Fay: A Novel

by Larry Brown

  “I didn’t know em from Adam.”

  And that made him mad. He nodded and she saw a muscle flex in his jaw. He turned his face to the half open window.

  “How’d you know they wouldn’t kill you?”

  “They didn’t look like they would.”

  He turned to look into her eyes.

  “Have you got any idea how dangerous it is for a girl like you to be out on this road at night? Or any road. There’s people that drive around just looking for somebody hitching a ride.”

  She put her hands in her lap and looked out the windshield.

  “I was tired of walkin,” she said. “I didn’t know where I was and I’d done almost got dogbit one time already. I didn’t think they was gonna try to hurt me.”

  She thought back to what she had seen them doing in that room. He kept looking out the window for a while. He took a few more drags off the cigarette and then flipped it out and rolled up the window.

  “You’re headed west, right?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “They said go west and then south. What’s the name of that place where you turn off? Batesville?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s where my office is. I ain’t supposed to be giving rides but I guess I can take you that far if you want to go.”

  “Well,” she said. “If you don’t care.”

  He picked up the radio mike and told them that he was 10-8 again and looked both ways before he turned the car around. She tossed her smoke out and rolled up the window.

  “That air too cool on you?” he said.

  “It’s fine.”

  He waited until the road was clear and then the power in the motor pressed her back in the seat and they were running down the hill in the cool air and the world was softened and diffused and she felt that they were floating on a cushion of air, rushing headlong toward those distant hills and the green line of trees slightly shimmering beneath that awful sun.

  His name was Sam Harris and he told her he was forty-two years old. His home was at Cole’s Point, he said, a lakeside house on the reservoir at Sardis, and he got to telling her about crappie fishing and running trotlines for White River cats and deer hunting in the deep hollows of hardwood timber on the forty acres he owned. There was just him and his wife now, he said, and she liked gardening, and had some clubs she belonged to, but he said he liked to fish a lot and she didn’t.

  At the Sonic in Batesville he pulled in and bought lunch for her, a thick hamburger with melted cheese and pickles, fries, and a Coke in a tall cup, her cheeks stuffed and chewing when he pulled back out into traffic and turned up Highway 51. Out past the high school and into the country land where the cotton was growing and the rusted irrigators crept on their wheels spraying water over the sunburned rows and past deserted silos with their conical roofs punched in, the rotten boards hanging and crumbling down the sides. Fields of tall corn with the tassled tops swaying in the wind and old barns where black cows lay chewing their cuds inside new pipe fences. Climbing back into the hills and turning northeast toward Highway 4 and the fronds of kudzu that had crawled unceasingly to the sides of the road and held out their trembling vines to the air. Back down again to 7 south of Holly Springs, his district, he said, pretty big district, wasn’t it? and then again among the lumbering trucks so docile and slow now with him behind them, their broad polished backs shining until they passed them and left them behind, the car always kept at a swift and steady gait that seemed to sweep everything before them past, as if there were some purpose to their travel, a certain destination, but he said that he was just cruising.

  Once in a while he would flash his lights at an oncoming car after reading numbers in red from a machine mounted on the dash but he didn’t pull anybody over.

  The sun went slowly across the sky until it hung straight overhead and invisible, glaring down on the roadway and always the cars and trucks climbing and passing, trailing one another in a line. He let Fay out to use the bathroom at a barbecue joint just north of Lafayette County and when she got back in the cruiser he handed her an ice-cold bottle of lemonade and a BC Powder and after another ten miles she felt lots better.

  With her stomach full and the cool bottle sitting in her lap and the window cracked to let the smoke out, she started telling him about her life up till now.

  The wind sucked the smoke from the car as farms and houses rolled by and treelines appeared and gradually grew closer and then passed as new ones appeared far down the road. He drove without speaking and she felt by then that he wasn’t going to make her go back home. They were almost back to the place where he had picked her up when she started telling him about the two times her father had crept up on her in the dark, how he’d ripped her clothes and put his hand around her throat and tried to choke her down, and of how she’d fought and kicked and scratched at his eyes until she was able to get away from him almost naked and run into the woods to hide, alone with the night birds and the tree frogs calling and her heart hammering finally slower inside her chest.

  She told him about her little sister, Dorothy, and how she had just stopped talking a long time ago, and about Gary, her brother, who had worked all summer and kept them from starving, and how, yesterday evening, she had told her mother she was leaving and had walked out of the yard.

  It was midafternoon by then. He slowed down and then turned off the highway onto an asphalt road where signs advertised boat rentals and lots for sale, a state park with symbols for camping and boating. He took his time on this road, following the curves and hills where the grass had been neatly mowed and young trees had been planted. He drove for a couple of miles and they came to the near end of the great levee where short treated posts held lengths of chain stretched down both sides. Out across the bright water she could see boats moving across the waves, specks of blue and white and red that were other boats far out on the lake. And there were sharp-winged birds soaring in the air, flocks of them that lifted and turned, and when she rolled her window down she could hear their voices on the wind.

