Johnny Two Horse kissed her again, or maybe it was only the hot breeze sliding in upon the night to sweep the dream away. And, when she peered once more into the dark, Betty Ann could see things she hadn’t seen before. The houses and the lawns and the trees looked different now, like the shiny things you get when they send your pictures back. Everything that used to be black was murky gray, and everything white went just the other way. It didn’t seem wrong, turned inside out, it seemed, to Betty Ann, the way things ought to be. Maybe the way things had been all along and were getting right again.
Up past the Harpers and the Smiths and the Roers, where the street lamp stood on the corner, something seemed to shimmer, seemed to tremble, seemed to hide behind a veil, like looking through Grandmaw’s glasses where the world was all a blur. Betty Ann blinked and the blur went away.
Then, for an instant, something was there and something not, something just beyond the corner, something coming, something waiting, something maybe in-between, something not quite ready, something not really there.
Betty Ann feels her mouth go dry, feels her legs go weak, backs up against the cold brick wall, backs up, finds the wall isn’t there, knows, for sure, that isn’t right at all. Walls stay where they are, where a wall’s supposed to be. Betty Ann tries again, staggers, very nearly falls, slips through the wall, through the wires, through the wood, through the pipes and the nails, through the cobwebs and little dead spiders and bugs that huddle there.
John-William’s mother, Sarah’s daughter, Betty Ann, walks through the curtains that trickle like powder, like snow, like ash, before her eyes, walks through the sofa that crumbles into dust, into the hall where the walls begin to vanish, into the kitchen where the stove, the mixer, and the radio sigh and fall away.
Betty Ann stands naked, looks through the screen door, where it used to be, looks for the black birds singing on the wire, black birds white now, sees them on the ground, lying on their backs with their little beaks open, claws up in the air.
“Well my goodness,” says Betty Ann, “now isn’t that a sight to see. Why, it’s like Andy always says, ‘You neber do knows what gon’ be happ’nin’ but you kin bets it will.’ ”
John-William’s mother laughs at the thought, walks back through where her first brick home used to be. Stops, for a moment, glances at the mirror in the hall. The mirror’s not there but someone is, someone Betty Ann thinks she ought to know. Just for an instant, just for a blink, then just as quickly gone.
Betty Ann stands outside where the porch used to be, stands there naked and watches the corner past the Smiths and the Harpers and the Roers, looks at the lamp that’s black instead of white, at the murky light on the street down below. Now, the thing on the corner, the thing that seemed to shimmer, seemed to tremble, seemed to hide behind a veil, isn’t something maybe there anymore, isn’t something maybe not, isn’t waiting in-between anymore….
John-William’s mother can feel her heart pound, feel the big clock down far-far below begin to chime. Whatever wasn’t there is coming on slow, dark and heavy, faint and distant, closer, closer still, hardly even there, turning, turning, past the Roers and the Smiths and the Harpers, coming right up to where John-William’s mother stands naked where her first brick house used to be….
They glide down the street now, slide on in without a sound, slip on in without a hum from their engines, a whisper from their tires. One before the other, one behind the next, hazy Buicks, Franklins, and Cords. Cloudy Chryslers, Lincolns, and Fords. Plymouths, Packards, Porsches, and Rolls, dusty and obscure. Duesenbergs, Dodges, Ramblers, and Olds, scarcely present, hardly there at all. Studebakers, Chevys, Rovers, and nearly invisible Saabs. Bentleys, Austins, Minors, and — goodness sakes, cars Betty Ann never heard about before.
They keep on coming, gliding down the street in a motion so slight they hardly stir the air. Each one black where they ought to be white, white where the black ought to be. Everything backwards, inside out. Just the way the big stone clock down, down, way below likes to see.
Betty Ann knows she shouldn’t ought to move, shouldn’t do anything at all. Ought to just mind her own business, shouldn’t ought to pry. Still, she feels she’s got to know, got to see what it’s all about, got to know why these peculiar cars are driving by. Ought to see who, ought to see what’s inside.
Betty Ann walks naked in the street, gets close to the windows, peers inside an old Franklin, looks inside a Saab. Can’t see anything at all. The glass in each and every window is cold, cold, icy to the touch, covered with frost, dark and river deep.
John-William’s mother wipes a little hole free and peers inside a l930 Cadillac. And, to Betty Ann’s surprise, there’s Grandmaw Wilcher sitting up straight, straight as you please, hand-bones clutching the wheel, shriveled, shrunk, stiff as a board, hair hanging this way and that.
“Grandmaw Wilcher,” Betty Ann says, “why, you can’t even drive!” Driving she is, though, nothing you can do about that.
There’s no one she knows in the Lincoln or the Cord. No one in the Nash. Helen, though, is there in the back seat of the Packard, caught in what seems intimate, dark coagulation with the soldier boy from Fort Sill. Ruin and rot have set in and a coat of fuzzy green. Still, Helen looks happy as a clam and, as Betty Ann’s mother Sarah always said, happy’s better than not.
Mama Steck looks not much worse than the night Betty Ann watched the dark slide in and slide out again, and suck her life away. Betty Ann can’t recall anyone drove a Studebaker back then, but there’s lots she can’t recall.
“Jack, Jack, Jack,” thinks John-William’s mother, as she peeks into the LaSalle, “I got to say you do look a sight.” Except for the blight and the ruin and the dent where she’d hit him with the axe. Except for that and the gross degeneration — well, time is going to take a toll, that and ancient ulceration of the soul — “Told you to stop,” says Betty Ann. “Told you hit me one more time, that’s it, and by God it’s just what you did, you got nothing to complain about that.”
Papa is in the rusted-out Ford, not looking all that good, something like tar and tallow dried on his overalls down into his shoes and some distortion of the bones.
Betty Ann thinks she might cry when she gets to the Chevy, she knew she’d find him there. That truck had hit him head on, wrapping the brand new Schwinn around him twice, penetrating bodily parts, leaving limbs twisted, badly out of whack.
Still, he did the best he could, God bless him, holding the wheel real steady, one hand sort of going this way, the other going that.
“You were my pride,” says Betty Ann, “and I never forgot you, not for a minute, John-William, not for all the years that passed. I kept that Krazy Kat button and the Nehi cap as well. You tore that Ferdinand shirt real bad, but I don’t guess you care about that.”
Betty Ann opens the door, and slides real quiet inside. Looks at JohnWilliam, pictures in her head that he’s looking back.
Just for a moment, no more than that, Betty Ann glances behind her, sees the two she lost sitting quiet, sitting still, looks there once and doesn’t look back.
Nobody said it was time to drive on, but real soon everybody did. Rolling down the window, she listened to the music playing on the car radios: “Moonlight Cocktail,” “Twilight Time,” “One for My Baby,” “Laura,” “Willow Weep for Me.”
And, coming from somewhere, out of the hot and inky night, just before the clock deep-deep in the earth strikes again, a whisper in the hot night air: