William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (7 page)

She wiped dust from her face with a handkerchief, powdered her nose, and looked briefly at herself in the windowpane. She was a dark and pretty woman and would perhaps have been beautiful except for a slightly receding chin which lent to her features an expression not so much of weakness as fretfulness, as if at any moment her jaw and lips might tremble in sorrow, like a little girl’s. She had been much publicized for her social activities—Red Cross, the Women’s Club, and the like—and her picture, taken shortly after her wedding, had been printed in the local papers sometimes as often as twice a month for over a period of twenty years until finally even she sensed the impropriety of the cloche hat and bangs which had given rise to idle and secret laughter around town. So she had had the picture replaced, regretfully, with another, newer one in which there no longer blossomed the youthful smile, but which instead recorded with precision the small puffy folds beneath her eyes and her neck, too, flaccid and slightly wrinkled. Now she gave her nose one last loving pat and entered the restaurant.

She laid her hand softly on Loftis’ arm. “Dear, we’d better go now. Everything is ready and …”

“When the great Day of Judgment cometh,” Hazel was saying in a level voice, “you and her will enter unto the golden streets together. Don’t you worry, mister. That’s what the good book says. John eighteen thirty-six, ‘My kingdom is not of this world …’ ”

Loftis groaned, looking up at Dolly with frightened eyes. “You say everything’s ready?”

“Yes, dear. Come on, now.”

“This vale of tears,” Hazel continued, “is like unto the veriest smoke …”

“How much do I owe you?” Loftis asked.

“That’ll be five cents.”

Loftis laid a nickel on the counter.

“My heart goes out to you, mister. It truly does.”

“Thank you,” Loftis murmured. Automatically he opened the door for Dolly. They stepped out together into the street, where the dust had cleared away entirely, and the sun now shone brightly. The jukebox voice, trailing them with remote sadness, sang: “Take me back and try me one more time.” Far off, coal plunged seaward from the elevators, shaking the earth. Try me one more time.

Now, as they prepared to get into the limousine, Ella Swan labored down the steps from the dock and silently climbed into the back seat; the hearse came up, too, with sleek, privileged gravity and a dulcet honking noise, while pedestrians in its path scurried like beetles to the sidewalk. Dolly entered the limousine, then Loftis; the train, which was about to go back to Richmond, made a doleful blast on its whistle and Mr. Casper got out of the hearse and paused benignly at the limousine door, like a bishop about to consecrate something.

“All righty,” he said, peering into the back seat. “Is everybody ready?” He smiled wanly. “Ah, I see. All right, we’ll go now.”

So they were off at last—Dolly and Loftis next to each other, Ella Swan on the jump seat sitting stiffly in black silk and rococo lace, her head bowed now in some old posture of contemplation or sorrow, saying nothing, and Mr. Casper in the front seat, starting the motor: Loftis could see his freckled brow and red hair in the little mirror. Yet they had gone no more than a hundred yards, trailing the hearse, when the hearse itself swerved toward the curb, stopped, and Barclay issued forth with a harried look, beckoning to Mr. Casper.

“Oh dear,” said Dolly, “oh dear.”

“What’s wrong——” Loftis began, bending forward, but Mr. Casper had stopped the limousine, got out and walked to the hearse where, with Barclay, he began to hold parley over the engine.

“Oh, my God,” Loftis said, to no one in particular. “Isn’t it enough that I’ve got all this, without something else going haywire?” He thrust his head in his hand. “Jesus. It’s more than I can bear.”

Dolly laid her hand on his arm. “You’ve got to be brave, Milton,” she said.

He raised his head without answering and gazed at the hearse. He turned away with a sudden shock, for inside, in that tasseled, becurtained gloom, he had caught a glimpse of the coffin, receptacle of all his love, which with panic he realized must today disappear forever. It was really, he thought, more than he could bear. He turned completely away from the hearse and craned his neck so that he could see the bay. Dolly murmured something softly consoling, harmless and incoherent; he ignored this, thinking: Jesus, she’s getting on my nerves. Up ahead the motor in the hearse gave a sinister belch, throbbed feebly, and perished in an asthmatic gasp; for a moment blue smoke billowed through the limousine, then faded on the air. Jesus, he thought: This is more than I can stand. By the seawall, where he turned his gaze, overlooking the bay, there was a little patch of grass and a sycamore tree: beneath the tree a colored boy and his girl were tussling. She made a grab for him, laughing; her mouth was big, open; round with wild delight: “Git on!” the boy cried, and they tumbled together beneath a scrawny little bush, then lay still. Summertime. Light lay serenely over the bay. A herd of oyster boats was anchored far out; like cows they all faced in one direction: like cows, too, almost imperceptibly, they turned—with the changing of the wind. Above, around the vast circumference of the sky, a pale light was reflected, glowing in bright oblong patches against those clouds that hovered motionless on the horizon. It was a bright and sticky light, somehow menacing; it filled him obscurely with a feeling of storm and threat and coming destruction. Oh, God, he thought, shivering a little: What will I be doing tomorrow?

