by William Gay
The ramifications of what he’d done or not done were dizzying, he’d made a lifetime out of living on the edge but this time he’d slipped and fallen further than he’d ever meant to go. It ain’t everybody can fall five scaffolds and not break nothing, Rojo had said. What had she thought when everything began to shut down? Whole banks of memory rendered into oblivion, had she seen the little night watchman going from room to room throwing breakers, clicking his flashlight down the dark corridors, will the last one out turn out the light?
She seemed to hover the room yet, dusting the bric-a-brac, straightening the giltframed photograph of some ancestor whose bones had gone to dust. Most of the photographs were of Wildman though and they charted his growth from infancy to adulthood like graphs showing the evolution of a species. One of a toddler sitting in a childsize rocker, a disembodied grandmother’s hand on his shoulder and all there was of the young Wildman left was the dark and haunted eyes that studied this likeness.
He went into the kitchen and turned on the light. He made a cup of instant Nescafe from the hot water tap and went with the cup in his hand through the kitchen door into what had been the living room and he saw with a stricken wonder that everything had changed forever.
The rosewood coffin on its catafalque set against the west wall where the sofa had always been. The casket and its occupant seemed to dwarf the room and were twinned by the opaque window behind it. He approached it, stared down at the stern old woman with irongrey hair and pincenez. Every detail was stored in his mind with a clinical detachment. The prim pursed mouth was slacker now, a stitch had given and left a small bloodless incision, he could see the wadded cotton or whatever her mouth was packed with. Studying her so intently he saw with a dull loathing a faint blue pulse beating in her throat.
He stumbled numbly backward over a folding chair. He saw with no surprise that the room had been set about with such chairs all alike stamped McFarland Funeral Home. He righted the one he’d stumbled over and seated himself like a patient spectator awaiting the commencement of some arcane show.
He sat waiting for time to draw on. In truth time had ceased to exist, neither past nor future, all motion had slowed finally to a drugged halt and all there was at the end of the world was an old woman in a casket and a man watching with heavylidded eyes from a folding chair. Then there was a faint rustle of funeral silk, the smell of lemon verbena, and the old woman raised her head. Cocked slightly sidewise in an attitude of listening. Then a scarcely audible sigh, and she pillowed her head again on the quilted satin. The clock in the corner began to toll, one, two, three, twelve times in all and she raised herself again, pulling herself upright with a clawed hand on the edge of the casket, tendons pulled taut as wires with exertion. She turned toward the window, listening intently. He knew intuitively that she was listening for him, or for what he had once been, an eighteen year old Wildman that always had to be home by midnight.
He heard the sound of an automobile approaching, headlights slid whitely across the wall, ceased and vanished. The engine died. The old woman sank back to rest with an expression of satisfaction. The clock began to strike again, tolled on and on, turning to see he watched its hands ratcheting madly backward, he could hear the protesting grind of metal on metal, gears and pins and springs being sheared off and broken. When the hands ceased at six o’clock the old woman began to rise again and the room was saturated with the smell of brewing coffee, he could hear it singing in the glasstopped percolator, he could smell bacon sizzling in hot grease. In the kitchen pots and pans rattled, cutlery was being laid out. Outside a car door slammed, a dog dead these twenty years scrabbled up from the porch and went running to meet its master. The smells of coffee and bacon intensified, became overpowering, a corrupt stench of charred meat.
The air was tinged with greasy smoke, somewhere flames were crackling like something feeding. He turned toward the kitchen. Beyond the door was a strobic flickering like summer lightning and thick black smoke rolled along the floor. There was a step on the porch. Someone was approaching the door, he could hear the dog leaping and whining to be petted. Flames were darting up and down the wallpaper playfully and the rug beneath his feet buckled and began to smoke, ceramic cats warped and ran like melting glass, the very air was aflame.
