William Gay - Provinces of Night

Sharp looked up from the worn Outdoor Life magazine he was reading when the door opened. He glanced back at the magazine then at Bloodworth in a doubletake of amazed recognition. Son of a bitch, he said. Where’d you come from?

Off the porch, Bloodworth said. He laid a five-dollar bill atop the bar. Gimme two bottles of beer.

What kind? Sharp asked, turning to slide back the lid of the cooler.

Cold, Bloodworth said. Listen. I don’t have time to explain all this right now, I’ll tell you later. But you ain’t seen me. I never come in the front and I ain’t goin out the back. All right?

Sharp set two brown longnecked bottles on the bar. I guess you’re back all right, he said. It don’t take long for things to get back to normal.

Bloodworth took up the beer and crossed the room and went down a narrow hall to the back door. He went out the door and down the steps and was immediately in the woods themselves, a thick growth of pine that had over the years carpeted the ground with two or three inches of coppery needles. He did not tarry, hurrying on into the trees, bemusedly remembering other times when the patrons of the Knob had emptied out the back as the law came in the front, men and women alike fleeing madly into the dark maze of trees where they’d not track you down unless they’d brought along a bloodhound in the back seat. Though once, he remembered, grinning to himself, they’d stationed a deputy at the back door to head off these fleeing miscreants and he fell to handcuffing or blackjacking at his discretion.

He went carefully over a debris of bottles, cans, rotting condoms, to where the woods were clean and denser still, picked his way down a hillside where a spring branch ran and following it away into summer greenery, filling his lungs with the smells: the hot crisp smell of the pines, the delicate odor of mimosa that had gone wild and taken the hillside.

He paused to rest, breathing hard. Sweat had broken out over him, he could feel it beneath his shirt but it did not bother him. It felt good. He seated himself against the trunk of a pine and worked out his pocketknife and pried off the bottlecaps.

Sharp was halfway through an article about a man being mauled by a polar bear when the door opened again. He’d been glancing up occasionally and eyeing the truck through the window and he’d thought whoever was out there must be the most patient of men or else he’d fallen asleep.

Hey, good buddy, where’s that old man at?

Sharp looked around. Nobody in here but me, he said. Not countin you. What old man?

He said he was a Rutgers.

I don’t recall ever knowin anybody by that name.

You don’t have to know him. Where’d he go?

Who go?

That old man that come in here. Coble was peering all about the room. Old man with a walkin stick carved like a snake and wearin a gray Stetson hat.

I ain’t seen him, Sharp said. He went back to his story.

It was silent for a long time. Coble seemed to be thinking all this over. Sharp finished the page he was reading and turned to another. Finally Coble said, Let me get this straight. I watched him open that green door there and go through it and shut it behind him. You was on this side of the door and you never saw him. Well what the hell happened to him? Did he step through a hole in the fuckin world? He was a goodsized man, way over six feet tall. I don’t believe you could of missed him.

Sharp closed the magazine, slid it behind the bar. Look, he said. I don’t have time to argue with you. Maybe it was some other green door, in some other beerjoint. Why don’t you go see?

Beneath the brim of the white straw hat Coble’s face had gone a deep brickred. Why don’t I just haul your skinny baldheaded ass over that bar and mop the floor up with you?

Because that’s just quarterinch paneling on the front of that bar, Sharp said. And because on this side of it I’m holdin a sawedoff loaded with doubleought buckshot. You might want to give some thought to where you are. You’re in my place of business, and as far as the law’s concerned you just tried to rob me and I wouldn’t agree to be robbed.

Coble dropped his arms back to his side and retreated from the bar a step or two. I don’t know what kind of number you people are trying to run on me, he said. But I want you to know you fucked with the wrong man. If you think I drove over four hundred miles out of my way just to deliver an old man to a honkytonk you’re badly mistaken. I aim to get to the bottom of this.

Sharp brought the shotgun up from the bar and laid it on the counter. I’m all for that, he said. But I’m tired of hearin about it.

Coble wiped a hand across his mouth. You tell that old man he’s goin to regret this the rest of his days, he said. He turned and went out. The door creaked to behind him.

Sharp shook his head. What is that old man up to now, he asked himself.

ALBRIGHT HAD BEEN WORKING at the stave mill for three days when the boss came down to the shed where he was stacking bundles of handlelength staves and called him off to the side.

That Woodall fellow is trying to attach your paycheck, the foreman said. He’s got some kind of legal paper where he can garnishee you. I thought I’d tell you so you’d know what was coming Friday when we pay off.

Albright filled a paper cup from a cooler of ice water. How much is comin? he asked.

Very damn little, the foreman said.

Albright left in the middle of the day without even looking back. This was the second job in as many weeks he’d lost because of Woodall’s sheaf of legal papers. He felt that Woodall had taken to following him around, sleeping only when he slept, up at a moment’s notice to follow him again. He caught himself glancing constantly over his shoulder, setting an extra plate for Woodall at the supper table.

At the hardware store he bought a gallon of yellow paint and a pint of red and he bought a brush. He drove home and parked in the shade of the chinaberry tree in his front yard. After he’d taken a bath and made a pot of coffee he came back out and opened the gallon bucket of paint and found a stick to stir it with. He dipped the brush into the paint and began to paint the car yellow.

When the nighflourescent yellow was dry to the touch he took up a roll of tape and masked off the word TAXI on each of the front doors carefully then stepped back to look at it. Satisfied he cleaned the brush and uncapped the pint and painted in the letters in red.

The car was still tacky at nightfall and he was forced to wait until the next day to go into business. Even then nothing much happened, but Saturday was another story. Few of the sawmill hands and sharecroppers around the county owned their own car and he was kept busy hauling families and their week’s supply of groceries from Long’s store out to the various hills and hollows where they lived. He hauled drunks to Goblin’s Knob, picked up other drunks there and drove them wherever they were inclined to be. At the end of the day he had a fistsize chunk of quarters and halfdollars and wadded ones in the toe of his pocket. Garnishee this, motherfucker, he said aloud.

Weekdays he’d lounge around the front of the Snowwhite Cafe for the occasional fare. He knew a waitress who worked there and sometimes she’d take phone calls for him or refer customers his way. He was sitting out front on Tuesday reading a funny book when she came out the door with an agey-looking fellow wearing a gray hat and a black suitcoat in all this heat. The waitress’s foot was malformed in some way and she went with a limp and they looked like a matched set of cripples coming down the sidewalk.

Junior, this is Mr. Bloodworth. He was wantin to talk to you.