Provinces of Night: A Novel

by William Gay

  She was wearing dungarees cut off into kneelength shorts. They didn’t get down into your shorts, did they?

  She gave him a catlike look of anger. Don’t you wish, she said.

  I’ve got to get my fish, he said. He went back down the creek with some caution but the hornets seemed preoccupied with assessing the damage to their home and they ignored him. He found the fish washed into a stand of cane in shallow water. Some of them had flopped off the forked stick and he gathered them up and threaded the stick through their gills and went back to where the girl was.

  She had put the bra and blouse on and tied the blouse across her stomach and seemed to be making ready to go.

  If you’re from Michigan what are you doing wading up Grinders Creek?

  We’re on vacation down here. Daddy works at Ford in Detroit but my Grandpa Dee Hixson lives close to here.

  I live right across from Dee. Up on that hill on the other side of the road.

  I didn’t know there was a house up there, you can’t see it from the road. What’s your name?

  He told her. They had begun wading up the shallow water toward the roadbed. He knew now why she had seemed familiar. What’s your name? he asked her.

  Merle. Daddy named me after this movie star named Merle Oberon. You think I look like her?

  For a minute I thought that was her drawing back that rock.

  She poked him lightly in the ribs. What are you going to do with those fish?

  I planned on having them for supper. You could come over tonight and help me eat them.

  What, you mean with you and your folks?

  I live by myself. My folks are in Detroit Michigan.

  They are? Where in Detroit?

  I don’t know. They’re looking for work.

  You mean you live all by yourself?

  All by myself.

  God. I wish my family would go off somewhere looking for something and leave me alone.

  Suddenly Fleming did not want them to go their separate ways. He did not want to go back to the still house and wait for Boyd or for any of the other things he seemed to spend his time waiting for. Come on over tonight, he said. We’ll eat the fish and listen to the radio awhile.

  I’m not much on radios. In Detroit we’ve got this big twenty-one-inch Crosley TV It’s like having a movie theater right in your house. Anyway, I don’t like fish, I’m always afraid of choking on a bone.

  I’ll pick the bones out for you.

  Are you a smooth talker or what, she said. I’ve had boys promise me a lot of things but you’re the first one that ever offered to pick out fish bones.

  The creek widened in a shoal before they came upon the bridge until it was no more than ankle deep near the bank and at the edge where a riot of cattails grew it was almost lukewarm. With his pocket knife he cut a handful of the reeds and gave them to her. These roses were just growing wild, he said.

  First you tear my clothes off and then you bring me flowers. What a man.

  Will you come?

  I don’t know. I might. There’s sure nobody else to talk to around this Godforsaken place. We’ll see.

  I can do this, he was thinking. All I have to do is just be as normal as everyone else. All I have to do is just not blow apart like a two-dollar clock. Just pick words and put one of them after the other like a baby learning to walk, like a drunk carefully crossing the street.

  He reached out suddenly and touched her arm. She jerked it away as if the touch had burned her then gave him a curious smile and linked an arm through his.

  Why did you touch me like that?

  I thought for a second you weren’t real, he said.

  HE HAD PRIED the fish and ate a plate of them leaned against the front wall of the house watching dusk descend and sipping a Coca-Cola chilled in the springbox. In the wintertime he could have seen the lights from Dee Hixson’s house but the trees were riotous with summer growth and for all the lights he could see this might have been the only house in the world.

  She might come and she might not but the later it grew the more he doubted she would. Would she come in the dark? Perhaps she was scared of the dark, they probably don’t have dark in Detroit. They have twenty-one-inch Crosley TVs but they don’t have hornets’ nests hanging from the lampposts.

  He thought how ludicrous he would be wandering the streets of Detroit. He smiled, thinking for a moment of the four of them, Boyd looking for his wife and him looking for Boyd and Merle, all of them moving through a maze of brick buildings and dark circuitous alleyways and everyone just half a beat out of sync with everyone else, wandering each alone in the electric dark and any destination reached one just quit by another.

