by William Gay
Even with all their household artifacts unloaded and inside, the house still seemed somewhat vacant. It was a huge old steep-roofed farmhouse with seven rooms and what they had only made it look like some children’s playhouse or a place tramps had slept then moved on: mismatched crockery with chipped edges, worn towels and quilts. A blackened coffeepot with the glass missing.
I guess we can seal off part of the rooms, Sudy said doubtfully. It’d be easier to heat anyway. When you start getting paid we can buy us some new furniture.
I guess so, Edgewater said, not as if the prospect fired him with ambition. He looked around the room. A blackened stone fireplace taking up much of one wall. An old couch and chair a previous tenant had left and that Edgewater had paid the landlord ten dollars for. The kitchen held a stove. Another room a bed. The air seemed damp and chill, it was colder inside than out.
You want me to try to build a fire? Are you cold?
A little bit. She determined to put the best face on things. It might be nice to have a fire in a fireplace, I never lived in a house that had one before. I’ll make us some sandwiches or something for supper.
Edgewater walking about his grounds, surveying by dusk his new dwelling. The house was set atop a rise and the yard sloped gradually away to where a wovenwire fence bordered a creek. There was a wooden bridge on concrete pylons spanning the creek, and from this bridge the house patinaed with the opaque air of dusk became more opulent, its faded paint and dusty windows were obscured and it seemed impressive and brooding, an abode befitting some country squire of an earlier time.
Inside the squire’s wife prepared his evening meal, fragrant kettles steamed and meat roasted on a spit, drops of grease flared bluely and died in umber coals. A larder of provisions to dull winter’s threat. Windows chinked to stay the wind and a cedar backlog on the fire. The squire’s young wife leaned to tend the fire, left hand to her long hair, a funnel of sparks shot up the flue, there was a bright expanse of glimpsed thigh. Lean red hounds ranged restlessly in the dogtrot, ice from their feet littered the oak parquetry and would not melt. The night drew on and on.
In days gone his grandmother had owned such a house, who slept there now? Did old gentle voices recite transgressions, whisper old secrets better untold?
Once in his youth his mother had had a thing to tell him, conspirator’s eyes bright with portent. He had not wanted it on him. Old weights better borne by the dead than passed to the living. I will skip my turn, let the earth cover it forever, whatever it was, whatever it is. I handpicked enough burdens of my own, cut away the straps but they would not fall. Old mouths now long impacted with earth would have drawn me into their tawdry intrigues, used me to people the broken landscapes of their dreams. Hard now to learn that hands beyond the grave still retain their grasp.
There was an old oneroom clapboard outbuilding with a door canted on the remaining hinge and within an air of sheltered gloom, the earth floor strewn with a welter of broken and abandoned tools, darkness already crouching in the corners. Old plows and castoff wheels and geared devices locked in rust and unidentifiable, an old sheetiron heater with the sides devoured by longcold fires. A scrapiron monger’s dream. A leaning flue of claymortared bricks, a tiny window still intact were testament this had once sheltered men. Through the moted glass the spare and bitter light fell on windbrought leaves clumping among these purposeless works of men. Summer home of copperheads and rattlers.
Leaning in the corner was an old axe near worn away with use and grinding. Edgewater took it up, wiping away the spiderwebs. He went out into the yard.
Above the bridge an enormous sycamore had been uprooted and beached here by floodwaters. Worn and barkless as driftwood, old branches gleaming white as bones in the dusk. The wood was so dead it broke when he began to chop it.
Till after full dark fell he carried wood and aligned it on the high porch. The sycamore he could break and from the hill above the toolshed old cedar stumps leached colorless and near weightless. The lights were on now in the house. Once she called to him from the porch. He went in and laid a fire. He lit it and went to gather more wood. When he went back in this time the room was warm.
She had quilts spread before the fire, they lay on them. Here at the tailend of this portentous day, silence seemed to have settled on them. Her hair was undone, she’d put on a gown. He lifted it over her hips, felt the cool mound of her thickness. He lay an ear against it, perhaps he could hear what life swam in these seas. Unmarked, white pristine, virgin. As if no eyes had ever beheld her, no sun shone here, repository of ancient wisdom.
