Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Part 22

'Blasphemer!' screamed Doctor Copeland. 'Foul blasphemer!' Jake shook the iron bars of the bed. The vein in his forehead swelled to the point of bursting and his face was dark with rage. 'Short-sighted bigot!'

'White--' Doctor Copeland's voice failed him. He struggled and no sound would come. At last he was able to bring forth a choked whisper: 'Fiend.'

The bright yellow morning was at the window. Doctor Copeland's head fell back on the pillow. His neck twisted at a broken angle, a fleck of b.l.o.o.d.y foam on his lips. Jake looked at him once before, sobbing with violence, he rushed headlong from the room.

Now she could not stay in the inside room. She had to be around somebody all the time. Doing something every minute. And if she was by herself she counted or figured with numbers. She counted all the roses on the living-room wall-paper. She figured out the cubic area of the whole house. She counted every blade of gra.s.s in the back yard and every leaf on a certain bush. Because if she did not have her mind on numbers this terrible afraidness came in her. She would be walking home from school on these May afternoons and suddenly she would have to think of something quick. A good thing--very good. Maybe she would think about a phrase of hurrying jazz music. Or that a bowl of jello would be in the refrigerator when she got home. Or plan to smoke a cigarette behind the coal house. Maybe she would try to think a long way ahead to the time when she would go north and see snow, or even travel somewhere in a foreign land. But these thoughts about good things wouldn't last. The jello was gone in five minutes and the cigarette smoked. Then what was there after that? And the numbers mixed themselves up in her brain. And the snow and the foreign land were a long, long time away. Then what was there? Just Mister Singer. She wanted to follow him everywhere. In the morning she would watch him go down the front steps to work and then follow along a half a block behind him. Every afternoon as soon as school was over she hung around at the corner near the store where he worked. At four o'clock he went out to drink a Coca-Cola. She watched him cross the street and go into the drugstore and finally come out again.

She followed him home from work and sometimes even when he took walks. She always followed a long way behind him. And he did not know.

She would go up to see him in his room. First she scrubbed her face and hands and put some vanilla on the front of her dress. She only went to visit him twice a week now, because she didn't want him to get tired of her. Most always he would be sitting over the queer, pretty chess game when she opened the door. And then she was with him.

'Mister Singer, have you ever lived in a place where it snowed in the winter-time?'

He tilted his chair back against the wall and nodded.

'In some different country than this one--in a foreign place?'

He nodded yes again and wrote on his pad with his silver pencil. Once he had traveled to Ontario, Canada--across the river from Detroit Canada was so far up north that the white snow drifted up to the roofs of the houses. That was where the Quints were and the St. Lawrence River. The people ran up and down the streets speaking French to each other. And far up in the north there were deep forests and white ice igloos.

The arctic region with the beautiful northern lights.

'When you was in Canada did you go out and get any fresh snow and eat it with cream and sugar? Once I read where it was mighty good to eat that way.'

He turned his head to one side because he didn't understand.

She couldn't ask the question again because suddenly it sounded silly. She only looked at him and waited. A big, black shadow of his head was on the wall behind him. The electric fan cooled the thick, hot air. All was quiet. It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.

'I was just asking you about Canada--but it didn't amount to anything, Mister Singer.'

Downstairs in the home rooms there was plenty of trouble.

Etta was still so sick that she couldn't sleep crowded three in a bed. The shades were drawn and the dark room smelled bad with a sick smell. Etta's job was gone, and that meant eight dollars less a week besides the doctor's bill.

Then one day when Ralph was walking around in the kitchen he burned himself on the hot kitchen stove. The bandages made his hands itch and somebody had to watch him all the time else he would bust the blisters. On George's birthday they had bought him a little red bike with a bell and a basket on the handlebars. Everybody had chipped in to give it to him. But when Etta lost her job they couldn't pay, and after two installments were past due the store sent a man out to take the wheel away. George just watched the man roll the bike off the porch, and when he pa.s.sed George kicked the back fender and then went into the coal house and shut the door.

