Cavedweller

by Dorothy Allison

  Cissy was watching Clint closely. He seemed to draw some strength from the memory of his wretchedness. He was breathing effortlessly now, and his color was almost normal.

  “Thought I’d have to kill myself. Decided that I would come out of that tub and shoot myself in the head. Put it through the mouth and out the top. Do it right. Use Daddy’s rifle just to make a point. I was getting ready. I pulled the plug and let the water out. I wiped my face, and I was ready sure as shit. But all of a sudden it was like the air in the room changed. I saw what killing myself would come to. I saw how it would be. There I was, sitting naked on cold porcelain with my knees pulled up to my chest, my skin all wrinkled and my belly empty.” He laughed and shook his head.

  “Lord damn, I saw how it would be. I saw how I would have to kill Amanda and Dede, and Mama of course. I couldn’t leave them to deal with it all alone. And somebody might come by, and I’d have to kill them too. And then, I’d have to burn down the house. Hell, might as well burn down Cayro while I was at it.” He stopped and looked down at his hands.

  “Funny how you get one moment like that when you see it all clear. Crazy, maybe, murderous and black, but it all makes sense in your head in a way it never did before. You see how everything connects, what is meant to be. I saw what killing myself would come to.” He put his hands together and laced the fingers as if he were going to pray.

  “Maybe it’s just once God gives you the ability to see that clearly. It sure was clear to me, the awfulness of my life, the grief slate I’d made. Maybe God waits until you’re so far gone you can survive seeing it and then he hits you with it. It hit me like a load of pure evil. Delia was the least of it. My daddy, my brothers, my girls, everyone in my life always looking at me scared or angry. There wasn’t a look of love in my life, and I’d made it that way. I’d made my life hateful.” He pulled his hands apart, his eyes bright and fixed on Cissy’s face.

  “I saw it clear. I saw that I could die and wouldn’t nobody mourn me. People would be relieved, people who once had loved me. People would just shake me off and go on.” His pupils widened. Clint looked as if he were pouring himself out through his eyes.

  “Maybe God touched me,” he whispered. “Maybe Jesus put his hand on my heart. Maybe the bull of somebody else’s heaven looked my way. I hadn’t never believed in nothing, and I an’t sure what I believe now. Except that sometimes, just for a minute, I get a feel of it all over again. I was crazy. Then I was crazier. Then I came around sort of sane, sitting in an empty bathtub, wanting it not to be the way it was.”

  He was wheezing now, fighting off another fit of coughing. “Anybody asks you, you tell them that’s how people change. Suddenly or not at all. Stupid, crazy, or just desperate not to be who they have been. Of course, then they got to live it, be changed in their day-by-day lives, and that’s hell all over again.”

  His right hand came up, and the bony, raw-looking fingers wiped at his mouth. “Day by day, changing my life has been about as terrible as anything you can imagine. And like I said, there are days when I don’t do it so well.”

  Clint closed his eyes. Tears slipped out from under the lids, and when he spoke again, his voice was so low that Cissy could barely hear him.

  “Days I am just as terrible as I ever was. Days it is just as well I am dying, ’cause for sure God wouldn’t want me to live to do what I would do.”

  “But you were touched,” Cissy said, and knew she was really speaking for herself.

  Without opening his eyes, Clint smiled. “Yeah.” The emaciated chin nodded once. Then the face was still, and Cissy thought he was asleep. She backed toward the door.

  “Sometimes it seems like something touches me and I an’t so scared or angry. Just for a minute, but it’s... it’s something. Bull or bullshit, it’s something.” Clint’s hands slapped weakly at the mattress, his eyes still tightly shut and streaming tears. “It’s something.”

  “Yes,” Cissy whispered, and opened the door as Clint’s voice caught her again, weak but insistent.

  “You won’t forget me?”

  “God, no,” Cissy said.

  “God, no.”