He took a deep breath and sucked in pure fire. The flesh of his lungs seared and crackled and burst with thin hisses of steam. The last sound he heard was the screendoor opening on its keeperspring and then everything fell from him in a rush, Beth and the thousanddollar story and the midnight runs to Clifton and every detail of his life that had made him Buddy Wildman and no other. Years reeled backward in a dizzying rush and abruptly he was on the floor, a naked child crawling about the bubbling linoleum, hair ablaze and swaddled in fire, feeling about for his playthings amongst the painted flames.
WHERE WILL YOU GO WHEN YOUR SKIN CANNOT CONTAIN YOU?
THE JEEPSTER COULDN’T KEEP STILL. For forty-eight hours he’s been steady on the move and no place worked for long. He’d think of somewhere to be and go there and almost immediately suck the life from it, he could feel it charring around him. He felt he was on fire and running with upraised arms into a stiff cold wind but instead of cooling him the wind just fanned the flames. His last so-called friend had faded on him and demanded to be left by the roadside with his thumb in the air.
The Jeepster drove westward into a sun that had gone down the sky so fast it left a fiery wake like a comet. Light pooled above the horizon like blood and red light hammered off the hood of the SUV he was driving. He put on his sunglasses. In the failing day the light was falling almost horizontally and the highway glittered like some virtual highway in a fairy tale or nightmare.
His so-called friend had faded because The Jeepster was armed and dangerous. He was armed and dangerous and running on adrenaline and fury and grief and honed to such a fine edge that alcohol and drugs no longer affected him. Nothing worked on him. He had a pocket full of money and nine-millimeter automatic shoved into the waistband of his jeans and his T-shirt pulled down over it. He had his ticket punched for the graveyard or the penitentiary and one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train. He had everything he needed to get himself killed, to push the borders back and alter the very geography of reality itself.
On the outskirts of Ackerman’s Field the neon of a Texaco station bled into the dusk like a virulent stain. Night was falling like some disease he was in the act of catching. At the pumps he filled the SUV up and watched the traffic accomplish itself in a kind of wonder. Everyone should have been frozen in whatever attitude they’d held when the hammer fell on Aimee and they should hold that attitude forever. He felt like a plague set upon the world to cauterize and cleanse it.
He went through the pneumatic door. He had his Ray-Bans shoved on the top of his shaven head and he was grinning his gap-toothed grin. Such patrons as were about regarded him warily. He looked like bad news. He looked like the letter edged in black, the telegram shoved under your door at three o’clock in the morning.
You seen that Coors man? The Jeepster asked the man at the register.
Seen what? The man asked. Somewhere behind them a cue stick tipped a ball and it went down the felt in a near-silent hush and a ball rattled into a pocket and spiraled down and then there was just silence.
The Jeepster laid money on the counter. I know all about that Coors man, he said. I know Escue was broke and he borrowed ten bucks off the Coors man for the gas to get to where Aimee was working. Where’s he at?
The counterman made careful change. He don’t run today, he said. Wednesday was the last day he’s been here. And what if he did run, what if he was here? How could he know? He was just a guy doing Escue a favor. He didn’t know.
He didn’t know, he didn’t know. The Jeepster said. You reckon that’ll keep the dirt out of his face? I don’t.
They regarded each other in silence. The Jeepster picked up his change and slid it into his pocket. He leaned toward the counte
rman until their faces were very close together. Could be you chipped in a few bucks yourself, he finally said.
Just so you know, the counterman said, I’ve got me a sawed-off here under the counter. And I got my hand right on the stock. You don’t look just right to me. You look crazy. You look like you escaped from prison or the crazy house.
I didn’t escape, The Jeepster said. They let me out and was glad to see me go. They said I was too far gone, they couldn’t do anything for me. They said I was a bad influence.
