by William Gay
I’m not tore up nothing to what you’re gonna be, she told him. You slackmouth gapejawed son of a bitch. Send you for a dozen eggs and you wind up runnin over half the county with my lovely car and it not have a thousand miles on it. Oh, I ought to kept you on a leash, Oh, I ought to knowed you. You had to come into town and brag and show it off, didn’t you? You had to bigshot around. Well, by God you ain’t flyin so high now.
Honey, Bradshaw began.
You shut your mouth. Who’s gonna pay for that car? Look at your clothes tore off you and your mouth all swelled up. Pick you up out of the gutter and buy you clothes and try to teach you to act like a human bein and this is how you repay me.
Honey, when we get by ourselves we can work all this out, he said all in a rush. You just sign them papers and …
Tell her how I saved your life, Edgewater put in.
We’re as by ourselves as we’ll ever be, she said. You lowdown shitass. If you ever get out of here and I see you sneakin around my drive-in I’ll get a peace warrant on you and slap you so far back in jail they’ll have to pipe the daylight in.
You’re all wrought up, he told her, making curious deprecating gestures with his hands.
You’re damn right I am but with any luck at all I’m lookin at your sneakin face for the last time. She turned, her black eyes shiny as buttons, and the head descended the stairs from sight. Bradshaw ran over to the edge of the cell steps but he could not get his head through the bars to see down the stairs. They could hear her purposeful steps growing faint.
Just forget it, by God, he screamed down the stairwell. I druther lay it out than have a slut like you on my bond. If I want out I’ll do it my damn self. He choked, caught his breath. And I’m through with you too, he went on. Just don’t come sneakin around tryin to apologize. He turned a harried face on his cellmates.
I guess you told her, Edgewater said.
Slick, you sure got a way with women, the fat man admired. How much would you charge me to learn your technique?
Bradshaw ran a hand through his blond hair. She’ll be back, he said. His hands were fumbling for the other piece of his cigar.
Maybe she will, Edgewater told him. But I kindly hope I’m somewhere else when she does.
It won’t do her a shittin bit of good. Any woman stands up and calls me everything from a chicken to a motherfucker in front of all my friends is walkin on my fightin side.
Welcome to Wayne County, the fat man said.
Where in the wide world you from, Billy?
Up in the mountains.
I bet you wish you was there.
I bet I wish I was anyplace but here.
Me too. Lord, I had as good a family as any man ever lived and I just let it all slide away.
Where’s home?
Up towards Nashville. You got a family?
Everybody has. Edgewater was scraping caked mud from around the rims of his shoes with a wooden ice cream paddle.
You don’t give up much, do you, Billy?
He grinned. I guess I don’t have much to spare.
I got a mama and a sister; I ever get out I guess I’ll head up that way and check on em. They get to wantin to see me. You ort to see my sister. Face like a cover on a movie book in a drugstore. Blonde hair and blue eyes.
Edgewater evinced his first interest here. What’s her name?
Sudy.
How old is she?
Seventeen or eighteen. You got ere sister?
No.
Your folks back in the mountains?
Edgewater’s eyes closed. His whole history plastic, reforming, a new world every day. People and events cut away and shuttled overboard. He thought of Roosterfish, wondered his fate. Continually discarding his past like so much weight he was unable to carry. He studied the shoe, laid it to the side.
My folks are both dead, he said. All I have is distant kin.
Bradshaw pondered this. I guess that’s right. I guess you can’t get much further off than dead.
Reckon when we’ll get out?
Lord, Billy, I don’t know. We ain’t even had the hearin yet and can’t make bond when we do. I’m good for a eleven twenty-nine. I don’t know about you.
I had a little money but not enough to make bond, I don’t guess I’ll ever see it again.
Easy come easy go.
Sundays were interminable. He would have preferred the brush hook, the pick and shovel. They could hear somewhere a congregation in song. A backslid preacher was inspired to conduct a makeshift service, gave some drunken and rambling discourse on the gospels. He finally subsided tearfully in the face of obscenities and catcalls.
