The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

by Johnson, Denis

“Hi,” English said.

  “How’s progress?”

  English raised his glass and shrugged.

  “A little better every minute, huh?”

  “You got it,” English said.

  “No, but—do you get my drift? Hey, brother, one thing: I remember I said a couple of things about our mutual friend. Ell Ess would be the initials. May she remain nameless.”

  “Nameless, okay.”

  “I hear you’re still going with her.”

  “Going with who?” the transvestite said.

  “Somebody nameless,” said English.

  “So I’m sorry if I stepped on anybody’s toes,” Phil said.

  “Aah,” English said. “It’s nothing, man.”

  “I hardly even know her, except we grew up in the same town, for whatever that’s worth, okay? She’s a good person,” Phil said. “She’s a good person.” He flexed his hands. “She’s a good person, but she’s mentally ill. I don’t know.”

  Nguyen Minh wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand and entered the conversation. “I’m very quite drunk now,” he said to Phil.

  “We were there, man,” Phil reminded him. “You in the air and me on the ground. We kicked their asses.”

  Nguyen lifted his glass to the cross-dresser. “I am a gook,” he said.

  English toasted him with a double Scotch rocks, the first swallow of which changed his smile because it went down like poison. “What’s your name?” he asked the blond-wigged man.

  “Tanny,” the transvestite said, and started singing “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” in a taught, professional baritone.

  “MA-AH-AY WARE! HOUSE! EYES,” Phil screeched, joining in, “MY ARAY-BEEYUN DRUMS. SHOULD I LEAVE THEM BY YO GATE?”

  He broke off, letting Tanny sing, “Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?” all by herself.

  Sitting here with the tavern glow shining softly on the blond bar, the light touching the self-described gook’s somewhat greasy cheeks in a way he could never touch back, filling the glasses with something nobody could drink, English felt his heart tearing on loneliness like a diamond. “I want to apologize to you both,” he said, “for dodging the draft.” He drank down his drink. “I could have gone in. My asthma wasn’t that bad.”

  Phil only stared at him. Nguyen smiled as if aping a photo of a smiling man.

  “Okay,” English said, “there.”

  “Anything else?” Phil asked.

  “Yes,” English said. “I may need a gun.”

  “They’re everywhere, everywhere, everywhere,” Phil assured him.

  “Ah. The violence,” Nguyen said, shaking his head.

  “It’s not that,” English said.

  “Yes, it is,” Nguyen said.

  Phil raised his glass. “To the ghost of John Lennon, dead these several months.”

  Something lurking in English’s mind now stepped into the light, the shadow became a shade—not by any means the ghost of a dead rock idol, but a question to haunt him: the mystical message Phil had been describing, the greetings from John Lennon, what if a person heeded all such inner rebop, would he be damned or saved? How quickly would a person’s life progress along its lines if he followed every impulse as if it started from God? How much more quickly would he be healed? Or how much faster destroyed? Saints had done that. Also mass killers, and wreakers of a more secret mayhem, witches and cultists and vampires and so on. I’m your God, come here. But you’re standing in a storm, God. Yes, and I’m calling you to come here. But how do I know you’re God? Because I’m all that’s in front of you, and all that was behind you is gone: choose the storm or you get nothing.

  English saw himself standing up in a movie theater with a grenade, crying, God told me to do this. Simone Weil wasting down into death on orders from her conscience in God, extinguishing, for herself, the whole world. Deranged men climbing onto tall structures to snipe down people they’ve never met, at God’s behest. Headlines: MOM ROASTS BABY TO DRIVE OUT DEMONS.

  Right and left of him he heard the drinks swirling in their glasses. The bartender’s rag was dropped just this way on the metal sink with its corner lapping into the water. That was all he knew.

  If he gave up all the hearsay, the whispers of the past and the hints from the future, he didn’t know anything beyond the cross-dresser clearing her throat deeply and Nguyen Minh squeaking his hand in the little pool of sweat under his cold drink. But he didn’t know for certain even that it was cold. “I’m going to put my finger in your drink,” he said. Nguyen watched him do it. “It’s cold,” he told Nguyen. “That’s good.”