The Jeepster in Emile’s living room. Emile was thinking thus must be the end-time, the end of days. The rapture with graves bursting open and fold sailing skyward like superheroes. There was no precedent for this. The Jeepster was crying. His shaven head was bowed. His fingers were knotted at the base of his skull. A letter on each finger, LOVE and HATE inscribed there by some drunk or stoned tattooist in blurred jailhouse blue. The fingers were interlocked illegibly and so spelled nothing. The Jeepster’s shoulders jerked with his sobbing, there was more news to read on his left arm: HEAVEN WON’T HAVE ME AND HELL’S AFRAID I’M TAKING OVER.
Emile himself had fallen on hard times. Once the scion of a prosperous farm family, now he could only look back on long-lost days that were bathed in an amber haze of nostalgia. He’d inherited all this and for a while there were wonders. Enormous John Deere cultivators and hay balers and tractors more dear than Rolls-Royces. For a while there was coke and crank and wild parties. Friends unnumbered and naked women rampant in their willingness to be sent so high you couldn’t have tracked them on radar, sports cars that did not hold up so well against trees and bridge abutments.
Little by little Emile had sold things off for pennies on the dollar and day by day the money rolled through his veins and into his lungs and the greasy coins trickled down his throat. The cattle were sold away or wandered off. Hogs starved and the strong ate the weak. It amazed him how easily a small fortune could be pissed away. Money don’t go nowhere these days, Emile said when he was down to selling off stepladders and drop cords.
Finally he was down to rolling his own, becoming an entrepreneur, slaving over his meth lab like some crazed alchemist at his test tubes and brazier on the brink of some breakthrough that would cleanse the world of sanity forever.
The appalled ghost of Emile’s mother haunted these rooms, hovered fretfully in the darker corners. Wringing her spectral hands over doilies beset with beer cans and spilled ashtrays. Rats tunneling in secret trespass through the upholstery. There were man-shaped indentations in the sheetrocked walls, palimpsest cavities with outflung arms where miscreants had gone in drunken rage. JESUS IS THE UNSEEN LISTENER TO EVERY CONVERSATION, an embroidered sampler warned from the wall. There were those of Emile’s customers who wanted it taken down or turned to the wall. Emile left it as it was. He needs an education, Emile would say. He needs to know what it’s like out here in the world. There’s no secrets here.
The Jeepster looked up. He took off his Ray-Bans and shook his head as if to clear it of whatever visions beset it. Reorder everything as you might shake a kaleidoscope into a different pattern.
You got to have something, he said.
I ain’t got jack shit.
Pills or something. Dilaudid.
I ain’t got jack shit. I’m out on bond, and I done told you they’re watchin this place. A sheriff’s car parks right up there in them trees. Takin pictures. I seen some son of a bitch with a video camera. It’s like being a fuckin movie star. Man can’t step outside to take a leak without windin up on videotape or asked for a autograph.
What happened?
I sent Qualls to Columbia after a bunch of medicine for my lab. He kept tryin to buy it all at the same drugstore. Like I specifically told him not to do. He’d get turned down and go on to the next drugstore. Druggists kept callin the law and callin the law. By the time they pulled him over it looked like a fuckin parade. Cops was fightin over who had priorities. He had the whole backseat and trunk full of Dudafed and shit. He rolled over on me and here they come with a search warrant. I’m out on bond.
I can’t stand this.
I guess you’ll have to, Emile said. Look, for what it’s worth I’m sorry for you. And damn sorry for her. But I can’t help you. Nobody can. You want to run time back and change the way things happened. But time won’t run but one way.
I can’t stand it. I keep seeing her face.
Well.
Maybe I’ll go back out there to the funeral home and see her.
Maybe you ought to keep your crazy ass away from her daddy. You’ll remember he’s a cop.
I have to keep moving. I never felt like this. I never knew you could feel like this. I can’t be still. It’s like I can’t stand it in my own skin.
Emile didn’t say anything. He looked away. To the window where the night-mirrored glass turned back their images like sepia desperadoes in some old daguerreotype.
You still got that tow bar or did you sell it?
What?
I’m fixing to get that car. Aimee’s car. Pull it off down by the river somewhere.