It was money, money, money all the time. They owed to the grocery and they owed the last payment on some furniture.

And now since they had lost the house they owed money there too. The six rooms in the house were always taken, but n.o.body ever paid the rent on time.

For a while their Dad went over every day to hunt another job.

He couldn't do carpenter work any more because it made him jittery to be more than ten feet off the ground. He applied for many jobs but n.o.body would hire him. Then at last he got this notion.

'It's advertising, Mick,' he said. I've come to the conclusion that's all in the world the matter with my watch-repairing business right now. I got to sell myself. I got to get out and let people know I can fix watches, and fix them good and cheap.

You just mark my words. Fm going to build up this business so I'll be able to make a good living for this family the rest of my life. Just by advertising.'

He brought home a dozen sheets of tin and some red paint. For the next week he was very busy. It seemed to him like this was a h.e.l.l of a good idea. The signs were all over the floor of the front room. He got down on his hands and knees and took great care over the printing of each letter. As he worked he whistled and wagged his head. He hadn't been so cheerful and glad in months. Every now and then he would have to dress in his good suit and go around the corner for a gla.s.s of beer to calm himself. On the signs at first he had: Wilbur Kelly Watch Repairing Very Cheap and Expert. 'Mick, I want them to hit you right bang in the eye. To stand out wherever you see them.'

She helped him and he gave her three nickels. The signs were O.K. at first. Then he worked on them so much that they were ruined. He wanted to add more and more things--in the corners and at the top and bottom. Before he had finished the signs were plastered all over with 'Very Cheap' and 'Come At Once' and 'You Give Me Any Watch And I Make It Run.'

'You tried to write so much in the signs that n.o.body will read anything,' she told him.

He brought home some more tin and left the designing up to her. She painted them very plain, with great big block letters and a picture of a clock. Soon he had a whole stack of them. A fellow he knew rode him out in the country where he could nail them to trees and fenceposts. At both ends of the block he put up a sign with a black hand pointing toward the house.

And over the front door there was another sign.

The day after this advertising was finished he waited in the front room dressed in a clean s.h.i.+rt and a tie. Nothing happened. The jeweler who gave him overflow work to do at half price sent in a couple of clocks. That was all. He took it hard. He didn't go out to look for other jobs any more, but every minute he had to be busy around the house. He took down the doors and oiled the hinges--whether they needed it or not. He mixed the margarine for Portia and scrubbed the floors upstairs. He worked out a contraption where the water from the ice box could be drained through the kitchen window. He carved some beautiful alphabet blocks for Ralph and invented a little needle-threader. Over the few watches that he had to work on he took great pains.

Mick still followed Mister Singer. But she didn't want to. It was like there was something wrong about her following after him without his knowing. Two or three days she played hooky from school. She walked behind him when he went to work and hung around on the corner near his store all day. When he ate his dinner at Mister Brannon's she went into the cafe and spent a nickel for a sack of peanuts.

Then at night she followed him on these dark, long walks. She stayed on the opposite side of the street from him and about a block behind. When he stopped, she stopped also--and when he walked fast she ran to keep up with him. So long as she could see him and be near him she was right happy. But sometimes this queer feeling would come to her and she knew that she was doing wrong. So she tried hard to keep busy at home.

She and her Dad were alike in the way that now they always had to be fooling with something. She kept up with all that went on in the house and the neighborhood. Spare-rib's big sister won fifty dollars at a movie bank night. Baby Wilson had the bandage off her head now, but her hair was cut short like a boy's. She couldn't dance in the soiree this year, and when her mother took her to see it Baby began to yell and cut up during one of the dances. They had to drag her out of the Opera House. And on the sidewalk Mrs. Wilson had to whip her to make her behave. And Mrs. Wilson cried, too. George hated Baby. He would hold his nose and stop up his ears when she pa.s.sed by the house. Pete Wells ran away from home and was gone three weeks. He came back barefooted and very hungry. He bragged about how he had gone all the way to New Orleans.

