William Gay - The Long Home

Oliver was a man of many cautions so he toenailed each window save one to the ledge so that the kitchen door would be the only access. He had an old hammerless Smith and Wesson revolver and he checked the load and slid it down into a jumper pocket and filled a quart fruitjar with coffee. He took down a cardboard box emblazoned with faded flying ducks and took out one of the waxed red cylinders and loaded the gun and cocked it. He raised the kitchen window and set out the hammer and the nails and coffee and as an afterthought a folded blanket and with some difficulty maneuvered himself outside. He nailed the window closed and took up the coffee and blanket and went on to the barn.

Dark was falling and a cold wind out of the north arose but it was warm wrapped in the blanket and bundled down into the hay. He was hoping for a light night, for he’d have to keep watch on the door. The only visitor he expected was Hardin, for he had seen to it that Winer was still in jail, but still he wanted a good view of the back door and plenty of time to warn folks wandering toward his kitchen.

It grew darker till and the world blurred and vanished in blue murk, then a cold December moon cradled up out of the apple orchard and hung like corpse candle over a haunted wood.

It’ll have to be tonight, he thought. Tonight is all we’ve got, me and Hardin. Still, I’ll be here till two or three o’clock in the mornin.

Infrequent cars passed, then about eight or nine o’clock the traffic picked up and he lay watching the Saturday-night revelers and sipping the now cold coffee and wondering what these folks would think if they knew they were calling on a dead man. He stared at the dark rectangle of screendoor in the cold white moonlight and it held for him a peculiar fascination. It looked like the back door to hell.

The curious altered time of three o’clock in the morning. Pearl sat watching Hardin and the girl. Hardin was as near drunk as he ever seemed to get and he kept feeding the girl whiskey and Coke from his glass. She was watching with a sense of apprehension, a sense of things slipping away from her. Hardin leaned to the girl’s ear and whispered something low and then he laughed softly to himself and cupped her breast with a palm. The girl shook her head from side to side. She was tugging at Hardin’s hand. “Quit it,” she said. Hardin released her breast. He put both elbows on the scarred tabletop and studied the girl’s face with an almost clinical detachment. Her eyes looked drowsy and vague, her face had a slack sleeprobbed look.

Finally Pearl said, “That girl ain’t used to drinkin.”

“Then it’s high time she learned.”

“What else you been teachin her? To be a whore?”

“From what I hear she ort to be givin me lessons.”

“I won’t have you messin her up no worse than what you already have.”

“Say you won’t? Live half your life with your legs spread and come on to me like a preacher? Shit. What you want and what you get don’t always make a set,” Hardin said. “But it’s late and I had a hard night and more of one still to go and I don’t need you yammerin at me like a Goddamned watchdog. And you a fine one to talk about drinkin. Stumblin around like a fat sow on your sourmash.”

There was a strange anticipatory air about Hardin, a mood she had come to recognize down through the years, though she had never understood or articulated it, as if he dwelt from time to time in some world where everything was heightened, the sounds clearer, the colors brighter and richer, as if he moved briefly through a world of hallucinatory marvels. As if he were never fully alive save when he was nearing the edge.

A moment of insight touched her. “You aim to kill old man Oliver and burn him out, don’t you?” I heard some of what that law said.”

“You hear ever damn thing that ain’t nothin to you,” Hardin said. “Slippin and spyin around. I think by God you’re goin crazy, and I just may have to put you away too. You gettin a little loose at the lip to suit me. Sullin up and pouting around like your little feelins is hurt. Givin away enough whiskey to float a Goddamn motorboat. If you’d just get your ass in bed it’d suit me fine.”

He turned abruptly toward the girl, seeming by the mere motion of his head to deny Pearl’s very existence. He put his hand on the girl’s left breast.

“You wantin to kill him. You look forward to it.”

Hardin didn’t reply. His yellow eyes were halfclosed. He stroked Amber Rose’s breast, massaged it gently with a slow, circular motion of his palm. She raised her eyes to his but she didn’t resist. Hardin’s motions were slow and deliberate, like motions seen underwater. Her face looked young and very pretty and suddenly Hardin saw past the young woman’s face to the features of the child he had seen long ago throwing rocks at Thomas Hovington’s chickens and he thought for a moment on the curious circuitry of things but he did not dwell on it.

“What’s the matter with her? What did you give her?”

“I ain’t give her nothin yet but I may here in a minute if I can get your fat ass out of the room long enough.”

“You can get it further than that,” Pearl said. “I’ve stood all I can stand. It’s took me long enough but I’ve got a bait of you. I’m buyin me a bus ticket as long as my arm and I’m ridin till it’s used up and that’s where I’m gettin off. And I’m takin Rose with me.”

“The hell you are.”

“She’s my daughter and I’m takin her.”

“Daughter, hell. Sows don’t have daughters. They have pigs and them pigs grow up to be other sows.”

“I always done what you said no matter how dirty you done me. All I ever asked was you to leave Rose alone. You promised me you would.”

“Then I guess I lied,” Hardin said. He arose, stood for a moment leaning unsteadily against the table. He looked at the gold wristwatch. “But I reckon she’ll keep. I got things to do.”

He crossed the room and went through the bedroom door. When he came back he was carrying the rifle slung under his arm and he went out into the night.

About what he guessed was four o’clock in the morning Oliver saw the Packard go up the road toward town and he arose in confusion. He’d expected Hardin on foot, but there was no mistaking the Packard’s taillights. He was waiting for it to stop but it did not stop. He was still watching the fleeing taillights when the shotgun fired and he leapt and spilled cold coffee down his shirtfront but he didn’t feel it. He felt a surging of adrenaline sing in his blood and there as a metallic taste like canker in the back of his mouth. He went scrambling awkwardly down the ladder.

Oliver came up the steps to the back porch in a sort of stumbling lope. His breath was coming hard and ragged. There was an enormous hole in the screendoor. The center brace, shotriddled, hung by a shard of screen wire. He looked all about the porch, puzzled. What the hell now, he thought. Could he have made it in before the gun went off? No way in hell, he told himself. He felt a momentary stab of superstitious fear: Was the son of a bitch real, was he flesh and blood? All there was beyond the exploded screen was darkness.

Inside he struck a match on his thumbnail, unglobed the lamp, conscious of the smell of cordite, of other smells, a coarse odor of raw whiskey, an almost animal smell of perspiration, then the room filled up with yellow coaloil-smelling light. At length Oliver turned.

Hardin was hunkered against the far wall. He had the 30–30 cradled between his knees, barrel drawn up against his chest. The yellow goat’s eyes were not blank, the old man saw, still holding the lampglobe, but worse than blank, like nothing, like holes poked in a mockup face through which you could catch a glimpse of a sere and lifeless yellow landscape.