William Gay - The Long Home

“What you need is a keeper,” Winer said. “And about thirty feet of heavy-gauge chain to hold you back by.”

A wan and sourceless light guided his steps off the road and into Oliver’s yard. He had the paper under his coat, for the air was full of moisture, a cold mizzling past mist and not yet rain. It was just past daybreak though there was no sun nor promise of one. He passed through a dull leaden dripping from the trees. Three bedraggled cocks already risen had taken shelter beneath an old white cooktable in Oliver’s frontyard. They watched him walk by disconsolately with eyes like bits of colored glass.

Yellow light flared through a window. Smoke rolled from the old man’s flue and Winer knew he was just up, for the smoke had a blue, greasy look to it and smelled of kerosene. He crossed the porch and knocked on the door and waited, tucking his shoulder in and hugging himself with his arms.

“It ain’t locked,” a voice called.

He opened the door and went into the front room. It was almost as cold inside as out. The old man was crouched before the open stove door cramming newspapers into the orange-red maw of its throat. He turned a harried face up toward Winer. The room reeked of kerosene.

“Boy, I’m about froze to death and I think this thing has gone on a sitdown strike or somethin.” Oliver began to feed the fire long, curled shavings of yellow pine.

“It just turned cold in the night. I went to sleep warm and woke up about four o’clock freezin to death.”

“I looked for a bad winter.”

“I think you found one,” Winer said. He spread his hands for the feeble warmth radiating upward from the heater.

“Is it snowin yet?”

“I believe it’s too cold to snow.”

“We’ll make us some coffee here directly this thing ever decides to burn.” Oliver blew out the lamp and they sat silently in the flickering light of the stove and the spectral gray dawn at the window. The fire caught and the area immediately surrounding the stove began to warm though cold held to the room and it was impossible to sit where the old man’s couch was. Oliver filled a pan with ice and water and set it on to boil. He looked halffrozen. His face looked gray and bloodless and he stamped about trying to get the circulation going in his feet, rubbing his hands together briskly.

“What’re you doin out so early anyway? You ain’t workin in this mess are you?”

“No. I don’t work there anymore.”

“Say you don’t? How come?”

“I quit. I just thought I might go out to town today. I was just waiting to see how it’s going to be.”

“I know how it’s goin to be,” Oliver said bleakly. “By God cold just like it is now clear on through till spring of the year.”

“It’ll warm up again. This is just a cold snap.”

“I don’t look for it to.”

“You got plenty of wood?”

Oliver poured crushed coffeebeans into the boiling water. “I got a world of it but it’s all on the stump,” he said.

“If it don’t get too rough I’ll come over after a while and cut you a load.”

“Ah, no need in that. I can buy me a little jag. I guess you got your own to worry about.”

“I cut some back in the summer when I wasn’t doing anything. Anyway, what I came to see you about was signing this paper for me.” As he spoke Winer was withdrawing the typed note from beneath his jacket and proffering it toward the old man.

Oliver shook his head. “You’ll have to read it to me. What is it?”

“It’s a note to borrow some money. I found a car I wanted down at Kittrel’s carlot and they sent me over to the bank, they have to have a cosigner and the man there said they’d let me have the money if you’ll sign the note.” Winer paused. “You were the only one I could think of who might sign it.”

“Well, well,” the old man said. He took the paper and studied it at arm’s length, peering at the typed hieroglyphs he couldn’t read. He seemed imbued with a curious sense of pride and as the room filled with the fragrance of boiled coffee and the heat from the stove dissipated the chill he grew expansive. He laid the note with care atop the table and taking the pan from the stove filled two earthenware mugs with coffee.

“I hope it ain’t like the paper I signed for Hodges one time,” Oliver said, grinning to himself. He handed Winer a cup of coffee. “There for a few years I kindly took a interest in that boy. I had a idy I might help him a little here and there, kindly straighten him out, but I doubt you could do that with a block and tackle. He come down here one time with a paper he wanted me to sign. He’d answered a advertisement in one of these here farm papers and he was goin to be a salesman, I made my X and two or three weeks later we went out to town to pick up this stuff that come in. Lord God. You never seen the like of junk. It come in on a boxcar at the depot. It was boxes and boxes of stuff, looked like stock for a grocer store. Pie fillin and flavorin and horse liniment and you wouldn’t believe the bottles of sweetsmellin stuff. He had to hire a truck to haul it home in and I don’t reckon he ever sold any of it. They dunned me about it a long time and I used to get letters from this lawyer in Chicago and I finally scraped around and paid it. I don’t know what Hodges finally done with it, I believe he used all that brilliantine himself and he smelled purty high for a year or two and then it all died out.”

“I’ll pay the note off.”

“I know you will. I was just thinkin about how Hodges looked when he saw all that stuff. All them boxes and him without even a bicycle to haul it on.”

Weather accomplished what Blalock nor anyone else had been able to do. It got Motormouth in motion. He turned up around noon at Winer’s complaining.

“Goddamn, I’m about froze to death,” he told Winer. “You talk about cold. Last night I near about shook myself to death and woke up with the river froze over and the weather says just more of the same. The radio said how the windshield factor was ten below zero.”

“The what?”

“It said the windshield factor was ten below zero and bearable winds.”

“I think it said variable.”

“Variable or bearable, it’s a cold son of a bitch. Are you about ready?”

“Ready? Ready for what?”

“Hellfire. To leave. To go to Chicago like we said. Well, I’m goin. I was goin to sell the Chrysler to Kittrel but I’ll give you first shot at it. You want it?”

They went out into the yard and stood looking at it. A cold drizzle fell and the car gleamed dully. Winer studied it from all angles, imagining what it looked like beneath the array of antennas and lights and coontails.

“I’ll take eight-five dollars in cash and if it ain’t worth two hundred I’ll kiss ye ass. I give twenty dollars for them foglights by theirselves.”

“I guess you know what you want to do.”

“The hell of it is I don’t know whether I do or not. I bet that’s a big place up there. I wanted you to go with me but I reckon you got stars in your eyes.”

Winer took out his wallet. “I’ll give you eighty-five for it if you’ll show me how to drive it. I never drove anything except Weiss’s tractor.”

“Why hell yes, slide your ass in here, son. You’ll be learning from a master.”

Late in the day they drove into town and parked by the bus station and Motormouth went in and got his ticket. He returned with it and they sat awaiting the bus and staring out across the rainwet streets and an unaccustomed silence settled upon Motormouth, a vaguer depression befell him as dusk drew on. At last the bus came and he got out with his cardboard box lashed with staging and strode purposefully toward it and mounted the steps. He turned and raised a hand. The bus door closed behind him with a soft pneumatic hiss. Winer watched the bus out of sight.