In the City of Shy Hunters

by Tom Spanbauer

  True Shot squinted up at Theodore Roosevelt.

  Look like anybody familiar? True Shot asked.

  I put my hand above my eyes.

  Perhaps you detect a certain resemblance to our nation’s current leader? True Shot said.

  Who, Reagan?

  No, True Shot said. Nancy.

  True Shot and I got to laughing then. True Shot was laughing so hard he sat down on his haunches, sitting in the way I never could for long. He was laughing and flipping the stick back and forth, back and forth.

  He put his mirrors back on.

  Belly jumping, shoulders rolling, I thought me and True Shot were in for a good laugh.

  But it’s not the truth.

  Under True Shot’s mirrors, tears coming down his cheeks, snot out his nose.

  Then just like that, True Shot jumped up and went flip-flop up the steps and I was following.

  What about Ruby? I said.

  Ruby couldn’t make it, True Shot said.

  Charlie couldn’t make it either.

  True Shot and I walked into a big hall with dinosaurs, and I wanted to stop and look but True Shot knew where he was going, so I just kept up with him. On the left on the wall were all sorts of things Teddy had said about life, and I only had time to read the one that said All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

  True Shot walked right by where you had to pay, and I walked by too, but the woman stopped me and I had to go back in line and pay a suggested donation of five dollars. So I paid five dollars and got the clip you clip on your shirt collar that I clipped on the bottom of my shorts.

  True Shot was waiting in the Eastern Woodlands and Plains, standing next to an exhibit of a pack of wolves. Taxidermy wolves. Art wolves. I followed True Shot through the Eastern Woodlands and Plains, through the Asian Peoples, and at the end of Asian Peoples we turned left and True Shot flip-flopped up the stairs and I followed to the third floor to Asian Mammals, where there were two elephants, and then we walked through a bunch of mannequins my Art Family would love to know. A sign said MECCA UPSTAIRS, but we didn’t go to Mecca. We went into Primates of the Eastern Woodlands and then, all at once, right there in front of us was the tipi.

  But it’s not the truth.

  Ceci n’est pas un tipi.

  BEHIND THE THICK glass was a tipi scene. Mannequins. Native American Art Family. Two women on the left and two men on the right. In the middle was a phony fire. One man was standing, holding a pipe and a pipe bag. The women were sitting by a game of sticks on the floor and one woman was braiding the other’s hair. The Native American Art Family all were wearing buckskin, beadwork on their buckskins. In the background were reed chairs on the ground you could lean back on.

  Indian drum music from speakers.

  On the left side of the glass were some words on a piece of paper. True Shot walked up and read the words out loud: In this scene an 1850s Blackfeet family relaxes in a tipi. The two women play a game of dice, a popular women’s pastime. The man standing at the rear of the tipi wears an outfit of tanned deerskin decorated with porcupine quills, horsehair, beads, and white weasel tails. He holds a pipe with a wooden stem and a stone bowl and a beaded pipe bag. Smoking was an important part of ceremonies, but both men and women also smoked for pleasure.

  True Shot had his head in his hands, in his hands his red bandanna. Just as I looked, True Shot’s chest went up and down, up and down, and a big crying sob came out of him.

  Then: a woman in a white blazer and skirt pulled her child away from the glass and said, Don’t touch, honey. The little girl was wearing a sunbonnet and fluffy dress, and the little girl said, Where’s their bathroom, Mommy?

  True Shot’s big tears were coming down under his mirrors, and pretty soon True Shot was sobbing way loud and his chin moved funny and he was weeping weeping and you could hear him all over inside the halls of the Museum of Unnatural History. The woman in a white blazer and skirt picked up her daughter and took long steps away—the daughter, under her sunbonnet, watching True Shot the whole time.

  Why is the man crying, Mommy?

  That kind of crying is like puking. Someone else doing it always makes you do it too. I put my arm around True Shot’s extra-lovely shoulders and there we were, the two of us, crying our eyes out.

  Then True Shot sniffed up and wiped under his mirrors with his fingers.

  They’re going to do this to the whole world before they’re done, True Shot said. Make it into a picture and put it in a frame.

