Provinces of Night (24 page)

Hellfire. If I did I wouldn’t expect much of it for a quarter. I doubt you’d even miss a quarter’s worth. Besides, I don’t want anything from you.

That’s what he heard himself saying but it did not even come close to being the truth. What he wanted, he had realized in the last few minutes, was everything. He wanted the rest of her life, and failing that, he wanted permission to walk along beside her while she lived it. As dying
men are told to have their past unreel before them Fleming had been gainsaid a kaleidoscopic view of his future. In the space of seconds whole sequences unspooled before him. They stood before a Bible-holding preacher. Hand in hand they stood before a crib where lay their firstborn. They stood shoulder to shoulder against a world that did its utmost to drive them to their knees and they prevailed. She knelt before his grave, tousled gray curls swinging, and imbedded into the clay a single white rose. There was a mist of tears in her eyes. He saw all this instantly, not as a future cast in stone but as a swirling maelstrom of events that could be mastered and controlled. It was a future to aspire to. Fleming considered himself a fairly stubborn and persistent person, and he planned to aspire as hard as he could.

As long as you understand that I’m not some watered-down version of my mama. We’re two different people, so don’t go getting us confused. She don’t tell me how to live my life and I don’t tell her how to live hers. I’ve already changed my name from Evelyn and I expect before long I’ll be changing the Halfacre too.

You planning on getting married?

You don’t have to get married to change your name. Besides, I’m sixteen years old, way too young to be married. Not too young to get married, just to be married. Mama thinks I’m pretty enough to get into some line of show business. Maybe not a movie star, or anything like that, but something. Really Mama sees me as her best shot to get out of Clifton. Out of Tennessee. She hates Tennessee, says it’s full of hillbillies.

Where’s she from?

Tennessee, the girl said, grinning, then leant to suck the last of her Coke through the straw.

We closing up in here, a woman at the counter called, proving it by crossing the room to a panel box on the wall and flipping a switch that killed the exterior lights.

They rose from the table, Raven Lee rolling up her magazine. That woman just hates me, she said. And I’ve never done a thing to her.

Fleming suspected that before time eventually did whatever it was going to do to Raven Lee Halfacre a lot of women were going to just hate her, but he didn’t say so. He followed her out the pneumatic door onto the sidewalk where enormous moths and candleflies fluttered
about in confusion as if they’d ascertain where the light had gone. One entrapped itself in the girl’s hair and after slapping at it unsuccessfully she allowed Fleming to extricate it. He released it and it flew away.

I hate those things, Raven Lee said. Let’s walk up by the cafe and see if it’s still open.

They had gone scarcely a block and a half past dark stores shuttered and barred when they came upon Fleming Bloodworth’s worst nightmare.

He was lounging against the front of the Eat and Run Cafe. The cafe was closed and dark. This nightmare was wearing engineer boots with straps and buckles, one of them on the sidewalk and the other propped back against the brick facade of the cafe. He was wearing jeans turned up one turn at the cuffs and a white T-shirt with a pack of unfiltered cigarettes rolled into a turned up sleeve. A pair of aviator sunglasses hung by an earpiece from the neck of the shirt. His hair was as flat on top as if it had been barbered with the aid of a spirit level and the sides were worn long and brilliantined back into a gleaming ducktail. A cigarette drooped from the corner of his mouth in a studied manner, as if he’d practiced it before a mirror.

Hellfire, Fleming was thinking.

Raven Lee Halfacre, the boy-man said.

Just walk on by and don’t answer, the girl hissed.

They did. Fleming didn’t look back but the boots had toe and heel taps on them and he could hear them clicking along behind them. Clicking faster.

When you goin to give me a shot at that stuff, Raven Lee, the man called. I believe it’s about my time.

Fleming stopped. She jerked his arm. Are you crazy? she demanded.

I may well be, he was thinking. He felt called upon to say something. Do something. Defend her honor in some manner. At length he allowed himself to be propelled along but by this time the man had approached, passed, and halted in front of them.

When you goin out with me?

When hell freezes over, she said.