  “It’s good,” Minh said, “but you shouldn’t put your finger.”

  Phil belched loudly without any consciousness in his red eyes.

  English said to Tanny without shame, “I find myself thinking of you as a woman.”

  “I’m more man than you’ll ever be,” Tanny said. “And more woman than you’ll ever have.”

  By the time the bar closed it was raining outside and it was cold. Phil and Nguyen Minh and English climbed the hill to forage for breakfast in English’s kitchen. “What’s this?” Phil demanded of English, who set three bowls on the chipped Formica table. “What are you, a vegetarian?”

  “It’s cereal. I don’t have enough chairs. Eat standing up,” English said. He poured bran flakes into his bowl. “How about handing me the milk,” he said to Minh, pointing at the refrigerator.

  “Hey, we’re not cows, man. We eat meat,” Phil said.

  “Maybe Nguyen eats cereal,” English said.

  “He’s not a cow. He’s a man.”

  “And Nguyen. What does Nguyen say?”

  “I like eggs and bacon,” Nguyen said shyly. “It’s good.”

  “We fought a war, motherfucker. We eat meat,” Phil repeated.

  “It’s very cold inside your house,” Nguyen pointed out.

  They had to drive in English’s car to Orleans, twenty-six miles away, to find an all-night restaurant that would serve them warriors’ fare, which English, the draft dodger, also liked better than cold cereal. But by the time the three of them were facing one another around a table, spilling their water, dropping their spoons on the floor, losing their napkins in the process of retrieving their spoons, English felt lousy and wished he’d stayed home and gone to bed. He seemed to be drifting in and out of the universe, meeting with fuzzy dreams and then arriving back at the table to realize he’d already ordered, while Phil was just finishing: “ … and some OJ.”

  “What?”

  “Uh,” he said, “orange juice?”

  The waitress nodded.

  English rapped his fork on the table for Phil’s attention. “Aren’t you married? Don’t you have a family? Where’s your home?”

  “Everybody’s happier if I don’t show up there all the time,” Phil said.

  Evidently they’d all three ordered the breakfast special. Nguyen didn’t say a word the whole time they ate. There were pancakes, sausages, and two eggs each. For a while English didn’t talk either, and didn’t even eat, but Phil held forth incoherently—and still, inside of three minutes, his fork was ringing against the china and then he was shoving his empty plate aside. “Do you want my breakfast?” English asked Phil.

  “I just ate. I’m telling you something. Do me the favor of listening. Hey, hey, hey.” He slapped the tabletop, jutting his chin.

  “I’m listening,” English said. “Fuck it, we’re in session.”

  “Well, man, you were like hanging out with her for weeks, man, right?”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “And she was trying to get a taste of regular life and you weren’t giving it to her. I mean, I don’t know all the details, she didn’t say too much.”

  “Say too much? Who?”

  “I mean, she wasn’t putting you down behind your back. Definitely not, okay?”

  “Who? Definitely who?”

  “I’m trying to explain this to you. Okay?”

  “Explain abo
ut who?”

  “Her. And me. The dyke, your girlfriend, or whatever.”

  “Her and you? Do you even know her?”

  “Since the first grade. I mean, I don’t know her. This wasn’t a hugely personal thing. It was one night, about an hour. Haven’t spoken to her since.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “And I really didn’t know you at all, brother. I mean, I knew you a lot less than I’ve gotten to know you the last few hours.”

  Somehow this disclaimer put everything into place. English’s hands suddenly felt numb. “What happened?” he said.

  Phil looked at Nguyen as if he expected his comrade to take over the telling. Nguyen looked back and forth between his companions. Then he sipped his coffee.

  Phil said, “What happened was, I met her coming out of her aerobics class, and she started talking to me, and she just picked me up. We went over to her hot tub, and then … that was that. We did the deed. Then I left.”