Because of Etta, Mick still slept in the living-room. The short sofa cramped her so much that she had to make up sleep in study hall at school. Every other night Bill swapped with her and she slept with George. Then a lucky break came for them.

A fellow who had a room upstairs moved away. When after a week had gone by and n.o.body answered the ad in the paper, their Mama told Bill he could move up to the vacant room.

Bill was very pleased to have a place entirely by himself away from the family. She moved in with George. He slept like a little warm kitty and breathed very quiet.

She knew the night-time again. But not the same as in the last summer when she walked in the dark by herself and listened to the music and made plans. She knew the night a different way now. In bed she lay awake. A queer afraidness came to her. It was like the ceiling was slowly pressing down toward her face. How would it be if the house fell apart? Once their Dad had said the whole place ought to be condemned. Did he mean that maybe some night when they were asleep the walls would crack and the house collapse? Bury them under all the plaster and broken gla.s.s and smashed furniture? So that they could not move or breathe? She lay awake and her muscles were stiff. In the night there was creaking. Was that somebody walking--somebody else awake besides her--Mister Singer? She never thought about Harry. She had made up her mind to forget him and she did forget him. He wrote that he had a job with a garage in Birmingham. She answered with a card saying 'O.K.' as they had planned. He sent his mother three dollars every week. It seemed like a very long time had pa.s.sed since they went to the woods together.

During the day she was busy in the outside room. But at night she was by herself in the dark and figuring was not enough. She wanted somebody. She tried to keep George awake. 'It sure is fun to stay awake and talk in the dark. Less us talk awhile together.' He made a sleepy answer. 'See the stars out the window. If s a hard thing to realize that every single one of those little stars is a planet as large as the earth.'

'How do they know that?'

'They just do. They got ways of measuring. That's science.'

'I don't believe in it' She tried to egg him on to an argument so that he would get mad and stay awake. He just let her talk and didn't seem to pay attention. After a while he said: 'Look, Mick! You see that branch of the tree? Don't it look like a pilgrim forefather lying down with a gun in his hand? ' 'It sure does. That's exactly what it's like. And see over there on the bureau. Don't that bottle look like a funny man with a hat on? ' .Naw,' George said. 'It don't look a bit like one to me.'

She took a drink from a gla.s.s of water on the floor. 'Less me and you play a game--the name game. You can be It if you want to. Whichever you like. You can choose.' He put his little fists up to his face and breathed in a quiet, even way because he was falling asleep. 'Wait, George!' she said. 'This'll be fun. I'm somebody beginning with an M. Guess who I am.' George sighed and his voice was tired. 'Are you Harpo Marx? ' 'No, I'm not even in the movies.'

'I don't know.'

'Sure you do. My name begins with the letter M and I live in Italy. You ought to guess this.' George turned over on his side and curled up in a ball.

He did not answer. 'My name begins with an M but sometimes I'm called a f name beginning with D. In Italy. You can guess.' The room was quiet and dark and George was asleep. She pinched him and twisted his ear. He groaned but did not awake. She fitted in close to him and pressed her face against his hot little naked shoulder. He would sleep all through the night while she was figuring with decimals. Was Mister Singer awake in his room upstairs? Did the ceiling creak because he was walking quietly up and down, drinking a cold orange crush and studying the chess men laid out on the table? Had ever he felt a terrible afraidness like this one? No. He had never done anything wrong. He had never done wrong and his heart was quiet in the nighttime. Yet at the same time he would understand. If only she could tell him about this, then it would be better. She thought of how she would begin to tell him. Mister Singer--I know this girl not any older than I am--Mister Singer, I don't know whether you understand a thing like this or not--Mister Singer. Mister Singer. She said his name over and over. She loved him better than anyone in the family, better even than George or her Dad. It was a different love. It was not like anything she had ever felt in her life before. In the mornings she and George would dress together and talk. Sometimes she wanted very much to be close to George. He had grown taller and was pale and peaked. His soft, reddish hair lay raggedly over the tops of his little ears. His sharp eyes were always squinted so that his face had a strained look. His permanent teeth were coming in, but they were blue and far apart like his baby teeth had . been. Often his jaw was crooked because he had a habit of feeling out the sore new teeth with his tongue. 'Listen here, George,' she said. 'Do you love me? ' 'Sure. I love you O.K.' It was a hot, sunny morning during the last week of school. George was dressed and he lay on the floor doing his number work. His dirty little fingers squeezed the pencil tight and he kept breaking the lead point. When he was finished she held him by the shoulders and looked hard into his face. 'I mean a lot. A whole lot.'