  He set the plate aside and leaned his head back against the wall. He felt a curious solitary contentment. The world he’d heard rumored seemed enormous, roads led everywhere free for the taking, any one you chose had a destination at its end.

  In the west a star winked on like a pinprick through the faulted dusk to a greater light beyond. Another. Bats came veering out of the murky purple twilight and one hollow over a whippoorwill called to him, brother calling to brother.

  IN THE TWO DAYS following Junior Albright’s destruction of the crimper the white company truck stopped in front of the small frame house he lived in three times. Each time Junior froze, hardly daring to breathe. Each time the horn honked three loud blasts, waited. A truck door slammed and Albright was mousequiet and mousestill, hearing in his constricted heart the heavy tread onto the doorstep, the measured hammering that shook the door on its hinges, rattled the glass in its unglazed sash.

  The third time Albright was crouched in the kitchen and heard Woodall trying to turn the doorknob that Albright had had the foresight to thumbbolt, heard him yell in frustration, You’re just making it harder on yourself, Goddamn you, ain’t you man enough to even open the door? I’ll catch you out sometime.

  Which he did. Albright was sprawled in a chair in the poolroom watching Clyde Sharp clean out Big Shaw at straight pool. He was drinking a can of Falstaff with salt sprinkled on the can’s top. He had just taken a swallow of beer and licked the salt when he felt a heavy arm settle about his shoulders.

  You a hard man to find, Woodall said.

  I didn’t know I was lost.

  Well you was. I’ve been out to your place three times but I can’t ever seem to catch you at home.

  I was out back there once when I seen your truck leave. I hollered at you but you just drove on off.

  Well. No matter. We’re both here now.

  I figured you just brought my check out, you know for that day I worked. I just decided to let it slide on account of that crimper actin up the way it done.

  No, Woodall said. It wasn’t quite that. As a matter of fact I have a receipt in my pocket where I paid the rental company for the very crimper you’re speaking of. Eight hundred and sixty dollars. That’s the amount you owe me. So you see it’s not something I can let slide, the way you can.

  Big Shaw stooped and sighted drunkenly down the length of his pool cue, looking directly into Albright’s face, one eye closed as if in a conspiratorial wink, and Albright leaned to the side in case the ball went wild. On the break Shaw had once laid out a man named Jess Cotham colder than a wedge so that he had to be lain on the concrete floor and water poured on his face. This time the cue ball just kissed gently off the seven and scratched in a corner pocket, but when Big Shaw stepped back Albright suddenly saw a folded twenty-dollar bill that had been hidden by Shaw’s polished dress shoe. The little engraved two and zero were clearly visible at the corners and powerful as some occult or Masonic symbol, and Junior looked about to see if anyone else had noticed. He sat trying to devise some plan to recover this windfall without Clyde Sharp falling upon him with a pool cue.

  Are you listening to me?

  Mmmm?

  I’ve got a note fixed up at my office trailer. I never thought that you would have eight hundred and sixty dollars. I never thought that you would ever ha
ve eight hundred and sixty dollars at one time so the note says that you will pay me thirty dollars a month for twenty-eight months then twenty dollars for the last month.

  They Godamighty damn. That’s nearly three years.

  Well, if you wanted to pay sixty a month we could shave that time nearly in half.

  Some months I don’t have thirty dollars. Besides, there was somethin wrong with that damn crimper to make it behave that way. Runnin off the way it done. I believe the throttle hung on it or somethin. Anyway I don’t believe it’s my place to pay for it.

  You are going to pay me that eight hundred and sixty dollars. We’re not even discussing that. What we’re talking about is how. You need to drive by tomorrow early and sign that paper so we can get it notarized and make it official.

  I ain’t signin shit, Albright said. And how about gettin your arm off my shoulder.

  If you’re not there by quitting time I’m lawing you, Woodall said. I’ll take you before a judge and get a judgment against you. If you’ve got anything I’ll take it. If you ever get anything I’ll get that. You’ll wind up losing your car. If you work I’ll garnishee your check. You’ll pay it one way or you’ll pay it another. I’ll see you tomorrow.