  Then True Shot was off weeping again, his whole big extra-lovely belly bouncing and his chest up and down, up and down.

  It is this way, True Shot said in between sobs, when he could. I came, I saw, I conquered, I put it in a museum, True Shot said.

  Then True Shot made his extra-lovely hands into fists and said, Someday I’m walking in here, and when I walk out I’m walking out with that medicine bundle.

  With what? I said.

  With the medicine, True Shot said, pointing at the Native American Art Family guy holding the pipe and the pipe stone.

  To my people, True Shot said, That pipe is their life, their medicine.

  It is this way, True Shot said, raising his extra-lovely fists into the air. Someday I’m walking out of here with that pipe.

  Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

  You’re going this way and then shit happens and then you’re going that way.

  In all the world, this distracted globe, just then, right then, when I looked over at the Native American Art Family relaxing in their tipi—and I swear this is the truth—the guy in the tanned deerskin and beads and porcupine quills and white weasel tails, holding the pipe with a wooden stem and the stone bowl, smiled at me. Winked.

  The sensation was a finger drawing a circle around my heart.

  I went to tell True Shot an inanimate object had just smiled at me and winked, but True Shot was busy with something else.

  True Shot said, Cover me.

  I said, Cover you? Cover what?

  It is this way, True Shot said. If you want something, you got to piss on it.

  True Shot rolled his eyes up to heaven.

  I’m marking this place, True Shot said.

  He pulled down the elastic of his red cotton shorts and the elastic of his underwear and pulled out his extra-lovely anteater cock. In the middle of all the people walking by in the Museum of Unnatural History on a Sunday on the Upper West Side, True Shot pulled his cock out.

  True Shot was standing right next to the door into the wall on the right side of the glass the Blackfeet Art Family were relaxing in, when he started peeing. I looked around. People everywhere. No Charlie 2Moons.

  True Shot was peeing, really loud, walking along the glass, more like he was dancing, singing, not holding on to his cock, his arms out wide: True Shot singing, dancing, his cock and his pee all up and down, back and forth, on the glass and on the floor.

  I put my arms out wide too. How else do you cover somebody?

  True Shot was just about at the door into the wall on the left of the glass case the Blackfeet Art Family were relaxing in, when a guard, a white guy, came around the corner. I stepped up to the guard, right in his face, and said, Excuse me?

  And the guy said, Yes?

  Language my second language.

  I said, Can you tell me, I said, Where the bathroom is?

  And the white guard said, Down Primates, past North American Birds at the stairs.

  I said, Thank you, and I was still standing right in front of this guard, so the guard went to step by and I stepped that way so he couldn’t go, and he stepped the other way and I stepped that way too, and then the guard got this look on his face, so I stepped away and looked over to True Shot and True Shot was still peeing under where the words on the left are.

  All at once I said right to the guard, clearly, not one stutter: All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhoo
d.

  The white guard just looked at me, checked for my little clip, saw my little clip on the bottom of my shorts, and went to step around me.

  Then: C’est un penis, I said.

  Fuck you, the guard said. He stepped around me. I looked over to the Blackfeet Art Family relaxing at home. My eyes went right to the place on the words to the left where it said both men and women smoked for pleasure, and all at once, that’s all I wanted to do, roll a cigarette and smoke it for pleasure. The place smelled like a toilet and True Shot was standing there all put back in; under his mirrors his eyes were smiling. True Shot nodded to the guard, and then when the guard turned the comer, True Shot had an extra-lovely smile for me.

  You want something, True Shot said, You got to piss on it.

  A FEW WEEKS later, I was lying on the futon in my shorts listening to Power 95 on the boom box and reading jokes in The New Yorker. The red-pink walls of my apartment, my Art Family, the E.T.-phone-home guy, the empty ’53 DeSoto, the oscillating fan. The humid sooty air.

  At four-thirty, I called Janet at Columbia University. The message machine again. I left the same message again: Where is Charlie? Where is Sebastian Cooke? Please call me back.

