by William Gay
Tyler judged it long past midnight when he finally admitted to himself that he was lost. There was nothing to distinguish left from right, forward from back. The terrain had flattened and he moved through some obscure and nameless bottomland. He thought he might eventually come upon a stream and follow it to either source or destination. At last hills began to rise on each side, and he was in a long, curving hollow, and he began to hear a curious familiar sound: a mournful highpitched keening, sourceless and bansheelike, and he knew instantly where he was. He felt almost faint with relief.
He went on up the hollow, moving more confidently now, seeing in his memory the lay of the land and the oblong fault in the earth and the stone arch with its narrow passageway, his exit from a nightmare. He could almost see the old man’s house in the lee of the hills, gleaming in a grail of sunlight, the shades darkening from melting frost.
In the spinning dervish of snow the curious harp went on playing its eerie onenote song, sides mounding whitely, flakes drifting into the dark abyss, falling and falling he wondered how far. He kicked the snow from the flat stone and lifted it aside and scratched the tobacco tin out of the earth and shoved it into the pocket of the overcoat. He went on into the channel between the rocks, then stopped abruptly and stoodstaring speculatively at the pit. Thinking perhaps of the old man sleeping. Dreaming an old man’s troubled dreams. Let an old man sleep, he thought. Some core of stubbornness hardened in him. You’ve got to play the hand that they deal you. And the ante’s never as high for the other fellow when you shove your coins across nor is the pot as large as when you yourself drag it in. After the last card comes down all you’ve got is yourself.
Working hurriedly, he began to dismantle the makeshift fence. Years seemed to have passed since he’d constructed it. He laid the rotten boards and deadfall branches across the narrow side of the pit six or eight inches apart. When he peered down once the snowflakes were vanishing as if they were being drawn into the black maw of the earth. When he had the opening covered save the dark cracks between the boards, he began to carry great armloads of snowy leaves and brush and spread them carefully and return for more, and all the while the falling snow was obscuring his work and the harp’s voice grew fainter and fainter. Ultimately the hole seemed not to exist, a thin skim of white already covering it. When the harp ceased the world went silent with it save the soft hush of the snowflakes in the trees.
He was satisfied but he kept dragging up more wood and he found the work warmed him. Into the lee of the rocks he dragged treetops and great slabs of lightningstruck whiteoak and thin silver husks of chestnut stumps and windblown branches, mounding it all till he thought he’d rival the old witchwoman at the Perrie place. When he’d dragged all he could find for a considerable circular distance around the chasm, he set about building a fire. Tinder was hard to come by but on the sheltered side of the bluff he pulled handfuls ofwiry, curling grass and such bits of moss as weren’t iced over, and he began to break the fine branches to length. In a natural hollow of the rock he piled tinder and a handful of the smallest sticks then fumbled out his snuffbox of matches and struck one. Cupping the feeble light in his hands he lit the tinder. By the orange glow his face was sharp and intent. The grass caught and burned in bright fluxing wires of fire. He fed it sticks and bits of moss and then larger branches. The fire in its stone bowl dished and wavered in the wind. He piled on more wood and waited for it to catch, crouched before it with his freezing hands outspread like some Neanderthal lost in the almost sexual wonder of heat. The fire rose, then roared and popped with the wind pumping up the hollow like a bellows. The flames fired the bluff orange and ebony shadows writhed across it fleeing windward as souls in torment are said to do and he just hunkered there for a time letting the heat soak into him.
When he’d warmed awhile and felt several degrees more human he got up and piled on wood until he’d relocated this woodpile atop the fire and within an hour he had an enormous bonfire roaring fullthroated up the natural flue of the rocks with showers of sparks cascading upward into the snow like antisnow and a standing tongue of flame burning away in the night like an enormous candle. There was a spreading black circle where the snow was retreating from the fire and he laid a fencepost within it and spread the coat over it as a makeshift but passable sleeping Tyler and went back into the stone arch to wait. There was no room to sit in the narrow passageway but it was relatively dry here and the bluff deflected the wind so ultimately he drowsed in exhaustion neither standing nor sitting, weary body bent to the contoursof the stone.