'Lemme go. Sure I love you. Ain't you my sister?'

'I know. But suppose I wasn't your sister. Would you love me then?'

George backed away. He had run out of s.h.i.+rts and wore a dirty pullover sweater. His wrists were thin and blue-veined. The sleeves of the sweater had stretched so that they hung loose and made his hands look very small.

'If you wasn't my sister then I might not know you. So I couldn't love you.'

'But if you did know me and I wasn't your sister.'

'But how do you know I would? You can't prove it. '.Well, just take it for granted and pretend.'

'I reckon I would like you all right. But I still say you can't prove-- ' 'Prove! You got that word on the brain. Prove and trick. Everything is either a trick or it's got to be proved. I can't stand you, George Kelly. I hate you.'

'O.K. Then I don't like you none either.' He crawled down under the bed for something. 'What you want under there? You better leave my things alone. If I ever caught you meddling in my private box I'd bust your head against the side of the wall. I would. I'd stomp on your brains.' George came out from under the bed with his spelling book. His dirty little paw reached in a hole in the mattress where he hid his marbles. Nothing could faze that kid. He took his time about choosing three brown agates to take with him. 'Aw, shucks, Mick,' he answered her. George was too little and too tough. There wasn't any sense in loving him. He knew even less about things than she did. School was out and she had pa.s.sed every subject--some with A plus and some by the skin of her teeth. The days were long and hot. Finally she was able to work hard at music again. She began to write down pieces for the violin and piano. She wrote songs. Always music was in her mind. She listened to Mister Singer's radio and wandered around the house thinking about the programs she had heard.

'What ails Mick?' Portia asked. 'What kind of cat is it got her tongue? She walk around and don't say a word. She not even greedy like she used to be. She getting to be a regular lady these days.'

It was as though in some way she was waiting--but what she waited for she did not know. The sun burned down glaring and white-hot in the streets. During the day she either worked hard at music or messed with kids. And waited. Sometimes she would look all around her quick and this panic would come in her. Then in late June there was a sudden happening so important that it changed everything.

That night they were all out on the porch. The twilight was blurred and soft. Supper was almost ready and the smell of cabbage floated to them from the open hall. All of them were together except Hazel, who had not come home from work, and Etta, who still lay sick in bed. Their Dad leaned back in a chair with his sock-feet on the banisters. Bill was on the steps with the kids. Their Mama sat on the swing fanning herself with the newspaper. Across the street a girl new in the neighborhood skated up and down the sidewalk on one roller skate. The lights on the block were just beginning to be turned on, and far away a man was calling someone.

Then Hazel come home. Her high heels clopped up the steps and she leaned back lazily on the banisters. In the half-dark her fat, soft hands were very white as she felt the back of her braided hair. 'I sure do wish Etta was able to work,' she said. 'I found out about this job today.'

'What kind of a job?' asked their Dad. 'Anything I could do, or just for girls?'

'Just for a girl. A clerk down at Woolworth's is going to get married next week.'

'The ten-cent store--' Mick said.

'You interested?'

The question took her by surprise. She had just been thinking about a sack of wintergreen candy she had bought there the day before. She felt hot and tense. She rubbed her bangs up from her forehead and counted the first few stars.

Their Dad flipped his cigarette down to the sidewalk. .No,' he said. 'We don't want Mick to take on too much responsibility at her age. Let her get her growth out. Her growth through with, anyway.'

'I agree with you,' Hazel said. 'I really do think it would be a mistake for Mick to have to work regular. I don't think it would be right.'

