Black Mountain Breakdown

by Lee Smith

  “What’s going on up there?” Lorene calls, and Crystal answers, “Nothing.”

  Crystal hears the doorbell when it rings, but she isn’t ready to go down even though she knows that Mack is uncomfortable with Lorene, who won’t even give him the time of day. But he can stand it, Crystal figures.

  Still looking in the mirror, she ties the shawl around her waist so that it hangs softly down all around, a peasant skirt, and she hunches her shoulders and gazes sorrowfully at herself in the mirror. The Little Match Girl. She looks so pitiful she almost cries. Then she piles the whole shawl up loosely on top of her head, steadying it with one hand, and draws herself up proud and stares arrogantly into the mirror, an untouched native with necklaces of bone and teeth, carrying some exotic burden: don’t touch me, swine.

  “Crystal?” Lorene calls. “Mack is here.”

  “Coming.” Crystal takes the shawl off her head and puts it back around her shoulders. It sure is tacky. She studies herself in the mirror, applies lipstick again and blots it. She practices looking down and then raising her eyelids slowly like Audrey Hepburn. She brushes her hair.

  “Crystal!” Lorene sounds mad now, so Crystal puts her brush on the dresser and runs downstairs, where Mack still stands by the door, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other.

  Lorene purses her lips when she sees the shawl, but says nothing except “I expect you home by twelve.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mack says and then they leave, running down the steps and across the sweet-smelling side yard, freshly mowed—Odell came and did it for Lorene that morning—to Mack’s pickup truck. That grass smell always makes Crystal feel drunk.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Mack says, trying to catch at the flying fringe of her shawl, but Crystal won’t wait. She runs across the grass and climbs up into the cab and then locks both doors and collapses, giggling, on the seat.

  “Come on, now,” Mack says. “Open the door, Crystal. I left the keys in there.”

  Crystal grabs them out of the ignition and jingles them at him behind the glass.

  “Damn it, Crystal, open the door!”

  Behind Mack’s black hair, Crystal sees the Venetian blind slit open in the McClanahans’ living room, and somebody’s eyes, Agnes’s or Babe’s or their mama’s, come peering out. She opens the door and hands Mack the key.

  “Shit, Crystal,” Mack says, gunning the truck back out of the drive.

  Crystal grins. Beyond the hanging dice on the rearview mirror she sees the Presbyterian church and the Esso station, and then they pass them, and she sees Bob’s Drive-In Restaurant on the left around the bend, and the railroad track across the river, and the pale-green mountain on beyond that. Crystal rolls her window down and the wind comes in warm and sweet, springtime. One of the songs that Mack’s band sings is “When It’s Springtime in Alaska, It’s Forty Below.” Crystal starts giggling again. They’re driving upriver on 460, out of town.

  “What’s got into you?” Mack asks, taking his eyes off the road to look at Crystal. He takes a sip from the beer he has in his crotch on the seat of the truck.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I just feel good, I guess.”

  “You want one of these?” Mack holds up his beer.

  “I don’t think so,” Crystal says politely. She always refuses the beer politely, as if she might have one later but not right now, and this amuses Mack. He has never known her to drink a beer. Probably because her old man died of it, he thinks. But Crystal never talks about her old man either, so he has no way of knowing for sure. There’s a lot of things it’s hard to know for sure about Crystal. Mack has been dating her off and on now for about a year, over a year now, and he still can’t figure her out. The first time, she called him, and he still can’t get over that one. He never would have called her up. He couldn’t believe it when Buddy said the phone was for him. He couldn’t believe who it was. Then when he went to pick her up, he couldn’t believe how she acted either: she was all over him immediately, like somebody from up in the hollers. Mack had borrowed one of Buddy’s good shirts for that date: he had thought they would go to the movies. They never got there, though. Mack still couldn’t believe it how Crystal had been. She really wanted it, or seemed to, and he gave it to her right there in the truck parked on the high road above the coke ovens, telling her to slow down all the time, trying to watch out for the troopers he knew patrolled that road. He had some rubbers in the glove compartment, but he couldn’t get one on. He didn’t have time because Crystal wanted it too bad. Or did she? That was one he would never figure out. Because then she cried all the way home and wouldn’t even let him touch her, much less kiss her good night, got out and slammed the door and ran straight into her house. Mack was so torn up that he went back up to Buddy’s and lined up two six packs of Coke bottles under the porch light and shot every one of them with Buddy’s rifle, not caring who heard or who came, until Buddy came out and got the gun away from him and told him to get on into the house. But Crystal had called him again, and then finally he had called her; it wasn’t what you would call regular, but it went on. “If I was you, I’d just relax and go to it,” Buddy had told him once. “You don’t know what’s in a woman’s mind.”

