Twilight by William Gay Page A

talk to you, but not about that. I need some advice about something. Could I come in for a few minutes?
    Well. Sure, I guess so. Come on in, Kenneth. He ushered Tyler into a neardark room and made no move to turn on the lights. The room was warm. A gas furnace burned with a soft hissing sound and a thin blue flame. A door opened off this room to what Tyler remembered was the kitchen, and Phelan kept glancing nervously toward it. There was a warm spicy smell of Italian food cooking.
    If I’ve come at a bad time—
    Oh, no, not a bit of it. Well, to tell you the truth, I was just having a guest over for dinner.
    I’ll just be getting on.
    Stay a few minutes as long as you’re here. I was just surprised to see you. I’d assumed you’d gone to east Tennessee.
    The kitchen door filled with a shadowy form. A heavyset girl in a white dress. A girl Tyler remembered from school. A junior then. A semipretty girl with soft uncertain eyes. At length a name floated into his memory to match the face: Retha Ellison.
    Phelan became agitated. There was a curious mixture of humility and defiance in his face. Suddenly it all made a kind of sense to Tyler. Phelan laid a hand on Tyler’s arm.
    Kenneth, you remember Retha.
    Yes. Hello, Retha.
    Hello, Kenneth. How have you been?
    Just fine. The grip on his arm had tightened and seemedto be moving him gently toward the door. Tyler felt that for days folks had been taking him by the arm and guiding him places he did not want to go on his own. The anger that Phelan’s kind, familiar face had dissipated returned, seethed just beneath the surface. He jerked his arm hard, and Phelan’s indecisive hand fluttered away.
    I guess I’d better get on, Tyler said. He wondered what madness had driven him here to begin with. What advice Phelan could possibly have given him. All these myriad differences between the world he was discovering and the world he’d been taught. There was nothing in Yeats or Eliot or Browning to cover this: had the situation been reversed, Phelan would probably have been coming to him for advice. He wondered how Eliot would have fared against the look in Sutter’s dead eyes.
    Well, Kenneth, if you must, then I suppose you must. Tomorrow night, then?
    I doubt it.
    It wasn’t anything urgent, then?
    No. No, it wasn’t anything much. I’ll let you get back to your guest.
    Ushered in, ushered out. The hand was at his elbow again as if he were blind or halfwitted and must be forever shown the way.
    I’m sorry you have to rush away into the night. But we’ll do it another time. I just had Retha over for some tutoring and we decided to have a bite to eat. You know how things are.
    He smiled a quick nervous smile and gave Tyler a conspiratorial wink. Tyler looked away. Beyond the limits of the porchlight the streets lay already dark and slicklooking and empty. Yeah, Tyler said uncertainly, as if the way things were would forever be a mystery to him.
    Phelan waved an arm goodbye. His hand still clutched the book, and he looked down at it as if he had forgotten it.
    Tyler started down the steps. What are you going to read to her?
    Pardon me?
    Browning, I’ll bet. You’re going to read her Browning, aren’t you?
    For a moment Phelan’s face was empty and dead. You were never a petty person, Kenneth, he said. I wouldn’t start at this late date. You don’t have the flair for it, and it doesn’t become you.
    Goodbye, Mr. Phelan. He went on but at the gate he turned and looked as though he might say something further but Phelan had already gone back inside and closed the door. He stood for a moment in the line between light and dark as if hedidn’t quite know where to go or what to do.
    Well, he thought. We tried the law and we tried the Poet’s Literary Tea Society. I guess I do it my damn self.

    Sutter was sitting under the walnut tree with the Coke crate cocked against it when the county car pulled into the drive and stopped. A deputy got out and crossed the yard and