In the City of Shy Hunters

by Tom Spanbauer

  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. W
hat 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.

  The Hell’s Angels are laughing and clapping, hollering to me.

  * * *

  ON THE CORNER of First Avenue, I am back up Hippodrome Standing, People on their stoops, on the sidewalk, are shouting at me and waving, A cabbie puts on his brakes, skids to a stop. The white stallion does not shy away. He gallops faster and faster. My arms out horizontal, I am vertical. I go into a Single Vault; my red Converse tennis shoes splash onto pavement; then I flip myself back up and over into a Double Vault.

  At Second Avenue, the light is flashing yellow, but the white stallion knows, and we go through. Horns honking everywhere.

  Just as the light turns red, all at once—abracadabra!—the white stallion leaps totally over a Checker cab, and I reach up and count coup on the traffic light.

  Complete acceptance of whatever the Divine sets in your path.

  God is anything that stands in your way.

  The lucid compulsion to move him the fuck out of the way.

  Fatum.

  Whether you fight it, cop an attitude, fuck it, or fall in love with it, you’re still going to die.

  We’re all just in our bodies for a moment in our life. Such a brave and lovely act it is to let the body celebrate.

  Past the men’s shelter, under the garage on the corner of Third and Bowery, hundreds of black men, brown men, some white men, the trickled-down welfare queens in designer jeans, Ronald Reagan’s faceless mass waiting for handouts, are standing, waiting for a chance, for a break, for a hand up, for a fix, a cigarette, just to be seen, for redemption. Praying for truth.

  When you throw out darkness, I yell, And there is no place for darkness, I yell, The light is unrelenting and darkness is everywhere.

  You’ve got to deliver yourself from your concept of God, I yell.

  Those who would hunt a man, I yell, Need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters.

  But it’s not the truth.

  I ride past the men’s shelter, only silence; on all of East Third Street, only silence.

  The men stare up at me: Teddy Roosevelt, white man on a white horse.

  One guy—in a red T-shirt with white letters that say YOU CAN’T IMAGINE HOW BIG IT IS—steps out into the street and raises his hand, Sahara Desert palm up and out. Flying by, I slap the open palm of my hand to his hand, and he yells, Go, girl!

  On Bowery, the white stallion knows, and we lean right, almost all the way over, and the white stallion heads upstream.

  I do a Reverse Crupper to Backward Stand in the Saddle.

  The white stallion turns east on East Fifth Street and this street is odd. Against the traffic.

  You get to know the cracks in the sidewalk, the star on the manhole cover, the smell of certain doorjambs, the fountains, the curbs, the WALK/DON’T WALKS, the stoops and garbage cans; you get to know the puddles, the pothole where the city repaired the sewer line.

  Past the old service station and the Senior Citizen Housing built in ’86, past Mother’s Sound Stages and the slobbering Doberman in the window. Past 205 East Fifth Street. On the street where I lived.

  Horse hooves clack-clack, I’m riding the Stallion of Love, past the garbage cans, past my windows, my Art Family dressed to the nines, hanging out my windows, all waving cocktails and cigarettes, elbow elbow, wrist wrist wrist. Past Fifth Street Videoland, past the stoop, past the rectangle of earth and the beautiful blooming cherry tree. In all the world, bursts of fuchsia blooms in August.

  Past Fish Bar, past our table in the corner by the window. The light on First Avenue is green, and we charge right through the Village View housing project with its windy sidewalks all cul-de-sacs like in suburbs, right on Avenue A, gallop past the Pyramid.

  Two blue shiny beetle cops on brown horses right behind me.

  Weapons drawn. In hot pursuit. Speeding light, darkness, speeding light. Sirens. Flashing cop-car lights.

  At the corner of Fourth Street and Avenue A, there are people everywhere, sitting and lying on the sidewalks holding their bruised and bloody heads, their broken arms, their busted ribs. Cop cars’ red and white flash. On the telephone wires sits a line of black crows. People are handcuffed together around the lampposts. You can smell the blood, the guns, the testosterone. A man on his belly is lying in a bloody puddle, his hands handcuffed behind his back.

  Some cop is yelling at me over a loudspeaker.

  Hippodrome Stand, I’m doing the Twist, the Jerk, the Mashed Potatoes, the Boogaloo, the Surf, the Swim, the Dance of the Wounded Male.

  The power of the dance is to dance with God. The only way out is in.

  I kick my red Converse tennis shoes off, pull down my cutoff jeans.

  In all the world, this distracted globe, I’m buck naked, cock and balls bouncing up and down, original, pure, red-blooded American boy, high enough to think I am New York, out there in the spotlight.

  Nowhere. Now here.

  Something from nothing.

  How this started—I don’t know how all this started.

  The stallion’s mane is parted in the middle. I’m holding on to the saddle horn for dear life.

  I’ve got a maiden to save.

  Arms out like a bird, I’m flying past the corner of Sixth Street and Avenue B.

  The whole world is applauding. A fucking standing ovation.

  But it’s not the truth.

  The Pentagon is not applauding, the Vatican is not applauding, Cardinal O’Henry is not applauding, Ronald Reagan and Nancy are not applauding.

  The cops are not applauding. In their steel-blue eyes, in their tiny Catholic hearts, I am the enemy.

  It is this way. They are correct.

  At the corner of Seventh Street and Avenue B, it’s Dog Shit Park. It’s police cars and ambulances. It’s paddywagons and SWAT teams. It’s flashing lights and sirens. It’s an arsenal.r />
  Every weapon, every gun, pointed at me.

  All daring and courage, all iron resistance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

  Then the moment.

  All at once, just like that, before I know it, the Stallion of Love is over the barricaded wrought-iron fence of Dog Shit Park. One solid silent leap.

  Frozen moments in time.

  Only silence, in all of New York City, all of Dog Shot Park, in all of the known universe, only silence, only mystery.

  See you in Life Café! I yell.

  The open palm of my hand is against the beaded blue horizontal and the beaded red vertical of the buckskin bag. I am holding on for dear life.

  The road is red. I am headed south.

  I am why birds like to fly so much.

  Gerónimo!

  ONLY THE WIND in the English elms: sigh and sway and scratch. The sky going blue. The soft warm wind of sunrise.

  The space in between is the Dance of the Wounded Male.

  In all the world, as far as I can see, all of Manhattan, all of the known universe, even the cops step out with their left leg, and the leg collapses under them and every person falls a bit, catches themselves, then leans their bodies forward, swaying out their hips, swaying and straightening their backs with the power of their shoulders, then step with their right legs, raising themselves to their full height, swaying their hips out. They drag their left leg next to their right.

  We are all wounded. Sexually haunted.

  So silent. The morning light is pink and orange in the blue. The wind is all around us, lips at our ears. The elm leaves shake back and forth, back and forth, catching light.

  The Stallion of Love jumps through the gold loop.

  In all the world, as far as I can see, all of the known universe, even the cops, waving their arms like swans or serpents.

  Silence, only silence. This is the point. Right here, at sunrise, the still point in the turning world, when even the cops are dancing the Dance of the Wounded Male.

  Then it happens, just the way Fiona said.

  All at once, just like that—abracadabra!—as far as I can see, the whole world, every person in the whole world, even the cops, starts to sing how their hearts are inside them, the way my heart is inside me too, on fire the way the morning is, longing for things that probably won’t come, and sad because we know they probably won’t.