The Lost Country

by William Gay

  Compared to the shanties Edgewater had been passing, the house Batts lived in was relatively prosperous. It was just a square box of a house with a hipped roof like a pyramid set atop but there were electric lights and the best he could tell the yard seemed neat and clean.

  The woman made him two ham sandwiches with thick slices of homebaked bread and poured him a tumbler of buttermilk and he ate at the oilcloth-covered table while they watched. The man paced nervously about the room, as if whatever had laid hands on him would not let him be.

  There’ll be another meeting tomorrow night, he told Edgewater. It goes on all this week.

  Edgewater did not reply, his mouth was full of ham. He ate hurriedly. There was a demented look in the man’s eyes and Edgewater feared that he was going to begin preaching. The woman watched him with pride. Perhaps she could not yet believe the miracle that had happened, the transformation that had occurred.

  Edgewater went to bed in the loft room they showed him. There was a musty, unused smell to the room and Edgewater raised the window to the night. He lay back with the cries of the whippoorwills about him and pondered the road that had brought him here. He marveled that he slept warm and dry and that he had come to Little Creek and wondered where its place in the universe might be.

  They all arose early and breakfast the next morning was a steaming pot of oatmeal with butter melting on top of it and the smell of cinnamon rising off it. There was fried ham again, redeye gravy and fried eggs and a pan of biscuits browning in the oven. The kitchen was rich with the aromatic smell of brewing coffee.

  Batts was already eating when Edgewater sat down among all these varied smells and began to help himself.

  I got a little harrowin to do this morning. Lord willin I’ll finish it by dinner and then I’ll take time to run you out to Highway 70. Unless you been thinkin about the meetin tonight. It’d do me a world of good to see you admit your sin and be cleared of it.

  Edgewater was watching the slow slide of melted butter down the side of a hot biscuit. He reached for the honey jar. I’ve not decided yet, he said.

  I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d think about it.

  After breakfast Batts found Edgewater a five-gallon bucket of viscous tar and a paddle whittled from a piece of pine planking and set him to patching leaks on the roof. He went toward the barn and as Edgewater was climbing the ladder to the roof he saw Batts come out with the geared mules and lead them across a plowed field.

  The sun began to climb, the day to warm up. The roofing was warm through his shoes. Birds called to Edgewater from the trees in the yard. He began to search for leaks. He got a paddleful of the pliable tar and began to spot nailheads with it. The roof steepened near the top and he did most of his patching on the lower roof. He patched everything that looked like a leak and anything that looked as if it might be a leak in the future and after a time the sun made him languished and drowsy and he crossed over to the shady side and lay down on his back. The sky was a clear deep blue, there was not even a wisp of cloud and so high above him he did not see them at first hawks or buzzards wheeled and tilted in aerial ballet. There was no sound save the birds calling from the woods and he lay still, completely relaxed, feeling the warmth of the roofing through his clothes. He pretended he was at sea, he had remembered the sea this color. As flat and slick and smooth as glass and it went on forever.

  After a while he heard the woman calling him and he got up and was around the roof and began to descend the ladder. She was standing in the shade of a cottonwood with a half gallon of iced tea in one hand and a glass in the other.

  I thought you might be gettin hot up there.

  I’m about through, he told her. He was peering across the field to where the mules pulled the harrow in a rising plume of white dust that dissipated behind them and the form of Batts to the side with the lines in his hands and occasionally he could hear his cries to the mules, staccato and indistinct, harrying them to slow or make haste.

  She followed his eyes, he heard her sigh. That’s a different man now since he quit that old whiskey, she said. She shook her head. You’d just never know, she said, what we went through. It was the Lord’s guidance helped me get him to that tent meetin.

  Edgewater took the tea she offered and hunkered in the grass.

  Lester said you had sick folks, she said. Who is it if you mind me askin?

