Twilight

by William Gay

He’ll see you now, he said.

  Tyler rose and went in. The sheriff was seated behind his desk with his palms laid flat on it. He was a big man. He wore pressed khakis, and his shirtsleeves were folded back a neat turn. He was dark, and his hair was brilliantined back into ornate and intricate waves. He wore a thin mustache of the sort favored by certain movie stars of the nineteen-forties and he was considered to be something of a ladies’ man.

  Something I can help you with, young feller?

  I hope so. I don’t know, but I thought I’d ask and see.

  Take a chair there. To begin with, who are you?

  I know him now, the deputy said. I told you I thought I knew who he was. That’s old Moose Tyler’s boy.

  Uh-huh. What can I do for you, Moose Tyler’s boy?

  Now that he’d come this far, he didn’t know what to say without saying too much. It seemed to him that with the mention of his father’s name a line had been drawn with him on one side and them on the other. He’d lived too long on the outskirts of the enemies’ camp to ever dine at their table.

  My sister and I have been having some trouble with Granville Sutter. He’s done a lot of talking about what he’s going to do. He’s threatened to rape my sister and kill both of us. The sheriff was watching him, deceptively casual. How’d you happen to wind up on the wrong side of Sutter?

  Well, it sort of come up about my sister.

  The deputy laughed. I’ll just bet it come up about his sister, he said. He turned to the sheriff. He’s got a hell of a nicelookin sister.

  Hush up, Harlan. You want to elaborate on this business about your sister, Tyler?

  He tried to go out with her, and she wouldn’t go. He didn’t want to take no for an answer. He slapped her around some and threatened to shoot us.

  Where do you fit into this?

  What?

  Why’s he threatening you?

  Hellfire. I don’t know. Because I took up for her, I guess.

  Uh-huh. Listen close to me, Tyler. I’m going to explain something to you. You’re young and you ain’t been around and you’ve got a lot to learn. You take a man wants something real bad and don’t get it, he’s likely to say some things he don’t mean. Sort of in the heat of the moment, you might say. When he cools down a bit, it’ll all be forgot. Likely he’s done forgot it, and you worrying yourself to death about it.

  And that’s it? You’re not going to do anything? Talk to him, or anything?

  The law’s a funny thing, Tyler. It requires that a crime be committed before a man’s arrested for it. If we arrested everybody that thought about doing something illegal, there wouldn’t be jails to hold em. And if everybody Granville Sutter threatened to kill wound up dead, Fenton Breece would have to hire him a couple of helpers and put on another shift. If Sutter roughed her up like you say and she swears out a warrant for assault, that’s another matter. But she’ll have to do it. You can’t do it for her.

  But then if she did, you’d have to serve the warrant and arrest him? He’d be in jail?

  Till he made bond. Which knowin Granville would be somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen minutes. And then he would be madder than hell. Which you wouldn’t want. My advice to you would be to let bygones be bygones.

  Whiskey, the deputy said suddenly.

  What? the sheriff asked.

  This has got to do with whiskey or I miss my guess. This boy here’s got into it with Granville over whiskey the same as his daddy did. Probably set up back there in one of them hollers in the edge of the Harrikin and Sutter’s got wind of it. Man go prowlin around back in there, no tellin what he’s liable to find.

  Tyler had risen. Unnoticed, his chair toppled sidewise against the wainscoting and fell. His face was white with anger.

  I ought not to have come here, he said. He was staring down into the sheriff’s face. The face was bland and almost politely inquisitive. I knew better all along and by God I came here anyway.

  You watch your mouth, boy. Anybody cusses in my office I kind of take it they’re cussing me, and nobody cusses me.

  Tyler went out without speaking and left the door ajar. The deputy’s voice said, Wouldn’t mind takin little sister a round myself.

  He went on in a kind of cold detached rage up the stairs and into the failing winter light. Dusk was falling and a purple mist seemed to be seeping up out of the earth itself andobscuring the town. Buildings looked blueblack and dimensionless. He stood for a moment looking back down the stairs, then he shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders and went on.

