Provinces of Night (7 page)

 

F
LEMING WAS
passing the Snowwhite Cafe when a voice hailed him. He halted in midstep and turned. An English teacher named
Kenneth Spivey was holding the door open and motioning at him with his crippled arm.

Come in and drink a Coke with me.

I need to get on, Fleming said. I’m late already.

Late for what? Spivey asked.

In fact Fleming was late for nothing and bound nowhere in particular and he figured Spivey knew it. Trapped, he crossed the sidewalk to the cafe and went in. I guess I have time to drink a Coke, he said.

Spivey was sitting in a booth by the plateglass window and Fleming seated himself across from him with the width of the red Formica table between them. He sat crouched on the edge of the seat like one who only has a moment and must soon be off.

A waitress in a white uniform stood at his elbow. Let me have a lemon Coke, Fleming said, and she wrote it on a pad.

Don’t you speak anymore, Fleming?

He looked up. A girl he remembered from school and for a dizzy moment no name came to mind. I didn’t even know you worked here, he said.

Just on the weekends. I’m still in school.

Fleming doesn’t know us anymore, Spivey said, leaning to his cherry Coke, his girlish mouth pursed, like a leech or a slug clamped about the straw. He’s gone on to other things.

When the Coke came it was in a tall glass of shaved ice with a wedge of lemon floating atop. He sat sipping it and studying the scratched tabletop. B.C. loves E.M. Elise loves Warren Bloodworth.

Have you dropped out of school, Fleming? Spivey asked.

Well, I don’t know. I guess not. I just haven’t been going lately.

No. Not for quite a while. It would be a shame if you did drop out. It’s always a shame when a young person gives up but even more so when it’s you. You’re the most promising student I ever had. I had high hopes for you, and I would hate to lose you.

Fleming was absentmindedly nibbling the slice of lemon. I don’t know anything about any of that, he said.

You don’t have to know it. That’s my job. I’m the teacher. What do you plan to do? Somehow I don’t see you working in the shoe factory.
Sharecropping. Perhaps you want to offbear at the sawmill and go home to a little country wife and a bunch of little Flemings running around.

He was leant across the table with his protuberant brown eyes fixed upon Bloodworth. Fleming was always uncomfortable in his presence and he was acutely so now. The soft bulging eyes were leaning an almost unbearable weight on him. Spivey’s eyes were naked peepholes into his soul and whatever emotion he felt, pain, anger, frustration, was there for the world to read. This was knowledge Fleming had no use for and he looked away. Across the street in front of the poolroom a man and a woman were arguing in silence. Their mouths moved but Fleming could hear no sound. They spoke in gestures like angry mimes. Finally the man gave a contemptuous gesture of dismissal and walked back through the poolroom door. The woman stood there for a time and then she went on down the street.

What did you think of that book I gave you?

It’s the best book I ever read.

There’s another book, a sort of sequel to it called
Of Time and the River.
It continues the story of Eugene Gant. There’s a very powerful scene where old man Gant dies. Would you like me to bring it to you?

Well. I’d like to read it. I could pick it up somewhere.

No, I’d like to bring it. I have a lot of books and books are better if you can share them.

Spivey’s withered arm looked like the arm of a deformed child, the drawn fingers the talons of some grotesque sort of bird. The tiny hand fished in a shirt pocket and drew out a pack of Camels as if it were performing a trick it had been trained to do. Spivey took the cigarettes with his good hand and tipped one out and placed it between his meaty lips. By this time the withered hand had produced a lighter. As he lit the cigarette his eyes were still fixed on Bloodworth.

I’d like to help you, he said. I’m in a position to help you. I know something of the situation you’re in.

The what?

The situation you’re in. Your home life. I’d like to do something about it.

There’s not a damned thing wrong with my home life, Fleming said.

Spivey smiled a sad onecornered smile. His wet eyes looked hurt, bruised. You southerners, he said. I’ve been here for fifteen years and I’ll never understand you.

We do just fine on our own, Fleming said.

I live in this enormous farmhouse down on Catheys Creek. I used to live with my sister but she passed away a few years back and I’m alone in it. I just rattle around that old house. There’s plenty of room. You’d have your own quarters, the use of my library. I know how lonely life can get.

I’m not lonely at all, Fleming said, and suddenly realized that he was speaking the truth.

Perhaps not, Spivey said. You’re so young. You’re so well read I sometimes forget you’re practically a child. I wonder if I was ever that young.

By now Fleming had drained his glass and was standing. He felt like the character in a comic strip who suddenly has an enormous lightbulb appear over his head. The feeling was so intense that he could feel the hot knowledge on his face.

Spivey smiled his worn threadbare smile. It’s not what you’re thinking, he said.

I’m not thinking anything at all.

I’d like to believe that. Spivey looked away, past the sunwashed glass to the streets where there was nothing at all to see. I’ll bring the book anyway, he said.

 

F
ROM THE SHADE
of the ivy-covered end of Itchy Mama Baker’s porch the old men in ladderback chairs and tilting Coke crates watched the hot blacktop that snaked up the grade toward Ackerman’s Field three miles away. They’d sit daylong and wait for something to happen, anything to happen, waiting for the road to entertain them.

