Provinces of Night (32 page)

 

F
LEMING PARKED
the yellow cab in Itchy Mama’s yard and climbed the steps to the front porch under the jaded eyes of the old men aligned in canebottom chairs. Lord God, one of the old men said. It’s somebody lost, lookin for Hollywood, California.

No, another said. It’s one of them Chicago white slavers, down here after another load of women.

Fleming was wearing brown gabardine slacks and loafers with pennies in the slots. He had on a blowsy Hawaiian shirt with huge yellow pineapples imaged upon it. His dark hair was parted smoothly and combed to the side, and you could smell aftershave from some distance away. He crossed to the dopebox and lifted a dripping Coca-Cola from the ice water.

I’d shut them socks off when I wasn’t usin em, one of the old men said. You’ll run the batteries down and a man might need a little light after dark.

Cater Hensley was studying the car. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a better match between man and automobile, he said.

Fleming popped the lid off the Coke on the edge of the cooler. The screen door opened and Itchy Mama came onto the porch.

You old highbinders shut up, she said. Let me look at this boy. I believe he’s shaved. She ran a workroughened hand the length of his jaw. Lord God. He has shaved.

She had an arm about his shoulders, bumped him with an enormous hip. If things don’t work out for you just show up here about ten o’clock, she said. I’ll fix you right up.

The old men whooped with laughter. She can do it, too, Hensley said. Or could a few years back. Where’s that old man at?

He’s at home. Him and Albright’s playing rummy. Junior let me use the car.

Likely he’s hopin you’ll elope with it and not bring it back, Hensley said. I was just tryin to think if I’ve ever seen a uglier automobile. I don’t believe I have.

Fleming drained the bottle and set it in the Coke crate. Well, he said, it’s better than walking.

Hensley seemed to ponder this. I guess it would depend on how far you had to go, he said.

I’ve got to go a long way, he said, starting down the steps. I’m going off down to Clifton.

Stay and play some Rook with us tonight, Youngblood.

I got to get on.

Ten o’clock and not a minute past it, Itchy Mama called after him.

He drove on into a late afternoon countryside that might have been a Halloween autumn scene from a calendar, some old proletarian mural come to life. When he reached the stretch of riverbottom farms before Clifton the fields were shocked with corn and pumpkins and once he saw folk gathering corn into a muledrawn wagon like some old print from Currier and Ives. He drove with the windows down for the smell of the air, crisp and clean and sere with the scent of drying leaves.

When he came over the last hill overlooking Clifton the car started to overheat but he told himself it was nothing to be concerned about. Still he cut the switch and took the Dodge out of gear and coasted down the long stretch of hill to the city limit. He popped the clutch at the bottom to restart the engine and when he cut the switch in Raven Lee Halfacre’s front yard the temperature gauge was out of the red by a comfortable margin.

Raven Lee was lounging in the swing, the same place she’d been the first time he saw her. She laid a book facedown on the porch and sat up. He was coming up the walk when she stepped off the porch into the yard.

Lord God.

He couldn’t tell if she meant him or the car. That’s what they said the last place I stopped, he said.

What is that thing? she asked.

He guessed she meant the car. It’s Albright’s taxi, he said. You’ve seen it before. Right now it’s the car that’s going to take you into Ackerman’s Field to the drive-in movie.

Mmm, she said. I don’t think so.

Why not? It’ll be night when we get there, nobody’ll see it.

She had a hand upraised to shade her eyes from the slanting sun. A curl had come undone and laid across her forehead like a question mark, her left eye the dot that completed it. I believe that thing would glow in the dark, she said. Anyway I can’t go. Mama’s drunk and she’s pitched one fit after another all day.

Well. You sort of talked like you might go.

God, that was a long time ago, she said. I figured you’d died. Or run away to become a professional fighter.

Who is that? a voice yelled from inside the house.

It’s the Watkins man, Mama.

Get me a bottle of vanilla flavoring, the woman said drunkenly.

Give me a bottle of vanilla flavoring, Raven Lee said.