  Two stone lions stood sentinel at the gate of the house, but they were chipped and weathered and their ancient eyes were blind. They might have guarded some city long sacked and forgotten: the house they actually watched was subtly going to seed, and the gate itself canted on one twisted hinge.

  Tyler went up the cracked concrete sidewalk. A plaster mother duck and six plaster ducklings wended their way singlefile through the sere winter weeds, but like the lions they were weathered and blind and seemed to have lost their way.

  He went up the steps to the gloom of the porch. Somewhere behind the curtain windows a light glowed and he could hear soft jazz playing within the house. He rapped on the storm door then opened it and knocked on the peeling white door. He waited awhile and knocked again. After a time he could hear soft footfalls and a porchlight came on over his head. The door opened.

  Kenneth?

  Hello, Mr. Phelan.

  A pair of limpid eyes behind the thick lenses of reading glasses. A thin scholarlylooking man in a white shirt and a blue necktie. Phelan’s cheeks were slick and freshly shaven, and he smelled of Lilac Vegetal. His hand clutched a thin leatherbound volume a forefinger marked his place in.

  I thought you were in Knoxville, Kenneth. Well. No. Not yet.

  If you wanted to talk to me about it, this is not really a good time for me. Could you come back tomorrow, perhaps in the afternoon?

  I did want to talk to you, but not about that. I need some advice about something. Could I come in for a few minutes?

  Well. Sure, I guess so. Come on in, Kenneth. He ushered Tyler into a neardark room and made no move to turn on the lights. The room was warm. A gas furnace burned with a soft hissing sound and a thin blue flame. A door opened off this room to what Tyler remembered was the kitchen, and Phelan kept glancing nervously toward it. There was a warm spicy smell of Italian food cooking.

  If I’ve come at a bad time—

  Oh, no, not a bit of it. Well, to tell you the truth, I was just having a guest over for dinner.

  I’ll just be getting on.

  Stay a few minutes as long as you’re here. I was just surprised to see you. I’d assumed you’d gone to east Tennessee.

  The kitchen door filled with a shadowy form. A heavyset girl in a white dress. A girl Tyler remembered from school. A junior then. A semipretty girl with soft uncertain eyes. At length a name floated into his memory to match the face: Retha Ellison.

  Phelan became agitated. There was a curious mixture of humility and defiance in his face. Suddenly it all made a kind of sense to Tyler. Phelan laid a hand on Tyler’s arm.

  Kenneth, you remember Retha.

  Yes. Hello, Retha.

  Hello, Kenneth. How have you been?

  Just fine. The grip on his arm had tightened and seemedto be moving him gently toward the door. Tyler felt that for days folks had been taking him by the arm and guiding him places he did not want to go on his own. The anger that Phelan’s kind, familiar face had dissipated returned, seethed just beneath the surface. He jerked his arm hard, and Phelan’s indecisive hand fluttered away.

  I guess I’d better get on, Tyler said. He wondered what madness had driven him here to begin with. What advice Phelan could possibly have given him. All these myriad differences between the world he was discovering and the world he’d been taught. There was nothing in Yeats or Eliot or Browning to cover this: had the situation been reversed, Phelan would probably have been coming
to him for advice. He wondered how Eliot would have fared against the look in Sutter’s dead eyes.

  Well, Kenneth, if you must, then I suppose you must. Tomorrow night, then?

  I doubt it.

  It wasn’t anything urgent, then?

  No. No, it wasn’t anything much. I’ll let you get back to your guest.

  Ushered in, ushered out. The hand was at his elbow again as if he were blind or halfwitted and must be forever shown the way.

  I’m sorry you have to rush away into the night. But we’ll do it another time. I just had Retha over for some tutoring and we decided to have a bite to eat. You know how things are.

  He smiled a quick nervous smile and gave Tyler a conspiratorial wink. Tyler looked away. Beyond the limits of the porchlight the streets lay already dark and slicklooking and empty. Yeah, Tyler said uncertainly, as if the way things were would forever be a mystery to him.

  Phelan waved an arm goodbye. His hand still clutched the book, and he looked down at it as if he had forgotten it.

