Twilight by William Gay Page A

seemed ill at ease, someone who must soon be off.
    Turning colder, he said awkwardly.
    What can I say? It’s December. But I could of stuck my head out the door and told that. You didn’t have to drive all the way out here to give me a weather report.
    Like I told you, it’s business.
    If it’s whiskey business, you’re shit out of luck. They cleaned me out last week. The fuckin revenuers. I’m under indictment again. Out on bond. The son of a bitches just won’t let me be here lately. Somebody’s got it in for me. I’ve paid these goddamned local laws enough money to buy a farm in Georgia and the niggers to work it and not a word of warning do I get. They didn’t even fool with the county. You know what they done? A nigger come walkin up out of the woods and Isold him a pint. He shoved it in his hip pocket and walked back down in that holler. A nigger in woreout overalls and bustedout shoes, and I thought he’d been down there diggin sang or somethin. Then when the feds came in a big black car with their warrants, there set the son of a bitch right in the front seat wearin a suit of clothes and a necktie. The front seat. Black as the ace of spades. The slick son of a bitches. Who’d of thought they’d send a nigger?
    Breece’s eyes had adjusted to the halflight from the openhearth, and by it he was covertly studying Sutter’s face. Sutter wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He seemed to be abstractedly talking out of a store of rage he’d laid by and a hot but unfocused anger burned in his eyes.
    It was the first time they had ever talked face to face and Breece divined in a moment of dizzy revelation something about Sutter that no one had noticed before. Why, he is mad, Breece thought. He’s not what people say about him at all. He’s not just mean as a snake or eccentric or independent. He’s as mad as a hatter, and I don’t know how they’ve let him go so long.
    What is it you want, anyway?
    Someone has something that belongs to me, and I’m being blackmailed. I’ve got to have it back, and I think you’re the man to get it for me.
    Sutter was rolling a cigarette. Who is it?
    Well, there’s two of them in together, I think. A brother and a sister named Tyler. The girl is the one who actually approached me about the money, but I know for a fact the young man is the one who stole the article out of my car. That’s what I want back, and I’m willing to pay for it.
    The article. Yes.
    Say I try to do it for you. Do I get to know what the article is, or do I just wander around finding things that look like they might have belonged to you?
    Of course, you’ll know what it is.
    Then let me in on it.
    All right. Some photographs were taken of myself and a…young lady. They are potentially very damaging. The photographs are of a very incriminating…a very intimate nature. The young woman is connected politically, and they are threatening to goto her husband if I don’t pay them fifteen thousand dollars. I’ve been in a quandary. If anything goes wrong, my position in this community will be ruined.
    This story was so monumentally absurd that Sutter did not even take offense at being lied to. He was even a little impressed. The idea of Fenton Breece doing things of an intimate nature to a politically connected young woman while someone else took potentially incriminating photographs was so far beyond the realm of probability that he permitted himself a small smile.
    Of course, we both know that’s bullshit, he pressed on. But it’s your business what you done and what specie of animal you done it with. Pictures then. And you want em back. If they’re as bad as you say, why don’t you just give them the fifteen thousand dollars. That’s chickenfeed to you. What do you think, I’m goin to do it cheaper? I ain’t no bargain basement, ain’t runnin no sales.
    Breece was silent for a time. He seemed unused to speech, as if he’d gone too long without the companionship of the living. He studied a bit