Strange Hour (Outcast Hour) -im Griff-

Author(s): Anne Carson

Source: The Threepenny Review, No. 72 (Winter, 1998), p. 35
Published by: Threepenny Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4384695 .
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 Henry had leaned down to pick up a rock. "Muh-dear told me to let you
win," he said, throwing the rock sidearm into a ditch. "You white."
Now Henry was the new commissioner, the one who made the motion to
replace him, Fred said.
"Henry did?" he'd asked, to be sure.
"Right. Henry Philpot. Grew up out there on your place."
Ben remembered a hot summer Saturday in the Sixties when he'd watched
the start of a new demonstration. A worn-out white deputy had looked at the
black leader he stood facing.
"I wish you would tell me what it is you all want," the deputy had said like
a plea, the back of his shirt wet with sweat already. "What would it take to
satisfy you, so we could cut all this out and get back to work?
The answer, delivered as from a pulpit, had spread like a news flash.
"We want this town, and we want this county. We got the vote, and the law
behind us. It's our time now!"
The stretch of road ahead of Ben had been patched out of season, because of
a pot-hole accident. The smell of tar was still strong, crushed rocks on top still
loose. On his way to work today, a passing car had thrown a rock against his
windshield but luckily hadn't cracked it. Rocks now crunched beneath his
shoes, slowing him down. Dan had left the rocky road for friendlierroadsides
and ditches.
Suddenly, up ahead, something was emerging from a stormcloud of rock
dust. A red sports car with the top down was coming too fast for the road.
Almost at once he could make out a black driver in wraparound shades and a
dazzling white shirt. Drug dealer, he'd come to think, right or wrong, at sight
of a black in a flashy car.
To give the red car room, he got off the road all the way, onto a shoulder
high in dead grass, weeds, and kudzu. He looked to see that Dan was out of
the way, but he'd run off somewhere out of sight.
And the red car was not slowing down, nor leaving the middle of the road.
The driver, shades like a glossy mask, looked straight ahead.
A gust of thick gray dust hit Ben all at once. Grit peppered his bare arms
and clothes. He shut his eyes and turned his head, but not before a small rock
had stung him on the temple, close to one eye.
Instantly, as if transported, he found himself in the middle of the road,
shouting after the driver.
"Run over me then, God damn it!"
He was like a radiator boiling over. His chest heaved. If he had a stroke, he
didn't care.
"Son of a bitch!" he called out, then drew himself together, filled his lungs,
and hurled his voice like a weapon. "Go to hell. All of you!"
The driver stopped and backed to near where Ben stood. Looking puzzled,
he got out and shut the car door. He'd obviously heard shouts but not words.
"You hollerin' at me?"
"Damn right!" Ben said. "Who do you think you are, tearing down the
road throwing rocks in people's faces?"
Up close, he could see that the car was secondhand, the white shirt new but
not expensive. And the driver was young, maybe thirty. Without the shades,
he looked oddly familiar.
"I'm in a hurry, man," the driver said, his accent from somewhere up
North. "I'm suppose to be in Mobile by dark."
Ben put a hand to his temple, felt the hot little lump. He spat the taste of
dust from his mouth.
The stranger frowned, watching. "I'm not use to no Southern roads," he
said.
"Well, you're not blind!" Ben countered. "You saw me and knew to slow
down. You just want to run over somebody, all of you, every chance you get!"
The Chair
The chairleft out in the gardennightall winter
Sitswaitingfor the summerday all night.
The insidesof the metalarmsarefrozen.
Overthe housethe nightsky wheelsand turns
All winterlong even behindthe day.
-David Ferry
WINTER 1998
The strangerlooked at him, said nothing.
"Only a nigger would do what you did!" It came out involuntarily, a word
Ben despised, never used, had winced to hear all of his life.
A muscle twitched in the young man's cheek. Small flames leapt up in the
depths of his eyes. For a split-second he said nothing. Then his voice came
hard and tight as a fist.
"You got to 'pologize for that, motherfucker!You got to 'pologize now!"
"'Pologize for your goddamn rocks!" Ben shot back.
They came at each other, mouths set. Ben was bigger, but the black man
was quick, and young. Ben's right arm was caught at once in a grip so strong
it was all he could do not to cry out, but he twisted and strained, this way and
that, until his muscles quivered and the grip began to loosen. He did not
intend to be licked. Not if it killed him, today, on this road.
But then Dan was there, with a sound he never heard from him before, the
warning growl of a guard dog. From close beside him Dan growled again,
deep in his throat, and the man let go and drew back, eyes wide. All at once
Ben froze, as if a restraininghand had clapped him on the shoulder.
Who was this stranger? He knew those eyes, didn't he? Somber, set wide
apart, so still they could be unsettling. And not just the eyes. The features,
matte black skin, solid stance. All familiar. He felt his heart stop, clench.
"Are you an Agee?" he asked, and held his breath.
"Say what?"
"Is you name Agee?" Ben cried. "Did you know Easter Agee?"
The stranger hesitated, glanced at the dog. "EasterAgee was my grandma,"
he said, at last. "But she passed, long ago."
Ben stepped back, arms limp at his sides. Tears blurredhis eyes. A held-back
sob distorted his face.
"EasterAgee raised me," he said hoarsely.
Overhead the drone of a plane grew loud, then faded. In the pasture a calf
bleated for its mother, sounding lost. The grandson gave Ben a long, specula-
tive look, checked the dog now sitting, panting, beside him.
"Say she did?"
It was a comment, Ben knew, not a question. It was closure. The grandson
wanted to be on his way. Besides, the last thing he wanted to hear, no doubt,
was that his grandmotherhad been someone's mammy.
Ben fought back the impulse to tell him anyway, as in some crucial summa-
tion to a jury, what Easter had meant to him. But things like that weren't said
any more. They were racist, patronizing, some kind of put-down, they
thought.
Also, after Henry, he couldn't help wondering how she'd felt about him all
those years, at night on her lumpy mattress, if her faithfulness hadn't been
three parts necessity at the time. Things had been worse for her then than they
were for him now.
He looked at her grandson across a no man's land of silence. Behind them
on the flat Black Belt prairie, the sun reddened and glared before starting to
set. There was no sound except the lonely, drawn-out lowing of a cow soon to
be slaughtered.
Ben glanced at the sun, drew a quavering breath. "Don't let me hold you up
any longer," he said. "You're late already."
The grandson shrugged. "Well, all right, then," he said, brightening like a
schoolboy let out for recess. "I got to head on. But I been hearin' about
Ashton all my life. I just cut through here to see what it look like."
He hurried back to his car, got in, and slammed the door. Before driving off,
he looked back at Ben.
"Man, you take it easy," he said. "Okay?"
B?enraised his hand in the semblance of a wave. "Take care," he called out
too late, whether to the grandson or himself he didn't know. C:
Strange Hour (Outcast Hour)
-im Griff-
3 A.M. cool palace roar of Oakland night.
Not even a siren then a siren far off.
Train passed a while ago now nothing.
Bare lightbulb in garage across the street who left it on.
Every sentence should contain a fact at least.
No one but myself ever seems to set foot on this balcony
strange to say.
Undertone of hatred I cannot eliminate
from my feelings of friendshipfor most people.
Clear at this hour.
-Anne Carson