William Gay: Provinces of Night

He stood by the flames for a moment refilling his cup at his leisure and then he went out of the house for the last time. He recovered the books and the records and since he could already feel the heat from the dry pine he retreated some farther distance and stood drinking the coffee and just watching it burn.

He sat with the old woman on the south end of the house where the thin sunlight was. The weather had moderated somewhat and the day was cold but bright. The grandmother would not allow herself to be kept inside all the time and she seemed to have reached some point in her life where the weathers were of no moment. They sat in wickerwork chairs against the wall where the light fell and the old woman had allowed a shawl to be draped across her lap. The boy wore a heavy dark coat that hung oddly to the right side for he had recovered the old man’s pistol and it was his intention if Brady said a single word to him to shoot and kill him.

His other intention had been to give her a word of farewell or at least some news of his going but this was not one of her better days. She had known him at first but when he had mentioned leaving she had confused him with E.F. and seemed determined to maintain this confusion and see it through to its end.

She studied his face in a cold appraisal, eerily like a young woman peering through the ruin time had made of her face. You’re a good-looking man, she told him. But you’re not the only man in the world. Far from it. You’ll turn up some time from you whiskeymakin or your musicplayin and be mighty surprised.

She fell silent and watched him out of her fierce hawklike face. I’m not goin to put up with it anymore, she told him. Jails and shootin laws and bein treated like trash. If you go this time that’s an end to it.

He looked away, out across the garden with its dead and windtilted weeds. Where the wraith had leaned to raise the wire and so accommodate its passage. A flock of blackbirds moved like a shapeshifter against the blue void.

This old music, she told him, it’s drove you crazy. It’s got inside your mind until you think that’s all there is. More than me and what’s worse, more than them boys. Do you think kids raise theirselves?

No, he said. No, I don’t think that.

Then what are you goin to do about it?

I don’t know, he said.

No. I expect you don’t.

All I can do is just do the best I can, he said.

It would need to be some better than the way you’ve lived so far, she told him.

He rose abruptly to go. But he turned back and leaned over her where she sat and kissed the papery skin of her cheek. She looked up in mild astonishment, recognizing him, then waved him away. Get on away from here, she told him. Quit wastin your time with an old woman, go do whatever it is young men are supposed to be doing. He grinned and turned to go, resting his hand a moment in passing on her bony shoulder, still breathing the smell of her skin where he’d kissed her. There was a dry acrid smell about her, and the fugitive smell of death biding its time, and a compound of spices, cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg that made him think of Egyptian mummies in their sarcophagi, their viscera jarred and the sacred flesh preserved for eternity with exotic spices, far underground, waiting while the sands shift ceaselessly above them and the millennia roll.

She seemed somewhat surprised to see him but not displeased. I thought I was shut of you for good last time, she told him.

No, you’ll probably never be shut of me, he said. I’ll probably aggravate you for the rest of your life.

I suppose I could learn to live with that.

She was heavier yet through the abdomen and he thought he should inquire about her health but as this was a matter of some delicacy he did not quite know how to go about it. Finally he said, Are you uncomfortable?

She gave him a wry smile. I don’t believe I’m as uncomfortable as you are.

They were sitting in the yellow Dodge outside Raven Lee’s house. Fleming kept glancing to see was Mother about but she did not make an appearance.

I’m going off for a while, he said. I’ve got some stuff I need you to take care of for me. Funny as it might seem to you, I don’t have anybody else to ask.

What is it?

A couple of books. Those records we played that time. The old man’s banjo.

Oh, Jesus, Fleming. He didn’t die, did he? He died.

So he told her his tale, staring out toward Clifton where not a soul seemed to be about this cold December day. He told her all of it, and when he was done with it she just sat quietly beside him for a long time. Finally she leaned her face against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

So what are you going to do now? Where are you going?

I’m going in the Navy. I’m seventeen and Warren signed for me and I’m leaving for Memphis sometime tomorrow.

God, when you make a move you really make a move. Are you sure this is what you want to do?

He thought about it a while. There were a lot of things he could have told her but they seemed somehow beyond articulation so finally he just said, I can finish school and they’ll help pay college tuition. I’ve got to do something, no move is the wrong move, Warren always said.

It sounds like you’ll be aggravating me from a considerable distance, she said.

He took six folded fifty-dollar bills and laid them beside her on the seat. You may be needing this, he said.

What’s all this? She was fanning the bills out like a poker hand, studying their unusual denominations.

It’s till I can send some money. You’ll be needing money for doctors and all that. I guess it’s just for whatever you need it for.

Lord, where’d you get it? Rob a bank? And why on earth are you giving it to me?

I borrowed it from Warren. Actually he offered it and I took him up on it. He said he’d just piss it away on loose women anyway.

Is that what you call what you’re doing with it?

No. No, I don’t, and I don’t want to hear anymore about it.

All right.

He sat for a time in silence. It seemed to him somewhat ironic that Warren had given him money to pay for a grandchild he didn’t know existed but he did not say any of this. He just sat comfortably beside her, until this sense of comfort began to bother him a little; he was aware that he experienced it only when he was with her, and it had occurred to him that it might be some time before he experienced it again.

Where’s the banjo and stuff you wanted me to keep?

In the trunk. I just went and got it out of the trailer. No one else wanted it.

Life would be so much simpler if I’d met you before I started fooling around with Neal, she said. I wish this was your baby.

He was silent a time. She was still leaning against his shoulder and he was trying not to move so that she would stay there. I’ll take it then, he said.

What?

I want it. It’s mine. Neal doesn’t want it and he doesn’t want you. Anyway he got out on bond and headed out. I want you any way I can get you, and I’ll treat the baby the same as if it was mine.

You are crazy.

No I’m not. I was crazy, before, but I’m not now. I’m finally not crazy anymore. Can you believe that?

I don’t know what to believe.

Then he did twist around in the seat, so abruptly that she straightened and pulled heavily away from him.

Listen, he said vehemently. Somebody’s going to have to say what they really mean and then do what they say they will. All this lying. All this bullshit and pretending. It’s just wasting lives, wasting time, everything’s just a waste.

She was looking at him curiously. That’s just the way people are. The way the world is. What are you trying to do, fix the world?

I don’t want to fix the world. Fuck the world. Just the little part of it that I have to live on. You and that old man. Folks starting babies and walking off like that’s got nothing to do with them. People walking off while you’re asleep and never coming back. Leaving a note. A Goddamned note. Old people living half a mile apart and wanting to see each other and dying without doing it. Now that’s crazy for you. That’s what’s crazy.