Little Sister Death

by William Gay

  He just remembered it was all.

  They played cards for a while. Binder and Vern were bored. Corrie and Ruthie weren’t bored: they were sisters, and they didn’t see each other very much. They had a lot to talk about, everything was a joke. It was a long way to Orlando, and Ruthie and Vern were always tied up at the motel.

  Watching her study her cards, Binder thought how much Ruthie had changed. He remembered when he and Corrie married she had been an attractive girl, a little heavy on the baby fat, maybe, but with an aura of raw sexual awareness she made Binder immediately aware of. She’d treated him with a sort of big sisterly approach that seemed somehow tentative, subject to change at a moment’s notice. Now she just projected an overblown blow-siness. There was a haphazard look to her and the dark roots of her blond hair were showing. Looking at Ruthie and Corrie together, Binder thought sardonically, Well, I got the pick of the litter all right.

  Say, you got something to drink? Vern asked him.

  I don’t know. I think there’s part of a bottle of Scotch around here somewhere. Do you know where it is, Corrie?

  Somewhere in the cabinet. I remember putting it there.

  What’s the matter with you? You quit?

  I seldom drink anymore.

  He seldom drinks anymore. Ain’t that pretty. Ain’t that just like a writer. Writers seldom drink anymore. Anybody else would just say they quit.

  He didn’t say he quit, Vern, Ruthie said. He says he doesn’t drink much. Quit picking on him.

  You probably smoke that old dope, don’t you?

  No.

  Ruthie turned to Binder. He’s not happy unless he’s picking at somebody. I don’t know what’s the matter with him. Picking is what he does best.

  As if to remove all doubt of this, Vern continued. Will there be any women at this forsaken dance?

  It’s not a forsaken dance.

  Vern was a few years older than Binder, and he seemed to have something to prove to him.

  Will you please not be rude? Corrie had asked. I know you don’t like Vern, but just try to get along for my sake.

  All right, Binder had promised, and watching her face now across the card table he regretted it. He saw nothing left of the sweet gratuity that had been there, and he thought: she likes them. She really does. Vern too. And he saw suddenly that they were no longer two couples. They had become three of a kind and a wild card.

  While they slept, he went with his morning coffee toward the toolshed. The grass was lush and heavy with dew. Fog followed the line of the creek, crept ephemeral as smoke into the rank, weedy bottomland. Then the sun seemed to ascend visibly, the fog ascending with it coincident with a chorus of cicadas arising from the field and a crisp warm smell of summer dying. Already there was a remote look of distance to the heavens.

  Night seemed to linger in the cloistered dark in the toolshed. He stood in the doorway for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the diminished light. Objects formed out of formlessness, as if creating themselves: the dank earth floor, old oddments of metal, a motley of broken tools. A row of mason jars of cloudylooking foodstuffs. He could smell the dryly sour odor of years-old onions strung on the walls. Provender the optimistic old lady Abernathy had put by for a winter she didn’t live to see.

  It was there, lying in the fingers of sunlight that fell solid through the broken shakes. At first glance a once-gaudy scarf sun-aged to a faded iridescence, gleaming in the sun, burnished, metallic. He approached the board floor cautiously, hunkered on the dank earth watching the snake. Its head was toward him yet he moved with such stealthy caution it did not stir. Perhaps it dozed behind eternally open eyes, lulled by the timeless sanctity of the toolshed, or maybe it knew him by now.

  He had come to kill it the first time he had seen it. A badly frightened and stillsobbing Corrie had decreed that it die, and he had stood leaning over it with an iron tamping bar in his hands, forty or fifty pounds of rusty metal that would have crushed its newpenny head to an unrecognizable wafer of mangled flesh. He held it paused a foot above the snake’s head, feeling its weight, knowing that it would fall, but it did not.

