The Midnight Cool Read online

  This mule right here might be joining your brother in the fight, he said, businesslike as he could.

  Might be seeing him before I do. She laughed a little. I ought to give him a message to deliver.

  Go right ahead, Charles said, motioning with the cigarette.

  She looked at him and smiled. Then she got up on her toes and grabbed the mule’s ear and whispered into it.

  Well. Charles handed her the cigarette. What’d you tell him?

  She smiled again, her teasing smile. She would share no secrets tonight.

  I told him to tell Ed what we were having for breakfast at Everbright tomorrow, of course. Bowls of cold sapphires and orange juice. Ham and eggs and emeralds.

  Freedman’s Hill

  One morning Billy looked over from his bed and said, Take me mule hunting with you, Charles, or else I just might go crazy in here.

  Charles had to help him across the yard to the wagon. He made a big fuss over Gin and then Charles realized it was because he couldn’t climb in on his own. So Charles hefted him up, taking hold of his big strong hand. He didn’t complain about the pain. That meant it was bad.

  But as soon as they got going, Billy cheered up. He delighted in every tree, every bird, every cow and horse they passed. They went to a feedlot on the north side of town and Billy did all the talking. There had been a Money Matters column that week about conserving food titled ‘Food Will Win the War.’ Charles grinned when he overheard Billy’s big pitch to the feedlot manager.

  You know what will win the war? he was saying to the man. Mules will win the war.

  A little colored boy had been watching them from the fence. When Charles was tying the mules to the wagon Billy coaxed him over.

  I know where some good mules are, the boy said. I’ll take you there if you give me a piece of it.

  Billy grinned at him, and he climbed into the back of the wagon. At his direction they headed off for the colored neighborhood out beyond the depot that was known as Freedman’s Hill. On the way they passed two men trying to get a Ford out of a gully by the road, and when Gin trotted smartly past them Billy leaned over and shouted to them, Git a hoss! Then he made Charles turn around and unhitch Gin and pull them out. And afterwards wouldn’t let them drive off until he told them his favorite joke, the one about the farmer and the banker. Charles had heard it a hundred times.

  Well the banker buys himself a brand-new automobile and takes his wife out for a Sunday drive in the country. Soon enough he gets the thing stuck in a ditch in front of somebody’s cornfield. His wife is hollering at him but he pushes and shoves until he’s covered in mud and there’s nothing to be done, he can’t budge it. Finally along comes the farmer in his hay wagon. The banker gets out and pleads for help. The farmer, he unhitches old Dobbins from the wagon, hitches him to the car, pulls it out in a jiffy. Just like we did for you here. The banker is beside himself. Pulls out a nice fresh dollar bill and hands it to the farmer. Says, ‘You must make money day and night, pulling folks out of these ditches.’ The farmer tucks the dollar into his overalls and smiles. ‘Not quite,’ he says.

  Billy looked between the two men, eyes flashing.

  ‘Not quite. At night I got to dig the ditches.’

  The men laughed, but Billy laughed the hardest, the laugh that took over him like a strong wind, and he didn’t even hold on to his broken ribs. Charles had taken out his stitches a few days before, and the angry red gash at his hairline was covered by his hat. His bruises seemed to be fading by the minute. He looked almost as if nothing had ever happened. It felt good as hell to have him back.

  The men drove away and the little boy helped him hitch Gin back up and they set off. Soon they got up to Freedman’s Hill. As they were coming up it, a couple of kids in an apple cart rigged with roller skates tore past them, though Gin didn’t blink. A dog cried like a woman. A man came out of a house to empty a bucket, an excuse to look at them.

  The boy brought them to a place near the top of the hill, where they bought two mules off of an old man who ran a delivery business. When Charles wrote out the check the kid watched with bloodthirsty eyes. He took a dollar out of his pocket and gave it to him.

  You keep on your toes, kid, you’ll make a million bucks someday.

