The Lost Country

by William Gay

  Yeah, a job, Bradshaw said, fumbling out a cigarette and pushing in the cigarette lighter. Hands that neither sew nor spin are an abomination in the sight of the Lord. You write that down, Edgewater. At the switchback he spun off the railroad in a cloud of dust toward town.

  They weren’t hiring at the poolroom but they tarried there anyway. Save for a lethargic barkeep talking drunkenly and ferociously to himself, they had the place to themselves. He seemed to be berating himself for some gross and ancient wrong. After a while the door opened and an old woman pushed a cripple in a wheelchair and Bradshaw and Edgewater began a listless game of eightball. The cripple wheeled his chair up to the table and fell to watching. There was a sour reek of urine and vomit about him. He had dead lank hair like dried straw that lay flat on his skull and his legs looked shrunken, as if the flesh had been incised from his bones, lost in the castoff trousers he wore. He had an enormous bowtie replevied from the garbage of one more prosperous than he, clipped to the collar of his chambray shirt.

  Hey Elmer. How you makin it?

  Not worth a damn, Bradshaw. Where you been?

  Better places than this, Bradshaw told him, sighting along the cue. He shot the three into a side pocket. Higher times and wilder women. What’s been happenin around here?

  Starvation.

  Bradshaw scratched in the corner, looked all about the poolroom with an air almost proprietary. Yeah, back to my old stompin ground, he said.

  You ain’t got nary a cigarette on you have you?

  Edgewater gave him one. Elmer put it in his mouth, sat waiting patiently, as if some vague idea of courtesy forbade him asking for a light. Bradshaw held at length a match. You want to kick your ass to get your lungs pumpin?

  The cripple began to laugh, strangled on smoke, a laugh that became a hacking blue cough that wracked him until the chair shook. When he finished coughing he said, Bradshaw, you ain’t got fifty cents on ye have ye?

  Hellfire, Elmer. I give you fifty cents just last year. What’d you do with that? He was fumbling in his pockets, separating change. Here. Don’t spend it all in one place.

  Elmer wheeled toward the bar.

  What’s the matter with him? Edgewater asked.

  Bradshaw shrugged. I don’t know. Some disease. Folks say he got ahold of some bad whiskey one time and that done it, but it ain’t so. He just got a little worse all the time. He used to hobble around duckfooted like and then he got to where he couldn’t walk at all. Folks chipped in and got him that wheelchair. Goddamn but he used to be a ballplayer. He had a fastball you could of lit a cigarette off of.

  Who was that old woman?

  His mama. She’s just an old whore. Or was till people got to where they wouldn’t buy it. She didn’t used to be so ugly. He laughed to himself. Boy, she can’t stand me. Me and old Arnold had her out one time and she wouldn’t give me none. Old Arnold had a dick on him about like a jack and I reckon she was spoilt. It was dark and we was all drunk and I crawled on her and put it in but she throwed me right off. Why you ain’t Arnold, she said. She had her glass of snuff there in the car and I took it away from her and pissed in it and she ain’t had no use for me since.

  Some women are just sensitive natured, I guess, Edgewater said.

  I reckon so.

  By the time the game was finished and another begun, Elmer was back with a bottle of beer and a benign look on his face. The door opened and a prosperous-looking man came in and ordered a beer. He carried it to the back table and selected a cue and began idly practicing bank shots. He had on a white shirt, a necktie, and a softbrimmed gray hat. His face was florid, the cheeks mauve with burst capillaries. The face somehow imbued with excess. Too much good food and too much bad whiskey. He had the look of a smalltown politician.

  Hey, Big Shawn. Elmer hurriedly drained his beer. What do you know?

  Very little, Big Shawn said.

  You wouldn’t drink a beer with me would ye?

  Big Shawn glanced at his wristwatch. I might have time for one. I got to meet somebody at the courthouse here in a minute.

  Elmer waited. Big Shawn went on practicing bank shots. It’d be easier if I had one too, Elmer said at last.

  Oh. Well, here then. Shawn gave him a quarter, turned his bottle up to drain it, set it back on the corner of the table. You get you one. I got to get on.

  Listen. You ain’t got…Here he paused, gauged Shawn’s prosperous appearance…two dollars, have ye? I need me some supper.

  Two dollars? I just give you a dollar Wednesday. Wasn’t it? What’d you do with it?

