Joy Williams - State of Grace

“Wheel?” Doreen says. She is still dipping into the Tanfastic. “The wheel of love?”

“Four wheels of iron, all covered with razors which detrenched our poor Catherine over and over again and cut her up horribly in torment,” Cords elaborates helpfully.

“Ichh,” Doreen says.

“You like that part do you, Kate?”

“Oh certainly,” I say.

“Personally,” Doreen says, “I’ve never seen myself passing on.

I look at them. They’ve both taken off all their clothes and are lying there, not moving much.

“You’re jammed in neutral gear,” I say pleasantly.

“You should get out more,” Cords says just as kindly. “Loosen up. Circulate.”

I get up all the time. I eat and drink out. I go to the hospital. I see my friend Corinthian. At this very moment, I am getting out of bed.

“When you see ‘Pellicle Pete,’ tell him seventy-five dollars. Seventy-five dollars for ten minutes.”

“Better than a model in New York City,” Doreen says reverently.

“I’m not going to be speaking with Corinthian,” I say. “You’re crazy to want a leopard. That’s out of hand. Why don’t you settle for a great Dane or something?”

“I’ve seen myself walking sometimes, you know on one of those fantastic beaches in Mexico? And I’m wearing a silver lamé tunic like and silver earrings, and I’m barefoot in the shining surf.” Doreen is talking quickly as though she’s on to something.

“Doreen’s an eclectic,” Cords acknowledges.

“And I’m walking with two great Danes,” Doreen finishes breathlessly.

“No leopard.” I am walking downstairs.

“Oh, it has to be a leopard,” Cords calls after me.

Down in the kitchen, I open the refrigerator. There is nothing there but the prize steer of the county fair, rearranged in neat and mysterious packages. Daily, the cook pushes her hand into the cold. The result is uncertain. A gristly Ouija. It could be pot roast or brisket, eye of the round or sirloin tip. The steer has invaded their lives. He is everywhere. There is no room for the sisters’ diet-cola or for their underwear on sizzling mornings. They have been eating him for weeks.

From the cellar, the voice drones on. Someone whistles. The secret whistle, for god sakes. Such cheery girls. I had high hopes of becoming one of the bunch. And of course I am. One cannot deactivate. It’s not in the rules. Every girl remembers her activation day. Excuse me. There was sun. Later it set.

Corinthian is standing on a stepladder, changing the fly strips at Bryant’s Beasts.

“I have never seen a car like that one must of been,” Corinthian says.

I left the Jaguar on the curve. I have not paid the towing fee. I have not gone to Al Glick’s where it has been taken. The highway does not pass Glick’s. Only the railroad tracks. My head hurts now from the crashing. It didn’t hurt then but it does now. Glass is still breaking inside my head and my Grady is saying, no mistake .

“Never,” Corinthian says. The night is warm and there is juke-box music coming from the bar. All the windows are open in the menagerie and I can see people dancing in the bar. smooth.

I am sitting beside the shark pen. The water is oily and smooth.

“I can’t understand how you know if they are still alive or not,” I say, looking at the water. It shines off the cages, dappling the bars.

Corinthian shrugs. “I don’t even know how many are in there any more. Bryant puts new ones in that the fishermen give him and then he takes some out as well, so there’s no way of telling. I’ve stopped feeding them because the fish were all floating back up.” He climbs down the ladder and comes over to the pen. “I don’t believe there’s anything in there at all,” he says.

I look at the water. The South is full of things like this, I suddenly realize. Rotted and broken-down handmade cages and hutches and wire-wrapped boxes and tanks. Perched or suspended or shored up. Outside filling stations or drive-in restaurants or boatyards or vegetable stands.

And empty. Maybe a pan in it or a stick. And the quality of the disquietude is very complete and precise and centuries old.

“Never will touch a man’s head,” Corinthian mutters. “Will bite off the rest of him save for his head.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sharks,” he says mildly.

“Don’t be a ghoul,” I say.

“It’s not me being ghoulish,” he says. “It’s the facts that are. Things are out to get a body, that’s the truth. There are some who’ve got just one thing waiting for them and there are others who’ve got ten, twenty things waiting for them. That’s just the truth.”

I don’t say anything.

“Once there were a lot of things I wanted to do, but lately I can’t remember any of them,” Corinthian says. He is drinking from a warm bottle of Coca-Cola.

I look at the animals fitfully. The cages are all occupied and the alarm one feels at this is accurate and ancient too. There is a kestrel here. The windhover. I cannot look at him. It is his eye that will not allow it. Not my own. The windhover. How free he must have been.

“Look here,” Corinthian says, “that box of books you brought here that time. Were they all yours?”

“Yes,” I say. My obstreperous retiree. My deep-sea diver with the butterfly stroke …

“Look here,” Corinthian says listlessly. He has gone into another room, a room where Bryant keeps the feed and hoses and brooms, and he comes back and hands me a book. It is Heart of Darkness . It falls open to a marked-up page. EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES, someone has circled deeply in ink.

I don’t understand. I look at Corinthian and then at the book.

“It wasn’t me,” I say finally. “I didn’t do that.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Corinthian,” I say as clearly as I can. “You know very well it was not me.”

“It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t you.” He takes the book away and puts it back where he got it. He drinks his warm Coca-Cola. We sit and watch the animals. They are portents, like cards or constellations. The juke-box music stops. The lights go out in the bar. The only sound left is that of the aerator and the water slapping against the sides of the tanks.

Corinthian gets up and unlocks the leopard’s cage. After a while, the leopard walks out.

“How long have you been doing this?” I ask.

“Two weeks,” he says. “I did it for two months before he would come out. Now he takes water from my hands. You’ve been here when the cage was open and you didn’t even know it because he wasn’t coming out.”

The aerator seems to be assisting me with my breathing. Everything is effortless. Everything is simple and whole. The words are easy as I say them.

“Would that leopard walk beside somebody for a minute or so?” The animal is close enough for me to touch him. I rest my hand on his calm judicatory skull. He does not move away. His eyes are like suns.

I tell Corinthian about the Queen Serenade. He is reluctant. But the words are easy. I convince him. I am impressed how his concern and gentleness are changing the beasts. Is it not true that they are changing? Have they not responded to his love? I become very animated. I reassure him. It is all arranged. Corinthian’s mood lightens. We talk cheerfully until morning. We are friends.

I go to the hospital daily, to the smallest wing in the hospital, the old wing. Everyone seems to shun it, being more interested in the recent additions. Small men move about, pushing floor polishers down the hall. It is not sanitary here. For example, only the corridors, where the patients never are, have been tiled. Tiny tiles in a random design of fake slate. The rooms have brown rugs which absorb oxygen and which, a helpful candy striper told me, could be fatal if brought in contact with vinegar. Vinegar thrown on these rugs would produce copper acetate which is poisonous. This, she told me, is true in any hospital whether it be a Memorial one or not. I’m telling you this because you can’t be too aware.