  The kid ran off. Billy had propped himself against the back of the bench, twisted nearly backwards to lean on his good shoulder. He whistled to Charles and then pointed in the direction they had come from, where Leland Hatcher’s Pierce-Arrow had glided out from an alley. It turned onto the road and disappeared down the hill.

  Charles’s heart began to pound in his ears. Shit, he said.

  I can’t think of a single thing that would keep me away from you, he had told Catherine in the middle of the dark deserted street. But with the Pierce-Arrow staring him down like that, he did not feel quite so brave.

  You look a little nervous, Charlie boy.

  Charles watched the place the car had come from, chewing his knuckle.

  You don’t think he followed me?

  A man with that kind of money can go just about any damn place he pleases, I suppose, Billy said thoughtfully. He’s like a shark in the ocean, Charlie boy. Go anywhere he pleases, do anything he pleases, say anything he pleases.

  Billy tugged his ear and looked at the mules. And you and me can too, you know. Look at me. I’m right as rain. Why, we could pack up and be out of here by first light tomorrow. We might not be sharks. But we could be free as a couple of gulls.

  Scandal

  Bristol

  There is a scandal in Bristol that summer. The youngest King brother announces that he has discovered a health spring in a secret location up on Holston Mountain and unveils a plan to build a grand resort there. He and his business partner begin recruiting investors, and they have raised thousands of dollars when his partner has a heart attack, nearly dies, and confesses the whole thing is a hoax. There is no spring, he announces. And with this ailment God had punished me for the lie.

  The investors pull out quickly. There is talk. The Kings take a long vacation in West Virginia.

  When they return, Maura gets a job working for them, at their house up on Solar Hill. She makes twice the money she did at the Nichols House, even taking the monkey trick into consideration.

  She whispers to Billy about the beauty of the house, the silver settings, the Oriental carpet. Missus King’s fur coat, mink, is kept in a special box in the closet.

  I don’t like you working for em, Billy tells her. To make the kind of money that man has, you got to be something of a shark.

  Oh, Maura says simply. I don’t mind a shark.

  But he’s a liar too.

  Ah, Billy, no one will even remember this nonsense soon enough. And what’s the harm he’s done, anyway? If you ask me the way the world works isn’t gonna change. You either figure out how to make it work for you, or you don’t. If it wasn’t Mister King it’d be somebody else making all that money. No. I admire Mister King. He goes after it, he does. The world’s a goose, Bill Monday. Them that do not pluck will get no feathers.

  Soon the Kings purchase an automobile, Bristol’s first. They take it out only on Sundays, puttering into the country. Mister King hires someone just to look after it, to clean the acetylene lights, to polish the chrome, to buy the gasoline.

  Sometimes he drives it downtown and lets young boys take turns sitting in it. It sends the horses on the street into greater paroxysms of panic than the bicycles do and smells terrible. And Maura is right. Soon everyone is talking about the automobile, and no one is talking about the scandal.

  The Battle of the Somme

  Four months, nearly one million dead. Six miles won. Six miles.

  Cornhusking

  The bright half-moon hung above Kuntz’s like something you might want to lick. Charles and Billy had been at the sale to buy mules, and he and Twitch and a few others were waiting for the Johnson twins, but it was clear now they weren’t going to show. Billy had taken the wagon back to
Dillehay’s with the mules they had bought. He was still unsteady on his feet, but as he said, if anything happened to him, Gin knew the way.

  Charles was stalling. Catherine had left a note in the wall for him, breaking their date to meet that evening. It was the second date she had broken in a week. And the last time they were together, she hadn’t let him kiss her. She was convinced her father was on to her. Charles had not told her about seeing the Pierce-Arrow on Freedman’s Hill, afraid that if he did she might refuse to see him at all.

  He had explained all of this to Billy. Charlie boy, Billy had said. Be sensible. Remember who we’re talking about. The richest fellow in town. If he knew that something was going on that he didn’t like, don’t you think he would put an end to it without a moment’s pause?

