William Gay - Provinces of Night

Spivey smiled his worn threadbare smile. It’s not what you’re thinking, he said.

I’m not thinking anything at all.

I’d like to believe that. Spivey looked away, past the sunwashed glass to the streets where there was nothing at all to see. I’ll bring the book anyway, he said.

FROM THE SHADE of the ivy-covered end of Itchy Mama Baker’s porch the old men in ladderback chairs and tilting Coke crates watched the hot blacktop that snaked up the grade toward Ackerman’s Field three miles away. They’d sit daylong and wait for something to happen, anything to happen, waiting for the road to entertain them.

These were old men in clean chambray shirts and suspenders and pants so roomy they could have held another oldtimer entire and shoes split down the sides for comfort. They’d sit ruminatively, building their Country Gentleman cigarettes and leaning birdlike to spit their snuff-juice past the edge of the floorboards into the yard. Talking about old lost times and looking back over their lives as dispassionately as though these events were something they’d read about or something that had happened to somebody else.

The screen door opened, slapped loudly shut. An enormous woman had come onto the porch, a woman with a fierce turtlelike face and wild frizzy carrotcolored hair. She was wearing a bright yellow tentsize dress with dark halfmoons of sweat fanning out from the armpits.

One of you loafers spits on my porch you’re cleaning it off, she said. She studied them in a kind of mock anger that they were so accustomed to they deemed it threatless and so paid her little mind.

I’m spittin in the yard, Ferris Walker said.

When one of you gets kindly caught up on his spittin I need some wood busted up.

I might could handle that, Walker said. What’s in it for me?

Well, I ain’t chargin you rent on this porch.

How about a little drink?

There might be a halfpint hid back up there in the holler somewhere.

I might could bust up a little wood, Walker said. He rose and ambled off toward the woodpile looking for the chopping axe.

Who’s that rollin that car tire? one of the old men asked.

They turned to see. He had just appeared on the periphery of their vision, a gangling young man with a halo of wild white hair, slowly rolling a carwheel up the grade.

That’s that Albright boy, Itchy Mama said.

He’s lost his automobile, one of the men said. All but one wheel.

No, he’s always doin that, another said. His casin’s flat and he’s rollin her to town to get it fixed. Nobody’s ever told him about some folks havin a extra one they haul around in the trunk of their car in case one goes flat.

It wouldn’t take many trips up that grade for me to figure it out, the first one observed.

That boy’s opinion of himself don’t match the one everybody else has got. He thinks he’s all aces but he’s mostly sevens and eights.

He may be a little slow but he ain’t a patch on his daddy for crazy. That was the one rewritin the Bible. Old man Tut Albright. He was rewritin her start to finish, takin out all the begats and the therefores and writin it where what he called the common man could make sense out of it. He read me some of it one time. You ort to heard it. It was a part about some angels of heaven layin with the daughters of men and he took out that part about layin with and just put in they screwed the daughters of men. It was the damnedest thing I ever heard.

He used to cause carwrecks back when he was a young man, the first oldtimer said.

He what?

Used to cause carwrecks. He had this long blond wig he’d put on and this little red shortwaisted dress. He lived on this real sharp curve out by Horseshoe Bend and he’d put that mess on and go set in a lawn chair there by the bank of the road with his legs spraddled out. He caused I don’t know how many bad wrecks. A whole carload of drunks run off out there one Saturday and two of em finally died. There was some said he wore red drawers when he done it but I ain’t fool enough to know about that.

You can hush about some red drawers, the second man said. The thought of Tut Albright pullin on a pair of women’s underwear is more than I want to deal with this early in the day.

JUNIOR ALBRIGHT WAS on the schoolhouse construction site long before seven o’clock, his battered Dodge pulled into the graveled parking lot and the door cocked open for what coolness remained. The sun had come up red and smoking and malign over the spiky treeline, instantly sucking the dew from the leaves and driving it into the parched earth and he judged it was going to be another hot one. He sat with a leg extended over the open car door, sipping the last of his coffee. He glanced occasionally at his wrist as if he’d check the time though he wore no watch there. There was just a band of paler flesh, like the ghost of a watch. His watch resided in a cigar box beneath the bar at the poolroom with similar timepieces where he’d pawned it for two sixpacks of Falstaff beer, and he resolved that the first thing he was going to do when he got a paycheck was redeem the watch.

After a while he got out of the car with his lunch box and seated himself on a pile of treetrunks a dozer had pushed into windrows. The bladescarred trees were lush with honeysuckle vines and the air was heady with the scent of their blossoms. He opened the lunch box and selected a sandwich and unwrapped it and took a bite. Occasionally he’d glance up the cherted road and cock his head attentively and listen but all he could hear was doves calling mournful as lost souls from some smoky hollow still locked in sleep.

He turned at a sudden whicker in the air and watched a hummingbird suck the drop of nectar from the throat of a honeysuckle. Curious creature, no bigger than his thumb. Its blurred wings, tiny sesame eyes. He stopped chewing and watched it. He studied it with a bemused intensity as if he’d learn its secrets. As if this might be a talent he ought to acquire. When he heard the first pickup truck he rewrapped the uneaten portion of his sandwich and restored it to the lunch box and fastened the clasps and stood up.

The truck pulled nearer the unfinished structure and stopped and two men got out. Doors slammed. They stood studying the schoolhouse as if to see did it meet their specifications.

Bout time you all got here, Albright sang out. I’d about give you out.

They didn’t even look at him. They’d seen this fool before. This was the third day he’d been perched on the windrowed trees, drawing no salary, waiting like a vulture for somebody to burn out, not show up, die.

You reckon they’ll be hirin today?

You’d have to ask Woodall about that, one of the men said.

The other man lit a cigarette. He glanced at Albright through the smoke. It gets any hotter than it was yesterday you can have my job.

I’d take it, Albright said.

The man looked at him. You wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with it, he said.

Supposed to be a hundred in the shade and shade hard to come by, Albright said.

Other workers arrived in beatup trucks and rattletrap cars and even one man walking, angling across a field of kneehigh sedgegrass, his lunch bucket swinging along in his hand. The men fell to getting out tools and stringing power cords. Someone cranked a concrete mixer and began to hose water into it. Another to remove plastic sheeting from pallets of bagged mortar mix.

When the white truck with WOODALL CONSTRUCTION painted on the side arrived Albright was already sauntering toward the office. The office was a tiny metal trailer with the wheels removed shored up on concrete blocks. A set of steps of raw lumber led to the door. The truck halted before the trailer and a man got out. Heavyset man wearing khakis and a broadbrimmed gray cowboy hat. He removed the hat and laid it carefully in the seat of the truck and put on a white hardhat and adjusted it over one sleepylooking gray eye. He seemed not to have noticed Albright.