Perhaps he wasn’t coming. Perhaps he hadn’t even seen the fire, though Tyler didn’t know how that could be. Anyone abroad this night, however doubtful that might be, was going to see this fire. Maybe he had already come to Bookbinder’s. Crept into the old man’s lair and cut his throat where he lay. Perhaps he lay this moment in the old man’s bed, the old man’s goldrimmed glasses astride the blade of his nose and nightcap drawn down about his ears and his body burrowed beneath Bookbinder’s bloodsoaked covers like an enormous mole, a spurious Bookbinder awaiting Tyler’s arrival, teeth locked in a smarmy grin, the better to eat you with.
When Sutter came there was no sound save the wind. No rattling stones, nothing whatsoever to foretell his arrival, the upper body just loomed above the shelf of rock and at first he wasn’t sure there was anyone there, then the wind intensified and the fire flared and Sutter was climbing onto the table of stone slowly, ever so slowly, coming on implacably like the protagonist of a nightmare escaping whatever bonds separate dreams from reality. Hunkered now. Silently taking up the rifle. Coming erect painfully slowly, as if even the popping of kneejoints might awaken the sleeping Tyler. He stood leant forward studying the coat, and then he looked all about. Tyler was thinking the coat did not much resemble a sleeping human. Sutter turned about like a beast to catch whatever scent the night might bring. Rifle at the ready. Some old primal caution seemed in force here, he seemed to divine by some subtle alteration in the terrain or the atmosphere that the glade was just quit by another.
Come on, goddamn you, Tyler thought. Come on up these stairs. Take another drink and just put your foot on the nextstep. The door’s unlocked and this time I’m ready for you.
Sutter looked to the left. To the right. Crouched and with the rifle held before his midsection he stepped forward onto the juryrigged chasm and when he did the earth twisted and went from beneath him like a gallows trapdoor and he flung the rifle, clawing wildly for purchase.
The rifle was gone but Sutter himself seemed to defy gravity or perhaps the depths had decided they wanted no part of him for he clung desperately to a length of pole that had lodged beneath his armpits and his eyes were intent on the lip of the stone nearest him as if nothing else in the world existed. He hung on the pole as if resting until his strength came back. He was opening and closing his mouth in great gulps of icy air. Finally his eyes locked on Tyler’s.
Boy, he said. His breaths were coming in ragged gasps. Tyler could see ice frozen in his hair and eyebrows. Cold, Sutter said. Feathery snowflakes were cascading past him into the earth and they lay in his hair without melting.
Tyler was looking about for a weapon. He took up a length of lumber and stood holding it.
Listen, Sutter said. There’s money in my pocket. Better than seven thousand dollars. You can have it, just let me get over to you where you can give me a hand.
Tyler waited with the board clutched like a ball bat.
She ain’t dead, Sutter said. When them doctors come they brought her to. All she was was knocked out. And if you hadn’t took to the deep pineys we’d of all had a big laugh about it. Likely she ain’t even got a headache by now.
You’re a goddamned liar, Tyler said. She was dead before I left her and Fenton Breece has got her somewhere.
This money’s in my right front pocket. I can feel it burningmy leg. It’s yours if you want it. We can get a lot more out of that crazy undertaker.
He extended a han
d, and Tyler stood a moment in indecision. Sutter seemed to sense this lack of resolve and hunched himself along the length of pole.
Tyler suddenly swung the board. It struck Sutter’s outstretched hand so hard Sutter swung like a pendulum, the pole swaying. He shook his head and came on anyway, his eyes closed and face lowered onto his arms to evade the flailing plank. When Sutter finally looked up his eyes looked far away as if whatever lived behind them were shrinking, getting so tiny you could hardly see it, and blood was running into his eyes.
