Provinces of Night: A Novel

by William Gay

  When he opened them again she was standing before him with a squat glass of icecubes in one hand and a decanter of amber fluid in the other. Are you a drinking man, Mr. Albright? she asked.

  He was eyeing the decanter. I been known to, he said.

  She poured two inches or so into the glass. Gene would never drink anything but this Kentucky bourbon, she said. It’s supposed to be mighty smooth.

  He sipped the bourbon and slowly began to be warmed within and without. He needed to be off and gone while he was still feeling good about the progress he was making in squaring himself with the widow Woodall, but he lingered over the bourbon and she seemed ever ready to replace each sip as he removed it from the glass.

  Supper will be ready in just a moment, she said. You’ve worked so hard around here recently I wouldn’t feel right about things sending you off without feeding you.

  He protested weakly about getting a sandwich at home but she would not hear of it and presently he was ushered into a dining room where on a gleaming cherry table service was laid for two and a crystal chandelier lit the room with a pale diluted light. When he was seated at the table with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other she dished up grilled steaks garnished with fried onions and mushrooms, baked potatoes dripping with butter and sprinkled with chives, a crisp garden salad.

  There’ll be pie later, she said, attendant at his shoulder.

  Pie later, Albright thought in a bourbon-diffused wonder, slicing into his steak. It seemed to fall away in tender strips before the actual touch of the knife and at its center it was the exact shade of pink he would have chosen had he a say in the matter. He sliced off a section and chewed. He closed his eyes and for once seemed at a loss for words to express himself.

  I can tell you’re pleased, she said. She had seated herself at the other end of the table and spread a napkin over her lap and was forking salad onto her plate.

  It’s the beat of anything I ever put in my mouth, Albright said.

  Gene couldn’t stand the sight of me and he grew to loathe my touch, but he never had a derogatory word to say about my cooking or my money.

  Albright could not come up with a fitting response to this and so kept on eating. More bourbon was served during the meal and Albright grew expansive, regaling her with his adventures in the taxi business, his brief career as a metal crimper.

  When they had finished the apple pie and cheese he arose when she did and went back into the living room. Albright was making ready to go but she urged him to linger on.

  I have so little company, she said. Most of the friends we had were Gene’s friends and seldom come around. And of course Gene was very busy, he had his mistresses.

  Albright was seated in the easy chair without quite knowing how it happened. One moment he was eyeing the door and the next he was leaned back into the soft upholstery and she was scooting a hassock in front of the chair.

  Would you like to watch television?

  No, he said, I’ve seen it before. All them gray folks bouncin around makes me nervous.

  Gene bought it to watch the wrestling on, she said. I’d rather read a book, wouldn’t you?

  Mmmm, Albright said.

  I usually have a cup of coffee or a little cognac after the evening meal, Mrs. Woodall said. Which would you prefer?

  I’m not much of a coffee drinker, Albright said.

  He sipped the cognac and decided he’d never had anything like it. He was already rehearsing in his mind the story he was going to tell Fleming Bloodworth about this and he was searching his mind for a way to describe the bouquet the cognac had when he lifted the glass to drink.

  She refilled their glasses and seated herself across from him in a bent-wood rocker. Albright was noticing that she had done something to her hair. He did not know what, but it looked somehow softer, less like a lacquered wig. Perhaps it was the cognac but she was looking considerably less froglike and more like a kind, well-educated woman.

  I don’t understand your obligation to Gene, she said. But these last few days I’ve been thinking how rare a quality honor is. You felt an obligation, financial or otherwise, and you’re honoring it the only way you know how, with the sweat of your labors. Honor is a very attractive quality in a man; it distresses me to admit that Gene did not possess it. Not an iota of it, or any empty space where honor had ever been. When I met Gene I was teaching English in a college up in East Tennessee. My father was well off, a well respected man in that part of the state. Gene was hired to do some work for him. He was just an itinerant carpenter then, building decks, pouring concrete sidewalks. I fell in love with him. He seduced me and married me, which I admit required very little effort on his part, and in no time he was in the construction business. Truth to tell he was good at it. All he needed was a start. I was that start; he betrayed me almost immediately, and he’s betrayed me a thousand times over.

