High Lonesome by Barry Hannah

Author:Barry Hannah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1996-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

Hardly without a pause, I dropped my racket and slapped him in the face. I’d never hit a man with a full fist, and in this case the result would have been even sillier if I had. He popped me so fast with the ham of his forearms, twice, I was out cold for a time. I woke up sitting, with his face over me and into mine, now with more concern than anger. He was smiling. Then he must have smelled the beer on me. Mary was up by me, amazed on her little legs.

“You shouldn’t come out here drinking, pal. I’m sorry, but you’re very lucky I’m a belt. I only told you you were late with your backhand,” the man said.

“I’ve been late with my backhand for thirty years. It’s the way I play, it’s fun that way. You fucking loudmouth pig.”

Mary moved down to get between him and me as he took a step, saying no to both of us. He wore athletic sports glasses. In his horror over my infirmity, he cut into me with a high-beamed glass stare that reminded me of every imperious monster of life that had ever hounded me. I almost fainted with hatred, overcome by all my failures at once, and proud of them too.

Afterwards Mary and I drank even more beer in my closed store together. I took out a new Jaguar poster with an even nuder woman poised in a diaper on the hood, her toes stretched out as just then in the moment of sexual crisis. I tacked her up. She was more Ford than Jaguar.

“Yes, and I think I’m separating from Jane. This antiseptic thing is coming on too strong. We’re going to just be a laboratory with the right wallpaper soon. She even asked me if I thought we’d still make love after age fifty. My God, fifty. That’s probably gotten dirty too. Or unkempt. That’s what it is about those St. Louis Midwestern people. Their fear of soil, wood, anything that could leave a stain—that’s why they’re creeps. Want to pave the world, they’re paving the goddamn beaches, they want designer nursing homes for resorts.” And so on. “She doesn’t even like sex, I’ll bet. She just wants a picture of it.”

I thought I’d get some agreement from Mary. But now she scolded me, and I quit the beer.

“You’re not separating. No you are not. Separating is all you’ve done since I’ve known you. And you will work with Jane, you will compromise. At your age it’s just indecent, you, to always want to be a social nigger. You won’t get along without her. You’ll get worse.”

“We might strike up something again, you and me,” I said.

“Not a prayer. You’re had. You worked for it hard to be had, and you’re not stepping out now! You’re married, Royce! You’re so absolutist. You think heaven’s supposed to feel like heaven. If you quit this, I know this: you’ll get old and tired instantly, with all your little principles intact.

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