This is not makin a whole lot of sense to me.
They wouldn’t let me in out there, they won’t even let me in to see her body. I went and looked at her car. Her blood’s all in the seat. On the windshield. It’s all there is of her left in the world I can see or touch. I aim to have it.
Get away from me, Emile said.
Aimee had turned up at his place at eight o’clock in the morning. The Jeepster still slept, it took the horn’s insistent blowing to bring him in the jeans he’d slept in out onto the porch and into a day where a soft summer rain fell.
Her battered green Plymouth idled in the yard. He stood on the porch a moment studying it. In the night a spider had strung a triangular web from the porch beam and in its ornate center a single drop of water clung gleaming like a stone a jeweler had set. The Jeepster went barefoot down the doorsteps into the muddy yard.
He was studying the car. Trying to get a count on the passengers. He couldn’t tell until she cranked down the glass that it was just Aimee. He stood with his hands in his pockets listening to the rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers. The dragging stutter of a faulty wiper blade.
I need a favor, she said.
It had been awhile and he just watched her face. She had always had a sly, secretive look that said, I’ll bet you wish you had what I have, know what I know, could share the dreams that come for me alone when the day winds down and the light dims and it is finally quiet. She was still darkly pretty but there was something different about her. The grain of her skin, but especially the eyes. Something desperate hiding there in the dark shadows and trying to peer out. She already looked like somebody sliding off the face of the world.
I don’t have a thing. I’m trying to get off that shit.
Really?
I’ve had the dry heaves and the shakes. Fever. Cramps and the shits. Is that real enough for you? Oh yeah, and hallucinations. I’ve had them. I may be having one now. I may be back in the house with baby monkeys running up and down the window curtains.
She made a dismissive gesture, a slight curling of her upper lip. Will you do me a favor or not?
Is Escue all out of favors?
I’ve left him, I’m not going back. He’s crazy.
No shit. Did a light just go on somewhere?
He stays on that pipe and it’s fucked him up or something. His head. You can’t talk to him.
I wouldn’t even attempt it.
I don’t understand goddamn men. Live with them and they think they own you. Want to marry you. Eat you alive. Jimmy was older and he’d been around and I thought he wouldn’t be so obsessive. Sleep with him a few times and it’s the same thing over again. Men.
The Jeepster looked away. Blackbirds rose from the field in a fury of wings and their pattern shifted and shifted again as if they sought some design they couldn’t quite attain. He thought about Aimee and men. He knew she’d slept with
at least one man for money. He knew it for a fact. The Jeepster himself had brokered the deal.
What you get for taking up with a son of a bitch old enough to be your daddy.
I see you’re still the same. The hot shit macho man. The man with the platinum balls. You’d die before you’d ask me to come back, wouldn’t you?
You made your bed. Might as well spoon up and get comfortable.
Then I want to borrow a gun.
What for?
I’m afraid he’ll be there tonight when I get off work. He said he was going to kill me and he will. He slapped me around some this morning. I just want him to see it. If he knows I’ve got it there in my purse he’ll leave me alone.
I’m not loaning you a gun.
Leonard.
You’d shoot yourself. Or some old lady crossing the street. Is he following you?
He’s broke. I don’t think he’s got the gas.
I hope he does turn up here and tries to slap me around some. I’ll drop him where he stands and drag his sorry, woman-beating ass inside the house and call the law.
Loan me the pistol. You don’t know how scared I am of him. You don’t know what it’s like.
The loop tape of some old blues song played in his head: You don’t know my, you don’t know my, you don’t know my mind.
No. I’ll pick you up from work. I’ll be there early and check out the parking lot and if he’s there I’ll come in and tell you. You can call the cops. You still working at that Quik Mart?
Yes. But you won’t come.
I’ll be there.
Can I stay here tonight?
You come back you’ll have to stay from Escue. I won’t have him on the place. Somebody will die.
I’m done with him.