  Mrs. Lupino’s cats across the hall yelling and scratching—it all got to be too much, and when the phone rang and it was Ruby breathing breathing in the phone again. I climbed the stairs to Rose’s apartment door and knocked. Dogs barking but no Rose.

  I sat on the stoop, rolled a cigarette.

  Charlie 2Moons nowhere.

  Garbage all over the sidewalk and under the stairs. The hot summer night made the garbage worse, the flies and the stink. People walking by on the sidewalk had to step around cardboard boxes, black plastic bags, holes in the bags, every kind of trash flowing out of the holes. Somebody’d thrown away a bunch of photographs, so all over the sidewalk and into the curb, little squares of smiling people holding beers looked up at me. Two garbage cans were turned over, one can in the street. Books, papers, old food, a brassiere, dog shit, beer bottles and cans, an empty bottle of Yukon Jack, a plastic gallon of Clorox. Blue and white paper coffee cups, a wadded-up slice of pepperoni pizza.

  I started walking, just walking wherever my feet wanted me to walk. In St. Marks Books, I opened a big book by Robert Mapplethorpe that said DISPLAY COPY on it. One of the photographs was of a guy who looks like a Catholic saint, beatific smile, eyes rolled up to heaven.

  The guy was jerking off.

  Charlie 2Moons. I’d seen Charlie 2Moons look like that.

  At Hebrew National I bought two hot dogs. They’re the good kind of hot dogs, so I bought a third. I sat in the air-conditioned window and ate the hot dog, the paper napkin wadded up tight, red and yellow-orange in my left hand. People walking by on the street.

  THAT EVENING WAS probably the last twilight walk I ever walked when the monster and its heavy footfalls was still a secret deep inside Manhattan’s heart. All around me, behind the million windows, in their apartments, young men stood in front of mirrors and looked into their eyes, trying to understand the strange new sense of everything falling away.

  Bad diet, too much coffee, too many drugs last weekend.

  Slow down, that’s all.

  My God, this rash. What’s this in my throat?

  It’s only a cold, the flu. This bump, this purple bump. I’ve never had a bump on my body like this.

  At the gym, the young men stood on the scales and moved the weight across the scale, and then stared at the seven pounds that used to be on their arms and chests and butts and legs.

  Behind the million windows, sleepless, the heavy fall of the monster’s footsteps shaking the glass of water on the nightstand, shaking the nightstand, shaking the whole building.

  Only the week before, the Post reported that a couple on East 70th Street had thrown a big party—champagne and the works. After the party, when their friends were gone, the two young men joined hands, stepped to the window ledge, and jumped out of their penthouse apartment.

  THE FOLLOWING WINTER, one night after Cauchemar closed, it was just Daniel, the boss’s brother, and John the Bartender and me sitting in the long angled shadows, the windows fogged, the doors locked. Big flakes of snow falling in the mercury-vapor light. Latin beauty Sade on the music system, “Smooth Operator.”

  Slave interest.

  Got a straw? Daniel yelled over to John.

  Then: And John, Daniel yelled, On your way over here, bring me a fresh Hennessy—make that two.

  Daniel tapped his gold American Express card against the butcher paper, ran his thumb and finger down the edge of the card, made a face that was like a smile, and then rubbed his thumb and finger on his gums above the capped teeth.

  John set the two snifters of Hennessy down on the table, one by me, one by Daniel. Daniel said, straw? and John walked back to the bar, singing “Smooth Operator,” moving his body to “Smooth Operator,” a nice way with his shoulders and butt.

  John was shiny bald on the top of his head, a fifty-dollar haircut on the sides, and in back a ponytail just to the collar. A barrel chest, big black mustache, those black garters on his arms over the white shirt, black bow tie.

  John came back with a straw, cut in half, and laid the straw on the table on Daniel’s side. John winked at me. The halogen light was right on John’s bald head, and the moment when he winked at me around his head was illuminated.

  You want some of this? Daniel said, and handed John the straw.

  John sat down on the banquette too close next to Daniel. Daniel put his arm on John’s back and John leaned the straw into the cocaine, pushed the straw into the line of white, put a finger to his nose, pushed the nostril closed, and sniffed up the line. John sat back up straight, wiped his nostrils and his mustache, snorted, and cleared his throat, Daniel’s arm draped over his shoulder.

