Any Day Now: A Novel

ONE

HE’S JUST A LITTLE BOY.

But I can’t see out the back.

What are those big mirrors for?

They’re for looks, Lou Emma. Not for looking out.

Shhhh. I think he’s asleep.

He’s pretending.

Clay was just a little boy. He knew his name. He knew to keep his eyes closed so they would think he was sleeping, wasn’t listening, wasn’t there. That was his first trick. More would follow. He lay up in the back of the car, a ’39 Mercury coupe, june bug green, under the slanted glass. It was perfect, like a little bed. Like it was made for him.

Soon they were talking of something else in low voices in the soft light from the dash. Dash. Clay liked that word.

His mother’s voice was soft and familiar, like cotton cloth. His father’s voice was sharp and strange, like steel or plastic. It came from far away.

The little boy opened his eyes. The one-eyed moon looked back. The world below it was dark. Light bounced off running posts and signs. The world was flat. The moon was round. The car made a singing sound. Tires, motor, radio. It made the world go by. The big trees, far away, went slower the farther away they were.

It was all moving, just right. It was perfect.

He’s not pretending, his mother said. He’s just a boy. A little boy.

Calhoun was small.

Owensboro was big.

This is it, his father said. They had a new house. It was just like all the others. They were all new, all in a row. The trees in the front yards were all small, like children. Wires held them up. The trees in Calhoun had been big. He had lived in a big house with his aunts and his cousins. Now he had his own room.

He’s not used to you yet, said his mother.

His father was home from the War.

He’ll get used to you, said his mother.

What was the War like? he asked one day.

It was like nothing, his father said. It was like a lot of big gray steel nothing. He had been on a ship.

Don’t tell him that, his mother said.

Why not, his father said. It’s true.

Jimmy Spence lived two doors down. He was sixteen. His father was a dealer. Jimmy had a ’49 Ford. It made a rumbling sound like the ’39 Merc. He liked to drive fast through the puddles and splash the kids playing.

Everybody laughed but them.

There were no sidewalks. The neighborhood was too new.

Jesse and Yancey were twins. They lived next door. Clay hated them.

Your daddy’s a Yankee, they said. He talks funny.

Your daddy’s a hillbilly, said Clay.

No, he’s not.

Yes, he was. Clay had heard his mother and father talking about it. It was one of the few times they agreed.

The second grade school was new. There was a ditch between the playground and the tobacco field. There were crawdads in the muddy water.

The teacher’s name was Miss Wilson. She was pretty. Nice too. She let the boys catch crawdads and bring them into the classroom in a coffee can. Clay and Bobby Lee caught the most. Bobby Lee was his best friend.

On Monday they were all dead and the room smelled bad but Miss Wilson didn’t care. She opened all the windows with a crank.

It was Science, she said.

Fourth grade was another school, all the way across town. They had to ride a yellow bus. The driver’s name was Porter.

All the kids liked Porter. He taught them songs.

MacArthur, MacArthur, he’s our man!

Throw old Truman in the garbage can!

Where’d you learn that? Clay’s mother asked.

Clay didn’t know who MacArthur was, or Truman either, but he knew better than to tell on Porter.

From Bobby Lee, he said.

Bobby Lee’s father owned a drugstore and a picture show. Every Saturday there was a cowboy movie and a serial too. Clay and Bobby Lee got in free.

Clay’s mother picked them up after the show.

How was the show? she asked. Did the cowboys win again? She was smoking a cigarette. The cowboys always won.

The niggers threw popcorn, said Clay.

The what?

The niggers in the balcony, Bobby Lee explained. They eat the popcorn and then they flatten out the boxes and sail them down to try and hit us. It doesn’t hurt though.

Clay’s mother let Bobby Lee out at his house, then stopped the car again at the end of the block. She lit another cigarette and said, Don’t you ever let me hear you say that again.

Say what?

