In the City of Shy Hunters

by Tom Spanbauer

  There was a child named Bernadette. Fiona sang. Do you remember the night I sang the song?

  Only silence.

  That’s when the exact right most perfect person will appear, I said.

  Yes, Fiona said.

  How will you know, I said, This exact right most perfect person?

  All I know is it will be dramatic. It will be just so fucking dramatic that I will know, Fiona said.

  Fiona, I said, Why don’t we go to my apartment and take a shower? I said. I’ll fix us some pasta.

  Fiona bit her lip. Her breath in. Her breath out.

  I can’t go in showers, Fiona said. And toasters terrify me, and refigerators. I’m even afraid of my vibrator, for chrissakes, Fiona said.

  Only silence.

  I’m afraid of my ’53 DeSoto, I said, And I’m afraid of the shower too, and elevators, and subways, and cabs, anyplace confining, and people can’t get too close to me.

  Really? Fiona said. The only place I feel safe is in my shower curtain. I’m going to get over it, Fiona said, In time.

  Just come home with me, I said, Lie down on the futon. Or we could go to Fish Bar, I said. There’s a great new song on the jukebox. Mercedes Sosa, “Gracias a la Vida.”

  Will, Fiona said, I can’t go inside.

  How do you feel about irons and ironing boards? I said.

  Not yet, Fiona said. It’s just not right, Fiona said. I know it’s unbelievable.

  The war, Fiona said. Any day now. The Dog Shit Park War.

  FIONA’S INNER VOICE wouldn’t let her leave the green bench. I bought her a knish and some scalloped-looking potatoes from Odessa and took the knish and potatoes back to the green bench. Fiona was still sitting there. She ate like a farmhand.

  She ate like she was eating for two.

  We sat there on my green bench holding hands, watching the light entre chien et loup. On the corner of Eighth Street and Avenue B, the streetlamp came on, the color from another incarnation. Ruby Prestigiacomo’s arborvitae was right behind us.

  Then Fiona’s inner voice called her back to Walk/Don’t Walk.

  I went home without her. Took my clothes off, washed my face in the kitchen sink, sponged off my pits, my crack, my balls. I was standing among my naked Art Family.

  I hadn’t checked my mail for about a week, so I got my keys, walked out into the narrow blue hallway, and under the unrelenting light of the fluorescent halo, I opened up my mailbox. Inside was my Con Ed bill, the rent bill, and a big manila envelope from Peter Morales.

  I turned on my reading lamp, set my reading lamp on my Father Knows Best table, Rose’s poem on the red wall in black Magic Marker just above me. Swiped the dry rose petals off the table. Put down True Shot’s manila envelope. Threw the Con Ed and the rent bill in the garbage can.

  I pulled up the ladder, sat on the second rung.

  Across the courtyard, the E.T.-phone-home guy was phoning home again. Newspapers spread around him on the floor, the phone receiver cradled in his neck, his other hand pumping on his cock.

  I rolled another cigarette, lit it, and opened the envelope from True Shot. A photograph fell out of the folded paper.

  True Shot was standing in front of a tipi. He was smiling extra lovely with his arm around an old man, an old Indian man, smiling with his arm around Grandfather Alessandro. In front of them—Alessandro’s old hand and True Shot’s extra-lovely hand—in their hands, the ocelot medicine bundle, Charlie 2Moons’s pipe.

  True Shot’s handwriting was shaky like his eyes had been, and all the sentences sloped down.

  I read True Shot’s letter out loud to my Art Family.

  Dear William of Heaven:

  So much has happened since I arrived here in Fort Hall. So much it would take a novel to tell you all of it. First off, there ain’t no Blackfeet in Blackfoot, Idaho. The Blackfeet are all up in Browning, Montana. Alessandro says we’ll take medicine pipe up there next spring on Mother’s Day. Then there’s Charlie’s pipe, which as you can see is safe here with Alessandro. Alessandro says to tell you to come get it anytime you want. And something else, Will. You were Charlie’s brother, Will. Your father had an affair with Viv. Charlie’s father is your father, Will.

  All my love,

  Peter Morales

  P.S. Doublewide Viv wants me to tell you a story. It’s a Shoshone story and it goes like this: When a woman gives birth, first she births a rabbit. The rabbit runs from the womb, runs here and there, to the river, to the mountain, to the forest. Then when the child is bom, the child must follow the path of the rabbit.

  Wherever the rabbit goes, we have to go too.

  So on your journey, Will, Viv says to watch out for rabbit turds!