  Hell! Let’s have a party! Daniel said. Just bring that Hennessy bottle over here!

  When John got up to get the bottle, Daniel handed me the straw and started singing Bob Dylan, Bring that bottle over here, and I took it but Daniel kept holding on to it until he finished singing, I’ll be your baby tonight.

  I had to stand up to get to the line of cocaine on Daniel’s side. Either that or I had to go sit next to Daniel the way John had, so I stood up and leaned over the table.

  On the end of the white line on the white butcher paper, I put the straw. I cussed my hand for my mother’s nerves, made a fist with my other hand behind me, released the fist, then quick switched the straw to my steadied hand, held the straw to my nose, my other hand’s index finger against my nostril, and pushed the straw toward Daniel’s third shirt button, inhaling the cocaine, then stood up straight and breathed in deep through my nose.

  That one’s yours too, Daniel said, and pointed at the table.

  I changed nostrils, leaned down, pulled the cocaine in, tapped the straw onto the table.

  Done this before, Spud? Daniel asked.

  Daniel was smiling his restaurant smile.

  Didn’t know if you’d have blow in Idaho, Daniel said. He laughed, said: Didn’t know. Blow. Idaho.

  Daniel dumped the rest of the cocaine from the bottle onto the butcher paper and, with the straw, scraped out the cocaine that was stuck on the glass inside. Daniel looked up at me then and kept looking right at me as he leaned back against the banquette and pushed up so I could see the crotch of his suit pants, and he reached into the pocket of his pants and moved his hand around in there and pulled out a shiny square of red paper.

  Daniel leaned his elbows onto the butcher paper, pushed his shirt buttons up against the table, unfolded the shiny red square slow, then held the red paper between his thumb and index and tapped the cocaine in the square onto a pile on the table next to the pile of cocaine from the bottle.

  Daniel scraped the square of paper with his long pinkie fingernail, fanning the rest of his fingers out. His fingers were thick and there was black hair on the backs, black hair smashed down under his dia
mond ring, third finger, left hand.

  Daniel made eight lines, longer than his gold American Express card and thicker this time.

  Yes, I said, I have.

  Really? Daniel said. Where’d you do cocaine?

  Just about everywhere, I said. Jackson Hole, Boise, Missoula, Ketchum, Coeur d’Alene, Hope.

  Hope? Daniel said.

  He inhaled four lines, fast, nothing left of the lines, not one particle of cocaine, when Daniel was finished. Daniel held his nostrils for a moment with his thumb and finger, then handed me the straw.

  That’s a place? Daniel said. Hope? Hope, Montana?

  Hope, Idaho, I said.

  You lived there? Daniel said.

  For a while, I said.

  Then: Not in Hope, I said, just outside. Beyond Hope, we called it.

  Daniel’s smile was not his restaurant smile, not polite, not sophisticated, just a big smile on Daniel’s face.

  Hey, John! Daniel yelled over. Did you hear that? Spud here used to live in a place called Beyond Hope!

  John called over: What do you hope for in Idaho?

  I did two more lines, my hand steady, not shaking at all. John brought the Hennessy bottle over, and a snifter for himself, put the bottle on the table, and sat down on the banquette too close to Daniel. Daniel handed John the straw.

  For cocaine, I said. You hope for cocaine.

  I thought Daniel was having a heart attack, but he was laughing. John had to stop snorting the line of cocaine because he was laughing too. I was surprised I was so funny. But when I did the next two lines, my hand was totally steady, and Daniel and John were still laughing and I was laughing, and I knew why I was so funny and I was laughing.

  Hope no more, Spud! Daniel finally was able to say. You’ve come to the right place, Daniel said. In New York you don’t have to hope. There’s nothing to hope for. It’s all right here. Fuck hope, Daniel said. You never have to stop and hope, all you have to do is reach out and take what you want.

  Fuck hope! John said, and raised his Hennessy snifter.

  Daniel raised his snifter. Fuck hope! Daniel said.