  He did not know exactly what had forestalled him. Certainly it did not look defenseless: a yard long and thicker than his wrist, with a lethal look of evil about it. It looked quite capable of taking care of itself. But maybe it’s a female, he thought. Perhaps it has young. Who will suckle them? Why didn’t Mommy come home, they would ask, though he did not believe it. There was nothing of the mother about her. The bar’s weight heavier, his muscles knotted holding it, but still it would not fall, and he realized he was caught by eerie and evil beauty. Its skin looked coppery and bright, so iridescent there seemed to be depths to it, as if he could see through to the evil at its core, layered like the skin of an onion.

  After the first time, he returned each morning. Most days it would be there in the sun. He guessed it made its home beneath the broken floor. He’d sip his coffee and watch it, smoke his first cigarette of the day lost in the complex pattern of its skin, finding there maps to places he’d never been, watching the play of the light on the scaled body as it moved.

  Once he’d poked it with a long stick to see what it would do. It coiled instantly, exploding into a nearliquid smoothness of motion, all grace and purpose, head and stubby tail aloft, its mouth wide, fangs unhinged. It struck at the stick, waited. He waited, the stick motionless at length. He lowered it carefully. He sat still as death for a long time. At last the snake flowed over the boards and beneath the floor.

  He knew there was something old and implacable and female about it—Little Sister Death, he named her, after a line from Faulkner, though he couldn’t remember where he’d read it. It seemed to suit her.

  David.

  They were up. He could hear Corrie calling him in to breakfast. He drained the coffee cup, ground the cigarette butt out on the dank earth, and arose with painful slowness, backed out of the door into the bright September sun, as if he’d suddenly broken the surface of murky, polluted water.

  Breakfast is ready.

  All right, I’m coming, he said.

  They had all been ready an hour awaiting Vern while he shaved and combed his hair just so and changed twice before he looked the way he wanted to look, and then nothing would do him but he must find a bootlegger.

  That’s the way Vern always is going out, Ruthie said. Men talk about women keeping them waiting, but I’ve never seen one take as much time with her hair and clothes as a man does.

  David’s not like that, Corrie said. He doesn’t care how he looks.

  Vern wants to look just right, Ruthie said, and there was a curious kind of pride in her voice, so that Binder thought, Ruthie knows Vern is a lover too.

  Binder was driving. He didn’t even want to go. He was feeling a little desperate, a seed of anger burning inside him, locked into this by the promise he’d made to Corrie. I don’t know where to get a drink, he said. This is a dry county and I don’t know any bootlegger. Wouldn’t a beer do?

  For a dance like this one? Hell, David, we can find us a bootlegger. Man can’t go to a square dance without a little toddy in him.

  A cab driver in Beale Station sold Vern four halfpints of peach brandy from the trunk of his cab, first making them drive down below the railroad tracks.

  Binder drove back out Highway 20 and down Sinking Creek, Vern and Ruthie in the backseat taking turns at the bottle. Out the windshield, Binder watched the twisting country roads, the little unexpected rises rushing at you out of the night, the clearings where sat houses, the whiteframe homes of the country squires, the shotgun shacks of the disenfranchised.

  Binder didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t what he found when they reached the dance. He guessed he’d been looking for old folks in Duckhead overalls, brighthaired girls in gingham dresses, an old toothless fiddler sawing out Appalachian reels, brogans clogging on scarred floors. Binder smiled wryly to himself. The enormous building looked like a converted roller
rink surrounded by four-wheel-drives. He couldn’t hear any fiddles, either. There was music spilling out into the night, but it was hardedged rock and roll. The place was loud and alive; it had the air of a raucous country honkytonk.

  Inside was more of the same: no alcohol was served but everyone seemed to be slipping into the night and returning drunk anyway, and once Binder caught the smell of marijuana smoke. No overalls. He even saw a pair of designer jeans, a few pairs of hundred-dollar cowboy boots. The trucks outside had deer rifles in the back windows, likely .357 Magnums in the gloveboxes. These good old boys had a curious air of militancy about them, and even the anthemistic song the band was playing bore this out: I’ve got a shotgun a rifle and a four-wheel-drive and a country boy will survive.

  They all seemed to be having a good time. The floor was crowded with dancing couples, the air heavy and confusing with threads of conversation and laughter.