There were few visitors. Family ties apparently did not run deeply here. Bradshaw watched all the women eagerly but none met his exacting standards. Edgewater was learning that Bradshaw screwed no women save the prettiest, drove no car but the fastest, held no poker hand but the highest, escaped from no situation by anything wider than a hair’s breadth. He fell to telling Edgewater of past exploits.
Best piece I ever had was in Arkansas, he said. I’se on my uppers and a feller picked me up in the poolroom to help him finish some concrete. Give me four dollars. We went out to where he lived and it was a porch he wanted me to help on. He done had it formed up and everything already and this big old truck come and dumped it full of concrete. We flew into levelin her down with rakes and shovels.
His old lady kept lookin at us out the window. She was about twenty and pretty as a picture. Had hair the color of a blackbird’s wing. Little rosebud mouth.
It was in August and we was sweatin like mad. The concrete was about to get away from us, already startin to set up. I kept lookin at her and I took to wantin a drink of water. I laid my rake down and went in and she was in the kitchen. They had a bar across it and she was settin on one of these here stools spins around. Come here, she said. She pulled her skirt up and she didn’t have on a goddamn sign of a drawer. I looked out the window while I had her backed up against the bar screwin her and he was in his rubber boots knee deep in that concrete rakin away. Ever now and then he’d look up towards the door real mad and then he hollered at me. I ortn’t done it but I couldn’t help it. I’m comin, I hollered back at him. We kept on and directly I seen him throw his rake and start toward the door. I went out the back as he come in the front and I never seen neither one of em again. I’ve wondered if he ever did get that concrete finished.
Monday morning. Harsh voices in the halflight behind the jail, the slap of shoeleather on asphalt. Eastward of the broken ranks of buildings a soft pastel rose, fanning outward spreading now, wrought of the scattered windows stained glass in the grimy alley. Pale exhaust from the idling flatbed truck. Rattle and clang of the tools they loaded aboard.
Under the watchful eye of the guards they climbed the ladder of welded water pipe to the bed of the truck, aligned themselves on benches in the canvas doghouse. The guard swung up. Roll it out, Bradshaw called. Let’s get this show on the road. Everybody turned to look at him. Looked away. The guard came up and put his face very close to Bradshaw. Bradshaw fell to studying the handgun the guard wore.
I’se just helpin out.
You help out one more time and your mouth will have overloaded your ass. In a case like that bad things begin to happen to you. Are we all clear on that?
Yessir.
All right, roll it out, he called.
The sun at midday. A hot July sun pulsing in the vaulted heavens. Prisoners strung out along the highway carrying bags of gathered litter. Edgewater studying the passing cars with something like longing. A baldheaded man tossed him a half pack of Camels from a passing car. He covertly tucked them into the top of one of his socks. Turned to see the guard studying the wheeling of hawks in the distant throbbing blue.
Suddenly a fit seemed to take Bradshaw; he went to the ground and then began a curious ungaited dance. He wadded something, held it to his chest. He looked halfdemented. A fifty-dollar bill, he shrieked. Hot damn, I found me a fift
y-dollar bill. He had it in his fists, throwing his arms, his feet shuffling in some gleeful dance.
Everyone turned to look. Efforts redoubled at scanning the ground. There might be more. Fleeing robbers. Perhaps a sackful. A wrecked Brinks truck.
Where? the guard said. He had a hand on Bradshaw’s shoulder. Give it to me.
No, Bradshaw cried. It’s mine, all mine, you’ll take it away from me.
I said by God give it to me, prisoner. The guard shook Bradshaw tearing his shirt down the front.
It’s mine, you can’t have it.
Bradshaw fell on his knees. He had both hands locked together and clasped between his knees. His face turned up to the white light of the sun. He might have been praying. His eyes were closed. His eyes working. He looked possessed. I need it, he said. Please. I found it. It’s mine.
I need it too, the guard said. He kicked Bradshaw, fell upon him. For a minute they rocked silent on the cropped ground and locked like lovers or madmen. The guard’s fingers tore at Bradshaw’s hands. At last tore them open, wrested from him a torn and grapestained popsicle wrapper. He threw it from him. He looked as if he might cry. You goddamn crazy bastard, he said. Bradshaw’s face turned upward to accept the surreal white weight of the sun, he looked crazed, contorted with pain and glee.
