Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron Read Free Book Online Page A

thirty-six. Now I like Packards—I’ve got an Olds now—I like Packards O.K. But I had the damndest time with my feed line. I reckon I took that car down to Pritchard’s five times before I got it straightened out.”
    “Yes, sir,” Barclay said. He was pouring water into the radiator, the can held high, his elbow almost in Loftis’ face.
    “An Olds I like because of hydramatic drive. Here, let me help you there. …” He took the can and edged in front of Barclay. “Taller than you,” he said with a little chuckle. The water began to slop over the engine and Barclay thought: Hell, I got to go get some more.
    “Some people don’t like hydramatic drive. I do. Pickup’s slower and all, that’s true, but if you drive around town as much as I do it’s a pretty good thing.” He put the can down. “My daughter was always after me about getting a convertible; a Packard convertible was what she always wanted. For herself, I mean. You know how kids are about cars.” He looked at Barclay. “How old are you, around twenty? My daughter was a few years older than you she was——” He glanced at his hands. “You got something I can wipe my hands on?”
    Barclay handed him a rag, thinking: the poor guy. He watched Loftis’ hands tremble with a sort of palsied agitation, as he rubbed furiously at them.
    The poor guy, Barclay thought, wondering: What would Mr. Casper say to make him feel better?
    Then Loftis paused, looked around tentatively, aimlessly, as if he considered walking off toward town. His expression was neither of grief nor of fear. It was an expression, Barclay thought with sudden bewilderment, of absolutely nothing at all. He merely stood there, the rag clutched tightly in his hand, his face beaded with sweat but as blandly composed as a deacon’s. I should say, the boy was thinking: I reckon I should say—— But Loftis’ skin was suddenly the color of chalk, an incredible shade of white that Barclay didn’t think possible even in a corpse, let alone alive: the face still composed and expressionless, but as drained of color as if color had never existed there, and Barclay watched in a sort of bewitchment as the dry, bloodless lips parted and said: “I’m sick.”
    Loftis said nothing else. Conscious only of a vague commotion around him—people walking through the dust, astonished voices like those of children caught in a sudden rainshower—he stood with one hand lightly, almost casually, resting on the fender, the other hand still clutching the rag. Then leisurely, in the methodical fashion of a sleepwalker, he let the rag drop from his hand and walked away through the dust. As he started off across the street his first thought was: I mustn’t get sick here. I must get to a place where I can vomit—fighting back the nausea which surged up from his belly in hot demanding waves and then, in the near-deserted restaurant, walking past the juke box now mute and gaudy with shifting kaleidoscopic light, red and blue and green, and into the filthy toilet in the rear where in spasms, bending over an unflushed bowl, he was sick.
    Afterward he went out and sat on a stool at the edge of the counter where he could watch the limousine—still shaken but feeling better as the nausea subsided, thinking: I’ve got to get hold of myself. I’ve got to be a man. A taxi driver who had been eating at the other end of the counter got up and paid and went out, saying, “See you, Hazel.” Dully, Loftis watched him through the flyspecked window: strolling past, sucking on a toothpick with the poky, shiftless look of taxi drivers south of the Potomac—casual trifling ease. Then he disappeared beyond the window frame. Loftis, looking absently around him, found the place deserted except for Hazel.
    “Hiya, what’ll it be?” the woman said. “Ain’t the dust awful?”
    “Coffee,” he said.
    “Say, you look real sick,” she said. “You must of hung one on last night.” She went back to the coffee urn. There