by Richard Ford
His back began to tighten and his knees began to strain against the ribs of the boat. He sat back and rubbed the furrow in his forehead for a long time and gauged his own breathing. The old man looked thin as paper, his temples sunken considerably, and absolutely ridiculous lying in the floor with the mallards flying off his collar and his yellow suspenders gapped above his shoulders as if they had been made for a much taller man. He reached down between his legs and mashed his eyelids down and noticed how simple and unspectacular a matter it was to do that, since the lids closed willingly and stayed shut without the slightest effort, as if there were no difference in being closed and open. Though the old man looked unmistakably dead now, and the businesslike impulse rose in him again, and he reached for the stob where Landrieu had impaled the white jug, threw the jug off, and pulled the boat over to where the paddle had floated. With the paddle he piloted the boat over to a patch of quavery ground, got out and towed the boat up partially, took off his shirt and draped it over the old man’s face. He scanned the cluttered end of the lake and saw nothing. The turtles had departed the deadfall, and the lake was empty and somnolent. The sun was forty-five degrees off the top of the woods, shining out from behind a long peninsula of crusted clouds. There was the smell of rain mingled with the rank scent of the water, and with his shirt off he felt the breeze slide against his stomach, causing his flesh to run up into the hollow of his ribs, and he rubbed himself and turned toward the sun and tried to let it warm him, but it wouldn’t.
He pulled the old man’s arms off the gunwales and fixed them at his sides. He lifted his skinny ankles off the bow seat, folded his legs in such a fashion that his knees listed against the sides, and put the black box by his feet for support. He grabbed the bow handle of the boat and pushed off back into the lake, letting the boat scrape through the shallow grasses, perched on the narrow bow on his knees, poling the boat farther and farther into the lake until he could no longer touch the marly bottom with the blade and until the boat, with the old man down in the broad flat end, rose out of the water like a gondola cruising some still and rancid waterway, and he the fat and efficient and shirtless gondolier.
7
In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1953, his father brought him downtown and left him in the lobby of the King Edward Hotel while he went away to the mezzanine to talk to a man about selling starch in Alabama. His mother was home in bed and too sick to watch him, so he sat in the lobby and watched the men standing against the fat pillars smoking cigars and shaking hands for minutes at a time. In a little while a midget came into the lobby wearing cowboy boots and a Texas hat, and attracted everyone’s attention as he signed his name to the register and gave the bellboy a tip before he ever touched a bag. When he was ready to go to his room, the midget turned and looked around the pillared lobby into the alcoves and foyers as if he were looking for someone to meet him. And when he saw the boy sitting on the long couch, he came across in his midget—s gait that made him look as if he were wearing diapers, and told the boy that his name was Tex Arkana, and that he was in the movies and had been the midget in Samson and Delilah and had been one of the Philistines that Samson had killed with the jawbone of a mule. He said he had seen the movie and remembered the midget fairly well. The midget said that in his bags he had all his movie photos and a long scrapbook with his newspaper clippings which he would be glad to show him if he cared to see. Most of the men in the lobby were watching the two of them sitting on the couch talking, and the midget kept watching them and talking faster. When the boy said he would care to see the scrapbook and the photos, too, the midget got up and the two of them got on the elevator with the bellboy and went to the midget’s new room, which faced the street When the bellboy had left, the midget took off his shirt and sat on the floor in his undershirt and opened the suitcase and went jerking through the clothes looking for the book while the hoy sat on the chair and watched. In a little while the midget found the broad wooden-sided book and jumped on the bed, his cowboy boots dangling against the skirts, and showed the boy pictures of himself in Samson and Delilah and in Never Too Soon and in a movie with John Garfield and Fred Astaire. There were pictures of the midget in the circus riding elephants and sitting on top of tigers and standing beside tall men under tents and in the laps of several different fat women who were all laughing. When they had looked at all the pictures and all the clippings, the midget said that he was sleepy after a long plane ride from the west coast and that the boy would have to go so he could go to sleep. The boy shook hands with the midget and the midget gave him an autographed picture of himself standing on a jeweled chariot with a long whip, being pulled by a team of normal-sized men. And the boy left.
When he came back to the lobby his father was waiting for him, smoking a cigar, and he showed him the picture of the midget in the chariot, and his father became upset and tore up the picture, and went to the glassed-in office beside the front desk and had a long talk with the manager while the boy waited outside. In a while his father came out and the two of them went home where his mother was sick. And late in the night he could hear his mother and father talking about the picture and about the midget with the cowboy boots on, and he heard his father say that the manager had refused to have the midget thrown out of the hotel, and in a little while he could hear his mother crying.
