Stories from the Attic by William Gay

Author:William Gay
Format: epub

He’d seen his son two nights ago. He’d just set down at the bar of a place called The Highlander and drank half a beer and when he’d looked up he could see reflected in the bar mirror the green baize of the pool table and beyond it Butler watching him. His still eyes, his closecropped black hair. The other player was leaned to shoot and on the far side of the table Butler stood with his cuestick held bothhanded before his chest like a weapon at parade rest.

Vestal drained the beer and set the bottle down and shoved his change across the bar for a tip and arose. He went past a makeshift plywood stage with a karaoke machine and a fat man in a porkpie hat singing Sam Cooke with his eyes closed. Bring it to me, bring your sweet loving, bring it on home to me. He went through batwing doors and out into the failing heat and crossed the street to the parking lot.

It was at just the end of twilight and beyond the parking lot the western sky was a burnished red that cooled to smoke gray even as he watched it. Feeding nighthawks came to dart and check above the streetlamps, random as spores moving on a glass slide.

Hey.

He turned. His son had come out of the bar and was crossing the pavement toward him.

No need to run off.

I wasn’t running off.

I could have sworn you were running off. Saw me there in the mirror and split.

Vestal slid his hands in his jean pockets and didn’t say anything.

Hell, I know you started drinking again. We could have had a beer or two. Shot a game. Talked about olden times. I guess they’re all olden now.

I had a hard day, Butler. I worked my butt off. I left because every time we talk it works around into a situation where you’re chewing my ass and I just can’t handle it today.

What are you doing?

Roofing a house. Putting on shingles. It was hot up there today, too.

Yeah. I heard they fired your ass up at the college. I expect it’s harder toting shingles up a thirty-foot ladder than it was looking up co-eds’ dresses there in that air conditioning. Though I guess that got to be hot work too.

The look on Butler’s face was a complicated one but Vestal knew this calm confident face so well he could have deciphered it, but he didn’t want to go there. He went anyway. The face looked confused and disappointed in him and it showed pain and the shame he felt saying these things or even being in this conversation and beneath it all anger burned like a banked fire.

The face looked like old photographs of Vestal’s father. They were both constructed on the same paradigm. Compact bodies and high cheekbones and go-to-hell grins and sleepy moviestar eyes. The three of them, grandfather and father and son, looked as alike as if they’d all been stamped with the same faulted die and Vestal wondered how many of them had been shipped into an unsuspecting world.

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