  Albright closed his eyes and listened to Woodall’s footsteps fade away. He was in bondage for three years, in debt with nothing to show for it. Here his life had never properly gotten up to speed and now Woodall was holding a mortgage on the next three years of it.

  He rose and stretched, elaborately casual. He sauntered off toward the toilet at the back of the poolroom. As he passed the table he dropped his lighter and watched it fall within six inches of the twenty-dollar bill, stooped and gracefully scooped them both up. The bathroom reeked of urine and stale vomit but he paid it no mind, studied the bill minutely in the light of the bare ceiling bulb and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger as if he’d ascertain its authenticity. It had a rich crinkly texture and seemed official enough, coin of the realm, minted in Washington, D.C. He slid it into a pocket and went out.

  At the bar he unpocketed it again and smoothed it onto the Formica countertop. I’m buying a round for the house, he said.

  The house? the barkeep said. Hellfire, there’s nobody in here but you and Sharp and Big Shaw.

  Then I’m buyin a round for us, Albright told him.

  SHE DID NOT COME the first night or the second and by then Fleming had given up on her but the third night a step on the porch brought him back from the edge of sleep. He waited for a knock but the door was simply opened without this formality and a warped rectangle of moonlight fell into the room.

  Fleming?

  Who is it?

  Then he could see the dark outline of her body against the paler dark outside. She stood with a hand still holding the doorknob, leaning to peer about the room. Then she stepped out of the moonlight and he could hear soft footsteps approaching the bed. He was sitting on its side feeling about for his shoes when he felt her weight settle onto the opposite side of the bed.

  Are you getting up?

  Well. I thought I’d get up and talk to you a while.

  It’s kind of dark in here. Cool, too. We can just talk here.

  It is dark. I’ve got some matches here somewhere and I’ll just light the lamp.

  Let the lamp go. This is nice, and my eyes are sort of getting used to the dark.

  By now she had crawled into bed and settled herself against him. I thought they’d never go to sleep, she said. I tried to slip off over here for the last couple of nights but they watch me like a hawk. Finally tonight Daddy got drunk and passed out on the couch and I just headed out.

  Fleming had thought about this at some length. He had made tentative plans that in their wildest fruition might achieve her presence in a bed beside him but to have this happen as the first card dealt rendered his scenario worthless. He lay silently beside her trying to think of something to say. Don’t talk then, she said. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek and the cool weight of her hand on his bare shoulder. Then she pressed her face to his and kissed his mouth, gently at first and then harder, opening her mouth so that he could feel her tongue and sharp little teeth. Her breath and her flesh felt hot against his. She slid a hand down his side to his hip and then she jerked away.

  You’ve got your pants on. What are you doing sleeping in your clothes?

  Well. You never know who’ll show up in the middle of the night.

  Get them off. Here, I’ll do it. She was unbuttoning his jeans and when he raised his hips to chuck them off he heard the soft sound of a zipper.

  Wait, he said.

  Wait? For what?

  Stand over in the light and take them off.

  Why not, she said. What the hell. You’ve seen about everything I’ve got anyway.

  In the oblong area of light she posed for a moment like a parodie ballerina then pulled the dress over her head and dropped it to the floor. She slid her panties down holding them momentarily with a toe to step out of them then turned breasts bobbing to close the door. She vanished. He heard the thumbbolt click. It seemed to take her an eternity to cross from the doorway to the bed, in its span folks were born and lived their lives and died, whole generations passed away.

  When she slid against him he had decided to remain calm and save all these moments for bleaker times, each instant a snapshot, a flower pressed in the pages of a Bible. But when she grasped his hand and placed it on her sex his mind reeled away and images shuttled like unsequenced frames in a film. He was unaccustomed to such urgency and he thought that perhaps girls from Michigan were different, perhaps this was the way things were done in Detroit. She was pulling him onto her, saying, here baby, I’ll do this, and he felt himself sliding into her and she was whispering against his ear, No, baby, take it easy, slow down, we’ve got all night to do this.

