In the City of Shy Hunters (74 page)

You motherfuckers! she screamed. You can't do this!

Sergeant White Supremacy reined in his steed, choking the stallion back. The white stallion reared up, and when the horse came back down on all fours, his eyes were somewhere else. Sergeant White Supremacy's left shoulder leaned forward. He clasped the gun at his waist. The woman's crotch was just over from his boot.

There was tape over the name on Sergeant White Supremacy's badge.

Then his boot kicked hard into the woman's crotch. I heard the sound of steel-toed boot to soft flesh. The woman doubled over, her braids hanging down, jewelry clink, sunset light onto the drooping green jewels.

People screaming and shouting. Horses horses everywhere. People running every which way.

Sergeant White Supremacy locked his eyes on me. Smiled.

Some people know it's a horse race and some people don't. I knew it, have always known. Just never thought I'd have a chance.

I smiled back. Gave Sergeant White Supremacy a big wink. Grabbed my crotch, puckered up my lips together, made sucking sounds with my lips.

Sergeant White Supremacy kicked the flanks of the white stallion, and the white stallion started through the tables after me. I dived into the open doors of Life Café, hit the floor, rolled, got up, ran behind the counter, through the screaming people in the kitchen, out the back door, jumped up onto a garbage Dumpster, grabbed the bottom rung of the fire escape, pulled myself up.

On top of the building, I was running west, climbing up, jumping down, on and off buildings. Below me, all along my left side, was Dog Shit Park, the mercury-vapor light, the bonfire light, and the humanity battling the Riders. Through the graceful branching limbs of the English elms, cops banging heads left and right, people screaming, the incredible sound of all those people screaming, the horses, the sound of hardwood blow to bone, knife into flesh, fist to mouth. Gunfire.

Up on the roof, halfway to Avenue A, staring at a brick wall too high to climb, I stopped.

Sergeant White Supremacy was not behind me.

I leaned against the brick wall. My breath in. My breath out. In and out, my heart beating beating.

To the south, just over the cornice, below me, the Dog Shit Park War.

Kick over an old rotten log, and underneath the log, partially submerged, the ground is a thick mass of insects, slugs, crawling things, a living swarm of dishonoring putrescence.

Just over the cornice, below me in Dog Shit Park, in all the world, this distracted globe, the helmeted bugs in blue, the armored shiny beetles on horses, were getting the better of the welfare queens, the humanity.

Just over the cornice below me, framed by the north-east-south-west of Dog Shit Park, framed by the streetlamps, solitary illuminations in the night. Streaks of brown-shit sobs, purple lost lives, black despair, yellow hope, red rage. Humiliation.

Unrelenting light scattering the shadow swarm.

Dividing.

Conquering.

No matter how hard I looked, into speeding light, darkness, speeding light, into the brown-shit purple black yellow red ocher dust-storm rage, no red plastic shower curtain.

No Fiona.

* * *

MY ART FAMILY
was huddled together, a Greek chorus of weeping and gnashing of teeth. I held each one of them, kissed them all good-bye, stuck Rose's silver revolver in my pants. The silver revolver was hard and cold next to my cock. Charlie 2Moon's ashes around my neck, my lovely erect pink penis in my pocket.

Entre chien et loup
. Between dog and wolf. Twilight.

Lamplight ocher dust-storm light from another incarnation clicking on.

Down from Dog Shit Park, below Houston, the Saint Jude phone booth, receiver hanging down like my limp dick, inside the phone booth painted all over with words.

When all else failed, hell of a fix, things gone haywire, when there was no place left to go, when I was up Shit Creek, in a world of hurt, I walked straight to Ruby Prestigiacomo's Saint Jude phone booth. The direct line to God.

I picked up the receiver. Silence on the other end of the line. The receiver was not attached to the rest of the phone.

Last call.

YOU
'
RE GOING THIS
way and then shit happens and then you're going that way.

In all the world. The moment that after you're different.

One cold round eye, metal against the back of my head. When I turned around, Sergeant White Supremacy was a big pink smiley face. The barrel of his gun now between my eyes.

The horrific whisper: You Italian? Sergeant White Supremacy said.

