44
Light in August
My life had become crowded with people I hardly knew existed a month ago; I counted them up and it came to twenty-one new people. This was even leaving out Rose, since my list had to be people I had actually talked to. For that reason, too, it left out the Girl, even though she might have been the most important of all.
Twenty-one new people! It was staggering, since these are not people I met and only said hello and good-bye to; these are people I am involved with, such as Dwayne and Louise Landis and the folks in the Windy Run Diner. Yes, I was staggered by this. The next time Ree-Jane makes a comment about my lack of social life, I will tell her this.
After I left the Oak Tree Gift Shoppe, I decided I needed to think for a little before I talked to Dwayne later on, so I walked down to Second Street to McCrory’s, which was usually a relaxing place to be, especially the makeup counter. I liked to look at the lipsticks and powder and eyeliners, deciding what I’d wear if I wore makeup. Ree-Jane said that makeup wouldn’t do you any good if you didn’t have the bones to begin with.
None of this was getting me closer to how I would convince Dwayne to go to Brokedown House again, so I left. But then I got some notion of what I might do and hurried to the Abigail Butte County Library, a couple of blocks up Second Street.
Inside the library (where I should have gone in the first place), I headed for the literature shelves, where I started looking for William Faulkner. I was amazed to find he wrote so many books. Where did he ever find the time? For one thing, he didn’t have to wait tables. I had decided I would take down just one instead of piling a bunch of his books on my library table and thus confuse myself. Also, it was working its way around to noon and I had to get back to the hotel. It was irritating to have to get back and serve lunch to Miss Bertha, but I couldn’t keep putting this off on Walter. After lunch I would go to Slaw’s Garage.
I ran my finger along the spines of Willam Faulkner’s books, reading the titles. As I Lay Dying (no thanks, unless it’s being told by Ree-Jane); Python, which I didn’t know what it was; The Sound and the Fury, which I read the opening paragraph of and put back; Sanctuary, a title I really liked, for it sounded peaceful. I leafed through it and found one of the characters was named Flem Snopes and put it back, too. Light in August. This title I thought was the prettiest, and wasn’t that the book Dwayne carried around? I took this book to my favorite reading table, which sat by a sunny window. I liked the way the sunshine made a latticework of light coming through the little square panes. It must be fate, for here I was, reading Light in August.
On the very first page, the woman named Lena is remembering when she was twelve years old. I could scarcely believe it. Talk about fate! Here’s a double dose of it! She thinks about her mother and father, who died when she was my age. William Faulkner described her house and rooms lit by a “bugswirled kerosene lamp.”
Bugswirled. What a wonderful word. I looked up and I could see above me the thick whiteness of our porch light and small moths circling and fluttering around it as if its whiteness were some sort of moth landing, like a landing on the moon. I read on. “Stumppocked.” Here was another wonderful word. Since he was describing where the trees had been cut, I suppose it means stumps that look diseased. Then there’s “hookwormridden.” I did not want to linger too long over Lena’s condition. I guessed she must be going to have a baby. I suppose all writers get around to sex sooner or later, only Faulkner got around to it on page two.
It was noon and I had to get back. Holding the book, I went up to Miss Babbit where she was working behind the checkout desk and asked if I could please have a sheet of paper and borrow a pen or pencil. Of course, she said, and reached to a shelf and brought up the paper and handed me a pen. She noticed the book I was carrying. My, my, she said, Mr. Faulkner. Faulkner-country is not an easy place to be, she said. Neither is Graham-country, I said, surprising myself with this comeback.
I thanked her and went back to my desk, where I started going through my book, just looking anywhere, quickly running my eye down a page here, a page there, stopping if I found something and copied it down. After I’d taken down three different things, I went back to “hookwormridden” and wrote that down too. Then my eye fell on the paragraph that followed :
There was a track and a station, and once a day a mixed train fled shrieking through it.
This was Emma-country. Wow!
In Slaw’s Garage, the mechanics were all wiping their hands on oily rags, so I guess they must have seen someone coming.
They weren’t very impressed seeing the someone was me. Especially Dwayne, who made a huge production out of getting down on the flat board and sliding under a gray car. I said hi to Abel Slaw and the rest and walked over to the gray car. “Dwayne?”
“Yeah?” His voice sounded miles away. There was a lot of metal clanging on metal, the sounds of being busy.
“Come on out from there, will you?” I sat down on the running board of an old Ford pickup that looked like Ubub’s but wasn’t, for the license plate didn’t read UBB. You-boy was whistling, searching under the hood of an ancient convertible up front.
“Why? I got work to do.”
“I can see that. Come on out anyway. It’s important.”
