Twilight (26 page)

Not so much of a fool as he might have liked, the old woman gave him a look transparent with fierce malice, and Claude said, I reckon you been to mechanickin school. The edge of his smile jerked nervously, and his eyes looked harried.

Tyler just stared off to where the woods took the muddy road. The bowed trees stood bent like penitents under the windy rain and through the blowing water the horizon seemed in tumultuous motion, wavering like a horizon seen through fire
and it seemed to be receding from him.

Likely it’ll just get well on its own, he said.

Claude ignored him. Nothin else works we can always push it, he said. Get her rollin down this grade and she’ll fire right up like a sewin machine.

This having occurred to him, nothing would do but they must try it right away. With Claude behind the wheel andeveryone else, even the old woman, leant with shoulders to the truck, it began to inch forward through the sucking mud to the slope. Tyler pushed with a kind of fevered desperate hope that the truck would start. He felt that his lungs would burst and funny lights flickered behind his eyes and his feet were slipsliding wildly in the slick gray muck. The truck rolled silently toward the downgrade.

We got her on a downhill run now, boys, Claude yelled. Halfway down the slope he popped the clutch and the truck slewed sideways when the gears meshed and the wheels threw great contemptuous gouts of mud back toward them, but it did not hit, nor did it the next time when he tried where the slope leveled out and where it ultimately ceased, sulking in the roadbed like some illformed creature with a malefic will of its own. When Claude leapt out he slammed the door so hard glass rattled in its panel and he kicked the door with a vicious broganned foot and looked wildly about for some weapon to strike it with.

You goddamned eggsuckin son of a bitch, he told the truck. I ain’t never in my life seen nothin so aggagoddamnvatin.

We ain’t goin, Drew said.

We goin too, Claude said. It’s done got me mad now. Let me think a minute.

I’m goin to the house, Pearl said. She was slathered with mud and anger smouldered and flickered in her eyes. You may as well quit on it. Like you do on everthing else. She started up the slope, skirting the worst of the mud.

Put on a pot of coffee, Claude called after her, but she didn’t say if she would or she wouldn’t.

Claude opened the truck door and sat with his feet on therunningboard. Sheltered so from the rain he began to build a cigarette but when he raised it to his lips to lick the paper water dripped from his hair onto it and he was left with half a shredded paper in each hand and brown flakes of tobacco strewn over his lap. He sat staring at it not in anger but a kind of bemused stoicism, set upon by all things mechanical and now by the very elements themselves, as if whatever god had plucked him from the midst of sinners was sorely testing his newfound faith.

Claude got out of the truck and dusted the tobacco flakes from his trousers. Boys, there ain’t but one thing to do.

Tyler dreaded hearing it, but there seemed no choice. Let’s have it, he said.

We’re goin to have to push her back up the grade and roll her off again. We’ll scotch her and take another bite and work her on up.

Hell, there ain’t no way, Tyler said.

Claude ignored him. Drew, you and Lost Sheep go get some big cuts of that heater wood and tote em down here. I aim to warm my hands and see about that coffee. Yins get the wood down here, come on to the house and warm. I believe it’s turnin colder.

They went lethargically back up the hill to the barn. Tyler
could feel his wet clothes chafing his body. He could hear frogs singing somewhere below the barn where a pond might lie. Rain sang on the tin. Drew began stacking wood in his arms.

Don’t overload yourself, Tyler said. There is no earthly way we’re going to get that truck back up the hill.

Drew just shook his head and went on stacking his arm full. So bedraggled and mudslathered and absolutely wet heseemed set up as some cautionary symbol of such depths as human misery can descend to. Tyler was touched by a pity for Drew and a sorrow he couldn’t put a name to.

Hell, cheer up, Drew. There’ll be another day. They’re not goin to run out of town girls.

