Provinces of Night: A Novel

by William Gay

  I may have to rethink my whole philosophy of life after going out with you, she said.

  What are you talking about? He turned and watched the screen. Some sort of chorus line had formed, folks with walking sticks and straw boaters were singing and dancing, all in silence.

  I was thinking about all the guys I’ve gone with. I had about decided men were the worst kind of trash on earth. I didn’t want anything else to do with them. They use you and drop you, slap you around a little every now and then to keep you in line. Kiss you and slobber around on you. Take Neal, for example.

  You take him if you want him. I believe I’ve about figured Neal out.

  If Neal brought me to the drive-in, which he wouldn’t, he never took me anywhere, and the car had died like this one did, which it wouldn’t, Neal has a new Buick, it wouldn’t have bothered him a bit. Tough shit, Neal would have said. Likely he would have just walked off or got a ride somewhere. You were really bothered by it, I could tell. It embarrassed you. Not only did you get us drinks and popcorn, you bought the giant economy size. Maybe I got to you in time and I can shape you just the way I want you. Make my own little man.

  He was silent a time. He was no good at these kinds of conversations. Words would not come to him as easily as they did to her. Words carried weight, some more than others, and it seemed to him that once you’d arranged them into phrases they stayed that way like bricks you’d laid in a wall and went on meaning what they said no matter what happened. Finally he said, I’d just as soon not talk about Neal. If you think I drove all the way to Clifton and back in this garbed up piece of crap to talk about Neal Bloodworth you’re sorely mistaken.

  What’s the matter with Neal? Aside from the stuff I already mentioned.

  Neal’s crazy. Sometimes I think my whole damned family is crazy except me. Maybe me too. Come to think of it, especially me.

  She bit a chunk of ice with her clean even teeth. Why did you drive all the way to Clifton in this garbed up piece of crap?

  Because I had to see you, he said.

  She pulled her feet back off his lap and straightened in the seat. Let’s go sit on the grass by the speaker post where we can hear, she said.

  In the trunk he found a folded blanket Albright had been using for a dropcloth and spread it on the speaker ramp. He turned the speaker up and the girl became engrossed in the movie. It did not interest him. His mind would not focus on it, he could make no sense of it, as if the reels of film were being shown in random order. She was too close to him, leant against his shoulder. He’d begin to get some grasp on the plot of the movie and when he turned toward her her coinclean profile roiled his mind into a jumble of colored images. And the blanket they were sitting on seemed as public as the movie screen and did not lend itself to any sort of intimacy. On the way to town he’d kept his eyes open for any sort of likely-looking sideroads and he thought that on the way back he might talk her into parking for a while. He had a crazy feeling that time was running out for him. He felt that he’d crossed some line and everything on this side of it was represented by Raven Lee Halfacre.

  Let’s go sit in the car, he said. What happened to having your fun while you could?

  She just shook her head without taking her eyes from the screen but after a while the mosquitoes found them. He was kept busy slapping his arms and neck. The things are the size of bats and they’re eating me alive, he said. You can sit out here it you want to.

  She slapped one and left a bloody smear on her cheek. If you leave me here they’ll probably fly off with me, she said. We’d better get somewhere.

  She would not get into the back seat but after they’d kissed heatedly for a time her shirt was unbuttoned and her brassiere around her waist and he had managed to get her into a semireclining position half in the front seat and half against the passenger side door. Quit, she kept saying, but she kept raising her mouth to his and she still had her arms tightly about his neck. He was in some confusion about interpreting these conflicting signals and he was nearing a state almost ecstatic, his entire body tumescent. He was crouched on his knees above her trying to work her shorts down when the door she was leaning against sprang open. The dome light came on as she toppled backward, arms outflung and a wild look on her face and her bare breasts white in the disinterested glow of the light. Hellfire, Fleming said. He turned in the seat and kicked the dome so hard the plastic cover smashed. Darkness fell. You crazy shitass, she said. She climbed back in the car and adjusted her clothing. She slammed the door with such force that the glass rattled. He put a tentative arm about her shoulders but the moment seemed to have passed.

