I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

by William Gay

  Bender waited. He watched. The high sheriff took up a twig and began to draw meaningless hieroglyphs in the dust. Bender let me talk to you a minute, he said.

  All right.

  I’ve known your people all my life. You’ve known me all yours. Your mama and daddy was fine people, both of them. Paid their debts and minded their own business. The way you are your ownself. And I know this piece of land goes way back but don’t you think you’ve done about all you can do?

  You’re telling it.

  You’ve hired lawyers and fired, lawyers and hired more lawyers. You’ve tried to get injunctions and court orders and exemptions and about every kind of legal paper they make. I don’t know how much money you’ve spent and I don’t give a damn. It’s nothing to me. But I know you ain’t a rich man, and for what value you’ve got you might as well have stuck that money up a wild pig’s ass and hollered sooey. They’re going to build that dam. It’s for flood control and the government holds that the common good is more important than what one individual, you for example, has to say about it.

  They’re going to shut the goddamned thing down, Bender exploded. That fish. That snail darter. It’s on the endangered species list and the EPA is not going to let it be destroyed.

  Bellwether was shaking his head. There is just no way in hell, he said. Not in this lifetime. They’re going to finish it and cut the channel for the river and all this is going to be under a hundred feet of water. Are you by any chance building a boat in your backyard?

  Bender didn’t say anything,

  Now listen. You’ve got a wife and a kid and a good job teaching English out at the high school. Them boys of mine had you, they thought the world of you. You’ve got it made. Why do you want to piss it all away? Your wife and kid still here?

  Yes.

  You know they’ve offered you market value for this farm. Take it. There’s plenty of land. Buy some more.

  Bender felt awkward and inarticulate the way he did every time this happened. He was continually called upon to explain himself and day by day it had grown harder so that by now there didn’t seem to be any words, the right phrases hadn’t been coined yet. It was easy to say buy more land but hard to explain this was all the land there was. This was all the land he had been born on and that had absorbed the lives of his ancestors. His dead parents’ voices rose and fell in measured cadence just out of hearing and their shades stood almost invisible in dark corners.

  Bellwether stood up. Now his face looked curiously remote, and Bender divined that he was distancing himself from him. Bender’s folks were good folks and all that but the law was the law and the federal government was where the buck stopped.

  I’d like to talk sense to you, Bellwether said. Sometimes a man in my position is called on to do things he might not want to do, but he’s got to do them anyway.

  He climbed back into the cruiser and pulled the door to. I’ll see you, Bender, he said. But I hope for both our sakes it’s someplace else.

  BENDER IN HIS OLD FORD truck drove through a countryside almost surreal in the degree of its devastation. As if some great war had been won or lost here. No soul seemed to have survived. He drove past shotgun shack and mansion alike, all empty, houses canted on their foundations by dozers, shells of houses gutted by fire, old tall chimneys standing solitary and regal like sentries left to guard something that wasn’t even there anymore.

  The old man was sitting amidst the motley of plunder on his front porch like some gaunt-eyed dust bowl survivor. Ninety-five years old and he lived alone and did his own cooking and mowed the yard himself and until recently he had driven an old pickup truck homemade from a ’47 Studebaker. Liverett had outlived the ’47 Studebaker and all his children and a number of wives and all this outliving had begun to turn him bitter against things in general.

  Come up, Bender, the old man said.

  Bender sat on the doorstep. He hadn’t seen the old man for a while and age seemed finally to be catching up with him. His face seemed caved as if it were decaying internally and the skin stretched over the cheekbones looked nearly transparent. He went inside to fetch Bender a cup of coffee and now he seemed to move as carefully as if he conveyed something of incalculable value and marvelous fragility.

  When Bender had taken a sip of his coffee he figured to work the conversation around to the government. Those home health people still bothering you? he asked. The old man was fiercely independent and for years he had waged a running battle with various agencies determined to take care of him.