Hi, Dick, I said.

His smile, his little white teeth.

I'm the survivor, I said.

Little teeth set hard against little teeth, a bigger smile, piggy gums. You're the faggot, he said.

Whiskey and marijuana breath, the smell of his sweat something flinty. Handguns and testosterone.

Put the gun down, Dick, I said. You don't have to use a gun.

Faggot? Sergeant White Supremacy said.

His thin lips, his pink skin, red freckles, his Cardinal O'Henry steel-blue eyes behind those big, almost square, rimless, thick plastic glasses.

Inside his blue eyes, his tiny Catholic heart.

Sergeant White Supremacy pushed the gun barrel hard between my eyes. There was something quick with his arm, like it had a life all its own.

Dogs were barking, lots of dogs, wolves howling, monster roar.

It is this way. You may tell of power, and how power is received only when war happens, only when you are on the battlefield, only when you're ready to fight for your life. Only then are things told—what power has been given, what power you must use.

It is at such a time that power previously hidden enters you. When you stop being who you are and become a warrior.

Pull your pants down, bitch! Sergeant White Supremacy said. And then grab your fucking ankles!

The moment that, after, you're different.

My intention was to do that very thing, to reach down and unbutton the five buttons, let my cutoffs drop, pull down my shorts, but just like that—abracadabra!—something got into my arm, and my arm knocked his weapon away, and my arm reached out and my open palm slapped Sergeant White Supremacy, knocked the square ugly plastic glasses off his face—his poor squinty blue eyes. Then I slapped him again. Then my arm reached down and my hand grasped Rose's silver revolver and pulled the silver revolver out of my pants next to my cock, and then I shot him—the lucid compulsion to act polemically—I shot him, shot Sergeant White Supremacy, shot him between the eyes.

Bracelets clack-clack.

Light from another incarnation.

All at once, just like that—abracadabra!—drops and drops of rain.

Sergeant White Supremacy lay in a bunch of dry weeds and rocks and shiny bits of glass and garbage, and his blue eyes were open and his red hair was thin on top of his head. The bullet hole in his head was a red emergency button, blood was coming out his nose and onto his blue shirt, and when I pulled the tape off his NYPD badge there was his name: White, Sergeant Richard White.

Rain beating down hard on things, beating down the dry weeds, pinging against a garbage can lid, turning the light-brown earth dark.

After some time, who knows how long, I undid my pants and pulled my cock out, policing my body, new-shoe stiff. From the top of the head chakra to bullet hole between the eyes chakra, to Adam's apple throat chakra, to tiny Catholic heart chakra, to big belly chakra, to little dick
chakra, to glistening peritoneum, I anointed Sergeant White Supremacy with my strong flow of yellow piss.

The terrible things done to the world by the father.

I paid the devil his due.

The telephone receiver was lying on the ground. I picked up the receiver, cradled the receiver into my shoulder, walked stepping stepping slow toward the stallion. The stallion could smell Chub and ayaHuaska all over me. Talking nice talk to the beautiful white stallion, I took him by the reins and swung my leg over the saddle.

Back in the saddle again.

A western saddle, worn smooth. Leather sounds as my ass settled in.

The stallion's ears were up. My open palm against horse mane.

The white stallion's big live body under me, raring to go.

I tied the reins together, let the reins drop.

Lifted Charlie 2Moons up from my chest. Kissed the blue-beaded horizontals and the red verticals. Held Charlie in my open palm.

Charlie 2Moons and his stories.

My lips against the stallion's ear: Quiet is kept, I whispered. Do not fear. The maiden has shape-shifted into wolf!

Darkness is in its place, I whispered. Order is restored and the universe is safe!

THINGS START WHERE
you don't know and end up where you know. When you know is when you ask, How did this start?

How did this start?

With Wolf Swamp, with this city—that's how this started. When I crossed over to New York City, the fuck-you city.

Now everything's different. Now it's been told.

I fucked my sister. I betrayed my brother. Murdered a cop. Killed the monster.

My task was nothing compared to True Shot's, or Rose's, or Fiona's.

True Shot's task was to restore order to the universe.

Rose's task was to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Fiona's task was to find the meaning of life.