  English stared at him. He tried a little of his orange juice.

  “That dance center is just two blocks from her house. You know, the Martial Arts Center. It was just—a short walk,” Phil said. He shrugged with embarrassment.

  English felt as if this orange juice were something he’d just vomited up. There was no chance of drinking this stuff. A short walk? “I know it is,” he said. He shoved his OJ over in front of Phil. “Here, goddamnit.”

  “Listen. Don’t get me wrong.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, hey. Yeah.”

  “Don’t get you wrong what?”

  “What.”

  “Don’t get you wrong what? You didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, I mean, I fucked her.”

  “We know that. We know that. We know that.”

  “That’s been well established, you’re saying.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, so you’re saying—what?”

  “I’m saying I’m pissed off. I’m completely pissed off, man.”

  Phil winced and made half a gesture with his hand.

  “What.”

  “Maybe—I don’t know—” Phil said.

  “Fuck.”

  “Fuck is right. Fuck it.”

  “Fucking-A.”

  “Okay. Fuck you, then.”

  “Fuck you, you mean.”

  Phil got up and left the diner. What English felt good about was that he knew Phil would go on in his anger, would hitchhike back to Provincetown in the chilly rain without a jacket, suffering every step of the way in his pride. And English, in his pride, would pass him by on the road and for that would suffer guilt. English paid for everybody’s meal, including Nguyen’s.

  He could see that Leanna had been up all night, too, cleaning rooms and taking care of paperwork. She was sitting at her desk in the living room, fiddling with a pencil and drinking from a bottle of beer. He just opened the door without knocking. She didn’t mind.

  “Hi, baby,” she said, and turned toward him.

  The pain he was feeling was sexy. She really was a beautiful woman.

  Now wasn’t yet the time. He needed to touch her first. He wanted her to feel the anger inhabiting his skin.

  She kissed him, clutching him around the neck. The bottle in her hand rubbed against his ear. He liked the taste of beer on her tongue.

  “Make love to me,” she said.

  And so he held her in his arms. She took hold of his shirt at the back, pulling on it, and he let his arms fall from her while she removed his shirt for him and unbuttoned his jeans but did not touch inside his fly. They lay down and floated on her water bed. He kissed her seriously and deeply. He kissed her breasts and then her stomach and thighs all over, and then between her legs: saliva on the crotch of her sleazy little panties. Leanna started breathing rapidly. He removed her panties and kissed her vagina for a long time. She spread her legs wide apart, legs thin and unshaved and somewhat muscular and lovely, as he put his tongue far inside her, and she liked it a lot. But what good was any of this? An ancient discouragement welled up in his chest, the feeling of a loveless moment. She had lots of hair on her legs. He felt his isolation, his inability to connect—it was stronger, essential, cosmic. Right. It was now. “I’ll tell you what I feel like, kissing you,” he said to her. “I feel like somebody’s writing swear words on my balls.”

  Yes, now was the time. He sat up and lit a cigarette, wiping his mouth first with the pillowcase. “What you need is a goddamn operation,” he said. “What you need is to get your head on first so you can learn to fuck.”

  Leanna sat up, too. She looked at him, opened her mouth, couldn’t speak. She regained herself quickly, her scattered forces recollecting in her eyes. Then she didn’t have to speak.

  “You think I’m a goddamn lunatic?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “What about you? What about your attitude, what about being a lesbo one day and a regular person another day, and—shit,” he said, running out of words. “It’s all a bunch of shit. —Wait a minute,” he said as she started to say something, “wait a minute. What about it, the way you treat people you supposedly love?”

  She was quiet now. He felt her trying to calm him by her silence.

  He went ahead more slowly. “And what about Phil?”

  “Phil,” she said.

  “Yeah. Scuzzy local fucker? Drives a cab? Kind of spent the night with you?”

  “Phil?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about him?”

  “Excuse me. Isn’t that the question I just asked?”

  “Well, I met him at the Martial Arts Center. Outside, coming from aerobics.”

