Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Part 8

The night was very quiet and dark. Harry held her elbow when they crossed the street.

'There's a certain young lady back at the party that thinks it's sissy for a fellow to wear gla.s.ses. This certain person--oh well, maybe I am a--' He didn't finish. Suddenly he tightened up and ran a few steps and sprang for a leaf about four feet above his head. She just could see that high leaf in the dark. He had a good spring to his jumping and he got it the first time. Then he put the leaf in his mouth and shadow-boxed for a few punches in the dark. She caught up with him. As usual a song was in her mind. She was humming to herself. 'What's that you're singing? ' .It's a piece by a fellow named Mozart' Harry felt pretty good. He was sidestepping with his feet like a fast boxer. 'That sounds like a sort of German name.'

'I reckon so.'

'Fascist?' he asked. 'What?'

'I say is that Mozart a Fascist or a n.a.z.i? ' Mick thought a minute. 'No. They're new, and this fellow's been dead some time.'

'It's a good thing.' He began punching in the dark again. He wanted her to ask why. 'I say it's a good thing,' he said again. 'Why? ' 'Because I hate Fascists. If I met one walking on the street I'd kill him.' She looked at Harry. The leaves against the street light made quick, freckly shadows on his face. He was excited. 'How come?' she asked. 'Gos.h.!.+ Don't you ever read the paper? You see, it's this way--' They had come back around the block. A commotion was going on at her house. People were yelling and running on the sidewalk. A heavy sickness came in her belly. There's not time to explain unless we prom around the block again. I don't mind telling you why I hate Fascists. I'd like to tell about it.' This was probably the first chance he had got to spiel these ideas out to somebody. But she didn't have time to listen.

She was busy looking at what she saw in the front of her house. 'O.K. I'll see you later.' The prom was over now, so she could look and put her mind on the mess she saw.

What had happened while she was gone? When she left the people were standing around in the fine clothes and it was a real party. Now--after just five minutes--the place looked more like a crazy house. While she was gone those kids had come out of the dark and right into the party itself. The nerve they had! There was old Pete Wells banging out of the front door with a cup of punch hi his hand. They bellowed and ran and mixed with the invited people--in their old loose-legged knickers and everyday clothes.

Baby Wilson messed around on the front porch--and Baby wasn't more than four years old. Anybody could see she ought to be home in bed by now, same as Bubber. She walked down the steps one at a time, holding the punch high up over her head. There was no reason for her to be here at all. Mister Brannon was her uncle and she could get free candy and drinks at his place any time she wanted to. As soon as she was on the sidewalk Mick caught her by the arm. 'You go right home, Baby Wilson. Go on, now.' Mick looked around to see what else she could do to straighten things out again like they ought to be. She went up to Sucker Wells. He stood farther down the sidewalk, where it was dark, holding his paper cup and looking at everybody in a dreamy way. Sucker was seven years old and he had on shorts. His chest and feet were naked. He wasn't causing any of the commotion, but she was mad I as h.e.l.l at what had happened.

She grabbed Sucker by the shoulders and began to shake him.

At first he held his jaws tight, but after a minute his teeth began to rattle. 'You go home, Sucker Wells. You quit hanging around where you're not invited.' When she let him go, Sucker tucked his tail and walked slowly down the street.

But he didn't go all the way home. After he got to the corner she saw him sit down on the curb and watch the party where he thought she couldn't see him.

For a minute she felt good about shaking the spit out of Sucker. And then right afterward she had a bad worry feeling in her and she started to let him come back. The big kids were the ones who messed up everything. Real brats they were, and with the worst nerve she had ever seen.

Drinking up the refreshments and ruining the real party into all this commotion. They slammed through the front door and hollered and b.u.mped into each other. She went up to Pete Wells because he was the worst of all. He wore his football helmet and b.u.t.ted into people. Pete was every bit of fourteen, yet he was still stuck in the seventh grade. She went up to him, but he was too big to shake like Sucker. When she told him to go home he s.h.i.+mmied and made a nose dive at her.

'I been in six different states. Florida, Alabama--. Made out of silver cloth with a sash. The party was all messed up. Everybody was talking at once.

The invited people from Vocational were mixed with the neighborhood gang. The boys and the girls still stood in separate bunches, though---and n.o.body prommed. In the house the lemonade was just about gone. There was only a little puddle of water with floating lemon peels at the bottom of the bowl. Her Dad always acted too nice with kids. He had served out the punch to anybody who stuck a cup at him.

Portia was serving the sandwiches when she went into the dining-room. In five minutes they were all gone. She only got one--a jelly kind with pink sops come through the bread.

Portia stayed in the dining-room to watch the party. 'I having too good a time to leave,' she said. 'I done sent word to Highboy and Willie to go on with the Sat.u.r.day Night without me. Everbody so excited here I going to wait and see the end of this party.'

Excitement--that was the word. She could feel it all through the room and on the porch and the sidewalk. She felt excited, too. It wasn't just her dress and the beautiful way her face looked when she pa.s.sed by the hat rack mirror and saw the red paint on her cheeks and the rhinestone tiara in her hair. Maybe it was the decoration and all these Vocational people and kids being jammed together.

