The Lost Country

by William Gay

  ———

  Edgewater’s room above the pool hall was across from the doctor’s office. He had but one furnished room in the attic where the walls sloped like a truncated V inverted but there was an enormous window facing south and there was a radiator painted with aluminum paint that complemented the décor of the room and sometimes even put out heat. When it did not Edgewater shivered under his blankets and swore at it and sometimes rapped it with a piece of wood a former tenant had left and had perhaps used for this selfsame purpose. There was as well a little stove with kerosene burners and early on these winter mornings he made coffee and had his first cup by the big window in the sun and watched the day’s crop of sick folk wash up below him.

  On these cold near-zero mornings cars would park before the brick two-story building and set with motors idling, white puffs of exhaust rising and dissipating. The healthy would sometimes get out and assist the old or infirm up the steps and then return to the warmth of their cars, sit and smoke with a kind of bemused country patience until the old man or woman at length hobbled back down with their ration of pills or tonic, stood alongside the car fumbling with the door. Their clean faded overalls, their town bonnets and dresses. Something in their faces that touched him, a look of acceptance, of calm resignation. Whatever illnesses and complaints not registered here he figured not worth mentioning. On these bitter mornings when everything seemed bleak and austere to him, it seemed that all the world’s old and resigned and doomed must eventually come to his front door. In these early long dreary hours of December he fell to searching faces for folk he knew, saw none familiar.

  Save one morning near the end of the month when he saw approaching a figure he recognized, a onearmed man walking springily along the sidewalk and halting and peering up toward Edgewater’s window with a shaded hand. The window had sidepanels that cranked outward and Edgewater opened one of them and stuck his head out into the cold.

  Hey. Around at the side.

  Roosterfish waved his hand in acknowledgement and passed from Edgewater’s view of the black shingled roof and he heard the door open, after a time measured footfalls on the stairs. He unchained the latch and opened the door onto the cold and drafty landing. Roosterfish’s head and shoulders appeared above the railing.

  Come on up.

  When they were inside Roosterfish shook hands with him solemnly, pumping his hand up and down as he’d seen old folks do. Roosterfish stood peering all about the room, eyes soaking up all these uptown wonders. Even a picture on the wall. Aswim in gaudy greens and reds Longfellow’s village smithy raised a sledge beneath the chestnut tree. A mighty man was he.

  Get you a seat. You want some coffee?

  Roosterfish selected a chair, aligned it near the hissing radiator. I could use some. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it so by God cold. I come as nigh freezing to death last night as I ever want to.

  Edgewater poured steaming coffee into a cracked porcelain cup. Remnant of other days. He passed it to Roosterfish. Where are you staying?

  I got a room in that goddamn roachtrap they call a hotel but I’m plannin on leavin. I spent most of last night with my mattress wrapped around me and the rest of it beatin on the goddamn walls for heat. Tonight I plan on takin my blanket down by the tie yard where it’s warmer.

  Bunk in here if you want to.

  I don’t want to put ye out. I just kindly wanted to see ye. We split under unusual circumstances.

  Yes we did. What did they do to you? Whatever happened about all that?

  Not much. There was a plague of fire hit McNairy County there for a while. Barns went up in the night. Squally times. I spent many a night laid in the brush while the law kicked through ashes huntin for clues.

  I guess by you being here they never found any.

  Oh, they knowed who it was all right. They had enough people tellin. And I expect maybe they’s a warrant or two layin around somers. But knowin and hangin don’t necessarily sleep together. All that old shit ain’t nothin new to me.

  Edgewater was looking him up and down; Roosterfish looked much as he remembered him, except that he was thinner, the bones in his face more pronounced, the eyes perhaps more deepset. Roosterfish had always put a neat and clean appearance, and even now he was freshly shaven, his cheeks slick and gleaming. Clean clothes, hair neatly trimmed. A smell of talcum, Bay Rum.

  I would of come looked you up sooner but I didn’t want to bother ye. First they told me you was livin way out in the tules somers and all married and settled down. Then I heard about ye bad luck and I didn’t figure you much wanted to see nobody.