He must have sighed then, unconsciously, made a noise; perhaps he did, for once more he felt Dolly’s soft gloved hand on his, the voice saying tenderly, “I’m with you, dear. I’m here. Don’t worry, I’m with you.”

He looked at her and tried to smile. “I don’t feel very well,” he said. He remembered the scene in the restaurant and his belly heaved. “This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

“Dear,” she said, “you’ll just have to be brave.” Her eyes glistened in sympathy, together with pure rapt adoration, the familiar expression which she wore, when near him, with mindless constancy.

“I was sick,” he said.

“Oh dear,” she exclaimed. “Oh, my darling.”

“I vomited. Bile came up. I’d go to bed. Any other day.”

“Oh, my poor darling.” Again she rested her hand on his, and in a willful, irritable gesture he drew his hand away. In the past he would have devoured her sentiment, would have basked sunnily in this warm atmosphere of devotion. During the last few years he had relied upon her steadfast gaze of love and longing, perhaps unconsciously enough, as one among the assortment of props and crutches—along with all the whisky, and with Peyton—which supported him against the unthinkable notion that life was not rich and purposeful and full of rewards. That face, that gaze, that adoring glance, he had believed, were nearly reward enough. She was submissive and she worshiped him, and it was for those reasons that he had loved her. It had been that way from the beginning: he talked and she listened, while through this curious interplay of self-esteem and self-effacement there ran an undercurrent of emotion they were both obliged to call love.

Now, however, just as it had during the past few months, her presence had begun to worry him, depress him; each word she said somehow left him more and more unstrung. He wished he hadn’t brought her with him. It had only been cowardice anyway, he reflected, that prompted him to go by for her this morning, when Helen had refused him. He had wanted company, that was all; he had needed so to talk to someone.

“What’s wrong, dear?” she said. He glanced at her. She looked hurt, hurt because he had drawn his hand away.

“What’s wrong?” he said. “Oh, God, now really …” He looked away.

“Yes,” she said gently. “Yes, darling. Of course. I understand. I just wish I could say something to make you feel better.” She groped in her handbag for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “There’s nothing,” she concluded, “that you can say at a time like this.”

He didn’t answer. It had begun to get fiercely hot in the limousine. Silently Ella Swan ran a hand over her forehead. A smell of salt and tar lingered on the air, rankly suggestive of sea, heat, stagnation. He crossed his legs, uncrossed them, and unaccountably sneezed: would they never fix that motor? There was a dim clanking sound; at the front of the hearse he could see Mr. Casper’s rear, clad in shiny black, bent over the fender.

“Anything you try to say at a time like this,” Dolly added, “sounds so inappropriate.” She paused. “Somehow.”

Please be quiet. Just hush.

A huge truck swung around the corner, roared past toward the station, heavily vibrating. On its side there were big red letters.

SCANNELL

Hogsheads of tobacco bobbed high above. The truck disappeared behind them, leaving an odor of tobacco, faintly acrid. Once more the hood of the hearse went down with a crash. Mr. Casper stood erect and wiped his hands. Barclay got in and started the engine; it made a fitful, hacking noise, like a dog coughing up a bone, then caught; an umbrella of blue smoke rose to the heavens and Barclay waved his arm valiantly out of the window. Mr. Casper returned with a distressed look and climbed back into the front seat. The hearse moved ahead.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Mr. Casper said. “Terribly. On a day like this …” His voice sank into a murmur of vague, inaudible recriminations, and the limousine, too, began to move again. There were fields on either side of the road, full of marsh grass gently rustling in the sultry air; the first squat, unsightly buildings of the town loomed ahead. Gusts of air blew through the limousine, hot, laden with the odor of dead fish and rotting grass. From the shipyard, which lay not far away across the marsh, Loftis could hear the sound of metal falling, riveting hammers, the whistle of a train. They passed a little colored boy blowing on a tin horn; his eyeballs rolled back at the hearse, big black pupils wobbling in wonder. Loftis fidgeted, looked at his watch, crossed his legs again, thinking: Is not just remorse enough? Isn’t there a way to set all this right? Isn’t this grief enough? How long? What can I do? But haunting him still, his father’s ghost, words said years ago: an old man in whom obscurity resembled solemnity often enough, and solemnity wisdom, but who nonetheless—through a stew of dogmatism and misinformation, through the scraggle of archaic Edwardian mustache in mild, uncomprehending protest at a world that long ago had passed him by—managed to say things which, if not precisely wise, were at least durable truisms, self-tested——