  Well, Edgewater said, peering at her, gauging. What did she want to hear? Who did she want it to be? I’ll be what you want me. You create me, whole out of yourself. She was looking at him out of a bland, friendly face, the eyes that fixed his were dull and almost stupid.

  Well, it’s my mama, he began. She’s bad sick havin an operation and I’m tryin to get there. I just got discharged out of the service and got all my stuff stolen.

  Lord have mercy. You mean money and everything?

  Edgewater was shaking his head slowly from side to side, expressing his disillusionment in his fellow man, eyes wide and hurt by misplaced trust. Hard to accept people would do one in his shape so gross a wrong.

  Money and orders and discharge papers, and bus tickets and all my clothes. I wired home but they must not have got it. I waited awhile and then I just struck out.

  No wonder you got a lot on your mind, the woman said. Here, get you some more tea. She refilled his glass, peered at him expectantly. Was there more?

  You know how it is, he told her. Wantin to get there bad and at the same time dreading it. Not knowing what to expect, but expectin the worse all the same.

  The woman set the tea down beside him carefully in the grass and walked into the house. She was gone for some time and when she came back out she was carrying a pocketbook. She opened it and withdrew a bill, stood smoothing it with her fingers. It was a five, he noticed.

  Here, she said. You take this and I don’t want to hear a word about it. It’s my money. My daddy died a long way from here and I never got to go see him when he was so bad. Lester was bad on the whiskey then and he never let me. I know how you feel.

  He folded the bill and slid it into his shirt pocket.

  I’ll see that when Lester drops you off it’s somewhere you can catch you a bus. You buy you a ticket with that and get on home.

  I thank you, Edgewater said.

  You just see you get on home.

  Batts came in from the field about ten o’clock and came into the house and looked all about the kitchen. Is they not any tea made? he wanted to know. She looked to see. I reckon it’s all drunk, she said. I’ll make you some more.

  He was drinking water at the sink. Let it go, he said shortly. I ain’t got time. Me and that boy’s takin a load of pigs into Selmer this evenin.

  Pigs? She turned from where she was slicing meat into a pan. You never said nothin bout sellin no pigs.

  I reckon it slipped my mind. I got to ungear and feed them mules.

  You get through?

  Just about, he said, already out the door.

  Edgewater stood around awhile and then he thought he’d walk out and see could he help feed the mules.

  Batts was in the loft throwing hay down with a pitchfork. He climbed down the ladder and stood regarding Edgewater.

  I’m through with the roof.

  Well. I need you to help me load them pigs.

  All right.

  Edgewater started walking toward the house.

  Say, Batts began.

  What?

  Batts seemed abstracted and nervous. What was it you done with that old whiskey you had last night?

  I poured it out.

  Oh. Good, good, he said, although he did not appear especially pleased.

  They did not even wait for dinner but drove down below the barn where the hogpens were and Batts backed up to the chute. They loaded the hogs and drove to the stockbarn in Selmer and sold them without incident. After getting a few items in town they started back. Batts said since they had made such good time he figured he might take another load. They could get in and
sell them and still be back in plenty of time for the meeting.

  They drove back through Selmer and through a seemingly endless string of beer joints and gambling houses and achromatic-looking housetrailers set on shadeless graveled lots. They drove further still and a mile or so out of town, Batts slowed down and looked toward a weatherbeaten shack forty or fifty feet off the road. The house was set in the middle of a motley of car tires and old ragged bedsprings and old motors and transmissions, behind it sloping junkmountains of immeasureable richness.

  Lester Batts did not say anything. He drove on until they reached the first side road and he turned in and still wordlessly backed out and went slowly back up the road the way they had come. When he was even with the shack he stopped and peered at the house with his hands clasped on the steering wheel. And many a dollar I throwed away here, he said.

  Edgewater had broken the five-dollar bill in Selmer and bought a pack of cigarettes and now he took them out and began to open them.