  Clint heard them, his woman and his girls. They were talking and arguing and moving around. For an instant he was angry, but morphine made anger tricky. He couldn’t tell which was making him dizzy and confused. Things shifted on him, took on other aspects—Dede’s face the exact replica of Delia’s, Amanda speaking like his mama, Cissy looking back at him like his own mirror. Whatever he had been, he was not that anymore. A man could change. A man could change. He breathed hard. Air was like whiskey. Sweat was like blood. God would take him up, purify his bones, and feed him to the bulls. “God take me up,” Clint whispered, and remembered how it was.

  He had not known Delia before high school. They were thrown together by default, each too shy and stubborn to bother charming the other students at Cayro High.

  Before Delia, Clint had dated without any real conviction. Something always seemed to come between him and the girls he asked out. He was good-looking enough, but he was shy and awkward, and he had a slight limp from the shattered knee joint that would keep him out of competitive sports. That the knee would also keep him out of the draft did not seem at the time the advantage it turned out to be when the Vietnam War became such a fearful presence in the minds of the boys who could play ball. At Cayro High, as in so much of rural Georgia, sports was everything. Even boys with money in their pockets and cars to drive around jockeyed for the real prize, a place on the team. Clint could never win that.

  Clint smiled easily and that got him a ways, but he could not follow up the smile.

  “That boy’s nice, but it’s like swimming in mayonnaise to get him to talk.”

  Girls would look at Clint expectantly. He would look back, then drop his head and smile at the floor. What was he supposed to do? Talk about his daddy, that man who never spoke himself? Talk about his mama, that woman who woke up with a prayer on her tongue and rarely said more: breakfast, dinner, mail’s here. Nothing but phrases and grunts at the Windsor place. Mumbled phrases, whispered pleas, sudden hisses of indrawn breath.

  “Sir, don’t.”

  “Woman, yes.”

  Clint would set his teeth while dry atonal hymns blew through his head and scratched at his pride. Better not to speak. Better to smile and look away. Better not to see what he could not understand, his daddy’s gray anger and his mama’s thin-lipped endurance.

  It was Delia’s singing that caught Clint’s attention that afternoon behind the gym. A light, cold drizzle was coming down, and he had decided to take the later bus home. He could tell his daddy he’d slipped in the rain and missed the first one, have a little time to himself for a change. It was a rare moment of freedom from the farm and his daddy’s insistent demands. Clint sneaked off to smoke and watch the football players running their laps. He didn’t want anybody to catch him watching and think him jealous or resentful, so he took care not to be seen sidling along the gym building with his signature limp. But he had barely positioned himself in the shelter of the overhang at the side entrance when Delia came around the corner, that soft reverberation preceding her at a little distance, a melody as tender as a prayer.

  Surprise opened Clint’s mouth. Surprise spoke.

  “Lonesome.”

  Delia stopped, turned her head, looked Clint in the eye. A spark flared in his middle. Instant heat shone on her cheeks. They were like a photograph and its negative, Clint with his dark expressionless face and Delia’s polished red-blond and distant features.

  “I could die.” Embarrassment prompted him. Heat and sweat. “So lonesome I could die. Hank Williams. I recognize the tune.” His voice seemed raw after Delia’s molasses notes.

  “Yeah, I like those old records.” Her drawl was as rich as her song, like burnt-sugar frosting. Like nothing Clint had ever heard. She rocked a little on the balls of her feet, both hands pushed into the pockets of her car coat. “But I always imagine it’s a
woman singing those words, kinda like Joan Baez would sing it—if she would.”

  Clint saw the fabric of the coat bunch and knew Delia had curled her hands into fists. She’s scared, he thought. But Delia’s head came up then and her eyes pierced him, stubbornly unafraid.

  “She should,” he blurted. “Joan Baez. She should. It would be good.”

  Astonishing. He had spoken. The heat eased off a little and he risked another look at Delia’s pockets. Her head was tilted to one side as if she were considering him from some rare and special place inside, but her hands had loosened their hold on her coat. He smiled at her and was rewarded with a smile that seemed as easy and luminous as her song.

