Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears? by Robert Coover Read Free Book Online

hadn’t seemed to notice we’d come in, he just kept thumping away: white-cheeked, very hairy, and professional. His lips moved faintly as though he were timing himself.
    â€œVos… you sh—vos tut zich—!?” Harry choked, his voice cracking with embarrassment and rage, but too stunned for the moment to leap on Gus and drag him off. I braced myself for the worst, glanced around for things that might break.
    â€œDon’t do anything, Harry!” Golda pleaded throatily, wrapping her big soft thighs all the tighter around Gus’s bucking arse. Her eyes reminded me of some of my rejected sketches for Gorky’s eyes: desperate, aggrieved, soulful, but reflecting something more like irrational panic than wisdom. Over their heads was a quote I’d pinned up from Gorky’s Childhood: “Our life is amazing not only for the vigorous scum of bestiality with which it is overgrown, but also for the bright and wholesome creative forces gleaming beneath.” “I’m in love!” she cried.
    Harry’s mouth opened and shut three or four times, gasping for air like a beached fish. Harry in his poems celebrated free love and he never interfered with his sister’s affairs, but he was clearly unprepared for this. He seemed to be trying to say something like “Get off!” or “Give up!,” but before he could get it out, Gus suddenly arched his back, slammed powerfully into Golda, and unleashed an orgasm that made her yelp and cross her eyes.
    â€œHey! Hey—shit shtik!” Harry croaked, finding his wind at last, grabbing Gus roughly by the shoulder. “I’m telling you—!”
    Gus turned slowly, imperturbably, to gaze up at Harry from Golda’s flushed and ample bosom where he’d fallen, and after a moment a flicker of recognition crossed his bearded face. He lifted himself with brisk expertise out of Golda, stood with a jerky little hop, pulled on his shorts and trousers, tucked in his shirt, buckled his belt, cleared his throat and, standing there more or less at attention, sang “The Internationale” straight through, not missing a word: “Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! Arise, ye wretched of the earth…!”
    We all dropped back in amazement, foolish grins twitching at the corners of our mouths (O.B. was laughing openly, his white teeth gleaming against his black face, and his girl was giggling helplessly, her face ducked against O.B.’s chest; later, I accomplished a wire-and-plaster study for a sculpture of the two of them like that, calling it, and meaning no irony at all, “After Guadalajara”), all except Harry and Golda—Golda lay tearful and naked on my bed like a pinned moth, breaking out all over her body in a pink mottled rash (“How many on our flesh have fattened…?” Gus was singing), while Harry stood rooted to the floor and white with shock. He didn’t even move when Gus finished his recital ( “The Internationale shall be the human race!”) , raised two clenched fists in a V, smiled as though accepting applause, and strode out. We had to shake poor Harry and smack his cheeks before he snapped out of it. Golda had by then roused herself, grabbed up her clothes and, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling, fled the room, possibly to chase after Gus, maybe just to escape her brother’s wrath. Harry wasn’t angry, though. He just shook his head stupidly like an old man and muttered: “That f’kucken Karl Marx! That f’kucken Karl Marx…”

Just how Gus managed that seduction, I eventually witnessed for myself and at Golda’s request. Poor Golda. Ordinarily buoyant, chatterboxy, rather plain and unmade-up and simple as water, a happy, open woman with a good heart and a fair amount of worldly wisdom, she suddenly became estranged and melancholic, more beautiful in a soft and vulnerable way, but more ludicrous too, puppy-eyed and dolled up