my arm, Doctor Ray. I’m about to fall down.”

  We held each other, everything rushing around us from all corners.

  Agnes Hooch has said nothing during the funeral. The heat in the cemetery is a hundred degrees and we go out to the hole in our suits and dresses, hats, sunglasses. The little Hooch twins have quiet, hallowed looks beyond grief. I see the maimed one hobbling on her artificial leg with the hot wind rumpling her dress. She is a vision of permanent agony. Toward the end of the ceremony Mrs. Hooch raises a dreadful animal wail of fearful, unknown, soprano lamentation. But the wooden Indian in the station wagon never batted an eye.

  XVII

  LOOK here, you were involved in one murder, says the voice over the phone, so here’s another. I called you because you’ve got experience. Maybe he was a bum, but he was a good bum, and I know who did it.

  I was not involved in any damned murder, I say.

  Well, there’s a corpse out in Capitol Park, name of Buster Lewis. He’s been around a long time. Friendliest, wisest drunk in town. In fact, I’ll say it, he was my uncle. I’ll meet you there. A teenager did it. If you don’t come see me, I’m going now to kill the kid with my thirty-eight. Then there’ll be two, and I’m on my way to Mexico.

  Why me, fellow? There’s the police, you know.

  Yes, there’s the police, but you’re cute. Besides, I was a corpsman in the Marines. You get the picture?

  Are you a nigger? I say.

  Could be, the voice says.

  I’ll be there, I say.

  My Corvette wouldn’t start. So I jumped in Westy’s Toyota. Edward, Edward, Edward, here I come in this here Jap econo-car! Just hang on.

  XVIII

  BUT Capitol Park can keep for a while. Let’s talk about Judy—Judy and her apartment. She’s a lady who ran for mayor on the strength of her large, loving personality. Judy’s an honest port. She’s not the malicious and bored ground crew. Sometimes there is a true person waiting to talk to you and comfort you, and Judy is it!

  I’ll tell you, God, you’ve brought some manure and beauty down on this doctor and aging pilot who saw you face to face over the Sea of China one night, but the blue honest port that he came down to is Judy, who’s traveled a bit herself over the herd of crabs in politics. How sweet to be in her place and have her hold your hand.

  God makes people like Judy. Poem.

  XIX

  THERE ain’t nobody here and the fog is rolling around. For a moment I’m entering a zone of Edgar Allan Poe privacy. The border of vague in a semi-German or Greek swamp. Rising sins from my past are coming up and haunting my insides, and there’s this miserable dew on my buckle loafers. Look here, I’m an important doctor on a mission, I don’t have to wait here for creepy phantom business. Then I hear the hiss and the voice.

  “Over here, Ray.”

  “Give me a light.”

  Out in the park I see Uncle Buster with a bloody face. He’s breathing pretty well. But he’s in shock. Healthy and large for a wino. I tell the man with the flashlight to raise the feet.

  First dawn I have seen in fifteen years, twenty years, twenty-three years. I was a Boy Scout at Camp Kickapoo. I was smoking grapevine in the cabin and Mr. DeLard called me out: “If I ever have to call you out again, Ray, even though you’re a Life Scout, I’ll have to dismiss you from the troop. You’re supposed to be a leader, and here you are smoking.”

  I have always needed a great exhaust system. DeLard had his Luckies on the top of his knapsack. He was a hairy, frantic man. I went back in the cabin and lit up another piece of grapevine, because I had information. This here was the only time ever I was mean—with information. Mr. DeLard ran into the cabin. He had a Scout suit on and was forty.

  “Okay. I warned you.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “You’re out of the troop.”

  “No, I’m not! We live next to you, Mr. DeLard. My dad bought a high-power telescope for my astronomy badge. I turned it around to your bathroom and me and my dad and mother saw you beating your meat!”

  Many Scouts in the cabin heard this. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been mean. I was always gentle until people shot at me.

