On the curve below the gap the rear wheels drifted slightly and he realized that there was a thin sheet of ice on the road. He sat up over the wheel and wiped the glass with a rag. He passed Tipton’s, the lights above the road warm and friendly-looking through the trees. Old married men. Sylder chuckled, reached for his cigarettes. He was the nicest boy … the rain peening steadily the tin roof of the church, obelisks of light slanting down from the high windows like buttresses. After the creak of the door nothing but the huge breathing silence, musty odor, the patient and quiet abandonment, chairs, benches, the pulpit, all orderly and still in their coats of dust, an air of mild surprise about them at this late visitation. Their steps ghostly on the warping boards, rousing an owl from the beams, passing over them on soundless wings, a shadow, ascending into the belfry like an ash sucked up a flue and as silently. She gripped his arm. Together to the mourners’ bench. O Lord, O Lord. Witnessed by one nightbird.
Topping the hill above the creek he came upon a half-ton truck with a horse on it, the long bland face peering down at him over the slatted tailgate with eyes luminous and round as bottlebottoms in the carlights. The truck was laboring at the hill with beetle-like industry, the gears grinding out a low whine. He watched the snow swirling over the road behind it, serpentine, white wisps like smoke on glass, eased up the shiftlever and passed them, the horse’s off eye rolling wildly, past the cab, the driver dimly lit within, puffing at a cigar, looking down at him once.
One side for the hooch man, Sylder said. New Year’s whiskey comin. Figure ten headaches to the gallon, makes … a thousand … about twelve hunderd real hat stretchers. How about that, old man?
Old man puffed his cigar, receding rearward, dimmed his lights to one dull orange globe.
He drove straight down Gay Street, halting obediently at the stoplights, gazing at the numbed traffic officers with insolent bemusement.
Howdy, Blue-boy. Keer for a drink?
Out on the west side of town he pulled into a drive and around behind an aged and ill-kept frame house. He backed the coupe up to the garage and got out, stretching a little. Two men came from the house, the kitchen, where a small window was lit. Another man came to the door and stood there leaning against the jamb, his shirttail out, smoking a cigarette and taking the air. A woman’s voice small and shrill somewhere in the house behind him: Shet the door, idjit. You raised in a barn? He didn’t move.
Howdy, Sylder, the first man said, going past him to the garage, not even looking at him.
Howdy, Sylder said.
The other one stopped. How’s the new car? he asked.
All right.
Ward says it come out of Cosby.
Could be.
Ward says it’s plenty fast. Says they blockaded the feller on the Newport highway is the only way they ever come to catch him at all.
Let’s go, Tiny, the other man called from the garage.
Sylder went to the rear of the coupe and opened the decklid. They began to unload, carrying the cases back into the garage, the car creaking and rising bit by bit until they had finished and it stood with its rear end high in the air like a cat in heat.
Sylder took a flashlight and wrench from the glove compartment, stooped by the rear wheels each in turn and lowered the car. Then he undid the chains, got in and drove off them, came back and put them in the trunk. The motor was still running and as he slid behind the wheel once more Tiny came to lean on the door.
Don’t she sound sweet though, he said.
Sylder looked up at him. That what Ward says?
Tiny grinned. Naw, he said. Seems to me that’s what McCrary said. When Ward loant him the money to buy it.
Tell Ward good cars costs good money. Even at a government auction. Or even if you done paid for em oncet.
He set the gears and ran the motor up once and Tiny-stood up. Come back, he said.
Sylder was rolling up the glass. We’ll see ye, he said, switched on the headlights and pulled away down the drive.
He drove slowly back to the mountain, past the forks and the store, the porch posts deadwhite as plaster casts of those untrimmed poles, the huge carved lion’s head in fierce cameo upon the door, the brass knocker brightly pendant from its nostrils, and the barred panes buckling in the light planeless as falling water, passing out of the glare in willowing sheets to darkness, stark and stable once again. Past his own house, dark but for the light on the porch, and then across the mountain, still slowly, pulling the grades down under the wheels easily.
The road was glazed with ice on the far side and he amused himself by drifting the coupe from curve to curve like a boat tacking. At the foot of the mountain he left Henderson Valley Road and turned right down Bay’s Mountain Road, driving on gravel now, slowing to some ten or fifteen miles an hour and finally switching off the headlights. He drove that way for half a mile, the coupe rolling ghostly over the road, black and silent against the snow. Then he turned the car around in a drive, pointing it back down the road, and got out.
He walked up the road until he came to the next drive and here he turned in, plodding through the snow to the lightless house where it brooded in a copse of trees, solitary above the empty fields, over and around it the naked branches tangled like ironwork.
He walked around the house twice. No dogs barked. At the back again he tested a window, lifted it, the weights slithering in the sashes, stepped through and inside. He found himself in an areaway off the kitchen, two doors in front of him, one leading to a large open room, the other one closed.
Hola, Jeffo, he called, whispered, in mock and inaudible greeting. Dorme? On downpointed cat’s feet he stepped the three steps to the closed door and folded his hand over the knob. Oh, Jeffo, he whispered. Es muy malo que no tengas un perro. Turned the knob and opened the door.
There was one small high window in the room, a square of gray standing out of the blackness, and other than that he could see nothing. He stood at the door for a few minutes, listening to the rumbling breath of the man asleep. After a while he could make out the shape of the bed, directly in front of him.
It was warm in the room, he could feel the sweat in his armpits, but the man was swathed heavily in blankets. Thickness of them under his hand … here shape of arm, of shoulder, chest… sleeping on his back. Gifford snuffled. One gluey eyelid came unstuck as the covers receded from his chin with maternal solicitude.
He even raised his head a little, wonderingly, sleep leaving him in slow grudging waves, so that he seemed to be coming up to meet it, the shut fist rocketing down out of blackness and into his face with a pulpy sound like a thrown melon bursting.
When he got home it was past midnight and had turned off colder yet. He parked the coupe at the back of the house, scotched the wheel and went in through the kitchen. He took some biscuits and a jar of preserves from the icebox and ate them, walking up and down a little, flexing his knuckles. When he had finished he put the preserves back, took a long drink from a jar of buttermilk, and then went into the bedroom. His right hand was swollen and he picked delicately at the buttons of his coat.
Marion …?
Yeah, he said.
Oh … what time is it?
Late, I reckon. I got tied up.
Are you okay?
Yeah.
He stepped out of his trousers and crawled in beside her.
She could feel him laughing silently. What? she said.
He kept astin who it was.
What? Who did.
Hmm? Naw, nothin. Just some feller. Go on to sleep.
She turned over and put her hand on his chest. She said, Hush.