"Nigger. That’s a white trash word. That’s white trash talk. You’re a Bewley and don’t you forget it. We’ve always had colored help, colored people around, in Calhoun. We don’t use that word."

Clay had a little sister. Then she died. She was zero years old.

Now he had his own room again. His mother sat up late, crying and smoking. His father was in the garage, listening to the radio. He listened to the radio a lot. He had a shortwave.

Clay read airplane books under the covers with a flashlight. His favorite was the Curtiss P-40, the Warhawk.

On Sundays, after church, they went to Calhoun.

Calhoun Mama lived in the Big House, on the banks of the Green. There were old cars all around the barn and empty whiskey bottles in the rafters of the tobacco stripping room. A BB gun to keep cats out of the milk.

Calhoun Mama sat in a rocker by the window, with her legs straight out, like white sticks, all wrapped up. All the kids had to say hello and remind her of their names. The curtains were always closed.

All the aunts and cousins were there. Sometimes Uncle Ham cooked squirrels. They were like chicken but all dark meat. The boys looked for buckshot with their teeth, then played in the sweet-smelling barn, where the burley was hanging.

They sat on the big green tractor. From the barn door Clay could see the bridge and the cars speeding over, one at a time. Two out of three were Chevrolets

There was a new boy in the fifth grade, Emil, pronounced a meal. He was a Yankee, from Chicago. He talked funny but Clay liked him. He knew all about airplanes. Bobby Lee liked him too. Emil had all the Oz books. He kept them on a shelf in his room, in order.

There were thirty-nine in all. Clay had never dreamed there could be so many.

They formed an Oz club. You had to read all the books, in order. They built a clubhouse under an Osage orange tree and each took a name. Bobby Lee was Tik-Tok of Oz, Emil was Peter Brown, the American boy, and Clay was Ojo.

When we grow up and get out of here, we’ll find Oz, said Bobby Lee. Nome, Alaska, was suspect.

Owensboro seemed suddenly small. Now they saw it for what it really was: a shadow of the real world.

On the first Saturday of every month all the boys in Owensboro, it seemed like anyway, went to the icehouse on Ninth Street. An old colored man on the porch gave haircuts for a quarter. The icehouse had a big old-fashioned porch like in a Western and the boys all lined up. It only took sixty seconds and all the boys looked alike when he was done. Only white boys of course. They were all ten. The iceman’s grandson took the quarters. He was thirteen and mean-looking and black as night. He had already failed two grades.

The boys were all afraid of him.

There was a girl with a shovel behind the Loyals’ garage.

Who are you? Clay asked.

None of your beeswax, she said. She was tall for a girl and skinny.

She was burying a bird. That seemed more interesting than hide-and-seek. It was a little gray thing. There was no blood and nothing was broken. The only thing wrong with it was that it was dead.

How did you kill it?

I didn’t. I found it. Maybe it just died.

If it was a cat, it would have eaten it. There would at least be blood.

It seemed better without the blood. Even more dead.

She handed Clay the shovel. They wrapped the bird in a paper bag. Ruth Ann put a ribbon around it, but that didn’t seem right. That was her name. They put a little cross on the grave.

I wonder if he died from the inside out, Clay said.

Maybe he just didn’t belong here, said Ruth Ann. Do you think there’s a heaven for birds?

I guess there would have to be. What about a hell?

Brrr. They shivered and looked at the tiny grave. Had they sent a bird to Hell?

They decided to dig it up in a year, to see what it looked like. Clay looked for Ruth Ann the next day but she was gone. She’s our cousin, said Yancey, the only one of the Loyal twins who had any sense. She lives in the country.

She had a pony, said Jesse.

It died, said Yancey. Her daddy didn’t feed it right.

In 1953, Hillary and a Sherpa were lost on the descent from Everest. It was on the radio but nobody in Owensboro noticed except for Emil and Clay and Bobby Lee. Sherpas were colored helpers.

