by William Gay
Sometime after four o’clock in the morning William Tell Oliver was awakened again, this time by a heavy determined pounding at the door. He lay for a sleepy minute listening to it, perhaps thinking that if he ignored it it would go away. It did not. It intensified and after a time a voice began to call, “Hey, hey.”
What on earth, the old man wondered. He got up slowly, began to pull on his pants. The voice kept calling. “All right, all right,” Oliver said. “I’m comin.” He took down the Browning over-and-under from the rack above the bed. He lit a lamp and with it in one hand the gun in the other crossed to the door. He leaned the gun against the wall and opened the door slightly.
The moon had set by now and the porch was in darkness, fainter darkness framing the bulk of the man standing before the door. The door opened wider, allowing the seepage of yellow light to spread, illuminating a tiredlooking man leaning against the doorjamb. He swayed slightly as if drunk or exhausted.
“What is it?” Oliver asked.
“Well, I’m in kind of a bind and I need some help. I need to get you to run me into town.”
“Have you got a stick?”
The man looked startled. “A stick? What kind of a stick?”
“Well, you wanted run to town. I shore ain’t got no automobile.”
“Shitfire.” When Oliver didn’t comment the man said, “I’m Cecil Blalock.”
“I know who you are. But I still ain’t got no way to town. What’s the trouble, ye car play out?”
“Yeah, and it’s a hell of a piece to town. Seems like I been wanderin around in the woods half the night.”
“Where’d ye have trouble?”
“Down by Hardin’s.”
“Why, Lord, that ain’t over a mile. It ortnt took but a few minutes to walk that.”
“Yeah. Well I might’ve got turned around or somethin. How about lettin me use your phone to call a cab?”
Oliver was silent a time. “I’m sorry,” he said at length. “I just ain’t bein no help at all. I ain’t got no telephone either.”
“Hellfire.” Blalock stood as if undecided what his next move should be. A cool wind blew across the porch, rustled through the leaves. The light wavered in the quaking globe, guttered, flared up. “Thanks anyway,” Blalock said. He descended the steps and crossed the yard toward the road. He was out of sight but Oliver could hear the walking. “Hey,” Oliver called. The steps ceased. “Ain’t no use wakin up them Winer folks. They ain’t got no car either.” There was no reply save the steps commencing again and after a moment he went back inside and closed the door.
Like aging birds aligned on a winter wire the row of old men sat before Sam Long’s cold stove and endlessly refought Hardin’s set-to with the whitecaps. On creaking Coke crates and upended cuts of wood they refurbished or delineated the story to its marrow according to their whims.
“I hear they takin his leg off,” Horace Hensley said. “What of it Hardin didn’t take off with that highpowered rifle.”
“Some say Hardin didn’t do it,” a man named Pulley said. “Blackstock hisself says he had a fight with a feller he caught ransacking his house.”
“A man tells a baldfaced lie like that I wouldn’t believe him if he was standin in Buffalo River and he told me his feet was wet.”
Sam Long dumped William Tell Oliver’s poke of ginseng onto the scale, watched intently the fluctuation of the needle. “I make it just under thirty-nine ounces, Mr. Oliver. You want it in cash or credit?”
“Well, I took me on a partner. You might ort to just let me have it in cash.”
“That must’ve been a purty good to-do, though,” Long said. He punched No Sale on the cash register and began to count bills onto Oliver’s palm. “Shoot Blackstock’s leg off and kill a Diamond-T truck. All in the same night. Well, I guess Blackstock was astin for it since he didn’t have no business down there. But that truck was just a innocent bystander.”
Horace Hensley had been listening in silence. “I’ll tell you what Hardin told me one time,” he finally said. “And it was the damnedest thing I ever heard tell of, I still don’t know if it was so or not. You never could tell when Hardin was tellin the truth and when he was talking just to hear hisself.
