Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [56]
They talked about her. They stood at the bar so they could see her by turning a little. She was a girl in a small town. The television had exhibition football coming from Grand Junction. They were thinking of her legs as they watched the game, she was like an animal they wanted. She smoked a lot, Alma, but her teeth were white. She was flat-faced, like a fighter. She would be living in the trailer park, Billy told her. Her kids would eat white bread in big, soft packages from the Woody Creek Store.
“Oh, yeah?”
She didn’t deny it. She looked away. Like an animal, it didn’t matter how pure they were, how beautiful. They went down the highway in clattering steel trucks, wisps of straw blowing clear as they passed. They were watched by the cold eyes of cowboys. They entered the house of blood, its sudden bone-cleaving blows, its muffled cries. He didn’t spend much money on her—he was saving up. She never mentioned it.
They poured the side of the house that faced Third Street and started along the front. He thought of her in the sunlight that was browning his arms. He lifted the heavy barrow and became strong everywhere, like a tightened cable. When they finished in the evening, Harry washed off everything with the hose, he put the shovel and hoe in the trunk of his car. He sat on the front seat with the door open. He smiled to himself. He lifted his cap and smoothed his hair.
“Say,” he said. There was something he wanted to tell. He looked at the ground. “Ever been West?”
It was a story of California in the thirties. There was a whole bunch of them going from town to town, looking for work. One day they came to a place, he forgot the name, and went into some little restaurant. You could get a whole meal for thirty cents in those days, but when they came to pay the check, the owner told them it would cost a dollar fifty each. If they didn’t like it, he said, there was the state police just down the street. Afterward Harry walked over to the barbershop—he looked like that musician, he had so much hair. The barber put the sheet around him. Haircut, Harry told him. Then, hey, wait a minute, how much will it be? The barber had the scissors in his hand. I see you been eating over to the Greek’s, he said.
He laughed a little, almost shyly. He glanced at Billy, his long teeth showed. They were his own. Billy was buttoning his shirt.
It was hot in the evening. The hottest summer in years, everyone said, the hottest ever. At Gerhart’s they stood around in big, dusty shoes.
“Shit, it’s hot,” they told each other.
“Can’t get much hotter.”
“What’ll it be, then?” Gerhart would ask. His idiot son was rinsing glasses.
“Beer.”
“Hot enough for you?” Gerhart said as he served it.
They stood at the bar, their arms covered with dust. Across the street was the movie house. Up toward the pass, the sand and gravel pit. There was ranching all around, a macadam plant, men like Wayne Garrich who hardly spoke at all, the bitterness had penetrated to the bone. They were deliberate, their habits were polished smooth. They looked out through the big, storelike windows.
“There’s Billy.”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“Well, what do you think?” They laid out phrases in low voices, like bets. Their arms were big as firewood on the bar. “Is he going to it or coming from it?”
The foundation was finished at the beginning of September. There was a little sand where the pile had been, a few specks of gravel. The nights were already cold, the first emptiness of winter, not a light on in town. The trees seemed silent, subdued. They would begin to turn suddenly, the big ones going last.
Harry died about three in the morning. He had been leaning on the cart in the supermarket, behind the stacks, struggling for breath. He tried to drink some tea. He sat in his chair. He was between sleep and waking, the kitchen light was on. Suddenly he felt a terrible, a bursting pain. His mouth fell open, his lips were dry.