  I was a Life Scout, very solid. I knew how to start a fire, eat raw minnows, mold, and worms when it got down to survival. Then I went into Explorer Scouts, which led to flying in the Civil Air Patrol, which led to training on the T-33s in Biloxi, which led to the F-4 Phantom, and I could speak a little French and I was a captain when Edward was gone in the gray-pearl over Hanoi, which is what Tom Wolfe called it, and he was right.

  With the Rolling Stones on the tape on my right side and the whole U.S. hugging my back in this hot cockpit, I’m throwing off my mask as I see the MIG-21 come up after the gooks shot my commander Edward down.

  Channel 16. “Daya, menta, menta, casa, casa, casa, casa, casa!” International jet talk. Telling the gook pilot to get out of the air or I’ll bury him.

  He still rises.

  “Vaya casa, vaya casa.” Go home or you’re dead, son. I’ve got everything on me, and this plane and me will make you burn if you stay up here twenty more seconds.

  But he comes up twirling like a T.

  Well, hell. I want him! I turn the Rolling Stones all the way up, all the states of the U.S. shine behind me.

  He’s in the scope. I’m almost upside down and he’s trying to get back home but it’s too darned late.

  “You speak English?” I say.

  “Uh, yes.”

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “Used to be before Communist.”

  “I want to know your name and how old before I kill you.”

  “Lester Sims, twenty-three, lieutenant, Hanoi base.”

  “Lester Sims?”

  “Translating. Lu Gut. Trying to fly away.”

  Then the buttons when he got into the middle of the scope. It’s so easy to kill. Saw him make the bright, white flower. It’s so fucking hard to live.

  Big orange lights in rectangle on my carrier, the Bonhomme Richard. Lots of handshakes.

  It was the start of what I’ve got, and no nooky, no poem, no medicine or nothing will make it go away. Jesus, my head!

  Six years of medical training at Tulane. They said six to satisfy the med laws. I only had four. But four’s all it takes to get the drunk breathing good.

  “Shit, he’s alive!” I said.

  The fellow put down the flashlight.

  By God, it was Charlie DeSoto. From the old days of Eileen and Charlie. He had a sad mustache and balding blond hair.

  “I knew he was going to make it when I called you,” said Charlie. “I’ve got him and two more uncles in town. This one’s a lush and a teenager hit him over the head with a two-by-four. The little punk is over at his grandmother’s house and I’ve got the thirty-eight, like I told you. Eileen has left me, and I really don’t care anymore.”

  I walked over to the house with the light in the parlor. It was four in the morning. I knocked on the door and the grandmother opened it. I asked for the phone. While I was calling for the ambulance, the criminal walked up. He was a big innocent-faced frat boy in an Izod shirt.

  “I’ll tell you, these scummy winos come out there and scum up the view of
the park. It’s more than you can take.”

  I said, “Bring me the thing you hit him with.”

  “Sure. Hey. Tomorrow you’ve got to come up to the Sigma Chi house and have some beers with us. Some of the brothers said you were a keen teacher in Am Civ.”

  The service answered.

  “It’s just one of those things,” said the student when he got back with the thing.

  I bashed the fuck out of his ribs with it and his grandmother screamed.

  We put them both in the ambulance.

  I healed everybody.

  XX

  WE wear gray in the big meadow and there are three thousand enemy in blue, much cannon and machinery behind them. The shadow of the valley passes over our eyes, and in the ridge of the mountains we see the white clouds as Christ’s open chest. Many of us start weeping and smiling because we will die and we know. Last week we thought we were immortal.

  “Shall we charge, my commander, or shall we fall back? We have nothing but our sabers and our pistols, which are cowardly.”

  “Up!” yells the commander.

  You take the saber from your left thigh and hold it straight above. The pennants go higher. You put the cavalry hat down because the sun is against you. Around you there is nothing because the horses are in perfect line. The sun is coming over the raised sabers.