  Only silence. My apartment, all of the whole Known Universe, silent. I turned off the light, rolled a cigarette, stood with my Art Family, smoked. Rolled another cigarette, smoked. The mercury-vapor light was dust-storm light from another incarnation and the unrelenting light from Fifth Street Videoland was coming in my windows onto the floor. The cigarette an orange jewel.

  The photos:

  Mother in her red housedress and Bobbie in pedal pushers and white short-sleeve blouse and me in jeans and a striped T-shirt with suspenders, standing in front of the Residency squinting into the sun.

  Father standing in front of his swimming-pool-blue pickup, Levi’s leg up, his cowboy boot on the running board, his Stetson cocked back.

  Father in his clown suit in front of his swimming-pool-blue horse trailer with his German shepherd Heap Big Chief and Ricky the monkey and Sea Bass the mean goose.

  Photos of cowboys steer-wrestling, bulldogging, bronc-riding, bullriding.

  A photo of Father with his buddy Lou Racing in front of the old Tribal Council building.

  A photo of Bobbie standing in front of the sexually haunted barn, wearing the black dress.

  A photo of Mother—the one of her from her magenta album with the gold edges on the pages—where she was lifting up her skirt and dancing in Saskatchewan when she visited her cousins. She was smiling so much her gums showed.

  A photo of Father as a young man. In front of Saint Veronica’s Church in Blackfoot, wearing a suit with pleated pants and shined shoes, white shirt and a tie with the pattern of butterflies and dice.

  His black hair, his smile.

  THAT NIGHT AT Café Cauchemar there was some big to-do with Les Misérables, and we were all in the weeds. I had Section Five, which is right in the middle of the restaurant, right under the Sistine Chapel God. It was about eleven o’clock and Andrew, the new maître d’hôtel seated three people at table 33: a heavyset tall man, an American, with wild graying blond hair in a white turtleneck and double-breasted blue blazer with gold buttons; a dark-haired, dark-eyed small-boned woman who looked Italian; and a thin beautifully skinned silver-haired man, maybe Swedish.

  The big American man ordered a bottle of Chablis Grand Cru and appetizers for the table—escargots and a dozen bluepoint oysters.

  The silver-haired Swedish man was wearing a cornflower-blue suit and a blue silk shirt, the same blue as his eyes. His wife—I guessed—was wearing a sleeveless scoop-neck long black gown. Her voice was deep; she smoked one Marlboro after the other.

  I poured the ’84 Mugo.

  All three of them were laughing laughing as I served the American man his steak frites rare with ketchup and a steak knife, the Italian woman her cassoulet, the Swedish man his steak tartare.

  Dessert was fresh fruit compote for the woman, tarte tartin for the silver-haired man, deep-fried ice cream for the American. Espresso all around, decaf for the American.

  The American guy was talking.

  Paris is so clean and beautiful, he said. And Barcelona, so clean and beautiful And Madrid. But here in New York, garbage strewn across our streets—rats, vermin. We live in fear and filth. Homeless people, beggars are everywhere. You’d think they’d have the courtesy to stay in their own parts of the city.

  The moment that after, you’re diffe
rent.

  My fist hit the table. The water, the wine in the glasses rippled.

  Quiet as only New York can get that fast.

  Abracadabra! My fist was a John Wayne punch, a big bang, a big fucking bang, right into the American guy’s big mouth.

  I don’t remember much about this next part.

  Big crashes, people yelling. The American guy—chair and all—went flying onto the black and white tiles of Café Cauchemar. Someone, some people, pulled me off the American, ripped my shirt. In no time at all, I was through the swinging red doors and in the kitchen.

  I made my way to Chef Som Chai. The chef was sautéeing sole meunière. I kissed Chef Som Chai on the cheek, then the other cheek. The chef looked down at the sauce pan. He didn’t say anything. He just knew. Kung Fu salad guy gave me the high five. I changed my clothes in the locker room. Put my ball cap on, my Levi’s jacket on. Walked out through the dining room, through the front door, the same way I came in.

  So long ago.

  AT PARADISE GARAGE, the beautiful man behind the red velvet rope winked at me when he lifted the rope and let me in. I winked back, walked up the cement incline you could drive a truck up—blue emergency lights on each side of the ramp, blue light back and forth around and around—I turned right, and walked up some more.

  In the crowd, my eyes went right to a woman in a yellow dress. She looked like the cover of a Marvin Gaye album. She was at the bar, dancing with the brass bar pole, pulling against the pole, stretching, pushing her butt out, dancing with herself.