  “You got one for me?” She gestured at the damp cigarette in his hand, forgotten but still carefully pinched between thumb and forefinger. Clint looked down at it, then back at her. A girl who smoked, a girl who didn’t care that he knew. His mama and daddy would hate that. He smoked constantly, every moment he could get away from them, and they were always telling him how filthy the habit was, how much it said about his weak and shiftless nature. “Boy, you’re ruining yourself.”

  You’ll ruin yourself, he almost said to Delia; instead he fumbled in his jacket for the pack of Winstons. Delia moved to stand beside him, and he realized she was waiting for a light. His heart sank. He had used his last match for himself, and knew he could never offer the butt he had been smoking. Goddamn, he cursed to himself.

  Magically Delia seemed not to notice his distress. In a careless movement, her pale fingers reached for him and drew his fist up to pull the glowing cherry from his cigarette to hers. Her cheeks hollowed and filled, hollowed and filled out, and then she dropped his hand and drew the welcome smoke in.

  “Goooood,” she breathed gratefully, leaning back against the wall beside him, ignoring the sharp intake of his breath. She blew smoke out in a thin stream up toward the gym roof. “So good. By the end of the day, this is all I want.”

  Clint kept his face turned to the football field, his eyes shielded from her glance. That she had cadged a smoke from him so easily and comfortably created as much of a sexual charge as he had known in his seventeen years. That she had drawn fire from his cigarette made him dizzy with desire. Unseen in the shelter of his jeans, his knees began to tremble, and a new source of heat began to pulse in his groin. All he could think was how magnificent she was, this girl who smoked beside him. Her cigarette flared again, and another stream of smoke peeled up into the sky. Clint raised a shaky hand and took a final drag, drawing nicotine deep into his lungs. The smoke seemed different, electrically charged and sweet. Beside him Delia went on puffing in companionable silence. She sighed once, and he felt the impact as her head knocked gently against the brick building.

  “Look at them run,” she said so softly it was like that murmured song. The team was staggering in the final set of laps, some of the boys stumbling as their exhausted legs came down heavy and flat-footed.

  “Poor sons-a-bitches,” Clint said, the words pulled out of him by her disregard.

  “You got that right.”

  Delia rocked her head again and shifted her shoulders. He could hear the cloth of her coat dragging against the brick. All his senses had sharpened, it seemed, picking up the smell of her smoke distinct from his own, the small crackle as her muscles worked.

  “Like they’re training for the army, God help them. Like they don’t know.” Delia shook her head.

  Clint’s vision came back into focus, and he looked at the boys on the field, seeing for the first time how they were rushing at their fate, a fate he would not share. He realized he had no idea what was coming for him, what he would do with his life. He wasn’t that smart, he knew. His daddy had told him often enough. Not scholarship-smart, no advantages at all. But he understood suddenly that he didn’t want to grow peanuts or to farm. And if he did not work with his daddy, what else was there?

  God help me, he thought, forgetting for the moment the wall at his back and Delia at his side. The bunched pack of boys turned at the near curve of the track, shoulders angling, and then they were running away, hips grinding, feet throwing up clods of damp red earth. Pitiful and brave at the same time, they staggered toward the coach, who was thumping his clipboard against his thigh and glaring at their progress. Clint felt his throat pull tight.

  “Sad,” Delia whispered.

  “Run, you sons-a-bitches!” The coach’s words were a roar, his contempt a palpable wave that lapped at Clint’s heart.

  “Damn!” Clint shook his hand where the dwindling butt had burned him.

  “Yeah.” Delia echoed his curse and tossed her half-smoked cigarette to join the others scattered on the ground. “Makes you wonder at the world, don’t it?”

  She turned to him. She was hugging her coat close to her midriff, the expression in her eyes warmer than a smile. You all right, that look said. We know what we know, don’t we? Clint could not look away. I’m all right, he thought. An’t nothing wrong with me. Delia gave him a nod and walked off, resuming that murmured scrap of song.

  Clint looked back at the runners. Two of them had fallen. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m all right,” he said, and pushed off the wall.