  On the way back to Clifton he listened to every tick and tremor of the engine with the concentration of a doctor holding a stethoscope to the chest of a dying patient. He had refilled the radiator with water from the concession stand but upon getting underway the car began to overheat immediately. The engine labored and wheezed and even on level ground seemed to be ascending some almost insurmountable grade, on hills it came to a near standstill. He had decided the car was dying and was determined to roll over every foot of ground it was capable of covering.

  The girl seemed oblivious to all this. Why are you driving so slow? she asked.

  He didn’t reply. His hands were whiteknuckled on the steering wheel, and he was listening to a new sound, a sinister muffled knocking that seemed to be coming from beneath the hood, as if something was trapped inside the engine and was trying to pound its way out with methodical blows from a sledgehammer. They had started up a long grade five or six miles out of Clifton, he was locked in concentration deep as prayer, when there was a final blow from the engine, then an explosion of steam from beneath the hood and the car stopped.

  He shoved the emergency brake down and got out and raised the hood. A radiator hose had burst but he suspected that was the least of his problems. He wondered what the old man would do in this situation. What Junior Albright would do. Thomas Wolfe. O lost, and by the wind grieved … All the poems he’d read seemed of little benefit here.

  He went back and climbed behind the wheel. Now let’s just see, he said.

  Did you fix it?

  We’ll try her and see, he said. All he got was a clicking, a dead telegrapher tapping along wires with nobody at the other end.

  What do you think is the matter with it?

  To tell you the truth I think I blew a head gasket and just kept driving it till I broke a piston or threw a rod or something.

  You don’t have another one? A spare gasket?

  He looked at her. No, he said. And I don’t have a pair of pliers to put it on with if I did.

  Well, what do I know, I’m not a mechanic. What do we do now?

  I guess we’ll walk. He was already climbing out of the car, trying to get a fix on where he was, trying to remember how far it was to Clifton. Was it five miles, six? More in all likelihood.

  She made no move to climb out. That’s crazy, she said. Shit. I’m not walking anywhere.

  Well you’d better make up your mind. If you’re staying here there’s no point in me heading toward Clifton. All that’s waiting for me in Clifton is that thug who kicked hell out of me and your mama. And we don’t even have her flavoring.

  Oh well. She climbed out. Neal could fix it, you know. Or one of his buddies would just happen along with a backseat full of tools and a headgasket that would just happen to be for this make of car. He’s the luckiest thing I ever saw, Neal is.

  If I hear the word Neal one more time I’m going to run off and leave your ass, he said. Let something carry you off.

  She wound an arm through his. Anything that grabbed me would turn me loose when morning came, she said.

  Not me, he said. If I caught you I wouldn’t ever turn you loose.

  Anyway I was just teasing you. It’s like waving a red flag at a bull, you bite every time. You don’t much like Neal, do you?

  There’s not much there to either like or dislike, he said. I think I finally figured out ho
w he looks at things. He thinks the world is his front yard, and everything else, people or whatever, that’s just stuff left lying around for him to play with. Are you in love with him or something?

  No, I guess I’m not. I thought I was there for a while, but it’s over now. It was just that he was goodlooking, and he had that new car, Neal always had women running after him. But you’re right. When Neal don’t need you, he just don’t need you. Like that old blues song, Neal don’t know you when you’re down and out.

  You don’t seem so down and out to me.

  I’m laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

  They had finally topped out on the hill. The blacktop spooled away in the moonlight, an ungodly amount of it. The landscape was all indigo and silver, a few scattered yellow lights from houses in the bottomland. He could see the bluffs along the river, clumps of ebony trees that were just indecipherable shapes.

  They rested a moment, standing close together, her hand still clasping his. He suddenly realized that he felt comfortable with her. Most of his life seemed to pass in a lurch of nervous anxiety about things he had no control over, a rush to be in some undefined future events had not even shaped yet. She was like peaceful waters, like a calming hand laid on his shoulder.