  I reckon they about give up on me, Liverett said. They send em out once and I run em off and next time it’ll be somebody else. They sent this little snip of a girl out here a week or two ago. Said she was new on the job. Purty little thing, big blue eyes, fine little titties. Said she was supposed to check my blood pressure and give me a bath. A bath? I said. Why I never heard of such a thing. A little snip of a girl givin a grown man a bath and him a stranger at that. Well Missy, I told her, I’ll tell you what. You let me give you one first and we might work up some kind of a deal.

  Bender grinned weakly. In his later years the old man’s mind seemed to have turned to sex and in some manner locked there. Bender judged that were he stronger and more agile he might have turned into some kind of sex maniac.

  I hear you let them beat you, Bender said. You finally knuckled under.

  Is that what you hear? You heard wrong. What I heard was that I asked em a certain price and they finally met it.

  You already sold?

  Damn right. Wait here a minute. He got up and opened the screen door and went inside. Bender could hear him rummaging around inside the house. When the old man came back out he was carrying a paper bag, a grocery sack with the top folded down. He unfolded it and held it for Bender to peer into. Looky here, he said. Bender looked. Great God, he said. The sack was full of money. Neat stacks of bills as square and crisp as if some kind of machine had bundled them. They paid you in cash?

  No. They wouldn’t. I had to carry the check to the bank and cash it. They raised Cain but I didn’t give em no selection. I wanted it with me. All of it. The notion might strike me to roll around in it.

  What are you aiming to do with it?

  I been studyin some on that. I’m goin out to Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m goin into one of them gamblin places they got and pick out the purtiest girl in the place. I’m goin to pay her just whatever it takes to dance naked on the table I’m sittin at.

  Bender looked at the money again. I expect that would do it, he said.

  I may get two of em dancin.

  I meant really. What are you really going to do, Mr. Liverett?

  The old man looked sharply at Bender and for a moment his eyes looked confused and disoriented. I’m damned if I know, he said, and Bender wished he’d left him his casinos and dancing girls.

  What do you plan on doin, Bender?

  Hang on as long as I can. I believe that fish is going to shut it down.

  Not anymore it ain’t. Don’t you never watch the news? They found a bunch of them little son of a bitches down around Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In the Tennessee River. Then they found some more somers else. Seems they ain’t near as scarce as they thought they was. I look for em to find em in mudholes and everywhere else before they’re through. They may have to cut the river channel just to thin em out some.

  Bender drained his coffee cup and set it carefully on the porch railing. He stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants. I got to get on, he said. You be careful with that money, Mr. Liverett.

  I aim to. The old man arose as well. He stuck out a hand in a curiously formal gesture. I expect I won’t ever see you again, Bender.

  I guess not. Bender took the hand. It was dry and papery and the bones felt light and hollow as bird’s bones.

  I don’t know what you’re going to do out there in Nevada. You won’t know a soul

  I don’t know a soul anymore anyway, the old man said. That’s all folks are good for. To die off
on you.

  GAUNT-EYED AND INTENSE Bender stepped out of the thick woods to see why the government truck had stopped in his driveway. The motor of the pickup was idling and the door was open and a young man in a white hardhat already had the sign in his left hand and a claw hammer in his right hand. He was holding tacks in his mouth.

  I believe you’ve wandered onto private property here, Bender said.

  The young man said something around the tacks Bender didn’t get.

  Spit them out, Bender said. You won’t be using them on my property anyway.

  The man palmed the tacks and stood holding them. I don’t believe I’m on private property. I was told this was government land, part of the dam project.

  You were told wrong then.

  They sent me up here to post all this property. I just do what I’m told.

  If you do what you’re told then I’m telling you to get the hell off my land.

  Interfering with the United States government can put a world of hurt on you. Have they not served you with eviction papers?

  No.

  Well they’re fixing to.