When they had the wood at the foot of the hill the thought of heat drew them to the house and they found Claude seated on the couch before the fire, his clothes steaming richly from the heat and a quart jar three-quarters full of a colorless liquid clutched in his lap that he stroked absentmindedly like an alien pet and a fey look of distances in his eyes.

She hid it in the picture box under the Bible, he said in answer to an unasked question. You boys ready to try it up the hill?

We about ready to warm, Drew said. We ain’t got no fruitjar. We have to warm from the outside in.

What about that coffee? Tyler said.

She never made none.

Then if we got to do it, let’s do it and get it over with.

Loath to lose the jar again, Claude slung it along in his hand and at the peak of the slope stopped and drank and stood studying the grade intently as if he were figuring angles and degrees of inclination and then went on down the hill.

Drew, you the least. Get you a stick of wood ready and me and Lost Sheep’ll push it as far we can up the grade, and you scotch it. Then we’ll get us another toehold and go again.

They tried, and the truck wouldn’t move. You goin to have to help us, he told Drew. Help us roll it and maybe we can hold it till you throw your block under it.

They locked their feet in the mud and leaned into it. The truck moved two or three feet and then no more. Drew threw awhiteoak cut under the wheel and they released the truck and stood hands on knees breathing hard.

Again. This time no more than a foot. With his breath exploding in his lungs Tyler stood staring up the muddy slope and it seemed to stretch to infinity. He turned toward the woods and the blue horizon lay beckoning like a promise.

One more time, Claude said, but the truck just rocked on its springs and the wheels would not move. No matter how hard they rocked it or lunged against it, it would not roll.

Claude went to his knees in the mud breathing hard. It’s went in gear somehow, he said.

Drew looked. No it ain’t.

It ain’t going anywhere else, either, Tyler said.

Claude began to curse the truck. There on his knees in the mud swearing he seemed like a penitent praying to a god of blasphemy. After a time he ceased but remained sitting in the mud with the rain channeling through his sparse hair and the eggsized bald spot he’d so carefully combed over bared to the elements.

I got to think, he said. I’m not whupped yet. Go in the house and warm. I’ll think of somethin here directly. He raised the bottle aloft to the winter light and drank and set it carefully
in the mud, wallowing out a hole with the bottom of the jar to prevent its overturning.

The serried warm gloom of the house. This is the last goddamn time I’m changin clothes today, Drew said. I’ve got me a good mind to just go back to bed and start all over.

When they came back through the curtained doorway to the front room, Claudelle said, Let me try to find you somethin of Daddy’s to put on.

He stood steaming before the fire. There’s no need of it, he said. I’d just get them wet. I’m going back out and see if I can help him do whatever it is he thinks of doing to the truck. Did your mama ever make any coffee?

She just shook her head.

When he’d warmed awhile and judged he’d soaked up enough heat to hold him against the cold he went back out. He met Claude coming up the slope but Claude didn’t speak or otherwise acknowledge his presence. Tyler noticed that the level of liquid in the jar had fallen and Claude seemed to list slightly as he slogged through the mud. For lack of anything better to do Tyler followed him to the barn.

By the time he caught up in the hall of the barn Claude had a bridle slung over his arm and was opening the door to a stall off the strawstrewn hall of the barn. Tyler could hear a heavy stamping behind the door. Here, Stannybogus, Claude was calling into the haysmelling dark. A horse’s head appeared in the widening crack, and when it did Claude grasped its mane with a fist twisted in it, and the horse tossed its head and Tyler could see it was blind in one eye. He shook his head and went back out into the rain and down the hill to the truck. After some time Claude came stumbling down the grade leading the horse and
carrying a board in his free hand. He laid aside the board and hitched the horse to the bumper of the truck and took up the slab and turned to wink at Tyler.

