Mrs Hollingsworth's Men - Padgett Powell (5 page)

At the funeral of his father, to which he was late he
had to have them open the coffin at the cemetery so he could see him.
He had never seen a dead man before. He said to his father, “Hey,
bud,” a thing his father had said to him, which he had never
himself said. He held his hand. He kissed him on the cold meat of his
forehead. No one at the cemetery saw this. In the heat they were now
concentrating on trying to leave. Deer flies and sportcoats and good
cars and some women who had liked his handsome father were by the
cars, ready to leave. He could have joined his father in the
expensive box that was designed to turn his father into slime and for
which he felt most sorry for his father, and they would not have seen
this either,

At the funeral of his mother, he was not late, and he
did not have to have the coffin opened because it had not yet been
closed. He said, "Hey, Mom." He did not touch her. If he
did, he cannot remember, but he can remember thinking he was probably
not going to want to, and he does not remember any change of emotion
when he saw her, so his memory that he did not touch her is probably
correct.

Inside the funeral home at his father’s affair,
where he discovered his father already removed to the cemetery, was a
vulgar employee whom he should have assaulted but did not. The man
said, "Y’all come back tomorrow, y’heah?" and got away
with it.

He walked out into the heat then, and saw Forrest for
the first time. Forrest slapped at a prickly pear cactus with the
flat of his saber, and the man might have thought of his father’s
mother slapping his father with the flat of her carving knife, but he
did not. It was too hot to think. He then saw Sally at the grave and
did not remember her. She introduced herself, and he said, “Oh,
yes. Of course.”
 
 

Gizmo

The woman with taut vanilla flesh sits on the black
chair and regards the courthouse lawn. I don’t see them, she says.
——
Who?
——
The
redhorse suckers.
——
Why should you?
——
They went out this window.
——
Oh.
She watches the square. Something odd catches her
eye in the shadows. She looks at the black men, who see her. She
looks back to the odd thing, under a store awning.
——
There
are two men watching this window.
——
The
sages?
——
No. These are criminals of some
sort. White. Looking at us with a gizmo.
——
What
kind of gizmo?
——
High-tech gizmo.
——
I am not worried about no high-tech gizmo.
——
Well, these are pretty low-tech-looking boys
wielding the gizmo, if that makes any difference.
——
Might.
Just might.
 
 

Scientists

——
I caint quite tell if she can see him or not,
Hod. I know he can.
——
Whyont you run
Forrest now?
——
Shit, Hod, em nappy
pappys already actin spooked. I run him right through them last time,
they so whooped by it one of em says he smellin bream beddin!
——
Naw.
——
Swear to
God.
——
Well, all right. We got what we
want anyway. If she can see him too, that a extra. Mr. Roopit Mogul
gone be very pleased with his field hands, I’d say. The New
Southerner to order! Man who caint remember who he is, one; caint
forget who he supposed to be, two; can see Forrest and be spooked by
it and have half a idea what the hell it is, three: that was our
orders. And to boot, to judge from the looks a her, he aint queer—
——
That’s a miracle, way it going.
——
Theys more wrong in the world than being
queer, Rape.
——
They is? Like what? You
hidin something from me, Hod?
——
No. It
aint nothing but a thang. Now see can she really see him. Put him on
Talk. I bleve we in position for a bonus, Rape, Mr. Mogul find out we
got him a mating pair. Don’t run him through them old men no more.
No telling what this does to people.
——
Fuck
people up when they see it, I'd say.
——
Yeah,
but I mean when they don't.
——
Make em
smell bream when they don't. That much we know.
——
Yeah,
Rape. We a couple reglar scientists.
——
How
reglar we got to be, working for a dude nauno Roopit Mogul? That wife
of his .. .
——
All rich fucks got women
look that good, Rape. its the law.
 
 

Dandy

The woman who no longer is Sally, if she ever was,
pays oblique attention to the two men under the awning who are
pointing something around the square. Those are as solid a pair of
ne’er-do-wells ever scuffed shoes, she says to the man.
——
I’m tired.
——
I’m
tired too, love. But it’s Ted Bundy and Lee Harvey Oswald down
there aiming a ray gun at this window or I’m a coot on duck day.

And then she sees Forrest—of this, from her
expression, there is no doubt in the minds of those who witness her
seeing him.

Forrest appears unmounted, natty in shirt garters and
whipcord trousers, not his riding attire, and wearing silver spurs.
He takes a position near a granite pedestal bearing a likeness of
himself. He disregards it. He says, in a voice surprisingly high and
piercing, "I jingle when I walk in these things. They become me,
if I am a dandy, and I become a dandy when I walk. That is why I ride
fist skull stomp gouge and resent the everliving shit out of
appointed leaders who dick around with cigars and bury boys. The
bones of boys, mark me, will mark us forever. I am fire."

Forrest turns to fire, his mouth a monalisa. His
spurs melt into the ground like mercury.

God damn, the woman says.
 
 

Obsession

It occurred to Mrs. Hollingsworth that she should do
something with herself other than make this preposterous grocery list
that was getting preposterouser with every item she added. It was
taking on a powerful vigor of its own. The Bundy and Oswald figures,
for example, had appeared on the list without her direct intention,
it seemed. This equipment they had she could not properly identify
except to know that it made holograms and was more technical than she
was and appeared way more technical than this Bundy and Oswald who
were charged with operating it. It was one thing to have a
preposterous grocery list, she thought, and another to have a list
you did not control.