  Billy was right. But Charles could not convince Catherine. You don’t understand, she said. It is so strange. He’ll drift off in the middle of a sentence. I’ll find him staring out the window. Just staring. I’m just waiting for him to turn to me and tell me he knows about us. Then—well I don’t know what then. But that would be the end of it, I do know that.

  Charles studied the brilliant moon. He was full of energy, all jumped up from the auction, and he did not want to go back to the shack and stare at the newsprint on the walls all night. He had been doing such a fine job finding mules that today Bonnyman had not come up to Kuntz’s, and instead entrusted him with the buying at the sale. He and Billy had stood in his prime spot beneath the podium and bought one thousand dollars’ worth of mules. One thousand dollars, just like that. Kuntz looked down at Charles always just before he dropped the plait, as he did with Bonnyman, his waxed mustache trembling, giving him the final chance. Pass or yes. It made Charles’s chest swell every time. It made him feel about ten feet tall.

  Twitch was headed to a party. A cornhusking, up in the Barrens. There would be good strong liquor, he said. Homemade. Strong enough to eat the intestines out of a coyote.

  Come on, he said. The girls up there, they’re prettier than you’d think.

  They walked up along the moonlit road. No horses, no wagons, no cars. As they went up the hill, the houses got smaller, the fields scrappier. The tobacco gave way to shabby little acres of corn, now all harvested, just the bent pale stalks left. An owl boomed from the dark woods when they turned in at Twitch’s place so that he could look in on his father. An unpainted frame foursquare with a skinny dog asleep on the porch, its spine sharp as a knife. Inside, Twitch lit a coal oil lamp and said, Make yourself comfortable.

  Charles looked around. In the room was a stove, two ladder-back chairs, a table covered with oilcloth. A 1915 calendar tacked to the wall, torn to February, was the sole decoration. The picture, printed cheaply, was of Jesus on the cross. Along the bottom someone had written, It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven. The meek shall inherit the earth. He could hear the old man cursing Twitch as Twitch coaxed him to eat. Twitch’s voice was patient and gentle, the opposite of the way he talked to the horses.

  With the money he was making, Charles had bought all kinds of things. A new wool suit, and a chain for his watch, and a two-volume set called Poems to Make You a Better Man, and a silverware chest a traveling peddler brought to the door of the shack, even though Billy tried to stop him, even though he didn’t have any silverware to put in it, and two framed water-spotted Currier and Ives prints. He had spent five whole dollars on a gift for Catherine, a brooch. And for a dollar he had bought a subscription to a magazine called Ambition.

  He stood there regarding Jesus. He had never understood that, about the camel and the needle. He hadn’t had the best of luck with his purchases, he did know that. The book of poems, he had abandoned after a few pages. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The brooch had turned out to be a fake, glass and paste, which he thankfully discovered before he tried to give it to Catherine. That was a good thing, because these days he could not figure out what she wanted from him anyway. She had been so distant. So guarded.

  And Ambition, he had discovered, was a sham. Every article was a thinly veiled advertisement for a business correspondence school. He wrote a letter demanding his dollar back, but the letter came back marked Undeliverable.

  Sleep well, Pa, he heard Twitch say.

  Be careful, Vernon.

  When Twitch came out Charles still hadn’t sat down.

  Your name’s Vernon?

  Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.

  At the party the barn floor was piled knee-high, wall to wall, with unshucked corn that hid half a dozen jars of moonshine. Charles drank hard and flew through the corn, tearing off the husks and throwing the cobs into the huge growing pile. Whenever a red ear was discovered, a girl was kissed. It took Charles a long time and a lot of liquor to find one. When he did he looked around. There was one girl no one had yet kissed, with a patch over her eye. The smile she gave him when he lifted her up and spun her around and kissed her was a thousand watts. For the rest of the night, he could feel her watching him. The liquor was running hot in his blood.