  The four of them sat at a table near the bandstand, but only for a moment. Vern immediately grasped Ruthie’s hand and they disappeared into the swirling dancers.

  I wonder if they sell anything to drink here, he said to Corrie.

  What?

  He said it louder.

  I don’t know. Cokes, I guess. Why? Do you have a headache?

  No, Binder said, but he did, the beginning of one. A bright, nagging flickering of pain like heat lightning behind his eyes.

  She didn’t believe him, he could tell, but she was solicitous. We’ll move where it’s less noisy when Vern and Ruthie get back.

  The song ended and another began. Vern and Ruthie didn’t return. Little by little Binder felt himself absorbing the cheerful ambience of the place. He began to feel a little better about things. He might even be able to write tonight, if Vern would leave him alone. He could feel the stirring of the desire to work that had lain dormant for the week Vern and Ruthie had been there, and when the band began a waltz he pulled a protesting Corrie from her chair and led her to the floor, her face blushed and pleased. She pillowed her face against his throat.

  There he is, Binder told her. Vern’s already promoting himself.

  Vern in a crowd along the opposite wall was talking to a man in a cowboy hat. There was a young girl with long blond hair by the man’s side. Vern seemed mainly to be talking to her. The man in the cowboy hat wasn’t watching. The red slab of his face looked bored and distracted.

  He’s telling them how much he took in last year, Binder said. How close he is to Disney World, how full his motel is, how many miles his black Eldorado gets to the gallon. All those alligator mouths.

  What?

  Never mind. Something Vern told me to impress me.

  Oh, just forget him, David. For a moment I thought you were actually having a good time.

  When Ruthie returned to the table, Vern didn’t. Ruthie had brought them all a tall paper cup of Coca-Cola and crushed ice. She looked about in mock caution, took a halfpint from her purse, then poured peach brandy into the Coke.

  Vern just loves people, she said. He’s a great mixer, I don’t reckon he’s ever seen a stranger in his life.

  Yet her voice seemed to carry a diminished enthusiasm, as if she were growing more morose. Binder didn’t see how you could get crying drunk on peach brandy and Coke, but she might. He guessed you might get sick, and that would be about as bad.

  He’s not a stick-in-the-mud like David is, she said, then smiled at him, as if to diminish the sting the words carried.

  I like him just the way he is, Corrie said, her hand on David’s arm.

  They moved to a table near the door where it was quieter. After a while Vern glided up, seated himself between Ruthie and Corrie. He gestured toward the paper cups. Where’s mine?

  We figured your new friends would buy you one, Ruthie said. You seemed to have forgotten us.

  There’s a lot of nice folks here, he said, smiling broadly, winking lewdly at Binder, who didn’t wink back.

  David, who is that girl? Corrie asked.

  Binder looked. A girl seemed to be watching him. She was standing in the open doorway, leaning on the jamb, framed against the summer night. A slim, tall blonde with flaxen hair, pale blue eyes. She was studying him intensely.

  I don’t know, he finally said.

  Then why is she looking at you that way?

  I don’t know, Binder said again. Maybe she thinks she knows me.

  Or maybe she does know you.

  Oh for Christ’s sake, Corrie. You know everybody in the county I do.

  She was silent. What Binder had said was true, and Corrie knew it, yet she continued to watch the girl with a kind of annoyed perplexity.

  Maybe she saw your picture on the jacket of your novel, Ruthie said.

  I doubt it, Binder said lightly. I think it only sold two copies in Tennessee, and they were both sold in Blount County.

  Mention of Binder’s book, especially by Ruthie, did not set well with Vern. That looks like a girl I was talking to a minute ago, he said. She may be looking at me.

  She may well be, Binder said, grateful to Vern for what must have been the first time in his life. However inadvertent it had been, Vern had taken the pressure off him, but the question was suddenly moot, for the girl turned and walked out into the night.

  How about stepping out for a nip? Vern asked Binder.

  Not right now, Binder said.