Part VII
Robard Hewes
1
He stood between the house and the Gin Den viewing the sky skeptically. Long purple flathead clouds were sizing up and the air had moistened and cooled and felt electric. There was the sense now, though not the sound, of thunder and it unsettled the air and made him feel that he wasn’t going to get across before it all broke down. There was silence on the island, and for a while he wandered back between the shed and the house steps, anticipating the old man and Newel, watching the sky.
He needed to get her shunted off to some motel since there wasn’t any way he could take the time to go to Memphis now. Just get in the room, he thought, with the lights off, and get her to work her trick and be done with it without ever leaving town.
And it wasn’t only that. He took a seat on the low rise of the step and watched the chalky sun being scrubbed out by the storm. The color of the sky was being altered on the minute, becoming more bruised and complicated every time he looked up. But the wind was low, and he figured the rain would hold off and come in when the wind was ready.
The real snake was two-headed. One, that any more time spent going through the motions with Beuna might be just enough to push it all over with Jackie, so that he’d arrive at an empty house without so much as a pencil pointed in the right direction—which would be ruinous, pure and simple, though he’d estimated that disaster, or thought he had, before he took the chance, and couldn’t complain if that’s what he picked.
The other head was that he didn’t feel so good about Newel claiming to see whatever he saw, though it was only a word in a million, and it might be anything, but probably was something, since he had little premonitions for it. It made him itchy.
Mrs. Lamb stepped to the edge of the steps and consulted the thermometer-barometer nailed to the porch stud. She held her glasses forward with her hand and peered up through them, then stared at the sky as if corroborating the opinion of the gauges. He looked up and saw her hair was flatted against her head and her eyes looked unrested. He stood up to walk back to the Gin Den.
“It’s smotherin,” she said, as if she had just seen the center of the turmoil and could do nothing about it.
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
“He loves smotherin days,” she said calmly. “He’ll just stay to dark if it don’t rain, if the other man don’t turn the boat over.”
He looked at his jeep as though it had just arrived, then looked down the car path to where it disappeared into the bottom. “Hope he don’t,” he said.
“Decamping?” she said.
“Yes’m.”
“And where is it you’re going again?”
“California,” he said, standing out in the grass. “My wife’s out there.”
“What are you going to do?” she said, passing time.
“Go to work,” he said. “Construction. That kind.”
“You’re not going to bring her back?”
“No’m,” he said, resting his toe against the step, watching her.
Mrs. Lamb elevated her chin as if she were catching some scent on the air and was diverted from the conversation. “Well,” she said, “come and go.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
She regarded him a moment majestically, then went back inside.
It occurred to him just as she was letting the door to that he could have asked her to pay him, gotten off the island while there was light and no rain, and made it to Helena before it was dark, where he’d feel better. But she closed the door and there was no chance now of reopening the conversation on the subject of wages, even though he knew she was in charge of disbursals, and once the old man arrived he would just have to go back and get it from wherever she had it squirreled away.
He walked across the yard to the Gin Den. Landrieu had limped into his house and not emerged. The puppy had sprung after the little jeep, but in a little while come back and gone to sleep under the steps. And there had been nothing since then but waiting. He took out the postcard and gave it a reappraisal. The laughing man in the sepia glimmer of daylight amused him. If he had a pencil, he thought, he’d write, “Be to home—Robard,” and stick it in the first chute he came to. And that might keep her until he got home again, some kind of promise.
The wind began to post off the lake. He could see the sock sprung out in the airfield, the funnel showing east. The clouds had blackened and were revolving fast and moving the air in different directions through the trees and under the house. Elinor woke, winded, and relocated herself behind one of the pilings.
In the woods he began to hear the sputter of the Willys, and walked out behind the Gin Den to watch for them, the wind flooding his satin shirt, making it cold down his back.
All he could see at first were Newel’s bare shoulders buckled over the wheel as if he were forcing the jeep toward the house with the strength in his arms. As they came nearer he could see Newel’s face fixed in an odd, exasperated expression he hadn’t seen before, as if Newel had left the old man in disgust and come in by himself. Though finally he could make out the old man’s feet, nylon socks rolled over his ankles, hung side by side across the gate like two sides to a stepladder. And there wasn’t any urgency. Newel drove the jeep to where he stood, gave him the same exasperated look, and slumped backward in the seat.
He looked over the sill and saw Newel’s blue shirt draped over the old man’s face. Mr. Lamb’s body seemed skinny, his wrists and ankles turned blue in the time it took to cart him back to the house. He had a keen urge to take a look, but looked up instead at the window and saw the glass was the color of swamp water and couldn’t be sure Mrs. Lamb wasn’t looking and would see the old man before she was ready.
The wind whipped under the jeep and tumbled out on the yard, making Newel grimace and get goose-pimply.
“What the hell happened to him?” he said.
“The old fart electrocuted himself,” Newel said, and rubbed his hands together under the wheel. “Monkeying with his goddamned box and the first thing I knew he’d grabbed the wires and knocked over. He said oops.”