  Just her in her body in a moment in her life, such a brave and lovely act it is to let the body celebrate.

  Then I was not just kind of dancing off to the side by the speaker like usual. Just like that, my skinny arms, my big butt, nipples poking out my T-shirt too much, my big bare frog-belly-white Idaho legs, my wish my dick was bigger, my mother’s nerves—I was walking out alone into the middle of dancing humanity.

  Who cares what a bunch of assholes think. I was invited to this party.

  Dancing. Not locals kicking up closing time. No ranchburger home sweet home.

  In all the world. America’s dark basement. Charcoal. Wolf Swamp. Down here in the jungle. In drag as me. Where the heart is. Where you fuck hope. Where you never touch me. Where you be one and get one.

  Where the hunter is the prey and paradise is out in the garage.

  Horizontal, I am vertical, hula-hula walking like an Egyptian, shoulder bone connected to arm bone, folding in on myself, crossed over, polemical fool, lucid, slow-water circles down the corner drain, dervish, whirling labyrinth, William of Heaven in heaven, another New Yorker gone to hell, broken open, a puddle of blood, cum in the palm of my hand, vasty deep, spilled open, head bone connected to butt bone, round and round, up and down, side to side, back and forth, strong yellow piss, spit. Finally totally too too too out of my fucking mind.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  The people of Dog Shit Park had built a barricade around the park.

  Those who lived in Dog Shit Park were inside; everybody else, the rest of New York, especially the police—the Riders—were outside.

  Anything you could imagine was set in front of the gates and against the old wrought-iron fences: cardboard, car parts, wood scraps—two-by-fours, two-by-sixes, four-by-fours—plastic tarps, canvas, blankets, shopping carts, old couches, armoires, dressing tables, chests of drawers, kitchen tables, chairs, old wood doors, destruction rubble, an old Dodge Dart, pieces of plywood, sheets of corrugated metal, Sheetrock, pressboard, a huge cornice from a building, bicycle frames, tree limbs.

  A barricade seven to ten feet tall all the way around Dog Shit Park. A banner across the front gate facing Avenue A, HOMES FOR THE HOMELESS: FUCK PIGS. FUCK THE RIDERS. FUCK SERGEANT WHITE SUPREMACY.

  The first night there was one hell of a party going on inside the barricade. A big bonfire and people yelling and waving banners and chanting, We want a home! We want a home!

  And there was music—guitars and flutes and saxophones and tambourines and drums—and people singing and dancing. Inside the barricade, Dog Shit Park bacchanalia. Outside, the puritan undertow.

  Divide and conquer.

  When the horse shit hits the fan, you’ll know where to find me.

  Fiona Yet was inside the barricade, dancing and singing, twirling. The flames of the bonfire on her red shower curtain made of her a reflected fire, a dancing twirling dervish of fire.

  Me outside the church.

  All around Dog Shit Park was crawling with cops. Hundreds of cops, maybe a thousand. As many cops outside as homeless people inside.

  The first night of the Dog Shit Park War, Fish Bar got held up. Two guys wearing ski masks walked in, held everyone at gunpoint, took the money from the cash register, took money and valuables from all the customers. Precinct Nine half a block away, but not a cop in sight.

  The next day, Mayor Ed Koch gave the order.

  I was sitting in Life Café, dipping french fries into my coffee, when the Riders came around the comer, four abreast, line after line of big horses galloping galloping—horse sweat, horse hooves on the pavement—from the east on Tenth Street, from the west on Tenth Street, on the sidewalks of Tenth Street, cops on horses, clubs in their hands, clubs raised in the air. Charging ahead of the legions of four, a white stallion. On the white stallion, Sergeant White Supremacy.

  Just then a man crossing the avenue dropped his grocery bag and ran across Tenth Street in front of the horses. Sergeant White Supremacy caught up, leaned into the blow, and hit the man in the back of the head. The man screamed and fell, horse hooves all around him, graceful English elms inside the pool of blood on the pavement.

  From the south on Avenue C, more horses, more cops.

  Riders swinging clubs from the north on Avenue C.

  You could hear the horses’ hot breath in and out, in and out. People running everywhere. At the sidewalk table next to me, a young black woman with long braids, copper bracelets, copper necklace, and long green jeweled earrings catching light, had been sitting, reading a book, drinking her cappuccino. When she saw the Riders, the woman let her book drop. She stood up and raised her fist.

  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.