At noon a nameless woman in a dusty Bronco brought him a foam tray of food. He sat down in Rabon’s recliner in the living room and prepared to eat. A mouthful of tasteless mashed potatoes clove to his palate, grew rubbery and enormous so that he could not swallow it. He spat it onto the carpet. This is the last goddamned straw, he said. All his life he’d doubled up on the salt and pepper and now the food everyone brought him was cooked without benefit of grease or seasoning. There was a compartment of poisonous-looking green peas and he began to pick them up one by one and flick them at the television screen. Try not to get this all over everything, he said.
When the peas were gone he carried the tray to the kitchen. He raked the carrots and mashed potatoes into the sink and found a can of peas in a cabinet and opened them with an electric can opener. Standing in the living room doorway he began to fling handfuls of them onto the carpet, scattering them about the room as if he were sowing them.
When the peas were gone he got the tray of pills and went out into the backyard. The tray was compartmentalized, Monday, Tuesday, all the days of the week. He dumped them all together as if time had no further significance, as if all days were one.
Rabon had a motley brood of scraggly-looking chickens that were foraging for insects near a split-rail fence, and Scribner began to throw handfuls of pills at them. They ran excitedly about pecking up the pills and searching for more. Get em while they’re hot, the old man called. These high-powered vitamins’ll have you sailin like hawks and singin like mockinbirds.
He went in and set the tray in its accustomed place. From the bottom of the closet he took up the plastic box he used for storing his tapes. Wearing the look of a man burning the last of his bridges, he began to unspool them, tugging out the thin tape until a shell was empty, discarding it and taking up another. At length they were all empty. He sat on the bed with his hands on his knees. He did not move for a long time, his eyes black and depthless and empty looking, ankle-deep in dead bluegrass musicians and shredded mandolins and harps and flattop guitars, in old lost songs nobody wanted anymore.
Rabon was standing in the doorway wiping crushed peas off the soles of his socks. The old man lay on the bed with his fingers laced behind his skull watching Rabon through slitted eyes.
What the hell happened in the living room? Where did all those peas come from?
A bunch of boys done it, Scribner said. Broke in here. Four or five of the biggest ones held me down and the little ones throwed peas all over the front room.
Do you think this is funny? Rabon asked.
Hell no. You try bein held down by a bunch of boys and peas throwed all over the place. See if you think it’s funny. I tried to run em off but I’m old and weak and they overpowered me.
We’ll see how funny it is from the door of the old folks’ home, Rabon said. Or the crazy house. Rabon was looking at the medicine tray. What happened to all those pills?
The chickens got em, Scribner said.
THE GOING WAS SLOWER than he had expected and by the time the chert road topped out at the crossroads where the blacktop ran it was ten o’clock and the heat was malefic. The treeline shimmered like something seen through bad glass and the blacktop radiated heat upward as if somewhere beneath it a banked fire smoldered.
He stood for a time in the shade of a pin oak debating his choices. He was uncertain about going on, but then again it was a long way back. When he looked down the road the way he had come, the perspiration burning his eyes made the landscape blur in and out of focus like something with a provisional reality, like something he’d conjured but could not maintain. After a while he heard a car, then saw its towed slipstream of dust, and when it stopped for the sign at the crossroads he was standing on the edge of the road leaning on his stick.
The face of the woman peering out of the car window was familiar but he could call no name in mind. He was wearing an old brown fedora and he tipped the brim of it in a gesture that was almost courtly.
Mr. Scribner, what are you doing out in all this heat?
Sweating a lot, Scribner said. I need me a ride into town if you’re going that far.
Why of course, the woman said. Then a note of uncertainty crept into her voice. But aren’t you … where is Rabon? We heard you were sick. Are you supposed to be going to town?
I need to get me a haircut and a few things. There ain’t nothin the matter with me, either. That boy’s carried me to doctors all over Tennessee and can’t none of em kill me.
If you’re sure it’s all right, she said, moving her purse off the passenger seat to make room. Get in here where it’s air-conditioned before you have a stroke.
He got out at the town square of Ackerman’s Field and stood for a moment sizing things up, getting his bearings. He crossed at the traffic light and went on down the street to the City Café by some ingrained habit older than the sense of strangeness the town had acquired.
In midmorning the place was almost deserted, three stools occupied by drunks he vaguely recognized, bleary-eyed sots with nowhere else to be. He sat down at the bar, just breathing in the atmosphere: the ancient residue of beer encoded into the very woodwork, sweat, the intangible smell of old violence. There was something evocative about it, almost nostalgic. The old man had come home.
He laid his hat on the counter and studied the barman across from him. Let me have two tall Budweisers, he said, already fumbling at his wallet. He had it in a shirt pocket and the pocket itself secured with a large safety pin. It surprised him that the beer actually appeared, Skully sliding back the lid of the cooler and turning with two frosty cans of Budweiser and setting them on the Formica bar. The old man regarded them with mild astonishment. Well now, he said. He fought an impulse to look over his shoulder and see was Rabon’s rubbery face pressed to the glass watching him.
You got a mouse in your pocket, Mr. Scribner? a grinning Skully asked him.
No, it’s just me myself, Scribner said, still struggling clumsily with the safety pin. He had huge hands grown stiff and clumsy and he couldn’t get it unlatched. I always used one to chase the other one with.
I ain’t seen you in here in a long time.
That boy keeps me on a pretty tight leash. I just caught me a ride this mornin and came to town. I need me a haircut and a few things.
You forget that money, Skully said. I ain’t taking it. These are on the house for old time’s sake.
Scribner had the wallet out. He extracted a bill and smoothed it carefully on the bar. He picked up one of the cans and drank from it, his Adam’s apple convulsively pumping the beer down, the can rattling emptily when he set it atop the bar. He turned and regarded the other three drinkers with a benign magnanimity, his eyes slightly unfocused. Hidy boys, he said.
How you, Mr. Scribner?
He slid the bill across to Skully. I thank you for the beer, he said. Let me buy them highbinders down the bar a couple.
There was a flurry of goodwill from the drunks downbar toward this big spender from the outlands and the old man accepted their thanks with grace and drank down the second can of beer.
We heard you was sick and confined to your son’s house, Skully said. You look pretty healthy to me. What supposed to be the matter with you?
I reckon my mind’s goin out on me, Scribner said. It fades in and out like a weak TV station. I expect to wake up some morning with no mind at all. There ain’t nothin wrong with me, though. He hit himself in the chest with a meaty fist. I could still sweep this place out on a Saturday night. You remember when I used to do that.