by Tito Perdue
They possessed all of these, and by the time they had run past Wetumpka, his brother had gone to sleep. His father was not asleep, as Lee could determine by the glow of his cigarette, for upon him had fallen the responsibility of everything, including money, a thermos of coffee, and a jar to pee in. Soon now his mother would begin singing, a habit of hers when the family was together and going somewhere. Lee would remember this. Meantime the ash on Poor Albert’s cigarette had grown so long and tenuous that Lee expected momentarily to see it collapse into his lap. True, the man had a talent for ashes of impossible length. That was when Lee’s mother began singing his first-favorite nighttime traveling song:
No one here can love or understand me,
Oh what hard-luck stories they all hand me.
Make my bed and light the light,
I’ll arrive late tonight
Blackbird, bye, bye.
There was no question but that she sang well. And no question but that this song, that blended so well with Alabama and the night, with occasional filling stations and faraway homes with feeble lights burning in them, with cicadas and bats, the patched Moon, vigilant mules, and here and there a column of exhausted ungulates wending homeward in single file, of volcanoes exuding a lava as green as grass, radio towers, of grunting hogs, the dog and Lee and . . . And that was when the ash fell into his father’s lap.
They left the road and halted long enough to permit the man to beat out the sparks that had set his pants on fire. Too, he had brought a small flask of whiskey with him that fitted ideally into his vest pocket on the left-hand side. He liked to sip at it from time to time to enhance his driving. Strolling further down the roadbed, he then opened those same pants and “took a leak,” as generally he called it. Lee’s mother had meantime alternated over into one of the songs that must have been popular when she was young and when a family’s livestock was the best thing they had:
Go and tell Aunt Rhody
the old grey goose is dead,
the one she’s been saving
to make a feather bed.
Pleased by the music, Lee’s brother had come awake to listen to it. There were four of them in that car, and the rest of the world might well be extinct for all that Lee could care. Continuing in that line of thought, he speculated on the corpses, the starved dogs, unanswered telephones, and department stores when in an unpopulated world everything would be free of charge. “Good Lord,” said Leland to himself, “that’s a strange thing to wish for, a boy my age.”
Truth was, he hungered for earthquakes, thunder and lightning, and great wars, followed up by a renewal of a Dark Ages even more tenebrous than the last one. He wished for other things too, a submarine for example, or a hot-air balloon. Wanted a farm of his own and then, last of all, to set foot on the uncanny surface of Uranus, his favorite of the greater planets. Wanted numerous girls, the cream of northern Alabama, and to see his name made famous throughout the South. Not that he expected all of it at once! No, he was still quite young as yet, and could tarry for a certain while.
It was about as dark as ever he had seen it, which is to say until he realized that he had been dreaming. Forcing open first one lid and then another, he climbed to the window and examined the outside world. In the meantime a wind had come up, and it appeared to him as if the night had turned into a viscous material swirling back and forth. His father, certainly, had not changed, and Lee was able with his methods to ascertain that he was still awake. Perhaps they had lost the way, perhaps not, but in neither case would Lee have wished to call attention to the fact. They were moving deeper into the night. The latitudinous Moon had come to rest in an unfrequented place, whileas the stars, worn down by now to the merest things, were on the verge of going out. He could have scooped up the whole number of them in an average-size mason jar.
He was interested equally in signs. They passed a billboard with the picture of a beautiful woman on it (smoking a cigarette) who reminded him in some ways of Gwen, and in others of a particular eleventh-grader whose name he didn’t yet know. He next turned his notice to a bejeweled traffic sign telling of danger up ahead. They ran over a railway track, making haste lest a train arrive suddenly. He spotted a half-dozen swamp niggers, as these were called, pilgrimaging southwardly down the shoulder of the road.
