LITERATURE: Provinces of Night – Story

I’ve been reading William Gay’s novel Provinces of Night and as is my
habit lately, I’ve been reading not only for story, themes, imagery,
language, etc., but I found myself following the trails of the
characters as I would in a hypertext piece.  There are three
generations of men: the grandfather, old and ill and wanting to come
home to the wife and three sons he abandoned twenty years ago; his son
Boyd, determined to find the wife who has left him; and Boyd’s son,
Fleming, abandoned by his mother and then his father as he takes off
after her.

There are layers of time here that and place that intersect as those who have left drift in and out of the minds and thus the place of the story. Characters become alive and real and float away. Fleming, a young man whose interest in reading and writing is likely borne of being deserted, has his first sexual experience and even this turns out to be with a woman who leaves him.  Fleming has become independent and makes his own roads.  Here, at the end of Book 1, we find a metaphor of his life:

He sat for a time and rested.  He was uncertain as to which way to go.  If he bore left he would wind up at his grandmother’s.  Straight ahead followed the spine of the ridge to his home.  There was something mystic about crossroads, they doubled the options, confused both pursuer and pursued.  He didn’t know which he was, and after a while he made a pillow of the magazines and slept this night at the crossroads.  (p. 73)

While it may seem contradictory to say that he has self confidence even as the above states his uncertainty, it is the fact that his decision is to spend the night at the crossroads, feeling secure enough to sleep at what is usually considered a metaphor for great changes.