William Gay - Little Sister Death

After the first time, he returned each morning. Most days it would be there in the sun. He guessed it made its home beneath the broken floor. He’d sip his coffee and watch it, smoke his first cigarette of the day lost in the complex pattern of its skin, finding there maps to places he’d never been, watching the play of the light on the scaled body as it moved.

Once he’d poked it with a long stick to see what it would do. It coiled instantly, exploding into a nearliquid smoothness of motion, all grace and purpose, head and stubby tail aloft, its mouth wide, fangs unhinged. It struck at the stick, waited. He waited, the stick motionless at length. He lowered it carefully. He sat still as death for a long time. At last the snake flowed over the boards and beneath the floor.

He knew there was something old and implacable and female about it — Little Sister Death, he named her, after a line from Faulkner, though he couldn’t remember where he’d read it. It seemed to suit her.

David.

They were up. He could hear Corrie calling him in to breakfast. He drained the coffee cup, ground the cigarette butt out on the dank earth, and arose with painful slowness, backed out of the door into the bright September sun, as if he’d suddenly broken the surface of murky, polluted water.

Breakfast is ready.

All right, I’m coming, he said.

They had all been ready an hour awaiting Vern while he shaved and combed his hair just so and changed twice before he looked the way he wanted to look, and then nothing would do him but he must find a bootlegger.

That’s the way Vern always is going out, Ruthie said. Men talk about women keeping them waiting, but I’ve never seen one take as much time with her hair and clothes as a man does.

David’s not like that, Corrie said. He doesn’t care how he looks.

Vern wants to look just right, Ruthie said, and there was a curious kind of pride in her voice, so that Binder thought, Ruthie knows Vern is a lover too.

Binder was driving. He didn’t even want to go. He was feeling a little desperate, a seed of anger burning inside him, locked into this by the promise he’d made to Corrie. I don’t know where to get a drink, he said. This is a dry county and I don’t know any bootlegger. Wouldn’t a beer do?

For a dance like this one? Hell, David, we can find us a bootlegger. Man can’t go to a square dance without a little toddy in him.

A cab driver in Beale Station sold Vern four halfpints of peach brandy from the trunk of his cab, first making them drive down below the railroad tracks.

Binder drove back out Highway 20 and down Sinking Creek, Vern and Ruthie in the backseat taking turns at the bottle. Out the windshield, Binder watched the twisting country roads, the little unexpected rises rushing at you out of the night, the clearings where sat houses, the whiteframe homes of the country squires, the shotgun shacks of the disenfranchised.

Binder didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t what he found when they reached the dance. He guessed he’d been looking for old folks in Duckhead overalls, brighthaired girls in gingham dresses, an old toothless fiddler sawing out Appalachian reels, brogans clogging on scarred floors. Binder smiled wryly to himself. The enormous building looked like a converted rollerrink surrounded by four-wheel-drives. He couldn’t hear any fiddles, either. There was music spilling out into the night, but it was hardedged rock and roll. The place was loud and alive; it had the air of a raucous country honkytonk.

Inside was more of the same: no alcohol was served but everyone seemed to be slipping into the night and returning drunk anyway, and once Binder caught the smell of marijuana smoke. No overalls. He even saw a pair of designer jeans, a few pairs of hundred-dollar cowboy boots. The trucks outside had deer rifles in the back windows, likely.357 Magnums in the gloveboxes. These good old boys had a curious air of militancy about them, and even the anthemistic song the band was playing bore this out: I’ve got a shotgun a rifle and a four-wheel-drive and a country boy will survive .

They all seemed to be having a good time. The floor was crowded with dancing couples, the air heavy and confusing with threads of conversation and laughter.

The four of them sat at a table near the bandstand, but only for a moment. Vern immediately grasped Ruthie’s hand and they disappeared into the swirling dancers.

I wonder if they sell anything to drink here, he said to Corrie.

What?

He said it louder.

I don’t know. Cokes, I guess. Why? Do you have a headache?

No, Binder said, but he did, the beginning of one. A bright, nagging flickering of pain like heat lightning behind his eyes.

She didn’t believe him, he could tell, but she was solicitous. We’ll move where it’s less noisy when Vern and Ruthie get back.

The song ended and another began. Vern and Ruthie didn’t return. Little by little Binder felt himself absorbing the cheerful ambience of the place. He began to feel a little better about things. He might even be able to write tonight, if Vern would leave him alone. He could feel the stirring of the desire to work that had lain dormant for the week Vern and Ruthie had been there, and when the band began a waltz he pulled a protesting Corrie from her chair and led her to the floor, her face blushed and pleased. She pillowed her face against his throat.

There he is, Binder told her. Vern’s already promoting himself.

Vern in a crowd along the opposite wall was talking to a man in a cowboy hat. There was a young girl with long blond hair by the man’s side. Vern seemed mainly to be talking to her. The man in the cowboy hat wasn’t watching. The red slab of his face looked bored and distracted.

He’s telling them how much he took in last year, Binder said. How close he is to Disney World, how full his motel is, how many miles his black Eldorado gets to the gallon. All those alligator mouths.

What?

Never mind. Something Vern told me to impress me.

Oh, just forget him, David. For a moment I thought you were actually having a good time.

When Ruthie returned to the table, Vern didn’t. Ruthie had brought them all a tall paper cup of Coca-Cola and crushed ice. She looked about in mock caution, took a halfpint from her purse, then poured peach brandy into the Coke.

Vern just loves people, she said. He’s a great mixer, I don’t reckon he’s ever seen a stranger in his life.

Yet her voice seemed to carry a diminished enthusiasm, as if she were growing more morose. Binder didn’t see how you could get crying drunk on peach brandy and Coke, but she might. He guessed you might get sick, and that would be about as bad.

He’s not a stick-in-the-mud like David is, she said, then smiled at him, as if to diminish the sting the words carried.

I like him just the way he is, Corrie said, her hand on David’s arm.

They moved to a table near the door where it was quieter. After a while Vern glided up, seated himself between Ruthie and Corrie. He gestured toward the paper cups. Where’s mine?

We figured your new friends would buy you one, Ruthie said. You seemed to have forgotten us.

There’s a lot of nice folks here, he said, smiling broadly, winking lewdly at Binder, who didn’t wink back.

David, who is that girl? Corrie asked.

Binder looked. A girl seemed to be watching him. She was standing in the open doorway, leaning on the jamb, framed against the summer night. A slim, tall blonde with flaxen hair, pale blue eyes. She was studying him intensely.

I don’t know, he finally said.

Then why is she looking at you that way?

I don’t know, Binder said again. Maybe she thinks she knows me.

Or maybe she does know you.

Oh for Christ’s sake, Corrie. You know everybody in the county I do.