A thousand years might go by, but never would Lee understand why people had chosen to sleep at night instead of the other way around. His nervousness increased, and probably he should have swallowed one of his pharmaceuticals at this juncture. The dog meantime had lapsed off into perturbed dreams, while his brother had fallen fully unconscious on his ledge. He even believed that his mother might be sleeping, too, until he heard her singing in a somewhat diminished voice:
Stars and steel guitars
And luscious lips as red as wine
Stole somebody’s heart
And I’m afraid that it was mine.
The words pushed aside the rubbish that cluttered Leland’s mind and would remain forever there, though another thousand years go by.
His father was not unconscious, and by the time they came into the outlying suburbs—two shacks and a filling station—of the little river town his grandfather had founded, Lee was so nearly asleep himself that he had to be roused by one of the adults. His assignment was to find his way up to the front porch of William’s House and knock on the door, a stunt that was supposed to surprise and delight his ancient grandmother. He was accustomed to it, being put to use that way and made an agent of his father’s tricks.
He had seen this place before, an unpainted structure with all sorts of stained glass and fancy fretwork running around the architrave. Stumbling up the stairs, he went and took up a position on the porch, surprised that the woman was still on vigil at one o’clock in the morning. They looked at each other warily through the frosted glass.
“Hi!” Lee said.
No sound came to him from within the enormous building.
“It’s just me,” he added.
Across the road, two lights came on in the neighbor’s house. Somewhere a dog was barking. From inside he could hear the sort of footsteps that he associated with old people who have become humpbacked from age and inclination. A lamp came on, a kerosene lantern to reckon from the granular character of the haze. From neighboring houses, two dogs were coming from opposite directions. Lee was surprised to have the rooster crowing at this untoward hour, a violation of its usual routine. No doubt his father would be grinning at all this, just the thing to finish off a perfect day.
“Ga-ga?” (It was his old-time expression, “Ga-ga,” for his grandmother.)
“What do you mean out there on my front porch!”
“Nothing.”
A long silence intervened. The bravest of the dogs had come forward and was interrogating Leland’s purpose with his nose. And then: “Is Young Albert out there?”
“No, ma’am! He’s in the car.”
She went around, moving slowly, and opened the curtain, giving her a pretty good vantage on Young Albert’s Ford. Lee, confident it would happen, waited for her to return to the door.
“Well,” she said. “I reckon it’s alright.”
She opened the door an inch or two, enough to let Lee see the .32 caliber semi-automatic trembling in her hand.
“Hi!” Lee said.
She was a tentative sort of person and had some trouble bending low enough to make out his identity.
“Looks like . . .”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Albert’s boy.”
“Yes, ma’am. Can we come in?”
The dog, the brave one, had entered already, and was sniffing at Lee’s and his grandmother’s four shoes and feet. Came now Leland’s people—a groggy brother and two adults. His father was grinning broadly. His mother, on the other hand, was faded-looking and was bringing two pieces of small luggage. Lee was pleased the old woman had set up a Christmas tree, however small. And yet she must have possessed ten thousand trees better tha
n this one among the some two hundred and forty acres still pertaining to her.
They gathered in the parlor and began passing compliments back and forth. Uncanny, how the old time smells still lingered here, essence of camphor and linseed oil, cakes, lavender, and pies. A thousand years might go by. His eye, Lee’s, traveled by habit to the massy portrait on the wall of his entombed grandfather, a stern man, rectitudinous, afflicted with no tolerance whatsoever—just the sort that later on Lee was to become and adore. That portrait hung just above an antique clock of high value, a thing as big as some of the biggest clocks normally seen. Enchanted by these old familiar artifacts, not to mention the shotgun in the corner and calendar on the wall with the picture of Jeff Davis on it, Lee went and looked down the long dark corridor that had intrigued and worried him for so long. He could discern pieces of large furniture that lined the hallway, also a blistered mirror that had mostly peeled away by now. The house and its features had been assembled in 1898, but Lee did not have enough history to visualize the world of that day, when people like his grandfather had held sway.
