William Gay - The Long Home

“There’s a feller now we can ask,” Motormouth said.

A man wearing a yellow hardhat and carrying a clipboard was striding toward them across the pier. He had opened his mouth to speak when a cry from the barge gave him pause and he turned to see who had called out.

Winer had seen it. A tie cocked sideways and jammed the chute and a huge black man reached an expert hand to free it just as the next tie slammed into it with a loud thock. He stared for a moment in amazement at his hand from which the four fingers were severed at the second joint. Blood welled than ran down his arm into his sleeve and he sat down heavily in the water sloshing in the hull of the barge. “Goddman it,” the man in the yellow hard hat said. He laid the clipboard on the dock and his hardhat atop to hold the papers in the wind and swung down a rope ladder into the barge. The black man was leaning up against the bulkhead with his hand clutched between his knees. His eyes were closed and his face ashen and it wore an expression of stoic forbearance.

Winer and Motormouth stood uncertainly for a moment. The two men on the upper end of the chutes had ceased loading and now they hunkered and took out tobacco and began rolling cigarettes. “Course we don’t have to rush into nothin,” Motormouth said. He had taken a tentative step or two away from the river and toward the stores and cafes in town. “I guess we could study about it awhile.”

“Yeah, we could,” Winer said. “We could study about it a good long while.”

He’d sleep cold now and in the mornings find on the glass and metal of the Chrysler a rimpled rime of frost. Lying on his back Motormouth would stare upward a time into the ratty upholstery and then unfold himself, his distorted reflection in rustpocked chrome mocking him, a jerky caricature. The wind along the river these chill mornings would clash softly in the sere stalks of weeds, he’d hear it gently scuttling dislodged leaves against the car. Through the frosted glass there was little of the world he could see yet more of it than he wanted. He was peering into a world locked in the soft cold seize of ice.

Such mornings as these brought the bitter memories of winters past and he fell to thinking of walls and ceilings and flues. Of a porch ricked with seasoned wood and the smell of smoke sucked along the ridges. Of the soft length of her laid against him on December mornings. The way her hair looked in the morning, tousled as if she’d fallen asleep in a storm.

He drove past the house. It looked still and empty and he had no expectation of seeing her yet there she was, standing before the smokehouse door peering in, a sweater pulled about her shoulders. He slowed, looked all about. He could see no one else. No car or sign of one. He stopped. A core of something near fear lay in the pit of his stomach, anticipation and dread ran in his veins like oil and water.

It was cold in the front room as well, colder than in the spare light of the sun a musty chill of unused rooms and closed doors. A jumble of stovepipes littered the floor, a film of soot and ashes dusted the linoleum. He sighted up the flue, saw only the gunmetal sameness of the sky, half a bird’s nest perched precariously on a loosened brick. He was standing in the middle of the floor rubbing his hands together and looking about when she came through the kitchen door. She paused on the threshold and stood watching him.

“You get out of here. You got no business here.”

“Just checkin ye out,” he said. “Come back have ye?”

“Yes, I’ve come back but not to you. It’s my house, you know. Daddy gave it to me.”

“Daddy’s welcome to it,” Motorouth said. He took out a cigarette and lit it. He stood shifting his weight from one to the other of his thin legs as if torn between going and staying whether she wanted him to or not. The wind off the stretch of field rippled the tin of the roof and sang softly across the flue. A loose pane of glass tinkled in its sash like a chime. “Turnin cold, aint it?”

“It does most ever year about this time.”

“I look for a bad winter this year.”

“I never knowed of a good one. You still ain’t said what you’re doin here. You know I got papers say you ain’t allowed here.”

“I don’t want much of nothin. I was just drivin by and I happened to think of all them carparts I got in the smokehouse. I wouldn’t want nothin to happen to em.”

“Then get em and go.”

“I will in a minute. Say, are you think about movin back in here sure enough?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Just makin conversation.”

“Make it another place, with somebody else.”

“Are you movin back in here?”

“What if I am?”

“Nothin.” He paused. “By yourself?”

“No.”

“Oh, Blalock too, huh. Is there not enough room in that big old house of his?”

“I told you what we do is our business.”

“You’re still married to me.”

“I won’t be in a few days.”

He thought he might fare better if he changed the subject. “What was you doin peepin in the smokehouse?”

“I was fixin to put up the stove. It’s cold.”

“Lord, you can’t move that heavy old thing. It’s castiron. Why don’t Blalock put it up for ye? That ain’t no woman’s job.”

“He ain’t here. He took off a load of cattle to Memphis or somewheres.”

“Get Clyde to do it then.”

“Him and Cecil got into it. That’s why we’re comin up here. They got into it over me.”

“Well, ain’t you the belle of the ball.”

She didn’t say anything.

“And say Cecil ain’t here?”

“Didn’t I just get through sayin so?”

Hr crossed the room and balanced himself on the arm of the sofa, glanced about for an ashtray and finding none tipped off ashes into the cuff of his trousers. She had not moved, stood watching him reflectively from the door. “Don’t make yourself at home,” she told him. “You don’t be here long enough for that.” But there was no vehemence or urgency to her voice, she sounded almost abstracted, as if other things occupied her mind. She crossed her arms, shook back her long hair from her forehead, he watched the smooth, milky flesh of her throat.

“Maybe we could try it again,” he said. His voice sounded strange to him, a dry croak.

She just shook her head. “There is no way in hell,” she told him. “I am to have Cecil and there won’t nothin stand in my way.”

“Cecil’s rollin towards Memphis,” he said. His mouth felt as though it had dust in it. The wing of red hair fell across her brow again, she blew it away in a curious gesture he had seen a thousand times. The past twisted in him like a knife, sharp as broken glass. Old words of endearment he need not have said tasted bitter and dry as ashes. The thought of Blalock long gone, Memphis seemed thousands of miles away and drifting in the mists of some lost continent. The wind sucked through the cracks by the windows and told him of a world gone vacant, no one left save these two. He thought of his hands on her throat, of his weight bearing down on her, forcing her legs apart with a knee, sliding himself into her. Dark and nameless specters bore their visions through his mind. He thought of her supine in a shallow grave, her green eyes and the sullen pout of her mouth impacted with earth, the cones of her breasts hard and white as ivory, ice crystals frozen in the red hair under her belly. The rains of winter seeping into her flesh, the seeds of spring sprouting in the cavities of her body.

“Why are you lookin at me like that?”

“I ain’t.”

“You look halfcrazy when you do that. You was always doin that.”

The cigarette burned his fingers and he looked at it in wonder. He dropped it, smudged it with a boot into the worn and patternless linoleum. He arose. “Well. I guess I better get on. I just thought I’d see how ye was.”