William Gay - Provinces of Night

By ten o’clock the heat on the roof was horrific. It danced off the metal in miasmic emanation like steam rising from a swamp and the sun off the mirrorlike tin was blinding. Albright was wringing wet with sweat. Son of a bitch, he said. It was like the basement to hell, like the furnace room to hell. He was constantly wiping sweat out of his eyes with a shirtsleeve and when he glanced over the wall toward the horizon the landscape warped and ran like a landscape viewed through melting glass. He felt lightheaded and so weightless he might go drifting aloft into the hot blue firmament and he divined that the only thing keeping him earth-bound was the length of leash he kept paying out, reeling in, paying out.

He cut off the crimper. Goddamn it’s hot, he said. I’d give a five-dollar bill for a good cold drink of water.

But there was no water here cold or otherwise and the thought of negotiating the ladder again seemed not to appeal to him. He looked about for shade. There wasn’t any. He took off his shirt and folded it and laid it on the roof and laid the hardhat atop it. Fucker draws heat like iron draws lightning, he said. He shook the water out of his spungold curls and wiped his eyes again and took a pack of Camels out of his pocket but he’d sweated them through and he tossed them over the edge. He stood for a moment catching his breath. The air was so hot it seemed to sear his lungs. He turned the crimper back on.

He was crimping away when he heard someone yelling at him. He seemed to have been hearing it subliminally for some time and when he finally turned Woodall was standing on the roof screaming at him. Woodall pounded the top of his hardhat and pointed a finger at Albright’s bare head until finally comprehending but momentarily confused Albright dropped the cord and went to get his hardhat.

The crimper crimped on toward the sloping edge of the roof. Albright positioned the blue hat on his head and whirled to chase the crimper. Woodall was shrieking at him soundlessly. The crimper was at the edge of the roof when Albright grasped the cord. There was too much slack and the crimper tilted over the edge like a diver and just went on crimping sheer air and vanished from sight. Come back, Albright cried. The cord grew taut in his hands then went slack. The clacketyclack fell silent and something slammed against the concrete far below and Albright could hear the startled cries of the workers.

He raised a hand to calm Woodall, a placating hand of casual assurance, don’t worry, just a minute, I’ll go get it.

He made for the ladder. He went down it hand over hand without a thought for heights and dropped the last six or eight feet and was up immediately and headed for the Dodge. He went past crimper parts and oddments of metal strewn over an unlikely area of concrete and past where men were circled about the remains of the crimper standing hands on knees peering down at it like soldiers gathered about a comrade fallen in battle. By the time he reached the Dodge he was going at a dead run with his left arm already extended to open the car door he wasn’t even at yet and his right hand was fumbling out the ignition keys.

Inside he cranked the car and shifted and popped the clutch in one smooth liquid motion and slewed spinning out of the gravel into the road. He went down it with the speedometer in a slow steady climb and a slipstream of pale dust rising behind him.

ON A PINE WARM MORNING in May Fleming Bloodworth carrying a string of sunperch rounded a bend in the creek and came upon a blondhaired girl about to heave a rock at a huge gray hornets’ nest suspended from the branch of a sycamore.

Hey, he yelled.

The girl looked at him in wildeyed surprise but heaved the rock anyway and tore out a fistsize chunk of the nest. Instantly the air was full of hornets and they seemed in little doubt about where the rock had come from. Bloodworth dropped the fish and began to run. Batting away hornets onehanded he grasped the girl about the waist and dragged her upstream in a silver sluice of water. He was stung on the neck and he could feel them in his shirt and buzzing madly in his hair and the girl was fighting him with one hand and trying to slap away hornets with the other. The hornets were coming at his face like divebombers and the girl had clawed his left cheek and she kept trying to slap him away.

She was halfcrying. Get the hell away from me, she said.

Where the creekbed fell away to a thighdeep pool Fleming went under and when he came up pulled the girl under with him. He opened his eyes underwater and she had a wildeyed look of panic on her face as if she were drowning. She was frantically trying to unbutton her blouse. She surfaced sputtering and choking. She gagged and spat a mouthful of water. She was still trying to undo the blouse but her hands were shaking. When Fleming grasped both sides of the collar and jerked the buttons spun away and she shrugged out of it and reached behind her back to unhook her brassiere. There was a coppery glint of stubble in her armpits, red welts already swelling on her sides.

She went over to the bank of the creek and sat down. She began to cry. The hornets seemed to have departed but he could see them downstream circling their ruined home and the air was vibratory with an angry hum.

She stopped crying and glared at him. You could at least turn your head, she said.

He looked away and when he looked back she had the bra off and was raking crushed hornets out of it. Her breasts were starkly white against the tanned flesh of her stomach and shoulders save the rosecolored nipples and the dark aureole surrounding them. His mouth felt dry and there was a faroff ringing in his ears.

I told you to look the other way.

How many times did they get you?

I don’t know. A lot. I can’t stand this, they stung me all over. She was dipping water in her cupped hands and rubbing it over her breasts.

You’re not allergic, are you?

How the hell would I know? I don’t even know what kind of bugs those were.

They’re not bugs, they’re hornets. Why on earth would you slam a rock into a hornets’ nest?

I told you I didn’t know what they were. It was just a big gray paper thing and I wondered what would happen if I hit it with a rock.

That’s what happens.

Well. I’m from Michigan. They don’t have the things hanging from lampposts in Detroit.

The girl had covered herself as best she could with the blouse and beneath it she sat hunched and miserable. Fleming’s stings hurt as well but the sheer fact of seeing the girl and talking with her seemed to diminish the pain. She had blond hair with auburn lights in it and eyes of clear guileless blue and light played on the angles of her face in an interesting way. There was a faint prettiness about her but also something vaguely familiar, and he kept wondering if he’d seen her before or just someone that looked like her.

She was wearing dungarees cut off into kneelength shorts. They didn’t get down into your shorts, did they?

She gave him a catlike look of anger. Don’t you wish, she said.

I’ve got to get my fish, he said. He went back down the creek with some caution but the hornets seemed preoccupied with assessing the damage to their home and they ignored him. He found the fish washed into a stand of cane in shallow water. Some of them had flopped off the forked stick and he gathered them up and threaded the stick through their gills and went back to where the girl was.

She had put the bra and blouse on and tied the blouse across her stomach and seemed to be making ready to go.

If you’re from Michigan what are you doing wading up Grinders Creek?

We’re on vacation down here. Daddy works at Ford in Detroit but my Grandpa Dee Hixson lives close to here.