William Gay - The Long Home

“Boy, you don’t have to do that. Do you have to be doin somethin ever minute?”

“It won’t take long till cold weather.”

“No, I guess it won’t. It never is anymore. Or warm weather either for that matter. Seems like the older you get the faster the wheel rolls.”

“Where’d you say the saw was?”

“It’s on the crib wall where it always is but I don’t see why you can’t find nothin to do but cut a old man’s wood. When I was your age I was workin twelve hours a day and runnin the women all night. Why ain’t you in town doin that?”

Winer started off toward the barn.

“Unless of course you’ve found somethin a little closer to home.”

Winer stopped and turned and Oliver was grinning down into the pan of cutup pears as if something he saw there amused him. Winer went to the barn.

“You get through we’ll sack you up some pears to take home,” the old man called.

Weekdays were generally slow and nothing Pearl and Wymer couldn’t handle and Hardin had lots of unspecified business to take care of. When he left he told no soul where he was going or when he’d be back, just driving off in the Packard or saddling up the Morgan and riding off up the ridge out of sight into the woods. On the days when Hardin was gone Amber Rose would sit outside and watch Winer. There was something curiously tranquil about her. He never saw her read a book or sew or anything else to occupy her time, she would sit quiet and self-contained and so watchful he came to feel that he could discern the weight of her eyes, could tell the moment her attention fell on him. He remembered her on the schoolbus but she’d never talked then either and she had certainly not looked the way she looked now. He remembered her violet eyes and the coarse black hair but the rest of her had changed. She seemed to have grown up overnight, the way a flower opens up.

He looked up from his homedrawn blueprint and she was standing before him holding a quart jar of peaches in her hands.

“You reckon you can open this? Me nor Mama can’t.”

Winer laid his pencil aside. “I might can.”

She was standing reaching the jar down toward him. When he stood up they were standing very close together and looking down into her face he felt that the air had suddenly become charged with electricity. She met his eyes innocently as if she were unaware of it, perhaps she was. Her hair was parted in the middle so that it fell over both ears and onto she shoulders. Seen closer than he had ever seen it her skin was very clear. He could smell the warm, clean scent of her and the thought of Lipscomb leaning to the sunwashed glass made him dizzy.

“Well, go on and open them if you can. Mama’s waitin on me.”

He unscrewed the ring and handed her the jar. “You’re very strong,” she said, an ironic edge to her voice. She took the jar but made no move to leave. “What are you starin at? Is my face on crooked?”

“I just thought you had the prettiest eyes.”

Her hair smelled like soap and he could see the clean line of her scalp where her hair was parted. The sun bright off the whitewashed wall fell on her face and in its light her eyes looked almost drowsy. He could see the dark down along her jawline, the pale, soft fuzz on her upper lip. The lips looked hot and swollen.

“Well, you can talk. I didn’t know if you could or not. You ought to try it more often.”

“I might if I had someone to talk to,” he said. “No need in telling myself things I already know.” Above the ringing in his ears all his words sounded dull and clumsy.

“Next time I need a can of peaches opened I reckon you can talk to me,” she said. When she smiled her teeth were white and straight. He watched her back through the sun to the house.

In midafternoon she brought out a jar of icewater and then just before quitting time she came out again and set a jar of peaches besides his lunchbox.

“Here,” she said. “Don’t say I never give you nothin.”

Sam Long watched him come up the street from the railroad tracks, a tall young man who seemed heavier through the chest and shoulders every time Long saw him. He passed the window of the grocery store without looking in and went on, a purposeful air of tautness about him as if he were searching for something and knew just where it was hidden. Long went back behind the cash register and took out a ticketbook and studied it and finally laid it aside in a wooden drawer. He lit a short length of cigar stub and waited. A family came in and began to slowly wander the aisles gathering up provisions but Long seemed bemused and abstracted and this time when Winer came by Long went out and stopped him.

Winer waited, a look of friendly curiosity on his face.

“I ain’t seen you in the last few weeks. Got to wonderin about you.”

“Well, I haven’t been getting into town much. I’m working over at Hardin’s and staying pretty busy.”

“That’s what I heard. Hardin payin off by the week, is he?”

“He’s paying me well enough. What was it you wanted anyway?”

“I was wonderin when you could do somethin about what you owe me. Your grocer ticket.”

“What needs to be done? I’ve been sending the money in to you on Saturday just like always.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Winer didn’t reply immediately and Long said, “Come on in here a minute and I’ll show you the tickets.”

“I wouldn’t know any more if I looked than I do now. Somethin’s not right here. I’ve been sendin the money in here every week.”

“Well, for a long time you did. Ever since you was workin for Weiss. You or your mama’d come in and settle up and get your grocers. You always paid off like a clock tickin. Then about a month or so ago your mama started comin here with that Huggins feller sells them pots and pans. She quit payin but she kept on buyin. I didn’t think nothin about it for a while cause you always been good for it.”

Winer didn’t say anything for a while. When he did speak he said, “All right. How much is it?”

“A little over a hundred dollars.”

“How little over?”

“A hundred twenty-three is what it is.”

“Well, you’ll get it, but from now on nobody buys so much as a Co-Cola on my ticket unless I say so. All right?”

“That’s fine with me.”

Huggins was there the following Friday evening rocking gently in the porch swing, a proprietary air about him, claiming squatter’s rights. Winer went on into the house and collected his mirror and razor and soap. He went out the back door and down the path to the spring. He had already bathed and was shaving, kneeling on the bank, when the voice came. He nicked his face with the straight razor when Huggins spoke.

Huggins had made no sound approaching, easing through the brush with a kind of covert stealth, paused standing behind him, framed in the mirror behind Winer’s face. Winer watched a scarlet bead of blood well on his jaw, trickle down his face. He wiped it away and lowered the mirror.

“What do you know, good buddy?”

Winer turned. Huggins stood waiting, arms depending at his sides as if Winer had summoned him and he was waiting patiently to see what was required of him. He stood stooped as if he were composed of some strange material slowly turning liquid, a pear-shaped lump of loathsome jelly gravity was slowly drawing misshapen to each, barely contained by the mismatched clothing he wore, clothing he seemed to have stolen under cover of darkness from random clotheslines.

“What is it? I came up here to take a bath.”

“I know ye did. I just needed to talk to ye a minute and wanted to catch ye by yeself.”

Have you got a couple of dollars till payday? Winer asked himself.

“Reckon you could loan me about five till Wednesday?”