When the board slammed the horse’s rump its one good eye walled fearfully and it leapt against the traces with bunched muscles, simultaneously lashing out with its hind legs. Its right hoof caught Claude a glancing blow on the thigh and he collapsed into the mud, thrashing about and trying to rise. The horse had fallen to its knees leaving great raw slashes in the fresh mud and it was frantically trying to regainpurchase before the board could fall again. It veered right and left, rolling its good eye to see then lunged again and for an elongated moment the chains held and it stood straining and vibratory with nervous tremors rippling its hide and when the traces broke it lost its footing and fell again.

From the porch the woman was yelling something the wind stole and Claude was rolling around in the mud clutching his thigh, face contorted in histrionic anguish. Crazed so all over with mud and lightly furred with straw he looked like the luckless victim of some peculiar catastrophe whose survival lay in grave doubt. Graver still, for the woman had left the porch and was approaching with long purposeful strides.

The horse was running in great sliding lopes around the hillside with the singletree randomly banging the ground and each time it did the horse redoubled its speed toward the edge of the woods. They looked good to Tyler too.

I got to get on, Claude, he said. I’ll see you.

Claude just shook his head and wiped his cheek, leaving in the wake of his hand a slash of mud. Boy, I ever need anymore back luck, I aim to look you up and wear you like a charm on a
watch fob. You draw misfortune like shit draws flies.

Tyler knelt in the mud before Claude. There’s a man looking for me named Granville Sutter, and he may come here. I just don’t know. If he does, don’t fool with him. Don’t even let him in. He’s crazy.

You bring the son of a bitch on. After the day I’ve had and it not over yet, nobody’s goin to come on my own land and jerk me around.

Tyler rose and went on up the hill. Meeting the woman he gave her a wide berth and she shot him a look of fearful godspeed and he went on to the porch. The girl met him there. She had a folded coat in her arms and a brown paper bag with the top rolled down.

It’s Daddy’s old army coat. Try not to let him see it.

I think he’s got other things on his mind. I guess I better get on.

I guess you had. Mama’s pretty mad. I fixed you a little lunch, some bread and jelly was all I could find. And some coffee. I don’t reckon you’ll have any trouble findin water to make it.

Thanks a lot.

Bring that coat back. It’s Daddy’s old World War coat, and he wouldn’t take nothin for it. You are comin back, ain’t you?

You know I am, he said. Even your mama couldn’t keep me run off.

I just hope you ain’t lyin about it. I wished Daddy hadn’t stayed up all night stumblin around. I wished we’d of done it knowin we’d get caught. I’ve just got a bad feelin I ain’t never goin to see you again.

I’ll turn up.

No, you won’t. Give me somethin of yours to keep.

Do what? He looked about. All there was was the gun.

Anything of yours to remember you by.

He laid the coat and bag down and untied the thong from the arrowhead amulet and handed it to her. She tied it about her throat and tucked the arrowhead into the top of her dress. Her face was touched with an inexplicable sorrow. I don’t even know your first name, she said.

It’s Kenneth.

Well. Bye, Kenneth. Be careful.

You be careful. If a man shows up around here and asksabout me, you head out. If you have to go out a window or whatever. Just stay out of his way.

What in the world are you talkin about?

He picked up the folded coat and the bag and the rifle from against the porch stanchion. It’s a long story and you wouldn’t believe it anyway. Just do what I asked you. He raised a hand in farewell and went back into the rain.

He angled toward the barn and figured to come out of the hollow back onto the roadbed. He had a thought for the tarp, but he could hear angry voices from the vicinity of the truck. When he had the barn between himself and the house, he unfolded the coat. It was emblazoned with the insignia of old wars long won or lost, and when he wrapped it round him there was room enough for a companion had he had one, but it was thick wool and very warm.

He went through the dripping brush skirting a wetweather stream boiling up from a mossy shrine and up a rocky incline and through a curtain of blackjack onto the road. He trudged
on. The rain did not abate. The day drew on gray and somber and when dusk fell you could not have told the exact moment it did so. The light just faded by immeasurable increments until ultimately he was walking in darkness.