  A nigger bootlegger lives here, Batts said. A man bound for hell if one ever was. It come on me like a revelation that it’s one thing to resist whiskey I ain’t even got. It’d be something else again to have it right in front of me. To just look at it and hold the jar and then set it down and just say, no thank ye. I don’t use it no more.

  Edgewater did not reply. He had lit his cigarette and sat peering out across the junkstrewn yard and house and as he looked a black girl of six or seven years came onto the porch and sat down in the swing and began to rock listlessly to and fro.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Wouldn’t it what?

  Wouldn’t it be something else again?

  I guess it would.

  Batts fumbled in his pocket and selected a bill and reached it to Edgewater. You go get us a quart of that stuff.

  A quart? Looks like half a pint would be sufficient for resisting purposes.

  Any half-saved fool can resist a halfpint, Batts said. You get us a quart.

  Edgewater got out and walked across the yard and up the broken cinderblock doorstep. He peeked at the screen door. The child in the swing stared at him or through him as if he were not there at all.

  Yeah? A thin dark face crosshatched by the screen door.

  Give me a quart.

  The black turned away, returned with the fruit jar. He peered up the bank to where the pickup idled.

  Ain’t that Lester Batts’s pickup truck?

  Yeah.

  You tell him I said get on away from here fore he opens it up. You tell him I said the law is givin me a hard enough time without him messin me up again like he done last time.

  He’s not goin to drink it, Edgewater said. He’s saved. He’s going to resist it.

  The black handed him the jar. Sho he is, he said. You tell him what I said.

  Edgewater wended his way back to the road through wrecked and accordioned cars that the falling sun invested with an unreal, almost pastoral beauty.

  He got in and handed the jar to Batts. Here you go, he said. You goin to resist it here or take it on down the road.

  Batts did not reply. He sat the jar between his legs and put the truck in gear and they drove back down the road. After a mile or so the presence of the whiskey seemed to make Batts voluble, as if he in some manner absorbed the essence of it by convection through his thighs.

  He began to regale Edgewater with the stories from his life. Lessons learned the hard way. Good money thrown endlessly after bad. Time cast to the winds and lost forever. You’re young, he told Edgewater. Got your whole life ahead of you. Repent ye sins now and none of this has to happen to you. Why that woman has whipped me right down to the ground with a stick of stovewood and me blind drunk as a mole and no more sense about me than a yeller dog. I’ve been beat bloody time and again over the same mess sloshin right now in this fruitjar.

  They drove for four or five miles and a log road came up and they turned off into scrubby cutover timber and Batts stopped the truck and cut the switch off. There was a deep silence in the woods.

  He took up the jar, his hands caressing, unscrewed the lid and smelled. He set the jar on the dash and sat staring at it in disdain, as if it were a thing of no import. And there you sit, he told it. They sat for what seemed to Edgewater two or three hours and at the end of this time three quarters of the whiskey was gone, almost all of it drunk by Batts. He was sodden drunk, had fallen to favoring Edgewater with sidling glances of suspicion, as if he could not remember who Edgewater was or where he had appeared from.

  It’s getting late. You still plan on taking me out to 70? Edgewater asked.

  Batts was surly. In a while. Help me load them other hogs and I’ll let you out in Selmer.

  Well.

  On the way back to Batts’s farm, he raked a mailbox and then slowed down to a cautious ten or fifteen miles an hour. He drove past the house and the woman came out onto the porch and watched them pass with some interest. She raised a tentative hand and called once but Batts ignored her and drove on down toward the hogpen. It took several attempts before he was backed up to the chute to his satisfaction.

  Edgewater was looking toward the house. Jesse came out and started toward them. Behind her came the faint slap of the screen door. Batts saw her too. You go head her off. See what she wants.

  Halfway there the woman called to him. Is he loadin up more hogs?

  Yes, ma’am.

  Why Lord, he ain’t got time. You tell him I said start washin up for the meetin.

  I’ll tell him.

  Edgewater went back and told him.