  “It doesn’t take all night to meet somebody. Meeting is like a short thing, right?”

  “Lenny—”

  “So it wasn’t meet. It was more like you spent the night, huh? Got laid? Or eaten out, or whatever the fuck, if you tried to make him into a dyke. Fuck you. Dyke cunt.”

  In a gesture he found both graceless and heartbreaking, she took a long pull off her beer and exhaled with a gasp. “I feel all right about it.”

  “Hey, shit, I don’t give a fuck, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Okay, then. I’m not going to pretend I feel guilty.”

  She got up off the water bed. He watched it quiver and grow calm, thinking, We did, we hated each other in another life.

  “Who do you think was following Marla all last winter?”

  Leanna was putting a leg into her panties and didn’t answer.

  “Marla Baker, your little bisexual honey. Do you know that Ray Sands was a detective?”

  “Ray Sands?” she said.

  “And do you realize I was his assistant?” He leaned right down in her face. “Who do you think was listening while you guys cried in her bedroom all night? Guess who.” The anger tasted good in his throat. “I’m the eavesdropper. It was me.”

  Leanna surprised him by shoving him backward, quite hard. He had to put his hand behind him to keep from hitting the wall. He was embarrassed.

  “You’re not eavesdropping anymore. You’re right in the middle. Burglar,” she said, and started to cry. She moved, practically lunged, to her desk. “Burglar, burglar!”

  She pulled an enormous revolver from the drawer and pointed it at him, using both her hands to lift it.

  “Oh,” he said. “Huh.”

  “Goddamn right,” she said.

  “Are you,” he said, and stopped. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “It’s my old Magnum .44,” she told him. “Eddie lent it back to me.”

  When he stayed speechless, she said, “Eddie, the cop. You met him.”

  “Eddie,” he said, “the cop. Did you fuck Eddie, too?”

  “What?” She shook the gun in his face with such vigor his mouth dried instantly. “Did I what? Did I fuck him?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m dead, right?”

  “You’re an infant, you’re a psychotic baby.” />
  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Your libido is like a tiny child’s.”

  She put the gun back down on the desk.

  English shuddered down the length of him, like a wet dog. “I oughta pick that up and shoot your face off.”

  “It isn’t loaded,” she said.

  “So what? You could’ve killed me with it anyway. I could die of fright.”

  “Get out of here,” she said.

  “No.”

  She lifted the receiver off the phone and smiled at him in an almost truly friendly way. “I’m gonna have you locked up, Lenny,” she said. She dialed once. “The police, please,” she told the operator. “It’s urgent, no kidding.” She waited with the receiver at her ear.

  “So,” she said to him, “you were the one. The spy.”

  He made for the door. “I just wanted to find out what you’d say about my theories. Then I go with the opposite, because you’re a liar.”

  Suddenly she looked hurt. Or was it pity in her eyes? “Get out of here,” she said.

  He slammed the door behind him and stood at the top of her stairs, putting on his shirt. “I know what you did,” he shouted in the empty stairwell. “I know what they did. And I know what I’m doing.”

  In ten minutes he stood in front of the bank, having withdrawn all his money, less than eighty dollars. A slow-eyed dyke with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth drove past. A cloud followed her, and rain fell down all over the street. The raindrops were big this year.

  English headed north, driving recklessly. The Cape highway was crowded with cars, most of them coming toward him. The boards had been pried off the roadside drive-thrus, and the crowds loitered around them eating frozen custard in the rain. English felt sorry for them, their small lives made cheap, their cheap lives made sad, by the failures of the weather.

  Well north of Boston he stopped at Jerry’s Seafood Diner to get something to eat. It was just a little joint, next to another one called the Alaska Bar, in the emptiness between two towns on Route 1. Maybe he was in New Hampshire by now, he didn’t know.

  He was parked and standing outside the car before he realized the neon sign above Jerry’s was cold. Their dinner hour, according to the notice by the door, began in forty-five minutes or so.