  In his fever-heated sheets, Clint tried to roll to the side. His hip locked up with the old shortened tendons that ran down to his knee. Pain surged through the morphine fog. Delia had talked Dr. Campbell into raising the dosage, giving him respite and dreams cut loose of time. He had dreamed forward and back, every moment he ever had with Delia interspersed with flashes of his life before her and splintered visions of what would follow after him. The world was getting ready to let go of him, to swing him free. It was lifting him high and he could see far, to the girls grown up and hateful, and then back to himself an infant hanging on tight to a breast he could not imagine his mama had ever provided. Delia would go on forever. But he would not, and that was all right. He knew it finally. That was all right.

  “Goddamn,” Clint moaned. His tongue was dry and stiff. Too much trouble to talk anymore. Damn, he said anyway. He said it in his head and felt himself start that journey again, swinging up and up. He heard the car coat drag on the wall and smelled cigarette smoke and rich wet dirt, the girl beside him and the years ahead, her blood on his hands and his own tears sliding down his face. He felt heat flare in his groin for the first time in so long he did not at first know it for what it was.

  “Damn.” He said it out loud and swung high, as high as he had ever gone.

  And let go.

  Chapter 11

  Reverend Hillman officiated at Clint’s funeral. The crowd was small, though not so small as M.T. had promised Rosemary it would be. There were a number of women from Holiness Redeemer who had come with Grandma Windsor, some of the men from Firestone who had once worked with Clint, and at least a dozen patrons of the Bee’s Bonnet who no one had expected to come.

  “Some of them must be here just to make sure he’s dead,” M.T. whispered to Rosemary as they stood under the canopy at the graveside. Rosemary covered her smile with her hand. M.T. had been cheerful and friendly from the moment she had gotten the call telling her that Clint had died, and Rosemary knew it was only partly relief that the man was gone. M.T. was not at all unhappy that Rosemary would be leaving in a couple of days, but neither was Rosemary. She had gotten her fill of the small Georgia town and been packed to leave for weeks. She had sworn to herself she would kick dirt on Clint Windsor’s coffin and was waiting for the crowd to clear so she could do it.

  “When I get back to Los Angeles,” Rosemary whispered to M.T., “I’m going to one of those expensive day spas, get my whole body oiled and massaged and revitalized. You come visit me and I’ll pay your way. You will not believe how good you can feel.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that!” M.T. sounded tempted. She looked sideways at Steph, who was holding Lyle’s hand and trying to look sad with no success at all.

  “You should. Los Angeles is a hell of a town
for women our age, full of handsome young men ready to appreciate us older women of substance.” Rosemary smiled and put her arm around M.T.’s shoulders.

  “Gigolos you mean.”

  “Uh-huh, fine, strong, good-looking young gigolos. Just what the doctor ordered for tired blood and general malaise, and I don’t know about you, but after all these months I am suffering from malaise.” Rosemary squeezed M.T.’s arm and angled her body away from Grandma Windsor’s glare. The old woman had been giving her hateful looks since they left the church.

  “The way you talk!” M.T. pressed her lips together to keep from giggling. Pity Rosemary disliked Cayro. She could learn to like this woman.

  “Just like you,” Rosemary told her. “I talk like you. Why you think Delia likes us both so much? We got a lot in common, Marjolene Thomasina. More than just our friendship with Delia Byrd.” She turned her head and gave Grandma Windsor a big smile. Clint’s mother glared back at her and started walking away from the grave.

  Cissy barely heard what Reverend Hillman said. She was thinking about her daddy. She remembered the time they had all gone to a funeral for some friend of his in a chapel filled with big baskets of flowers tied around with colored ribbons. Delia wore a velvet vest with a starburst sewn on the back in bright orange threads. Randall had walked around the little church with Cissy on his hip, hugging people and trading reminiscences. At one point he had picked her up and put her in a hamper of flowers, yellow daisies and pink and white mums in a mound so high the blossoms almost closed over Cissy’s head.