  Vern was restless. The three of them seemed to confine him. He was soon up and drifting again, greeting people, shaking hands, like a host to a monstrous party. A rawboned young man in a denim suit asked Corrie to dance. When she smilingly declined he glanced halfquestioningly across the table and Ruthie arose a little unsteadily and took his arm and followed him to the dance floor.

  What time is it? Binder asked.

  Nearly ten, Corrie said, glancing at her wrist. Binder was instantly sorry he had asked. It had been a long summer. Corrie had patiently been ignored by him while he was writing, and Ruthie’s promised visit and David’s promise to take her to the Labor Day dance had helped her pass time through the sweltering summer. This was supposed to be more than a dance—it was a much-anticipated event. Now they both seemed to be turning sour for no reason.

  Hey, you want to dance?

  Not right this minute. We better sit here and keep an eye on Ruthie. She’s getting high, I think.

  When Ruthie returned, she and Corrie went off to find a ladies’ room. Binder’s head hurt worse. He watched Corrie’s small dark form become swallowed in the crowd. He took four aspirin from a tin and swallowed them with Coke. When he glanced toward the door the flaxenhaired girl was there again, watching him with calm level eyes. He looked away. There was an eerie familiarity about her, as if she were a creation from his fantasies, from his dreams—or worse, he suddenly thought, fearing madness, from the book he was writing. The face was placid and smooth, seemed touched with the remnants of a lost, corrupt sweetness, a doomed innocence, and he knew irrevocably that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything. The book, Corrie, life itself.

  She was gone before Corrie got back.

  Ruthie wants you to go outside and look for Vern, Corrie told him. We didn’t see him anywhere.

  Likely he just went outside for a drink, Binder said. I didn’t come here to babysit, he said to himself. Or did I?

  He got up, moved through sweating shuffling couples into the night. The people were beginning to oppress him, to smother him, and outside the door he paused and breathed deeply, smelling the sere scent of Indian summer, becoming conscious of the wall of nightsounds beyond manmade noises, the crying whippoorwills and owls somewhere from a nightlocked hollow.

  Vern wasn’t in the car. There was a bottle in the front seat. Binder unscrewed the cap and drank, the brandy rushing down his throat like hot sweet fire. Binder looked about. Couples strolled armlinked in the dark, the night seemed alive with them. Beyond the glassed-in cars he could hear their murmuring voices, their faces floating together weightlessly like hungry creatures unde
rwater or in a dream. He could hear a girl’s protesting laughter from beyond the wall of pinewoods. As he turned back toward the building he heard a man’s voice with an undercurrent of threat in it, felt simultaneously a hand on his arm. He stopped.

  Hey, the blond girl said. She released his arm, reached a hand up to touch his beard.

  Goddammit, Cissie, get over here, a man’s voice said, and turning Binder saw between two parked cars a curious tableau: Vern leant backward across the hood of an orange Firebird, lying there unmoving and lax as if he had fallen asleep in this curious position. There were two men across from him, one draped against a truck door, arms crossed, the other facing Vern, standing almost between his feet. He was the redfaced man in the cowboy hat. He had an open knife in his hand. The girl drifted toward them.

  Binder walked back to the car and unlocked the trunk. All he could find was a jack handle. He took it up and went back toward the Firebird, swinging the length of steel in his hands.

  What’s going on? Binder asked.

  The man in the cowboy hat looked at him levelly. Nothing that concerns you very much, he said.

  That’s my brother-in-law.

  What kin are you to that tire spud you got there?

  Binder looked at it. There was an icy weight of panic at the pit of his stomach, and for a moment he’d forgotten the tire iron. He could feel the heavy dew cold through his sneakers.

  Just close friends, he said.

  Your friend here is all mouth and beltbuckle, the man said. I was just standin here wonderin what his insides was like.

  What’s your quarrel with him?

  Why don’t you ast him?

  What the hell did you do, Vern?

  Vern’s voice sounded thick and peculiar. I never did a goddamned thing, he said. He raised a hand to wipe his mouth. There in the dark the smear of blood looked like ink.