William Gay - The Long Home

Her hair was a soft black cloud against his cheek. She was warm in his arms, he could feel the delicate bones beneath her flesh. She was like some small beast he’d caught in the woods, held too roughly, felt jerking with hammering rabbit’s heart in his hands. He was afraid if he held on to her he’d hurt her but there was no way now he could let her go.

“This is all right,” she said against his throat. “You take everything too serious.”

“It’s better than all right but we’ve still got to get a car. If we had one we could drive into town anytime we wanted.”

She seemed to be thinking over the idea of a car. Then she said, “Or anyplace else we wanted to go.”

“It seems like I have to be with you all the time. When I’m not it’s like I’m drunk or on dope or somethin. I just drag through the day waitin for night to come. Everything else just seems dead.”

She didn’t reply. Everything seemed to be moving her closer to the line she didn’t want to get to. She guessed sooner or later everyone was going to have to know but she’d just as soon it was later. Slipping out would be easier than openly defying Dallas Hardin. Experience had taught her that defying Dallas Hardin was something best done from as great a distance as possible.

Then he went one night and the blankets were gone from the stumphole, the leaves kicked aside. He sat on the stone anyway waiting and the night crept by like something crippled almost past motion until the rind of moon set behind the blurred trees. The jukebox played on and approaching cautiously he could see the oblique yellow light falling through the trees and hear the sounds of merriment but she never came. He sat crouched in the darkness until his mind began to play tricks on him. He could hear feet kicking through the dry leaves, her soft laugh, see her face, conspirator’s finger to her lips. He grew apprehensive and felt something was watching him out of the dark with yellow goat’s eyes but if it was it never said so.

That was on a Sunday night and all the next week he wondered at her composure, at the duplicity flesh seemed capable of. Watching her move serenely across the yard he hardly knew her as the girl who lay against him in the dark, who cried out his name and clung to him as if she were drowning, being sucked downward into a maelstrom of turbulent water. Who whispered nighttime endearments the daylight always stole away from him.

When Hardin paid him off on Friday he said, “Winer, me and you got a pretty good business arrangement goin. You work to suit me and I pay to suit you. And I got other plans for us too, plans got some real money tied up in em.”

Winer didn’t ask when plans or in fact say anything. He had been waiting all week for this and he recognized Hardin’s speech as mere preamble.

“I don’t want to make you mad. But you kindly steppin on my toes here slippin around with that girl and I’m goin to have to put a stop to it. I thought you’d do me straighter than that.”

Winer folded the money and slid it into the pocket of his jeans. “You? I don’t see that it’s got anything to do with you.”

“Say you don’t? I told you I had plans. Son, I got plans workin in my head ever minute and they don’t all concern you. I got plans for her too.”

“What kind of plans?”

“What they are ain’t nothin to you. I’m just telling you we got to keep things on a business footin here and leave all this personal shit out of it.”

“What kind of plans?”

“Well, I told you it ain’t none of your business. But have you ever really looked at her? I been around a long time and I ain’t seen many that looks like that. And let me tell you, I been around long enough to know they don’t look like that long. Like a peach hangin there on a tree. It’s July and it’s hot and you’re standin there tryin to decide whether to pick it or not. One day it ain’t hardly right and then there’s a minute when it is and then it’s rotten and the yellerjackets is eatin it. You see? I been waitin for this minute and the time’s right now. There’s a world of money to be made and I can’t have anybody muddyin the water. Even you.”

He paused, offering Winer and opportunity to reply. When he did not Hardin said, “Let’s just leave it at that. Let’s just say I’m concerned about her welfare. Hell, I raised her. I knowed her when she was a kid runnin around the yard naked. She’s like a daughter to me. All I’m asking you to do is give me your word you’ll leave her alone. Hell, she ain’t nothin but a kid. You sweettalk her and turn her head and no tellin what’s liable to happen.”

In that moment Winer realized it was impossible to promise anything. Each succeeding moment seemed shaped by the one preceding it. Everything was volatile, in flux, and there was nothing anywhere he could count on. “Don’t hand me that shit,” he said. “You don’t seem to be considering what she thinks. Are you?”

“Do what?”

“You heard me. Don’t hand me that daughter shit, save it for somebody that believes it.”

“Nobody talks to me that way anymore, Winer. I done growed out of puttin up with it. Now me and you…here, you wait a minute.”

Winer was gone. He’d only turned and walked a step or two but he was gone just the same.

There was a chill to the weather that night and after early dark fell Winer laid cedar kindling and built a fire. He made himself a pot of coffee and sat before the fire drinking it and soaking up the heat. He’d put the last of the roofing on that day and his shoulders ached from hauling the rolls of roofing up with a rope. He was halfasleep when Hardin came.

Hardin had been drinking. He was not drunk but Winer could smell whiskey on his breath and his face had a flushed and reckless look.

“Get in here where’s it’s warm. I need to talk to you.”

Winer got in on the passenger side and closed the door with its expensive muted click and leaned his head on the rich upholstery. There was a warm, leathery smell of money about the car.

“Winer, I don’t want me and you to have a fallin out. I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot back there and I think we ort to work it out.”

“I don’t guess there’s anything left to work out. You want me to do something I can’t do and I guess that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, you kind of got me backed into a corner on this thing and you ortnt fuck with a man backed in a corner.”

“If you’re in a corner then it’s a corner you picked yourself. You act like I’m going to mistreat her. I wouldn’t hurt her for the world.”

“Goddamn it, Winer.” By the yellow domelight Hardin’s face looked almost pained. “You’re goin to have to make up your mind. Just what it is you want? Pussy? Winder curtains? A little white house somers with roses climbin on it? I know what you’re thinkin, boy, but believe me, it ain’t like that. And never was. All in God’s world it is is a split. All it is is a hole and over half the people in the world’s got em. And nary a one of em worth dyin over. You shut your eyes or put a sack over their face and you can’t tell one from the other. You believe that?”

“No,” Winer said.

“And on top of that you don’t even know her. I do. I’ve knowed her from the time she was five year old and you wouldn’t know her if you slept with her the rest of your life. You see her but you don’t know her.”

“I know her well enough. You paid me off tonight and we’re even now. Let’s stay that way. You find somebody else to finish your building and I’ll find another place to work.”

“You dipshit fool. You think I couldn’t have found a dozen carpenters better than you? You think for what I been payin you I couldn’t find somebody to build a fuckin honkytonk? Wake up, Winer, you been livin in dream world.”