Read Online Yonder Stands Your Orphan by Barry Hannah - Free Book Online Page A

didn’t ponder, he did not love but found the language of love came fluid to him. He never even had the puppy kind of love. He was jaded before he had a crush. He was a pimp before he comprehended what a pimp was. It was just that women liked him, especially the marginal breeds. They shed all natural jealousies, even pride, for him. They broke open on him. They went with other men and gave him half the money.
    His name was Man Mortimer. Death by sea or by mother. He was horrified of progeny. Nothing was busy or brooding enough to follow him.
    Seven years ago the girl from his early days, a store owner’s daughter, had come to him with a child six years old she claimed was his. She was on hard times, drugged, worn, emaciated. She thought the son would bring him back to her. He denied fatherhood.
    They were at an old gravel bed outside St. Louis. She walked back to his car where the boy was waiting and shot him in the forehead. Mortimer was not aware she had a pistol. Now she sat in the car beside the body of the child. The night silent, hot, the moon white somewhere. Mortimer’s expensive loafers on the gravel. He always needed expensive shoes and boots. He stood looking in the foggy windshield at the woman behind it until she raised the pistol and shot herself in the temple. He looked away, and for a long while he watched lightning reveal shivering bushes in the field next to him. He couldn’t be sure this was not a dream. Even while he dragged them both to the trunk.
    A thin highway dog lurked at the edge of the trunk light. Skeletal but with full paps. She smelled the blood, thrust out her muzzle, wanting to eat but fearing him. He took pity on her and intended to use the pistol on her. Withthis thought he assured himself he was a right man. But she ran off into a dark field of sedge.
    He drove southward with his burdens, hating that his shoes were scuffed from labor. These sordid details, these fluids. He could never forgive her. She had shown him hell.
    â€œShe just wanted me to watch, is all,” he said aloud. “It was already done when she got here. She wanted to ruin me. Well.”
    He felt no pain outside this nasty theater of his mind. But he felt a surge of power. A tougher man seemed to drive the car now. He gathered himself into this new form. He took some pride in the force of his withdrawal from women. He had driven some into lesbianism. Or supposed he had. He had barely laid a hand on any of them. He believed in the mind.
    Acquaintances in Vicksburg would help him bury his old history.
    He wondered vaguely, and not for the first time, whether his departure had destroyed his mother.
A person like me don’t come along every day
, he thought.
You just got to watch yourself. Don’t ever mistake that I’m like you
.
    It was only when his looks started to go, at age forty-three, that he became hungry for all the life he had missed. Something had made him grow up too fast, and he cursed that thing now. He fled from one of his three houses to the other, the next house always a getaway from the last. The people he knew were made curious by his changes this last year. With them he seemed to be doing some imitation of warmth, friendship, trust. Childish, stilted gestures, as if studied from some old book on stagecraft. They had no idea what he had on his mind.

    When the man who owed him the boat at last came up, Mortimer told him to stay in it. He wanted driving somewhere.
    â€œYou see that pontoon barge way out there? I want you to follow it, see where they get off it.”
    â€œThose children? Them is orphans from the new camp.”
    â€œOrphans? Well. Let’s see where they land. I might could help them.”
    The man was surprised. Then he looked at Mortimer’s feet. “Careful. Them ain’t no boat shoes. They like for selling cars in.”
    â€œJust drive it. If you can stay quiet, you might be earning this boat back.”
    The man was very warm to this