  I’ve got this crazy uncle if he was here he could just pass a hand over it and miracle it back on the road. Heal that blown headgasket. Just a curse with a little reverse spin on it.

  What’s your father like?

  He was silent so long she looked up at him, her eyes darkened further by the shadow of her lashes. He realized that Boyd was a cipher to him. I’ll be damned if I know, he said finally, and wondered for a moment where Boyd was, if he was ever coming back, if even now he might be climbing the rocky path that led through the cedars, a paperback book in his hip pocket, his eyes already set to the point where the unlighted house would come into view.

  They descended the long hill toward the bridge. The night was cool but not uncomfortably so, a good October night for walking. A wind they had not felt on the other side of the hill went scuttling through the trees, sent clouds streaking across the face of the moon, intent and purposeful, as if they knew just where they were going and were in a hurry to get there. He thought of Alfred Noyes, looked about the night in a kind of wonder; the wind really was a torrent of darkness, the moon a ghostly galleon tossed upon stormy seas.

  When I was a little girl I used to slip off up town and go around asking grown men if they knew my daddy. If any of them did I’d make them tell me everything they knew about him. Most of it wasn’t very good, he’d beat a lot of them out of money. He was a con man from somewhere, supposed to be half Indian. Or a full-blooded Cherokee, depending on who was doing the talking. He came in here with some kind of oil scam, he was going to make everybody rich. I probably oughtn’t be telling you this. I should have told you he was a Baptist preacher, who got killed on a mission somewhere saving souls.

  I was never much on preachers anyway.

  He was supposed to be a sharp dresser, Daddy was. And a slick talker, too, he had a bunch of papers saying he represented some big oil company. I don’t know exactly how it worked, but he got a land lease and a bunch of heavy equipment from somewhere and started setting up to drill a well. He had reports on the soil, all that. I reckon folks were just tripping over each other to hand him money. It went on a while and then one morning all the investors showed up to watch the drilling start and Daddy never showed up. He was longgone, and the money was too. Everybody talked big, they say, telling what they were going to do when they caught him, but he was just gone. Nobody knew where he came from, nobody knew where he went. He just faded out. I guess he was always conning everybody, he for sure conned Mama. She always used to say he’d come back and get us, but I said the hell with that. Why would you come back to a place where they were going to tar and feather you? That’s crazy. Clifton’s a mean place, they’d skin him alive.

  They walked on in silence. Then she said, see how you men are? Mama might have been a schoolteacher instead of a drunk. You men are always breaking things you don’t know how to fix.

  Below them the river wound through lowering trees that seemed to be adrift on pale shoals of mist and past the bridge the world simply faded out as if everything beyond that point had merged together, water and tree and sky become some combinent and alien element. For a moment nothing existed save himself and Raven Lee, then voices came out of the fog sourceless yet with a bell-like clarity. They seemed to be simply appearing out of thin air.

  Clyde. Clyde. They’re out there runnin our trotlines, a woman’s voice called.

  You get away from them lines, a man shouted. I’ve got a gun over here and I’m fixin to shoot.

  Laughter, the lapping of oars in the water. Oh, no, he’s got a gun over there and he’s fixin to shoot.

  Raven Lee pulled off her shoes and inspected her heels. God, she said. Blisters. You tote these, I believe I’ll try it barefoot for a while.

  They trudged on, Fleming carrying the shoes. We seem to do a lot of walking on our little get-togethers, she said. In the unlikely event that we ever go out again, how about if we do something different?

  We could sit on a porch somewhere and rock.

  I believe I’d just sit, she said. I’m too tired to rock.