  Mack looks over at her now, all wrapped up in that purple thing on the seat. “What you doing away off over there?” he says.

  “Just thinking. How do you like this?” She spreads out her arms in the shawl.

  “Come over here a little bit where I can see.”

  Crystal scoots over closer and he fingers the shawl, all the tiny careful stitching. “That’s real pretty,” Mack says. “Somebody make that for you?”

  “Yes.” Crystal is caught up in some secret delight. “You really like it?”

  “I think it’s beautiful,” Mack says.

  “It is beautiful,” Crystal says quickly. “It is very beautiful.” Then she grows quiet on the seat. He can feel her drawing back into herself like she does sometimes, and her good mood is going away.

  “C’mere,” Mack says. He pulls her over closer and puts his arm around her and she’s all up against him now. Crystal puts her head back and closes her eyes, smelling him, some old tacky hair oil he uses and cigarettes, and Mack kisses her hair and her forehead and nearly runs off the road. Crystal sighs and stretches and feels better. She curls her feet up under her on the seat. They have passed Royal City, they have passed Vansant, they have passed the big Island Creek tipple all lit up. They’re on their way up to Buddy’s, but Buddy won’t be there. He’s working the three-to-eleven shift at the Harmon mine.

  Mack flicks on the radio, which he listens to all the time. He picks up Cincinnati and they get Merle Haggard, and Mack whistles along right next to Crystal’s ear. She never knew anybody could whistle like Mack can. It’s like his mouth is some kind of a musical instrument or maybe some kind of a bird. It’s beautiful the way Mack can whistle, and his breath is lifting her hair. Outside it’s full dark now. They can see lights way up in the mountains every now and then, little houses where people live. Crystal wonders who lives up there and what they’re doing right now: what do people do? She sighs and gets closer to Mack.

  He pulls off 460 and turns up the holler where he and Buddy live, a holler without even a name to it, and then bounces along the dirt road and parks in front of Buddy’s little shotgun house. Crystal stumbles over a beer can, going up the steps. Once she dreamed that Mack lived in a giant beer can, she remembers. Well, he might as well. But even if she has dreams like that, she doesn’t care—she would rather be here than anywhere else, and she would rather be with Mack than anyone else. With Mack she feels like she can be herself, whatever that means! she thinks, grinning, stumbling again on the steps. It means she can wear a purple shawl if she wants to, for one thing. It means she can fuck him if she wants to, which she does. Oh yes. Mack holds the screen door open for Crystal to go into the house.

  Buddy’s house is nothing: peeling linoleum all over the floor, streaked paint inside, o
ld broken furniture piled up any old place. Buddy had a woman, but she left him, so he doesn’t keep house very much anymore. Mack says that Buddy still thinks his woman will come back, but Mack doesn’t think she will. Mack says she’s been gone too long. The only decent thing in the whole tiny house is a big color TV in the corner; but outside, behind the house, is Buddy’s boat, a shiny metallic green fiberglass MonArk with an 85-horsepower motor, the boat inexplicably named the Bud-E, stenciled in white on its flank. Buddy keeps the Bud-E shined up to gee all the time, even though there’s no water for miles around. He has to haul it all the way to South Holston Lake to get it into the water.

  “It ain’t the water anyway,” Mack told her once. “Buddy don’t give a damn about water. He just likes to work on the boat.”

