by William Gay
Karas smiled. So you all lived happily ever after, he said. All your grandkids and great-grandkids turned out for your fiftieth wedding anniversary.
Well, not exactly. Not in my case. I come in early from huntin one day two years later and caught her in bed with my brother. I looked down and I was holdin that shotgun, what else was I goin to do? I shot her where she lay and my brother was up and out the window. I shot a goose down pillow he was lyin on a second before. The air was full of feathers like it was snowin. It was summer and hot like this and they had all the windows up. I sighted down the barrel laid across the windowsill and he was runnin up this spring holler. About where we are. I shot his legs out from under him and went out the window after him.
Jesus Christ, Karas said. I don’t want to hear any more of this. These are all things I don’t need to know.
You need to know what a man’s capable of. You need to know what things cost.
Why would I want to know any of that? Karas asked. What in God’s name are you talking about?
Night had almost completely fallen. Darkness was rolling out of the hollow like smoke. Borum was barely visible. He seemed to be fading away.
Because everything has its price, he said out of the dark. And because the two years between talkin her back and shootin my brother’s legs out from under him was the two best years of my life. Them was good times. Sweet times. Yet all the same when the bill come it had to be paid.
AT SOME HOUR past all clocking Karas was on the road back to the Storm Princess. It was a road not appreciably better than most of the other roads he had been on this day. Stones sang off the rocker panels and went flying off into the weeds like shot and something, probably the jutting tip of a boulder, slammed the undercarriage and oil pan hard. The engine had taken on a guttural sound as if he’d lost or broken the muffler. He glanced down and saw he was driving too fast. He was going downhill like a stone skittering down the sides of a well and he began to ride the brakes. He parked the car on the shelf of rock where he’d already parked one time too many and got out. He kicked the door closed, one more dent couldn’t hurt, the Grand National’s sides were streaked with zigzag scars like hesitation marks on the wrists of a would-be suicide.
He leaned against the door and fumbled with his clothing and urinated beside the car, his penis in one hand and the rum bottle in the other, the rum burning his throat. A huge orange harvest moon was just clearing the horizon above the dark field and it looked for all the world like some light enormous and supernatural that was rising out of the black velvet surface of the field itself. He canted the bottle against the starblown heavens as if he’d gauge its contents then turned toward the trailer.
Though by now, he had to admit, it was no longer a trailer. It was the lonely tower where the Storm Princess had fled to escape the attentions of an evil wizard. It was a tall conical tower of white stone, and roses climbed its side, their thorns giving purchase on the almost poreless rock, their blossoms dark as drops of splattered blood on the alabaster stone. Slits of window climbed the tower in an ascending spiral, he knew that inside a staircase wound toward a bower at the top where the Storm Princess had sequestered herself to make her stand, all the furniture in the room hastily skidded across the floor to barricade the door against the weight of his shoulder.
The evil wizard fell twice on plates of slick shale rock, once rapping the bottle smartly but not breaking it. He rose and went on, the bottle held aloft like a beacon that was lighting his way or yet like a child held one-handed out of harm’s way by someone fording deep swift waters.
The trailer was dark, not even a porch light. Long and low and tacky, it no longer bore any resemblance to a white stone tower, no more resemblance than the woman who finally answered his knock bore to the Storm Princess of so long ago. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup and by the bare-bulb glare of the porch light she clicked on he could see the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, a few gray strands of hair swept back from her temples.
Are you alone? he asked, knowing that tonight she was still alone. Yet he was weary with the knowledge that flesh can be no more than flesh and he knew of time’s implacable attrition on all good resolve. He knew that a time would come when his fist would pound the flimsy door and a man in his wife’s bed would stir and sit up. This faceless man would grasp the Storm Princess by the shoulder and shake her gently awake, asking, Who in the world can that be at two o’clock in the morning?
Of course I’m alone, who did you expect to be here? What do you want? She wore a blue bathrobe unbuttoned but clasped loosely at the throat with one hand and at the waist by the other. She did not seem particularly surprised to see him, nor pleased that he could still number himself among the living.
You of all people should know what I want.
Well, she said, it’s—she turned and glanced over her shoulder to a wall clock, a round white clock that was garlanded with fake roses that reminded him of the roses climbing the tower—two o’clock in the morning. You’re going to have to be more specific than that. I have to work tomorrow.
I’m drunk but not so drunk I don’t know what day it is, Karas said. Tomorrow is Sunday. Is it all right if I come in?
I suppose so, she said. You seem determined to run through all the definitions there are for a fool. What’s the matter with you?
Not exactly knowing, he did not reply. When she stepped aside to allow him passage he entered the small claustrophobic living room, stood for a moment in its center breathing in the caustic smell of imitation wood paneling, old violence, his own violent despair. He crossed the room, a bare few paces, and seated himself on a vinyl sofa. He held the bottle across his lap the way a commuter awaiting a train clutches his briefcase.