Tyler was halfcrying. He swung the board again and Sutter’s head jerked sidewise and he slipped and caught by his hands with the pole bouncing up and down and Tyler was sobbing raggedly then and beating at just the hands, the flesh peeling away whitely like the flesh of a corpse and the knuckles beaten to shreds of flesh and bone, and finally he threw away the board and kicked the end of the pole dementedly until the pole slipped past the stone edge and tilted and vanished from sight with Sutter’s hands still locked desperately about it.
Tyler stood leaning, peering into the chasm cautiously, halfthinking Sutter might be clinging to the stone walls like a spider, refusing to acknowledge even the laws of gravity and physics but he was not. There was only the mocking dark drawing off the light and snowflakes sifting down into silence.
He began to kick the rest of the lumber and poles into the hole and all the while the pastoral snow was sifting down and when he’d finished the lips of the crevice were alreadywhitening and the earth had resumed its eerie keening.
He sat dully before the fire. He seemed touched by a kind of numbness. He took out the tin of pictures and opened it and sat looking at them dispassionately. He began to feed the pictures to the fire. Halfcrazy he thought the fire might not even take them but it did. Their edges curled and darkened and the perverse images bubbled then burned with little blue flames. He burned them one by one, staring at them as emotionlessly as the camera’s eye had. One by one they went to a pale gray ash that rose on the updrafts, and they were as clean and pure now as the falling snow that obscured them.
A soulless and unpromising dawn had broken before the motley band of volunteers reached the whistling well. Their number was much diminished by laggards and dropouts and they were redeyed and weary and had been wandering hopelessly lost throughout the night and they were scratched from briars and branches and had fallen more times than they cared to think about. Their feet were wet and nighfrozen and their dungarees seized thighhigh with leggings of ice, and few among them were happy.
The fire had burned to a smouldering mound of ash. A driving snow still fell and these folk clambered calfdeep through it to hunker before the smoking ash. Son of a bitch, one of them said. That’s the story of this whole damn mess. You get there right after they left or just before they get there. Who do you reckon it was here?
Bellwether didn’t say anything. He was looking about, but everything save the mounded ash was pristine white withtrackless snow. Bellwether was nonetheless studying the glade as though there were a tale to be told here could he but decipher it. A few bedraggledlooking birds were looking about forlornly for food.
Old man Bookbinder’s place is right down the ridge, the man said. He might of seen somethin.
Maybe, Bellwether said.
Want to go down there and see? Bet it’s warm. And it’s just possible old man Bookbinder might own a coffee pot.
It sounds better than bein poked in the eye with a stick, Bellwether said.
The men rose. Their breath plumed palely. One of them stood looking warily down into the pit. He didn’t get too close. Hell of a thing to be just out here open in the woods, he said. Without a fence around it or nothin. A man could damn sure get his ticket punched he didn’t watch where he was goin.
Bellwether looked down. Yes he could, he said.
Tyler came out of the pines just after good day and went down the slope cautiously for the snow now wore a coat of clear ice and he’d lost count of the times he’d fallen. The woods behind him lay seized in a white surreal glaze, and he’d moved through a continuous gauntlet of tree branches breaking and tops splitting off with sounds like random and sporadic gunfire. Once in the night he’d been on a road and come upon a highvoltage wire trees had broken down. All alone there in the dark the wire was leaping and writhing serpentlike, spitting arcs of blue fire against the fluorescent snow like some forerunning tendril crept up from Hell. There was analien beauty to the dancing blue wire and he gave it a wide berth and went on.
He looked gaunted and thin, the flesh drawn tight over the sharp cheekbones, the eyes just smoky bores in his grim face. He came down the slope sliding cedar to cedar.