Saturday night seemed a busy night in Wayne County. From four o’clock onward there was heavy traffic on the concrete stairs, a vast procession of the drunk and bloody and broke and luckless. A few familiar faces among the transients, regular customers perhaps. Until all the cots were taken, the air thick with the smell of whiskey, sweat, vomit. Edgewater began to contemplate vainly the possibility of escape. Wished himself elsewhere with an impassioned desperation. Were wishes animate he’d be thousands of miles away.
When dusk fell and the slotted window darkened, the revelers fell into a quarrelsome uneasy silence, contemplating perhaps their losses, a Saturday night that went on without them. Women that settled for second best, music others were hearing. They felt themselves cheated, wronged.
Sometime after midnight Edgewater came awake to yet another scuffle. There was fighting at the foot of the stairwell, sounds of blows, swearing, cries of pain. Little by little the fight progressed up the stairs until two deputies came into view dragging a third man between them. They opened the cell door and hurled him in. Edgewater immediately recognized the little man who had offered to whip anyone in the poolroom.
The deputies stood for a moment adjusting their clothing, breathing hard. One of them had lost a hat. The little man fell upon it in the cell. He stamped it viciously. Kicked it toward the corner of the bullpen. There, by God, he said. He turned a bladelike face toward the deputies, his eyes enraged.
You wormy little bastard.
Pick on a drunk, will ye? Hell, anybody can whip up on a drunk.
What’s your name, anyway?
Hodges. As you damn well know. Gimme my hat.
Hodges. I’ll remember that. An eye closed in concentration. He turned to the other deputy. What’s yourn?
Hinson.
Hinson and Hodges. Hodges and Hinson. He was feeling all through his pockets as if for paper and pencil. You goin way up on my shitlist now, he told them. You better be huntin you a high limb to roost on because when I get out I aim to be lookin you up.
You know where I live, Hodges said disgustedly. Morton, you want to hand me my hat.
The fat man in overalls got up from his bunk and made to approach the cap. It did not look like a cap at all. It looked like some luckless and shapeless animal elongated on the highway.
Go ahead, Morton, the little man said. If that’s all life means to ye.
The big man paused and he stood regarding the little man quizzically as if what he was hearing must be through some defect in his hearing.
What? he asked.
I said pick that cap up and the undertaker’ll be puttin ye Sunday best on for ye. I want my twenty-dollar bill, too.
Your twenty dollars is long gone, slick. I had twenty dollars I wouldn’t be layin out a fine for a public drunk.
That’s just tough shit. You pick up that cap and you’re still a dead man.
What are you goin to do? Talk me to death? Morton bent down and picked up the cap, raised an obsequious grinning face to Hodges.
I’m a bad son of a bitch, the little man said. He jerked a snubnosed pistol out of his overall pocket and stood pointing it in Morton’s face. Silent men faded back in staggered ranks. Edgewater himself drawing to the shadowed corner, the man with his pistol and the frozen deputies some unbelievable tableau from the vales of aberrance.
Get on your knees, Morton.
Pettijohn, you crazy fool, Hodges said. If a straitjacket’s what you’re huntin tonight you’ll damn sure find it. You headed for a rubber room at Bolivar if you don’t walk mighty soft.
I’ll get to you in a minute. My mind ain’t so bad I forgot them blackjacks. You just stay right where you’re at and the first man even looks like he wants to pull a pistol on me goes down them steps on a stretcher.
Hell, it ain’t but a shittin cap pistol.
Pettijohn whirled and fired. There was a flat report and the bullet sang off the concrete coping like an angry wasp and left in its wake a new-looking chink the size of a quarter. The deputies dropped from sight like retreating jacks-in-the-box and there was silence. The air smelled of cordite. The pistol swung back to Morton. His face was white and pastylooking, the face of a man to whom a doctor has just imparted dire news.
On them knees, Pettijohn said. He was leaning slightly forward, the pistol aimed directly into Morton’s face. There was no tremor at all to the pistol.