  Sam slowed the car and drove along the levee for a while. He smiled some, looking out at it.

  “Pretty, ain’t it?”

  “It sure is,” she said. “I ain’t never seen that much water before.”

  “It used to be the biggest earthen dam in the world. Then I think they built a bigger one over in Iran or Iraq one. Most of this one was built with mule power. Back in the thirties. You want to get out and look at it?”

  “I’d like to go swimmin in it,” she said. “If I knew how to swim.”

  He grinned and pulled the car over to an observation point and parked it close to the chains and left it running. They got out. He walked around to the front of the car and put his hands in his pockets and leaned against a lamppost that was there, watching her.

  “There’s a beach on the other side,” he said, turning his head toward the lower lake. She looked down there at the groves of trees and the picnic tables, tents and campers under the trees.

  “This is nice,” she said. She was smiling. She stepped over the chain and stood there looking out across the water. It was out there as far as she could see.

  “And you say you live over here?”

  He came over to where she was and stopped beside her, stretched his hand and arm out and pointed to the south side.

  “You can’t see it from here,” he said. “I mean you can’t see the house, hardly. I can see this levee from my back deck. I go out there in the morning to drink my coffee. It’s over there behind that bluff you can see there, where that red dirt is.”

  She nodded, looking, trying to see it. It was cool there with the wind coming off the water and the boats rocking up and down on the waves.

  “What are you going to do?” he said. He sat down on the post next to her and folded his fingers together, watching the water move.

  “I don’t know.” She turned to look at him. “I guess I’ll just head south. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to go back.” />
  His voice was quiet and he kept his fingers locked together. He drew in a deep breath.

  “How will you live, though? What will you do for money? For food? And a place to stay. You can’t just sleep on the side of the road. Some-body’ll do something to you. It happens to young girls all the time. I’ve seen it.” He turned to look at her. “I’ve seen it myself, with my own eyes.”

  Down below them there was a slanting wall of big white rocks that went all the way down to the water that lapped against them and receded, was unending in its movement.

  “I guess I’ll try to find a job,” she said.

  “But you’d have to find a place to stay. You can’t sleep in a park, the cops’ll roust you in any town you go to. Or they’ll take you to a shelter. They might even send you back to where you came from. There’s no telling what might happen to you.”

  She looked down at her dirty fingernails and the nails of both her big toes sticking through the ragged tennis shoes. She knew she looked bad and she wished there was something she could do about it.

  “What you think I ought to do?”

  Sam got up from the post and put his hands back in his pockets. The wind was whipping the legs of his trousers and the radio was chattering inside the cruiser.

  “I think you ought to come home with me and let me and my wife fix you some supper. You like steak?”

  She gave him a small smile.

  “I’d like to try it.”

  “Come on, then,” he said.

  She gazed out over the water and saw that today was better than yesterday, and decided to go with it. She got up and they walked back to the car.

  The drive that led to his house curved through a big stand of mature pines. You couldn’t see the house from the main road, he told her. The cruiser nosed along the drive and the trees were close on each side.

  “Amy’s probably out on the deck with her nose stuck in a book. We can take you swimming after while if you want to go.”

  She didn’t know what to expect here. She’d never imagined that a cop would have a house in the woods or like to fish.

  “I might get in if it ain’t in the deep. I ain’t never had a chance to learn how to swim.”

  “Everybody needs to know how to swim,” he said. “What if you were on a boat and it sank? You ever thought about that?”

  “I ain’t never been on a boat.”

  He slowed down going around the last curve and she caught a glimpse of the house then, a flash of tall windows and cypress siding, a high peaked roof.

  “You hang around me very long you’ll be on one.”

  The drive went over a low wooden bridge and when he pulled up and stopped in front of the house, she could do nothing but look at it for a minute. It seemed to have grown in one piece out from the side of the hill, the entire side wall made of glass so that she could see the furniture inside and fans turning in the ceiling and potted plants hanging from big wooden beams. The old pines that grew beside it covered it in a deep shade and littered its top with their needles. A wide deck ran all across the back of it and there were padded lounging chairs and tables and past the corner of the deck she could see the water of the lake rippling out there.

  “This is your house?” she said.

  “Home sweet home,” he said, opening the door. He had already checked out on the radio and he grabbed his notebook and got his keys. “Come on in and we’ll find Amy. I know she’s probably got a swimming suit you can wear.”

  Her fingers went to the door handle but they were slow in opening it. He was standing in front of the car, waving her in with his keys. She opened the door and got out, still looking up at the house. Now she was even more ashamed of her torn tennis shoes, the blouse and the skirt that were too small for her. She shut the door and walked up beside the fender and stopped. Sam had already gone ahead to the steps and now he turned to look back at her.

  “Well? You coming in or what?”

  “You sure it’s all right?” she said. “You don’t think your wife will get mad or nothin?”

  He walked back to her and gently took one of her hands.

