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

Bender was sitting on the side of the bed with his hands cupping his knees. He watched her get out of bed and pace away from him — her white nightgown drifting behind her.

In fact, I don’t think you should go at all. Well figure something out.

She paced back to him. I’ve already called Ruthie and told her we were coming. I’ve got to get away from here a few days. If you come over tomorrow we can talk about it.

He grasped her arm but perhaps harder than he meant to for she cried out and twisted away and her eyes were panicky and wild-looking. She was backpedaling away from him. When he was almost upon her with arms outspread to grasp her she jerked the lamp off the end table and swung it at him. Goddamn, Bender said. Only the shade caught him a glancing painless blow but he was so shocked at her striking him that he shoved outward bothhanded as hard as he could. The lamp swung away and slammed the wall and the bulb broke. He heard her fall somewhere off in the dark. She didn’t even cry out. He picked up the lamp and righted it and plugged it in. The room stayed dark. He crossed the room, almost running, and clicked on the ceiling light.

Oh Jesus, Bender said. Oh Jesus.

She was lying with her head on the edge of the raised brick hearth and her neck cocked sideways at a crazy-looking angle. Blood like shadows was already seeping onto the brick from the back of her head and with her eyes open and lying there on her back with arms and legs outflung she looked as if she had fallen from some unreckonable height and slammed onto Bender’s carpet.

With his face close to hers he tried to ascertain was she breathing or not. He couldn’t tell for sure but he didn’t think she was. Her pulse was either faint or absent at her throat and his own heart beat too loud and too fast to be sure.

He ran out of the room and down the hall to the open door of Jesse’s room. Jesse lay with his face toward Bender and the sheet rising and falling in measured respiration.

He went back to the bedroom and squatted in the middle of the floor and watched Lynn. After a while he put his face in his hands and sat there swaying soundlessly and trying to think. What to do. It had grown very quiet. He could hear the rain soft and suspirant on the roof and far off beyond the dam the rumble of thunder like something heavy and out of control rolling downhill toward him. He didn’t care if it was. He couldn’t fathom how or why this had happened. Someone he loved lay still and bloody pillowed on the hearth and no hands but his had touched her. He felt strange in his skin, it was light and uncomfortable, like some illfitting costume he had struggled into, and he did not know how to get out of it. He divined that he was somewhere he’d had no intention of going, that he was someone he did not want to be.

He got up and stripped the sheet off the bed and laid it spread out on the carpet and lifting Lynn by the arms he dragged her to the center of it. He lowered her gently onto it. Her head kept lolling back loosely as if it would fold beneath her and he had to adjust her head with a foot while he positioned her. He folded the sheet about her like a shroud and straightened and just stood for a moment staring down at her. He stooped and picked her up and cradled her in his arms and turned her so that she was draped over his left shoulder. He went cautiously past Jesse’s door and out of the house and into the rain.

He’d decided that somehow he had to get her across the garden fence and across the chain-link fence and back to the graveyard. Then he could place her in one of the empty graves and maybe cave the sides in on her. Only one body to a grave, who’d look in an empty grave? He’d tell Ruthie they had had an argument and Lynn had driven off and left him. Nobody was going to buy that story long but maybe it would give him enough time to think of something.

He was halfway across the garden staggering in the mud and vines when he stopped dead-still. He stood in an attitude of listening. Well I’m a son of a bitch, he said. He could hear a car engine toiling up the hill. He turned with her. He stared in disbelief. A slow wash of headlights coming up the hill like the very embodiment of ill luck. His face had an angry, put-upon look as if the world would not leave him alone long enough for him to get on with the things he had to do. Then all at once he came to himself and half ran, half fell, into the nightshade and honeysuckle with her. He pulled vines over her as best he could and struggled up and ran into the shadows keeping the house between himself and the headlights. When he came around the corner of the house the car was sitting parked in his driveway with the door sprung open and a dark silhouette getting out. Rain was falling slant in the headlights and he could hear the disjointed crackling of a police scanner.

What is it? Bender asked. His voice sounded like a harsh rasp and he felt he could not bear just one more thing. Not one more thing. He felt some enormous dark weight settling over him and smothering him. He wondered that he could place left foot in front of right, string one word in a coherent sequence after another.

Of course it was Bellwether. He saw Bender as he closed the door of the cruiser. Bender?

What is it?

Do you not know enough to get in out of the rain?

Bender raked his wet hair out of his eyes. Water coursed down his face. He grinned weakly.

What the hell are you doing out in this mess?

Bender took a deep breath. He forced himself to think. I thought lightning struck something. It came a hell of a clap of thunder and the power went off a second then came back on. I thought it might have hit my pump but I reckon not. A tree over there I guess.

Listen, Bender, I’m sorry as hell to come out here this late, but they want those papers served. I’ve got them right here. You want to go in the house where it’s light and I’ll read them to you?

I think not, Bender said. Leave them and I’ll read the goddamned things myself.

I told you all this before. Sometimes I have to do things I don’t want to do, and this is one of the times. You know I got to read them to you. Now get in the car.

Bender did as he was told. He pulled the door closed and sat clasping the door handle loosely with his right hand. Bellwether turned on the dome light and read the papers. They might have been Sanskrit, Latin, so little did Bender comprehend. He sat staring at Lynn’s face so pale in the wet black honeysuckle and not one coherent word did he hear.

That’s about it. This is where it stops. You are ordered off this property by ten o’clock tomorrow morning or suffer whatever consequences failure to comply entails.

Like getting my ass carried off it?

Like getting your ass carried off if need be. When you roughed that feller up or whatever you done you pissed them off.

Bender opened the door and started to get out. All right, he said.

All right what?

Just all right. Ill be gone.

They’ll give you sufficient time to get your property and personal effects moved. Listen, Bender, you fought and you lost. Let it go. For what it’s worth I’m sorry.

Bender was standing by the car. Sorry is not worth a damn to me, he said. He shoved the door but Bellwether leaned across the seat fast and caught it and pushed it open hard. The edge of the door caught Bender on the hip and he staggered back.

Let me tell you this straight out, Bellwether said. I’ll be here myself to see about your wife and kid. You do what you want. A man wants carried out can damn sure find somebody to carry him. But I’m escortin your family away from any trouble myself. Are we right clear on that?

Bender stood rubbing his hip. He didn’t say anything.

Are we right clear on that?

Yes.

All right then. Bellwether eased the car in gear and pulled the door closed. He had scarcely begun to turn in the drive before Bender was moving rapidly toward the corner of the house. Out of the lights he stood leaning for a minute against the side of the house with the rain from the eaves falling on him until he heard the car going down the hill and then he struck out for the garden.