cold air sucking under the door, tinkling the unglazed windowpanes with soft chimes. He checked under the couch for the rifle, then hunkered before the heater tying his boots. As he straightened and held his hands toward the fire, Claude came through the door with a cup of coffee in his hand. In the cold room the coffee seemed to be smoking.
Get you a cup of coffee.
I believe I will. Turned off cold, ain’t it? Tyler could see his breath in the cold air.
It’ll warm up here directly. It’s that north wind. I ever build another house, I’ll never build it facin north like I did this one. Get you a cup of coffee. It’s done.
He was spooning sugar into a cup when she said, We about out of sugar around here. Best save what’s left for them kids’ oats. I got to get em some breakfast here directly.
He’d had an uplifted spoonful bound for his cup but returned it to the jar. He’d wondered about cream but figuredthat might be rationed too and started with his coffee back to the front room. She was watching him with bitter eyes, her face stony as a banker’s.
What’d I do? he asked, pausing in the doorway.
She didn’t answer for a time. When she did, her voice was a hoarse croak. You got him to thinkin about whiskey again.
Tyler guessed that whiskey was never very far from Claude’s mind but he didn’t say so. If I did I never meant to, he said. He went back into the front room, where Claude was standing with his back to the fire.
We still going to town today?
Sure, it’s Saturday, ain’t it? We got to. We about out of groceries.
She thinks I got you started thinking about liquor.
Don’t pay her no mind. I don’t need it nohow, I’m shut of it. Givin up drinkin and cussin and startin a new life. I just had me one of them white nights where you can’t sleep, and along about three o’clock in the mornin it laid pretty heavy on my mind. I just can’t for the life of me think what she could of done with it. I know she ain’t thowed it away. That woman’s so tight she’ll boil coffee grounds till they fade plumb out.
The front door blew open in a gust of wind and Drew came in. Shut that door, Claude said automatically before the boy was even in the room. It’s got a awful raw breath.
You think it’s raw here, you ought to try it down by the hogpen, Drew said. His cheeks were red and chapped, and his nose was running, and he kept rubbing his hands together to show how cold it was.
When we goin to town? he asked.
I believe we’ll wait till after breakfast.
There was a curtained doorway leading off to a room Tylerhadn’t seen and through this door Claudelle and Aaron came barefoot and sleepyeyed and aligned themselves before the fire. Why is it so cold? she asked.
It’s wintertime, Claude said.
Tyler moved aside to make more room by the heater. Claudelle caught his eye when Claude was looking the other way and shrugged elaborately. I couldn’t, she mouthed.
Don’t you let Aaron touch that hot stovepipe, Claude told her.
It’s ready, Pearl called.
Breakfast was a hasty meal of smoking oatmeal with buttered biscuits and more coffee. Going to town seemed to be on everyone’s mind and there was an undercurrent of restrained excitement. An almost holiday mood that touched everyone save Pearl. Tyler glanced up once from his bowl and she was watching him with something akin to trepidation and he wondered what new offense he had committed. She seemed to have concluded that the sooner they were shut of him the better, but the girl had slipped down in her chair and stretched her legs out and imprisoned Tyler’s ankles between her own. She went on spoonfeeding Aaron oatmeal as if she didn’t know Tyler existed.
Drew finished and pushed his bowl back with a thumb. He drained his coffee cup and set it aside and stood. We best be getting ready, he said. I aim to be there when the show opens. You want me to warm up the truck?
I don’t reckon you’re runnin this operation just yet, Claude said. I’ll say when to get ready. And you ain’t goin to no show.
Am too. You done said.
If he goes, I’m goin, Claudelle said.
I said ain’t nobody goin. Them shows ain’t nothin butshootin and fistfightin and them gals runnin around with their bosoms hangin out.
I ain’t never seen that one, but it sure sounds like a good one, Drew said. You don’t recall the name of it, do you?
You ain’t goin.
Watch me.
At length they were ready. The girl in a blue-and-white-checked calflength dress Tyler knew she thought of as her town dress. Claude in a white shirt buttoned to the chin and suitpants and brogans blacked with shoepolish. Dressed for town Drew looked like a diminutive and amateur pimp. He wore a semitransparent nylon seersucker shirt and trousers baggy at the upper legs and pegged sharply at the cuffs. They were a pale limegreen with contrasting stitching of a darker green.
I ordered these special out of Chicago, the boy said. They come mailorder from a place I seen an advertisement for. The Hep Cat. I dug several fenceposts to get the money to buy them britches. I’m savin up now to get me some of them pointytoed shoes.
Claudelle was studying his hair curiously. It was slicked back stiffly in a grotesque pompadour. What on earth has he got on his hair? she asked rhetorically. She leaned to smell. He was at pushing her away. That boy’s got a double handful of lard on his hair, she said.
Least I ain’t got socks crammed in my brassiere, Drew said viciously. That hadn’t sounded right, and he glanced around to see who’d heard. Or wouldn’t if I was wearin one, he amended hastily.
Boy, that mouth of yourn needs some tendin to, Claude said. And it’s fixin to get it here shortly. You and Lost Sheephere go get that tarpaulin and lash it over them sideboards. Less you wantin to swim to Ackerman’s Field.
You could of come up with this before I got ready, Drew said.
Them slickers is on the back porch.
The yard was already filling with water, here and there islands of higher ground crested with dead yellow grass and the tilted husks of last year’s weeds, and they progressed island to island to the barn. There was a crude ladder nailed beside a crib door and Drew skinned up it. I’ll thow it down to ye, he called. See if you can find any wire anywhere.
Tyler found several footlong pieces bent and hooked through a logchain secured to the ridgepole and dangling a little over headhigh in the hall of the barn. He stared a moment trying to divine its purpose, but if it had one other than the storing of wire he couldn’t divine it. The folded tarp fell heavily in a dirty slipstream of drifting straw and several drownedlooking chickens ruffled their feathers and turned quarreling to study Tyler with jaundiced, unblinking eyes, then turned back and stood humpbacked and disconsolate, watching the rain stream off the edge of the tin roof.
Hellfire, Drew said. We’re goin to get as wet foolin with this damn tarp as we would ridin to town. You can’t get any wetter than wet less you drown.
They trudged out into the rain and unfolded the tarp over the sideboards and pulled it taut and began wiring the eyelets through fence staples driven into the slabs.
We goin to get them town girls? Drew asked.
Bring them on, Tyler grinned. Water was streaming out of his hair and down his face, and he had to be continually wiping it out of his eyes. Drew’s hair had risen in sharp, stiffspikes, and greasylooking gray water ran out of it and beaded like oil on his freckled face.
Damned if we ain’t a pair of drowned chickens, Tyler said.
What the hell. We goin to town.
When they had warmed and approached a semblance of dry and were aligned expectantly in the truckbed the truck would not start. The motor whirled but it would not fire nor hit and after a few moments the strong odor of raw gas came seeping back under the tarpaulin. He’s floodin it, Drew said. You’re floodin it, he called through the