  Catherine had pushed him away again and again, looking over her shoulder, saying that they had to be more careful. That was the thing. He didn’t want to have to be careful at all. Didn’t want to sneak around. And there was some relief, not being with her. With her he was always weighing his words, wondering how he came across. Here he could just drink whiskey and tell a joke and snatch up a girl and spin her around.

  When the husks were swept away a couple of the older men brought out a fiddle and a banjo. Twitch, he saw, was a good dancer, light on his feet. He handled the girls delicately. For one dance they ended up across the square from each other. Twitch winked.

  You’re a saint, McLaughlin. You ain’t got to kiss Sally. They’re all swooning over you.

  The fiddle rang out. The caller hooted. Charles reached between the two girls on either side of their square. They danced. Across the barn, the girl with the patch over her eye was watching him. Every time he spun he could see her. The floor was shaking. The girls smelled of hay and sweat.

  After the last dance Twitch disappeared. Charles took the girl with the patch outside. Sally. He was woozy with the liquor. When he put his hand on her back, her homemade dress felt so coarse compared to Catherine’s fine clothes.

  He kissed her, sloppy, at the edge of the woods.

  She took off the patch and where her eye should have been was a shiny mass of flesh.

  Lost it harvesting tobacco, she said. Leaned too fast over one of them there spikes.

  He wished she would put it back on but she didn’t, so he closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see it. It made him awfully sad. She would have been pretty but now no man was ever going to want to marry her. He could see the life that stretched out before her, poor and lonesome and toiling, all because of one stroke of bad luck, leaning over too fast at the wrong moment in the tobacco field. And then he realized she was going to let him do whatever he wanted and he knew he would and then he quit thinking at all. Her dress was hitched up around her breasts. She was shivering. He turned her around and yanked at his belt and pulled himself out of his pants and had her quick. When he pulled out of her it was with the thought of Catherine Hatcher’s bare legs in the deerskin skirt that he came on the leaves at her feet.

  He walked the girl home. In the moonlight everything was clear. There were even shadows. She had put the eye patch back on. Below the road the tobacco clung to the steep hills.

  Kind of place where the cows got legs shorter on one side than the other, he said.

  This made her laugh.

  You’re a swell girl, he said, when they got to her house. He strung the words together carefully as he could but still wasn’t sure they had come out in the right order. It was powerful liquor. You got some warm blankets in there?

  I’m plenty warm now, she said before stepping up onto the porch.

  He went back to Twitch’s. The place was dark. Twitch
wasn’t home, or had already gone to bed.

  He slept on the floor in the front room with his coat as a pillow. He felt fleas gnawing at his ankles, picked up in the corn, and thick corncrib dust in his throat. All night the mice ran across his legs. He would open his eyes and see Jesus up on the cross and then roll over and try to sleep again.

  He woke to the sound of two boys beating a dog. It was past midmorning but the holler was so dark you wouldn’t know it. There was the smell of burn coming from the kitchen. The boys came in, trailed by a little girl working her thumb into the cleft of her bottom through her dress. Where had these children been last night? He rubbed his eyes. They felt full of sand. His mouth was thick with a dark brown film. The soul-forsaking hangover of homemade liquor.

  Twitch followed the children in, batting the little girl’s thumb away from her backside.

  They all got damn worms, Twitch said. I just burned the damn biscuits. You get a piece of tail last night?

  Charles rubbed the side of his face.

  Shoot. The girls they won’t hardly blink at me and you come up here for one dance and walk off with a piece of tail.

  Charles’s head was pounding. The dog howled shrilly. He put on his hat and asked Twitch if he wanted to go to town and get something to eat. Twitch looked back at the smoky kitchen.

  Shoot, he said, I ain’t going nowhere. Sometimes I think it’s lost on you, McLaughlin. You don’t know how good you got it.

  Cold

  Cold days, colder nights. Every morning, a carpet of frost covered the pasture. Hog-killing weather. Dillehay dragged his scalding tub into his front yard and the neighbors brought their hogs. One by one their bodies went up on the oak trees in the front yard until there were three, legs strung taught, bellies slit.