“It was right after he come to this part of the country. Back before Hovington died and right after Hardin moved in with Pearl. Times was tight then and by God I mean tight. They wadnt no soldiers blowin money nor judges birdhuntin with him nor none of these sharptittied Memphis whores down there. He wadnt drivin no Packard back then neither, all he had was an old Diamond-T truck and he won that off old man Pennington in a poker game.”
Pope raised the lid of the dead stove and spat into the ashes. “Which he probably rigged,” he said.
“Which he probably did,” Hensley agreed. “Anyway, somebody had busted his still up, just teetotally demolished it and busted all his whiskey, and he worked up some kind of deal with Homer McCandless over in Hickman County and bought a bunch of whiskey off of him. I don’t know how, he probably beat him, you know how slick he could talk. The hell of it was Hardin couldn’t drive a car. Here he was a grown man and he couldn’t even drive. Oh, he could I guess hold one in the road but nobody had never showed him the gears nor how to start and stop one. Course he can now he drives that Packard, but he couldn’t then. So he come to me.
“I didn’t want no part of him. He just didn’t look right to me. He looked like a feller who’d do anything and already had a start on all of it but drivin a car, but I had three kids contrary enough to want to eat ever day or two. And he laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table, I never will forget it. It looked as big as a bedsheet, and I believe I could have warmed my hands off of it. I got to thinkin about grocers.”
“Hovington had about five or six hundred pounds of cotton down there in a crib and we loaded it on that truck. He had some old sideboards he’d cobbled up. We headed out to Hickman County and got that whiskey, and I was on pins and needles all the way. I never fooled none with whiskey, didn’t even drink. I think that’s why he wanted me. He had the whiskey hid under that cotton and a tarpaulin stretched over it and lit out like we was headed to Lawrenceburg to the gin. Made it all the way back and turned down the Mormon Springs road and a rod in that old truck started knockin. I was wringin wet with sweat, and it October, I knowed we wadnt goin to make it. I knowed I’d be settin there in the middle of the road with fifty gallon of whiskey and a blowed-up truck and I’d done made up my mind to take to the bushes.
“Then to top it off the law stopped us. Amacher was hid out in a sideroad and he stopped us. I don’t know if he’d been watchin Hardin or not, I do know he didn’t have em bought off like he does now. Amacher come up and checked my license. Wanted to know where we was goin. ‘Just takin off cotton,’ I told him. ‘Takin it where?’ he ast. We was headed the wrong way and I hadn’t even thought of it. Then Hardin spoke up calm as you please. He told Amacher we was headed to Lawrenceburg and the truck started tearing up and we come back.
“Amacher made me crank it up. It sounded like a cement mixer with a armful of brick throwed in it. Amacher just nodded and waved us on.
“Anyway, we got there and got the whiskey unloaded. Hardin took him a little drink and got to braggin. Spread hisself a little bit. That’s when he said what I started out to tell you that was the damnedest thing I ever heard of. He said he was a walkin miracle, that nothin couldn’t ever happen to him cause the worst already had. He said he was a walkin dead man.
“He told me he was born in a casket. Said his mama was killed when a horse run off with a buggy and throwed her out and broke her neck. They had her laid out and everthing and was preachin her funeral, and in a way I guess his too, when they heard a baby squallin. Folk didn’t know what on earth to do. Some just jumped up and took off runnin out of the church. Some of the women finally got up and looked. Godamighty. He was down in her clothes. He’d crawled out or got jarred out by them handlin the casket or somethin. Anyway there he was.”
“Not that I believe any of this horseshit for a minute,” Sam Long said. “But that’s the strongest argument for embalmin I ever heard. She’d a been embalmed he never would’ve been.”
“It just sounds like a damn lie to me,” a man named Pope said.
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot and I don’t know why a man would make up a tale like that to tell on hisself. But I don’t know why he’d tell it if it was the truth either.”
“Hardin never done nothin without a reason.”
“Yeah. It makes you think though. This ain’t nothin against religion but looky here. It looks like somebody slipped up and let him get started in the first place and then seen what they done. They tried to wipe out that mistake with anothern and let the cagey son of a bitch slip through anyway. I guess when they seen how set on gettin into this world he was they just throwed up their hands and said let him go.”