Turn the lights out.
Why?
I just don’t like it with the lights on, she said.
How do you know?
I just know I wouldn’t. I don’t like you lookin at me.
He kissed her navel, turned his cheek then and pillowed his head against her as if listening for the roar of distant seas.
Whose is it?
What?
Whose is it?
You know it’s yours.
All right. I’ll take it then.
He lay with his cheek there for a long time and she lay beneath him motionless as if she were sleeping. He thought she might be crying and after a while he looked to see but she wasn’t. She was just lying there with the gown tabled about her breasts, staring at the whitepainted ceiling as if she thought about nothing at all.
A new world of the senses opened up to Edgewater, a world of comforts he’d forsaken or never known. Soft flesh in the morning, compliant, scented. Her breasts above him bobbing with her motion, her face abstracted, a stranger’s eyes. Somehow intent on her mark as if she had forgotten him, had never even known him. Her mouth open a little as if she could not breathe, the hair sweated at the temples, strands of it stuck to her brow. She was a face seen through the wrong end of a telescope, unseeing siltrimmed eyes staring at him from the sandy seabed, strands of seaweed twined in her fanned out yellow hair, a seasnail nestled in the hollow of her throat.
There was frost in the mornings now and a chill icy clarity to the light. Some mornings he’d build up the fire and go back to bed. When he’d go out to bring in the wood the world was all white ice, the bridge glittered. The sun above the cedared slope had moved farther away, there was a quality of remoteness to the air, to the silence. Crystals of ice glittered. There did not seem to be any world beyond the ridges that bluely bound them. The porch was icy to his bare feet. He’d crawl back in bed and she’d come awake with his shivering.
He had a job now. Every day save Thursday and Sunday he sold cars for Grimes in Ackerman’s Field. The old woman had gotten him the job, hauling in some old marker for a favor her husband had done Grimes long ago. Each day at seven-thirty he was there at work in his neat clothes, prepared to discuss the merits of various automobiles with whatever customers the day brought him, take their down payments, fill out the notes Grimes used. At noon he’d eat a sandwich in the Belly Stretcher Café amidst other merchants like himself and listen to them talk of vagaries of dealing with the public. That old woman had pressed order onto his life, forced events into a routine. He’d go to work and drive home in the evenings and Sudy’d be there. Days were shorter now, the house would be already lit, a cheering homey glow set against the umbered hills and that was the way October came that year.
When he got off work he went behind the garage where he’d parked and crippled Elmer’s chair was stationed beside the old green Fleetline. Elmer himself ensconced inside with the door closed and Edgewater’s radio playing away. Edgewater went around the front of the car and opened the door and got in.
Edgewater had a paper bag on the seat containing a carton of cigarettes and a whole strawberry pie for Sudy. He looked into the sack. The cigarettes had been opened and there were two packs gone and there was none of the strawberry pie left at all.
I done you a big favor, Billy, Elmer said. How about givin me a ride home?
I’ll take you home but I’d just as soon
not want to know about the favor. He got out and folded the chair and put it in the backseat and then he got back in and started the motor. Then he looked over at Elmer. Two fresh packs of cigarettes showed clearly through the thin material of his slacks. He had one in each front pocket. Edgewater looked up. His mouth was smeared thickly with some sort of red jellylike substance and crumbs of sticky piecrust clung in his weekold beard. His eyes were clear and innocent.
You have anything in that poke?
Cigarettes and I had my wife a pie.
You better look and see if it’s all still all right. They was two niggers out here goin through ye stuff when I come up. That’s what I’m doin here. I thought I’d set and watch ye car till you come.
Thanks, Edgewater said dryly.
I like to never run em off. I throwed rocks at em and cussed em but they won’t hardly nobody mind a cripple.
Bradshaw was sitting on top of the world.