  The man had the sign affixed against a utility pole and was positioning a tack when Bender closed on him. They struggled for a moment in the roadside ditch like drunken dancers. The government man’s hardhat fell off. Bender had him in a headlock and when he released him he crumpled. Bender wrenched the claw hammer out of his right hand and threw it as far as he could into the woods. The man’s left hand had made a fist over the tacks and he was pulling them out of the flesh of his palm.

  Hellfire, the man said. His lip was bleeding and he was looking around for his hardhat. When he had found it and had it on he got into the truck and slammed the door. He rolled down the glass. I heard them talking about you, he said. You don’t watch it mighty close you’ll be in a place where the rooms got rubber walls.

  Get off my property, Bender said.

  THE WOLF HAD SLEPT out the day in a hazelnut thicket near the river and it was full dark before it came out and when it did it crept unbidden into Bender’s dreams. It came delicately down the tiers of limestone shelving to the riverbank and drank and angled across a cleared area toward the dam. This area was laid out with wooden stakes tied with garlands of red plastic but the wolf went on. Far across the manmade basin low thunder rumbled and on the western horizon lightning flickering a fierce staccato rose. By its photoelectric glare the scraped treeless world was as barren and alien as a moonscape.

  The wolf paused and raised its head toward where the moon would be were it not overcast and when the horizon quaked and trembled again it increased its pace and by the time the first drops of rain came it was moving at a slow lope. It went down the limestone riprap with surefooted steps and crossed the concrete floor weaving between the rebar without diminishing its speed. It had a brief yellow-eyed glance for all these works of man but seemed to have no interest for it.

  The wolf’s shaggy coat was wet now and the stag’s blood coagulated and matted began to melt in his ruff and his front was stained with spreading pink as if he were some jaunty tie-dyed wolf a child might create.

  He went past the desecrated Indian mound where long ago men had laid their dead with solemnity and later other men had with like solemnity disinterred them and when it reached the chain-link fence it did not falter but turned at a right angle and ran along the fence until it came to a bulldozed pile of charred trees and scorched topsoil. It ran up the jumble of logs until it was almost at a level with the top of the fence and then it jumped. It landed in thick honeysuckle it had in past times wallowed into a lair and slowed its pace cautiously and followed its path through the sweet smell of honeysuckle into the wild nightshade that had taken Bender’s fallow garden.

  From where it stood chest-deep in the tangle of nightshade it could see through the falling rain the yellow squares of light from the house and after a while it took shelter beneath the riot of honeysuckle and lay with its chin on its paws and watched the house.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  LYNN WAS TALKING but Bender had his eyes closed and he was not listening. His mind was occupied with thinking about the days before the dam project was even rumored and he realized that he and Lynn and Jesse had been living an idyllic life without even knowing it and that this life was as remote to him now as his childhood.

  … taking him to my sister’s for a few days, were the first words he heard clearly.

  He raised onto his elbows. What? he asked. He noticed with mild surprise that she had been crying.

  Just until this is all settled one way or another. We can’t go on like this, this is like living in a motel. We can’t live in a motel the rest of our lives.

  I don’t know as Hike the sound of any of this, Bender said.

  I don’t know as we have a choice, she said. You won’t even talk about leaving. About taking the money and finding another place. It’s like we’re just sitting here waiting until the police pick us up and carry us across the property line. I don’t know what you plan to do. If you plan to do anything at all. You won’t talk anymore.

  We’re a family, Bender said. Me and you and Jesse. Together we can do whatever we have to do. Split up and scattered we’re nothing, just three separate people.

  A family talks about things and makes decisions for the good of the family. Not like this … this craziness. Your whole life depends on what they decide to do about some stupid fish.

  Bender decided not to tell her what Liverett had said about the snail darter. If you want to go a few days I can’t stop you. But you’re not taking Jesse. He’s as much my son as he is yours. What makes you think you can pick him up like a suitcase and just go away with him?

  Bender was sitting on the side of the bed with his hands cupping his knees. He watched her get out of bed and pace away from him—her white nightgown drifting behind her.