Looks like you down to scrapin the bottom of the barrel, he observed.
What’d you do, decide to get you a young one and bring him up right?

We’re not bothering you, the girl said. Why don’t you just let us alone and go about your business?

Right now you are my business, the man said. I heard you had some excellent stuff.

I heard you didn’t, the girl said. I heard you got that no account Sheila Brewer in the bedroom with none of her folks at home and couldn’t even get it up.

You lyin little slut, he said. He slapped her openhanded hard and then whirled on Fleming. The girl clasped her face bothhanded and stood for a moment with her head down and her hair fallen over her hands. The man spun his cigarette into the street in a spiral of sparks. His face was flat and angry. What do you have to say about this? he asked Fleming.

I heard—Fleming tried to swallow but there was insufficient spit in his mouth. He could feel cold clammy sweat in his armpits, tracking down his rib cage—you couldn’t get it up till her brother came in the room.

He knew he was going to be hit and he threw up both hands in a kind of clumsy guard, with the result that he was hit not only with the man’s fist but by his own as well. His own hands slammed nose and mouth and a larger fist connected with his lower jaw and his knees just seemed to liquefy. He struck out as hard as he could aiming at the man’s face but felt glass break under his right hand. His left connected to something with more flesh to it but then a blow caught him in the solar plexus and the air exploded out of his lungs like a bellows someone had closed. He sat down hard with his hands splayed out behind him to break his fall and the man kicked him in the thigh with an engineer boot then whirled and ran.

You cowardly son of a bitch, the girl cried. She was looking about wildly for something to throw but could find not so much as a Coke bottle. She made as if to throw the magazine then thought better of it and turned and caught Fleming by the hand.

Can you get up?

He stood but his left leg wouldn’t work. The muscles in his thigh felt
as if they had cramped themselves into a series of knots, one atop the other. He made it to the curb and sat down and massaged his leg hard. The muscle in it was jumping like something alive but separate from him and he rubbed it until he could feel some of the tension easing out of it. Blood kept dripping on his jeans and he reached and felt his face and worked his jaw back and forth with his hand then leant and spat a tooth into the street.

Let’s go, the girl said. We need to be out of these streetlights before the law drives by. They’ll lock you up.

He spat a mouthful of blood. I haven’t done anything.

That makes no nevermind. You’re from out of town and you’ve got blood all over you. They’ll lock you up.

He staggered up out of the street. Then by all means, he said.

They went down a narrow sloping alley between the Eat and Run Cafe and a feed store past broken crates and garbage cans and an inkblack cat that vanished into nothing at all in the darkness. They came out on a street near the river and struck out down it, the boy pausing now and again to raise his left foot and kick the leg as if some delicate mechanism had become misaligned and he might jar it back into place. After a while he noticed his right hand was aching and when he raised it to the light there were streaks of blood coursing down his fingers. He just shook his head and went on.

Abruptly the girl stopped in the middle of the street and began to laugh. She grasped his arm. Why did you say that about Sheila Brewer’s brother? she asked.

Hellfire, he said. You were the one that came up with that crazy shit about that no account Sheila Brewer. I’ll bet there’s not even such a person.

After a moment she began to laugh again. It was a throaty halfmusical sound and Fleming for a crazy moment thought that if he hurried he might be able to catch his assailant and get beaten up again and she’d go on doing it.

Anyway I thought I’d make him mad enough to charge me, and if he was out of control I might be able to handle him. It may be that I’ve seen too many movies.

He was out of control, all right, the girl said. I believe that I’ve misjudged you. I believe you’re something of a smartass after all.

I just never can learn when to keep my mouth shut, he said.

I’m sorry about your tooth, I swear. But I never expected you to set him off like that.

He smiled a rueful smile. He was picking shards of broken glass out of his knuckles. He’s going to have a mighty sore pair of sunglasses in the morning, he said.