  “Commander, we could fall back. Our horses can run away from this.”

  There is no turning back. Hold sabers. We will walk to them until they shoot and then we will charge.

  Everybody was killed. One Union private lived to tell the story.

  If warriors had known this story, we would have taken the war to the gooks with more dignity.

  XXI

  ME and the machines saved Uncle Buster. He woke up wanting some wine. All ready to be a bum again. Go out there in the park, safe from vigilant idiots who get their haircuts at fifteen dollars.

  XXII

  “EILEEN left you?” I hadn’t been listening too good.

  “For a month now. She didn’t like my friends. She used to be nothing but love. Now she’s just complaint and fury. What happens to women, Ray?“

  My clinic is on a small offstreet. Through the window I can see the trees waving back and forth as the thunderstorm comes on. Linda Ronstadt is on my tape deck. I turn her down. I was listening more to “Blue Bayou” than to Charlie DeSoto, honestly. One afternoon I saw a gorgeous stag raise his head out of the hedge of yellow flowers. Right here in the middle of the city. There is a creek that runs down to the Black Warrior River and there is a thick swamp as it meets another creek, where there are deer and immense snapping turtles. It’s a haunted place, full of tales. Sister may be there now.

  “What?” I light up a Vantage.

  “I don’t understand what happened to her after we got married.”

  Charlie had acute gastritis over a peptic ulcer. Lots of buttermilk, if you can stand it.

  “Look, Charlie. I’m going to stick you with some morphine and I’ll drive you home. Drink the buttermilk and sleep as long as you can. But this is the only time. Morphine is dangerous.”

  “Don’t tell me. They used it in Nam.”

  “Okay. Let us not use the Demerol or any of the other shit after this. We’re just going to have to wait and see if your belly comes back for you. It should. A belly does.”

  “I got a raise. I’m the plant manager now. There’s a girl at the office who’s twice as good-looking as Eileen. She wants to lick my dick. I don’t know what to do. I’m sick.”

  “Your blood pressure is up. Knock off the salt. Buy yourself some garlic pills.”

  “Garlic?”

  “Trust me. We’ll get them at the drug on the way home. You’re the last patient today and i want out of this office. Catch ‘*A*S*H’ and make love.”

  “Why do women change after you marry them? She hates all my friends and is always tired when I try to get it on.”

  “You want to go fishing soon? My son and I have been catching some nice bass.”

  “You haven’t told me a damned thing about women.”

  “I tried to write a paper on the subject once. Pick up a Cosmopolitan magazine at the drug. Women read it to find out who they ought to be and then that’s who they are. A guy whips his pudding when he sees the new look in bathing suits. If Jackie Kennedy sucked you off, your ulcer would go away.”

  “Can you get her to do it?”

  “No,” I say. “For doctors, they have Claire Bloom and Lee Remick, but simple street shits like you just have to buy Penthouse.”

  Charlie smiled.

  It is always a sign of health when the smile can rise. His eyes are brighter. This handsome bastard will outlive me, and I resent it.

  The nurse comes in with the needle. She’s trained in the great med center at Birmingham and she is a knockout. Her hair is blond and curled. She’s about five-nine, a tall girl, twenty-six, and her legs are an amazing long event. Beyond that, she’s just a straight honest slut. I never had her. It is a perversity, but I hired her just to tempt myself and resist, as a man who’s quit smoking keeps a pack of Luckies on his desk just to see what he won’t do anymore.

  Rebecca puts the needle in him. When Charlie phases out, he lifts his hands in prayer. She looks at me quickly. She takes down the top of her uniform. The large dark-nippled breasts are there. Charlie is lying in the leather chair and she lowers herself to him.

  Certain things are private and it is tacky to witness them.

  In three weeks his ulcer was cured. He came by the office to tell me how delightful it was to be healthy. He told me he paid Rebecca for a week, but all the rest was free. Eileen was still in Georgia, waiting it out, knowing she was hurting Charlie. Women enjoy revenge more than the worst Apache.