  In fact, I don’t think you should go at all. Well figure something out.

  She paced back to him. I’ve already called Ruthie and told her we were coming. I’ve got to get away from here a few days. If you come over tomorrow we can talk about it.

  He grasped her arm but perhaps harder than he meant to for she cried out and twisted away and her eyes were panicky and wild-looking. She was backpedaling away from him. When he was almost upon her with arms outspread to grasp her she jerked the lamp off the end table and swung it at him. Goddamn, Bender said. Only the shade caught him a glancing painless blow but he was so shocked at her striking him that he shoved outward bothhanded as hard as he could. The lamp swung away and slammed the wall and the bulb broke. He heard her fall somewhere off in the dark. She didn’t even cry out. He picked up the lamp and righted it and plugged it in. The room stayed dark. He crossed the room, almost running, and clicked on the ceiling light.

  Oh Jesus, Bender said. Oh Jesus.

  She was lying with her head on the edge of the raised brick hearth and her neck cocked sideways at a crazy-looking angle. Blood like shadows was already seeping onto the brick from the back of her head and with her eyes open and lying there on her back with arms and legs outflung she looked as if she had fallen from some unreckonable height and slammed onto Bender’s carpet.

  With his face close to hers he tried to ascertain was she breathing or not. He couldn’t tell for sure but he didn’t think she was. Her pulse was either faint or absent at her throat and his own heart beat too loud and too fast to be sure.

  He ran out of the room and down the hall to the open door of Jesse’s room. Jesse lay with his face toward Bender and the sheet rising and falling in measured respiration.

  He went back to the bedroom and squatted in the middle of the floor and watched Lynn. After a while he put his face in his hands and sat there swaying soundlessly and trying to think. What to do. It had grown very quiet. He could hear the rain soft and suspirant on the roof and far off beyond the dam the rumble of thunder like something heavy and out of control rolling downhill toward him. He didn’t care if it was. He couldn’t
fathom how or why this had happened. Someone he loved lay still and bloody pillowed on the hearth and no hands but his had touched her. He felt strange in his skin, it was light and uncomfortable, like some illfitting costume he had struggled into, and he did not know how to get out of it. He divined that he was somewhere he’d had no intention of going, that he was someone he did not want to be.

  He got up and stripped the sheet off the bed and laid it spread out on the carpet and lifting Lynn by the arms he dragged her to the center of it. He lowered her gently onto it. Her head kept lolling back loosely as if it would fold beneath her and he had to adjust her head with a foot while he positioned her. He folded the sheet about her like a shroud and straightened and just stood for a moment staring down at her. He stooped and picked her up and cradled her in his arms and turned her so that she was draped over his left shoulder. He went cautiously past Jesse’s door and out of the house and into the rain.

  He’d decided that somehow he had to get her across the garden fence and across the chain-link fence and back to the graveyard. Then he could place her in one of the empty graves and maybe cave the sides in on her. Only one body to a grave, who’d look in an empty grave? He’d tell Ruthie they had had an argument and Lynn had driven off and left him. Nobody was going to buy that story long but maybe it would give him enough time to think of something.

  He was halfway across the garden staggering in the mud and vines when he stopped dead-still. He stood in an attitude of listening. Well I’m a son of a bitch, he said. He could hear a car engine toiling up the hill. He turned with her. He stared in disbelief. A slow wash of headlights coming up the hill like the very embodiment of ill luck. His face had an angry, put-upon look as if the world would not leave him alone long enough for him to get on with the things he had to do. Then all at once he came to himself and half ran, half fell, into the nightshade and honeysuckle with her. He pulled vines over her as best he could and struggled up and ran into the shadows keeping the house between himself and the headlights. When he came around the corner of the house the car was sitting parked in his driveway with the door sprung open and a dark silhouette getting out. Rain was falling slant in the headlights and he could hear the disjointed crackling of a police scanner.