He had had his hair cut and a barbershop shave and he fairly shone with cleanliness. There was a closecropped expanse of naked flesh at the back of his neck where the clippers had been and you could have smelled him coming from the Bay Rum alone. He had on a white nylon seethrough shirt and black beltless slacks and a pair of Winklepicker boots he had long admired through the plateglass of Ellis Drygoods. He had money in his pocket from a check he had forged on his mother and it would not be back for at least a week. A week is seven days. Who knew where he would be in a week? Empires can topple in seven days, wars be won or lost, a civilization tilt and slide into silent seas.
He had had a halfpint of peach brandy at Big Mama’s before he set out and he could tell the cards were falling right. There were times when he could do no wrong and he felt in his nerve ends that this was one such time.
On top of everything else it was Thursday and business was slow at the Knob on Thursday nights. Old men past working age who did not have to arise early on Friday mornings and whom he did not even consider competition anyway and loggers stopping by for one quick draft and a sixpack to go. He saw the evening as a chance to get reacquainted, reignite old fires. Even Swalls might not be there. Watching the highway snake away beneath him and night falling beyond the pines and with the peach brandy a warm nucleus of comfort within him he gave himself up to fantasies better left alone. One or two beers and then she’d come around the bar and pass him to the jukebox. Let him help select the songs. Bathed by the cool blue neon of the jukebox, turning, she would let her breast brush his arm. I got to be goin, he’d say. A restraining hand on his arm, the glossy scarlet mouth pouting. Why? Drink another beer or two. Old Swalls is gone and I’ll set em up to you. No, I got to go. Where you goin, Buddy? You got another girl somers?
There was an iron cot in the back Swalls sometimes used and she would lead Bradshaw to it. There in the musky tousled blankets the essence of her, the core square root of her being. He would arise like a phoenix from the tangled quilts untouched by her flames and haul up his trousers, make ready to go. Her supine body trying to draw him back into the shameless sprawl of her legs. Somehow I thought it’d be better, he’d tell her, and just let the screen door fall to behind him.
When he crossed the county line and came onto the pinebordered clapboard building it was even better than he’d dared expect. Not a single vehicle sat in the parking lot. Not even Harkness, whom he had for a moment dreaded. D.L. Harkness was an unknown quantity, a man who had transcended clocks, a man above the clocking of timecards and the rising of the sun. He parked and whistling tunelessly went up the steps and inside.
He was somewhat taken aback to see Swalls behind the bar but he went up anyway and seated himself and ordered a beer. He sat without speaking to Swalls and drank his beer and stared toward the kitchen as if he could by some occult telekinesis draw her bodily through the swinging doors. He sat for the length of time it took him to drink the beer and gaze thoughtfully at the label and then as if interpreted there his next movement, he said, Where’s Caren?
Swalls looked up from the newspaper he was reading and adjusted his glasses. His gaze lingered on Bradshaw’s sartorial splendor and his nostrils twitched delicately at the smell of Bay Rum. Thursdays is slow, he said. I give her the night off. He went back to his newspaper.
Well shit a brick, Bradshaw said. He sat in indecision, half off his stool, as if he needed to be gone somewhere else but could not remember where. His reflection in the barglass seemed to steady him, he seemed to draw reassurance from it. Give me anothern, he said.
Swalls slid him the bottle. You tryin to get out of your class, he said.
Yeah, and I reckon you wouldn’t jump it in a goddamn minute if you had the chance.
Me? I’d let her squat and piss in my face if that was her heart’s desire. But I’m a man always been aware of his limitations. That ain’t a bad thing to learn.
You seen Edgewater?
No. You mighty dressed up to be lookin for just Edgewater.
I reckon a man can clean up if wants to.
I guess so.
I never come here to talk about your philosophy of life, Bradshaw told him.
For lack of anything better to do he sat for a long time drinking beer and hoping someone he knew might show up. He played the jukebox and the morose homilies of country musicians soothed him, changed him in some subtle way so that his haloed reflection staring back at him seemed to go into the stature of myth, the raw material tragedy is made from. Unrequited love, she would never know the pain she caused him, the suffering he rose above.