  Now Mack disappears back into the kitchen to get another beer and Crystal goes into the bedroom and sits down on the mattress without turning on the light. The bed takes up the whole room. Mack sleeps in the front room, she knows, on the couch. Three rooms and a bathroom is all there is to Buddy’s house, and Buddy sleeps here. Crystal sits on the edge of the mattress and feels dirt under her fingers; she lets her shawl drop down on the floor.

  “Get out of here!” The kitchen door slams and she knows Mack is putting the dog out. The dog has mange and he doesn’t have a name either. Nothing has a name up here. Crystal doesn’t even know what Buddy’s woman was named: all that’s left of her is one bottle of Evening in Paris perfume, which still sits on the back of the toilet. Only Buddy and Mack have names, but Mack doesn’t have his father’s last name or even know it. His mother, Buddy’s sister, gave him her last name—Stiltner—and that’s all she gave him before she went up to Detroit to find a new life that didn’t include any baby. Mack lived with his grandmother until she died, then with some cousins he didn’t get along with, now with Buddy. Crystal brushes off Buddy’s bed. Buddy killed a man one time, she knows. A long time ago. Crystal met Buddy once and he was smaller, slighter than she had thought he would be; Buddy has only three fingers on his left hand.

  Mack stands in the doorway, blocking the light. His shirt is unbuttoned now and hangs loose around his jeans. He’s taking off the jeans as he moves forward; he pushes her back on the bed. Crystal closes her eyes and he gets off her clothes and gets on her. She comes before he does. She can come sometimes at home just thinking about him. Then they lie on the mattress all tangled up, not talking, and the fresh air from outside blows in across them as softly as breath.

  Mack still can’t believe it. There is nothing as nice as a nice girl. Every one he has ever had before Crystal wanted to put her clothes back on right away, or they wanted you to say you loved them, or they tried to make you feel bad about it, or they were too crazy to care. Mack used to worry about Crystal getting pregnant. Now he doesn’t care. He wishes she would. Then they’d have to get married.

  “What’s the matter?” she asks now, because Mack gets up and goes over to stand by the window.

  Mack doesn’t answer. He feels around on the floor for his shirt and gets a cigarette and lights it, and in the moment when the match flares, Crystal can see his face, all dark and surly, his light-colored eyes looking mean in the glare.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she says. “Come on back in the bed.”

  “I don’t know,” Mack says. Crystal has to strain to hear him because he’s facing the window away from her. “What I told you before, Crystal. It’s just gone bad. I don’t know, it’s no good anymore, honey. I’ve got to get out of here.” Because except for Crystal it’s all gone now and this house and the mountains are pinning him in and he knows he has to get out of here and away. He’s been here too long already.

  “But what about your band?” Crystal says.

  Mack laughs. “Some band,” he says. “It’s not any good anyway, you know that. What do you expect—a butcher and somebody that works in a furniture store and then poor old Jimmy. He doesn’t do nothing, I reckon.”

  “I think you all are real good,” Crystal says. And it’s true, they can get jobs whenever they can get together to take them, at Hazel’s Blue Light up at the state line or at the fire department benefit or anyplace.

  “No. The band is not any good. The band is shit,” Mack says. After a while he says, “I’m good, though.”

  Crystal leans down and gets her shawl and puts it over her. “Play me something,” she says, knowing he will anyway, he always does, and Mack puts on his jeans and gets his guitar, the only good thing he owns besides the dobro that belonged to his grandmother, and lays it on the bed in its case and takes it out. Mack is real careful about his guitar. He does “Honeycomb.” He does “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” real slow, as good as Hank Williams. Mack’s singing voice has got something in it that Crystal can’t identify although she’s thought and thought about it, something like a searchlight. Only she would never tell him that. He’s not used to girls saying things like that: he’d think she’s crazy. He thinks she’s crazy now. Crystal lies back under the lilac shawl and lets the air come over her and over Mack playing, and some light from the front room comes in and across the bed.

  “Here’s one I wrote about you,” Mack says, hitting an A-minor chord, and he sings,

  “Angel face, angel hair,

  Spread out on the pillow so fine,

  Soft and fair, angel hair,

  I know she won’t ever be mine.