We’ll stop and pick one up. Are you going or not?

I guess I am. Anything’s better than listening to a drunk woman yell about vanilla flavoring. But get a move on, she’ll be out here in a minute.

The screen door opened and Mother stood peering into the yard. She swayed gently from side to side and seemed to be holding herself up by hanging onto the door.

Who is that? Her speech was loose and slurred. Who’s that you’re traipsin off with?

By this time they were in the car. Raven Lee rolled down the glass on her side. I’m taking a taxi uptown to get a magazine.

Oh no you’re not, Mother said. She had released the door and staggered across the porch and into the yard. You little whore, she screamed.

Go, go, Raven Lee said. Unless your plan was to take Mama with us.

He released the clutch and drove into the street. Raven Lee had turned in the seat, facing him, her back to the door. She was wearing
white shorts and there seemed an enormous expanse of smooth brown legs.

Stop by the hardware store a minute, she said.

The hell you say. Is that not right next to the Eat and Run Cafe?

When she grinned her teeth were very white.

I meant to bring a gun and I clearlight forgot it, he said.

At the hardware store she bought a small can of yellow paint and a small brush. While Fleming sat in the car and watched gulls forage over the river and blue twilight seep out of its timbered farther shore the girl painted out
TAXI
on one door and went around and painted it out on the other. She stamped the lid on the paint with the heel of her shoe and threw the brush away and climbed back into the car. I just put Junior out of the taxi business, she said.

By the time they reached the city limits she had slid across the seat and put her left arm about his shoulders. You look good tonight, she told him. Smell good enough to eat, too. What is that aftershave, vanilla flavoring?

Two miles more and he felt so lightheaded he fully expected to drift car and all a few feet off the road. She had lain her face against his and kissed his cheek then twisted his mouth to hers. The car was drifting all over the road and finally he wrenched himself away from her and where the road widened above the river he drove onto the shoulder and cut the switch. When he turned to her she slid into his arms like one piece of a puzzle interlocking with another. He held her face against his throat. When he raised her face to his and kissed her her mouth opened under his and he could feel her tongue. He opened his eyes and hers were open as well and it seemed strange to see two enormous dark eyes so close to his own. When he cupped her breast she turned slightly on the seat to accommodate him but then he slid the hand inside her blouse and she twisted away from him.

My God, we’re parked right in the road. What’s happened to you? Did you take one of those correspondence courses on girls or something?

Me? What’s happened to me? What’s happened to you might be a better question.

She laughed against his throat. I believe it’s this car, she said. How could a girl resist a guy with a car like this? She straightened and adjusted her clothing, smoothed back her hair with her fingers. Beyond the glass night had fallen, and he could barely see her.

No, she said, I suspect my life’s in for some major changes and I don’t know how everything’ll work out. I just decided to have fun while I can.

What do you mean your life is changing?

Nevermind. It’s more of a feeling I have than anything else. Maybe I’m psychic, aren’t Indians supposed to be? Are you ready to go?

I’m ready for anything, he said. Just whatever. But why don’t we just stay here?

He could see the flash of her teeth. You are ready for anything, but we’re here in the middle of the highway. You promised me a movie and I want a cherry Coke. Take me there. This is a taxi, isn’t it?

It was before you attacked it with a paint brush, he said.

From a high point of cupping the breast of the prettiest girl in a three-county area things could only go downhill and almost immediately they began to do so. Before they were halfway to Ackerman’s Field the temperature gauge began a slow and inexorable climb into the red and the engine had begun to miss. By the time they were part of a long line of cars waiting to pass the ticket booth and enter the drive-in the previews were already flickering on the screen and the needle had pegged into the red as far as it would go. The engine wheezed and loped like a washing machine.

Hey,
Showboat’s
playing, Raven Lee said. That’s all right. I love musicals. He scarcely heard her. He was wringing wet with sweat. He was willing the car to go a few more feet. There were cars in front of him and cars behind and he was able to progress only a few feet at a time. In order to keep the engine running he had to knock the car out of gear and hold the accelerator halfway to the floor. A shifting blue haze of oilsmoke hung over everything and folks in the other cars regarded them with interest.