He sat for a time alone on the porch in a canebottom chair with the beer bottle cradled in his lap, his feet propped on the porch railing, staring off across the valley where the river flowed unseen, and if he strained to hear, it seemed to him that he could discern the murmur of distant water. Across the bottom there were scattered lights, vague and undefined, coal oil yellow windows. As the night drew on they went out one by one, sleep stole hushed and ephemeral across the face of the land.
Cars went by sometime, indecipherable shouts occasionally as they passed the Knob. Dropping off the sloping curve the rattle of glass-packs, the hot throaty popping of burnt-out mufflers. Headlamps arching upward, leveling out, flaring across deep sleepy hollows, coon trails, the domain of owls and foxes. A few people stopped briefly, no one he knew or cared to know. He began to get drunk.
He was back inside when Caren and her date came in. She was laughing, untying blond scarfed hair. They seemed a little drunk. She was with the man in the cowboy shirt Bradshaw had seen before. The cowboy and Swalls went out into the pines where the whiskey was hidden and Caren went behind the counter and began to fill a carton with bottles of Coca-Cola. She looked up and smiled at Bradshaw. Hey, Buddy.
For some reason the smile enraged Bradshaw. Who is that?
What? Oh. Bobby Seiber from Beaver Dam. Why?
He looks like a goddamned queer to me. Wouldn’t nobody but a shittin queer wear one of them shirts.
He used to be a Golden Glove, she told him. I’ll tell him what you said and let him take you outside and show you how queer he is.
He wouldn’t get no cherry.
You’re drunk, Buddy. Go sleep it off.
She shrugged and started from behind the counter and Bradshaw said all in a rush: Caren why won’t you go out with me?
What’s in it for me?
Well hell. You go with everybody else. What’s the matter with me?
There’s nothing the matter with you, she told him, but I go with who I please. I give up fuckin for charity a long time ago.
She started toward the door and met Swalls and the cowboy coming back in. The cowboy had a halfpint in his hand and his face was flushed and he seemed drunker. Nothing would do him but he must dance. He put money in the jukebox and opened his arms and Caren fitted herself smoothly into them and they stood swaying, her smooth head pillowed against the tapestry of steers and lariats and wide open spaces. Her hips thrust against his pelvis, arms around his neck. Their eyes were clo
sed.
Shit, Bradshaw said. He went out the door and unsteadily down the steps to the parking lot. He breathed deeply to steady himself. Frigid air stung his nostrils, there was an icy weight laid against his lungs. He had forgotten it was nearing winter, he did not even know where summer had gone. Yet now the winds of late November sang in the pines, many mournful voices with age-old tales of northern snows and sleet hissing soft among the branches.
He sat down dizzily and for a moment thought he might vomit. He leaned against the cowboy’s car, rested his face against the cold metal of the quarter panel. Even after he began to feel better he continued to hunker in the gravel staring at the ground. After a time he began to pick up gravel stones from the parking lot and pour them from hand to hand. He could still hear the jukebox, another song began. He unscrewed the gas cap and began to drop the rocks one by one down the gas tank, listening to the sounds they made: first a hollow skittering rattle down the neck of the tank and then a faint splash when they struck the gas. He sat bemusedly dropping stones for some time.
When the couple came out Bradshaw had arisen and was leaned against the car pissing into the gastank. When he saw them he leapt back adjusting his clothing and there was a look of demented glee on his face.
Hey you son of a bitch. The cowboy began to run down the steps three at a time. Bradshaw angled for the pines at a dead run, darting between needled paths he knew from times past but deep into the pines a low strand of wire he did not foresee threw him face forward onto a litter of bottles and cans. He half arose to listen and could hear no pursuit. He held his breath. Lightheaded he heard the car start, saw lights flicker among the trees. He exhaled. Chickenshit, he snickered to himself. He took out a book of matches, struck one to examine his injuries. Black blood welled sluggishly from a V-shaped tear in his ankle.