  Tyler started down the steps. What are you going to read to her?

  Pardon me?

  Browning, I’ll bet. You’re going to read her Browning, aren’t you?

  For a moment Phelan’s face was empty and dead. You were never a petty person, Kenneth, he said. I wouldn’t start at this late date. You don’t have the flair for it, and it doesn’t become you.

  Goodbye, Mr. Phelan. He went on but at the gate he turned and looked as though he might say something further but Phelan had already gone back inside and closed the door. He stood for a moment in the line between light and dark as if he didn’t quite know where to go or what to do.

  Well, he thought. We tried the law and we tried the Poet’s Literary Tea Society. I guess I do it my damn self.

  Sutter was sitting under the walnut tree with the Coke crate cocked against it when the county car pulled into the drive and stopped. A deputy got out and crossed the yard and squatted before him like some great ungainly bird. He didn’t speak.

  Ezell, Sutter said after a time.

  Part of Ezell’s jaw had been shot away and surgically reconstructed and the plastic surgery hadn’t taken properlyso that he looked like a partially healed escapee from some mad scientist’s laboratory.

  I heard something you’d maybe be interested in, he finally said. There was a curious vibration to his voice, his disfigured jaw lent it the residual hum of some stringed instrument strummed gently and laid aside.

  Sutter was paring his nails with a switchblade knife. He did this in silence a time. Then he said, Well, are you going to tell me, or are we playin guessin games? You’d give some kind of a hint might make it easier. Just somethin to let me know what general area it pertains to.

  You remember that state prosecutor you got into it with at your trial? Schieweiler, from over at Ackerman’s Field? He’s trying to get you a new trial, and get it moved out of the county. Maybe at Ackerman’s Field.

  Hellfire. They can’t try me again on that. They done tried me on it. It done got thowed out.

  Well. They claimin jury tamperin. Perjury too, what I hear.

  Jury tamperin? I never tampered with a one of them son of a bitches. Never had to. They was already scared shitless.

  I just told you what come down. Like I always do. He’s workin with Sheriff Bellwether, over at Ackerman’s Field.

  Sutter took out a bag of Country Gentleman and rolled himself a cigarette. He lit it. I appreciate you warnin me, Ezell, he said, his voice slightly furred from the smoke.

  Ezell was silent a time. Finally he said, I’m takin a chance just tellin you. It’ll be my ass they ever catch me out here.

  Well. I said I appreciated it.

  Still the deputy sat. Sutter was tempted to just wait him out, to see would he sit hunkered there while darkness fell and be there still when dawn broke, his Adam’s apple bobbingevery time he swallowed.

  Was there somethin else?

  Well, Ezell buzzed. Last time you gave me a little somethin.

  Sutter took out his wallet. Peered inside. Just how little was this somethin I give you?

  Last time you give me forty.

  If I did it must of been good news, Sutter said. This only qualifies for twenty. Hell, by all rights you ought to be payin me.

  Ezell rose and took the proffered bill. By some sleight of hand it disappeared into his khaki pocket. Just whatever, he said. I’m always lookin out for you.

  He crossed the yard to the car and got in. Lifted a hand farewell and drove away. Sutter went on sitting. Everbody’s always lookin out for me, he said. He thought of Schieweiler. His bulging earnest eyes. Of Bellwether, the sheriff who wasn’t for sale. An anger that would not dissipate seethed somewhere inside his chest.

  All these son of a bitches, he said aloud.

  His old mama died in the madhouse, you know. Died huntin a butcher knife she swore she’d hid and couldn’t find. She’d get up in the mornin and hunt all day like a man puttin in a day’s work. She’d’a hunted all night if they hadn’t of strapped her in.

  They’ve always told that when Granville was a boy he woke up one time in the middle of the night and she was settin on the side of the bed watchin him and she was holdin a butcher knife. Said she was watchin him, but it was like shewasn’t really seein him. He laid awake the balance of the night waitin to see what she’d do, then he took to sleepin in the woods or in the barn. Just wherever. She’d set up all night like she was studyin about somethin. They took to hidin all the knives.

