William Gay - Time Done Been Won't Be No More

What are you doing in this part of town, Sailor?

Just waiting for someone like you to come along, he said.

You ready to roll?

He got in and slammed the door. Ready as I’ll ever be.

This was Memphis Tennessee, the middle of April in 1952, the convertible already rolling, washed-out sunlight running on the storefront glass like luminous water. She was driving down a series of side streets into a steadily degenerating neighborhood. Where winos and such streetfolk as were yet about seemed stunned by this regenerative sun and so unaccustomed to such an abundance of light that they drifted alleyward as if extended exposure might scorch them or sear away their clothing. Bars and liquor stores contested for space on these narrow streets and both seemed well represented. They had a stunned vacuous look to them and their scrollworks of dead neon waited for nightfall.

She glanced across at him.

God I hate the way you dress, she said. I’m going to have to buy you some clothes.

Edgewater was wearing a Navy dungaree shirt and jeans held up by a webbed belt the buckle of which proclaimed US Navy. I’m all right, he said.

Listen. You’re going to have to bear with me on this. Just hang in there no matter what happens, okay?

Wait a minute. What does that mean, no matter what happens? I thought we were just picking up your motorcycle.

Well, you know. They were my in-laws, after all. There might be a few hard feelings.

Here were paintlorn Victorian mansions where nothing remained of opulence save a faint memory. Rattletrap cars convalescing or dying beneath lowering elms. Shadetree mechanics stared into their motors as if they’d resuscitate them by sheer will or raise them from the dead with the electric hands of faithhealers.

Past a rotting blue mansion with a red tiled roof she halted the car and peering backward with a cigarette cocked in the corner of her mouth she cut the wheel and backed the trailer expertly over the sidewalk and down a driveway bowered by lowhanging willows.

Showtime, she said.

All polished chrome and sleek black leather the motorcycle seemed waiting and coiled to spring, setting alien and futuristic in the back yard.

Claire got out and slammed the door. Edgewater followed, climbing slowly out of the car like someone cautiously easing into deep cold waters. There were a couple of two-by-eights in the bed of the trailer and he aligned them into a makeshift ramp and turned to the Harley Davidson leaning on its kickstand.

A screen door slapped loosely against its frame. A short heavyset woman had come onto the back porch and she was crossing the porch rapidly in no nonsense strides and she was rubbing her hands together in an anticipatory way. Put one whore’s hand on that motorcycle and you’ll pull back a bloody stub, she said.

Hurry, Claire said.

He’d no more than raised the kickstand and angled the front wheel toward the ramp when the woman began to scream. You ruined my son’s life, you bitch, she yelled. She was coming down the steps two at a time and Claire turned and took a tentative step away but the woman closed on her remorseless and implacable as a stormfront and slapped her face hard then laid a hand to each of Claire’s shoulders and flung her onto the grass and fell upon her.

Shit, Edgewater said.

He had the motorcycle halfway up the ramp when the screen door slapped again and a man with a torn gray undershirt came out with a doublebarreled shotgun unbreeched and he was fumbling waxed red cylinders into it. He dropped one and was at feeling wildly about the floor for it.

By the time Edgewater heard the gun barrel slap up he’d rolled the cycle off the ramp and straddled it and kickstarted it and he was already rolling when the concussion came like a slap to the head. He went through shredded greenery that spun like windy green snow, skidding blindly onto the street then across it and through a hedge before he could get the motorcycle under control and out onto the street again, leaning into the wind and houses kaleidoscoping past on either side like the walls of a gaudy tunnel he was catapulted through.

The imaged street rolled in and out of the rearview mirror then the white Ford appeared and followed at a sedate pace. Edgewater slowed and turned the motorcycle into the parking lot of a liquor store and she turned in beside it. The Harley idled like some fierce beast that wasn’t even breathing hard. She was laughing.

Hard feelings my ass, Edgewater said.

Do you believe this? My brother-in-law had to run out and wrestle him for the gun. He shot the shit out of that tree, did you see that?

I rode through it, Edgewater said.

Ahh Baby you got it all in your hair, she said, brushing it away with a hand.

They had to manhandle the cycle onto the trailer because she hadn’t thought it wise to stop for the boards and Edgewater lashed it upright to a support with the rope she’d brought.

That’s twice I’ve wrestled this heavy son of a bitch up here, he said. My first time and my last.

You’re in a good mood she said, grinning, getting into the car.

I’m not real fond of getting shot at, Edgewater said.

She eased the car out into the street and headed north, glancing in the rearview mirror to check was the cycle secure. You’ll feel better tonight, she said. We’ll get you a sport coat somewhere and go out to a really good restaurant. Italian maybe, we’ll get a nice bottle of wine. Okay?

Okay, Edgewater said.

The prospective motorcycle buyer lived in a town called Leighton east of Memphis and they drove toward it past tract houses and apartment complexes and onto a flat countryside of housetrailers and farmland beset by tractors that Edgewater watched move silent down cottonfields that seemed endless.

He turned to study her against the slipsliding landscape. There was a faint blue bruise at the corner of her right eye and a scratch on her cheek but with the wind blowing her hair and the silk scarf strung out in the breeze she looked rakish and well satisfied with herself. In the brief time he’d known her she seemed always to be playing some role. Seldom the same one twice. Just the star of whatever movie today was. He’d had the impulse to glance about and see were cinecameras whirring away, a makeup man with his potions at the ready.

Then as he watched her profile seemed to alter. The flesh itself to sear and melt and run off the skull and cascade down the linen blouse she wore and the linen itself blackened and rotted and the wind sucked tatters of it away and when she turned to grin at him bone hand clutching the steering wheel the hollow eyesockets of her skull smoked like a charred landscape beyond which a faint yellow light flickered and died. Her grinning teeth had loosened in their sockets and there was a blackened cavity where the right canine joined the jawbone.

They were coming up on a white stucco building with a Falstaff beer sign framed by a rectangle of light bulbs. Carolyn’s Place, the sign said.

Pull in there, Edgewater said.

What?

Let me wait here for you. I have to make a phone call.

She’d already begun to slow but she turned to frown at him. This doesn’t make any sense, she said. We’re almost to Leighton. You can call from there. Besides, who would you call? You don’t know anybody.

He was out almost before the car stopped rolling. Pick me up after you get your business transacted. I’ll be in there drinking a beer.

She glanced toward the sign. Just make damn sure you keep your hands off Carolyn, she said.

Edgewater crossed a glaring white parking lot of crushed mussel shells. Carolyn’s Place was set on earth so absolutely bare of tree and shrub that the stuccoed honky-tonk seemed to have sucked up all the nourishment for miles around. Dancing Saturday night to live music, a placard in the window promised, but Edgewater was already touched by a rising desperation and he promised himself that by Saturday night he’d be dancing somewhere else.