  Hell, Elmer said, shrugging. Wednesday.

  Another thing, Shawn said, hanging his cue back on the rack. You know that big sack of garden stuff I brought you? Clyde Webb said he seen you going across the street here at the corner and said you just throwed that sack of stuff right out in the middle of the street and kept on going.

  Elmer’s face was all outraged innocence. He’s a goddamned liar and the truth ain’t in him, Elmer said. I carried that stuff home and Mama cooked it.

  Well, all I know is what I hear, Shawn said. Like there was garden stuff strowed all over the street and cars was running over tomatoes and all that other stuff.

  They said. People’ll tell anything. You wait’ll I see that lyin’ son of a bitch. I’ll set him straight.

  Big Shawn had racked his cue and now he paused to relight his cigar. I got to get on, he said. I’ll see ye.

  I sure could use two dollars, Elmer suggested.

  I can’t spare it this morning, Big Shawn said. He dusted his hat carefully against his trouser leg and went toward the door. When he had opened it and started onto the street Elmer’s voice stayed him.

  A sack of shittin’ garden stuff, he said. I couldn’t give nobody nothing bettern a goddamn bunch tomaters and cucumbers, I’d just keep em to myself.

  Big Shawn grinned and shook his head. He went on out into the hot street.

  I just hate a tightwad like that, don’t you? Elmer asked.

  Boogerman came down out of the woods where the hollow leveled out and into a field of cutover cane. He walked with something like stealth into the edge of the field and halted behind a hedge of sassafras and blackjack sprouts. He peered between the broad leaves of sassafras. Two men were crossing the field approaching him, striding and as yet unrecognizable forms. Past them the field curved downgrade to a deep red gully choked with brush and the worn copper of old cedars and rusting car bodies and beyond this was the tin roof of his house glowing a warm umber in the ascending sun and a shiny black car parked in his turnaround driveway.

  The figures came on straggling across the field. One dark and one light with the sun in his hair. The blond almost skipping along talking and gesturing to the dark and stolid presence like a familiar. Boogerman’s eyes shaded to ascertain did they wear guns or badges. He could not tell as yet. The car was strange to him. He knelt on the cool earth. The weight of the sun was on his back. Jays quarreled from the woods behind him, crows called like watchdogs as these interlopers approached.

  When they were nearing the border of the field one of them began to hail him and just as he did Boogerman recognized Bradshaw. He stood up brushing dry hay from his overalls and just let them come. He wore overalls and a chambray shirt both sunfaded to the same neutral hue like something from nature layered with years of ancient stains no longer even recognizable. He had a blearyeyed whitewhiskered face and he looked like nothing so much as some badtempered badger coming out of hibernation after a long harsh winter and blinking against unaccustomed light. He had a shotgun strung on his arm and now he broke it down and pocketed the shells.

  What say Bradshaw?

  What was you sneaking behind them bushes for? We seen you ease out and peep all around like you’d just done something against the law. Weda been the law weda knowed you was makin whiskey right off. What you ort to do is just walk out whistlin, ye head throwed back like you just made a down payment on the world.

  You tell me abou
t it, Boogerman said. I ain’t been doin it but fifty year and I still got a lot to learn.

  Yeah and how much of that fifty years did you pass up at Brushy?

  I ain’t never done but eleven months and twenty-nine days out of fifty years and they hid whiskey in my front yard to get me that time. You fellers wantin a drink or just visitin?

  A little of both, Bradshaw said.

  Walk on down to the house and we’ll find some shade somers.

  They walked back across the field toward the house. When they passed the ditch Bradshaw said, I’se in your line of work I’d find something else to do with my syrup buckets. That ditch is full of em. That’s a dead giveaway.

  I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I just sell out to you and you can run the business any way you want to.

  There was an enormous cottonwood shading one end of the house and beneath it a motley collection of old lawn chairs and Coke crates and an old broken rocking chair appeared to have been salvaged from floodwaters. They sat silent beneath the tree. The house seemed to emanate silence, it seemed to be sleeping. A cloud passed from in front of the sun and moving light lacquered the windows, lending the weathered wood a depth and solidity almost surreal.

  Where’s ye family at? Last time I’se here they’s seven or eight of yins.

  Gone.

  Gone? Gone where?