The car blew one peremptory blast of its horn but by the time it did Winer had already opened the door and stepped onto the porch. Dusk was deepening, the western sky beyond the darkling stubbed fields mottled with bloody red where the day’s light was draining off the rim of the world.
“What say, Winer?” The Packard sat gleaming dully in the yard.
“Hidy.”
“You got a minute? I got a little business I need to talk with you.”
“I reckon so.”
Winer approached the car. Hardin cut the switch and the lights and swung the door open a little way though he made no move to get out. He sat facing Winer with his arms on the door panel, chin resting on his forearm. “Come on up, boy. I reckon everbody’s peaceable.”
Winer thought the face curiously asymmetrical: the nose had been broken and healed crooked, tipped slightly toward the left side of his face. The right side of the face was lanternjawed, the cheek perpetually swollen. There was an imbalance to the jaws as if God Almighty had laid a hand on either side of the face, slipped one side a notch up and the other a notch down. The eyes were pale yellow, some peculiarity about the pupils. The eyes were goatlike. The left lid drooped sleepily as if his guard never dropped, as if one eye must watch while the other rested.
“I hear you run out of a job.”
“Yeah. I was working for Weiss.”
“Me and you might be able to help one another. You need work and I need it done.”
Winer hunkered in the yard, absentmindedly took up a stick, began to scratch meaningless hieroglyphics in the earth. A whippoorwill abruptly called from the woods, as if at some occult signal others took up the chorus. As dusk drew on the face phased out, there was only the voice and the pale gleam of the Packard, which seemed to emit some cool black light.
“What was it you wanted done?” Winer asked.
Something in his voice, caution perhaps, made Hardin grin. “I ain’t tryin to hire you to kill somebody,” he said. “I don’t sub that work out.” He took a cigarette from a pack, offered the pack to Winer, returned it to his pocket when it was refused. A match rasped on metal, flared. “You know that buildin I’m puttin up up there? I need some help on it. Reckon you can drive a nail? You ever done any carpenter work?”
“What I don’t know I can learn.”
“I hear your daddy was a carpenter.”
“That’s right.”
“I heard he was a damn good worker. I heard a lot of folks say you’re a pretty damn good worker yourself.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I want that place finished before cold weather. I want it dried in before the rain starts and I ain’t getting it. I got Gobel Lipscomb down there piddlinass around and he’s cryin he ain’t got no help. Hell, he ain’t no carpenter nohow. I can pick up plenty of these old boys but as soon as they get enough worked out to buy a halfpint of whiskey you don’t see em no more till next Thursday. That ain’t what I want. What I want is somebody’ll be there to work ever day the weather’s fit and give me a day’s work for a day’s pay. From what I hear that’s you, Winer.”
“What are you paying?”
“Well, I’m payin fair wages. What are you worth?”
“I don’t know.”
“I might tell you a dollar an hour and be underpayin you. I might say two dollars a day and be payin you too much. What say you come down Monday mornin and we’ll try each other out.”
“Well, that sounds fair enough to me.”
“I guarantee you a fair wage. I ain’t astin you to work for nothin, and man nor boy don’t enter into it. I pay what a man’s worth. Me and you just might hit it off. I been lookin for a likely feller I could trust. A young man want to make his mark.”
Winer arose. “I’ll see you Monday then.”
“You got any tools?”
“I got my pa’s. I reckon he had about everthing I’ll need.”
“You get in there and rest up then. Me and you’s got a honkeytonk to build, Winer. A hell of a honkytonk. I’m gonna have a nigger cook fryin hamburgers for them that’s hungry. I’m gonna run poker games for them with money burnin their pockets and whores for them inclined in that direction. I’m gonna feed em, bleed em, and breed em, all under one roof. And you’re gonna build me that roof.”