When he was pulling up the banked tier of earth where the speaker posts were aligned the engine died and it would not start back. A sinister thumping sound was coming from under the hood and hot waves of
steam rolled from beneath it. The car was roughly parallel with the last row of speakers and it was facing the concession stand. They sat for a time staring at it. It was a square whitewashed building. A multitude of moths fluttered in the hot beam of light from the projector.

Well, anyway we made it, he said.

Made it? This isn’t making it. We can’t even see the screen.

If we turn sort of this way and look out the side we can see, he said. I’ll let you next to the glass.

On the screen small Technicolor animals smashed each other into oblivion, resurrected themselves with the marvelous recuperative powers peculiar to their species.

What do you think is the matter with it?

I don’t know. It’s never done that before.

Well, it’s done it now, and picked a fine time to do it. Will the speaker reach?

He got out to see. If it was about eight feet longer it almost would, he said.

Oh well. Why don’t you go get us a cherry Coke?

At the concession stand he bought two large cherry Cokes and two enormous tubs of buttered popcorn and returned with them to the car. She lay down in the seat with her feet in his lap and her back against the passenger side door. She ate popcorn and took sips from her Coke.

I may have to rethink my whole philosophy of life after going out with you, she said.

What are you talking about? He turned and watched the screen. Some sort of chorus line had formed, folks with walking sticks and straw boaters were singing and dancing, all in silence.

I was thinking about all the guys I’ve gone with. I had about decided men were the worst kind of trash on earth. I didn’t want anything else to do with them. They use you and drop you, slap you around a little every now and then to keep you in line. Kiss you and slobber around on you. Take Neal, for example.

You take him if you want him. I believe I’ve about figured Neal out.

If Neal brought me to the drive-in, which he wouldn’t, he never took me anywhere, and the car had died like this one did, which it wouldn’t, Neal has a new Buick, it wouldn’t have bothered him a bit.
Tough shit, Neal would have said. Likely he would have just walked off or got a ride somewhere. You were really bothered by it, I could tell. It embarrassed you. Not only did you get us drinks and popcorn, you bought the giant economy size. Maybe I got to you in time and I can shape you just the way I want you. Make my own little man.

He was silent a time. He was no good at these kinds of conversations. Words would not come to him as easily as they did to her. Words carried weight, some more than others, and it seemed to him that once you’d arranged them into phrases they stayed that way like bricks you’d laid in a wall and went on meaning what they said no matter what happened. Finally he said, I’d just as soon not talk about Neal. If you think I drove all the way to Clifton and back in this garbed up piece of crap to talk about Neal Bloodworth you’re sorely mistaken.

What’s the matter with Neal? Aside from the stuff I already mentioned.

Neal’s crazy. Sometimes I think my whole damned family is crazy except me. Maybe me too. Come to think of it, especially me.

She bit a chunk of ice with her clean even teeth. Why did you drive all the way to Clifton in this garbed up piece of crap?

Because I had to see you, he said.

She pulled her feet back off his lap and straightened in the seat. Let’s go sit on the grass by the speaker post where we can hear, she said.

In the trunk he found a folded blanket Albright had been using for a dropcloth and spread it on the speaker ramp. He turned the speaker up and the girl became engrossed in the movie. It did not interest him. His mind would not focus on it, he could make no sense of it, as if the reels of film were being shown in random order. She was too close to him, leant against his shoulder. He’d begin to get some grasp on the plot of the movie and when he turned toward her her coinclean profile roiled his mind into a jumble of colored images. And the blanket they were sitting on seemed as public as the movie screen and did not lend itself to any sort of intimacy. On the way to town he’d kept his eyes open for any sort of likely-looking sideroads and he thought that on the way back he might talk her into parking for a while. He had a crazy feeling that time was running out for him. He felt that he’d crossed some line and everything on this side of it was represented by Raven Lee Halfacre.