  Have you got a girlfriend?

  No. I sort of had one last year but she took up with a football player.

  Have you ever done this before?

  Sure. Lots of times.

  You liar.

  Have you?

  No. Find those matches, I’ve got a cigarette here. Do you want one?

  No.

  How come?

  I just never took it up.

  You just never took it up, she said. You talk funny. Sort of like a hillbilly and sort of not. You sound so serious. So solemn. What makes you so solemn, is the world going to end in the next few minutes? You act like you’re always thinking about something. Were you taking notes?

  He had found the matches and struck one on the iron headboard of the bed and lit her cigarette.

  I never think about anything, she said through the smoke. I just do whatever comes next, whatever the next thing is.

  What’s the next thing right now?

  Well, I’ve got to get home before he wakes up. Unless you wanted to try this again. I’ve been here almost two weeks and we’ve just got together. Look at all the time we’ve wasted.

  When he walked her within sight of Dee Hixson’s house he didn’t even suspect what time it was. She walked close beside him in fading moonlight, holding his hand. He could hear her feet in the gravel, her breathing, hear his own breathing adjusting to hers. When they separated at the rise before Hixson’s cocks were crowing from Hixson’s barnlot. He stood awkwardly for a moment then leaned and kissed her. He didn’t know if he ought to say he loved her and he didn’t know if he did and in the end he followed her lead and said nothing at all.

  When he got back to the creek he had no desire to go back to bed so he sat for a time on the bridge, his feet swinging idly over the dark water. After a while a bird off in the woods somewhere began to sing and another took up the call. Before he knew it blue dawn light was fading out and the day began to gather itself out of the darkness. In the east a reef of salmoncolored clouds was rimlit by a bright metallic color he had no name for.

  In old books he’d read the heroes were seized in the throes of self-denunciation w
hen they’d finally yielded to temptations of the flesh, when they’d let carnality corrupt the spiritual. He felt that perhaps he ought to feel this way too, but all he felt was alive, as if his senses had been turned so that colors looked brighter, the tiniest sound had been given a bell-like clarity. He felt his fingertips could have read the words of a book as easily as if it had been printed in braille. He had been permitted brief access to a world of softer and warmer senses, and he was already planning how he could go there again.

  SHE CAME for two more nights and then the following night she didn’t. Finally he went to bed but he kept getting up and going outside and standing on the top step listening. He imagined her feet clinking the stones climbing the hill, when a cloud shuttled from beneath the moon he thought he saw her crossing the bridge. At last he went to bed but it was a long time before he slept.

  The next morning he was about early and he crossed up through a stony sedgefield and a growth of halfgrown cedars. Dee Hixson’s house sat at the mouth of a hollow, its tin roof rusted to a warm umber. The only vehicle parked in Dee’s yard was his pickup truck. Dee himself was sitting on the edge of the porch shelling fresh garden peas into a bowl.

  Come up, young Bloodworth. What you up to?

  Fleming seated himself on the edge of the porch. I was headed down around the old McNally place. Thought I’d see if ginseng was up yet.

  It’s up. Starroot too. Blackroot, there’s a world of that back in there.

  I’m about to run out of money. I thought I might make a few dollars that way.

  Dee was a wiry little man wrinkled and dark as a shriveled apple. In his younger days he was supposed to have been mean but to Fleming he didn’t look big enough to have accumulated the reputation that mantled him. Yet his face was a roadmap of old violence. A knife cut on his cheek had been crudely stitched so that the healed scar and the dots where the stitches had been looked like a pale fleshy centipede crawling toward his hairline. Long ago a man named Scrapiron Steel had held him down and cut off the end of his nose with a pocket knife. A week later Steel had disappeared, never to be seen again in Ackerman’s Field or anywhere else. The way Fleming had heard the story he was at the bottom of a cistern covered by the stones that Dee had rolled in to cover him, but studying this old man shelling peas he had trouble believing it.