Like me, he loves animals. I adore that. I also adore that he adores his wife.
Hell, I love the guy. My whole family does.
And because of that, along with the fact I think he is a worthy recipient of this honor, I write this from the heart: I love you, Neal. I’m glad you are being honored in this way, and I’ve yet to forgive you for giving me a gift of a dollar bill torn in half.
GETTING DARK
Neal Barrett, Jr.
FROM THE AUTHOR: I chose this story for the collection because it came to me in one of those pleasant moments when a writer feels he’s truly done it right this time — that he’s pierced that barrier between the world that seems real, and that other state of being, the one we’ve feared all along.
I was a child growing up where “John-William’s mother” grew up, and during the very same years. I listened to the radio, read the funnies, and was deathly afraid of the dark. For me, that awesome, timeless moment between daylight and dark was, as John-William’s mother recalls, “like sorrow come to stay.” I also heard the same grandmother tales that frightened John-William’s mother, and carried many nightmare memories for years. I can’t say what was real and what wasn’t in John-William’s mother’s life, and very possibly she couldn’t either. But that’s the point here, isn’t it? I sincerely hope you enjoy the story, and thank you for the privilege of having it appear in this volume.
JOHN-WILLIAM’S MOTHER TURNS the water on low and peels carrots in the sink. Wet skins slick-slick quick off the cutter and stick in a huddle where they fall. This is what skins like to do. They like to huddle up, stick with their own kind. Peel a potato and a carrot in the sink, they won’t speak at all, they’ll bunch up with someone they know. Like nigger-folks and whites, thinks John-William’s mother. That’s what Jack used to say. One’s dark and one’s not. One’s that snake in the Garden, would’ve stuck it in Eve, but couldn’t figure how.
John-William’s mother drops carrots in a pot, puts the pot on the stove. Leaves the skins alone, leaves them where they fell. They look like bird tongues to John-William’s mother, cut-cut dagger tongues, curled up at the end. She thinks about birds, big old black birds, harelipped fat birds without any tongues. “ ’weet! ’weet!” go the birds, poor little birds without any tongues. Poke in a peel now, that’d be fine, stick a little tongue in a pointy yellow bill.
John-William’s mother peers out the screen door. The birds have black ruffle necks and glitter-green eyes. They perch on phone wires just behind the house. Birds in twos now, birds in threes, birds like notes on the music at Mama Sarah’s house. Note birds hop from one wire to the next. Hop down, hop up, up and down again. The birds play “Summit Ridge Drive,” play “Chatanooga Choo Choo,” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” When she hears those songs, John-William’s mother gets a tingle where a tingle shouldn’t ought to be.
“Not if you’re a lady,” giggles John-William’s mother, “not ’less you come from the Wilcher branch of the tree.”
The fan on the counter hum-hums to the left, hum-hums to the right, gives a little jerk and starts back again. John-William’s mother smells Camay soap and Lipton iced tea. Smells meatloaf and pepper and water on the stove. Flour and catsup and old coffee grounds. Summer sucks Oklahoma heat through the open screen door, mingles with the smells from inside. John-William’s mother draws damp hair off her neck, pins it up back. Her dress is stuck to her skin. She pulls at her collar, lets the breeze in. Lord God, too hot for underwear in August. Grandmas and aunts in Shawnee and Maud can keep their corsets and their buttons and their snaps. This is Oke City, and a girl can jiggle what she likes down here.
John-William’s mother peeks down for a look. They’re still down there, and still looking fine. You can say what you like about your big old melons, sagging on the vine when you’re still eighteen. There’s not a man living doesn’t have a liking for a grown-up woman’s got a pair of thirty-fours poking right up like happy puppy dogs.
John-William’s mother looks past her pretties, down past her tummy, feels a little shudder, feels a little warm start to grow, thinks, for an instant, why not leave the pot a’bubble, run back to bed and have a little tingle, who’s going to know? Blushes at the image like a movie show flicking in her head, raises the lid off the carrots, which don’t need checking at all…
…stops right there, holds the steamy lid in her hand, stops there and listens, hears it coming, hears it on the way, long before it gets there at all. Sets down the lid, drops her apron on a chair, kicks off her flats, and walks out the screen door. The steps are still warm. She pulls up her skirt, leans back against the door. If some old man gets a peek, well maybe she’ll let him have two.
There’s no wind at all, but it’s better out back than inside.
Still a little light, but the sky’s turning dull pewter-gray, turning dishwater blue, like the bottom of a worn-out pan. John-William’s mother doesn’t like this time of day, doesn’t now and never did. When she was little on the farm she’d sit on the back porch steps past Mama’s kitchen door. The wood was dull gray, worn by lye soap and long dead years. Sit real still and look past the gravel back yard, past the hen house and the barn, past the smoke house and the dirt storm cellar with its tin door in the ground. Out past the pile where Papa put things he meant to fix, and never did. A plow with no handles, busted wagon wheels, the carcass of a Ford, its rusty hide now a 12-gauge target, fine as Irish lace. Broken shovels, dull washtubs with the bottoms burned out.
And, past the orchard and the fence and the fields full of rattle-paper corn, to the land that stretched forever to the sky.
That’s when John-William’s mother sat still as mice and held her breath. Held it, and waited for the last pallid whisper of the light to disappear, waited for the day to give a final sigh and slide away.
You had to watch close. It happened, just like that, and it was gone. It wasn’t day and it wasn’t night; it was something in between. Every color died and the faraway fields began to smudge against the sky. The barn, the hen house, the rusted-out Ford began to blur, grow faint and indistinct, dull and undefined. The dark descended and sucked the day dry.
And it was then when John-William’s mother, Betty Ann, heard the great stone clock, felt it strike deep, deep within the earth, felt it beat against her heart. When the time was just right, at the moment in between, she listened, and heard what the clock had come to say…
That’s when the big clock stopped for a beat, and the world grew silent and still. It seemed to Betty Ann like sorrow had come to stay, as if all the lonely had spilled out from the day. Grandmaw Wilcher said this was the moment dark came to snatch life away. “You can see it if you look real close,” Grandmaw Wilcher said. “You might see a dead bird out in the yard, claw feet stickin’ right up, bill wide open, sucking for a last breath of air. You might see a rock or a stick you was lookin’ right at, and now it’s not there. For a blink, for a wink, you’re seeing things gone, things that were there a minute or so before. It might be a toad, it might be a stone, it might be someone you know.”