Ruby's task to give us all a name.

And now, at sunrise, sitting on a white stallion, my task is easy: Get on the horse and ride out of town.

But it's not the truth.

Fiona would say: Riding out of town was a typical guy thing to do. True Shot would say: It is this way—the cavalry rode out after Wounded Knee. Rose would say: You honkies are all alike, you think the movie's over when the white guy rides off. And Harry: I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille! Ruby'd be laughing his ass off; I can hear Ruby right now: William of Heaven, what am I going to do with you?

Standing next to Saint Jude phone booth, when all else has failed, up Shit Creek, in a world of hurt, when I've killed a cop, my bad breath into a dead line of NYT&T is the only place left.

Sitting on a stallion, looking for a stallion.

In all the world, even myself I am just here, isn't it?

Everything about the world is brighter, clearer, like the kind of painting that when you first look at it you think it's a photograph the photographer took when the light made the edges of things hard and more real, or the photographer took acid and took a photograph of how he was seeing, but then you step closer and you see the brush strokes, you see how the guy painted a painting to look like a photograph that looks just like the world, only brighter.

I am the Will of Heaven. Why else do we live except to love and remember those we love?

You could call this a prayer. Going Slack is what Charlie and I called it.

If you ride fast enough, let the reins go slack, if you shut your eyes and dream, you can make the warrior's stallion your own and live forever that way, riding free.

RIDING FREE, HORSE
hooves against the pavement, the hard heartbeat against the asphalt chest. This city, a grid of the horizontal and the vertical, buildings up to the clouds, buildings down to bedrock, north and south and east and west in between.

Horse hooves bouncing off the six-story red-brick tenements, rain dripping off the cornices from above, the stoops, the long narrow windows, the sidewalks and curbs, past the garbage cans, I am riding free through the ocher dust-storm light from another incarnation. Rain on my face. My breath in, my breath out, in and out, in and out, riding free on a white stallion.

No longer scared.

I go straight into the Hippodrome Stand. My feet are on the saddle, and I say, I'm going to stand up now, so just hang in there with me, please.

My knees push up and then I'm standing up, in the air. I put my arms out horizontal. I feel the way I've always wanted to feel and never knew it. What we live for. It's the way the ocean feels, rolling rolling, or why birds like to fly so much.

I let out a big whoop! and look over at two old men in T-shirts that barely cover their bellies. They're standing in a doorway, passing a brown bag back and forth, talking. Their arms, their hands, every which way, never still. They look up and out at the rain and when I whoop they look at me, at me letting go.

Across Houston—horns honking, cars sliding sideways—from both directions, just like in the movies, brakes squealing, tires screeching, banging crashing yelling, a New York drop-dead fuck-you lot of fuss.

Me and the white stallion are in a flat-out gallop.

A car alarm goes off.

Yet another New Yorker.

At the corner of Second and Avenue C, under the mercury vapor, is a figure all in black with a shopping cart: Black Plastic Woman. There is a smile inside the black plastic shiny dark of her from another incarnation. She is waving.

I do the Crupper Jump for Black Plastic Woman, go into a Double Vault.

Why do we have to stay in the fucking corral? I yell.

There is no corral! she yells.

At the corner of Third Street and Avenue C, the white stallion turns left. Evens east; me and the white stallion are headed west. The rain in the lamplight, onto the pavement and sidewalks—it's raining cats and dogs, lions and wolves. The white stallion gallops past the after-hours club Fiona found that first night, gallops to the corner of Avenue B, into the streetlamp light where Fiona stood so long ago in her little black dress, and sang “Song of Bernadette."

On the side of a building on the corner of Avenue A is a photo of Andy Warhol repeated a hundred times. Across the photos, the black Magic Marker words: I'm Andy
Warhol and I
'
m dead and you're not
.

Under the Neck; I come around, do an Indian Squat around the horn, lay back, then slide down the side of the white stallion, keeping my feet off the pavement by hanging off my right elbow. With my left hand, I wave at the Hell's Angels standing in front of their bar—elbow elbow, wrist wrist wrist. I'm taking very long, slow steps in the air, so as if to appear to be walking beside the white stallion.