This place feels wrong, he said. Distinctly bad vibrations. You can feel it in the air, double murder, love gone wrong. This place has been cleaned up but I’ll bet if I look I can find blood on the walls, bits of tissue in the nap of the carpet.
Just shut up, she said. I don’t want to hear your drunken nonsense. A man killed his wife and his brother, the man wasn’t even killed in here, it was the backyard. We saw it on the TV, both of us saw it on the news. It didn’t affect this place one bit.
He unscrewed the cap and raised the bottle and drank. The face of his wife, the room itself, darkened like a world abruptly cut to half power. He imagined holding a cigarette lighter to the cheap paneling until it caught in a thin blue spreading flame, holding her away one-handed while fire climbed the walls like roses. If suicide was feasible, was murder beyond conjecture? But when he glanced at the inside of his left wrist the blood still kept its appointed rounds through the dimly visible veins, its slow blue pulse as regular as the ticking of the clock. He screwed the cap on and set the bottle on the carpet between his feet.
Do you want a cup of coffee? It occurs to me that you could use one.
I suppose I could drink one, he said agreeably, and leaned his head against the cool vinyl of the couch. When she raised an arm to open a cabinet door her robe fell open and he could see her rounded breast, the dark smudge of her pubic hair. Then she turned her back to him and held the bowl of the coffeemaker to the sink. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them she was crossing the room carrying two cups of coffee. She set one on the table before his knees. There was a swivel rocker beside the television set and she seated herself there and turned the rocker slightly toward him, adjusting the robe closer about her knees. She sipped her coffee and watched him with a look almost of speculation.
Karas had not yet taken up his cup. He took up the Ron Rico and drank from the bottle. He had felt the first uncomfortable intimations of reality, as if you really could drink yourself sober, as if he’d been on some dark journey and the first harbingers of his destination had reared up starkly against the horizon, and it was a hostile and barren place he did not want to go to. He felt as if this day had used up all the emotions he possessed save a bleak and bitter despair.
W
ell, she said after a time. What are your plans?
I thought I might sleep here on the couch tonight.
That’s what I expected you might think.
Is it all right?
I suppose it is. I don’t want to live with you anymore, but I don’t want you killing yourself in a car wreck. Or killing a carload of innocent people.
Just on the couch, he said. I won’t bother you and I’ll be on my way first thing in the morning.
She smiled at him, not a particularly pleasant smile, a smile that said she knew him better than he knew himself and that he was continuing to live down to the expectations she had for him. You’re so facile, she said.
You don’t have to use words like facile, he said. We both know you went to college.
All right then, how’s this? You’re such a bullshit artist. You’re so manipulative. Words are all you care about and you think you can do anything with them. Don’t you think I know what’s wrong with you? It’s sex. You’re used to it every night or two and it’s been what, three weeks? You want to spend the night with me. You’ll lie down on the couch when I go to bed, then you’ll get up. Then you’ll stand in my bedroom door and ask if you can lie down beside me. Just for the company, you won’t touch me. Then you’ll put your arm around me.
Karas wondered if any of this might be true. He suspected that just such a thought might have been nibbling at the corner of his mind, like a cautious but persistent mouse.
Do you have any money with you?
What? Karas asked. He had been thinking that spending the night in her bed might be just the ticket; it was possible that he might persuade her to come back to him, and failing that perhaps she was right, it was just sex, something might collapse in him like a dam breaking and all the images of despair and blood and suicide might vanish in a clean orgasmic rush and he would be himself again, a sensible and literate middle-aged man writing a book about Robert Johnson. But the sudden shift in the conversation from sex to money threw him off balance.
When I moved in here the electricity didn’t work. The meter base or something was broken. It cost me three hundred dollars to hire an electrician and the realty company hasn’t reimbursed me. When I left I said I didn’t want anything from you, but I do. The repairs left me three hundred short of what I need this month, and that’s what it’s going to cost you. If you want me half as badly as you say you do then that ought to be the bargain of a lifetime.
Hellfire, he said in a kind of appalled despair. That isn’t what I wanted. Why didn’t you just ask me for the money? Why didn’t you just screw the electrician and cut out the middleman?
That isn’t what you wanted? You didn’t want sex?
Well. I don’t know. Of course I did, but not like this. I wanted us to make up, to get back together. Then go to bed, and everything would be the way it used to be.
It will never be the way it used to be, she said. And I thank God for that when I wake up every morning.
Karas was silent a time. That seems a reasonable figure, he finally said.
IN THE BEDROOM moonlight fell through the gauzy curtains. She slipped off the robe and lay atop the covers. She lay on her back, hands folded placidly across her stomach. He kissed her and gently stroked her breasts. Her lips were pliable, rubbery and unresponsive, and after a while he just sat on the bed beside her, elbows on his knees, his hands clasping the bottle.
What’s the matter? Can’t you do anything?
Why hell yes, I can do whatever needs to be done. It’s just this place, I keep wondering if it’s the same bed … let’s go to a motel.