They went through all the mountain climbing books in the library: Annapurna, Everest, Hunt and Shipton. The Matterhorn, gleaming with ice like a cruel tooth. On Saturdays, while the other boys were getting haircuts and playing baseball, they hiked out to the strip mines and climbed the shallow clay cliffs—Camp One, Camp Two—all the way to the summit, which was just a flat spot.

It was hot, with flies, but you could see all the way to the Ohio, slick as silver in the sun.

The Amazon, said Bobby Lee. Defying the cornfields.

Clay was in a movie. It was called Kentucky Rifle, and it was shot in Indiana, across the river. They hired kids from Owensboro as extras. Clay got in because his Uncle Ham rented the cars for the movie stars. They all wanted Lincolns.

Being in a movie meant standing around a lot. The kid in the movie was a child star from Hollywood. In between shots, he pointed at Clay and Bobby Lee and motioned for them to follow him.

They went behind the sound wagon and all smoked a cigarette. First he tore the filter off. Nick was a movie star. He taught them to French inhale. Bobby Lee threw up.

Burt Lancaster was the grown-up star. He thrilled the mothers by teasing them.

They hired you guys because you are used to going barefoot, said Nick. He thought they were all hillbillies. He was fifteen but he looked eight. Cigarettes stunted his growth, said Bobby Lee, who didn’t like him.

After that Clay smoked with Nick and a poor kid from the trailer park. His name was Harl. He was a year older than Clay.

If the movie is about Kentucky, Clay said, how come they are shooting it in Indiana?

What’s the big difference? said Nick.

I’ll tell you why, said Harl. Because nothing ever happens in Kentucky.

Bobby Lee was a Baptist. Clay was a Methodist. Methodists were better than Baptists but only a little. On Sundays Clay wore scratchy pants and sat in a pew between his mother and his Uncle Ham.

They all stood up to sing. His mother sang too loud. His father never went to church at all.

Emil’s favorite airplane was the F4U Corsair with the gull wings. Then he moved away. He took his Oz books with him.

Clay washed cars at his Uncle Ham’s lot after school. Fifty cents a car. An old colored man washed the engines. His name was Hosea but everybody called him Hosey. He ran the engines to dry them off.

Hear that, honey? he would say.

Hear what? Clay would lean over to listen.

Hosey would roll a cigarette and smile. He rolled perfect cigarettes, out of a little pouch tied with a string. He had one gold tooth. Clay liked the way he called him honey. He liked leaning on the fender and smelling the sweet Bull Durham and watching the engine idle, making the water drops fade.

Hear what? he said again. I don’t hear a thing.

Zactly, said Hosey. That’s a flathead for you. Quiet as a possum at midnight.

Happy Birthday, said Clay’s father.

Oh boy, said Clay. The engine, a Cox .049, came in a plastic box. The plane, a little plank-winged U-control P-40, came in a cardboard box.

How did you know this was my favorite? Clay asked. But his father was already gone, back to the garage. Clay could hear the radio.

The best place to fly it was at the other edge of town (Owensboro was all edges), where there were lots of vacant lots and the houses were mixed with trailers, and littler than Clay’s.

The .049 was hard to start. It made a wet sound when Clay flipped the prop.

A boy was in the front yard of a double-wide, working on a motorcycle. The yard was full of junk. He walked over without saying hello. Clay remembered him from the movie. He looked tough now. He had a flattop.

Sounds like it’s flooded, he said. He smelled it, then turned the prop so the port was open and blew in it, hard. It started.

He stuck out his hand for Clay to shake. Harl, he said. "Kentucky Rifle."

Clay flew the plane till it crashed and broke the prop, then went over to look at the motorcycle. It had a big yellow tank and fat wheels.

It’s a K-model, said Harl. It’s my brother’s. He’s in Korea. I’m taking care of it for him. Clay nodded like he knew.