  Through a shifting cognac haze Albright wondered where this was going. Why she was telling him. How he was supposed to respond to it. He sipped cognac and gave occasional sympathetic and encouraging nods.

  It made me bitter and meanspirited, she said, refilling the brandy snifter she held. A man seduced me and used my money to change himself from a jackleg carpenter who did not even possess his own wheelbarrow into a successful businessman with a literal harem of women. Then he refused to even share my bed. What would be your opinion of a man like that?

  I’d say he was a worthless, coldhearted son of a bitch.

  She nodded. He was that and more, she said. I’ve been admiring your hair in the light. Do you mind if I touch it?

  What?

  I’ve been looking at your hair. Admiring it. It looks like spun gold. Is it all right if I touch it?

  Why Lord yes, Albright said. You help yourself.

  She rose and ran the fingers of her left hand through Albright’s tangle of white curls. Then she just stood for a time with her palm resting on his scalp. She eased her fingers gently out of his hair and drank the remaining cognac in her glass. She crossed through a wide arched opening into the kitchen and he could hear her rinsing the glass at the sink.

  When she came back into the room she paused before him. When Gene died I was his sole heir, she said. I inherited his business, all its assets, all its liabilities. I also inherited whatever outstanding obligations were owed the company, or to Gene himself. I must apologize to you, I’ve drunk more brandy than I’m accustomed to and it always goes to my head. I’m going to bed. You’re an attractive man, Mr. Albright, in your own way, and I’d like you to stay the night, if you’d care to. My bedroom is down the hall and to the right, and I’ll be in it. If you decide to stay, I’d assume you’d want to bathe. There are towels and soap in all the bathrooms, just wander around until you find one.

  She was watching him with something that was almost amusement. Whatever you decide, I am hereby absolving you of all responsibility toward any debt owed Gene Woodall or Woodall Construction Company.

  She turned and went. He heard a door open, a door close. Goddamn, he said. He set the glass aside and sat for a time staring at the dead television screen. What to do. Absolved of all responsibilities had an official, free-and-clear ring to it, but there seemed a question of authority here. Some things went beyond wills and heirs and lawyers.

  At length he arose and went in search of a bathroom. A man who could climb a shaky forty-foot ladder ought to be able to find a bathroom, he thought, even in a house of this size.

  They lay in a comfortable semidarkness. The windows were black and Albright could see snowflakes listing against them. Hear a winter wind keening beneath the cornice. Lying there beside her Albright was beset with a bleak postcoital despair. He felt that all he had accomplished had been for nothing. All the chipping, scraping, sanding had been negated and he was deeper in debt than ever. He was driving Gene Woodall’s pickup and had eaten his food, drunk his special bourbon and an inordinate amount of fine cognac. Now he had lain with his wife, and there was no way he
could ever pay off such an insurmountable obligation.

  Finally he told her the story of the crimper. Of the legal papers, the judgment. Lastly of the fifty-dollar curse Brady Bloodworth had levied that had resulted in a plane being so destroyed you could have packed it away in a shoe box.

  She lay propped on an elbow listening to all this with an attentive look on her face. When he had finished she said, And you got all that for fifty dollars? I wonder why sand is so much more expensive.

  What?

  Let me describe a hypothetical situation. Are you familiar with the word hypothetical?

  No.

  She told him. Then she said, Let’s hypothesize a woman with a grievance. A bitterness. Suppose further that there is another person with a grievance, a mechanic, perhaps, who has a great deal of familiarity with airplane engines. What makes them function well, what makes them not function at all. If a sum of money changed hands, say a thousand dollars, a substance might be added to the fuel tanks. An airplane will not run on sand.

  They Lord God, Albright said.

  Of course this is all hypothetical, she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. I just thought it might make you feel better. Now go to sleep.

