The oilfield was like the army, hurry up and wait. Jack Gibson felt like he had been waiting forever in Cypremort. It was a nothing town at the end of a narrow road cutting through the marsh to nowhere. Nothing to do but drink moonshine. Nobody to talk to.
Nobody but doctors and bankers talked English in Cypremort. Oh, they knew a few words here and there, but it was just doctors and bankers who really talked it and Jack Gibson kept as far away from doctors and bankers as he could. Jack was muscle.
Back before he was drafted, before the war, Jack worked a carney. He ran the heavy equipment. He'd seen a million jerkwater towns like this one, but he never had to stay in one more than a couple of nights.
They would come in, lay cable, get the big generators working, put up the Ferris wheel and the other rides, from flying horses to a roller coaster. Then Jack Gibson would coast. He'd do a little maintenance now and then, but mostly he just stood around with his shirt unbuttoned to the mat of dark hair, sleeves rolled up, until one of the local yokel dames caught a whiff of him. Then it was nothing but colored lights, until time to move on.
Sometimes, when they got right down to it, the girls didn't want to put out. They were used to wrapping the farm boys around their little fingers. Jack taught them a thing or two. Sometimes he liked getting rough. Sometimes it felt like the girls liked it, too. A few bruises here and there didn't hurt them in the long run, it made them sweet. Taught them a lesson, anyway. And Jack got what he wanted. Jack always got what he wanted. It was a great life.
After the war, the carney scam was dead. Jack got into the oil business. So he had seen a lot of places and a lot of things. But he never had to spend so much time in a rat nest like this before. Suspicious people, too. If they knew how to talk, they'd be asking a lot of questions.
Good whiskey. And good homemade beer they made with rice and cane juice. Their word for beer was the same as for coffin, seemed like, bière. Sometimes they used another word for coffin that sounded like a circle. About the onliest word he needed to know was the one for beer.
Jack had the best room in the two-story boarding house, a corner upstairs with a gallery overlooking the cemetery. Peaceful. That's how he learned about beer and coffins.
There was a funeral and he was sitting out on the balcony watching it. He asked who died and the Frenchy that ran the house said it was a coffin and Jack thought he meant beer and nodded eagerly and said, 'Wee-wee, mahn-sewer, mercy.' It didn't seem that funny at the time, but it got funnier the more he thought of it.
The beer had gone hot so he sipped from the jug. The gallery was above the mosquito line. It was a quiet night, still. Clear.
The moon sneaked through the branches of the oaks in the cemetery to wash the stone and brick tombs glaringly. The tops of the Ford and Studebaker shone like wet turtles.
No sound except the crickets. The creak of his chair and shoe leather against the banister as he reached again for the jug. Then music. Old-timey. Charleston, Sweet Georgia Brown, Daaba-Daaba-Doo, stuff like that.
Then there in the moonlight – the moon was bright enough to see colors – a long, sleek, yellow Rolls Royce pulled up to the cemetery gate. The lights were off. Jack set his feet on the floor of the gallery. Very carefully, the car eased through the narrow cemetery gates. If there had been one more coat of paint, the car would have hit the gateposts.
The engine was so quiet he couldn't even hear it purr. He could just hear the soft music of twenty years before, days before the Depression, days before The War. With his hands on the rail of the upstairs balcony, now, he leaned drunkenly, unsteadily forward and peered through the branches and the shadows at the Rolls sliding silently through the cemetery, the shadows mottle-blurring on the yellow metal.
The car came to a halt at a place where marble slabs marked the graves. The music was louder when the door was opened. She stepped out into the moonlight.
He was so startled that he contorted his face to widen his eyes. She wore a flowing skirt and blouse of some spider-web fabric, translucent from the car to the flat, marble slabs. Her hair was red, bright red in the moonlight, striking.
He gulped the whiskey in his throat so that some spilled out of the corners of his mouth and he had to wipe his chin with his arm as his eyes never blinked. She danced. Alone, shimmering white and red among the moonlight-blazing tombs and night-dark tree shadow, she danced. She Charleston-ed, Fox-Trotted, Big- Appled, Polka-ed and Waltzed. The four slabs of marble were ablaze with the flame of her tossing, wide-spun, flaring hair.
He stood there, sweat stains mixing with those of whiskey and beer on his shirt, swigging, his sight blurry, captivated by the sight of the woman absorbed in music from the radio of the Roll Royce. Without tiring, the woman skipped and swirled, hopped and slid. The soft shushing of her sandals against the stone was the only other sound he heard. Nothing, not his own heart beating. Not his own labored breathing. Not the mournful weeeeyeweeee-ing of the crickets. Nothing distracted him. Only when the jug was empty did he take his eye from her and peer through the hole into the empty dark recess of the earthen vessel.