  Well. I guess it happened more to other people than it did to me. I’m still alive anyway. Elmer said he saw you way back in the fall.

  Yeah. Him and an armful of stolen chickens. Ah, I just passed through that night. Runnin me a little reconnaissance, like the army does. My main interest here was the cockfights, and they don’t have em that time of year, so I had to wait for cold weather. Is they any of that coffee left?

  Edgewater refilled his cup. What did you find at home?

  What I expected. Her gone. The house all tore up and everthing worth anything stole. Winders busted and a dead cat on the kitchen table.

  Edgewater seated himself on the windowsill, a weight of cold glass lay on his back. And you never heard where she went?

  Oh yes. I heard several places she went. I even checked a few of em out. Each one of em just a little shadier and a little further down the line than the last one.

  You never found her.

  I quit wantin to.

  Well. Anyway I’m glad to see you.

  We had a few times, didn’t we?

  Yeah we did.

  I had some after you left, too. Got kind of squirrelly there after they killed my rooster. They purely kicked the hell out of me, too. That old pistol hadn’t of blowed up I believe they’da killed me. They wanted you as bad or worse than they did me. They hated your ass, son. They could understand me; they couldn’t figure you out for shit.

  I yelled at you before I jumped. There wasn’t time to do a whole lot of planning.

  Oh, I know, I know. I was a little addled or somethin. I just couldn’t believe they was a son of a bitch alive mean enough to kick my rooster in the river.

  Roosterfish fell silent, seemed not to want to dwell on the details of the past. He laid an arm across the surface of the warm radiator. It sure is tricked out nice here. Beats the hell out of sleepin under a bluff. Lord, I bet it’s cold on that old river this morning.

  Like I said, bring your blankets and stuff around and bunk here. You can have the bed or the floor either.

  They might throw ye out.

  Edgewater shrugged. I need to be gone anyway. Seems like I can’t get started. That might be just the thing to get me down the line.

  I was aimin to ask you about that. What are your plans?

  I don’t have any plans.

  You not still goin on east?

  I just don’t have any plans.

  I reckon you could do worse than settle here. You reckon your old lady’ll come back?

  No, Edgewater said. I just guess her life was sad. I never knew what to do to keep it from being sad.

  It ain’t none of my business, I’se just askin.

  Who told you all this? I didn’t think there was five people here knew my name.

  I’se talkin to Buddy Bradshaw.

  Edgewater smiled. Yeah, that figures. No, I don’t think she’ll be back. I doubt I’d be here if she did. Are you going back on the road? he asked.

  No. I’m through with the road. I don’t look back, when a thing’s settled it’s over and done with. I done it a long time and I ain’t got regret one, even the whitecaps, but I’m through with it.

  What about Harkness? Do you not call that looking back?

  No. I don’t. That ain’t back, it’s here. It ain’t settled yet, how could it go anywhere?

  In the afternoon they walked down the street and through an alley
and cut across a backyard to the hotel and picked up Roosterfish’s things. Roosterfish burdened with his bedclothes, coming up the sidewalk with a great bundle of clothes and blankets athwart his thin shoulders, like a derelict or evictee or survivor escaping with all the effects he could salvage from fire or flood.

  He made himself a pallet on the floor near the radiator and late in the afternoon they went down to the Snowwhite Café for supper. After they ate they walked in the poolroom, stood a moment in indecision before the door. You want a beer? Roosterfish asked.

  It doesn’t matter. I guess I could drink one.

  Tell ye what. I got a couple pints of Gypsy Rose in my stuff. How’s that sound?

  Like old times, Edgewater said.

  I got somethin to tell ye I ain’t told nobody else.

  Waning light of late afternoon frangible on the wall. Roosterfish already wrapped in a blanket, shoulders against the wall, his bottle of wine a deep opaque purple. He had a tale he must tell.