My son, never let passion be a guide. Nurture hope like a flower in the most barren ground of trouble. If love has fed the flame of your brightest imaginings then passion will perish in that flame and only love endure. … Son, listen …

Believe me, my boy, you have a good woman.

Loftis blinked, sneezed again. The old man faded, smiling with ghostly benevolence; the droop and tremor of unkempt, stained mustache withered away like smoke——

In his youth Loftis’ attitude toward his father had been one of tolerance and of badly concealed impatience. The old man was fatuous and certainly, Loftis had concluded, something of a failure. Possibly as a result of this failure Loftis had never taken his advice seriously. Certainly, too, on the day of his marriage a quarter of a century before, Loftis knew he “had a good woman.” And for the rest—those warnings which came back to him today with such a sense of doom fulfilled—those he had shrugged off quickly, although with a vague feeling of resentment, perhaps because he sensed they might come true. As for love … well, indeed, what about love? Passion had perished in that flame long ago, but at the time he had forgotten his father’s reminder, and had thought that love had vanished, too. It wasn’t true. With a surge of tender warmth he felt that love had never gone away at all.

Suddenly a horrid pain came to his chest, like unexpected fire. Peyton.
She is dead.
That’s what Harry had told him. He thought of her crazy, wild letter.

Death by falling. Birds. Birds?

And now he couldn’t remember when this passion had flown, leaving him so foolish and bewildered and astray: can any man?

On a spring morning years before, when the dew had nearly melted on the grass and Loftis, deep in the lawn chair and full of coffee, wavered mildly between the Port Warwick
Sunday Tribune
and contemplation of the early sunlight encroaching upon his private beach, he was aroused by a tumble of feet on the grass behind him, a small voice announcing passionately: “Daddy, Daddy, I’m beautiful!” So he had turned and with the attentive respect given young daughters by their fathers he had watched Peyton—standing in the grass beside him, age nine—while she gazed into a little mirror and said again, “I’m beautiful, Daddy!”

For a moment all this crushed his heart. She
was
beautiful. Perhaps it was the first cigarette of the morning, or the coffee, but he felt quite giddy. Anyway, he would always remember that moment on the lawn: picking Peyton up with a sudden, almost savage upwelling of love, pressing her against him as he murmured in a voice slightly choked, “
Yes,
my baby’s beautiful,” with wonder and vague embarrassment paying homage to this beautiful part of him, in which life would continue limitlessly.

“… beautiful,” he was saying; he held her awkwardly against his chest. Her long brown hair was in his face, blinding him. She giggled, pounded his back, and the mirror which she held fell silently to the grass.

“But you mustn’t be so vain,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“Come on, get up.”

“No.”

“No what?” he said.

“No, thank you, stupid.”

“Is that nice? Come on, get up.”

“O.K.,” she said.

Now she was off his lap, spraddle-legged and barefoot on the grass, making faces at him.

“Don’t,” he said. “You’ll freeze that way, you know. All your life you’ll look like the wicked witch.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Let me see the funnies.”

In his lap the papers lay hopelessly crumpled, printed with small dirty footmarks. He pretended not to notice, yawning, gazing up at the blue spring sky where dumpy clouds drifted past, melting at their edges like smoke. The bay was very still, exuding a pleasant odor of salt. Past Peyton, with studied gravity, he gazed at the garden—his wife’s—a turmoil of nameless color, roses, pansies, whatyoum’callits—he never knew. A mockingbird somewhere made a facetious chatter, crickets chirped in the flower beds, the scent of grass was hot, filling his nostrils with a coarse sweet odor—a spring day in Virginia. He yawned again, looking upward.