Harl’s sister was sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette. Her name was Donna. She wore short shorts. They were narrow between her legs and Clay could see the little pink arc of her panties, peeking out.

Getting your eyes full? she asked.

No, said Clay even though he was. I’d better be heading home.

That night he lay in bed and thought about the flattop, the motorcycle, the little arc.

Mostly the little arc.

Clay’s father didn’t like guns. Clay’s mother said it was because of the War. Clay liked guns though.

Uncle Ham took Clay and his cousin Junior squirrel hunting in the Panther Creek bottoms. Junior didn’t like hunting but his father made him go. There were no panthers but lots of squirrels. Uncle Ham carried a 12 gauge and the boys both had .22s. Junior’s was a pretty little Remington pump and Clay’s was a single-shot Stevens. All you ever got was one shot anyway.

Uncle Ham let the boys take the first shot, and miss. Then he would blow the squirrel out of the tree with his 12 gauge. The boys had to pick up the squirrels and put them in the bag.

I feel sorry for the squirrels, said Junior. He was whispering so his father wouldn’t hear.

I don’t, said Clay, even though he did, a little. His cousin Junior was a sissy. Clay was afraid of being a sissy too.

One day Clay hit the squirrel. Ham didn’t have to shoot. It fell from the hickory tree like a stone.

Good shot, Clay, said Ham.

How do you know it wasn’t me? asked Junior.

I just do, said Ham.

That same day they jumped a deer. In those days deer were rare. It’s like seeing a unicorn, Clay said. He had been reading about unicorns.

There aren’t any unicorns, said Junior.

He hated his father.

Illinois was neat. Kentucky was messy.

They went north, once every summer, to visit Clay’s father’s parents, near Decatur.

The world got flat and wide until it was a table under the sky. The sky itself was filled with clouds marching from west to east. The dirt on the roadside was black. The roads all met at right angles. Every twenty minutes there was a neat little town with tall trees and big houses lined up on a rumbly brick street. Leaving one town, you could see the next on the horizon, a little clump of trees and a grain elevator, like a skyscraper.

Here’s my little man, Grandpa Martin would say.

I saved some magazines for you, Grandma Minnie would say. They were stacked on the porch for Clay to read, a spring and summer’s worth of Life in These United States and Increase Your Word Power.

Humor in Uniform was good too.

There were more issues of Reader’s Digest in the attic, all different and yet somehow all the same. Each had a condensed book in the back, but Clay didn’t know what to add to it to make it any fun to read. Water? Milk? Books apparently weren’t allowed downstairs, especially after they had been read. Clay’s father’s old high school textbooks were in a pile under the little triangular window. Exploring Our Modern World was best. There was a camel crossing the desert. Seattle harbor with its forest of masts and steamers mixed. A man with a hoe looking up at a dam being built. Was that the world my father expected? Clay wondered. None of it looked like Illinois, or Kentucky either.

The Reader’s Digests were piled in years. Illinois was all in squares. Grandpa Martin had a Cadillac. Then they both died in the fire and the house was gone and Illinois was gone. They never went back.

Clay never learned what happened to the Cadillac.

What’s this?

Science fiction, said Bobby Lee.

They were smaller than regular books and they weren’t in the library. They were paperbacks. They appeared on the racks in Bobby Lee’s father’s drugstore, different ones every month. They had rocket ships on the cover.

The Oz books were for little kids. These weren’t.

They cost a quarter but Bobby Lee and Clay didn’t have to buy them. They could read them as long as they didn’t bend them up and then put them back on the rack.

It was like the picture show.

Clay’s Uncle Ham owned the Ford-Lincoln-Mercury dealership. He gave Clay’s father a job in the office. Now they had a new car every other year. It was always a Ford, never a Mercury or a Lincoln.

Clay loved cars. They made sense. They were like ladders, leading up: Ford, Mercury, Lincoln; Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, Imperial; Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac. And there were ladders within ladders: Firesweep, Firedome, Fireflite; Monterey, Montclair; Special, Super, Roadmaster.