They left the street under the girl’s lead and ascended a slope to its smoothly mown summit where trees stood about as if landscaped and benches were aligned under their branches. He saw that they were overlooking the river where it passed thirty or forty feet below them. Lights were mounted here on poles and where the light pooled below the bluff the river was a swirling lurid yellow but this tended away toward the enormity of its width and there was not the slightest rumor of a farther shore, as if this was land’s end, they stood with the earth at their backs and all there was left of the world was water.

Let me see your face, she said.

I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.

She wiped his bloody face with the hem of her dress. He glimpsed the smooth brown expanse of her legs when she raised it but she saw the cast of his eyes and turned his face gently away and examined it critically. She raised the dress again and moistened a folded corner of the hem with her tongue and gently scrubbed the blood off his burst lip and the corners of his mouth. She grimaced. This is going to be a swollen-up mess in the morning, she said. You won’t be so pretty then.

I wasn’t much for pretty anyway.

They sat on a bench beneath an enormous maple. Well, she said. Do you suppose Junior and Mama are done yet?

He turned to look at her sharply. What? he asked.

He may be, what is that song they used to play on WLAC, a sixty-minute man. Do you think he’s a sixty-minute man?

What I really think is that you’re mighty blasé about all this, he finally said.

Her eyes widened slightly. Blasé? What kind of word is that? What does it mean?

I just read it somewhere and always wanted to use it in a sentence, he said. I never heard anybody say it. I guess it means that you don’t
seem to take what she’s doing, what they’re doing, very seriously. It’s almost like you think it’s funny.

She looked away, across the river into the darkness. I doubt if it’s been thirty minutes since I warned you about getting me and Mama confused, she said. If we’re going to be friends, if we’re going to be anything at all to each other, you’ve got to get that straight. I’m just me, and I’m not taking responsibility for what anyone else in this round world does.

All right, he said. I’m sorry. It seems I’m a dumbass instead of a smartass.

They fell silent. The bench was cool and damp against the back of Fleming’s neck. He closed his eyes. His tongue prodded the hole where lately his tooth had been. He wondered what time it was. It occurred to him that he was over forty miles from home, that Albright had already been drunk and would almost certainly be drunker, and that the road back to Ackerman’s Field from Clifton held hairpin curves and switchbacks beyond his power to number. After a while the girl settled her head against his shoulder. He sat without moving for a long time. Scarcely breathing. It seemed to him that the universe had tilted slightly on its axis and come to rest against him and that the barely perceptible weight on his left shoulder was the only thing that kept the stars spinning on their mitered courses.

He opened his eyes. Fireflies had come out over the river, thousands of them, more. They seemed to have appeared inexplicably and simultaneously, so many of them that he could see the dark water moving below them. They’d shaped themselves to the contour of the river, shifting and darting and roiling like sparks thrown upward by a river of smoldering fire. As far as the eye could see, up the river, down, like some rite of nature he’d been called forth to witness. He watched until she rose and pulled him up by a hand and led him off toward town.

Where’ve you been? Mrs. Halfacre asked.

We walked uptown, the girl said.

Town’s closed.

It’s closed but it’s still there, the girl said, as if that was that.

Fleming sat in the armchair in the corner of the room. Albright and
Mrs. Halfacre were on the couch. There was nowhere else to sit and Raven Lee poured Fleming half a glass of wine and gave it to him and settled herself on the arm of his chair.

Mrs. Halfacre seemed to have lost all the playful friendliness she’d exhibited earlier. She looked drunk, not like a raucous drunk or a happy-go-lucky drunk but a mean drunk, a drunk who is looking for trouble and knowing just where it’s hidden. Every time Fleming glanced up she’d be watching him. Mean little eyes in the thickening flesh of her face.

What’s happened to him? she finally asked.

He kept falling down, Raven Lee said. He’s about the clumsiest boy I ever came across.

Albright bore evidence of what Fleming had feared. He seemed to be profoundly drunk. He’d spilled wine all down his front and he was holding a guitar in his lap like something he’d found somewhere and couldn’t fathom the use of. He sat watching the tall radio cabinet with a fixed intensity as if he saw through the speaker cloth to where wires and condensers and tubes magically reconstructed images of folk picking guitars, sawing on fiddles, hawking barn paint.