William Gay: Twilight

He went on up the hollow, moving more confidently now, seeing in his memory the lay of the land and the oblong fault in the earth and the stone arch with its narrow passageway, his exit from a nightmare. He could almost see the old man’s house in the lee of the hills, gleaming in a grail of sunlight, the shades darkening from melting frost.

In the spinning dervish of snow the curious harp went on playing its eerie onenote song, sides mounding whitely, flakes drifting into the dark abyss, falling and falling he wondered how far. He kicked the snow from the flat stone and lifted it aside and scratched the tobacco tin out of the earth and shoved it into the pocket of the overcoat. He went on into the channel between the rocks, then stopped abruptly and stoodstaring speculatively at the pit. Thinking perhaps of the old man sleeping. Dreaming an old man’s troubled dreams. Let an old man sleep, he thought. Some core of stubbornness hardened in him. You’ve got to play the hand that they deal you. And the ante’s never as high for the other fellow when you shove your coins across nor is the pot as large as when you yourself drag it in. After the last card comes down all you’ve got is yourself.

Working hurriedly, he began to dismantle the makeshift fence. Years seemed to have passed since he’d constructed it. He laid the rotten boards and deadfall branches across the narrow side of the pit six or eight inches apart. When he peered down once the snowflakes were vanishing as if they were being drawn into the black maw of the earth. When he had the opening covered save the dark cracks between the boards, he began to carry great armloads of snowy leaves and brush and spread them carefully and return for more, and all the while the falling snow was obscuring his work and the harp’s voice grew fainter and fainter. Ultimately the hole seemed not to exist, a thin skim of white already covering it. When the harp ceased the world went silent with it save the soft hush of the snowflakes in the trees.

He was satisfied but he kept dragging up more wood and he found the work warmed him. Into the lee of the rocks he dragged treetops and great slabs of lightningstruck whiteoak and thin silver husks of chestnut stumps and windblown branches, mounding it all till he thought he’d rival the old witchwoman at the Perrie place. When he’d dragged all he could find for a considerable circular distance around the chasm, he set about building a fire. Tinder was hard to come by but on the sheltered side of the bluff he pulled handfuls ofwiry, curling grass and such bits of moss as weren’t iced over, and he began to break the fine branches to length. In a natural hollow of the rock he piled tinder and a handful of the smallest sticks then fumbled out his snuffbox of matches and struck one. Cupping the feeble light in his hands he lit the tinder. By the orange glow his face was sharp and intent. The grass caught and burned in bright fluxing wires of fire. He fed it sticks and bits of moss and then larger branches. The fire in its stone bowl dished and wavered in the wind. He piled on more wood and waited for it to catch, crouched before it with his freezing hands outspread like some Neanderthal lost in the almost sexual wonder of heat. The fire rose, then roared and popped with the wind pumping up the hollow like a bellows. The flames fired the bluff orange and ebony shadows writhed across it fleeing windward as souls in torment are said to do and he just hunkered there for a time letting the heat soak into him.

When he’d warmed awhile and felt several degrees more human he got up and piled on wood until he’d relocated this woodpile atop the fire and within an hour he had an enormous bonfire roaring fullthroated up the natural flue of the rocks with showers of sparks cascading upward into the snow like antisnow and a standing tongue of flame burning away in the night like an enormous candle. There was a spreading black circle where the snow was retreating from the fire and he laid a fencepost within it and spread the coat over it as a makeshift but passable sleeping Tyler and went back into the stone arch to wait. There was no room to sit in the narrow passageway but it was relatively dry here and the bluff deflected the wind so ultimately he drowsed in exhaustion neither standing nor sitting, weary body bent to the contoursof the stone.

Perhaps he wasn’t coming. Perhaps he hadn’t even seen the fire, though Tyler didn’t know how that could be. Anyone abroad this night, however doubtful that might be, was going to see this fire. Maybe he had already come to Bookbinder’s. Crept into the old man’s lair and cut his throat where he lay. Perhaps he lay this moment in the old man’s bed, the old man’s goldrimmed glasses astride the blade of his nose and nightcap drawn down about his ears and his body burrowed beneath Bookbinder’s bloodsoaked covers like an enormous mole, a spurious Bookbinder awaiting Tyler’s arrival, teeth locked in a smarmy grin, the better to eat you with.

When Sutter came there was no sound save the wind. No rattling stones, nothing whatsoever to foretell his arrival, the upper body just loomed above the shelf of rock and at first he wasn’t sure there was anyone there, then the wind intensified and the fire flared and Sutter was climbing onto the table of stone slowly, ever so slowly, coming on implacably like the protagonist of a nightmare escaping whatever bonds separate dreams from reality. Hunkered now. Silently taking up the rifle. Coming erect painfully slowly, as if even the popping of kneejoints might awaken the sleeping Tyler. He stood leant forward studying the coat, and then he looked all about. Tyler was thinking the coat did not much resemble a sleeping human. Sutter turned about like a beast to catch whatever scent the night might bring. Rifle at the ready. Some old primal caution seemed in force here, he seemed to divine by some subtle alteration in the terrain or the atmosphere that the glade was just quit by another.

Come on, goddamn you, Tyler thought. Come on up these stairs. Take another drink and just put your foot on the nextstep. The door’s unlocked and this time I’m ready for you.

Sutter looked to the left. To the right. Crouched and with the rifle held before his midsection he stepped forward onto the juryrigged chasm and when he did the earth twisted and went from beneath him like a gallows trapdoor and he flung the rifle, clawing wildly for purchase.

The rifle was gone but Sutter himself seemed to defy gravity or perhaps the depths had decided they wanted no part of him for he clung desperately to a length of pole that had lodged beneath his armpits and his eyes were intent on the lip of the stone nearest him as if nothing else in the world existed. He hung on the pole as if resting until his strength came back. He was opening and closing his mouth in great gulps of icy air. Finally his eyes locked on Tyler’s.

Boy, he said. His breaths were coming in ragged gasps. Tyler could see ice frozen in his hair and eyebrows. Cold, Sutter said. Feathery snowflakes were cascading past him into the earth and they lay in his hair without melting.

Tyler was looking about for a weapon. He took up a length of lumber and stood holding it.

Listen, Sutter said. There’s money in my pocket. Better than seven thousand dollars. You can have it, just let me get over to you where you can give me a hand.

Tyler waited with the board clutched like a ball bat.

She ain’t dead, Sutter said. When them doctors come they brought her to. All she was was knocked out. And if you hadn’t took to the deep pineys we’d of all had a big laugh about it. Likely she ain’t even got a headache by now.

You’re a goddamned liar, Tyler said. She was dead before I left her and Fenton Breece has got her somewhere.

This money’s in my right front pocket. I can feel it burningmy leg. It’s yours if you want it. We can get a lot more out of that crazy undertaker.