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rest of the
whiskey in his glass, then sipped from a pitcher of warm beer that he
was using as a chaser. He looked at the mouth and breasts of the woman
in the painting and through the open window heard someone playing a
piano in the brothel next door. His head reeled and the room seemed to
tip sideways, and his ears buzzed with sound that had no meaning. The
oil lamps in the saloon were like whorls of yellow color inside the
cigar smoke that layered the ceiling. The whiskey had brought him no
relief and instead had only created a hunger in his loins that made him
bite his lip when he looked at the woman above the bar mirror.
    Oh Lord, quiet my desires, he
thought. And immediately focused his gaze on the woman's form again. He
swallowed the rest of his whiskey in one gulp and thought he was going
to fall backward.
    "Gag and buck," he said to no
one.
    "What did you say, Willie?"
Jean-Jacques asked.
    "What does 'gag and buck'
mean?"
    "You don't want to find out.
You ain't gone and signed up for the army, you?"
    "I did."
    Po' Willie, why ain't you
come to see me first?" Jean-Jacques said, and cupped his hand on the
back of Willie's neck.
    "You're a criminal," Willie
said.
    "But I got my good points too,
ain't I?"
    "Undoubtedly. Oh,
Jean-Jacques, I've made a mess of things," Willie said.
    Jean-Jacques put his mouth
close to Willie's ear. "I can put you on a boat for Mexico when it's
the right time. Let's go next door to my sister's and get your ashes
hauled," he said.
    "That's a grand suggestion,
and please don't hold it against me for not acting on it. But I have to
puke," Willie said.
    He reeled out the back door
into an overgrown coulee and bent over behind a tree just as an
enormous volume of whiskey and beer and pickled food surged out of his
stomach. He gasped for breath, then rinsed his face in a rain barrel
and dried it on his shirt. The night air was soft with mist, the moon
buried in the clouds above the cane fields. Next door the piano player
was playing a minstrel song titled "Dixie's Land." Willie shouldered a
mop propped against a cistern and began a parody of close-order drill
in the yard behind the brothel, then flung aside the flap on the tent
in the side yard and marched through the row of cots inside, counting
cadence for himself, "Reep . . . reep . . . reep," saluting two naked
people caught at the worst possible moment in their coupling.
    He continued out the far end
of the tent and on down the road, passing a horseman whose face was
shadowed by a wide hat. The wind changed, and he saw dust blowing out
of the fields and a tree of lightning splinter across the sky. He left
the road and crossed the dirt yard of the laundry where Flower worked
and walked through the iron pots in the backyard and the wash that was
flapping on the clotheslines and stopped by the back window of her
cabin.
    "Flower?" he said.
    He heard her rise from her
bed, then push open the wood flap on the window with a stick.
    "What you doing, Mr. Willie?"
she asked.
    "Did Rufus Atkins come upon
the poetry book I gave you?"
    "Yes, suh, he did."
    "Did he report you?"
    "No, suh, he ain't done that.
I mean, he didn't do that."
    "Come close, so I can see your
face."
    "You don't sound right, Mr.
Willie," she said.
    "Did Rufus Atkins make you do
something you didn't want to?"
    "I ain't got no control over
them things. It don't do no good to talk about them, either."
    "I've done you a great harm,
Flower."
    "No, you ain't. I mean, no,
you hasn't. You better go back home now, Mr. Willie."
    He was about to reply when he
heard horses out on the road.
    "Who's that?" he said.
    "The paddy rollers. Oh, suh,
please don't let them catch you here," she said.
    He walked back through the
yard and the darkness of the oaks that grew on each side of the
laundry. He was sweating now, the wind suddenly cold on his face. He
heard thunder crack in the south and rumble across the sky, like apples
tumbling down a wooden chute. He stepped out on the road and walked
toward