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

He sat on the porch with Chessor drinking morning coffee and trying to think what to do. He had to formulate a plan.

Well? Chessor asked.

The old man sipped his coffee and sat staring across Chessor s yard toward the pear tree. The yard was littered with a motley of broken and discarded plunder, and dogs of varied and indeterminate breed lay about the yard like fey decorations some whitetrash landscapist had positioned there with a critical eye.

He give me the runaround.

Ain’t that the way of the world, Chessor said.

I got to have me a way of goin. You still got that old Falcon?

Yeah. It still runs but I had to quit drivin it. They took my license a while back cause I kept runnin into folks. I can’t see like I used to.

What’11 you take for it?

I don’t know. I ain’t got no use for it. Two hundred dollars? Would you give that?

Let’s look at it.

He checked the oil and brake fluid. He checked the coolant level and listened to the engine idle with a critical ear. Thurl was apt to run an automobile without oil and use water for brake fluid and trust the radiator to take care of itself.

What was that place like?

It was all right.

All right. That’s why you’re livin in a sharecropper’s cabin I reckon.

No, it was all right. They fed pretty good, nobody mistreated you. It was just … just a job to them, I guess. You had the feelin if you died in your sleep they’d just move you out and somebody else in and nobody would give much of a shit.

You want the car?

I guess. You throw in that lit old tan dog with one ear up and one ear down and I’ll give you ten more bucks.

Why don’t I just sell out lock, stock, and barrel and you move in here, Chessor said. Anyway that dog ain’t worth ten dollars. That thing sets in barkin long about dark and don’t let up till daylight.

He may just be a fifteen-dollar dog, Meecham said.

HE NAMED THE DOG NIPPER and set about immediately training it to bark at his command. Showing a great deal of aptitude for this, the dog was a brilliant pupil and seemed to need little instruction. He rewarded its efforts with bits of tinned mackerel and in no time at all he could command, You hush, Nipper, and the dog would erupt into a fierce grating bark as annoying as a fingernail scraped endlessly across a blackboard, leaping and growling with its black little eyes bulging, ugly as something alien, something left on a beach by receding tides.

The old man had been to Ackerman’s Field and laid in supplies and he was feeling fairly complacent. He had bought bread and milk and tinned soup and a gallon of orange juice and he bought a hot plate to warm the soup on. As an afterthought he bought a box of shells for the pistol. He expected this night to pass far more pleasantly than the previous one. Sitting on the porch watching the day wane with the rusty green Falcon parked in his driveway and Nipper dozing at his feet he felt quite the country esquire.

Of course Choat noticed the dog right away, he could hardly have avoided it. He ignored it until nightfall then came in his shambling graceless walk down the slope from the main house. White trash right down to the ground, the old man thought. He even walks like it.

Where’d you get that thing?

The old man was sitting on the stoop cradling the dog as you might a child. The dog watched Choat with its eyes shiny as bits of black glass.

It followed me home, Meecham said. I guess you could say I found it.

You better lose it then. I ain’t puttin up with no dog on this place.

It’s my dog and my place and I guess you’ll like it or lump it. He don’t bark much.

Yeah. I heard it not barkin much most of the goddamned day. It’ll come up with its neck wrung and you may not fare much better.

He’s a good boy. He don’t bother nobody. You hush now, Nipper.

The dog began to bark ferociously at Choat and snap its fierce little teeth and strain against the fragile shelter of the old man’s arms.

You learnt that little son of a bitch to do that, Choat said viciously. I don’t know how you found out a barkin dog drives me up the wall but by God you did and it’s goin to cost you.

The old man felt an uncontrollable grin trying to break out on his face but he swallowed hard and fought it down. Then something in Choat’s face sobered him. Choat had raised a fist and he looked as if he was going to attack man or dog or both, his flat porcine face was flushed with anger.

You touch me and I’ll have you in jail for assault before good dark, the old man said.

Choat lowered the fist, he turned toward the main house. You need put in the crazy house. And that’s where you’ll be before this is over.

You hush there, Nipper, Meecham told the dog.

♦ ♦ ♦

HE WAS ABED EARLY but he awoke at eleven o’clock the way he had planned to do and went barefoot with the dog onto the porch. Lace filigrees of moonlight fell through the leaves, the main house was locked in sleep.

He sat on the stoop and packed the bowl of his pipe with Prince Albert. He could feel· the warmth of the dog against his thigh. When he had the pipe going and the fragrant blue smoke rolling he opened a tin of mackerels.

Hush, Nipper.

The dog began to bark.

He forked out a mackerel and fed it to the dog. It stopped barking and snapped up the fish and looked about for more. Now I’ve done fed you, the old man said. You behave yourself, now.

The dog began a frenzy of barking. After a while the porch light came on at the farmhouse and the door opened and Choat came out onto the porch wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. Gross and misshapen against the dark doorway. How about shuttin up some ofthat goddamned racket, he called.

I can’t get him to hush, the old man yelled. I don’t believe he’s used to the place yet.

He’s about as used to it as he’s goin to get. You bring him up here and I believe I might manage to quieten him down some.

He’ll be all right. I expect he’ll hush by daylight anyway.

You contrary old bastard. I’m just going to let you be and outlive you. You’re oldern Moses anyway. You’ll be in the ground before the snow flies and I’ll still be here layin up in your bed.

He went back in and pulled the door to and cut off the light. After a while the old man went back in with Nipper. Before he went to bed he got out the pistol and loaded it. He found a can of machine oil and oiled the action and when he spun the cylinder it whirled, clicking with a smooth lethal dexterity.

♦ ♦ ♦

SOME TIME PAST MIDNIGHT he awoke to such bedlam that for a moment he was disoriented and thought he must have dozed off in a crazy house somewhere. Looking out the window into the moonlit yard did little to refute this view. What on earth, he asked himself. Choat was beating someone with what looked like a length of garden hose. His wife Ludie was swinging onto his arm and trying to wrest away the hose. He paused and turned and shoved her and she fell onto her back with all her limbs working like some insect trying frantically to right itself. All of them seemed to be screaming simultaneously at the top of their lungs. The hose made an explosive whopping sound each time it struck. You little slut, Choat was screaming. Then Meecham saw that it was the girl, such clothes as she had on torn away by the hose.

There was a car parked in the edge of the yard with the driver’s-side door open and of a sudden someone streaked into Meecham’s vision running full tilt toward it. A young man trying to haul up his pants and at the same time trying to avoid the hose that was falling with metronomic regularity.

Choat flung the girl aside and ran in pursuit of the fleeing boy. The boy had one hand behind him flailing about for the hose and the other hauling at his breeches and he was screaming Yow, Yow, every time the hose struck. He leapt into the car and slammed the door and cranked the engine. The hose was bonging hollowly on the roof when the engine caught and the car went spinning sideways wildly in the gravel. Glass broke when it glanced off the catalpa tree in the corner of the yard. It righted itself and one light came on as he shot off down the road.