  “Come on, Fay,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  She followed him then, the two of them hand in hand going up the steps to the door that was mostly glass too and inside to the clean pine floors and the big stone fireplace and the stuffed animal heads and fish hanging on the walls. The fans turned overhead and she could see a big kitchen and a butcher block table under a rack of copper pans and utensils.

  “There she is,” he said, and he turned loose of her hand and set his things on a table in the corner. “Let’s go out on the deck.”

  She didn’t know what to do with her purse so she just held on to it. He didn’t wait for her but went to the double glass door and pushed one side of it back and stepped out. A small woman in shorts and T-shirt who looked a lot like him sat in her chair with a drink in her hand. A book lay open and facedown on the table. He said something to her and pointed back inside and she got up a little unsteadily and then they both came back inside.

  The woman smiled at Fay and sipped her drink. Her black hair was streaked with bits of gray and she had pretty white teeth, bright brown eyes that seemed shy and careful. She came forward with her hand out, and she seemed to Fay no more than a girl herself. Then when Fay looked closer at her eyes she saw the tight wrinkles of skin that makeup couldn’t hide.

  “Amy,” Sam said, “this is Fay. I’ve asked her to eat supper with us tonight.”

  Fay turned loose of her purse with one hand and took the hand that was offered.

  “Hey Fay.” Her hand was limp and cool, fragile as a bird’s wing. It felt like it had no strength at all.

  “Hey,” she said. She could feel her face turning red. She shook the hand quickly and released it, and then looked at Sam for what to do next.

  “I told her we might take her swimming. You got me some beer iced down?”

  “It’s out on the deck. Why don’t you come on out and let’s sit down, Fay.”

  “I’m gonna go change clothes,” Sam said, and he went past them unbuttoning his shirt and vanished somewhere in the house. But this Amy was still smiling at her.

  “There’s a good breeze out here,” she said. “It’s been awful hot today, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes ma’am. It sure has.”

  She followed Amy out the door and watched her slide it shut behind them and then followed her across the deck, watching her walk very carefully.

  “Let’s sit down over here in the shade, Fay. Would you like a cold Coke or something?”

  Amy took a seat in a rocking chair and Fay sat down on the bench that ran along the railing of the deck.

  “Yes ma’am. That’d be real nice.”

  There was an ice chest between them and Amy opened the lid and reached into it and pulled out a can and handed it to her.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Sam’s working the day shift now and he always wants a cold beer when he gets home. So I always have some iced down for him. Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?”

  Fay shook her head and opened the can.

  “No ma’am. I’m fine, thank you. He bought me a hamburger a while ago. Best one I ever had.”

  She still had her purse in her lap but she picked it up now and set it beside her feet and held the can with both hands. She smiled, looked down, took a drink of the Coke. Something unexpected happened in her throat and two spurts of it shot out of her nose, fizzing spots that landed on her skirt. She jumped up and wiped at her skirt and then at her nose, sidestepping, her face blushing hotly.

  “Goddamn,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do that.” She paused and looked up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that, either. I’m just nervous.”

  Amy had already stepped to a table and pulled a paper towel off a roll there. She was still smiling when she moved up close and dabbed at the wet spots.

  “Nothing to worry about,” she said
. “I had a date with this boy one time and we’d been swimming, went in this beer joint to get some ribs and I sat down on this chair and farted in my wet swimming suit and you could hear it all over the room.”

  She stepped back and winked. “Shit happens. Don’t worry about it. Would you rather have a beer?”

  Fay looked at the Coke in her hand and already she knew that she liked what was in the brown bottles better.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “Or I can mix you a drink. I like Ruby Red grapefruit juice and Stoly. You ever drink that?”

  “Nome. A beer’s fine,” she said.

  Amy got one and opened it after a few tries and handed it to her. They sat back down and Amy picked up her glass. She looked into it for a second and took a sip, looked out across the lake, and then her eyes moved back to Fay.

  “We don’t get much company out here. We’re a couple of regular hermits. I go to the beauty shop and the grocery store. That’s it, beauty shop, grocery store, over and over.”

  “It sure is nice out here,” Fay said. “I ain’t never seen such a pretty house.”

  “It’s too big,” Amy said. “Too much to clean.”

  Fay tucked her feet under the bench so that her tennis shoes were hidden. She wished she had some better ones. The beer was very cold when she sipped from it.

  “All this water,” she said. “I’d love to live out here.”

  Amy nodded and leaned back, holding her drink with both hands. She crossed her ankles.

  “I don’t never go out on it. It’s pretty to set and look at, though.” She took another drink and looked back up. “He likes to fish. He goes out on it a lot.” She studied the lake for a while. “Yeah. A lot,” she said, and then she lifted the glass as if that explained something. She gave Fay a weak smile. “I like to relax when I get off from work.”

  Fay just smiled and bobbed her head and tried to think of something to say to her. She wanted Sam to come on back out now. But looking at the water was nice. She could have sat there and looked at it for a long time. It made her feel good. The water made her feel like she belonged beside it in some old familiar way.