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

IN THE MORNING he was about early. He gathered up the remnants of the dog and buried them below the barn lot. He had been very impressed with what a.44 magnum was capable of. It had virtually disintegrated Sugarbaby and torn out a deep groove in the floorboards then knocked loose a four-by-four porch column so that it dangled out of plumb from the porch beam.

When he came up from burying the dog Doneita was leaving. She had a small station wagon and she was loading possessions into it. Clothing, knickknacks, pictures. I’ll send Clarence after the rest, she told him.

He nodded. Take whatever you want, he said.

In days to come his life went on as usual. He farmed, he fed the horses. His life seemed largely unchanged. He knew how to run a washing machine, he knew how to cook. In truth he preferred his own cooking. He had always believed that Doneita used too much grease, too little salt, though he had been too polite to say so.

WHEN BEASLEY CUT the chainsaw off and turned around his daughter Berneice was standing there watching him.

Hellfire, he said. Why didn’t you speak up? I could have cut a tree on you.

I did but you can’t hear anything for that saw. I don’t believe you can half hear anyway.

I hear fine, Beasley said.

Berneice had had to leave her car and climb the fence and cross the pasture to the edge of the timber where Beasley was sawing firewood. She didn’t look happy. Beasley thought she looked torn between raking him over the coals and crying on his shoulder. He hoped it wouldn’t be crying, but there was a tremulous look to her mouth and a slick wet gleam to her eyes.

What’s all this about Mama? she asked.

Beasley set the saw down and knelt beside it and unscrewed the gas cap. He poured fuel into it from a milk jug he was using as a gas container.

What you see, I guess, he said. Me living out here and her living wherever she’s living.

She’s living out there in one of those housing authority apartments, Berneice said. Out on Walnut where the old people live. Most of them widows, old women waiting to die. One of them had to die before she could even get in there. She stayed with me and Clarence for a few days.

I guess you got an earful, he said.

Well. How come you shot Sugarbaby?

Beasley thought about it a time. He had unpocketed a file and begun to sharpen the saw. I don’t know, he finally said. I expect it was that yip yip yip every night.

Mama said you told her you meant to just shoot at it. Did you mean to hit it?

I don’t know. I just shot, and there it was.

She don’t need to be out there with nothing but old folks. Mama’s not anywhere near ready to give up and die.

Does she like it out there?

She claims she does but she don’t. She’s trying to fit in. She plays bridge with those old ladies. She’s planted a bed of petunias. They sit around talking about quilts and their dead husbands.

If she says she likes it then she probably does. Doneita was never one to hold her tongue when something needed saying.

What makes you the way you are, Daddy? Everything’s gone, it’s just such a waste. Thirty years of memories. You’ve just thrown it away.

You can’t throw away a memory, Beasley said. Anyway she can always come back. Nobody ever said she couldn’t come back.

She’s too stubborn. Both of you. All our Christmases gone, all the birthdays. Now she was crying silently, tears tracking down her cheeks. Beasley was growing more uncomfortable by the second.

Go out there and talk it over with her, Berneice said. Try and work it out.

Beasley was silent. He didn’t know why people were always trying to change things, to get back to where they were. People were who they were, and the things they did were just the things they did. He could not call back the bullet, silence the enormous concussion of the pistol.

And you might take her a little dog of some kind.

Beasley watched her cross back through the pasture. In due course Beasley received a certified letter from a lawyer’s office in Ackerman’s Field. He read it through three times. He studied it in a sort of bemused wonder. He was being sued for divorce. He had been mentally cruel, there were irreconcilable differences. Doneita wanted support, a division of their mutual properties. A date was shown for a hearing where these particulars might be discussed.

Beasley saw no need for that. If she wanted a divorce she was entitled to one. He personally did not believe in divorce. He decided to have no part of whatever happened. He would do nothing to prevent it but he would not abet it.

As the year drew on more letters came. They grew more insistent, the legalese the message was couched in more strident: His presence was requested in court. His lack of cooperation was making things more difficult for everyone. The letters began to anger Beasley. Who are the sons of bitches? he wondered. Why are they aggravating the hell out of me? Why is everybody nosing around in my business?

WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE at the beginning was go talk to her and get her to come back home, Clarence said.

I guess, Beasley told his son-in-law.

And since you didn’t do that, what you should have done was go talk to her when the court served you with those papers. Work something out. That’s what she wanted. But you didn’t do that either. You just let it roll.

I just let it roll, Beasley agreed.

It was the first cold day of winter and he had the rocking chair dragged before the fireplace and his feet propped on the brick hearth. He had been cutting and hauling firewood all day and he was tired and cold. He liked Clarence but he did not want to discuss this with him. At the very bottom of things he did not consider it any of Clarence s business. It was not even any of his business. It was the business of Doneita and the lawyer she had hired.

Clarence was a schoolteacher and the word he always used to describe Beasley was stoic. He’s tougher than a cut of sweet gum, he told Berneice once when Beasley was still within earshot. You can’t break him or split him, the grain runs every which way. He’s a vanishing breed. An anachronism.

This stoic anachronism sat regarding Clarence from the rocking chair. I appreciate your advice, Clarence, he said. But I decided a while back to just not have anything to do with all this mess. To just let it roll over me and get on out of sight.

It’ll roll over you, all right, Clarence said. You need a lawyer. It’s not any of my business, but this place has been in your family for generations. Now a bunch of lawyers are going to be fighting over it like dogs over a garbage can. They won’t leave you a pot to piss in. Nor a place to set it down if you had a pot.

I’ve always minded my own business, Beasley said. Kept my own counsel. I’ve always believed if a man minded his own business everybody would leave him alone.

You don’t understand, Clarence said.

Maybe not. But I haven’t bothered anybody. I pay my debts, I don’t owe a dime in this world. If they think they can do anything to me let them bring it on.

Well they’ll damn sure bring it. They’ll bring it in wholesale lots. She’s pissed about that dog. That Sugarbaby, and from what I hear the judge she went before is pissed too. They’re going to take you out.

Clarence, Beasley said, wanting to explain but unable to articulate what he meant. It was just that it wasn’t his kind of deal. He was not going to explain his business to a bunch of people in neckties and suits.

What was the use of having principles if you abandoned them when the going got rough? If you said, Well, maybe I’ll do this but I won’t do that. If you said, Well, I’ll move the lines back to here, but no farther? Beasley wasn’t moving any lines. The lines stayed where they were.