“Said what?”
“Ooops.” Newel smiled pathetically.
He took an unhappy look at the window. “I’ll get the nigger. Get him behind the shed.”
He trotted with the wind behind him to Landrieu’s house and went straight inside. Landrieu was perched on the edge of his bed watching an enormous television set, and gave him a look of irreconcilable outrage, as if it were beyond all his comprehension anyone should tread into his one good safe place.
“Whatchyouwant?” Landrieu said, clenching the corners of the bedspread as if he wanted to pull the bed in on top of him. Over the bed was a large photograph of Landrieu, much younger, wearing a baseball uniform and smiling.
“He’s dead,” he said loudly, stepping out of the wind, getting a whiff of Landrieu’s room, which was warm and smelled like rancid bacon grease. The television was on too loud.
“Who is?” Landrieu stood erectly and tried to see past him through the door.
“Mr. Lamb,” he said over the TV, breathing the unhealthy air. “You gotta catch the old lady before she has a hissy fit.” The wind kicked the door out of his hand and slammed it against the wall.
Landrieu got very grave. His left eye closed and his cheeks thickened. “Where he at?” he said, still trying to lean toward the door.
“In the goddamn jeep.” He stepped out of the way so Landrieu could see where Newel had pulled the jeep around the Gin Den. Landrieu took a careful step to the door, looked out, saw nothing, then marched straight into the yard, stuffing his shirt down in his coveralls and sniffing. He walked across to the back of the jeep, reached in, and yanked the shirt off Mr. Lamb’s head as if he expected the old man to pop up howling and was just going to go along with the foolishness. But the moment he saw the old man’s face, his nostrils flared and he stood back and looked gray. The wind came up stiffly. Landrieu’s hair shifted to the side of his head like a hunk of sponge, and he took another step backward and almost fell over his feet.
“What done happened to him?” Landrieu smiled queerly as if still not positive it wasn’t a joke. His big television was blasting out into the yard.
“He took a collect call,” Newel said irritably, and jerked the shirt out of Landrieu’s hand and put it back on the old man’s face. “Get on inside and tell Mrs. Lamb. We’ll carry him in quick as you tell her.”
Landrieu eyed them both, then the old man and the black box, which Newel had put in the back beside him, and tried to figure out just how duties were being assigned. “Who gon’ tell her?”
“You,” he said, wishing Landrieu would just go on. “We can’t tell her.”
Landrieu glared at him, hiked up his coveralls, and started legging it toward the house without another word, limping stiffly on his right leg. Halfway up the stairs, he stopped and looked back at them, then disappeared.
Newel leaned against the jeep, crossed his arms over his bare chest, and rubbed at his eyes, his flesh rigid in the wind.
Across the airstrip it was raining, like smoke creeping out of the woods. Behind it, the greenish sunlight narrowed the gap against the curve of the earth. The air smelled strong. He wondered just how long it was going to take the rain to cross the field and reach them.
He looked at Newel, then thought a moment. “What was it you said about my eyes? Something ignorant, I remember.”
“I forgot,” Newel said, looking away.
“No you didn’t neither,” he said. He bit up a tiny piece of his lip.
“You gettin worried?” Newel smiled at him.
“Screw yourself,” he said, and stalked inside the Gin Den and let the door spring out in the wind. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched Newel through the open door and wished he’d never seen him.
Newel walked inside the doorway and leaned against the jamb and looked out. “I said there was something grieved about you.” The wind had begun to keen in the joints, and the tin seemed to expand as if it wanted to explode. “Grieved might not be the right word,” Newel said, wagging the back of his head against the chase. “Heartbroken might be.”
“Nothin ain’t broke my heart,” he said, staring at the points of his boots, wishing Newel would disappear.
“I don’t know,” Newel said. “You know more about it than I do.” He walked off from the doorway.
“I sure as hell do,” he said loudly, trying to decipher just what there could be to break his heart.
Landrieu limped down off the porch, eyes big as buttons, arriving out of breath, hiking at his coveralls and looking up at the house nervously. “She comin,” he said, and imm
ediately made for the other side of the jeep and established himself so he could watch the screen door and the old man’s body at the same time.
Mrs. Lamb came down into the wind wrapped in a black afghan, her hair strewn around her head and her mouth bent into a look of anger. She strode across the yard, acknowledging no one, and walked to the edge of the jeep and peered down. She looked at Mr. Lamb from one end to the other, studying him as if she wanted to be sure all his parts were there. When she wanted to look at his face she motioned to Landrieu, and he lifted the shirt off and the old lady regarded her husband even more carefully, without speaking to anyone. Her complexion seemed slowly to be losing its olive color, and the set of her mouth hardened as though interior shifts were taking place she herself didn’t know about but which had already corrected her outlook toward the rest of the world.
