William Gay - Provinces of Night

I guess not, Fleming said. Here I am doing it.

Well. You’re in a sorry shape then. Leastways as long as you’re here maybe you’ll tell me the truth about somethin. You’re not much of a liar are you?

I never was much good at it.

Sometimes I believe E.F.’s come back here, she said. You don’t know anything about that, do you?

He’d been lying back with his eyes closed and his head against the metal of the lounge chair. Now he opened his eyes, saw to the composure of his face. What makes you say that?

I’ve been hearin banjo music sometimes in the evenins, she said. Long about dark. You ain’t took up banjo playin, have you?

No.

Brady can barely play a radio so I know it’s not him. Anyway he was settin right where you are one night when we heard it, so it couldn’t be Brady. You know he looked me right in the eye and swore up and down he never heard it? Said my mind’s gettin bad.

In fact Brady had told the boy the same thing, that the old woman was getting feebleminded, that time had shifted around her so that she didn’t know if something happened fifty years ago or yesterday. That she might arise in the middle of the night and cook breakfast, running now on some time inside her head that was utterly dismissive of clocks and calendars. That she might then turn around and cook the identical meal again.

He said he had arisen at one o’clock in the morning to go to the bathroom and discovered the old woman taking a pan of biscuits out of the oven, turning to break eggs into a bowl for scrambling.

Fleming had always found information related to him by Brady chancy at best, it required a certain amount of consideration. Everything had to be factored in, the look on his face as he told you, the intensity of his voice, what he had to gain or lose in the telling. After all this had been considered you could arrive at some approximation of the truth. But when he’d told this what had been on his face and in his voice was a kind of quiet horror, and Fleming expected all or most of it was the truth.

Now she turned and studied his face intently. What about you? Do you think I’m goin crazy, or do you think I heard a banjo?

He thought about it a time. I’d say if you thought you heard a banjo you probably did, he said.

Anyway I knowed that song, she said, and fell silent, remembering not just the tune but the pattern of the fingers on the strings, the words to it floating into her head though there had been no words with the melody that came drifting across the field, the words had just risen unbidden from memory: Got no use for a red rockin chair, I got no sugar baby now …

It was one of E.F.’s songs and I’ve heard it a thousand times, she said. Do you know anything about this?

He sat for a time thinking about conflicting loyalties. You keep your mouth shut about this, Brady had told him. What’s done is done, and there ain’t no changin it. She’s better off thinkin he’s dead, or whatever it is she does think. She’s hardly ever out of the house and there’s no need for her to know he’s even in this part of the country.

I guess that’s why you set the trailer in the back corner of the place, he had said, but this was so self-evident it did not even require an answer. It seemed to Fleming that it was the old woman’s business, hers and E.F.’s. It was not his, and if you came right down to it it wasn’t Brady’s, either. It went back further than either of them. He also didn’t like being told to keep his mouth shut, and he liked even less being painted into a corner and having to tell the old woman a direct lie.

Grandpa bought a trailer, he finally said. Or sent the money and had Brady locate one and buy it. He had a stroke back in Little Rock, a mild one I reckon, it don’t seem to have impaired him much.

Where’s it at, this trailer? Back across that field somewheres? That’s where the music was comin from.

Back up past it towards the blacktop. Me and Brady set it up for him.

That’s the craziest thing I ever heard in my life, his grandmother said. If he had to live in a trailer why wasn’t it set up over here where the power and water is? That’s just about as crazy as you livin like a gypsy and sleepin wherever night catches up with you when you could have a warm bed ever night and a full plate three times a day. If sense was gunpowder ever one of you men put together wouldn’t have enough to load a round of birdshot. And folks goin around sayin I’m losin my mind.

Look, he said, this was not my deal, I was just helping Brady set it up, and I was ordered to keep my mouth shut. If you say anything to Brady he’ll wind up putting some kind of curse on me.

I’ll keep you out of it. I aim to have the straight of it, though, I may put a few curses of my own, I ain’t above it.

Well. I reckon I better get on. I guess I’ve done about all the damage I can do here for one day.

She looked at him fondly. You won’t never make much of a liar, she said. I can see right through you like lookin down into still water. I expect law and politics is goin to be out of your reach.

She was silent a time, and he had already turned to go when she said, What’s E.F. like these days?

I don’t know what he was like any other days. I don’t know what to tell you. He’s just an old man, has to go with a stick. Kind of easygoing, talks about music all the time.

He must’ve calmed down with age some. Easygoin is not a word anybody would put to E.F. back when I knowed him. You tell him I said come by here some day. I done some talkin once a long time ago when I should’ve been keepin my mouth shut.

He turned to go. She would have told him more but he didn’t want to hear it. All these old troubles were burdensome and hard to carry, folks would load you down if you’d let them. He had plenty of troubles of his own, old and new, and he did not want to be further encumbered.

FLEMING WITH a sharp putty knife was scraping calcified bits of gasket off the heads while Albright cleaned the block. Albright had been drunk the night before and had given himself a tan with a bottle of suntan lotion called Mantan that was supposed to darken the skin chemically but had succeeded only in giving him a curiously piebald appearance. He’d tanned the palms of his hands, between his fingers, most of his face save round areas about the eyes which remained albino white and gave him the startled look of a raccoon.

You put me in mind of a spotted horse I had one time, the old man said. Come out of north Mississippi, I named him Cisco. His pattern of spots was laid out a whole lot similar to yours. Course I doubt he could have rebuilt a automobile engine.

I doubt if he could drive one just into the ground, either, Albright said. Just down to the ground and then into it. You’d think a man would know when to pull a car over to the side of the road and just cut the switch off.

Well, Fleming said, you said it needed overhauling anyway, and I’m helping you do it. Plus I bought that rebuild kit with the last of my typewriter money.

You couldn’t drive a typewriter to Clifton anyhow. Haul Miss Halfacre around on it.

That was my thinking exactly, Fleming said.

What I don’t understand is how you broke the inside light out of it. Plastic cover and bulb and everything. What happened to it?

It was the beat of anything I ever saw, Fleming said. We were going up that long hill before you get to Clifton. The motor was knocking louder and louder. When it knocked that last time, the loudest lick of all, that light blew up and scattered little pieces of white plastic all over the car. I didn’t understand it, not being a mechanic. I expect a mechanic could figure it right out. Probably something to do with the wiring.