  Angel hair, she don’t care, my darling angel hair.

  I hang the house with angel hair,

  Christmastime, turkey roast,

  But angel hair is sharp as glass

  You never can get even close.”

  Crystal is sitting up in bed with the shawl around her, staring at him. He misreads her look, breaks the song for a minute while he keeps strumming. “I need me some jingle bells right in there, see? Right back there at the Christmastime part.” He goes back and starts again on the chorus.

  “Stop it,” Crystal says.

  “What?” Mack looks up.

  “Stop it. Stop singing that song.”

  “Come on now, Crystal,” Mack says.

  Crystal starts putting her clothes back on.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” But Mack puts his guitar back into its case and closes it carefully before he touches her. He’s surprised that she’s shaking all over. “You cold?” he asks.

  “No.” Crystal pulls her sweater over her head; she feels all lost inside, like the bed is swaying. She remembers that the front of Buddy’s house is propped up on nothing but cinderblocks and she sees it all smashing up in the road. There was a slag slide up on Dicey once, her daddy told her there was, one Sunday morning. Killed fourteen people, he said, and would have killed more if they hadn’t all been at church. Only the bad people died.

  “Crystal.” Mack pulls her back on the bed, stroking her hair, but she fights to sit up and he lets her go.

  “I don’t like that song,” she says. “It’s about me, you said it was. It makes me sound awful. I don’t like it. Why did you have to go and write that?”

  “It’s a good song,” Mack says.

  “It’s not a good song.” Crystal wishes for a minute that he was Roger, who could never write a song in the first place, but if he did would never write a song like that. All Roger ever did was give her rings.

  Crystal bursts into tears.

  “I tell you,” Mack says, getting up. “You can’t have it every way you want it, honey. You’ve got to pick, some-time.”

  “What do you mean?” Crystal sniffs from under her shawl. Mack sounds so serious; finally she looks at him.

  “I’m getting out of here,” Mack says. He speaks in his soft voice, with all the country in it, and all the pent-up ways he feels come through. “I’m going to Nashville. I don’t know how good I am—I was just kidding you a while back when I said I was good. Buddy says I am, I don’t know whether I am or not. But I’ve got to find out, see? I figure I can get a job, I can hang around some, see what’s h
appening.”

  “Please don’t go,” Crystal says.

  “Why not?” Mack sounds so serious that she can’t believe it.

  “Oh, just don’t, please don’t.” He’s giving her a headache being so serious this way. Crystal pauses for a minute and then does her lip in the Sandra Dee pout. “We’ve got a date next week for the beauty contest, remember that?”

  Mack smiles a slow curling smile which she has never seen before, full of scorn and almost hate. “The beauty contest,” he says without inflection.

  “You said you’d take me,” Crystal says.

  “I don’t know,” Mack says. “I don’t know where I’ll be by then.”

  “Please.”

  “You ought to come with me,” Mack says after a while.

  “Where?” Crystal moves around on the mattress, but she still can’t see his face because he’s back up at the window again.

  “Nashville.”

  “What would I do in Nashville, for goodness’ sake? I’m in high school, remember?”

  “Fuck school. You could get a job, we could get married.”

  “Married?”

  “Yeah. Whether you know it or whether you don’t, we’re two of a kind, baby, we’re just alike, you and me.” Mack’s voice is flat and nasal, country.

  Crystal draws back from it. “We are not,” she says.

  “You can’t have it all.” Mack hits the cheap wood headboard of Buddy’s bed viciously with his fist. “You’ve got to decide sometime what you want. You’ve got to settle down and decide on things. You ought to think about your mother sometime, too,” he adds.

  Crystal doesn’t know what to say.

  “My mother?” she repeats.

  “Sure. Old Lorene. Old dumb Lorene. What’re you going to tell her we did tonight, tell her we went to The Sound of Music? What’re you going to say?”

  Crystal flares up. “You’re a fine one to talk about my mother! What do you want, anyway? You know perfectly well I can’t possibly get married. I don’t see what you’re acting this way for. I don’t see what you want.”