So to do something other than the list she went out
in the country for a drive and saw some cows and two white doves in
every green field. Then she went back home and organized the floor of
her closet, matching shoes to boxes and noting that she had three
expensive leather train bags and had not been on a train for
twenty-five years. She did not in fact think a train bag was
necessarily intended to go on a train. Then she sat back down at her
kitchen table to resume the list. It was becoming obsessive, she told
herself. She then told herself it was probably the absence, not the
presence, of some good salubrious obsessions in a life that made it
unsatisfying. What else did she have, really? In the end, a list like
this one was better on the antibourgeois scale than one you actually
went to the store with, wasn’t it? That, going to the store, would
result in tuna casserole and a marriage with fog of Cooking in its
background, which was precisely what she had and was precisely what
had inspired her to sit down in this fugue about Forrest in the first
place. So she listed on.

Spot

Only boy back air with Bobby Lee what could I hear
fight ate lemons, believed in Jesus, and got hisself shot by his own
men. And I am walkin round on spurs made from melted thimbles. We are
in a spot.

The fair ladies of Memphis have done made me a pair
of silver spurs and now caint sew. When they get what men back they
gone get back from this fight, it aint gone matter. The woman is gone
pay for this for the rest of her everliving life. She gone put up
with shanks and heroes what wasn’t there and the luckiest of fools
what was. It aint gone make for no high cotton.
 
 

Operator’s Manual

——
Reason she seen fish in the room, Rape, and em
boys smelt em, and that dude saw a pompano in the lake, is you aint
know how to run that thang. A yellertail in the lake! We lucky
Forrest aint come over here and kilt us.
——
Hod,
excuse me, Hod, excuse me, but did you see a operator’s manual? No,
Hod, you did not. You did not see a operator’s manual with this ray
gun, Hod. That woman is perfectly right in calling it that, because
this is what it is. And ray guns just appear without no manuals, like
in the movies, people just knowing how to run them. If you have a
quarrel, take it up with It Mr. Mogul. I suppose he knows how to run
it.
——
If it’s really his, he might.
Maybe he found it.
——
Christ Almighty,
Hod, you are not rational. Mr. Mogul does not find shit. He makes it
or he buys it. The last thing he found was himself in a position to
make millions of dollars I acause his daddy—
——
Rape,
he found us, didn’t he?
——
Point well
taken. We don’t count. What counts is him up there in that room,
and we found him, and that does count.
——
Read
me them orders again.
——
I caint.
——
Why not?
——
Lost
em.
——
Well, how we know we found what
Roopit wants, then?
——
I committed the
orders to memory, like General Longstreet.
——
Re1nember
them to me, then.
——
I caint.
——
Why not`?
——
I
forgot what they said. Before you say anything stupid, let me inform
you that no, committing something to memory is not the same thing as
remembering what it said. Horse of a entirely nother color.
 
 

Hair

The man has his arm across his eyes because the glare
from the floor, while comforting in its warm gold clarity and
cleanness, is bright. He is tired. The woman has told him the room
was full of fish, a matter he remembers now as one remembers sweet
improbable lunatic moments from childhood when things did not depend
on verisimilitude for their ratification. He is tired. He cannot
remember not remembering Sally at the funeral of his father. He
cannot remember that there is any connection between Sally and the
woman in the room, or if he thought there was. He can remember only,
and only sometimes, the citrusy heavy feel of her breast in his
mouth, that last moment he fancied he knew who he was, well before he
thought he knew who he really was, either then or now thinking of the
way he must have thought then he is tired. Sally? he says to the
woman on the chair.

——
I told you, shh.

The hair on his arm he can feel on his eyelids. It is
a well-and manly-haired arm, and women have liked his hair and his
arm, including the woman on the chair, of whom he can’t remember
why she reminds him of anyone at all, let alone Sally, and he doesn’t
think it was a good idea to put hair all over the human body like
this. Nor should a man, or a woman, be slick like a hairless dog, but
there should have been better thinking going into this rampant
hirsuteness, in his tired view, with his hairy arm across his eyes
against the nice hurtful glare.
 
 

Flood

Looking at the back of his eyelids, the man saw not
the colors he had read were called phosgenes and that some famous
artist had said looking at was all he wanted to do; he saw a fast
vivid replay of scenes with his father. These were both scenes he had
witnessed and those he had only heard about. Once his famous father
slept under wet sheets in a bathtub in Yulee Florida it was so hot.
His father punched a relative of the states attorney general in the
mouth at a country club in Tallahassee Florida once, and the attorney
general, under whom his mother worked, and under whom she was afraid
she would not work when it got out that her husband was punching his
relatives at the country club, sent word by her to thank his father
for punching the man. Once his father had his mother row them under a
live oak while his father fished and they looked up and saw so many
water moccasins that it scared not only his mother but his father
too. His father said, “One or two, all right, but ..., " and
laughed. “He laughs
now
,
” his mother said.

His father told him of how his own father had not let
him quit high school football after three weeks just because he was
getting hurt. You finish what you start. So his father said he
decided to hurt somebody back, and did not quit, and became locally
famous once he reversed the hurt ratio. Yet when Lonnie Sipple went
out for high school football, his father took him off the field and
informed the coach he would not be back. His father had been in the
Pacific but would not say anything about the war, except late in life
to tell him how comically bad a soldier he had been, playing poker
and drinking beer and being put on unscheduled picket duty and
falling asleep in a bamboo tower. Once when Lonnie was in college his
father visited him, and when he saw that his father was carrying a
pistol for the road, he remarked that it looked paranoid, and his
father was gone, home, when he came out of the bathroom. And then his
father died, more or less. In a box that cost $5000 and looked like
NASA could do something with it, and in fact had had to be cranked
open with a stainless steel tool and sounded like a refrigerator
opening when he had them open it in the desert, his father was
turning to slime. His arm across his eyelids felt comparatively
acceptable now. The room was filled with the golden light, and the
woman was alive. He was too. But he was tired.