  Albright lay quite still until she was asleep and then he eased out of bed. Dressed himself rapidly, found his shoes. He went down the hall and through the living room. He opened the front door and went onto the porch. A wind was whipping snow in a white dervish and the windshield and sidewindows of the pickup truck were covered with a layer of ice. The wind mourned coldly in the bare tree branches, windbrought ice sharp as mice’s teeth stung his face.

  When he crawled back into bed she stirred sleepily against him. Where’d you go, she asked.

  Albright was settling himself into the warm covers. Just got up to make sure all the doors was locked, he said.

  BELLWETHER SAT looking at his shoes. They were military low-quarters shined to a rich black gloss. Bellwether had been in the war just long enough to get shot and win a medal and then he was discharged. He was shot almost immediately, as if his assassin had been waiting on him, standing at the ready with his piece already cocked, waiting for the paperwork to be filled out. Along with the medal Bellwether had acquired a military bearing, a military neatness. If he had slogged through the entire war perhaps he would have lost this along the way but he had not. He had formed the habit of spitshining his shoes and civilian life had not broken him of this habit.

  Just what kind of deal is this he’s cooked up? Bloodworth asked.

  Something pretty sorry, I guess, Bellwether said. It gets pretty complicated with the legalese but what it boils down to is that he’s claiming you’re incompetent. That you’re a danger to yourself and a danger to others. He wants to put you in some kind of a home, and he’s petitioning the court to be made your guardian and have a power of attorney.

  The old man seemed only to hear the word home. A crazyhouse? Hellfire. He’s crazier than I am.

  Well, I’m not braggin right now about my own sanity. I’ve got no business even telling you this in the first place. Or even being out here, as a matter of fact. But I knew you when I was a boy, and you’ve always been square with me. I think any man deserves a warning. They were out there at the courthouse talking to some people from the state and I nosed around and found out what was going on.

  I just may show some folks how much danger I can be to other people. Wait a minute. You said they. Who else is in this? Not Warren.

  You ever heard of a fellow named Coble?

  Well I’ll be damned, he said. He grinned ruefully. The sky was black with chickens coming home to roost, he could see them settling about the trees.

  And you can just forget about this business of being a danger to folks. Are we right clear on that?

  The old man was silent a time, thinking all this over. How can I fix this? he finally asked.

  It was cold in the trailer and Bellwether kept thinking the old man might get up and stir the fire but Bloodworth seemed not to notice so finally he rose himself and took down the poker from where it hung on a nail behind the heater. There was wood stacked along the wall and he guessed the boy had done that. Bellwether raked the coals toward the front of the heater and laid sticks of split oak atop them and closed the stove door. There was a small window above the juryrigged flue for the stovepipes and he stood for a moment looking out at the day. Small dark birds he didn’t have a name for but just called snowbirds foraged the ice with an air of unfocused agitation. Beyond the treeline the sky looked the color of blued metal and as cold.

  It’s beginning to spit snow again, Bellwether said.

  Let it come, Bloodworth said. Ass deep to a tall Indian. I’m cozy as a badger in its den. Young boys to tote wood in for me, officers of the law to load up the heatin stove.

  It strikes me you’re taking this a little light for a man puts as much value on his freedom as you always did.

  You never did tell me how I could fix it.

  I don’t know that you can fix it. You need to get Warren up here on the double. Trouble is, he hasn’t been around here like Brady has. Brady claims he’s been watchin you. Claims you shot one of his dogs and waved a gun around threatening him. Coble told them his wellworn story about the Black Angus cows. All about the preachin and the babtizin. You might have thought that was funny at the time, but it’s come back on you like a bad check.

  A fool is just so hard to resist, Bloodworth said. How about that boy? He’ll speak up for me.

  The way the law looks at it he’s a minor. I could speak up for you myself, but I’m not your next of kin. That’s who the judge issuing papers is going to be listenin to, and right now that’s Brady. He’s your next of kin, and you seem to have pissed him off pretty good.

  Then if it’s up to him I’m in a hell of a shape.