  The old man shrugged. Just gone. Here and there. Hildy, she was the oldest and she was the first to leave. She got wildern a mink and finally she run off with that hairlipped Ferguson boy and I ain’t seen neither one of em since. Then the rest just started goin. I had all girls, you know. They’d get up breedin age and you ain’t never seen nothing like it.

  Bradshaw knew; the girls had constituted the main reason he was here.

  Seems like ever night they’s cars parked in here and a bunch of drunk carryin on. Fightin and such as that. Little by little they just got meaner. Took to not even kickin the door to when they’d go in em to screw. Like a bunch of dogs around a she in heat. It got to where you couldn’t walk out in the bushes without walkin up on a pair of em doin it. One night I just got maddern hell and I got my gun and run the whole bunch off. I meant to just run off the boys but hell they all went.

  Bradshaw’s face was somewhat rueful, the look of one listening to the description of a party he was not invited to.

  What about your old lady?

  Hell, she went too. Even the goddamned dogs is gone. Seems like when they start leavin everbody run out on ye. Even the cats went wild and livin in the woods somers.

  Boogerman himself had a feral look about him, the look of a man too much to himself. His eyes were quick and covert, they flickered about as if to see all he could at once. He seemed eager to be alone, to continue some discourse he held eternally with himself.

  Ain’t you hunted for em?

  I didn’t lose em. They left on their own hook. They can come back the same way. I don’t need em nohow. He arose, mopped his throat with an old red handkerchief. Let me get you a drink, he said. I got some around here somers. He walked around the house, moved slow and slopeshouldered towards a caved outbuilding.

  So much for that, Bradshaw said to Edgewater. Last time I’se out here this place was crawlin with pussy. You had to fight it off with a stick.

  It give up without a fight today.

  Well, hell, you heard him. They all left.

  When Boogerman came back he had a pint bottle swinging along in his hand. I don’t know what the world is comin to, he was saying. Young folks. I don’t know where them of mine went wrong. You have a bunch of em and then one morning they just ain’t there no more. He unscrewed the cap from the bottle, smelled tentatively. Here, git you a little drunk.

  Bradshaw tipped the bottle back and drank. Oily bubbles rose in the whiskey like tiny glass beads. He took the bottle down and wiped his mouth and reached the bottle to Edgewater. Edgewater shook his head no. I pass, he said. He could smell the sour sickish reek of the whiskey. He took the bottle, held it to the light. He shook it, watched a miniature storm of debris whirl silent in the bottle: bits of bug, hair, tiny green beads like weedseed. An insect leg spun like some curious dissected specimen in formaldehyde. He passed the bottle back.

  Old Edgewater knows Roosterfish, Bradshaw said. His voice sounded strange. He seen him up in McNairy County somewhere.

  Well, I’ll be damned. I figgered he was dead and buried by now. What was he doin?

  Edgewater’s face clouded with concern. Painting barns, the last I seen of him. We parted in a bit of a hurry.

  There wasn’t a trade Roosterfish couldn’t handle if he tried his hand at it. He could do a little bit of everything he set his mind to. Fore he lost his arm anyway. Boogerman drank from the bottle, stared up the road to where dust rose in an approaching cloud as if in pursuit of some as yet unseen vehicle. He set the bottle out of sight behind his leg. He could do carpenter work, mason’s work. Used to build as purty a fireplace as you ever seen. He built that un down the road here where old preacher Holly lives.

  A flatbed truck stacked with cordwood went by in a wake of dust. The driver saluted Boogerman with a listless hand.

  Roosterfish came down here to ask about Holly. To see would he pay. He’d heard he better watch him. So I just told him. He may be a preacher but he ain’t nothing but a goddamned deadbeat. He owed me for a gallon of whiskey and him claim to be a preacher. He’ll pay me, Roosterfish said. I’ll see to that, and he went ahead agin what I told him and built it and damn if Holly didn’t do just what I said. Told him he’d pay him the first. Well, the first come but the money didn’t. This was in I think June. Roosterfish didn’t push it. He just waited. October come and one night it was chilly enough for a fire. Holly kindled him up one and Lord if it wadn’t a sight. Smoke rolled out of his house like it was afire. It was just like he’d built a fire in the middle of the front room floor there. Well sir, he’s over at Roosterfish’s with his hat in his hand before good dark. It won’t draw, he said, somethins the matter with it. I’ll fix it when you pay for it, Roosterfish told him. Next morning Holly went to the bank and borrowed the money and went straight and paid him. He laughed to himself and Roosterfish stowed his ladder in the back of the truck and went over there and climbed up on the roof and chunked a brick down the chimbly. What he’d done was set him a big piece of glass above the throat and all it took to fix it was dropping that brick.

