William Gay - Provinces of Night

Well. You could borrow another fifty dollars at the bank and hire Brady to unhex him. He’d probably come flying right up out of the ground like it was the rapture or something. Dirt flying everywhere.

Shitfire, don’t talk like that, ain’t you got no respect? Anyway I done talked to Brady.

What’d he say?

It took him twenty minutes to say it but what it boiled down to was tough shit. He said let it be on my head.

You sound as crazy as he is. Who do you think you are, God Almighty? You think you can grab an airplane out of the sky and slam it against a mountain? Seems to me you and Brady have sort of an inflated idea of what you can do.

You’re lookin at it all wrong. If I had laid for him and shot him, would that mean I was God Almighty? If I had wired a stick of dynamite to his ignition? It would not. It would just mean I killed him. And that’s what this means. If I was God Almighty I’d be plannin on how to bring him back. Or makin it to where it had never been.

Just shut up about it. You’re giving me a hellatious headache.

I’ve got to make it up to his wife. Or whatever family he’s got.

Maybe you could just pay back the money. Rebuild that crimper. That’s what it all come up about.

Maybe.

You could take all this hayhauling money and endow some sort of charity in his name. The Gene Woodall Foundation. The Busted Crimper Society. Give out college scholarships or something. Send missionaries amongst the heathen to save souls in his name.

Just shut the fuck up, Bloodworm. I’m sorry I ever mentioned it to you.

Donate crimpers to the underprivileged.

Yonder comes that truck and I’m damn glad to see it. When I’m slingin them bales I don’t hardly think of him at all. That fucker’s just as worrisome dead as he was when he was swearin out all them papers.

COBLE IN THE red Diamond-T cattle truck circled the courthouse twice before he found a parking place. He’d had to wait until Saturday and he might have known the town would be overrun with woolhats and rednecks buying their flour and bacon. Such town as it was. He climbed out of the truck and locked the doors and stood looking about Ackerman’s Field with a sort of bemused contempt. To a man from Memphis this place looked like a wide place in the road, a hog wallow, less than that.

The courthouse was a red brick two-storied building centered on a neat city block of closecropped grass. Benches set beneath huge old elms and on them old men sat in clusters whittling and telling lies and unraveling the mysteries of the universe. An American flag and the Tennessee state flag hung devoid of motion from a flagpole. On this hot morning even the leaves on the trees seemed frozen. By the time he got to the courthouse steps and opened the door sweat was already darkening the armpits and across the shoulders of his khaki shirt.

The sheriff’s office when he found it was in the basement but the door was locked and he could not see through the pebbled glass. Probably sitting in there asleep, he told himself. A sign hung from the doorknob. Back in thirty minutes. Thirty minutes from when? he asked it.

He went back up the stairwell and stood for a time beneath a slowly revolving ceiling fan. He kept glancing at his watch. At last he went out the door and down the steps and across the street to the General Cafe. A sign on the wall behind the counter said that the special of the day was meatloaf and three vegetables. He ordered the special and sat down in a booth by the window.

The waitress who brought it was young and pretty. It was hot in the restaurant and she was filmed with a sheen of perspiration. He tried twice to get a glimpse of her breasts, once when she placed his plate before him and again when she leaned to lay his check on the table. All he saw was a stubbled armpit, a worn pink bra.

I’m lookin for a feller named Rutgers, he told her.

He ain’t down the front of my dress, she said. She slapped his tea onto the red Formica table and walked away.

Everything on his plate seemed drenched in grease but he ate it anyway then wiped the plate clean with a slice of lightbread. He sat sipping the tea and watching out across the lawn where a huge red sun flared behind the courthouse. When thirty-five minutes had passed he arose and paid the check. He didn’t leave any tip. He went back to the sheriff’s office. The sign hung on the doorknob as before. You’re a lyin son of a bitch, he told the sign.

He was lounging against a limegreen wall of stippled plaster picking his teeth with a sharpened kitchen match when the sheriff appeared. He looked pointedly at his watch but Bellwether did not seem to notice. Bellwether fumbled out a large ring of keys and selected one and unlocked the door. When he went into the office Coble followed him.

Bellwether crossed the room to a coffeepot that sat on a corner shelf. He poured a cup of coffee and drank from it and spat into a wastepaper basket then cranked the window out and poured the coffee out the opening and hung the cup back on its peg. What could I do for you? he asked. He went behind a scarred blond desk and seated himself in a swivel chair.

Coble had told his story twice before on the telephone, with no result, and it didn’t take him long to tell it again. When he was through Bellwether shook his head. You say you drove two hundred and seventy miles? This sounds like something that could have been handled over the telephone.

Well, a man would think so, but I guess not. I called twice, and both times I got the same shit-for-brains deputy. You know what he told me? There’s nobody in this country named Rutgers.

Do you know why he told you that? Because there’s nobody in this county named Rutgers. Bellwether picked up a thin telephone directory and tossed it to Coble. It struck him lightly in the chest then dropped to his lap. There’s also a county census you could check, among other things, Bellwether said. And speaking frankly, Mr. Coble, I don’t care to hear my deputies categorized in that manner.

Coble straightened in his chair. Categorized in that manner, he echoed. Hellfire. Now I let this old son of a bitch out in your county. I know he’s from here. He talked about this place like he was born and raised here. Like he come over on the fuckin Mayflower or somethin and discovered it. Now by God I traded for a herd of Black Angus cattle and drove four or five hundred miles out of my way to get them. That old man owes me a herd of cows.

He owes you a herd of cows? You paid him sight unseen for a herd of cows?

Hell no, I never paid him. You know what I mean. My only reason for even bein in this Godforsaken place at all was to pick up them cows. I’m either going to have a herd of Black Angus at a substantial discount or that old man’s goin to tell me the reason why.

Bellwether tapped a Lucky Strike against a thumbnail and scratched a match and lit the cigarette. I’ll tell you the reason why myself, he said. There’s not a Black Angus in this county. Look, Mr. Coble, it’s obvious his name wasn’t Rutgers. What did he look like?

He was a right presentable old gentleman, Coble said. Big man, held hisself kind of straight. Went with a stick, told he’d had a stroke of paralysis. That was likely a lie too. Had kindly long black hair, dyed, I figured, and a gray Stetson hat he wore. Had these real black, kind of meanlookin eyes.

For a moment he thought he saw something flicker in Bellwether’s eyes but he wasn’t sure. If he did it was gone almost before it registered. I’ll keep an eye out for him, Bellwether said.

You’ll keep an eye out for him. All right. What do you people do in this county, watch each other’s backs? Sweep one another’s tracks out? I’ll tell you what I’m goin to do. I’m goin to find him, and when I do he’s goin to rue the day he made a fool out of me.