  Then sabers up and we knock the fuck out of everybody. With the cherished dream of Christ in our hearts. Basically, the message is: Leave me the hell alone or give me a beer.

  Yes, I have seen the rain coming down on a sunny day. I have seen the moon hot and the sun cold. I have seen almost everything dependable go against its nature. I have seen needless death and I have seen needless life. One old mule of eighty came into the emergency room who had abused three wives, beaten his youngest son, twelve, with a tire tool, and had borrowed from everybody in Gordo. He had a heart attack and he was in intensive care, all hooked up to the machines and the monitors. He wanted to talk to me.

  “When I get out of here, I’m going to kill all those sons of bitches, Doctor.”

  I’d brought Rebecca with me. She can bring a man back. She can bring a woman back. A lesbian on Methadone came in wanting to die one afternoon. Rebecca put the bottle up and I straddled her, looked down her throat, opened it, and eventually got a pint of buttermilk down her. Then she was fighting and weird and we had to get the heavy stuff in her. After she was calm, Rebecca took her skirt off and sat on her face and the girl licked her wide hairy organ. I watched this one because I thought the girl might die.

  But Ray confesses he deliberately lost the bastard who was eighty. I told everybody to get out of the room and I bent down my face and looked him straight in the eye.

  “What are you going to do when I get you on your feet again?”

  “Kill the sons of bitches!”

  I yanked out the connections and shut down the monitors and let him pass over the light into hell. By the time the crew came in, I had all the stuff going again.

  “I lost him!” I screamed.

  Rebecca saw me in the hall. We lit cigarettes.

  “You killed him,” she said.

  “Well, hell,” I said.

  “You want to get it on, Doctor Ray?”

  “I can’t. I have a wife. Westy.”

  She said, “I want you to screw me, darling.”

  “Yeah. But I killed the old guy. Never did that before.”

  “He deserved it. Let’s go dance and fuck.”

  “I forgot how to dance about twelve years ago.”

 
“Yeah. But we could just go to my place, and fuck. You ever hear Jimi Hendrix? You and I could’ve saved him, poor old genius nigger.”

  XXIII

  “RAY?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They got me.”

  “Contact, Ed. I’m hearing you.”

  “Put your spirit with mine now, old lieutenant. I’m ashes.”

  Then he was.

  The last time Sister came to me at the clinic, I wrote this record and this prescription.

  —Female, 23. She has made one album and her next one is in process.

  —Her mother, almost nonexistent.

  —Her father, a philosopher.

  —Her family. Two sets of twins, one of them recently backed over by a bus, plus two others.

  —Her situation. Singer. Uses marijuana heavily. High blood pressure. 150/90. X-ray shows dark spot in the upper left lung.

  Prescription:

  —Valium, 25 mg. Every four hours until appetite returns. Prednisone, 200 mg. One every other day for two weeks. Then a half-pill every other day. 60 days. No refill.

  XXIV

  PAT and I go out in my little MG. I don’t have the Corvette anymore because of the gas. But I like my little 73 Midget and the sky. You get this low and you get to look at the sky.

  So me and Pat go out to the airport to look at the new two-million-dollar Learjet, and we get in the cockpit, and I show Pat the controls.

  Pat is a wonderful guitarist from Chicago, as well as a medieval scholar and poet. Nobody’s killed him yet.

  XXV

  EVERYBODY I love is in the jet. We try New York, but it’s no good. I’ve got the .32 machine pistol that I killed a gook in the head with. He was dead and he had a hand grenade in his hand. But he threw a knife into the neck of Larry. We were all fueling at Ton Sa Nut. Fifteen F-4s all in line. You couldn’t ever kill enough of them. Vietnam was like fleas.

  Never had a whore in Saigon. Never gambled my money. Quisenberry and I mainly just talked ourselves to sleep, then dropped Dexedrine when the horn sounded.