Free Yonder Stands Your Orphan by Barry Hannah Page B

thought had brought tears to the eyes of many, many old southern frauds, some of whom still
owned
retarded black men as slaves, retainers, hostelries, cooks, deer dressers. The South was so good. Why was this never discussed? Someone should make an objective documentary, but you couldn’t have it now, all this correctness.
    â€œWas it correct when Dee Allison took your cock in her mouth?” Mortimer all of a sudden asked.

    Frank Booth did not hate Dee Allison, but he was a bit afraid for her now. “You aren’t talking hurting her, are you, truly?”
    Mortimer said no, no, probably not. Booth was festering on his nerves. “You old queer. You ain’t no navy man, just a jeweler, you lying son of a bitch.”
    A stiletto knife, which he used for a letter opener though mail was rare for him, was tucked in the sun visor, the handle above his right hand. It was a cultural item like from Sicily. It was the first time Mortimer had taken up any deadly weapon.
    He rammed the stiletto into Frank Booth’s left side. This was the side of the liver, he thought he recalled from a movie. The liver brought quick death. He did not expect it to go in so smoothly. Booth, he thought, was suddenly a cadaver, promptly delivered out of the night. Wet ghoul. Mortimer was up to the hilt in him. He heard the song “Mack the Knife” in his head. European-like, a jazz killing, so here it was. Or leaving him bad-off wounded.
    Booth was effeminate, but he had been an actual lieutenant. He had known contact with heavy metal. He had swum underwater ten feet with a knife in his teeth and a Rottweiler right beside him in a scuba mask with a tank on its back, for two miles. He withdrew the knife from his side and then rammed it right back to its owner, his fingers slipping on the blood of the hilt. His mind was on his own nameless grief, but he was not destroyed. He knew full well where the liver was and he was in it, he thought.
    Man Mortimer’s belt buckle had bumped the point to a side. The stiletto faced down straight through his root and went then into one testicle, searching the underloin with its needle point. He left it there awhile, did Booth, thenjerked it back and returned it to the crease of the velvet sun visor where it lived, now bloody but not all that much.
    Mortimer bawled, then whined. He whimpered. He called to his mother without remembering her first name. Emmie? Lumpkin was his daddy, no use here. He couldn’t see her or hear her.
    The last sting to the groin was the worst pain now, beyond the balm of any mother, any history, any face.
    Booth thought,
I split his cock. I didn’t need the liver, didn’t want it. He’s going insane and I can’t listen. I hated the navy
.
    Then he let himself down from the huge Navigator, joining a saner planet although garish with lights. Orange, mustard, puce. This paramilitary scout stuff with these people. Like they needed another reason to keep one another’s hands on their dick and their women, he thought clearly, but Mortimer’s pain terrified him. Except for the blood in his jacket pocket, Booth was almost strolling away, down the casino esplanade. He called back, “I won’t be seeing you or your woman again. But I’ll have the law and my own gun so far up your ass if you come close to me, you’ll want to forget this.”
    Again Mortimer was convinced this was a dream. Dee, double-tongued. She would laugh now. He cried in a hard sob. Over his middle age, his former life. Smooth, purposeful, prosperous, sane, on the downward slope. Oh Mother, Mother. He needed to put his head above his sunroof and scream. Call somebody.
Edie? Lloyd! Bertha! I got too high. Mother can’t see me now
.
    For God’s sake, what is a man with no dick!?
    You go to the emergency room now, Vicksburg, and all the porky and black-root dye jobs going Assembly of God on you at the glass windows, already waiting on you for the