Drops of the Night

Julia Nunnally Duncan

[excerpt]     He sat on the bed and unlaced his boots. About him was the smell of cigarette smoke and sweet chewing tobacco and liquor, but his hands were clean as if he’d scrubbed them. His poker hands could make life easier for them, he swore. The drought this summer was shriveling the corn and turning the soil to dust, and a man had to turn to something besides farming in such times, he said. But poker? she asked. Gambling had been a sin especially worrisome to her. Lord knew he didn’t have much cash to bet, and his most valuable possession was an L.C. Smith double-barreled shotgun his granddaddy had left to him. Though she didn’t approve of guns, Roland had taught her to use his gun in case of an emergency, and she admired the mottled steel of the barrels and the rich walnut stock and knew Roland would never tangle the gun up in gambling. At least, she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
    “I got to tell you something,” he said and pulled the light string. In the dark he took off his clothes, as he would not undress in the light, and got into bed. He sat up and leaned against the iron headboard, and she sat up too. In the scant moonlight she looked at him, his thin shoulders and graying brown hair. For a man of forty, he looked worn, more like his granddaddy than ever. He hadn’t bothered to shave tonight, and his hair, left tousled by sweat and the pressure of his hat, made him look like a weary farm hand. She could have reached out and touched his shoulder, but that didn’t come so easy anymore. Best to leave that alone and let him say what he meant to say.
    “What is it?” she said.
    “This has been the strangest night of my life, Nora,” he said. “I went into town to get more seed corn and stayed like I always do on Saturday night to play a few hands of poker, back of Parker’s Hardware. Everett and Roy Johnson was there and a few others. One of them had brought a bottle of Wild Turkey, so it looked to be a long night, even though I hadn’t brought much money to throw in the pot. Neither had anybody else. Everett began shuffling when Ezra Burgin come in with a dark-skinned feller I never saw before. Ezra introduced him as a cousin, though he didn’t look like a Burgin other than his blond hair. The new feller asked if he might sit in and we all thought by the looks of his clothes and the way he talked we’d better let him, cause we could tell he had money.”
    “What was his name?” she asked, drawn in by Roland’s high-pitched tone.
    “What?” he said and looked at her with his dark gaze as if she’d disturbed a dream. “I don’t recall. I got it wrote down on a slip of paper.”
    Anyway,” he continued, “this Burgin pulled out of his dress trouser pocket a knife—prettiest one any of us had seen—a Puma, I think, with bone handles and polished brass ends—and laid it on the table. We thought he might throw it in the pot—hoped he would, though we surely didn’t have anything so fine to put up against it. But here’s the hell of the thing——”

isbn 1-59661-160-X
170 pages/$15

Like a Thomas Hardy heroine, Nora Lynch struggles to rise above her surroundings and express her inchoate dreams. Her story is told in poetic yet gut-wrenching prose. Both steamy and spiritual, Drops of the Night is a powerful novel which captures many essentials of rural life. Nora Lynch is an unusually appealing heroine with a riveting story.
--Lee Smith

Out of the most traditional of materials, Julia Nunnally Duncan has fashioned a clean-lined, strong-limbed story that travels its swift way like a mountain stream, sure and steady. For all its sadness, Drops of the Night is at last a hymn to freedom and a victorious love story. After reading three sentences, I knew I would follow it to the end and be glad I did. That is exactly what happened.
--Fred Chappell

In Drops of the Night, Julia Nunnally Duncan renders a moving and passionate portrait of Nora Lynch, a young farmer's wife, who after fifteen years finds herself trapped in a suffocating marriage. Duncan's prose is as irresistible as her heroine, and the reader can't help getting swept up in Nora's struggle as she faces down judgmental community members and, in so doing, allows herself to move beyond limitations she has endured all of her life. Set in the foothills of western North Carolina, the book embodies the plight of Appalachian farmers who, no longer able to make a living, were forced to sell their farms and take work in the mills. Duncan artfully brings to bear the pressures of the time and place on Nora and those around her. The result is Drops of the Night, an exquisite dark dream of a novel.
--Tommy Hays

Julia Nunnally Duncan studied creative writing at Warren Wilson College and is the author of three books of fiction.