He was pointed to the bedroom, shown his pajamas, and ordered into bed. His brother was mostly still asleep for hours, and their father was able to lift him up and lay him down next to the recumbent Leland, an embryo in a vitelline skein. His eyelids, unfortunately, were translucent, and the boy could witness all that happened during the course of nights. Even more annoying were the adults, who continued to gossip in the next room, the three of them excitedly exchanging banalities not worth hearing. His grandmother’s voice tended to peter out at the end of sentences, but he could get the gist of it. Twice she chuckled. “Heh, heh.”
Thus Lee—it was one o’clock in the morning, he could hear an owl blaring from not very far away. He was in the very room (he tried to picture it) in which his father had been conceived. Ten thousand years might go by, and forever there’d be additional Peflies emerging into life. A house and home, a dog and car, pictures on the wall—seldom had he felt snugger and/or smug than at just this time. Smacking his lips over it, he fell asleep and stayed that way until about two hours later, when he awoke to see . . .
. . . his father down on one knee in front of the hearth. The man had brought together some dozen lengths of hardwood and was using three or four several pinecones to kindle a fire. No doubt he imagined himself the only one awake, wherefore Lee took care to maintain perfect silence. From far away came the sound of a train full of Alabamians running at full speed through the counties and, nearer at hand, the owl giving one last call that would have to suffice him for the rest of the night.
His father was a wistful man, and his head was square. From his position, Lee was actually able to look through a slice of the man’s glasses, which gave a sharp and well-defined view of things as viewed by an engineer. Lee knew nothing of the experiences that had made him as melancholy as he was, nor of the problems which he was wont to keep to himself. Lee didn’t even know much about his work, except that it entailed the making of blueprints and required a lot of time. Further still, Lee wasn’t exactly sure of his own position in the family and whether he was growing up in accord with the plans that the man had blueprinted for him. But he had been wrong, Lee, about the owl, who now blared one additional time that really did turn out to be the last of the night.
Ten
He awoke unto an antique world. The washbowl had water in it, the smell of breakfast filled the house, and his brother was gone. Leaping to shirt and trousers, he strode quickly to the kitchen, where the family had met already and already was half through the dumplings and eggs. Lee saluted them and grinned boyishly, confident that his grandmother and uncle would greet him in the amazed and congratulatory way that he had come to expect.
“Good gracious alive! That can’t be Lee, can it?” (His voice was faint and came as if from far away.)
“Yes, sir; it is.”
“Well, come on over here, for goodness sakes, and get some waffles afore they’re all gone.”
Lee consented to it. His brother had consumed several of the things already, as could be seen in the fluid molasses draining from his chin. Lee settled across from his father who, still in robe and slippers, appeared to be reading the local newspaper. He was happy here, here in William’s House, and the ash on his cigarette was longer, too. Lee reached tentatively for a waffle, drew it to himself, and covered it, not in syrup this time, but rather the brown honey still regularly vouchsafed them by his extinct grandfather’s well-trained bees. He was also to remember, Lee, a certain little pink dish divided into compartments, each chamber holding a separate kind of jam and jelly and watermelon rind pickle. Further, there was a jar of strawberry preserves which they used with reserve. Coffee—he wasn’t allowed any. Nor any of the scuppernong wine that sat on a shelf of its own just below the massy portrait of his grandmother’s father, a bearded man who had slain his meed of trespassing northerners all those years ago.
It was a bright winter day, doves flying over, the scent of parched peanuts coming from the kitchen. He was both anxious to get outside, Lee, but anxious also to stay with these older people telling stories of the most remote times, when fog and smoke covered most of Alabama. Especially he admired his uncle, a hale man who had been delivering the mails for thirty years and was acknowledged the best fisherman in the county. His voice, however, was extraordinarily soft, even by local standards, and Lee had to bend close to pick up his words. He had a straw hat that he wore throughout the day, but his neck and face were sunburned just the same.
