Joy Williams - State of Grace

He knew the Jaguar perfectly. It was his only inconsistency. Stalls and shelters dotted the yard, housing soaking parts, tools, fluids and hoses. I remember him working on it on beautiful nights, the trees impossible ash, the river fat and white beneath the moon …

I remember him working on it the last time. I called to him but he only pressed deeper into the engine. His only movement was when he exchanged one wrench for another. When he was finished at last, he came in, smelling of soap and kerosene. He went to bed. We did not kiss the last time. We gripped our bodies as one learns to. Feeding cutlery.

But why do I speak so myopically? There has been an accident. The deputy looks at me as though he would like to hit me. He lights a cigarette that seems absurdly long. I wrap my fingers more tightly around the paper bag that rests in my lap. “Let me rectumfy something …” I begin and know I have made another mistake. “Rectify,” I say. There is a big star painted on the hood of the Ford as though we were part of a circus train. The deputy seems not to be listening. He pulls up to a White Tower and glares angrily inside for a few minutes at the people bent around the counter, eating fries and eggs. He puts the car in gear again. He seems displeased with everything.

He says, “There was only one accident and you left it. You wasn’t about to report it. There was only one accident and only one car.”

I agree with him as much as possible. “I saw the whole thing.” It was true. It wasn’t happening to me for, after all, it was Grady’s accident. I can’t be expected to assimilate everyone else’s events. A suppository of junky remembrances is pressed upon me by them all and I can’t forget a bit of it. I can remember everything and no one fact complements the other. It feels the same whether you’ve pretended it or not.

“You’re lucky,” the deputy says. “I seen accidents where nothing on the vehicle is broke save the headlight but the people inside is deader than bricks.”

He is so bewildering, this angry man. He is driving with prideful slowness through the town. He lingers particularly outside Mr. Porky, Mahalia Jackson Fried Chicken and John’s Bar-Bee-Q. We cruise in and out of the parking lots. The deputy breathes through his teeth and taps his fingers against the steering wheel.

Why am I lucky? I don’t understand. I am unable to make inferences, but nothing ever seems to come to a conclusion and that isn’t my fault. The deputy doesn’t mention Grady. I try to think of him, once and for all.

It is warm and the top of the Jaguar is down. I am following him in the other car, passing and falling back again on the thin blacktop road. I feel like a little girl and happy. The night is warm and smells so good and we are going out for dinner. The Jaguar rockets down the road, the wind puffing out his shirt like a sail. He moves his head up and down to the music that he hears.

He has washed in the river. His chest and arms shine like a fish but the parts of his body that are covered with the river are yellow and dented like a chewed pipestem. I interrupt him and he drops the soap. It floats down into the mud and is lost. He hoists himself up onto the dock and walks naked to the trailer. Water splashes from his hair onto my hands. It feels like nothing — the same temperature as my skin — but it smells nicely of weeds. The woods in the dusk are dappled like an appaloosa. There are shadows everywhere and splinters in my hand. I try to work them out with my teeth. Everything I touch hurts.

On the road, he is driving very fast and well. We travel for miles and see no one. The Jaguar flows tightly around corners. The air is cool and damp on my face but our hips and thighs, pressed against the transmission tunnel, are warm. The engine throbs so heavily and the wind noise is so high that we would not be able to speak to each other even if we wished to. There are so many dials and needles, all telling him that he is progressing well.

… I will admit I’m not stylish, but I want to tell you something further. Intimacy brings its own alleviations. It substitutes for a great deal that would otherwise have to be carefully worked out. We are young and secret newlyweds, cutely expecting a baby. I am allotted a certain recklessness of feeling in such circumstances and I might as well use it. The wreck was spectacular and I enjoyed it. I know it’s not stylish but I refuse to chastise myself for this as I might have at a more impressionable age. I felt a sort of sick exultation, as in making love. Now I feel merely sickish for it’s quite apparent that I am in some frame that is in process after the accident, that the accident did not include. The wreck was interesting while it was going on because of its promise of finality — graceful, very honest and so soundless, for Grady did not once touch the brakes, which was commendable, I see it all now — flying, turning, settling — in black and white stills. As though taken from an exhibition. But now I realize … that is, it seems apparent …

He tries to shield it from me, although this is quite impossible for the car lies in several sections on the curve. The top half of the steering wheel has disappeared into the ground. The exhaust system lies in the road but one tailpipe has become embedded by its pointed end in a tree. It falls as I approach. I touch Grady’s face. He tries to assure me that what has just happened doesn’t matter. Of course I know this but he is so insistent that I have to pretend to disagree so that he can convince me. I touch his face and it moves oddly across his jaw …

The deputy drives faster and faster as we approach the courthouse. We tear around a corner with two wheels in the air and lunge into an underground parking lot. He strikes the brakes and the tail of the Ford leaps up into the air and settles with a grind. There are prisoners down there, working on motorcycles and sweeping the concrete floor. They do not even look up as we roar in. One has only one eye and is drinking an Orange Crush. The deputy leans across me and opens my door. I step out with my paper bag of wine.

We walk to an elevator and soar softly upward. Everything is very new. Modernization begins here and tramps southward along the coast. South of the courthouse is the college, the pretty bay, yachts, condominiums and dazzling subdivisions where no tree grows. North of the courthouse, the country shifts and simplifies. It is noisy and brackish, the shoreline messy with skiffs and abandoned appliances and pickup trucks. We arrive on the second floor but nothing happens. In the elevator is a picture of the Governor and a small rotating fan, mixing the air. I smell like a cheese for I didn’t have time to bathe once Grady was through in the river. The deputy kicks the door with his boot and it slides back and we step out into the sheriff’s department. Three young boys shivering in plastic chairs look up. They are all rib and muscle and long bleached hair. Each has a generous cluster of pimples on his cheek in an ornate and purple curve, like a tattoo.

I sit down in a chair by the window and look out onto the street. My deputy is talking with some other men, all in uniform, and writing something down in a notebook. They talk very softly except when they are calling each other by name, then their voices boom and roll toward the surfers and me. My deputy is named Ruttkin. There is Tinker the jailer and Darryl at the desk. They call out their names and laugh and answer to them. They are solid presences in the room, more solid than the soft drink machine, certainly more solid than me sitting by the window and watching the wide white street. Ruttkin brings me a form to fill out and a folded newspaper to write on.

I want to say, “Besides I’m true, so why do I need an alibi.” I would like to tell them that good-humoredly but they would never know that it came from Mae West and it would be wasted. Besides, they don’t ask me for an alibi. They ask me if I would like a glass of water.