William Gay - Provinces of Night

What?

Well, are you going to guess or not?

Fleming was grinning. Just tell me, he said. Although I’m not sure I even want to know.

A sex doll, Neal said.

A what? A what doll?

One of them blowup sex dolls. It was the damnedest thing you ever saw. I’d always heard about them, but I sort of figured it was something folks made up, but there she was, and nothing would do Albright but he had to blow her up. We couldn’t find no pump and Albright he huffed and puffed around on her. I wasn’t about to blow that bitch up, no telling what you’d catch. Plastic clap or something. Pretty soon there she was. Big round titties, had these pink nipples on them. Had all these orfices, orifices, little round holes everywhere. Little round mouth. Had this like mop of steelwool-lookin hair. Albright like to fell in love.

Anyway at first we couldn’t decide what to do with her. Finally we carried her out by the mailbox in front of the house and stood her up. I found some bricks and piled them on her little feet so she wouldn’t blow away. Taped her hand to the door of the mailbox and she looked for all the world like she’d just run out to see what the mailman had left her.

Probably something in a plain brown wrapper, Fleming grinned.

Probably. Anyway we parked down the street to wait on Jimmy. It was a while before he come. This woman come by walkin a little dog and neither one of them knew what to make of her. Finally Jimmy come and it looked like he seen her from a long way off cause he started loping. He was looking all around, like he was trying to see was anybody looking out the windows of the other houses. Then he just run by her and grabbed her under his arm like a football and run right up the steps and through the door without ever slowing down. You ought to have seen it. Hey, hand me that pack of Luckies out of the glove compartment.

Fleming popped open the glovebox and tossed the unopened package of cigarettes to Neal. Then he withdrew a pair of women’s underwear and held them upraised by their elastic waistband. Pale blue watered silk, Tuesday embroidered in black thread. He regarded them with amusement.

I guess we’ve all got our secret side, he said.

That damned Raven Lee Halfacre, Neal said. For somebody that fought so hard to keep them she don’t seem to put much value on them. They say Tuesday, but I believe it was along about Friday before I got her out of them.

The road was running parallel with a wire fence, beyond it dying grass, weeds the wind had tilted. When he looked up nameless birds were moving patternlessly against a gunmetal sky, like random markings on a slate. He studied them intently, as if they were leaving some message there for him to decipher. Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere else but here, desperately wanted to be somewhere Neal was not.

I believe I’ll just walk, he said.

What?

Let me out.

Neal slammed the brakes and simultaneously slid the car toward the shoulder of the road. What the fuck’s the matter with you?

There’s nothing the matter with me, Fleming said.

He opened the door and climbed out. He stood for a moment leaning his left arm on the car and holding the door with his right.

Well there’s sure as hell something the matter with you. It’s three miles to the old man’s place and coldern a bitch out there.

I’ll see you, Neal.

You’re about as crazy a person as I ever saw in my whole Goddamned life.

I may be. You’re not very subtle, are you?

What? Neal took a last drag off the cigarette and spun it past Fleming onto the roadbed. Fleming turned and toed it out in the dry weeds. I guess not, Neal said. I guess subtlety is not my strong suit, as they say. Or it could be I just wanted to tell you something.

Could be I didn’t want to know it, Fleming said.

You need to know it.

I’d just as soon be the judge of what I need to know.

He was still holding the car door. It seemed to him for an absurd moment that closing the door would in some manner alter the rest of his life. Mark forever a line between what had been and what was yet to be. He slammed the door and started through the brittle weeds up the roadside.

Hey.

He turned and gave Neal the finger. He heard the door open. You crazy son of a bitch, Neal said. He heard Neal’s feet in the gravel. Then the footsteps stopped and a car door slammed and the engine cranked. He could hear Neal laboriously turning the car in the roadbed. Pulling up, backing, pulling up again.

He looked down and saw that he was carrying the panties balled up in his fist. His expression was caught somewhere between a smile and a grimace. He tossed them away and the wind pressed them furtively into the clashing weeds like a dirty scrap of paper, old newsprint. He hunched his shoulders into the wind and went on up the roadbed.

THERE WERE three carloads of them, two county cars and a state car full of Tennessee Highway Patrolmen. They had search warrants and official looking papers but as they had been expected most of the day they hardly disrupted the old man taking the pale sun on Itchy Mama’s front porch. Itchy Mama’s sources were wellnigh infallible and the whiskey had been removed hours before to a safer and more distant location and the old men watched all the legal proceedings with a bemused interest.

Deputies fanned out into the woods with sharp metal rods to prod the ground for jugs of contraband. Others searched the house with thoroughness and a mounting frustration but the place might have been a Pentecostal church so free of alcohol it was.

Bellwether seemed bored and he did not even participate in the search. He leaned against a porch support and smoked a cigarette, glancing occasionally at an old man in a gray fedora who sat beside a boy with dark hair and sleepylooking eyes like the old man’s. Bellwether knew the deputies wouldn’t find anything. He knew that Itchy Mama had a connection in the judge’s office, though he did not know who it was. Perhaps the judge himself, who knew. The moment a warrant was sworn out Itchy Mama would get a telephone call and everyone went into action. When the law had left and had time to get its collective mind on matters more pressing everyone would go into action again and move the whiskey back.

Finally the deputies strung emptyhanded out of the woods and made ready to go. Be a temperance meetin here at eight o’clock tonight, Garrison, one of the old men called to a deputy. Be testifyin and hymn singin. Everybody’s invited.

Bellwether rose to go as well. Crossing the porch he laid a hand in passing on Bloodworth’s shoulder.

Mr. Rutgers, I believe it is, he said.

THE DRIVEWAY was exposed aggregate concrete, long and winding, snaking sinuously up through enormous evergreens Albright had no name for but which he admired nonetheless. Finally the house came into view. Woodall had apparently done well for himself, for the house was huge, a long low ranchstyle dwelling shaped like the letter L. Before the house was parked a gray Lincoln Towncar and a white pickup truck; the truck immediately gave Albright a strong and unpleasant sense of déjá vu, and wrenched his insides with guilt. He remembered the truck idling in front of his house, he remembered Woodall taking off his cowboy hat and laying it carefully on the truck seat.

At closer range the house did not seem so opulent. There was an air of benign neglect about it. The paint was faded and peeling, the trim in places showed areas of bare wood. He was out of the Dodge and inspecting the cornice when the door opened and a middle-age woman came onto the porch. Albright couldn’t help noticing the front door itself was in bad shape, weathered and dull, the dark stain leached off the wood and everything in general just needed a good scraping and sanding.