  I ain’t studyin no meetin right now, he said. He had the jar out and cocked aloft and he was eyeing the bead. Me and you in the hog haulin business right now. He drank off the rest of the whiskey and threw the jar into the tangle of honeysuckle and stood unsteadily in the mud of the hoglot. There’s the very one I been dreadin all day long, he said, pointing at a huge spotted sow that stood watching him with wary distrust.

  He had the hog halfway up the chute when for some reason or other she stopped dead still. There was not sufficient space for her to turn and she began to back down the chute. Batts’s face grew apoplectic with exertion. He could not force her back up. He grasped her tail and twisted it and hit her on the rump with his fist. You get up there you hussy, he said. The hog leapt backward and knocked Batts off balance and he fell in the slick black mud. The railing off the chute caught him a glancing blow above the eye and he lay dazed a moment before he arose. He sat up in the mud and looked all about wildly and rubbed his head and left a streak of mud in the wake of his hand. A drop of blood welled, zigzagged down to join the mud at the corner of his mouth. He tasted it tentatively with his tongue. How about you gettin off your butt and helpin? he said thickly.

  Edgewater arose and climbed over the fence. The sow had retreated to a far corner of the pen and stood with feet apart and head lowered regarding them with malice.

  Spread out and help me herd her, Batts said.

  Edgewater kept to the cleanest part of the lot and stepped gingerly through the mud and offal. Batts plunged ahead slipping and sliding.

  At the end of a few minutes they still did not have the hog loaded. Batts had fallen two or three times on his own and once the hog had bolted past and knocked him down. His head was bleeding worse and he was crazed from head to toe with blood and pigshit.

  Goddamnit, will you get your thumb out of your ass and help?

  I hated to interfere. It looked like something personal between you and the hog. Edgewater stepped gingerly through the shallowest of the muddy offal and Batts plunged in ankle-deep, slipping and sliding.

  Batts began to chase the hog around and around the pen. The sow’s eyes were wild and mad as if she were in flight from some reeking demon of lecherous intent and Batts went slewing through the mud windmilling his arms for balance. Then he launched himself onto the hog’s slick back and locked his arms about her neck in some lascivious parody of lust and part of the time Batts was riding the so
w and part of the time she was riding him and when at length they ceased the sow’s jaws were slathered with foam and her sides heaved spasmodically and Batts was struggling for breath.

  He and the hog stood regarding each other without affection and Batts lowered his face down eye to eye with the hog and began to curse it as if it were some human opponent who had taken unfair advantage. You chickenshit mullyfucker, he told it. You worthless whorin slut.

  Edgewater glanced toward the house and the woman was striding toward them at a purposeful pace. Hey, he called to Batts. Hey. Batts kicked at the hog and fell on his back in the black mud and lay staring at the sky. Edgewater climbed the fence on the far side of the pen and dropped to the ground. When he looked back this time Jesse had increased her pace and somewhere she had found a stick. Edgewater moved on. Batts had arisen now and seen the woman and was trying to call to Edgewater on his hands and knees. He was calling at the top of his voice but Edgewater stoppered his ears, did not know whether it was rage or entreaty, pleas to wait. He did not wait to see. He looked back once and the woman was astride the fence and he looked forward at the field he was running through and heard the stick fall and a startled yell. Then they were cursing each other as loudly as they could as he ran through the creek where it shoaled shallowest, and as he climbed the bank and went on through the willows on the other side he could not hear them anymore.

  Roosterfish awoke with the first auguries of dawn, the chattering of birds above the bluff that formed his ceiling, the crowing of the cocks in their wooden cages. He lay for a time cocooned in his musty blanket for the night had turned chill after the storm. He lay peering up to where sunlight spread along the span of bluff seeking out the shadows and destroying them, acid eating away remnants of the night. He could smell the river that flowed beyond him and hear it lapping and its suck among the ironwoods and willows depending into it. He lay still, at peace. The sun was already warming the dark blanket. He could feel the slow spread of its heat. At length he arose.