Provinces of Night: A Novel

  You mind if I take these somewhere sometime and play them?

  You do what you want with them. Play them or throw rocks at them. I’m giving them to you.

  I can’t take them. You kept them for souvenirs.

  I don’t need souvenirs, the old man said. I remember everything I ever done, I don’t need keepsakes to remind me. I kept them because I figured someday I might run up on somebody that was interested in all that old stuff. Them old times.

  I’ll keep them then. I’ll take care of them.

  Give them to your kids. You don’t have any kids yet do you?

  No.

  You got you a girlfriend?

  I guess not.

  What’s the matter with you? You look tolerable presentable.

  I just don’t get out much, the boy grinned. I met this girl back in the spring because she busted a hornet’s nest with a rock. Dee Hixson’s granddaughter. She turned out to be already married though.

  The old man laughed, sat staring at the floor for a moment as if lost in memory. That Hixson family was wilder than a bunch of cats in heat. Every one of them acted like they was on some kind of medicine that kept them crazy. Come to think of it, though, I remember haulin some of it to them in gallon jugs. What I started to say, though, about four or five of them Hixson girls come in about the same time and it was high times twenty-four hours a day. If they couldn’t sell it they’d give it away. If they couldn’t give it away they’d pay you to take it. Saturday nights there’d be so many wagons and cars they’d run out of yard to park them in. They’d be strung out on the road. I never heard of anybody bein turned away. They’d take anything. Sometimes Dee’d go out in the front yard and fire off his shotgun a time or two just to calm things to a manageable level.

  The boy sat holding the records. He wondered how much was left out of the old man’s stories, he wondered if his grandfather had been observer or participant at these mad revels.

  Then the babies started comin, the old man went on. They never heard of rubbers, I reckon, or maybe they figured that that would be cheatin. One of the youngest of them girls told me one time, she was drinkin a little or she never would have told it, she said her sisters would bury them babies in widemouth Mason fruit jars.

  In what?

  In fruit jars. I reckon she meant the ones was born dead. Or maybe if they wasn’t dead they’d help them along. Said they never wanted them. She told me there was several buried on that bank up from the creek below Hixson’s garden spot, where they had a cat cemetery when they was little girls. I never asked if the cats was buried in fruit jars or not.

  God, the boy said. Do you suppose it was so?

  I’ve often wondered. I’d hate to think it was. I don’t know why she would have made it up, though. Or even how, how would she think of that, a fruit jar? Back at that time there was no place for meanness like Hixson’s farm. That bunch of men would take to fightin each other like dogs fightin over a bitch. Which was about what it amounted to. Likely it’s folks buried on Hixson’s place you never could of fitted into a fruit jar. They had everything from killins on down. The devil had to let things slide elsewhere to keep an eye on that place. Take on an extra demon or two. Oh things run on overtime for a while around there.

  Whatever happened, then? I don’t remember any of that from the time I was a kid.

  There’s a balance to things, things got their own way of balancín out. What happened this time was that two of them girls, one of them was the youngest one I spoke of, that told me about the fruit jars, she was pretty as a China doll, she was in the car with a couple of wild boys off Beech Creek and they straightened out some of the curves over by Riverside. They had a Packard wound out as far as she’d wind and took to the air comin down that long grade. Just flew off. I can take you to where the mark’s still on the whiteoak that Packard hit. Higher off the ground than you’d believe, too. It throwed folks everywhere. Killed all four of them and froze that Packard on the peg, it was like that old song, whiskey and blood run together. Then one of the girls got married and the others went north. But it was that Packard that shut it down. Like flippin a lightswitch. That quick.

  FLEMING CAME DOWN through a tangle of elderberry and sumac, wild pokeroot taller than his head, its poisonous-looking berries a deep virulent purple. Blackberry briars that latticed the hot windless cage of dying greenery. Nothing moved. He looked up, the sky was just broken shards of blue bottleglass glittering through the sumac berries. He could hear the creek trilling over the stones. He came out of the thicket where the earth sloped itself toward the creekbed.

  He studied the earth here, curious young archaeologist appraising the shape of the earth, looking for folks buried among the cats. Timeless glass coffins amongst the rotted shoe boxes of cat bones. Here were the juryrigged gravestones of a children’s pet cemetery. Small depressions in the ground long grown over with weeds, tall virile pigweed thrusting through the tilted husks of summers past. He sat for a time on the roots of a beech. Gnats had come to trouble his eyes and he kept trying to slap them away.

  If he closed his eyes he could imagine them coming down the slope with the cardboard box, solemn, perhaps tears in their eyes. Here was a hole Dee had spaded in the black loam. They came single file, the first in line carrying the box before her, the other three following like acolytes at some ritual they’d not mastered yet. Their thin legs browned by the sun and crisscrossed with the pale scratches from sawbriars, their hair plaited into pigtails. Imbued with a Sunday decorum, playing at being adults, something of ceremony about them.

  He could not imagine one of them covertly interring a fruit jar and its bloody freight into the earth. How did you get from one burial to the other, there was too much distance between, windy gulfs of darkness that lay between the child with the shoe box and the woman with the glass jar in her hand. Surely it could not happen by accident or even by a multitude of wrong choices, you’d think it would take an act of sheer will to plummet so far.

  When the sun tracked behind a cloud the light turned strange and green like light through smoked glass and the air felt dense and oppressive, too thick to breathe. He rose and descended the bank into the creek. The sun came back out and the shadows of the clouds moved about his feet like vague shapes moving beneath the surface of the water. Where the creek deepened he lay down in it, the sudden cold like a jolt of electricity coursing through him. He lay on his back and felt the gentle tug of the current, closed his eyes and let the water rise above his face, his hair fanned out in the moving water like a drowned man’s. The creek felt cold and clean, and he stayed beneath the surface until his lungs felt like fire in his chest and lights like fireflies drifted gently across the black expanse of the underside of his eyelids and he came up gasping and sucking air into his lungs.

  FLEMING 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 leng
th 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 behi
nd 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.