The Lost Country

by William Gay

  Give me a Sterlin, Swalls.

  Swalls was not to be had so easily; he made no move toward the cooler. I might think about sellin you one, he said.

  The man was going through his pockets one by one, as if he’d forgotten which contained his money. He was wearing an old outsize coat in this heat and he fetched up from the side pocket with triumph a handful of dried roots and blew the dust off them and laid them with care on the countertop. He began to separate them, fondling them, a miser at his coins. I got a little sang here.

  Hellfire, Arnold. I told you time and again this ain’t no tradin post. Next thing you’ll be bringin in mayapple and scrapiron and God knows what all. What I wanted was just a little cash business here. You know, money. You’ve heard of money?

  Arnold returned the ginseng reluctantly to his pockets. Shitfire, he said. Swalls seemed to forget him. He plugged the electric beer sign in and a rectangular vision of nature came on. Canoes on an electric river, blue water suggestive of depth. Mountains beyond, a harsh and fathomless sky. Arnold watched fascinated. A campfire flickered on the shore and fishermen oared the canoe toward the void at the picture’s edge.

  I’ll pay you Saturday.

  Swalls was solicitous. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Arnold. I’m startin up what I call a layaway plan, I’ll let you come around here to the cooler and pick out whichever one you want. I’ll write your name on a little piece of tape and put it around the neck and set it off in the corner by itself. I won’t sell it to nobody else, it’ll be yourn. Then when you come in Saturday and pay me I’ll give it to you. How does that sound to you?

  Arnold took up his crokersack, came off the stool. It sounds like so much horseshit to me, he said. I reckon I’ll take my business elsewhere.

  Bradshaw had been taking all this in. What you got in the sack, Arnold?

  A bullsnake.

  A bullsnake? Let me see. What the hell are you doing with a bullsnake?

  I just caught it. It was the biggest one I ever seen and I figured I might scout up some use for it. Maybe sell it to the fair when it comes through. He was unwiring the top, Bradshaw and Edgewater off their stools now, inside the bag they witnessed a vision offered up of ancient evil, scaly piebald skin dusted incongruously with meal or grain. Coils moving ceaselessly on themselves, lidless serpent’s eyes implacable and old as time. Some medium other than flesh here perhaps, the means by which nightmares are made carnate.

  Jesus. It looks just like a copperhead.

  They favor some but it’s a bullsnake all right. It blowed and swole up big as the calf of ye leg when I’se catchin im. I like to never got him in that sack.

  How big is he?

  Lord, I don’t know. He was longern a hoe handle but I didn’t have nothin to measure the hoe handle with.

  By now Bradshaw had drunk five or six beers and perhaps he had divined a use for the snake. What’ll you take for him?

  I don’t know. What’d you give?

  Bradshaw was figuring. I might give a sixpack.

  A case?

  Shit. A case? I may be drunk but I ain’t crazy yet.

  I’ll take twelve beer and you can do what you want with him.

  Swalls, set him up twelve beers there.

  Swalls was separating one poke from a stack. Did you want to take them with you? he asked hopefully.

  I ain’t goin nowhere just yet. Open em and set em up on the counter where I can reach em easy and we won’t lose count of em.

  Swalls began to open bottles and align them before Arnold. Arnold’s eyes had a dreamy, faraway look to them. His dry lips moved as he counted the bottles. Swalls was at subtracting from the dwindling pile of money. You let that son of a bitch loose in here and me and you goin round and round, he told Bradshaw.

  Bradshaw looked at him innocently. Hell, I wadn’t goin to turn him loose. I just aim to have some fun with it. You never can tell when a situation’ll turn up where a snake’ll come in handy. He was rewiring the crokersack, stowing it between his feet. Possessive about it, a pet perhaps. He might teach it tricks.

  Lord that’s good all the way down, Arnold said, wiping a mustache of foam off his upper lip. I do believe Swalls sets out the best beer in this part of the country.

  I just get it off the beer truck, Swalls said disgustedly. I don’t bottle it myself in the backroom. I ain’t got the recipe for it.