When he reached the point where he’d last left the Breece house there was no house there and he stood for a moment in stunned wonder. Secretly he’d have doubted the ability of fire to negate this symbol of copious wealth but the evidence lay all about him. Enormous piles of unidentifiable rubble all cloaked alike in ice. So much. Tens of thousands of fallen bricks and the charred remains of appliances and rising dizzyingly out of the ashes a brick chimney and high in the air the third-floor fireplace hearth suspended like a fireplace for a curious race of giant folk or aerie for the birds to quitclaim. Atop the chimney some dark bird already crouched uncertainly as if it had no other place to be, then lifted itself with slow strokes of the wings and was gone. Tyler looked about. Trees had shrouded the house and the near side of them was blackened and burned away. The shrouding trees looked like the container the fire had come in.
He sat down and laid a hand to the ashes but the ashes as well wore a film of ice. He stood up and made to go but like the bird he seemed to have no other place to be and he squatted in the epicenter of this holocaust like its sole grim survivor and when he’d rested for a time he rose and went on.
When he went out it was a Saturday and he didn’t know how many days had passed since Sutter had taken him for a walkdown by the tie yard nor did he want to sort through these past days to get a count on them. The weather moderated and what snow remained lay in dirty melting skifts. The road too was muddy and he kept skirting the deeper areas of mud with a thought for the new shoes he wore. He carried a tan suitcase and it as well was newlooking and cheap. A pickup went by once but didn’t stop, and Tyler took to the ditch to avoid the tireslung sluice of muddy water. Two large handpainted signs adorned the side of the truck proclaiming jesus jesus, but to Tyler it just looked like some old farmer making his Saturday pilgrimage to town.
Where the dirt road intersected the highway there was a tiny clapboard church bowered with rose briars set back in the corner the roads made and a graveyard with toilers at work, and he saw that the dead were still being replevied from the earth. He glanced once, then turned away, striding on toward the blacktop. Before he reached it a voice halted him.
One old man, two young. The old man watched, and the other two, sons perhaps, flailed at the earth with pick and shovel. It was the old man who’d hailed him and the old man himself coming gingerly through the nettles. One of the younger men stood shovel in hand watching him go and he called Pa once but the old man just went on.
Tyler stood awkwardly holding the suitcase and scanning down the wavering blacktop for traffic.
Ain’t this a hell of a mess? the old man asked. Old man with a caved and ravaged face, illfitting discolored teeth.
What?
All this mess. Granville Sutter killin that family back in the Harrikin and slippin through all them laws to Alabama or wherever. Crazy undertakers buryin men and womentogether and such. Did you ever hear of such crazy goins-on?
Tyler said he never had.
And the son of a bitch still alive in a hospital for lunatics in Memphis. Had a dead girl with him, I heard. Least they finally got her in the ground so’s she can rest. Who knows what all he’s done ain’t come to light yet. Son of a bich layin up eatin three meals a day and sleepin good at night. He ever gets out of that asylum and comes back around here, somebody’ll put
him out of his misery. I may do it myself if my health holds up. If I’m gone these boys here will. We diggin up Martha to see if anything’s wrong. We supposed to let the state do it, but the way I see it, it ain’t none of the state’s business.
Tyler turned to look. All these latterday Lazaruses, all these tawdry homemade resurrections. One of the young men fixed him with a cold cat’s look and turned his face and spat then went back to work. Tyler turned to go but the old man knotted his fingers in the fabric of Tyler’s coatsleeve and stayed him.
I think we owe em that, don’t you? All we can do for em. I know I’d hate to meet em up yonder and have to explain why they was done so shoddy. Ain’t that the way you think?
What Tyler really thought was that the dead were so absolutely beyond anything the living might do for them it was almost past comprehension and he had no commitment to meet anyone anywhere. He feared that beyond the quilted gray satin of the undertaker’s keep there was only a world of mystery that bypassed the comprehension of men and did not even take them into consideration. A world of utter darkness and the profoundest of silences.
Yet he said none of this. The old man carried death on his breath like a harbinger of the grave and his grip on Tyler’sarm was fierce and clawlike.
Yes, Tyler said, that’s the way I always thought.
Yet if there was only the three score and ten allotted that seemed to him no small thing and it seemed not unfair. He’d used up little of his and the world was wide and its possibilities infinite and all it took to get there was a highway that was free for the taking.