These were old men in clean chambray shirts and suspenders and pants so roomy they could have held another oldtimer entire and shoes split down the sides for comfort. They’d sit ruminatively, building their Country Gentleman cigarettes and leaning birdlike to spit their snuff-juice past the edge of the floorboards into the yard. Talking about old
lost times and looking back over their lives as dispassionately as though these events were something they’d read about or something that had happened to somebody else.

The screen door opened, slapped loudly shut. An enormous woman had come onto the porch, a woman with a fierce turtlelike face and wild frizzy carrotcolored hair. She was wearing a bright yellow tentsize dress with dark halfmoons of sweat fanning out from the armpits.

One of you loafers spits on my porch you’re cleaning it off, she said. She studied them in a kind of mock anger that they were so accustomed to they deemed it threatless and so paid her little mind.

I’m spittin in the yard, Ferris Walker said.

When one of you gets kindly caught up on his spittin I need some wood busted up.

I might could handle that, Walker said. What’s in it for me?

Well, I ain’t chargin you rent on this porch.

How about a little drink?

There might be a halfpint hid back up there in the holler somewhere.

I might could bust up a little wood, Walker said. He rose and ambled off toward the woodpile looking for the chopping axe.

Who’s that rollin that car tire? one of the old men asked.

They turned to see. He had just appeared on the periphery of their vision, a gangling young man with a halo of wild white hair, slowly rolling a carwheel up the grade.

That’s that Albright boy, Itchy Mama said.

He’s lost his automobile, one of the men said. All but one wheel.

No, he’s always doin that, another said. His casin’s flat and he’s rollin her to town to get it fixed. Nobody’s ever told him about some folks havin a extra one they haul around in the trunk of their car in case one goes flat.

It wouldn’t take many trips up that grade for me to figure it out, the first one observed.

That boy’s opinion of himself don’t match the one everybody else has got. He thinks he’s all aces but he’s mostly sevens and eights.

He may be a little slow but he ain’t a patch on his daddy for crazy. That was the one rewritin the Bible. Old man Tut Albright. He was
rewritin her start to finish, takin out all the begats and the therefores and writin it where what he called the common man could make sense out of it. He read me some of it one time. You ort to heard it. It was a part about some angels of heaven layin with the daughters of men and he took out that part about layin with and just put in they screwed the daughters of men. It was the damnedest thing I ever heard.

He used to cause carwrecks back when he was a young man, the first oldtimer said.

He what?

Used to cause carwrecks. He had this long blond wig he’d put on and this little red shortwaisted dress. He lived on this real sharp curve out by Horseshoe Bend and he’d put that mess on and go set in a lawn chair there by the bank of the road with his legs spraddled out. He caused I don’t know how many bad wrecks. A whole carload of drunks run off out there one Saturday and two of em finally died. There was some said he wore red drawers when he done it but I ain’t fool enough to know about that.

You can hush about some red drawers, the second man said. The thought of Tut Albright pullin on a pair of women’s underwear is more than I want to deal with this early in the day.

 

J
UNIOR
A
LBRIGHT WAS
on the schoolhouse construction site long before seven o’clock, his battered Dodge pulled into the graveled parking lot and the door cocked open for what coolness remained. The sun had come up red and smoking and malign over the spiky treeline, instantly sucking the dew from the leaves and driving it into the parched earth and he judged it was going to be another hot one. He sat with a leg extended over the open car door, sipping the last of his coffee. He glanced occasionally at his wrist as if he’d check the time though he wore no watch there. There was just a band of paler flesh, like the ghost of a watch. His watch resided in a cigar box beneath the bar at the poolroom with similar timepieces where he’d pawned it for two sixpacks of Falstaff beer, and he resolved that the first thing he was going to do when he got a paycheck was redeem the watch.

After a while he got out of the car with his lunch box and seated himself on a pile of treetrunks a dozer had pushed into windrows. The bladescarred trees were lush with honeysuckle vines and the air was heady with the scent of their blossoms. He opened the lunch box and selected a sandwich and unwrapped it and took a bite. Occasionally he’d glance up the cherted road and cock his head attentively and listen but all he could hear was doves calling mournful as lost souls from some smoky hollow still locked in sleep.

He turned at a sudden whicker in the air and watched a hummingbird suck the drop of nectar from the throat of a honeysuckle. Curious creature, no bigger than his thumb. Its blurred wings, tiny sesame eyes. He stopped chewing and watched it. He studied it with a bemused intensity as if he’d learn its secrets. As if this might be a talent he ought to acquire. When he heard the first pickup truck he rewrapped the uneaten portion of his sandwich and restored it to the lunch box and fastened the clasps and stood up.

The truck pulled nearer the unfinished structure and stopped and two men got out. Doors slammed. They stood studying the schoolhouse as if to see did it meet their specifications.

Bout time you all got here, Albright sang out. I’d about give you out.

They didn’t even look at him. They’d seen this fool before. This was the third day he’d been perched on the windrowed trees, drawing no salary, waiting like a vulture for somebody to burn out, not show up, die.

You reckon they’ll be hirin today?

You’d have to ask Woodall about that, one of the men said.

The other man lit a cigarette. He glanced at Albright through the smoke. It gets any hotter than it was yesterday you can have my job.

I’d take it, Albright said.