Quincy Nell felt small and far away, so far you couldn’t see her.
Let me drive you home, the cop told her. His voice was curi ously gentle.
I’ve got my car, she said. I have to drive.
I believe we’ll send someone for it, the cop said. Just get in the squad car there.
I have to drive my car.
I believe we’ll send someone for it, he said again. Get in the car, please.
She got in the car.
He drove back through Clifton. He seemed not to know what to say to her. She watched his reflection in the glass. His face looked strangely ambiguous. She thought he might begin to lecture her, or pull over at a roadside table and rape her.
Finally he cleared his throat. I’ve got a daughter myself about your age, he began.
That’s nice, she said, and that was the end of that.
IN AUGUST THE HEAT turned malign. It didn’t rain and it didn’t rain. In the bottomlands corn withered and the blades twisted upon themselves then turned yellow and sere. The thermometer at midday hovered at 110 degrees for ten days in a row. The sky was absolutely cloudless and about the sun it seemed to quake and tremble like molten metal.
Bonedaddy labored shirtless with the nail gun shooting eightpenny nails into oak pallets. He worked in cutoff jeans and a red bandanna tying back his wet black hair and the sun hammered him fiercely as a weapon the God of his childhood had turned against him for his sins.
Nights were no cooler. At night far-off upriver you could see heat lightning flicker soundless and rim-light such clouds as there were with brief flashes of rose and white but it would come to nothing and in the morning the clouds would be gone and the hot bowl of sky as smooth and seamless as a china cup.
Quincy Nell was home alone when he came. He came backing the Toyota up across the yard to the door of the storm cellar. He got out. She was standing on the porch with her arms crossed over her stomach watching him across the porch railing.
Hey babe, he said. I come after my air conditioner. That trailer’s like trying to sleep in a microwave oven.
You don’t have an air conditioner.
Oh come on don’t give me that. I paid good money for it and you seen me do it.
You got every nickel of that money back. By now I guess you’ve spent it on that Seiber woman.
No I never.
Then buy you an air conditioner.
I bought something a whole lot cheaper but just as good, he said.
He was opening the toolbox on the truck. He took out a wrecking bar almost three feet long. It was new-looking and a price tag still dangled from a string tied to it. He started toward the door of the storm cellar. She was already off the porch coming around the corner of the house. The only weapon she’d come across was a garden rake and she was carrying that. Get off my property, she was yelling.
I’m taking it.
Then you’ll take it to a jail cell if you break that lock. Daddy’s by a telephone right now and he can have the law here in fifteen minutes. Everybody knows it s mine anyway.
Come on, Quincy Nell.
No. It goes in our apartment.
Quincy Nell, there ain’t any apartment. I live in a house trailer, remember. Get it through your head. And I believe I’ll go to the law myself. I’ll get a paper says that air conditioner’s mine and I’ll have a deputy sheriff to help me unload it, too.
Then go on and do it, she said.
After he left she unlocked the door. She knelt in the door looking at the air conditioner. She could feel her swelling stomach pressing against her thighs. The thing sat on stacked bricks. It was no longer an air conditioner, and hadn’t been for some time. It was pale lime-green walls and yellow chintz curtains, a baby in a highchair saying Daddy for the first time and her telling Bonedaddy about it the minute he came through the door. She began to cry, for all that was lost, for all that had never been.
THE JADE-GREEN station wagon stopped in the driveway and a man got out and opened the rear door. He was a tall thin man in baggy twill pants and a T-shirt and he had thin black hair combed to cover a bald spot. He was grinning at her. He looked vaguely familiar and by the time he was halfway to the doorstep she had recognized him.
How stupid do they think I am? she asked herself.
He was at the foot of the doorstep. He took out a bright red bandanna and mopped his face with it.
You the little lady got the air conditioner I heard about on the radio? Sure is fine weather for one.
Yeah. I called it in on Tradetime. It’s a hundred and twentyfive dollars.
Well, that’s fine, that’s fine, the man said. He appeared nervous.
Say don’t I know you? Aren’t you Bonedaddy Bowers s brother that lives over at Coble?
Well, yeah, that’s me all right. But I wanted the air conditioner for me, not him.
Whoever it’s for it’s a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
Well what I was thinking see I don’t even know if it works. I was planning on taking it and making sure everything was all right then bringing you back the money. I know your daddy.
She was shaking her head. I’m sorry, she said. It don’t leave here till the money’s in my hand. If it don’t work you can bring it back. It’s guaranteed.
He stood twisting the handkerchief in his hands.
You can tell Bonedaddy I wasn’t born yesterday, she said. I didn’t just fall off some hay truck that was passing through town.
Yes ma’am, Bonedaddy’s brother said.
IT WAS THREE DAYS later when Clarence called. Clarence lived a quarter mile or so below Quincy Nell in a doublewide house trailer with his momma.
I got it sold, he said.
What?
I been hearing you every day on Tradetime. There’s a friend of mine down here, Cecil, he’s got the money in his pocket and he wants that air conditioner.
Send him up here then.
I can’t. Cecil won’t come. Bonedaddy whipped him a week or two ago over something and he’s afraid Bonedaddy’ll catch him hauling off that air conditioner.
This is the last place he’s likely to see Bonedaddy. He’s more likely to be at your house than mine.
He’s pissed at me. He got mad at me cause I said he was running over you.
I can’t load it by myself anyway, she said.
That’s no problem. I’ll run up there and help you.
When they had loaded the air conditioner into the Gremlin the shed looked curiously empty. She left the door standing ajar and it held only shadows.
Clarence laid a hand on her arm. Me and you ought to get together one of these nights, he said.
No. Me and Bonedaddy’ll probably get back together.
I don’t think so. You want to know what he said?
No, she said. She leaned against the side of the Gremlin and wiped the sweat out of her eyes with a sleeve. All right. What did he say?
He said you was a free agent. He said he reckoned you was anybody’s dog wanted to go hunting.
No he never.
He damn sure did.
He’s a liar then.
The driveway curved downhill and she followed Clarence’s truck. Where the driveway came out onto the county road there was an old abandoned farmhouse set in the corner with a yardful of pecan trees and here Clarence stopped in the middle of the road. She braked and sat in momentary confusion. Clarence’s truck must have died. She could hear a flat popping sound.
She turned to look. The yard was grown up knee-high with grass and there were old cast-off car parts and machinery jutting out of it. Bonedaddy was standing under one of the pecan trees looking up. He was wearing frayed denim cutoffs and no shirt and his hair was tied back in a ponytail and he was burned dark by the sun. He had a little chrome-plated pistol and he was shooting pecans off the tree branches with it.