William Gay - I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down - Collected Stories

Well, whatever. Ten thousand dollars is still a lot of money.

She didn’t argue with that. Wouldn’t it be fun to go down to the Bahamas? I’m on summer break. We could lie on the beach. All that white sand. We could just lie in the sun and drink those tall drinks they have with tropical fruit in them.

Then you’ll do it?

I’ll think about it. Like you said, it’s a lot of money. She paused, and was silent for a time. There’s just one thing, she said.

Where’s the fox at?

Robbie? He’s playing a string of club dates in Nashville, trying to get a record deal. By the way, you shouldn’t call him that — it just shows how petty you are. I told him about it, and he wasn’t amused.

Piss on him. I never set out to be a comedian.

Back to what I was saying. The way you tell it, you’re doing all the work. Swinging around on those bluffs — that’s dangerous. You could get killed. I’m only twenty-three, and I could be a widow. I think you deserve the entire twenty thousand.

Hellfire, Corrie, it’s Mayfield s money, not mine.

You said yourself he doesn’t care about it. Besides, it would take twice as long to spend it. If you’re really trying to, as you put it, win me back, this would give you twice as long to do it.

Raymer was put off balance by what she’d suggested, and he felt a little dizzy. He thought the smell of the roses might be getting to him. The room was filled with a sickening sweet reek that seemed to have soaked into the draperies and the carpet. It smelled like a wedding, a funeral. You may be right, he said.

Of course I’m right. You could take six months off from work. We could spend it remodeling the house. Maybe you’re learning, Buddy. You did right to tell me this.

I could tell you about it all night long, Raymer said. He’d heard that money was an aphrodisiac, but he suspected this was more likely to be true of actual as opposed to conjectural money, and Corrie’s reply bore this out.

I’ve got to think all this through, she said. I’ve got to decide what I’m going to tell Robbie.

At the door she kissed him hard and opened her mouth under his and rounded her sharp breasts against his chest, but her mouth did not taste the same as it had that day by the wishing pool, and the odor of the roses had even saturated her hair. An enormous sadness settled over him.

Going back, he was five miles across the county line when a small red fox darted up out of the weedy ditch and streaked into his headlights. He cut the wheel hard to miss it, but a rear wheel passed over the fox, and he felt a lurch in the pit of his stomach. Goddamn it, he said. He put the truck in reverse and backed up until he could see the fox. It wasn’t moving. He got out. The fox’s eyes were open, but they were blind and dull; its sharp little teeth were bared, and blood was running out of its mouth. Its eyes had been as bright as emeralds in the headlights, and they had gleamed as if they emitted light instead of reflecting it. I don’t believe this, Raymer said. This is just too goddamned much.

He rose and took a drop cloth from the bed of the truck and wrapped the fox in it. He stowed it in the back of the pickup and drove on toward home.

RAYMER WAS SHAKING HIS HEAD. Why don’t you just admit it? he asked. You wanted to go fishing. You wanted to get away from the project and picnic on the river. So you fed me all this bullshit, and here you are, with your little basket and your little fishing pole.

Mayfield regarded him placidly. It don’t matter what you think, he said. The money’s not there because you think it is. It’s there because I put it in a jar and poured paraffin over it and packed it up the side of that bluff. If you think it’s not there, that don’t change nothin. It’d be there even if you didn’t exist.

Because you packed it up the side of that bluff.

Right.

Raymer sat in the stern of the boat looking at his hands. He had slipped twenty scary feet down the face of a bluff before he could stop himself, and the nylon line had left a deep rope burn across each palm, as if he’d grabbed a red-hot welding rod with both hands.

Truth to tell, though, exploring the caves was interesting. He had not found any dead Confederates, but he had been in a cave in whose winding depths Indians had left flint chippings, pottery shards, all that remained of themselves.

As always, Mayfield seemed to know what he was thinking. Why won’t you admit it yourself? You know you’re gettin a kick out of it. I bet you ain’t thought of your wife all mornin.

Raymer shook his head again. He grinned. You’re just too many for me, he said.

THURSDAY HE WAS RAINED OUT in midafternoon, and he drove to the bank and checked the balance in his account. It was a lot higher than he had expected. He was amazed at how little he had spent. Like the old man, he seemed to be accumulating it in paper sacks, fruit jars. It was growing all the time.

He asked to withdraw $500 in ones and fives. The teller gave him a peculiar look as she began to count out the money.

It’s for a ransom note, Raymer said, and for a moment she stopped counting. She was careful to keep any look at all from her face. Then she resumed, laying one bill atop another.

He drank the rest of the day away in a bar near the bypass. The place was named Octoberfest and had a mock-Germanic decor, and the waitresses were tricked out in what looked like milkmaids’ costumes. He drank dark lager and kept waiting for the ghost of Hitler to sidle in and take the stool across from him. A dull malaise had seized him. A sense of doom. A suspicion that someone close to him had died. He had not yet received the telegram, but the Reaper was walking up and down the block looking for his house number.

You’ve sure got a good tan, the barmaid told him. It looks great with that blond hair. What are you, a lifeguard or something?

Something, Raymer said. I’m a necrozoologist.

A what? Necrowhat?

A necrozoologist. I analyze roadkill on the highways. On the life’s highway. I look for patterns, migratory habits. Compile statistics. So many foxes, so many skunks. Possums. Try to determine where the animal was bound for when it was struck.

There’s no such thing as that.

Sure there is. We’re funded by the government. We get grants.

She laid a palm on his forearm. I think you’re drunk, she said. But you’re cute anyway. Stop by and see me one day when you’re sober.

When he went to use the pay phone, he was surprised to see that dark had fallen. He could see the interstate from there, and the headlights of cars streaking past looked straight and intent, like falling stars rifling down the night.

The phone rang for a long time before she answered.

Where were you?

I was asleep on the couch. Where are you? Why are you calling? I’ve got it, he said.

Jesus. Buddy. You found it? All of it?

All of it.

You sound funny. Why do you sound like that? Are you drunk?

I might have had a few celibatory — celebratory — beers.

If you were going to celebrate, you could have waited for me.

I’m waiting for you now, he said, and hung up the phone.

A CHEST FREEZER STOOD on the back porch of the farmhouse they had bought to renovate. Raymer raised the lid and took out the frozen fox, still wrapped in its canvas shroud. He folded away the canvas, but part of it was seized in the bloody ice, and he refolded it. He slid the bundle into a clean five-gallon paint bucket. A vinegar jar would have been nice, but he guessed they didn’t make them that big anymore. The money was in a sack, and he dumped it into the bucket, shaking the bag out, the ones and fives drifting like dry leaves in a listless wind. He glanced at his watch and then picked up the loose bills from the floor and packed them around the fox. He stretched a piece of plastic taut across the top of the bucket and sealed it with duct tape. He replaced the plastic lid and hammered it home with a fist. Then he went into the kitchen and filled up the coffeemaker.