William Gay - Provinces of Night

Gene couldn’t stand the sight of me and he grew to loathe my touch, but he never had a derogatory word to say about my cooking or my money.

Albright could not come up with a fitting response to this and so kept on eating. More bourbon was served during the meal and Albright grew expansive, regaling her with his adventures in the taxi business, his brief career as a metal crimper.

When they had finished the apple pie and cheese he arose when she did and went back into the living room. Albright was making ready to go but she urged him to linger on.

I have so little company, she said. Most of the friends we had were Gene’s friends and seldom come around. And of course Gene was very busy, he had his mistresses.

Albright was seated in the easy chair without quite knowing how it happened. One moment he was eyeing the door and the next he was leaned back into the soft upholstery and she was scooting a hassock in front of the chair.

Would you like to watch television?

No, he said, I’ve seen it before. All them gray folks bouncin around makes me nervous.

Gene bought it to watch the wrestling on, she said. I’d rather read a book, wouldn’t you?

Mmmm, Albright said.

I usually have a cup of coffee or a little cognac after the evening meal, Mrs. Woodall said. Which would you prefer?

I’m not much of a coffee drinker, Albright said.

He sipped the cognac and decided he’d never had anything like it. He was already rehearsing in his mind the story he was going to tell Fleming Bloodworth about this and he was searching his mind for a way to describe the bouquet the cognac had when he lifted the glass to drink.

She refilled their glasses and seated herself across from him in a bent-wood rocker. Albright was noticing that she had done something to her hair. He did not know what, but it looked somehow softer, less like a lacquered wig. Perhaps it was the cognac but she was looking considerably less froglike and more like a kind, well-educated woman.

I don’t understand your obligation to Gene, she said. But these last few days I’ve been thinking how rare a quality honor is. You felt an obligation, financial or otherwise, and you’re honoring it the only way you know how, with the sweat of your labors. Honor is a very attractive quality in a man; it distresses me to admit that Gene did not possess it. Not an iota of it, or any empty space where honor had ever been. When I met Gene I was teaching English in a college up in East Tennessee. My father was well off, a well respected man in that part of the state. Gene was hired to do some work for him. He was just an itinerant carpenter then, building decks, pouring concrete sidewalks. I fell in love with him. He seduced me and married me, which I admit required very little effort on his part, and in no time he was in the construction business. Truth to tell he was good at it. All he needed was a start. I was that start; he betrayed me almost immediately, and he’s betrayed me a thousand times over.

Through a shifting cognac haze Albright wondered where this was going. Why she was telling him. How he was supposed to respond to it. He sipped cognac and gave occasional sympathetic and encouraging nods.

It made me bitter and meanspirited, she said, refilling the brandy snifter she held. A man seduced me and used my money to change himself from a jackleg carpenter who did not even possess his own wheelbarrow into a successful businessman with a literal harem of women. Then he refused to even share my bed. What would be your opinion of a man like that?

I’d say he was a worthless, coldhearted son of a bitch.

She nodded. He was that and more, she said. I’ve been admiring your hair in the light. Do you mind if I touch it?

What?

I’ve been looking at your hair. Admiring it. It looks like spun gold. Is it all right if I touch it?

Why Lord yes, Albright said. You help yourself.

She rose and ran the fingers of her left hand through Albright’s tangle of white curls. Then she just stood for a time with her palm resting on his scalp. She eased her fingers gently out of his hair and drank the remaining cognac in her glass. She crossed through a wide arched opening into the kitchen and he could hear her rinsing the glass at the sink.

When she came back into the room she paused before him. When Gene died I was his sole heir, she said. I inherited his business, all its assets, all its liabilities. I also inherited whatever outstanding obligations were owed the company, or to Gene himself. I must apologize to you, I’ve drunk more brandy than I’m accustomed to and it always goes to my head. I’m going to bed. You’re an attractive man, Mr. Albright, in your own way, and I’d like you to stay the night, if you’d care to. My bedroom is down the hall and to the right, and I’ll be in it. If you decide to stay, I’d assume you’d want to bathe. There are towels and soap in all the bathrooms, just wander around until you find one.

She was watching him with something that was almost amusement. Whatever you decide, I am hereby absolving you of all responsibility toward any debt owed Gene Woodall or Woodall Construction Company.

She turned and went. He heard a door open, a door close. Goddamn, he said. He set the glass aside and sat for a time staring at the dead television screen. What to do. Absolved of all responsibilities had an official, free-and-clear ring to it, but there seemed a question of authority here. Some things went beyond wills and heirs and lawyers.

At length he arose and went in search of a bathroom. A man who could climb a shaky forty-foot ladder ought to be able to find a bathroom, he thought, even in a house of this size.

They lay in a comfortable semidarkness. The windows were black and Albright could see snowflakes listing against them. Hear a winter wind keening beneath the cornice. Lying there beside her Albright was beset with a bleak postcoital despair. He felt that all he had accomplished had been for nothing. All the chipping, scraping, sanding had been negated and he was deeper in debt than ever. He was driving Gene Woodall’s pickup and had eaten his food, drunk his special bourbon and an inordinate amount of fine cognac. Now he had lain with his wife, and there was no way he could ever pay off such an insurmountable obligation.

Finally he told her the story of the crimper. Of the legal papers, the judgment. Lastly of the fifty-dollar curse Brady Bloodworth had levied that had resulted in a plane being so destroyed you could have packed it away in a shoe box.

She lay propped on an elbow listening to all this with an attentive look on her face. When he had finished she said, And you got all that for fifty dollars? I wonder why sand is so much more expensive.

What?

Let me describe a hypothetical situation. Are you familiar with the word hypothetical?

No.

She told him. Then she said, Let’s hypothesize a woman with a grievance. A bitterness. Suppose further that there is another person with a grievance, a mechanic, perhaps, who has a great deal of familiarity with airplane engines. What makes them function well, what makes them not function at all. If a sum of money changed hands, say a thousand dollars, a substance might be added to the fuel tanks. An airplane will not run on sand.

They Lord God, Albright said.

Of course this is all hypothetical, she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. I just thought it might make you feel better. Now go to sleep.

Albright lay quite still until she was asleep and then he eased out of bed. Dressed himself rapidly, found his shoes. He went down the hall and through the living room. He opened the front door and went onto the porch. A wind was whipping snow in a white dervish and the windshield and sidewindows of the pickup truck were covered with a layer of ice. The wind mourned coldly in the bare tree branches, windbrought ice sharp as mice’s teeth stung his face.