  Roosterfish is slick, Bradshaw said.

  He is that, Boogerman told him.

  Listen, we lookin to haul some whiskey. You still haulin down to Vera’s?

  Off and on I am. The business ain’t what it used to be. Sugar gittin higher ever day and everybody got a car now and just as well drive up to Mt. Pleasant and buy bonded. The liquor stores is tryin to put all of us out of business. But you might take her about twenty gallon if you a mind to. I’ll just pay ye to haul and she’ll settle up with me for the whiskey.

  Let’s load her up then. We need to be rollin.

  Well, I’ll have to show ye where it’s at. I got it hid on old man Holly down there.

  When they had it loaded Boogerman seemed loathe to let them go. Youns be careful, he said. He stood by the road’s dusty edge amidst the sawbriars and watched them out of sight.

  Suitably employed now, whiskey loaded and rolling again, Bradshaw fell to thinking of other women they might take out that night. I done forgot about Bonnie Serber, he said at length. I got her cherry when she about thirteen and they say a woman always keeps a soft spot in her heart for her first one. Do you believe that Edgewater?

  No, do you?

  I don’t know. Anyway we’ll get some pussy. I may have been the first but I damned sure wadn’t the last.

  Halfway back to Ackerman’s Field Bradshaw got a strange look in his eyes and suddenly became violently sick. He stopped the car and leapt out and began to vomit in the ditch. Edgewater sat and smoked and listened to a constant chorus of birds calling mockingly from the knoll of pinewoods. Brads
haw got back in weakly. He rested his head on the rim of the steering wheel a moment and then he got back out. You’ll have to drive awhile, he said. I just ain’t up to it.

  They went on and about a mile later he was sick again and this time did not have time to get out. He fell to cursing Boogerman, maligning his whiskey.

  I was trying to kill myself I’d pick a way a little less messy, Edgewater told him. They forded a shallow creek and Edgewater stopped in it and found an old rusted minnow bucket on the bank. He threw water in the floorboard until he could not smell vomit anymore. Bradshaw got out and washed his face in the creek. Mama’s gonna have a shitfit about this car, he said. I don’t know what I’ll tell her.

  Maybe the hair of the dog would help you. We could crack one of the jugs in the trunk.

  Bradshaw gagged and spat into the creek and shook his head. After a while they set forth again.

  He was feeling better by the time the whiskey was delivered. They bought a case of beer at Vera’s and started out toward Serber Ridge. By the time the town fell away and they were in pinewoods he was driving again, had regained almost all of his volubility and he was telling Edgewater about Bonnie and her younger sister. Edgewater rode in silence and drank beer. The sun was tracking westward now, the day beginning to wane. He closed his eyes, all the country was beginning to look the same, all the faces to be interchangeable. The road curved and dipped into lowering rushes and he opened his eyes on a bridge across a narrow stream and it seemed to him it was a bridge he had raised a thousand times. The act of raising it itself foolish and devoid of purpose.

  Bradshaw was not sick anymore but the whiskey seemed to have made him very drunk. His speech was slurred and his eyes were taking on a belligerent overbearing look. They ceased at a housetrailer set atop a gentle rise and Bradshaw shut off the engine and got out. He stood looking at the trailer uncertainly. I never noticed this before, he said. You wait here and I’ll rouse em out.

  Edgewater could see no electric wires. He wondered idly why anyone would set up such a trailer without electricity. A beast barked at them fiercely at the edge of the yard and a woman came out of the housetrailer and stood watching him through the screened-in storm door. The housetrailer was new and it looked to Edgewater to be long as a freighttrain. Behind it stood a crumbling shack forlorn and empty, given over to woods, windows stoned out, the house itself canted leeward as if it were in the act of falling with a movement so infinitesimally slow as if to be undetectable, as if time had warped and elongated: harsh times and prosperity simultaneous and profound on this same quarteracre. Hush, Bradshaw kept telling the dog. You hush your mouth. He stood leaning a little as if listing to some gentle wind. His pants were wet to his knees and his shoes were full of creek water and made squishy sounds when he walked.