Bill put Ralph down from his lap and shuffled his feet on the steps. 'n.o.body ought to work until they're around sixteen.

Mick should have two more years and finish at Vocational--if we can make it.'

'Even if we have to give up the house and move down in mill town,' their Mama said. 'I rather keep Mick at home for a while.'

For a minute she had been scared they would try to corner her into taking the job. She would have said she would run away from home. But the way they took the att.i.tude they did touched her. She felt excited. They were all talking about her--and in a kindly way. She was ashamed for the first scared feeling that had come to her. Of a sudden she loved all of the family and a tightness came in her throat.

'About how much money is in it?' she asked.

Ten dollars.'

Ten dollars a week?'

'Sure,' Hazel said. 'Did you think it would be only ten a month?'

'Portia don't make but about that much.'

'Oh, colored people--' Hazel said.

Mick rubbed the top of her head with her fist That's a whole lot of money. A good deal.'

'It's not to be grinned at,' Bill said. 'That's what I make.'

Mick's tongue was dry. She moved it around in her mouth to gather up spit enough to talk. Ten dollars a week would buy about fifteen fried chickens. Or five pairs of shoes or five dresses. Or installments on a radio.' She thought about a piano, but she did not mention that aloud. 'It would tide us over,' their Mama said. 'But at the same time I rather keep Mick at home for a while. Now, when Etta--'

'Wait!' She felt hot and reckless. 'I want to take the job. I can hold it down. I know I can.'

'Listen to little Mick,' Bill said.

Their Dad picked his teeth with a matchstick and took his feet down from the banisters. 'Now, let's not rush into anything. I rather Mick take her time and think this out. We can get along somehow without her working. I mean to increase my watch work by sixty per cent soon as--'

'I forgot,' Hazel said. 'I think there's a Christmas bonus every year.'

Mick frowned. 'But I wouldn't be working then. I'd be in school. I just want to work during vacation and then go back to school.'

'Sure,' Hazel said quickly.

'But tomorrow I'll go down with you and take the job if I can get it' It was as though a great worry and tightness left the family. In the dark they began to laugh and talk. Their Dad did a trick for George with a matchstick and a handkerchief. Then he gave the kid fifty cents to go down to the corner store for Coca-Colas to be drunk after supper. The smell of cabbage was stronger in the hall and pork chops were frying. Portia called.

The boarders already waited at the table. Mick had supper in the dining-room. The cabbage leaves were limp and yellow on her plate and she couldn't eat. When she reached for the bread she knocked a pitcher of iced tea over the table.

Then later she waited on the front porch by herself for Mister Singer to come home. In a desperate way she wanted to see him. The excitement of the hour before had died down and she was sick to the stomach. She was going to work in a ten-cent store and she did not want to work there. It was like she had been trapped into something. The job wouldn't be just for the summer--but for a long time, as long as she could see ahead.

Once they were used to the money coming in it would be impossible to do without again. That was the way things were.

She stood in the dark and held tight to the banisters. A long time pa.s.sed and Mister Singer still did not come. At eleven o'clock she went out to see if she could find him. But suddenly she got frightened in the dark and ran back home.

Then in the morning she bathed and dressed very careful.

Hazel and Etta loaned her the clothes to wear and primped her to look nice. She wore Hazel's green silk dress and a green hat and high-heeled pumps with silk stockings. They fixed her face with rouge and lipstick and plucked her eyebrows. She looked at least sixteen years old when they were finished.

It was too late to back down now. She was really grown and ready to earn her keep. Yet if she would go to her Dad and tell him how she felt he would tell her to wait a year. And Hazel and Etta and Bill and their Mama, even now, would say that she didn't have to go. But she couldn't do it. She couldn't lose face like that. She went up to see Mister Singer. The words came all in a rush: 'Listen--I believe I got this job. What do you think? Do you think it's a good idea? Do you think it's O.K. to drop out of school and work now? You think it's good?'