  I guess you are. All I can think of to do is call Warren for you. Do you know how I’d do that?

  He’s got a telephone. He lives in a place called Town Creek, Alabama.

  Bellwether wrote that down. He put on his hat and adjusted it. I’ll let you know what I find out. Any papers’ll be served through my office.

  I appreciate it, Bloodworth said, Whether I acted like it or not.

  Bellwether nodded. He had the door open and a foot on the top step when Bloodworth thought, Florida. Hellfire.

  Hey.

  Bellwether turned.

  What if I had a different next of kin?

  How’s that again?

  If you’d do me one favor I don’t guess you’d balk at two.

  I probably wouldn’t.

  I need a telegram sent to Little Rock. He had found paper and was rummaging in a drawer for a pencil. I’ve got me a plan to knock Brady’s legal papers into a cocked hat.

  What are you doing, calling up the reserves?

  Two chances is twice as good as one by my arithmetic, Bloodworth said, handing Bellwether the paper. Let me give you some money to pay for this.

  When Bellwether closed the door and went down the steps the day was colder yet and the yard beneath its layer of ice lay in frozen whorls. He could hear sleet in the trees again and it rattled onto the roof of the cruiser like shot and lay there without melting.

  WHAT WOKE the old man was not the engine but the long drawnout sound of wheels slurring on snow and ice. When the noise stopped he came fully awake. The car had halted before the trailer but he could still hear the engine, idling now, a car door closed.

  Visitin hours are about by God over, Bloodworth thought. Since the night he’d killed Brady’s dog he had kept the pistol beneath his pillow instead of in the guitar case and now he slid it out. He had come to believe that before this was over he was going to have to shoot somebody. Brady, Coble, who knew. Just start with dogs and work up.

  He heard footsteps on the ice and just as someone pounded on the door death came swiftly into the trailer like a physical presence. It came swiftly up the steps and turned the knob and so through the door, crossing the lino
leum with a sure firm footstep toward where the old man sat on the bed with the pistol in his hand. Death’s presence was overpowering in the tiny trailer, its weight on Bloodworth’s chest was such that he could hardly breathe, he had to struggle against it to get his shoes on, take up a heavy wool peacoat from the night table. Long ago the old man had been helping to dig a grave in a family plot on Grinders Creek and they were inadvertently digging the woman’s grave too near her husband’s casket and Bloodworth’s shovel had disappeared into the rotten wood and the smell that had risen out of this ancient and sacred earth had been the same odor that saturated the trailer and Bloodworth had stood with the shovelhandle in his hands breathing death in a kind of appalled outrage, thinking, so this is what it amounts to, this is what it all comes down to.

  He was at the back door when the pounding came again, moving in a kind of panic, some primitive instinct for survival demanding that he be somewhere else, anywhere else but here. He slid the pistol into the peacoat pocket and put on his hat and took up the stick from where it leaned against the doorjamb. He eased the door open and went cautiously down the metal steps. He closed the door soundlessly and felt the lock click and stepped into the yard.

  It was cloudy but there was a pale glow rising from the icy earth. He could feel snowflakes melting on his cheeks and hear their soft faint hush falling into the leaves. He moved as swiftly as he could while still maintaining his balance toward the arbor of vines and trees where the line of darkness lay like the border of a foreign country he could slip across and vanish into. He was listening for the back door to open and death to come down the steps after him but all he heard was the idling of the car in his mind, a long low hearse with the rear door sprung open, a faceless man in a black coat standing on the doorstep with a folded paper in his hand.

  He paused only a moment to catch his breath in the clearing where the sitting room was. He could see the pale snowy outlines of the lawn chairs. He angled toward the slope of thickening woods, with only a vague idea of where he was going; he figured it was Brady at the door delivering another load of craziness and he had no need for it. It occurred to him that he might cut through the woods and come out on the road and into the field where the cedar row led to the house. If he was at the cedar row there was no way he could miss the house, even in the dark. Besides, a light would be burning, he could almost see the yellow light flaring across the smooth icy field.