always gets the religion at these tent meetins, but he misplaces it after a few days. Pa always says His eye is on the sparrow, but I reckon He must of looked away a minute when Clifford stepped off in that hole. Don’t you ever think about things like that?
Not if I can help it, Tyler said. I’m just like everybody else, trying to get by.
You goin to town with us tomorrow?
I sure am. Don’t you think this thing’s about loaded?
Heavier we load it the less trips we got to make. Boy, we’ll have us a time in town. We’ll go to the picture show. You gotany money?
A little. Not much time, though. I need to see a man in Ackerman’s Field, and then I’ve got to figure how to get a ride back to Centre.
It don’t take long to see a picture show. Last time I went it was Lash LaRue, you ever seen him? We’ll find us a couple of them town girls and set up in the balcony and play with their titties, that’s what I’m layin off to do.
Drew glanced toward the house. Lamps had been lit now, and warm yellow squares of light defrayed the dark. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper even though the house and any ear that might be listening lay fifty or sixty yards away.
You ever had any pussy?
Any what? Seems like I’ve heard of it somewhere, but I can’t think what it is.
That’s what a girl-oh, shit. Nobody’s that lost in the woods. You funnin me again, ain’t ye?
Maybe a little.
Anyway, they say these town girls’ll flat put it on ye. We give Pa and them the slip tomorrow, we just might find out. But you better watch Claudelle; she’s boy-crazy.
Say she is?
Shit yes. You not seen the way she’s been watchin you? Like a cat slippin up on a bird. Ma says it’s just her age, but it just looks to me like she’s come into some kind of a heat. Like cows and such does. She’ll light on you like a duck on a junebug. You better watch Pa, though.
Is that right?
It damn sure is. He’s done run off three or four with a gun. What do you think about that? I think if we don’t get this wood to the house he’s going to have one after us.
All right then, let’s go. I just get to talkin and don’t never know when to quit. Out here I ain’t got nobody to talk to.
Claude waved them to table with an expansive arm. The table had been laid, and Tyler’s sweeping eye took in white beans cooked with chunks of ham and a steaming bowl of snowy mashed potatoes and a platter of fried pork chops. Biscuits from the warming closet and what he judged was muscadine jelly and glasses of buttermilk all way round.
It ain’t much, but it beats hickory nuts and a claw hammer, Claude said. Just help yourself, boy.
Tyler didn’t need asking. Drew was already ladling full his plate, and Tyler was eyeing the level of beans in the pot and spearing pork chops with his fork. The sloe-eyed girl was eyeing him from across the table but he had an eye only for the food and was dishing out mashed potatoes and awaiting the pot of beans.
I like a boy not afraid to help hisself, Pearl said.
Then you bound to pure dee love this feller, Claude said. He makes hisself right at home.
I was about starved out, Tyler said.
Who are you anyway, Lost Sheep? You from over around Centre?
I’m a Tyler. We always lived down on Lick Creek.
Lick Creek? You ain’t kin to old Moose Tyler, are you?
That’s what folks always called my daddy.
Claude had laid aside his eating utensils and was staring at Tyler in parodic disbelief. Well, I’ll be doubledipped in shit, he said. Why, boy, I’ve held you on my knee a lot of times. Old Moose Tyler’s boy. You watch your mouth at table, Pearl said. Be baptized at a meetin and come straight home and talk that way at the supper table.
‘Shit’ ain’t takin the name of the Lord our God in vain, Claude said. Or wadn’t the last time I looked.
It’s vulgar talk, Bible or no Bible, and if it don’t say in there not to say it, it ort to.
If this ain’t the beatinest thing, Claude said in wonder. Of all the people to come up out of the woods and wind up at my table. Boy, I knowed your daddy thirty year or more. He used to make as fine a whiskey as ever run down my throat, and I shore was sorry to hear when he passed on. I’ve passed out in your house and slept in your front room more times than once.
And a lot more front rooms, too, Pearl said. Not that it’s anything to brag about. She was watching Tyler intently and he felt his social standing had plummeted precipitously and he was eating incrementally faster as if the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth might suddenly plate and all be jerked from beneath his knife and fork.
Didn’t you have a sister a little older than you? Pretty little brindleheaded thing with big eyes?
Yes.
Where’s she at? Claude grinned. She ain’t lost, too, is she?
Tyler’s jaws had ceased working. He lowered his fork and sat silent for a moment staring at his plate.
She died too, he finally said.
Drew was fiddling with the radio. Twirling the dial from one end of the scale to the other. Garbled bits of laughter, music, soap jingles. Applause. Snippets of lives that were so foreign to them they might have come from another country, another planet.
Leave it in one place, Claude said. Put it on WCKY. They might have the Chuck Wagon Gang.
I ain’t studyin no Chuck Wagon Gang. I’m tryin to find the Long Ranger.
Claude looked up from the Bible he was poring over. Boy, the Lone Ranger ain’t goin to get you into Heaven.
He’d come about as close as the Chuck Wagon Gang, Drew said. But I reckon he must be out of town tonight. I can’t even get the station.
Let me see that thing. Claude dialing. The tailend of a gospel song. A voice came on telling about a miraculous photograph that had cured folks of cancer, arthritis, goiters. Whatever they had. Tumors the size of goose eggs miracled into oblivion, malignancies turned benign. A photograph was taken of a rose garden and when developed it showed the softly glowing figure of Christ the King reaching out toward whoever held the photograph. All free for the asking save postage and handling and a small donation.
Drew rose and went out and pulled the door to on the night. Claude built himself a Bull Durham cigarette and sat with the Bible open on his lap, listening to the voices coming out of the radio, his eyes closed. The woman was not about, and Tyler guessed she’d gone to bed. Somewhere in the house a clock was ticking loudly, he couldn’t tell where.
He looked toward the kitchen and Claudelle was standing in the door watching him. He looked away out the window at the dark and when he looked back the door was empty. After a while he rose and went into the kitchen. A cabinet the lengthof the kitchen held a drysink, and the girl was standing with her back to him washing dishes. Her black hair fell to her waist. At his step the hand holding the dishcloth stopped its motion, and she seemed to be waiting for something. She faced a window, and the lamp mirrored the glass so that Tyler could see himself reaching across her shoulder for the dipper in the water bucket. In the lamplit glass his face looked sharp and predatory. When his arm touched her shoulder, she turned, and when she did they were very close. In the yellow lamplight her face was translucent and poreless as a face carved from marble.
Why don’t you just slip up on a body? she asked.
You heard me coming.
I did not.
We won’t argue about it. You were waiting for me, though.
Waitin for you to do what?
For the first time her eyes met his. They were darkly fringed with lashes and in the lamplight they looked violet in their depths.
I don’t know. This maybe.
He kissed her and she didn’t pull away, but she stiffened, and under his mouth her lips were little girl’s lips, prim and clenched. He cupped a breast, and she made some murmurous sound, and her mouth opened and a hand