  Edgewater went out back. There was an outhouse but he walked past it into the pines over a carpet of copper needles. He looked up. The pines moved gracefully in some wind that never touched the surface of the earth. Beyond their dark tops the sky was deep and limitless and he felt momentarily alone. More akin to the hawks that wheeled against the blue void as if determined to leave there marks of their passage, he felt adrift in distance, all destinations awash in a sea of miles. All points of the compass equidistant, himself slightly drunk at the exact center of the world. He buttoned his pants and went back out of the pines.

  There was a man and a woman ascending the steps to the Knob and a pickup with an enormous set of bullhorns mounted on the hood sitting in the parking lot. Edgewater followed the pair in. The man was heavyset and unshaven and he wore shapeless dirty overalls. His face was florid as if he dwelt perpetually in some state of banked rage. His eyes were shrewd and small and not unlike holes chiseled into some chaotic darkness that seethed behind the mask he wore for the world to see. He moved with an inherent arrogance as if whatever was in his way would move before he reached it. The woman clutched his arm as if he were holding her afloat in perilous waters. She was younger than he was and heavily made up, eyebrows shaved off and then penciled back on in an expression of arch surprise, as if the world was constantly coming up with new toys to amuse her. She stood unsteadily, swaying slightly as if drunk or deranged with the heat.

  The man took a leather billfold out of his hip pocket and extracted a bill from it. Sack us up about half a case, he told Swalls. He looked all about, small eyes blinking in the gloom. What say, Bradshaw?

  What do ye know.

  I thought you’s out west somers shittin in tall cotton.

  Bradshaw did not reply. He returned to his beer, stared into the mirror past the upraised amber of his bottle. The mirror gave the room an illusion of spaciousness, himself reflected small and blond at its center.

  Take it out of this here. Me and Freda headin down to Lexington tonight.

  We goin all the way to Lexington just to eat fish, Freda told Swalls.

  You may start out eatin fish, the man said and winked at Swalls. You liable to wind up with something else in your mouth, you don’t watch me.

  She laughed, a sound harsh as splintered glass. She smiled at Edgewater and Bradshaw, a scarlet vacuous smile such as a celebrity might bestow upon an adoring public or flashing cameras. Hush your nasty mouth, she said, swinging on his arm.

  Hold my change for me, Swalls. I got to step out back a minute. He disengaged himself from the woman and took up one of the beers and went out. She stood for a moment as if lost or set adrift. She looked around and crossed the floor to the jukebox and leaned against it as if she drew sustenance from the cool blue neon within. She fumbled coins from out a purse, dropped them, punched buttons.

  That’s as lowbred a son of a bitch as ever shit between shoeleather, Bradshaw said into Edgewater’s ear.

  The jukebox began to sing to them, a country blues. Lessons learned the hard way. Just a deck of cards and a jug of wine, it cautioned, and a woman’s lies make a life like mine.

  Who? That man with her?

  Yeah. D.L. Harkness.

  Well I’m a son of a bitch.

  What? Do you know him?

  No, but I run up with a feller that did. Roosterfish Lipscomb.

  Goddamn, old Roosterfish. I didn’t know you knowed him. What’s that crazy old shit up to?

  It’s been a while since I’ve seen him.

  That cocksucker Harkness and me got into it one time. Right after my uncle died. Son of a bitch can’t lea
ve a widderwoman alone. Come suckin around there and I finally had to run him off. Some man dies and he beats the shittin hearse to the house. Bradshaw fell to studying the crokersack. Goddamn, he said. Wait here a minute, Billy. I’ll be right back. He arose with the sack.

  Swalls stayed him with his voice. Bradshaw, you start him up to where I have to whup him and I’ll fall right in on you.

  Bradshaw was all injured innocence. Arnold and Edgewater turned to watch him go. The woman was lost in deep study of the jukebox. Bradshaw raised a disparaging hand to Swalls in dismissal. The screen door slapped and Swalls shook his head disgustedly.

  Bradshaw was back in and seated before Harkness returned. Harkness drained his bottle and set it on the bar and pocketed his change without counting it and took up the sacked beer. Let’s go, he called to the woman.

