William Gay - The Long Home

In the Snowwhite Cafe he ate two grilled-cheese sandwiches and drank a large glass of milk. He paid and sat for a time listening to the jukebox and the clanging of the pinball machine, watched past his reflection in the glass the near-dark streets where Friday night’s business began to accomplish itself, strolling couples arm in arm, girls bright as justpicked flowers, halfdrunk belligerent men herded homeward by fierce women with bitter persecuted faces.

“Goddamn if it ain’t old Winer,” a jovial voice said. Winer turned to see a broad red face grinning down at him, a face he remembered from school. Chessor’s name was Wendall but no one remembered it anymore. His father nicknamed him Buttcut because he was the first son and his father had said he was as tough as the butt cut off a whiteoak log and the name had stuck. Buttcut had conscientiously lived up to his name. He had been a tackle on the football team and though he had been out of school for two years he still wore the black-and-gold school jacket and seemed to be making a career out of being a former athlete.

“Hey, Buttcut. Sit down.”

Chessor seated himself in the booth across the red formica table. “Boy, where you been keepin yourself? We figured you was dead or off to the wars one.”

“Naw, I’m still around. I’ve been carpentering down at Mormon Springs. Building Hardin’s honkytonk or whatever.”

Chessor turned toward the general area of the counter. “Hey, bring us a Co-Cola,” he called. He turned back to Winer. “You seen old Shoemaker?” When Winer shook his head Chessor said, “I heard he was lookin for you. Tryin to fix up some way for you to graduate or somethin. He had somethin or another lined up for you and then you didn’t come back in the fall. And say you ain’t seen him? I heard he went out and talked to your mama.”

“I don’t know. If he did she never said so.”

“Maybe not then. You ought to be there this year though. They’re drivin old Toby crazy, the seniors is. Just like we done when I was here. Carryin on the old tradition. Nobody even crackin a book, just fuckin off is all.”

A girl in a white lisle uniform set two glasses of Coke and cracked ice on a table. She laid a ticket upside down beside them. “Watch your mouth or you’ll be drinkin these on the sidewalks,” she said. “It’s ladies in here if you didn’t but know it.”

“If you see one holler at me and I’ll tone it down,” Chessor told her.

The girl turned and went toward the front of the restaurant, her left leg bent slightly outward at the knee and the tennis shoe she wore on her left foot hissing softly against the slick waxed tile.

“That gimplegged slut,” Buttcut said. “Im goin to have to straighten her ass out.” His face cleared, the old jovial look returned. “Old Toby won’t never make it till graduation time. That son of a bitch’ll be in a asylum long before then. I seen him in the drugstore, you can see it in his eyes. I member when I was in school he had this gray hat he was real proud of. He’d ordered it from somewhere. I got it and cut it up on the bandsaw in woodworkin class, it made the purtiest little gray strips. I took em and hid em in his desk drawer and when he found em he cried like a baby. I swear. I think he’s about three-quarters queer anyway.”

Buttcut looked all about, leaned farther still toward Winer, and lowered his voice. “This year Ann Barnett, she put a rubber on his desk. Put lotion or somethin in it so it looked like a used one. Old Toby come in and started French class and seen it and turned white as a bedsheet. Set there lookin at it with his nose flared out. You know how scared of germs the son of a bitch is, always scared he’s goin to catch somethin. Well. Anyway Ann said everbody was just fallin out of their seats. Toby finally took out his handkerchief and spread it over his hand and picked up his pencil by the point and worried that rubber around till he got the pencil stuck up in it. Then he picked it up and run across the room holdin it way out in front of him and a little off to the side like germs was blowin off of it. He throwed it in the wastebasket and then the pencil and then he throwed in the handkerchief. Never said word one. Went back and set down and went to conjugating French verbs like nothin ever happened.”

Winer sat smiling distractedly and listening, occasionally sipping his Coke. Behind the mask of his eyes he was trying to get a fix on Ann Barnett’s face, to single hers from the throng of faces swarming in his mind, but he could not. All he could recall was blond hair and iriscolored eyes. He could see Toby Witherspoon’s gentle, beleaguered face but all these things Buttcut was telling him sounded strange and foreign, the obscure rites of some race he’d barely heard of or one he’d forsaken long ago. He felt a cold remove from them, set apart, like a spectator never asked to participate, a face pressed against a window of frozen glass.

Buttcut looked at his watch. “You want to go a dollar partners on the pinball machine? I got a date directly but we still got time.”

“I reckon not. All they do is eat my money and leave me broke.”

“Hell, son, you got to know how to make em walk and talk. I’ll do the playin, all you got to do is set back and watch.”

He gave Chessor a dollar and adding one of his own Chessor exchanged them for a roll of nickels. It was an experience to watch Buttcut play pinball. He talked to the machine, cajoled it, swore at it. He caressed it, fondled it, fell upon it with his fists when it did not do his bidding. Leaning across it he coerced the rolling, gleaming balls to the pockets he wanted, his enormous frame thrust across the machine like a lover. Ultimately he beat the machine two hundred forty games and checked them off for twelve dollars. “Walkin and talkin,” he said gleefully, counting six ones onto Winer’s waiting palm.

“I believe I am part of the pinball machine,” he said. “There’s one in the family tree somewhere. I come in and seen one slippin out my mama’s back door. Listen, I got to pick Sue up. You want me to drop you somewhere?”

“No. I’m not going anyplace in particular. I just came out here to kill some time.”

“Find you a girl. You ought to be able to pick one up after the picture show lets out.”

“I may do that.”

“I’ll see you then.”

After Buttcut went out Winer finished his Coke and carried the check to the counter and paid. He went out as well. He stood for a moment uncertainly before the plate glass window of the restaurant and then he went on up the street.

Sam Long was about to close up when Winer got there. The store was bare of customers and even the old men had been rousted from their benches. Winer wondered idly did they have homes, where did they go when the store closed. Long was sweeping about the coalstove with a longhandled broom.

“What can I do for you, Youngblood?”

Winer laid four ten-dollar bills on the counter. “I’ll give you the rest of it next week.”

Long leaned the broom against the counter and came around behind. He began to fumble through dozens of ticketbooks.

“Don’t worry about it, boy. I wadnt dunnin you exactly. I just knowed that Huggins feller and I thought it might be somethin you didn’t know was going on.” He made the deduction from the books and handed Winer a receipt. “I don’t want you feelin hard at me. I always appreciate your business.”

“I don’t feel hard at you,” Winer said. He pocketed the receipt and started toward the door.

“Come back now,” Long called.

It grew cloudy and more chill yet and a small cold rain began to fall, wan mist near opaque in the yellow streetlamps. He walked past the darkened storefronts with their CLOSED signs and sat for a time on a bench in the poolroom. He thought he might see someone he knew or wanted to know but he did not. Outside he stood momentarily beneath the dripping awning then went on down the street. Before de Vries’s cabstand he stood as if he were waiting for something. The thought of going home depressed him but the thought of not going did not cheer him appreciably. He stared out at the wet street and the ritualistic cruising of the cars. Once he recognized Buttcut Chessor and his girlfriend and he lifted a hand but Buttcut did not see him. After a while Motormouth’s trickedout Chrysler drove by then circled the block and passed again. This time it stopped, the springloaded antenna whiplashing soundlessly in its socket.