  I seen the damnest thing down there one night I ever seen. I was laid out in the woods in front of Tyler’s house kinda keepin an eye on things and tryin to decide what I was goin to do to him. I’d done set fire to his car but hell that didn’t tip the scale. I was laid out late one Saturday night waitin for him to come in from wherever he was and his old lady was home, you member that young gal over at Simmons’s looked like she was half crazy? She come out a time or two and looked up and down the road and then she’d go back in. Wadn’t a sign of a light on nowhere and I got to kindly wonderin what she’s doin in there in the dark. Time drug by. I had me a bottle of wine and I was stretched out there waitin and takin me a little nip now and then. I figured he’d done me a pretty bad wrong and I’se makin my plans. I had my gun. After I got beat nearly to death like I done I’se about half crazy. I could of burnt him in his sleep and never turned a hair. There wadn’t nothin left of me but meanness.

  Anyway, after a while he come. Somebody pulled up and let him out. Bunch of men and women too, a whole damn carful. Drunk, sounded like. I just laid there watchin. He got out staggerin and sniggerin to hisself and wanderin around the yard. Seemed like he couldn’t find the porch. Directly he got up the steps and kindly squared his shoulders and prissed on in. You member how he walked.

  Roosterfish took out his pipe and clasped it between his knees, packed the bowl with roughcut tobacco. He took it up and popped a kitchen match on his thumbnail and lit the pipe and sat with eyes unfocused, staring at nothing.

  He stepped in that door and all hell broke loose. It was the goddamndest thing I ever seen or heard tell of. It looked like all the winders just lit up at once and somethin went like dinnymite goin off. It went whoom. Whoom. The goddamned doors blowed open and here come Tyler sailin backwards through em and lit plumb out in the front yard. It got quietern hell. Just that dark house and the doors gaped open and her probably settin there with a scattergun in her lap.

  Jesus H. Christ. What’d you do?

  I can tell you more what I didn’t do. I didn’t hang around for the inquest. I didn’t step down the road and call the law. You talkin about a man clockin the miles, I clocked em. I figured they might be some way they could work it around where I done it and I felt a dire need to be elsewhere.

  He blew out smoke, smoothed his thin bird’s wing of gray hair. I can’t tell you how it made me feel seein it. I can’t describe it. There I was layin in that brush hatin him and she just cut him in two with a shotgun. I felt like God Almighty. It was scary.

  They came down the slope onto the highway, detoured through the yard of the concrete plant, gray concrete trucks set in rows like some arcane beasts at pasture. A dozer with its tracks frozen deep in the whorled and icy earth. Above them the great mixer still and silent as if it were some monolith abandoned by a prior race unable to survive in so winterlocked a world as this one. A great frozen mire of sand and gravel and loaders parked with buckets dropped, old piles of wornout or obsolete machinery Edgewater had no inkling the purpose of. Through a hedge of fragile weeds that broke with their passage and up the bank of a ditch toward the Southside Café past the county garage where gravel trucks idled white smoke and men stood with hands over a fire in a fifty-gallon drum as if they were charged with its protection.

  Roosterfish had a plan. A plan of stark simplicity yet it was a day or two in coming. Hints must be dropped, reactions gauged. Walking down South Elm past the water tank he looked all around to see were there spies about and decided to reveal it all to Edgewater. All there was were the bleak empty streets of December, a vacant lot with the restless stirring of wintersered weeds.

  I wouldn’t give a chance like this to just anybody. It’s big money. But I kindly took a likin to ye and I know for a fact you ain’t loose at the mouth. I figured you ort to have a shot at it.

  Roosterfish.

  What?

  I don’t want a shot at it.

  Why hellfire. You don’t even know what it is.

  And don’t want to.

  Why shitfire, Billy.

  And you ought to be forgetting it right now.

  You don’t even know what I plan to do.

  You’re going to tell me, whether I want to know or not, I expect.

  I owe it to ye, son. He looked carefully about again. I’m goin out there and clean out Harkness and that bunch at the cockfight. If I can’t do it one way I’ll do it another.

