What are you lookin for?
Never you mind what I’m lookin for, Retha. What are you doin in here?
Just sittin in here where it’s quiet.
Go on and get out of there. You’re liable to get copperhead bit.
She got up reluctantly. I like it in here, she said.
Why? It seems a funny place to come and sit.
I don’t know.
Swaw liked it out here and he didn’t know why either. All he knew was that the door of the toolshed seemed to close off the rest of the world. When you were in the toolshed things you worried about didn’t bother you. Everything was timeless in here. There was a different perspective to things. In fact, there weren’t any things, as if the toolshed and its handhewn cedar door was the sum totality of existence, finite, the only thing there was. Swaw didn’t want to share it.
Go help your mama get in the last of them tomaters, he said, and don’t let me catch you back in here again. You git snakebit you’d die fore I could git you to a doctor, even with that wagon and team.
When she was gone he got down the bottle and drank, then sat on the wooden floorboards, feeling the warm assurance of alcohol feeding all through him. He rolled himself a Country Gentleman smoke and lit it, watched the blue smoke shift hazily in the columns of spilled light.
He heard laughter. A girl’s laughter, children, secretive and faint, and for some reason he suddenly felt like a trespasser or eavesdropper. He knew subconsciously he was listening to something that had not been said for his ears.
Yet consciously he thought, Them damn trifling girls. He thought about getting up to go look and he was just about to do so when a feminine voice no more than eight or ten inches from his ear said quite distinctly, Don’t do that no more, Daddy.
Swaw was up like a shot. Damn you, Retha, he said. He looked wildly about. No one, nothing save bits of straw drifting in moted light. He threw open the door and flooded the shed with hot sunlight. Retha was going through the garden gate, a basket swinging in her hand. He heard the hinges creak as the door closed behind her.
Saturday morning he went to a movie. He sat in the darkness and watched the flickering screen. He couldn’t concentrate on the film. It was all horses and gunfire, stagecoaches and buckboards running away. A blondhaired girl was beset with troubles the buckskin hero must set to rights. He wished desperately his life had the stark simplicity of a movie. Black was immediately distinguishable from white, right from wrong.
He felt beleaguered on all sides. The old woman and his daughters were mad at him. She was afraid they were going to be run off the Beale place. Beale was looking for him, mad about the corn still standing in the field, he guessed.
He was vaguely aware of the voices of children around him in the darkness. He could feel the halfpint bottle through his bib pocket. It was warm and comforting, a trusted familiar, a docile pet that always knew him well and showed it. He took it out and unscrewed the cap and drank. It was bad whiskey, an evil smell uncoiling in the darkness, and his stomach almost revolted. He felt hot vomit rise in his throat. He swallowed and closed his throat and suppressed it. After a minute he felt a little better. Every small victory counted now.
Hey, they don’t allow no drinkin in here, an old woman said behind him.
Swaw turned around. He could barely make her out. A bitter, dried-up old woman, the very embodiment of reprimand. Shut up, you old whore, he said. He didn’t bother to lower his voice. He could hear the sharp intake of the woman’s breath. The theatre fell abruptly silent about him. Swaw went back to watching the movie.
Sepia sagebrush images flickered there. A Never Never Land that never was. Black villains, heroes and heroines pure as the driven snow. Injustice settled with a gloved fist, a.45 revolver that seemed to never need reloading. Might makes right.
He felt the whiskey soaking through a tide of warm flames flickering in his flesh. The movie seemed to be ending. The heroine embraced the hero. Her lithe arms encircled his neck. Mash them titties agin him, Swaw thought. Past his broad shoulder she looked directly at Swaw. Her hair was long and blond, wavering to her shoulders and ending in a mass of curls. Her eyes were calculating as a cat’s. Her lips parted, and he could see the white predatory line of her teeth. Her lips moved. You, she said above the romantic swell of music. He lurched to his feet.
Hey, sit down there, a voice called.
He didn’t turn. He stood looking at the screen. A catcall of voices arose, a Coke cup wadded around a core of ice caught him hard in the temple. He half fell, caught on the row of seats in front of him, whirled peering into the darkness. Who done that? he cried. Which one of you little cocksuckers thowed that at me?
Lord God, the old woman said. She struggled to her feet.
He could hear giggling beyond the circle of dark. He shambled blindly toward it, felt the ungiving wood seats hard against his shins. He leant over the row of seats, slapping at the children, swaying like a drunken bear. Son of a bitches, he told them. Little rich bastards. Another drink cup caught him between the shoulder blades and he lurched toward a new set of tormenters. After a moment he trudged up the aisle over a carpet of paper and spilt popcorn.
He wandered out blinking against the bright daylight. He sat on the curb a moment examining his barked shins. He rolled himself a smoke and lit it. He felt the bottle against his breast, cooler now, remote, alien. He knew without taking it out that it was empty. He got up and started down the street, an air of purposeful resolution about him.
In the Snow White Café he ran up with Charlie Cagle. Your old woman’s a huntin ye, Cagle told him. I seen her peepin in the winder a while ago. She had a mean look on her face and a stick in her hands about this long.
Cagle was joking but Swaw wasn’t in a joking mood. He sat down at the bar and ordered a draft beer. When it came he sat staring morosely into it. The hell with her, he said after a time.
Hell, I was just joshin you, Owen. I ain’t even seen her.
Cagle thought Swaw looked bad. He moved as if he were in a trance. He hadn’t shaved in a week or two, and from the smell of him he hadn’t had a bath either. His clothes were stiff with grease and sweat; Cagle figured if Swaw climbed out of them they’d stand alone. His eyes were blackrimmed and red, as if an obscure rage flared behind them. Swaw looked like the middle of a long drunk with no end as yet in sight.
Cagle tried to draw him into conversation. How you farin out the Beale place?
All right.
You ain’t seen or heard nothin out of the way?
Swaw was silent a moment. No, he said at length.
So he has, Cagle said to himself. He has, and he don’t want to talk about it. But that’s all right. He don’t owe me nothin. I never done nothin for him only take them in when there was nowhere else to go and got a job when nobody else would hire him. I reckon that rubbertired wagon rolled him someplace where he don’t remember none of that.
Pigs, Swaw said, or that’s what Cagle understood him to say.
What?
All they are is goddamned hogs, gruntin and squealin. Wantin one thing and then another. He drained the mug of beer, set it down hard, and ordered another. He was going through his pockets one by one. Ultimately he dredged up two greasy ones and a handful of silver. Gimme a pack of them rubbers, he said. The barman laid the coinshaped foil package on the counter and picked up Swaw’s quarter.
Hot time in the old town tonight, Owen?