Airships: Shorts by Barry Hannah

Author:Barry Hannah [Hannah, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Southern Gothic, Fiction
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1970-08-02T12:00:00+00:00

Quarles Green made La Guardia and waited a cold six hours for the plane to Memphis. He was a miracle of patience. He read nothing, hardly changed position, smoked nothing, watched no pay TV, wet his underwear imperceptibly.

Reynolds will be the only one in Memphis who might be alive that would remember me from the old days, he thought. Reynolds who’s had thirty names in his time, on three continents. I did my bit in the Second. Cornered the Nazi czar of Fort Worth and his fifteen rifles.

When the plane was in the air he asked for the headphones.

The stewardess passed him. She was a big leggy blond girl, a superlative quite at ease in the jumbo jet. She was desire trebled out. Quarles Green felt the last big pang. He wanted to take up habitation in her, such as a baby kangaroo.

A terrific fist bashed him directly on the heart.

He smiled at her with his head phones on, snapping his fingers.

“Catchy,” he said, pointing at the phones. “Groovy, for your generation.”

She winked and passed by. He sat there awhile and died. The stewardess wanted to know the tune the old whitehaired boy was grooving on. She lifted up her own pair in her dressing room. Nothing was coming over them. There was only a howling, like waves in a storm of particles.

When she was out of the room, she saw Dana and asked her.

“The whole system’s screwed up by lightning or something. None of the headphone FMs are any good,” said Dana.

The stewardess walked back to look at Quarles Green. He had a tight smug smile on him, his eyes closed, like every dead man who finally hears his tune.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.