At first he did not understand. His gray eyes half-closed and he stood with his hands deep down in his pockets. There was the old feeling that they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. The thing she had to say now was not much. But what he had to tell her would be right--and if he said the job sounded O.K. then she would feel better about it. She repeated the words slowly and waited.

'You think it's good?'

Mister Singer considered. Then he nodded yes.

She got the job. The manager took her and Hazel back to a little office and talked with them. Afterward she couldn't remember how the manager looked or anything that had been said. But she was hired, and on the way out of the place she bought ten cents' worth of Chocolate and a little modeling clay set for George. On June the fifth she was to start work. She stood for a long while before the window of Mister Singer's jewelry store. Then she hung around on the corner.

THE time had come for Singer to go to Antonapoulos again.

The journey was a long one. For, although the distance between them was something less than two hundred miles, the train meandered to points far out of the way and stopped for long hours at certain stations during the night. Singer would leave the town in the afternoon and travel all through the night and until the early morning of the next day. As usual, he was ready far in advance. He planned to have a full week with his friend this visit. His clothes had been sent to the cleaner's, his hat blocked, and his bags were in readiness. The gifts he would carry were wrapped in colored tissue paper--and in addition there was a deluxe basket of fruits done up in cellophane and a crate of late-s.h.i.+pped strawberries. On the morning before his departure Singer cleaned his room. In his ice box he found a bit of left-over goose liver and took it out to the alley for the neighborhood cat. On his door he tacked the same sign he had posted there before, stating that he would be absent for several days on business. During all these preparations he moved about leisurely with two vivid spots of color on his cheekbones. His face was very solemn.

Then at last the hour for departure was at hand. He stood on the platform, burdened with his suitcases and gifts, and watched the train roll in on the station tracks. He found himself a seat in the day coach and hoisted his luggage on the rack above his head. The car was crowded, for the most part with mothers and children. The green plush seats had a grimy smell. The windows of the car were dirty and rice thrown at some recent bridal pair lay scattered on the floor. Singer smiled cordially to his fellow travelers and leaned back in his seat. He closed his eyes. The lashes made a dark, curved fringe above the hollows of his cheeks. His right hand moved nervously inside his pocket For a while his thoughts lingered in the town he was leaving behind him. He saw Mick and Doctor Copeland and Jake Blount and Biff Brannon. The faces crowded in on him out of the darkness so that he felt smothered. He thought of the quarrel between Blount and the Negro. The nature of this quarrel was hopelessly confused in his mind--but each of them had on several occasions broken out into a bitter tirade against the other, the absent one. He had agreed with each of them in turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not know. And Mick--her face was urgent and she said a good deal that he did not understand in the least. And then Biff Brannon at the New York Cafe. Brannon with his dark, iron-like jaw and his watchful eyes. And strangers who followed him about the streets and b.u.t.tonholed him for unexplainable reasons. The Turk at the linen shop who flung his hands up in his face and babbled with his tongue to make words the shape of which Singer had never imagined before.

A certain mill foreman and an old black woman. A businessman on the main street and an urchin who solicited soldiers for a wh.o.r.ehouse near the river. Singer wriggled his shoulders uneasily. The train rocked with a smooth, easy motion. His head nodded to rest on his shoulder and for a short while he slept.

When he opened his eyes again the town was far behind him. The town was forgotten. Outside the dirty window there was the brilliant midsummer countryside. The sun slanted in strong, bronze-colored rays over the green fields of the new cotton. There were acres of tobacco, the plants heavy and green like some monstrous jungle weed. The orchards of peaches with the lush fruit weighting down the dwarfed trees. There were miles of pastures and tens of miles of wasted, washed-out land abandoned to the hardier weeds. The train cut through deep green pine forests where the ground was covered with the slick brown needles and the tops of the trees stretched up virgin and tall into the sky. And farther, a long way south of the town, the cypress swamps--with the gnarled roots of the trees writhing down into the brackish waters, where the gray, tattered moss trailed from the branches, where tropical water flowers blossomed in dankness and gloom. Then out again into the open beneath the sun and the indigo-blue sky.