There was another in his room. He had hidden it from the Frenchy landlord and the help. But he couldn't find it. He crawled beneath the bed and rummaged through the chiffarobe. Finally he found it, corncob plug still in place, hidden beneath his coveralls, hardhat, steel-toed boots.
Satisfied, proud, eager, he clomped out onto the porch. She was gone. No music, no yellow Rolls. Nothing. He was alone in the weeeeyeweeee-ing of the crickets, the chorus of the tree frogs and the buzz of the mosquitoes.
Frenchy made like he didn't understand him in the morning. Jack was sure he was getting through. Then, when the old lady started flashing her dishrag around and spitting that Cajun at her husband, Frenchy stood up straight, very formal, tugged at the bottom of his vest and walked up to Jack like an officer at inspection. Friendly, though, almost begging.
"M'sieur Geeb-sohn," he said. "This … merde … ainh … sheet, she not fo' you, no. Very bad, very bad. Mal chance … la guigne."
The old lady and the old man fussed and fumed at each other for a while. But the only thing Jack could get out of Frenchy after that was rien, rien, which Jack later found out meant nothing. He went on down into town to send a wire to try to stir up a fire. He didn't mind being on the payroll and sitting on his butt, but he needed a little action. It was getting to be plumb boring in Cypremort.
He wasn't quite as drunk that midnight when she came again. If anything, the moonlight was brighter because it had just become really full. It was the same kind of night, except there was just a little bit more breeze, more comfortable, really. He was very comfortable when he saw the car.
It was a honey, all right. And there was a honey in it. Jack waited to see if she would do the same thing. There was the same music. She parked in the same place. She got out in the same place just as she had done that last midnight. And she began dancing.
Jack had a fresh jug and he knew just where it was this time. He meant to have him some fun even if it meant getting a little rough. Quietly, he went into his room, picked up the jug, started for the door.
It was locked. He searched for his key and found it on the dresser. It would not insert into the lock. Another key in the way, twisted in from the outside. There was no other way to reach the stairs.
Jack was furious. Frenchy's rooms were off the other side of the gallery. He clomped out onto the boards and banged on Frenchy's doors and windows. There was no response. Jack almost broke the glass pounding but there was nothing from the other side.
He was afraid to break the glass because Frenchy might shoot him. Everybody in that country slept with a gun beside the bed, he believed. And Jack was sure Frenchy was inside but would not rouse.
Cursing, now, he walked to the cemetery corner. She was still there, still swirling and prancing and gliding across the marble to the music from the Rolls Royce radio. He swung a leg over the balcony and took hold of the corner post.
It was hard climbing. He had a thumb stuck through the handle of the jug. But it was his pants that fouled him. The cuff caught on a nail that had once been used to string wash.
He lost a grip with his hands and fell backward and flipped over to take the blow on the back of his neck, rolled clear. Remarking what a tough country boy he really was, Jack stood up and saw that the jug had broken. There was the smell of rich, corn whiskey everywhere. It was a smell he liked but he liked the taste much better and the effect even more.
Well, he'd have to satisfy himself with a taste of her. He crossed through the yard to the little wrought iron fence, stepping over the low pikes. She was looking at him as he came up. When her eyes caught the moonlight, they glinted silver-green. Her face was very fair but with none of the freckles so many redheads have. Her skin was clean and creamy white. But her mouth was as passionate red as her hair. He could smell the woman of her as he stood beside the slab, so close to her he could almost feel her heat as she danced on wordlessly, eyes on his own.
She danced until the music ended. Then she paused, took a deep breath, lifted the thick, red hair from her neck. The movement pulled the spider cloth tighter about her body. Jack felt his blood rise. He was just about to step to the marble slab and take her when she let the hair fall and spoke.
"I've been waiting for you," she said, "Will you dance with me?"
And so he stepped up to the slab and took her small, sweat-damp, cold hand and began to dance. He knew he must have her and that to have her he must dance. So he trotted and swirled, spun her around, lifted her, dipped with her, moved his feet as best he could.
She continued to keep her eyes locked on his. Even when she spun, she held his gaze until she had to spin her head very quickly to see him again. Like an owl, he thought, like an owl.
The music ended. They stood facing one another breathless. The fingers of his left hand still intertwined in those of her right. She took the one step closer to him. Softly, she spoke.
"It is time for you to come home with me," she said.
"Sure is," he said. He held the door for her, then closed it and got in on the other side. The motor was still running. Running silently all along and not yet overheated. Rolls Royce was the best.
Serenely, expertly, she made the circle of the graves and carefully exited the cemetery. She turned left and drove slow speed past the boarding house. Jack looked across her to the moonlit gallery where his empty chair sat beside the empty beer bottles. Directly below was the shattered jug and gleaming whiskey.
The whiskey gleamed about his clothes, like little silver channels in the moonlight. The moonlight was so bright that he could see the red of the blood that had trickled from his mouth to the white shirt, where the broken neck rested his head against his shoulder.