“Good gracious alive,” he said.
Lee came nearer.
“What you boys been doing?”
“Nothing,” said Lee. “Went to Tuscaloosa.”
“Did!”
“Yes, sir. But my reed was broken.” (He made no reference to the girl.)
“Well, I’ll be jiggered. Done any fishing?”
“No, sir. But I sure would like to.”
“Me, too,” Leland’s brother said. “I sure would like to, just as much as he would.”
The man laughed. His arms were brawny from having dredged in so many bass, big ones that oftentimes ended up pictured in the newspaper.
“Well. I got to go to Enterprise this morning. But maybe we can do some fishing tonight. Unless you don’t want to.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.”
“Shoot, sounds good to me, too!”
“Which one does it sound better to?” He laughed a laugh, the man, like a dry breeze sifting through brown stalks of last year’s corn. And then, too, he had a grid on the back of his sunburnt neck that looked very like the waffles they had just consumed, the result of too much Sun over too long a time. As fascinated as he was, and as charmed, Lee scarcely noted that his grandmother had also been speaking over the past half-minute in a voice that was nearly as soft as her eldest son’s. Lee turned to her now, and they looked at each other. Her eyes must have been oval at one period, but now the lower lid had formed a little spout whence some of the juice had flowed away.
“No,” she said. “I don’t reckon you-all need to be down to the river in the middle of the night. You never know.”
“It’ll be all right, mama.”
“No. I don’t hardly think so.” Suddenly she jumped back, startled to find Leland’s brother just next to her. And yet they had been introduced several times before. That was when Leland’s uncle rose slowly, stretched, chuckled, rolled a cigarette, and then took out his knife and began paring at his nails. It was exceedingly sharp, that knife, and the blade had worn down over time to a substantial thinness. Lee came nearer to look at it. The man took no great care, apparently, when he micturated, and the front of his trousers bore all kinds of tiny stains. And if his three brothers had all gone off to college and turned into dentists and engineers and the sort, he remained by general consent the wisest of the lot. Suddenly he strode around to Leland’s brother, lifted him, left the house, and then began striding off to town with the boy riding on hi
s shoulders.
He had hoped, had Lee, that his father might eventually finish up with the funny papers; instead, the man appeared to have gotten bogged down in Mutt and Jeff. Reduced to the obverse of the page, Lee harkened to Alley Oop and his good friend Foozy sitting astride their dinosaur. Later on, looking back upon it, he could not accept the passing away of these people and the apathy they were to receive at the hands of the modern world.
With nothing left to do, no homework or anything of that sort, he opted to go to the barn and feed the chickens, but had no sooner arrived there than the recording machine in his head was captured by the ineffable smell of cotton and hay and compacted manure. The cows and horse had all been given chambers of their own, revealing the excellence in carpentry that had typified his grandfather. He was surrounded here, Leland, by the ghosts of ten thousand animals jostling for space. In the corner he spied an old-time harness rotted down to a mere lump of leather, too heavy for him to lift. What sort of men had these been who had toiled themselves to death with such awkward equipment? Who had understood mules and in turn been understood by them? And who now were abominated for poor dentition and sunburnt necks?
He could feel his gorge rising. The roof had holes in it, and rays of sunshine, each of about an inch in girth, were ricocheting back and forth among the stalls. Probing the nearest of these beams with his finger, Lee tried to stir up the little motes of dust floating in and out of ken. There was more to this than met the eye, more to light and more to dust, and more to a particular style of life.
The chickens were baffled by his appearance, nor did he rightly know how to put them at ease. Seizing one by the neck, he tried to force-feed grain to the creature, which is to say until the foul thing put its spur into the connective tissue between the boy’s thumb and finger. He was good at mathematics and pretty good at fishing, but knew nothing of hens, mules, darning needles, and molasses-making. Nor knew he aught about the twenty-foot-high levee that defended the town on three sides.