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
Mama told Betty Ann not to listen to Grandmaw’s trash, said she wasn’t right in the head. And maybe that was so, but every night after, Betty Ann ran back in, safe inside before the night caught her, caught her right between the light and dark, fled to the good smell of cornbread and jelly, to the oilcloth mustard-yellow bright, to the table set with cold ham and beans, the cloth still sticky from the noon summer meal. The kerosene lamp warmed her soul, and her mother brought cool cream butter in a bowl and said, “Time you came in, Betty Ann, it’s getting dark again…”
In spite of the prickly sullen heat, Betty Ann, John-William’s mother, feels a chill. She knows what’s happened. She’s waited just a beat, just a breath too long and the dark has caught her there, standing outside her kitchen door. Caught her as the night swept in and drew its cape across the yard and the trees and the house next door, and nearly got Betty Ann, John-William’s mother, too. John-William’s mother doesn’t even look back. Looking back’s like Grandmaw said, when you saw, from the corner of your eye, things that were missing, things that had been there just a blink before.
Betty Ann, John-William’s mother, moves quickly inside, shuts the screen door, snaps the latch, stops, pauses just a minute, listens, almost certain she can hear that great stone clock beat down-down-down, deep in the earth and far away.
Betty Ann checks the meatloaf and the carrots, pulls an Old Gold from the pack on the counter, leans in, and lights it from the stove.
John-William’s mother, Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, gets a jelly glass of water, reaches past the Sunbeam mixer and flips on the Philco radio, watches the dial begin to glow, settles in a breakfast room chair. Old familiar voices make her smile. The Kingfish tries to talk Andy into some fool scheme. Betty Ann knows exactly what’ll happen next. Andy falls for it, like Andy always does. Amos has to come in and straighten the whole mess out.
Lord, they were funny. Better than Benny or Fred Allen, either one. Jack wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t stay in the room if they were on. Said they weren’t even coloreds on the show, said niggers weren’t like that at all. Said they stole stuff fast as you could blink, didn’t matter what it was.
The very next time Betty Ann looks up, the dark has creeped in from outside, hid the catsup and the flour in shadow. All she can see is the dim blue flame below the pot.
If I had any sense, thinks Betty Ann, I’d’ve opened a can of tuna fish instead of heating up the kitchen on a hot summer night. John-William didn’t care, long as there were cookies or pies or something sweet in the house.
John-William’s mother thinks he ought to be home right now. She doesn’t like him out at night, but boys didn’t know about the dark, didn’t know what happens out there when the sun goes down and the day hides out of sight.
She and Jack used to hear it all the time when they’d take his daddy’s big LaSalle out and park. That was when they first began to date, before they even thought about getting married or anything else besides parking, feeling up, and having fun. And even after that, sometimes, before Jack pumped her up like a tub with John-William inside, they’d hear that song and everything would be fine. Betty Ann’s father didn’t trust Jack at all. He knew what they were doing in the back of that LaSalle. Jack didn’t wear overalls, wore a Searsucker suit and a snappy bow tie. He came from Paul’s Valley, which didn’t say much, even for an Oklahoma town. Still, like Betty Ann’s mother Sarah said, anyone don’t have shit on his shoes is worth looking at twice. Well that was a lie, considering Mr. Searsucker suit didn’t hang around all that long after John-William’s mother, Betty Ann, brought two more babies in the world who curled up and died.
John-William’s mother walks from one shadow room to the next. The furniture is dim, like chairs and tables and beds all covered in a ghosty kind of light, the pale green glow like the fireflies John-William’s mother used to capture in a jar.
It was the first brick house she’d ever lived in in her life. The first time she’d lived in town except once. Betty Ann and her mother had moved to Atoka from the farm when Mama Steck took sick and they had to live there till she died. When it happened, Betty Ann was right there, Betty Ann saw it, watched the night come until the room was inky black, watched while it hovered over Mama Steck a while, then plunged down into that dry and withered mouth and sucked her life away. Betty Ann peed her britches right then, and never, ever, told Mother what she saw.
Jack’s wife, John-William’s mother, walks through the dark, walks from one room to the next. To the living room, the big bedroom where she sleeps alone now, through the bathroom and John-William’s room, even in the closets, out through the doorway that leads to the shed that sags against the house. Light from a half-moon slants through the holes that Jack never fixed. Truth to tell, Jack never fixed shit, never put a nail in a wall, never fixed a leak.
Lord, what a mess, thinks John-William’s mother, Betty Ann. It’s like your whole life’s stacked up in there, gathering dust, soaking up time, hours used up and tossed away, moments dead and gone, rusted and frozen where they lay. Jack’s hammers and his nails and his saws and his files and his broken axe, waiting to finish some