“You think everything you want’s important.”
“That’s kind of dumb, Dwayne. Everybody does.”
He didn’t answer. I pulled out the sheet of paper with my three quotes to see which one best fit the situation. None of them really did, but I decided on:
There were words that never even stood for anything, were not even us, while all the time what was us was going on and going on without even missing the lack of words.
I knew Dwayne favored words. So did I.
As he shot out from under the car, I quickly folded the paper and shoved it in my pocket. I wanted him to think I knew it, and had recited, not read, it. I sat with my chin on my up-drawn knees and tried to look heartfelt.
“What’d you just say?” Prone on the board, he bent his head back as if he thought maybe Billy Faulkner were under the car with him.
I wasn’t at all sure what I’d said. “You heard.”
Dwayne got up off the wood flat as if he were rising from Lake Noir, buoyant. The oily rag came out and he stood wiping his hands.
“Don’t you recognize it?”
He grunted, but he was near to smiling. His eyes already were. “Recognize the writing. I have not memorized everything Billy Faulkner wrote.”
“I thought you’d like that, as it’s about words. You remember what you said about words being ‘a shape to fill a lack.”’
“So do you know what all that means? What you just said?”
I couldn’t even remember what I’d read, much less what it might mean. “No, but it sounds good. It’s from Light in August.”
Dwayne stopped wiping his hands and shoved the rag in his back pocket. It hung limply over the edge and was a dull rose color.
“I decided I really like him. Billy Faulkner, I mean. William.” I hadn’t yet read enough to be on a nickname basis with him.
“He’d be pleased.”
“When do you get off work?”
“ ’Round seven this evening. I still got a truck to do. Why?”
“We need to go to Brokedown House.”
“ ‘We’ do, do ‘we’? And why’s that?”
“I need to go in that room again to see some things. You’re going home anyway. White’s Bridge is hardly any detour at all.”
“So where’s all your buddies? Night before last, it looked like a Fraternal Order of the Owls meeting.”
“There’s too many of them. They get in the way.”
“What about your good friend Butternut?”
I sighed. “Du-wayne. You know Mr. Butternut wouldn’t have any idea what to do in an emergency.”
“And just what emergency might announce itself?”
“I don’t know. But you do recall the police came that time.”
“From what I gather, a missing girl was that particular emergency.”
I ignored that.
“What’s in this house that’s so all-fired important?”
Abel Slaw shouted from the door of his tiny office, “Dwayne, you better come on and finish up Teets’s truck. I promised he could pick it up before we close.”
I said, “So I’ll come back at seven, okay?”
“Emma!” called Abel Slaw. “Now you shouldn’t be hanging round the cars.”
Dwayne said, “Okay, come ahead.”
I answered Abel Slaw: “I’m leaving, Mr. Slaw.”
“Yeah, well, it ain’t I don’t want you around, but it’s dangerous out there where all the machinery and stuff is.”
Some idea of danger he had.
Miss Bertha found another reason to complain, with having to come into dinner at six instead of her preferred time of six-thirty. It was as if she had a schedule of events on her social calendar that would be completely thrown out of kilter by this earlier time. She demanded to know why as she and Mrs. Fulbright sat down at their table.
Pouring the water, I knew if I said it was because I had certain plans for the evening, she would do everything in her power to make me at least a half hour late, so that I would gain nothing from the change. I had to make it worth her while. When I’d set their menus before them, I told her that our candy supplier (for the display case at the desk) had called up and said they just got in the York peppermint patties—which was Miss Bertha’s favorite—that we’d been out of for so long and that he’d be there till seven this evening if I wanted to pick them up. It was a special trip I’d have to make but seeing how much she liked them I would make the effort.
I love going to the candy wholesaler when Mrs. Davidow goes to pick up boxes of Hershey bars, Butterfingers, Snickers, Mounds, and Three Musketeers, my favorite. It’s because the bar is in three sections of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Candy boxes, each containing one or two dozen bars, are stacked in the warehouse ten feet high, row after row. I often wonder how they sold all of that candy. To Miller’s and the five-and-dime and the drug stores, I guessed—all around.
When I’d told her this, she didn’t know how to respond. She was on what is called the “horns of a dilemma” (a state I myself am often faced with), as she wouldn’t want me to miss delivery of her York peppermint patties, but then she’d have to go along with this time change. The York patties won out, for she told me to get their first course (fruit cup) and be quick about it.
I smiled and told her “Coming up!” and made for the kitchen. Miss Bertha would not be happy when she saw the display case tomorrow, but I’d worry about that tomorrow. As Scarlett O’Hara liked to say, tomorrow is another day.