Ray (5 page)

T
HE
gulls are coming in to the dock and fighting over the can of sardines I left out for them. I couldn't finish it. I should eat. Sweetest Sister is
gone and Westy is gone, and it is hard to swallow a cracker. Out in the gulf you see the edge of your world, many boats, and people falling off, silhouetted by the sun. Arms up, screams, goodbye. The moon is coming in red. Small-craft warnings are out. Over the crumpled horizon the moon seems to roll away the clouds and be a great ruby marble.

Barry and I are here. We aim to catch some fish.

Lee and Barry are also back here in Tuscaloosa with me. Hold old Ray close, everybody, for he is estranged from the clear home that he once knew.

I almost forgot. My dogs are here too. We're all in here now and we are having fun pitching pennies in a minnow bucket. We are about to eat the delicious ribs from Archibald's—happy nigger that smokes them the best—and my daughter Lee and I have had a good time at the university pool. She comes down the slide hollering with glee. She's a water lady of nine years. We go off the diving board together in a backflip. Through the water and swimming forward.

This is me at the trial.

“Doctor, did you ever hear Doctor Castro threaten the woman?”

“No.”

“Did you yourself ever have sexual relations with the deceased?”

“No.”

“You are under oath.”

“The answer is no.”

“Semen was found in her vagina.”

“Not mine.”

“But Doctor Castro has alleged that he saw . . .”

“I'm not on trial here.”

Maynard stood up, crying, and confessed. You couldn't understand too much of what he said through the weeping. But there it was. He rushed over to me and hugged me. I came up with a quick stroke from the old Navy practice and sent him sprawling back to his lawyer.

In their secret hearts, such perversities as Maynard know there are things they can never have, things they have wanted with all their hearts. So they kill them. Most preachers are this way. Their messages seem benevolent, but they are more evil than the rest of us walking pavement.

When I fly again, it will be against the preachers.

A
FTER
the trial, this man comes up to me. I'm so full of trouble I don't even recognize him. Holy God, it's one of those students I taught in that American Civ class. He wants me to read his poem.

Certain Feelings

I have certain feelings about this room
I have certain feelings about doom
I have certain feelings about trees and gnats
I have certain feelings about this and that

I have certain feelings about firearms
I have certain feelings about the girls and the guests
I have certain feelings about firearms
I have certain burglar alarms

I have certain strains of Mozart in my soul
Certain helplessness I cannot control
Though I guess when all is said and done
I have certain feelings

They always say Southerners can write. So I slugged this skinny lad. I laid him down the steps. They took this on the local TV, and I watched it with Westy. I was in my white suit and I duked away this harmless poet. He tumbled down a lot of steps and his family is saying they'll sue.

No matter. I'm in Westy again. The thing seemed to have turned her on. Not the violence, but the lonely trouble. Cornelia Wallace called me up about publishing her novel. Fame on the TV got me back to Westy.

She covers me with kisses. Tears running down. Ray heaving, wife receiving. Hear me, poets. I have certain feelings.

I
N
the moon that comes over Dauphin Island, over the bay, we see the gray-blue chariots of the gods move across its face. The wind is running from the south. The night is clear. The blinking lights of the airport tower are throwing out against the color.

The hurricane is over and many people are dissatisfied that it killed no one. Bob the hurricane came in and just sort of raised the water, blew a few phony cupolas off the houses.

Ray meets one of the detestable children of the modern day. I delivered her baby and now she's delivered her modern self onto the world. She was at the 7-Eleven when I was buying crab bait.

“Are you, I'd guess, a Taurus, Doctor Ray?”

“Yes. Nice to see you.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Fishing with my father and my son.”

“Oh, how macho. Just like a Taurus.”

“Yes, isn't it?”

“I'm divorced now.”

“Oh.”

W
ESTY
and I are hugging. The thrill goes all around the world. I seem to have made her pregnant. Westy is worried about having a retarded idiot at her age, and we have too many children already. But I want it, moron, imbecile, whatever's in the cards.

Come forth! Take flight! Son or daughter of Ray and Westy!

When the day is done, I have seen ten patients and the sun is setting out over the trees. Westy sits on the bed crying, face in her hands. She doesn't know what to do about the baby. She is scared of it. Another thing to fly and die.

Dr. Ray breaks into tears himself. He washes them away with cold water, but they flood again. The baby in Westy's womb looms up like the huge fetus at the end of
2001.
Our baby, our baby.

Two more days and it turns out she wasn't pregnant, after all. My brain was in squalor and torment. But now it's like another friend I lost in Nam.

“Edward, what you got?”

“I've got something, something on me!”

Then I saw it, the SAM missile go into his exhaust. It was a big white flower spraying in the night. There was Edward, lieutenant commander
from St. Paul, Minnesota, a nigger who saved my life twice, falling to pieces. There he goes.

I should have delivered him. I should have been awaker.

Mr. Hooch was at the funeral, of course. Sister was lying all fixed up in the coffin. I couldn't go by to see the body or smell the bank of flowers. Mr. Hooch is a strong man. His wife trembles and smokes. The Hooches have lived in CM (Constant Misery), and now their first claim to fame is dead.

I was shivering. Westy was holding me with her slim arms.

“You really loved her, didn't you?” says Westy.

“Yeah. Westy, I'm sorry, but I did.”

“She was lovely. But don't you think I'm lovelier?”

“Yes.”

“Is everything just sex and music?”

“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.

L
OOK
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.

B
UT
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.

T
HERE
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.