  Then finally she tried to kill old Squire Sutter. They kept her locked up awhile, and when she got to be more than they could handle, they put her in the crazyhouse. They was funny folks, them Sutters. The last time Granville even seen his mama was the day they come and hauled her off, and if he ever regretted not seein her before she died, he never said so.

  Then later on when the old man took sick and got down, I heard he was bad off and went down there. That old man was in a hell of a shape. He hadn’t been took care of. He hadn’t been shaved or washed since God knows when, and with Granville doing the cookin, no telling what he’d been eatin. If anything.

  Granville was grown then and about ready to leave the nest. He already had that look in his eyes. That look like he’s lookin not just at you but right on through you to whatever you’re standin in front of. He was settin on the front porch, I never heard tell of anybody catchin him workin. I told him I heard his daddy was bad off. Asked if they’d had the doctor out there. He said there wadn’t any need for a doctor nosin around his business. The way he said it, I could tell he meant me, too. Hell, I wadn’t nosin around. I always liked the old squire, even if he was funny turned. I told him they didn’t have one, his daddy would likely die. He just looked at me. Well, he said, if he lives, he lives. If he dies, he dies.

  I left and I didn’t know what to do. He put me on a spot. Iknowed I ort to send a doctor, and I’d always worry about it if I didn’t, but at the same time Granville was goin to hold it against me, and somewhere down the line I’d have cause to remember it.

  I sent old Doc Powers down there. That was before Pierce ever come here. Paid him out of my own pocket to go, but when he did Sutter was already dead. Granville was on the wing then, and there wadn’t nobody left to call him back. I knowed right then that Sutter was always goin to make people feel that if they done the right thing, like anybody would, a ticket was goin to be made on it, and sooner or later they’d have to pay it. I don’t like to feel like that myself, so I’ve steered clear of him.

  And never regretted the loss of his company.

  All day doves cried close to the house and all day Corrie moved in an impending sense of dread. Long a believer in signs and portents she felt this was one of the worst and signified a death in the family. Why don’t he come on? she wondered. She did everything about the house she could think of, and then she cooked his supper.

  The day drew on. She went out once to look up the road to see if the truck was c
oming. She stood in the packed earth yard. A hand to shade her eyes. Wanly pretty, slightly harried. Her shadow was long before her. She stood gazing up the road in an attitude of listening but there was nothing to hear nor did she see the truck. She waited for a moment in seeming uncertainty, and then she went back in.

  The house had seemed empty since the old man died. Hisghost hovered yet in dark corners; the air seemed forever resonant with his voice. Once she’d forgotten and set his place for supper. Before twilight she went about the house turning on lights, dispelling shadows though light still lay redly at the western windows. He didn’t come and he didn’t come. She went out again to listen for the truck, but there was nothing. Even the doves had fallen silent. Nothing she could name drew her eyes to the hillside. Black slashes of inkblack trees against a mottled red sky. An angular shadow, one among other less substantial shadows, moved as if in some curious way the weight of her eyes had given it life or at least the kinetic semblance of it, and it rose from where it had been crouching there in the twilight and ambled down the slope toward her. She stood motionless and mute. A hand to her mouth. When she saw the rifle, there was a moment not of apprehension but of relief, for she thought: a hunter. When the figure reached the fence it didn’t come around to the gate like anyone else would have done but simply stepped across it as if to show what he thought of fences and the folks who’d built them. He carried the rifle aloft across his chest like one fording deep waters, and when the light struck his face, she saw then it was Sutter. As with a terrible inevitability she’d known it had to be.

  Hidy, he said.

  She didn’t say anything. He skirted a planter made of an old cartire turned wrong side out and its edge scalloped and sat on the edge of the porch.

  I been waitin up there, he said. I been kinda holdin off thinkin he’d come, but I don’t think he’s goin to. He may have left plumb out. He may be across the Alabama line by now. He sat idly tapping the stock of his rifle against a booted foot. Just a weary traveler taking brief respite from the road. Soon to be off again.