They were like grades. Clay was in the eighth, going on ninth. Everything got bigger, newer, higher every year. It was the way the world worked.

Clay’s mother smoked Kents, only halfway down. They were like long white grubs in the ashtrays. Clay stole the long butts and smoked them by the window in his room, reading late, after dark.

Buy your own cigarettes, his mother said. They will stunt your growth. So will that stuff.

She mistrusted paperbacks. He was reading Heinlein, Simak, Arthur C. Clarke.

See that old Ford? said Clay’s Uncle Ham. It was a 1949 Ford two-door with bad paint. It was at the back of the lot by the fence next to the funeral home.

Clay had noticed it before. It reminded him of Jimmy Spence’s hot rod, except it didn’t have duals.

Like it?

Yes, sir, Clay said. He always called his Uncle Ham sir. He was his mother’s big brother.

It’s yours when you turn sixteen, boy.

That was only a year away.

You have to pay me for it though. Fifty dollars.

Still a good deal, Clay thought.

Want a ride? It was Harl, the kid from the other edge of town.

He had pulled up on his motorcycle in front of Clay’s house. Clay was mowing the lawn. He shut off the mower.

The motorcycle was idling: potato, potato, potato.

Sure, he said.

Just where you two going? Clay’s mother asked.

She was standing in the doorway, smoking a Kent.

For a ride, said Clay, getting on the back. Harl didn’t say a word.

No, you are not, said Clay’s mother. She was wearing her terry cloth bathrobe even though it was two in the afternoon. It was Saturday. He’s not old enough to have a motorcycle.

It’s his brother’s, said Clay. He’s in Korea. He held on to the seat underneath his legs. He wasn’t about to put his arms around Harl. Let’s get going, he whispered. My mother thinks you are a delinquent, he added, after they got going.

So what, said Harl. He had traded his flattop for a ducktail, called a DA. They rode around the town but stayed off the big streets. No plates, said Harl, back over his shoulder.

He’s not in Korea, said Clay’s mother when he got back. He’s in jail.

So what, said Clay.

It was after midnight the night Clay finished Against the Fall of Night, by Arthur C. Clarke. He turned out his light and carried his shoes out the door on tiptoes. His father was in the garage with the shortwave; Clay could hear it crackling and mumbling. His mother was asleep in her chair in the living room.

The whole neighborhood was asleep. The whole town was asleep. Only the streetlights were on, and they ended at the end of the street. He pulled on his shoes and went to Bobby Lee’s house. It was only three blocks away.

Wake up, he said, tapping on Bobby Lee’s window. Let’s go.

Where? What time is it?

Midnight!

It’s too late. We’ll get in trouble.

So what, said Clay. He gave up and went on alone. It was summer. The bugs were loud. Owensboro was all edges. The town ended at the end of the street. He walked out into the darkness, between the long rows of burley tobacco, still only waist high. He kept his eyes on the ground until he was far out in the field. Then he looked up.

There was the Universe. It was all stars. He lit a Kent and watched the smoke drift up into the Universe. Nobody in Owens-boro even knew it was there.

He finished the cigarette and turned back toward town. In this universe the night was falling…

TWO

CLAY’S MOTHER DIDN’T LIKE HANK WILLIAMS BECAUSE HE WAS A hillbilly. She liked Elvis though, in spite of it. So did all the girls in Owensboro. So did all the girls in the world. They liked James Dean too.

In Owensboro it was football players, movie stars, and cars, in that order. Bobby Lee tried out and made the team. He even started, twice. Now he had a girlfriend, a cheerleader; her name was Mary Beth. She was a Baptist.

Clay tried out for football but didn’t make the team. But that’s okay, he thought. I’ll have a car in three months. He had already saved thirty-four dollars, washing cars.

High school was different. All the kids were older now. The boys had ROTC, one day a week. The