Winer dragged the box of tools from the back room out to where the light was. Hands gentle and respectful to the tools. He wiped the framing square with an oiled rag, tilted it toward the white globe of light to read the spill of numbers. Something awesome, almost occult, ageless, in this sheer condensation of knowledge.
“What are you doin?”
“Getting ready to go to work.”
“For him?”
“Yes.”
“Buildin that Godless mess down there at Hovington’s.”
He laid the square aside. “Well. I haven’t noticed any preachers coming around to hire me build a church.”
“You think God Almight’ll ever allow a roof over such a snake’s den as that? No, he won’t. He’ll burn it down with a bolt of lightin before the first bottle’s sold or the first blasphemy’s said. Then where will you be? If it was me I’d want to be as far away from a sight like that as I could.”
“Well. God Almighty let him sell it off Hovington’s front porch and I never even heard any thunder.”
“Yeah. Yeah. And him gettin bolder every minute and darin folks to stop him. Shootin em and goin scot-free, burnin houses over folks’ heads. And you defending him to your own mama and gettin a mouth on you needs a bar of soap took to it.”
Winer didn’t reply. He tried a tape measure, dripped oil into the case, and tried again.
“And you gettin more like him ever day. Usin his tools. It’s a wonder he didn’t take em with him when he went, I reckon he figured there wadnt a dollar on them.” Old bitter anger long unhealed imbued her with vehemence. “Storm in here mad at nothin and gone with never a word of why to anybody.”
He still didn’t reply. He seldom did anymore.
Oliver had always expected his fences to outlast him but in the last year or so it seemed to him that he spent most of his time repairing them where the goats had pushed through.
“I aim to kill em,” he said. “Ever last emptyheaded one of em. I’m goin back to the house soon as I fix this fence and get my gun and lay out ever last goat I own.”
“If I was going to kill them I’d just let the fences go,” Winer said. He was grinning, he’d heard death sentences passed on the goats before but the old man’s herd always seemed to increase rather than diminish. Even as Oliver spoke a baby goat was rubbing its head against the old man’s arm.
He was weaving a temporary deterrent of seagrass string among the rusted strands of wire. “I sort of like to hear the bells but by God I can string the bells on wire and let the wind ring em.” He knotted the string. Already the goats were pushing against the wire. “And say we’re out of the sang business?”
“I reckon. I told him I’d be there Monday.”
“Just as well, I reckon, I’ll be gone fore long. I look
for a early frost and a long winter. Long and cold. Signs is there if you know where to look.”
“You reckon I ought to go work for him or not? I’m a little undecided.”
“Boy, you got to do what you want to do. You suit yourself. As long as you keep your head straight and stay out of his business you’ll be all right. Just drive nails and draw your pay on Friday and go on home. Besides, I know you. You’re goin to do what you want to anyway.”
Oliver straightened when he finished the fence, stood halfbent a moment then with hands on knees, his fingers kneading recalcitrant flesh and bone. “No,” he said. “But there ain’t no law says you got to like a man to do his work and draw his money. All you have to do is get along with him. I just worked for bosses I liked, I guess I’d a spent a good portion of my life settin on the front porch.”
“Would you work for Hardin?”
“Lord, no. I’d scratch shit with the chickens before I’d take a nickel that passed through his hands.”
“Why? Because he’s a bootlegger?”
“No. I got nothin against bootleggin. I lived around it all my life. Thomas Hovington was a bootlegger and I never had nothin against him cept he let folks run over him. Never would stand up for hisself. Let Hardin do him out of business, his place, even his woman. A man like Hardin now, he can spot that in a feller and use it, he knows who he can shove around and who he can’t. Just see he don’t get started off that way with you. The way I see it there’s a way of doin things, a way they ort to be done. Hardin strikes me as a feller that won’t cull much if it’ll get him what he wants.”
“Well. It’s your business anyhow,” Winer said. “I just wanted you to know why I won’t be over Monday.”
“You a good worker. Don’t sell yourself short and don’t let him run nothin over on you.”