  Edgewater studied him. He could see nothing about Harkness that would cause women to cast aside home and hearth and follow him. Yet there seemed something elemental about him, as if all the layers of convention had been peeled away leaving nothing save the need for procreation and violence.

  When they were outside and their footfalls fading Bradshaw arose. Billy, you and Arnold come out here a minute. I want you to see this here.

  They went out and seated themselves in the canebottom chairs. In the parking lot Harkness had the woman by the arm and seemed to be helping her into the truck. They seemed to be doing some curious dance, feet shuffling on the little white gravel.

  A deep blue dusk lay slanted on the land. Beyond the high porches, a descending wall of pines fell away and across their tops. Edgewater could see distant hollows where shadows accrued mauve and still and from them mist rose like smoke from faults in the earth. He wondered if people dwelt in these hollows. What secrets troubled their pillowed heads. A long and empty road wound in and out of his vision.

  The truck cranked and wheeled around to turn. It started forward and went fifteen or twenty feet and suddenly the brake lights came on and it abruptly rocked to a halt and the door on the driver’s side sprang open. Harkness leapt out with the woman clinging to his back as if she were riding him. He had her arms wrapped about his neck and her legs entwining his waist like some succubus he was fleeing and she was babbling incoherently. Harkness ran a few steps then halted, dancing jerkily trying to shake her off. She slid down and set spraddlelegged in the gravel holding him by his feet and Harkness was jerking an enormous pistol from the shapeless fold of his overalls. She was crying and pointing at the truck and she turned a wild face on Edgewater and Bradshaw. Snake snake snake, she seemed to be saying. Big goddamned snake in there. Harkness fired into the interior of the truck and they could hear glass break.

  Jesus, Edgewater said. He arose and seemed to be seeking some sort of shelter.

  The snake came writhing out and dropped from the running board, moved in smooth undulations toward the pinewoods. Harkness shot at it three or four times and they could hear the bullets whining off the rocks and see little puffs of dust and gravel rising as if the ground the snake fled across was mined. Harkness ceased and began peering cautiously into the truck should the serpent have brothers there or reinforcements.

  Bradshaw had slid out of his chair and he lay on his back on the rough board floor. He was holding his sides and his face was congested with laughter. Harkness had the gun aloft and he ran up the steps to where he lay as if to see had a stray bullet struck him.

  Who put that fuckin snake in my truck? His face was enraged and his eyes rolling wildly and there was no slack at all left in the trigger of the pistol. Did you do it?

  Bradshaw was shaking his head wordlessly from side to side and he seemed to be trying to stop laughing. He brought his face under momentary control but when he saw Freda crawling drunkenly about the ground his face twisted and he lay back weakly and went back to shaking his head.

  Crazy hillbilly son of a bitch, Harkness said. Couldn’t get any sense out of ye with a can opener. If I knowed you done it I’d shoot off ever one of your toes. He raised the gun and glanced one sharp glance at Edgewater and at Swalls’s dark bulk behind the screen.

  Bradshaw stopped laughing. Hell, she was in there with us. Ask her if I done it.

  Harkness pocketed the gun. I doubt she knows she’s in the world, he said. He turned and descended the steps. When he was in the parking lot he leaned down and jerked her to her feet. They got into the truck without looking again toward the Knob and drove away.

  Fine lot of friends I got, Bradshaw said. You’da stood right there and watched that big son of a bitch rip off my arms and legs and not lifted a finger to help me.

  When Swalls made no reply Bradshaw continued. Edgewater here’s my buddy. I run up with him in Wayne County and he saved my life. Or my ass. We been traveling together since then.

  Swalls glanced once at Edgewater who was staring at the bar as if in distraction. Edgewater’s eyes were blank and black as onyx and nothing showed there but his glare. Swalls evinced no other interest in Bradshaw’s life, or ass, saved or otherwise.

  Bradshaw finished his beer, slid the bottle back as if in some gesture of finality and arose. Well, drink up and let’s get on. We might catch a ride on home.

  I’ll just wait. I got to get on.

  Git on where? Bradshaw mocked him. Hell, you promised you’d stay awhile on the farm. I want you to meet my folks.