  They began to pass farmhouses set back from the road in lush tactile fields, manicured-looking pastures kept by wooden fences painted white. All these houses seemed well supplied with watchdogs that sensed these interlopers’ presence and passed the word down the line dog to dog until the entire valley was beset by barking and howling dogs. They began to be accompanied by dogs that followed barking at them from the shadows, their slitted eyes aglow as if from some internal malevolence. Goddamn a bunch of dogs anyway, he said. He handed her the shoes and gathered an armful of rocks and began to hurl them one by one into the dark at the yellow eyes. Behind them porchlights clicked on as if they’d inadvertently triggered some obscure alarm.

  Far down the road behind them headlights appeared, streaked toward them out of the silver mist. He could hear the fullthroated roar of a gutted muffler.

  Let’s get off the road, she said. That could be anybody.

  It could be a ride into Clifton, he said. I’m going to thumb it.

  He was standing by the roadside with his thumb in the air when the car passed, only slackening speed for someone to roll down the passenger side window and lob a halffull beer bottle at him. It struck his shoulder so hard it spun him sideways and onto his knees. His left hand was still full of rocks and before he even considered what he was doing he’d changed hands with them and aimed carefully and hurled one at the fleeing car with all his might.

  The rock with its freight of anger-drenched adrenaline deadcentered the rear windshield. It disappeared in a dull whumpf of collapsing safety glass, the brakelights came on instantly, and the car slewed crazily onto the shoulder of the road. Yellow backup lights came on and the car lurched drunkenly toward them with the rear tires smoking.

  Shit, the girl said.

  She went down the sloping shoulder of the road at a dead run and into a field, half falling over a fence. He caught her by the time they reached a thin stand of willows and they ran on into them. He could hear angry shouting from the highway. They sat crouched in the darkness, breathing hard, the dew soaking their knees.

  Come out and fight like a man, you coward, you chickenshit son of a bitch. She clasped a hand over his mouth and collapsed giggling against his back. A drunken ranting ensued, four or five different voices, elaborate and inventive namecalling. What future he had was going to be painful and extremely brief, the voices informed him. He’d be emasculated, his bloody testes pounded past broken teeth with a ballbat. God, she whispered. He twisted her hand off his mouth. I don’t need that, he said. At least I know when to keep my mouth shut.

  I doubt it, she said. I keep telling you things not to do and you keep right on doing them. Nobody but you could thumb a ca
r and have it be the only carload of drunk escapees from a lunatic asylum in the state of Tennessee.

  After a few moments of sitting in silence they heard the car crank and drive away, tires squalling on the macadam. She rose but he pulled her back down beside him.

  That’s only the driver, he said. The ones with the knives and baseball bats are there waiting for us to come walking up out of the bushes.

  How do you know?

  I just do.

  Oh well. Thank God for the bushes anyway. I’ve been about to pee for an hour. You won’t look will you?

  Go back in there wherever you want. Just watch for cottonmouths.

  Watch? I can’t even see the ground. I’m not going out of sight of you. Just don’t look, all right?

  He lay on his back in the grass with his hands clasped behind his head. Through the roof of branches a three-quarter moon fled at breakneck speed into endless reefs of clouds that it illuminated briefly then shuttled past. She came back and lay beside him, an arm thrown across his chest.

  How long do we have to wait?

  I have no idea.

  Life with you is so interesting. Is this the way you always meet girls?

  Look, he said. I’d like to tell you I’m sorry for all this, but if I did I’d be lying. I am sorry that you’re having to walk, and I’m sorry you won’t ever go with me again. But I’d rather be here with you, with all that blacktop in front of us, than what I’d be doing at home.

  What would you be doing?

  I don’t know. Reading, sleeping. Nothing. Listening to my cells break down and die. What would you?

  Listening to the radio probably. There’s this radio station in Nashville, WLAC. Nights they don’t play anything but blues. Old blues, songs you never heard of. Songs by Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson. You ever listen to it?

  My grandpa gave me some records he made a long time ago. He said whoever labeled the records thought he was a colored blues singer. They say Race Records on them.

  What were the songs?

  One I remember was James Alley Blues. One named Sugar Baby. I wish you could hear him play and sing. He sounds … he just sounds strange. Like nothing I ever heard on the radio.