What?
If you won’t go home with me then let’s go to a motel.
Don’t be so ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong with this bed.
There’s just something about this place. Something … unhealthy about it.
You’re just too sensitive, she said in a sleepy ironic voice. At any rate I’m not going to a motel. I like it here.
Karas sat in silence, listening to the various nighttime hummings and whirrings of the trailer. They began to sound like voices, sourceless and disembodied, replaying old accusations and recriminations, words he could almost but not quite decipher. The very atmosphere had turned oppressive and claustrophobic, the perfect setting for the story Borum had told him, and he wondered if any of it was real, if he was real. When he glanced at his wife her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open. He saw to his surprise that she had fallen asleep.
The exact nature of his malady perplexed him. You could stand on a street corner waiting for a traffic light to change and see a dozen women who were prettier, more smartly dressed, more confident in their congress with the world. There had always been something tentative about her, a look that said, All right, here I am. I hope you won’t hurt me, but if you have to, go ahead. Only a thin silver cord still bound him to her. He watched the measured rise and fall of her breasts and wished that she would do something so appalling the cord would snap like a kite string, as he had been unable to snap it with the penknife.
He saw that they had, hand in hand, come to a crossroads. They had been walking one of Robert Johnson’s fabled red backroads and they had come to a crossroads. The Storm Princess had scarcely glanced to the right or the left, without a falter or a stitch in her pace she had made her decision and gone on without a backwards look. But a crossroads presented Karas with too many options. Confounded, he had sat down on his suitcase to smoke a cigarette and think about things.
He rose from the side of the bed so abruptly the bottle rapped the edge of the dresser and she stirred but did not awaken. She turned over on her left side and pillowed her head on a folded arm and drew her knees up, her naked body in the filigreed moonlight at once real yet as remote and lost as a dusty nude study stacked in a museum’s forgotten corner.
He set the bottle on the corner of the bureau and took out his wallet. The movement of his reflection in the mirror was furtive, that of a prowler, a midnight rambler. Like a burglar returning something he has stolen. He withdrew three bills from the wallet and tilted them toward the moonlit window to ascertain their denomination. He folded them once and slid them under the edge of the bottle. The room seemed close and more claustrophobic than ever, decadent and diseased, perhaps there really was blood on the walls and baseboards, shreds of rotting brain tissue in the nap of the carpet. Voices from darkened corners of the room muttered secrets he wanted no part of. Holding his breath he crossed through the doorway into the living room, went out the front door for the last time. He pulled the door to behind him then as an afterthought opened it and reached in and turned the lock and pulled it closed until it clicked. He went down the steps from the deck.
It was almost as bright as day. The moon was well up now and the world as pristine as if no one had yet torn the cellophane off it, left a footprint on it. The slabs of limestone reared out of the dark white as snowbanks. He went to the car and climbed in.
He had his hand on the ignition when something his eyes had seen but his brain had not immediately registered struck him and he opened the door and got out.
Well I’m a son of a bitch, he said.
Oil had pooled beneath the engine and trickled down the rock in streams that in the moonlight looked like blood, dark heart’s blood coagulating on white leather seat covers. There was an enormous quantity of it, and he guessed the crankcase was empty, the engine bled white.
Well, it’s only an oil pan, he told himself. An oil pan could be fixed. He opened the door of his wife’s Taurus. He did not expect the keys to be in the ignition and they were not. He could go in for the keys, but it might be better to send a wrecker for the Buick. She would lend him the car, but in order to get the keys he would have to knock on the door and he did not want to knock on that door again. He had a superstitious fear that something dread might answer his knock, who knew what.
Like a crossroads, the night itself had confounded him, possibilities he’d never considered swirled like smoke—he
might borrow the keys and be on his way, he might seek value received for his three hundred dollars, like Borum he might sweet-talk her into giving him one more chance, he might strangle her where she lay.
Of course a man might walk away. The yellow moon lay low in the southern sky and that would be enough light to walk by. Just walk off toward it, give up cigarettes and Ron Rico and thoughts of suicide and bloody violence. Take up Zen, needlepoint, the salvation of heathen souls. Find a southern star and use it as a sextant as mariners were told to do and set a course for the Mississippi Delta so absolutely undeviating he would clamber over things instead of walking off course around them, crossing interstates and freeways and clotheslines and barbed-wire fences until he was deep in the Delta, sitting in some smoky club drinking Wild Turkey and listening to the blues. Then farther still until there was no longer any question of going back, you couldn’t go back. Until the turnpikes and the Burger Kings and the Taco Bells and acres of smashed cars that looked like the broken and discarded cartons death had come in vanished and time itself distorted like light through warped glass and he was in some yellow-lit shack that smelled of coal oil and bootleg whiskey and where the ghost of Robert Johnson scowled at him and turned his body away so that Karas could not see the chords his fingers were making on the guitar.