“Don’t want it too runny,” the old man said. There was always the feeling he might be talking to himself. He laid down the hoe. “Okey-dokey,” he said.
His shoulders were stooped, they had the set of labor in them. He took the handles of the barrow without straightening up.
“I’ll get it,” Billy said, reaching.
“That’s all right,” Harry muttered. His teeth whistled on the “s.”
He wheeled it himself, the surface now smooth and shifting a little from side to side, and set it down with a jolt near the wooden forms he’d built—Billy had dug the trench. Checking them one last time, he tilted the wheelbarrow and the heavy liquid fell from its lip. He scraped it empty and then moved along the trench with his shovel, jabbing to fill the voids. On the second trip he let Billy push the barrow, naked to the waist, the sun roaring down on his shoulders and back, his muscles jumping as he lifted. The next day he let him shovel.
Billy lived near the Catholic church, in a room on the ground floor. It had a metal shower. He slept without sheets, in the morning he drank milk from the carton. He was going out with a girl named Alma who was a waitress at Daly’s. She had legs with hard calves. She didn’t say much, her complaisance drove him crazy, sometimes she was at Gerhart’s with someone else in a haze of voices, the bark of laughter, famous heavyweights behind her tacked on the wall. There were water stains near the ceiling. The door to the men’s room slammed.
They talked about her. They stood at the bar so they could see her by turning a little. She was a girl in a small town. The television had exhibition football coming from Grand Junction. They were thinking of her legs as they watched the game, she was like an animal they wanted. She smoked a lot, Alma, but her teeth were white. She was flat-faced, like a fighter. She would be living in the trailer park, Billy told her. Her kids would eat white bread in big, soft packages from the Woody Creek Store.
“Oh, yeah?”
She didn’t deny it. She looked away. Like an animal, it didn’t matter how pure they were, how beautiful. They went down the highway in clattering steel trucks, wisps of straw blowing clear as they passed. They were watched by the cold eyes of cowboys. They entered the house of blood, its sudden bone-cleaving blows, its muffled cries. He didn’t spend much money on her—he was saving up. She never mentioned it.
They poured the side of the house that faced Third Street and started along the front. He thought of her in the sunlight that was browning his arms. He lifted the heavy barrow and became strong everywhere, like a tightened cable. When they finished in the evening, Harry washed off everything with the hose, he put the shovel and hoe in the trunk of his car. He sat on the front seat with the door open. He smiled to himself. He lifted his cap and smoothed his hair.
“Say,” he said. There was something he wanted to tell. He looked at the ground. “Ever been West?”
It was a story of California in the thirties. There was a whole bunch of them going from town to town, looking for work. One day they came to a place, he forgot the name, and went into some little restaurant. You could get a whole meal for thirty cents in those days, but when they came to pay the check, the owner told them it would cost a dollar fifty each. If they didn’t like it, he said, there was the state police just down the street. Afterward Harry walked over to the barbershop—he looked like that musician, he had so much hair. The barber put the sheet around him. Haircut, Harry told him. Then, hey, wait a minute, how much will it be? The barber had the scissors in his hand. I see you been eating over to the Greek’s, he said.
He laughed a little, almost shyly. He glanced at Billy, his long teeth showed. They were his own. Billy was buttoning his shirt.
It was hot in the evening. The hottest summer in years, everyone said, the hottest ever. At Gerhart’s they stood around in big, dusty shoes.
“Shit, it’s hot,” they told each other.
“Can’t get much hotter.”
“What’ll it be, then?” Gerhart would ask. His idiot son was rinsing glasses.
“Beer.”
“Hot enough for you?” Gerhart said as he served it.
They stood at the bar, their arms covered with dust. Across the street was the movie house. Up toward the pass, the sand and gravel pit. There was ranching all around, a macadam plant, men like Wayne Garrich who hardly spoke at all, the bitterness had penetrated to the bone. They were deliberate, their habits were polished smooth. They looked out through the big, storelike windows.
“There’s Billy.”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“Well, what do you think?” They laid out phrases in low voices, like bets. Their arms were big as firewood on the bar. “Is he going to it or coming from it?”
The foundation was finished at the beginning of September. There was a little sand where the pile had been, a few specks of gravel. The nights were already cold, the first emptiness of winter, not a light on in town. The trees seemed silent, subdued. They would begin to turn suddenly, the big ones going last.
Harry died about three in the morning. He had been leaning on the cart in the supermarket, behind the stacks, struggling for breath. He tried to drink some tea. He sat in his chair. He was between sleep and waking, the kitchen light was on. Suddenly he felt a terrible, a bursting pain. His mouth fell open, his lips were dry.
He left very little, a few clothes, the Chevrolet filled with tools. Everything seemed lifeless and drab. The handle of his hammer was smooth. He had worked all over, built ships in Galveston during the war. There were photographs when he was twenty, the same hooked nose, the hard, country face. He looked like a pharaoh there in the funeral home. They had folded his hands. His cheeks were sunken, his eyelids like paper.
Billy Amstel went to Mexico in a car he and Alma bought for a hundred dollars. They agreed to share expenses. The sun polished the windshield in which they sat going southward. They told each other stories of their life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES SALTER is the author of the novels Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, Solo Faces, The Arm of Flesh (revised as Cassada), and The Hunters; the memoirs Gods of Tin and Burning the Days; and the collection Last Night. He lives in Colorado and on Long Island.
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
Maya Angelou
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A. S. Byatt
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Caleb Carr
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Christopher Cerf
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Harold Evans
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Charles Frazier
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Vartan Gregorian
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Jessica Hagedorn
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Richard Howard
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Charles Johnson
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Jon Krakauer
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Edmund Morris
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Azar Nafisi
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Joyce Carol Oates
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Elaine Pagels
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John Richardson
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Salman Rushdie
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Oliver Sacks
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Carolyn See
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Gore Vidal
ALSO BY JAMES SALTER
The Hunters
A Sport and a Pastime
Light Years
Solo Faces
Cassada
(previously published as The Arm of Flesh)
Last Night
Burning the Days