Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [54]
A new structure made of concrete rose in its place. Of the old, only photos remained.
DIRT
Billy was under the house. It was cool there, it smelled of the unturned earth of fifty years. A kind of rancid dust sifted down through the floorboards and fell on his face like a light rain. He spit it out. He turned his head and, reaching carefully up, wiped around his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. He looked back toward the strip of daylight at the edge of the house. Harry’s legs were in the sun—every so often, with a groan, he would kneel down and see how it was going.
They were leveling the floor of the old Bryant place. Like all of them it had no foundation, it sat on pieces of wood.
“Feller could start right there,” Harry called.
“This one?”
“That’s it.”
Billy slowly wiped the dirt from his eyes again and began to set up the jack. The joists were a few inches above his face.
They ate lunch sitting outside. It was hot, mountain weather. The sun was dry, the air thin as paper. Harry ate slowly. He had a wrinkled neck and white stubble along his jowl line.
Death was coming for Harry Mies. He would lie emptied, his cheeks rouged, the fine, old man’s ears unhearing. There was no telling the things he knew. He was alone in the far fields of his life. The rain fell on him, he did not move.
There are animals that finally, when the time comes, will not lie down. He was like that. When he kneeled he would get up again slowly. He would rise to one knee, pause, and finally sway to his feet like an old horse.
“Feller in town with all the hair …” he said.
Billy’s fingers made black marks on the bread.
“The hair?”
“What’s he supposed to be?”
“I think a drummer,” Billy said.
“A drummer.”
“He’s with a band.”
“Must be with something,” Harry said.
He unscrewed the cap from a battered thermos and poured what looked like tea. They sat in the quiet of the tall cottonwoods, not even the highest leaves were moving.
They drove to the dump, the sun in the windshield was burning their knees. There was an old cattle gate salvaged from somewhere, some bankrupt ranch. It was open, Harry drove in. They were in a field of junk and garbage on the edge of the creek, a bare field forever smoldering. A black man in overalls appeared from a shack surrounded by bedsprings. He was round-shouldered, heavy as a bull. There was an old, green Chrysler parked on the far side.
“Looking for some pipe, Al,” Harry said.
The man said nothing. He gave a sort of halfhearted signal. Harry had already gone past and turned down an alley of old furniture, stoves, aluminum chairs. There was a sour smell in the air. A few refrigerators, indestructible, had fallen down the bank and were lying half-buried in the stream.
The pipe was all in one place. It was mostly rusted, Billy kicked aimlessly at some sections.
“We can use it,” Harry commented.
They began carrying pieces back to the car and put them on the roof. They drove slowly, the old man’s head tilted back a little. The car swayed in and out of holes. The pipe rolled in the rack.
“Pretty good feller, Al,” Harry said. They were coming to the shack. He lifted his hand as they passed. No one was there.
Billy’s mind was wandering. The ride to town seemed long.
“They give him a lot of trouble,” Harry said. He was watching the road, the empty road which connects all these towns.
“There