Morton got down on his knees. He studied the concrete floor as if awaiting inspiration or searching for something he had lost.
Say, I’m sorry for the way I done Pettijohn all these years.
You better kill me, goddamn you. Cause if I live when I get through with you you’ll need a magnifyin glass to find a greasy spot. Morton seemed to grow smaller, a more benign presence. I’m sorry for the way I done Pettijohn all these years, he said.
Say, Pettijohn ain’t such a bad feller.
Oh goddamn.
Say it, by God.
Pettijohn ain’t such a bad feller. Morton raised his eyes to the gun. He seemed to be looking straight down its barrel as if to divine something of eternity’s pattern in the convolutions of its dark bore.
Pettijohn stood unsteadily, perhaps thinking of something else to make Morton say. He turned to study the crowd, swaying drunkenly from side to side. There’s old Oneeye, he said. Accused me of stealin his shoat that time. Oneeye, say, I never stole that shoat. The pistol pivoted.
I knowed you never took that shoat that time, the man recited.
Edgewater could hear the deputies on the stairs. I thought you searched him, one said.
I thought you did. Hell, he never had no pistol before.
Morton yelled toward the stairs. You better do something about this crazy son of a bitch. You got a hell of a nerve puttin a crazy man with a pistol in with us. You better get Parnell up here.
He ain’t here right now.
I wish to hell I wadn’t.
Pettijohn, I’m giving you to the count of three to throw that pistol outside the cell. You don’t, we’re comin in after you. One.
Come on ahead then.
Two.
Pettijohn shot at the ceiling light. He missed the bulb and the bullet ricocheted off somewhere in the high ceiling.
Three.
There was silence. Pettijohn stood waiting, the pistol leveled at the top of the stairwell. He seemed not to breathe. Occasionally his eyes flickered to Morton still on his knees and back to where the deputies were going to come in after him.
Hey, Morton, Hodges called after a time.
What.
How about you and somebody else up there just jumping on him and overpowerin him? Take that pistol away from him.
Shit, Morton said
in disbelief. He spat onto the concrete floor, knelt with his big hands spread on overalled knees.
Hey, Bradshaw?
I ain’t qualified to do no overpowerin, Bradshaw said. You got the badge and the gun.
Hell, you’re right on him there.
Forget it.
Goddamn chickenshit bunch. Hey, I could reduce ye sentence.
Not as much as this feller here with the pistol could reduce it.
Well, we can’t just set here and let him wave a pistol around.
Get his old lady up here, Morton said. Maybe she can talk some sense into him.
Bring that bitch within a hundred yards of this courthouse and I start shootin whatever my eye falls on, Pettijohn said.
There was silence. Outside it had begun to rain. Concrete-muffled thunder came faintly and there was a fresh moist smell to the air. After a door clanged hollowly somewhere below and they heard voices at the foot of the stairs, undecipherable but with an undercurrent of anger. Then Hodges’s voice: Lord, I don’t know where he got it. He was clean when we brought him in.
Parnell’s voice, authoritative, persuasive. Pettijohn, where’d you get that pistol?
It don’t make no never mind where I got it, I got it.
Just what are you tryin to prove?
I ain’t tryin to prove a goddamn thing. I’m just sick of you son of a bitches comin down there and draggin me out of my own house evertime she gets a hair up her ass. She must be getting a fuckin kickback or somethin.
Well, what do you want? Parnell had not deigned show his face but his voice was resonant with assurance. A man well in command of the situation.
I want out of here and I want to see that old crazy man that cut that girl’s titties off.
What?
I didn’t stutter.
Lord, Pettijohn, he ain’t here. They done took him on to Memphis. They givin him all kinds of tests.
Tests? What do you mean, tests?
Psychiatric tests. To see if he’s crazy or not.
Crazy? You mean a son of a bitch cuts a woman’s titties off and makes a pocketbook out of her snatch and you have to ship him all the way to Memphis to find out whether he’s crazy or not? Shit. And lock me up for a public drunk. You son of a bitches is the one needs testin.