William Gay - The Long Home

“What on earth happened to your face? You don’t even look like yourself.”

Winer looked up at her approach then back toward here the street tended away into the darkness near the railroad tracks. “I got in a fight,” he said. “Have you seen Buttcut Chessor around?”

“No I ain’t and I ain’t likely to. He’s barred from here. He come in here the other night and started a fight and they like to tore the place apart. I had him barred.”

“Oh, he was just mad. Ollie Simmons fired him from the sawmill. He’d been cuttin logs and he got into it with the sawyer over somethin. Then he cut a beetree and it was solid at the top and the bottom, the log was, and he plugged the hole in it and carried it to the mill with the other logs. When the sawyer sawed it open they said the bees just boiled out and they like to stung him to death. They fired him.”

“I guess he’s down at the poolhall then.”

“I wouldn’t know. He beat up Ollie and two that tried to stop it and I called the law. They locked him up but I think he’s out. Why you want to waste your time on a crazy thing like him?”

“I just wondered where he was.”

“Wherever he is he ain’t worth botherin about. That other buddy of yours is long gone, ain’t he? Motormouth?”

“So they say.”

“Reckon he really killed that Blalock feller? I heard Hardin had it done.”

“I don’t know. All I know is Blalock’s dead and Motormouth’s gone in my car.”

“You look lonesome tonight.”

“I don’t reckon.”

“Say you don’t reckon? Well, are you lonesome or ain’t you?”

“I’m not lonesome,” Winer said.

“You may be later on,” she said enigmatically.

Buttcut studied Winer’s face by the harsh white glare of the poolroom. “Lord God, son,” he said. “Somebody sure took a strong dislike to your face.”

“That’s what they keep telling me. I got into it with that Mexican that started working down at Hardin’s.”

“Did he whip you?”

“Right down to the ground and then into it.”

“How big is he?”

Winer studied him. “About your size,” he said.

“Well, it ain’t no matter for you then. You ought to know better. I heard there was a killin down there.”

“I reckon. Motormouth was supposed to have shot Blalock, but I don’t know. He came by my house like a bat out of hell and I had a sinking feeling when my car went by. I got a good look at his face and he didn’t look like a man who planned on coming back.”

“He’s crazy but I didn’t think he had the nerve to kill nobody.”

Winer drank from his Coke and studied the pool game in progress. Roy Pace had found a sucker. Roy was paralyzed from the waist down and went in a wheelchair. His head was oversized and pumpkinshaped and there was a peculiar mongoloid cast to his face but he had won a small fortune off traveling salesmen who put great stock in appearances. As Winer watched he wheeled the chair smoothly to the end of the table. He shot from an awkwardlooking open bridge and the tip of his cue trembled with histrionic nervousness but he ran all the small balls then the eight and shook his huge head as if wonderstruck at such beginner’s luck. The sucker shook his head too. “Rack,” he called.

“I don’t no more believe he killed Blalock than nothing. I believe they set him up somehow.”

“I don’t know. He was crazy about his old lady and she was livin with Blalock.”

“Hey, you want to go over the General awhile?”

“I don’t think so.”

Buttcut gestured with his head toward the restroom. “I got a bottle in there. You want a little drink of who shot John?”

“I reckon not.”

“Hell, you don’t want do to nothin. You about as much fun as a Pentecostal preacher. What you are even doin in here?”

“To tell the truth I just couldn’t stay around the house any longer. The walls had started talking to me. I figured I’d leave before I started answering them back.”

They stood for a time before the Strand Theater, waiting for the show to let out, Buttcut’s car parked at the curb should there be ladies needing escorts home or elsewhere. Such ladies seemed few and far between. Overalled farmers with stoic broadshouldered wives. Stairstep children with stunnedlooking eyes still dreamy with Technicolor visions. Country boys fresh off the farm with manure on their brogans and placid, oxenlike looks on their faces.

“Goddamn it,” Buttercut said. “I never seen such a crop of hairyankled men in my life. You’d think with a war bein fought a man might stumble upon a little stray pussy just ever now and then. But hell no.”

Two or three people turned to stare at him but his size and his stance stayed them from comment. Winer grasped his arm.

“Hell, let’s go. We’ll find some women somewhere else.”

“Do you still not want to go to the General?”

“No.” Winer grinned. “We might go down to the Snowwhite.”

“I can’t go down there. They barred me. Said they’d get a peace warrant and lock me up if I went back.”

“I heard you cut a beetree.”

“That lopsided cunt had to call the law. She’s pissed cause I won’t go with her. She’s the same as sicced Ollie Simmons on me. Played up to him and he was goin to kick my ass. That’s the last time that’ll cross his mind. I had him down and he was goin, ‘Let me up, I’ve had enough.’ I said, ‘The hell you say. I’m doin this asswhippin. I’ll let you know when you’ve had enough.’”

“I guess we could go back to the poolhall.”

“We won’t find no women there. Let’s go down to Hardin’s.”

“I’m slow study but I do learn.”

They got back in the car. “I need a drink anyway,” Buttcut said. “I hide my bottle in the restroom. That way if they pick me up they won’t find no bottle on me. They can get me for a public drunk but they can’t prove possession.”

“What’s the difference?”

“About forty dollars.”

The long black Packard sat parked before the poolhall like a waiting limousine. Winer halted a moment looking at it then after a moment followed Buttcut into the glare of light. There were three of them: the girl demure in a white dress sitting at a scarred red table with a fat man in a blue gabardine suit. He was drinking whiskey from a bottle in a brown paper bag and chasing it with beer and the girl was taking delicate sips of Coke through a straw. When she saw Winer her eyes for a moment widened in shock, then she lowered them and fell into a study of her blurred reflection in the worn formica. Winer looked away and studied the fat man’s back, the shape of the wallet outlined through trousers too tight across the hips.

Jiminiz was shooting nineball with Roy Pace. He glanced once at Winer with the corners of his eyes widening, then the eyes flicked away. There was no recognition in his face. He chalked his cue and leaned to the green felt to shoot.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Hell, no. Ain’t this a public place? That’s him, ain’t it?”

“That’s him. How’d you know?”

“Well, I didn’t expect two Mexicans that size in Ackerman’s Field. I thought you said he was big. That son of a bitch is enormous. Was you fightin over Rose there?”

“That’s what it started about.”

Buttcut studied her serene profile across the length of the bar. “I can’t say I blame you. She batted them long eyelashes a time or two at me I’d go a round myself. Who’s that Goddmamn salesman or whatever with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I seen her a time or two in here with different fellers. Hardin was usually with her. Say, you look kindly down in the mouth, son. How about a little drink?”

“Why not. I guess I might as well.”