  Good God. I knew it.

  Sure you did, Billy. That’s why I want you in on it. You’re smart.

  I’m damn sure smart enough not to get mixed up in some halfbaked scheme like this.

  Hell, it can’t fail. Just give me the benefit of the doubt, Billy, have I ever steered you wrong? Now listen. Robbin a cockfight, whoever heard of a thing like that around here? That’d be the last thing they’d expect. And cockfightin’s against the law. What’re they gonna do, run to the sheriff?

  I can tell you what they’re going to do. They’ll blow your foolish ass away, Roosterfish. You better think this over.

  I been thinkin it over. I got it all planned.

  I don’t want to hear it.

  Roosterfish took a drink of wine, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I got me a gun, he said after a time. I’m just goin in to watch the fights, see? Just like anybody else. When everbody’s inside watchin the fight you’re out there stealin all the rotor buttons out of their distributors.

  The which? Edgewater asked in disbelief.

  Stealin the rotor buttons. That way they ain’t goin nowhere. We’ll have money and be haulin ass for warmer climates. I can’t stand this goddamn cold weather. My blood’s getting thin or somethin. This wind’s cutting through me this year like a knife. I’m getting me some money and headin someplace got some sun about it.

  Edgewater seemed in deep study. What I could do is jack up their cars and trucks and take all the wheels off them, he said at length. Roll them off in some holler somewhere. That way they’d still be stuck even if they found where we hid the rotor buttons.

  Son, I don’t believe you understand the magnitude of the money we’re talkin about here. I told you they was some highrollers shows up at them cockfights. We could wind up with eight or ten thousand easy; that’s Mexico, son, or Arizona. Layin in the sun and some gal smearin ye right good with tannin oil.

  What we’d wind up with is the graveyard or the penitentiary one. Now I’m going to say this just one time as clearly as I can. I want no part of it. I’ve spent all the time I plan to in jailhouses. And if you’ve got any sense at all you’ll give this up and never let it cross your mind again.

  You might be right.

  You know damn well I’m right.

  I ortn’t tried to bring you into this. It’s between me and Harkness. No hard feelins. I guess I ortn’t even mention this neither, but I will. I been keepin my ear pretty close to the ground where Harkness is concerned and I hear he’s been campin on ye old lady’s doorstep. Did I tell ye he was a lowlife son of a bitch, or did I?


  You told me.

  Billy, don’t it make you mad?

  I don’t know. I guess not.

  Why?

  Why should it? You look at things and you don’t see just one thing, you see a…a progression of things. One of them leading to the next. The inevitability of things.

  You may see that, what you said. All I see is a lowlife son of a bitch and a way to take him down a notch or two.

  Edgewater did not reply immediately. In the darkness he could hear the soft, almost furtive sound of Roosterfish drinking, the cap being screwed on.

  How do you drink that treacly shit? Edgewater asked. You could pour it on pancakes.

  It grows on ye. Are you tellin me if you had a chance to even up with Harkness you wouldn’t take it?

  I guess I am.

  How come?

  I just told you. The inevitability of things. There are things that are going to happen, things already set in motion. They’ll happen no matter what I do. And to do what you’re talking about, you have to care about some particular thing a hell of a lot. You have to be obsessed. I guess I’m not. Look at it this way. If somebody else had took your old lady you wouldn’t even be thinking about Harkness.

  Roosterfish took a slow drink, thinking. No. It has to be Harkness.

  All right. The way you told it he never held a gun on her, never kidnapped or raped her. Why aren’t you hunting her? She’s the one that said all that love, honor, and obey stuff, not Harkness.

  No. You’ve got it all balled up. It’s between me and Harkness. It’s just somethin you don’t do, and he done it. I don’t care if it was in her all the time, ticking like a time bomb. Harkness set it off.

  You may be right, Roosterfish. It’s none of my business. No hard feelings. I just thought I’d tell you my position.

  Well. It don’t sound like you’ve got one. But you won’t be sayin nothin about what I told you?