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

Until the day waned and the light pooled and drained westward and the streetlamps came on and until the pace of the streets altered and moved in a loose disjointed rhythm and fierce chromatic colors that seared the eye and until the day’s possibilities became probabilities and then dead certainties and they were hauled from the Blazer and humiliated, made to plead for their lives, urinating on themselves and soiling their clothing while the last vestiges of human dignity fled. Credit cards gone, money gone, pristine Blazer stripped and burned. Surely they’d slit his throat and rape her fair white body, slit her throat and rape his own fair white body, shoot them full of drugs that would send them at warp speed past any conception of reality the mind was prepared to deal with, snuff them in a bending flash of light that was the very essence of ecstasy. Their bodies would be found in garbage-strewn alleys, septic hypodermic needles dangling from their veins like fey ornaments, or their bodies would drift pale and bloated in the currents of the Cumberland River until they turned up stranded on silt bars like worn-out whores their pimps had no further use for.

Bring it on, Worrel told their sullen faces. Let me have it, you sons of bitches. You goddamned amateurs. There’s nothing you can do to me half as bad as this.

He thought of the people waiting for Angie, beginning to wonder where she was. The kids at the grandmother’s, the husband probably wondering why there was no supper on the table. He suddenly felt weary and omnipotent, like a troubled god: he knew something they did not yet know, something that was waiting for them like a messenger with a finger on the doorbell and a telegram in his hand. They did not know, any of them, that they were living in the end times of bliss. The last belle epoque. Not the kids at Granny’s, whining where is Mama, not the husband bitching about the fallow table.

They did not know that they were going to have their world blown away, walls flung outward and doors ripped from shrieking hinges, trees uprooted and riding the sudden hot wind like autumn leaves, the air full of debris like grainy old 8-millimeter footage of Hiroshima. A cataclysm that would leave the floor of their world charred and smoking, inhospitable for some time to come.

Just for a moment, though, he was touched by a feeling he could not control, that he had not sought and instantly tried to shuttle to some dark cobwebbed corner of his mind. He wanted to forget it, at the very least deal with it later.

He had felt for an instant a bitter and unconsoling satisfaction that terrified him. When she sat eyes closed with her fair head against the seat she seemed to be fading in and out of sight like someone with only a tenuous and uncertain reality, going at times so transparent he could see the leather upholstery through her body, her face in its temporary repose no more than a reflected image, a flicker of light off water.

At these moments, all that was real was the grip of her hand, the intent focused bones he could trace with the ball of his thumb. Nothing was holding her back save the fingers knotted into his own. She was sliding away, fare-thee-well-I’m-gone, vanishing through a fault in the weave of the world itself, but until this moment ended and whatever was supposed to happen next happened, he was holding on to her. Everybody was hanging on to her, all those gasping hands, but for the first time no other hold was stronger than his own.

The author would like to acknowledge the debt he owes to two friends named Amy — his agent, Amy Williams, and editor, Amy Scheibe — and to thank them for their trust and support.

He would also like to express his gratitude to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

WILLIAM GAY is the author of the novels Provinces of Night and The Long Home . His short stories have appeared in Harper’s, The Georgia Review, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Oxford American, and New Stories from the South 1999–2001 . The winner of the 1999 William Peden Award and the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize and the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim fellowship, he lives in Hohenwald, Tennessee.

I HATE TO SEE THAT EVENING SUN GO DOWN

In the collection’s tide story, Meecham returns home after a stint in a nursing home. Discuss what appears to be a class rivalry between Meecham and Lonzo Choat. Do you believe Meecham’s really a threat or merely a harmless old man? Is Meechams son, Paul, justified in sending his father to a home?

In the story “A Death in the Woods,” the body that is discovered on Pettijohn’s property disturbs him immensely, while his wife, Carlene, appears quite indifferent. Does her dismissive attitude seem suspicious to you? Do you think Pettijohn suspected something from the start? What do you make of Pettijohn and Carlenes relationship?

The narrator in “Bonedaddy, Quincy Nell, and the Fifteen Thousand BTU Electric Chair” says that Bonedaddy “met his comeuppance” when he met Quincy Nell. Did Bonedaddy get what he deserved? Was Quincy Nell justified? Why do you suppose Bonedaddy was allowed to get away with so much?

Many of William Gays characters in this collection have wonderfully colorful names. Why do you suppose “The Paperhanger” is never given a name beyond this moniker?

In “The Man Who Knew Dylan,” Crosswaithe is a complicated character with a varied past. How have women shaped Crosswaithe’s past, present, and future?

In “Those Deep Elm Brown’s Ferry Blues” Alzheimer’s is setting in on Scribner. Discuss the ways in which his mental deterioration is made manifest.

In “Crossroads Blues,” the main character, Karas, encounters a curious man named Borum who claims that “everything has its price.” How does this dictum relate to the story as a whole?

In the story “Closure and Roadkill on the Life’s Highway,” do you think Raymer, the jilted husband, finally gets the “closure” he admits he needs? Do you think old man Mayfield is telling the truth about the money? If not, then what are his motives for creating the tale?

In “Sugarbaby,” Finis and Doneita Beasley have been happily married for thirty years. Finis shoots his wife’s dog and does nothing to stop her when she leaves the next day. Why do you think he is so indifferent? What comment does it make about their marriage? Was Finis really happy or just going along with the routine?

Bender, the protagonist in “Standing by Peaceful Waters,” has a recurring dream in which there is a ravenous wolf. What does the wolf represent? Discuss the wolf’s symbolic role in the story. How do Bender’s dreamworld and reality blur?

In “Good ’Til Now,” Vangie finally decides to leave her husband on the day her lover, Robert Vandaveer, turns up dead. Do you think Vangie will still have the courage to leave? Robert credits fate with his meeting Vangie. What role does fate ultimately play in the story?

In “The Lightpainter,” Tidewater gets his name from the ability to capture light in his paintings. In what other ways does this name suit him? Why do you think he takes such a liking to Jenny? Does Tidewater have a superhero complex?

When Angie parks the car in a seedy neighborhood in Nashville in the story “My Hand Is Just Fine Where It Is,” Worrel worries that “at any moment everything could alter.” Discuss how this statement seems to describe the nature of their relationship.

Of the collection, what is your favorite story? Who is your favorite character? Why?

15. What themes do you notice appear throughout the collection of stories?