  After a time Edgewater shrugged and arose, as if one choice were the same as another, all roads the same in the end. He followed Bradshaw toward the door. Halfway there Swalls cleared his throat.

  I guess you heard they buried your daddy last fall.

  For an instant Bradshaw’s face went blank as if he had momentarily forgotten where he was and his face faltered, a step left half completed. Then he grinned tightly, eyes slick as muddy stones.

  I heard it on the radio.

  Late of any afternoon you might see him at his rounds. Down off the curving declensions of Rocky Hill in the pickup with the bullhorns, some gross and boastful advertisement for himself, as if the truck itself was resultant from some mythical coupling of flesh and chrome. Down Three Mile Pike and across the river to the Knob or perhaps to Early McKnight’s for a halfpint or a quart of homebrew and a laugh or two with the boys. He might rock awhile on Early’s porch with miscreants of lesser light than himself while dusk fell and tell his lies and listen with scant attention to theirs but he was always abstracted, seemed as if he were straining toward some sound he could not quite hear.

  Then down the line with the quart of homebrew between his legs and the miles of graveled road slewing away and the night coming as if the truck had left some land of daylight and was nearing regions perpetually in darkness.

  From their porches men might watch the truck pass and spit and say, There the son of a bitch goes.

  Harkness was wedgeshaped from the shoulder down but was an inverted wedge as if he’d momentarily softened and gravity had reshaped him with a wider stomach and hips.

  McKnight mused, His ass got built up that way from totin that heavy pocketbook. He likes to shoot folks but what he likes bettern than that is cuttin em with a pocketknife and what he likes best of all is screwin them. He one of those fellers that gets away with everything, nothing don’t touch him. He could slide through hell and never even singe his hair.

  And another: Yeah. D.L. thinks ever night is Saturday night.

  There was about him the proportion of myth, legend. This was told on McKnight’s front porch: Talkin about D.L., you member that airplane he had? It’s the only plane ever was around this town. He got it somers when he come back here after the war. Mighta gambled and got it like he did that sawmill. He was always wild. Anyhow, he could fly it. He had all that ground dozed off there behind his house where he could take off in it and if he come in at night his old lady used to go out there and park and shine the car lights cross that field so he could land.

  Him and two more was up there one day drinkin and foolin around. You know how crazy he is. T
hey was down on the Tennessee River flying under bridges and such foolishness as that and just kept getting drunker all the time. Come night they headed back. They got nearly home and D.L. radioed his old lady to get out there and get them lights on. He got where he thought he was home and seen a pair of car lights shinin. All it was, some coonhunters or somebody courting out in the woods but D.L. was drunk and he said, There she is, boys. Less set her down. Well sir, he set her down right out in the damn woods and they was tree limbs warpin em and all that and Bellwether, he was the sheriff then, he went out and investigated and he said they wadn’t a piece of that airplane you couldn’t have toted off in a shoebox and he said Harkness and them was a hanging in the trees like varmints. You know it tore that airplane into scrapiron and never killed a one of them drunk sons of bitches.

  He owned a warren of mudcrept houses in Sycamore Center and his destination might lie there. The rents might be due, some were better collected at night. A bathrobed housewife might meet him at the door, a door opening out of musty darkness, onto another kind of darkness, a balmy summer dusk studded with porch lights and fireflies. A husband on the nightshift perhaps, who knew. She on the nightshift herself. Come in, Mr. Harkness. He owned the house, he needed no invitation, he was already in.

  Watching the blackness roll by the windshield, the night would become a corporeal medium he moved through, the bullhorns splitting it into quadrants that sped below, above, to the right and left, a swimming amalgamation of trees and houses and empty stretches of silent pinewoods where a deer might whirl and vanish or buzzards rise reluctantly from their feeding and wheel away into the dark but all the while the wheels kept turning, the horns kept separating the night, he drove toward a point where the last of the eventide might go by in tattered shards like windtorn crepepaper and hot incandescence break upon him in a wave and consume him.

  No less a predator than the foxes that turned away from his headlamps, eyes orange as firecoals, no less an endangered species.