William Gay - The Long Home

Winer dragged the box of tools from the back room out to where the light was. Hands gentle and respectful to the tools. He wiped the framing square with an oiled rag, tilted it toward the white globe of light to read the spill of numbers. Something awesome, almost occult, ageless, in this sheer condensation of knowledge.

“What are you doin?”

“Getting ready to go to work.”

“For him?”

“Yes.”

“Buildin that Godless mess down there at Hovington’s.”

He laid the square aside. “Well. I haven’t noticed any preachers coming around to hire me build a church.”

“You think God Almight’ll ever allow a roof over such a snake’s den as that? No, he won’t. He’ll burn it down with a bolt of lightin before the first bottle’s sold or the first blasphemy’s said. Then where will you be? If it was me I’d want to be as far away from a sight like that as I could.”

“Well. God Almighty let him sell it off Hovington’s front porch and I never even heard any thunder.”

“Yeah. Yeah. And him gettin bolder every minute and darin folks to stop him. Shootin em and goin scot-free, burnin houses over folks’ heads. And you defending him to your own mama and gettin a mouth on you needs a bar of soap took to it.”

Winer didn’t reply. He tried a tape measure, dripped oil into the case, and tried again.

“And you gettin more like him ever day. Usin his tools. It’s a wonder he didn’t take em with him when he went, I reckon he figured there wadnt a dollar on them.” Old bitter anger long unhealed imbued her with vehemence. “Storm in here mad at nothin and gone with never a word of why to anybody.”

He still didn’t reply. He seldom did anymore.

Oliver had always expected his fences to outlast him but in the last year or so it seemed to him that he spent most of his time repairing them where the goats had pushed through.

“I aim to kill em,” he said. “Ever last emptyheaded one of em. I’m goin back to the house soon as I fix this fence and get my gun and lay out ever last goat I own.”

“If I was going to kill them I’d just let the fences go,” Winer said. He was grinning, he’d heard death sentences passed on the goats before but the old man’s herd always seemed to increase rather than diminish. Even as Oliver spoke a baby goat was rubbing its head against the old man’s arm.

He was weaving a temporary deterrent of seagrass string among the rusted strands of wire. “I sort of like to hear the bells but by God I can string the bells on wire and let the wind ring em.” He knotted the string. Already the goats were pushing against the wire. “And say we’re out of the sang business?”

“I reckon. I told him I’d be there Monday.”

“Just as well, I reckon, I’ll be gone fore long. I look for a early frost and a long winter. Long and cold. Signs is there if you know where to look.”

“You reckon I ought to go work for him or not? I’m a little undecided.”

“Boy, you got to do what you want to do. You suit yourself. As long as you keep your head straight and stay out of his business you’ll be all right. Just drive nails and draw your pay on Friday and go on home. Besides, I know you. You’re goin to do what you want to anyway.”

Oliver straightened when he finished the fence, stood halfbent a moment then with hands on knees, his fingers kneading recalcitrant flesh and bone. “No,” he said. “But there ain’t no law says you got to like a man to do his work and draw his money. All you have to do is get along with him. I just worked for bosses I liked, I guess I’d a spent a good portion of my life settin on the front porch.”

“Would you work for Hardin?”

“Lord, no. I’d scratch shit with the chickens before I’d take a nickel that passed through his hands.”

“Why? Because he’s a bootlegger?”

“No. I got nothin against bootleggin. I lived around it all my life. Thomas Hovington was a bootlegger and I never had nothin against him cept he let folks run over him. Never would stand up for hisself. Let Hardin do him out of business, his place, even his woman. A man like Hardin now, he can spot that in a feller and use it, he knows who he can shove around and who he can’t. Just see he don’t get started off that way with you. The way I see it there’s a way of doin things, a way they ort to be done. Hardin strikes me as a feller that won’t cull much if it’ll get him what he wants.”

“Well. It’s your business anyhow,” Winer said. “I just wanted you to know why I won’t be over Monday.”

“You a good worker. Don’t sell yourself short and don’t let him run nothin over on you.”

Watching the boy go back up the roadbed Oliver knelt back in the sun and rested a moment. Well, go then, he thought. I can’t stop you. The sun was a warm weight on the paper lids of his eyes but it already had a quality of distance to it, a subtle eclipse of the seasons he had an affinity with, a clocking of the earth’s time he felt in sync with, he and the earth growing old together but never able to give up.

That spotted horse, he thought, remembering the hoofbeats and almost concurrent with them the horse and rider appearing apparitionlike and immediate out of the brush and morning fog, the bunched muscles of horse’s hindquarters when Hardin sawed the reins and the horse rearing its eyes wild and muddy but no more wild that Hardin’s own, the look of surprise lasting no more than a second then going blank and serene, all surface you could not penetrate. There was a Winchester cradled in the crook of Hardin’s arm and as the horse calmed he laid it across the pommel of the saddle. Just resting it there.

“What the fuck are you doin out here?”

It was fall of the year and the woods were the color of bright copper and the wind was blowing, shifting the depth of the driven leaves like water. The forest became surreal, a place he’d never seen or dreamed or heard rumored, a dark corner of childhood night and he thought. This son of a bitch is crazy. This madman is goin to shoot me where I stand and leave me where I fall. He would rot in these woods, black millipedes sleep in his chambered skull, the teeth of predators score his bones. “Just mindin my own business,” he said. “A pastime I ain’t noticed much around here.” There was a sharp, metallic taste to his saliva, like cankered brass.

“Your business, hell. I reckon you think anything moves in these woods is your business. Don’t think I ain’t seen you prowlin. Stickin your long nose in my business.”

There was a hot seeping anger in Oliver’s chest. “You don’t own this property,” he said. “You better check your lines.”

“My lines is where I make em,” Hardin said. “And I make a new set everday.” He spurred the horse and almost as an afterthought quartered the horse toward Oliver, the horse’s shoulder catching him in the chest and spilling him backward into the brush, the spotted horse passing almost over him, he could hear the creak of leather and smell the horse, then the hot, acrid leaves he lay in, breathless. His lungs were emptied as if he’d fallen from some great height. His mind was a torrent of rage and disbelief. He lay stunned for a moment. He heard the blood singing in his veins, the fallen cries from a blackbird winging above him. Falling his mind had seen what his eyes had not remarked, the shovel across the saddle, not a proper shovel but a military entrenching tool, the blade wet with fresh clay. The shapes in a gunnysack tied to the saddlehorn.

Them was fruitjars, he thought. I just like to caught him buryin his money.

He thought of the jars packed with greasy coins and wadded bills, overflow from the money machine Hardin was hooked to, tucked into graves like the hasty and unforeseen dead.