'Watch her run!'

'Ouch! Cut it out--'

'Act your age!'

A bunch of girls were running down the street, holding up their dresses and with the hair flying out behind them. Some boys had cut off the long, sharp spears of a Spanish bayonet bush and they were chasing the girls with them.

Freshmen in Vocational all dressed up for a real prom party and acting just like kids. It was half playlike and half not playlike at all. A boy came up to her with a sticker and she started running too.

The idea of the party was over entirely now. This was just a regular playing-out. But it was the wildest night she had ever seen. The kids had caused it. They were like a catching sickness, and their coming to the party made all the other people forget about High School and being almost grown. It was like just before you take a bath in the afternoon when you might wallow around in the back yard and get plenty dirty just for the good feel of it before getting into the tub. Everybody was a wild kid playing out on Sat.u.r.day night--and she felt like the very wildest of all.

She hollered and pushed and was the first to try any new stunt.

She made so much noise and moved around so fast she couldn't notice what anybody else was doing. Her breath wouldn't come fast enough to let her do all the wild things she wanted to do.

The ditch down the street! The ditch! The ditch!' She started for it first. Down a block they had put in new pipes under the street and dug a swell deep ditch. The flambeaux around the edge were bright and red in the dark. She wouldn't wait to climb down. She ran until she reached the little wavy flames and then she jumped.

With her tennis shoes she would have landed like a cat--but the high pumps made her slip and her stomach hit this pipe.

Her breath was stopped. She lay quiet with her eyes closed.

The party--For a long time she remembered how she thought it would be, how she imagined the new people at Vocational. And about the bunch she wanted to be with every day. She would feel different in the halls now, knowing that they were not something special but like any other kids. It was O.K. about the ruined party. But it was all over. It was the end.

Mick climbed out of the ditch. Some kids were playing around the little pots of flames. The fire made a red glow and there were long, quick shadows. One boy had gone home and put on a dough-face bought in advance for Halloween. Nothing was changed about the party except her.

She walked home slowly. When she pa.s.sed kids she didn't speak or look at them. The decoration in the hall was torn down and the house seemed very empty because everyone had gone outside. In the bathroom she took off the blue evening dress. The hem was torn and she folded it so the raggedy place wouldn't show. The rhinestone tiara was lost somewhere. Her old shorts and s.h.i.+rt were lying on the floor just where she had left them. She put them on. She was too big to wear shorts any more after this. No more after this night Not any more.

Mick stood out on the front porch. Her face was very white without the paint. She cupped her hands before her mouth and took a deep breath. 'Everybody go home! The door is shut! The party is over!' In the quiet, secret night she was by herself again. It was not late-yellow squares of light snowed in the windows of the houses along the streets. She walked slow, with her hands in her pockets and her head to one side. For a long time she walked without noticing the direction.

Then the houses were far apart from each other and there were yards with big trees in them and black shrubbery. She looked around and saw she was near this house where she had gone so many times in the summer. Her feet had just taken her here without her knowing. When she came to the house she waited to be sure no person could see. Then she went through the side yard.

The radio was on as usual. For a second she stood by the window and watched the people inside. The bald-headed man and the gray-haired lady were playing cards at a table. Mick sat on the ground. This was a very fine and secret place. Close around were thick cedars so that she was completely hidden by herself. The radio was no good tonight--somebody sang popular songs that all ended in the same way. It was like she was empty. She reached in her pockets and felt around with her fingers. There were raisins and a buckeye and a string of beads--one cigarette with matches. She lighted the cigarette and put her arms around her knees. It was like she was so empty there wasn't even a feeling or thought in her.

One program came on after another, and all of them were punk. She didn't especially care. She smoked and picked a little bunch of gra.s.s blades. After a while a new announcer started talking. He mentioned Beethoven. She had read in the library about that musician--his name was p.r.o.nounced with an a and spelled with double e. He was a German fellow like Mozart When he was living he spoke in a foreign language and lived in a foreign place--like she wanted to do. The announcer said they were going to play his third symphony.

She only halfway listened because she wanted to walk some more and she didn't care much what they played. Then the music started. Mick raised her head and her fist went up to her throat.

How did it come? For a minute the opening balanced from one side to the other. Like a walk or march. Like G.o.d strutting in the night. The outside of her was suddenly froze and only that first part of the music was hot inside her heart. She could not even hear what sounded after, but she sat there waiting and froze, with her fists tight. After a while the music came again, harder and loud. It didn't have anything to do with G.o.d. This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings. This music was her--the real plain her.

She could not listen good enough to hear it all. The music boiled inside her. Which? To hang on to certain wonderful parts and think them over so that later she would not forget--or should she let go and listen to each part that came without thinking or trying to remember? Golly! The whole world was this music and she could not listen hard enough. Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart And the first part was over.

This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored--a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of instruments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again.

But maybe the last part of the symphony was the music she loved the best--glad and like the greatest people in the world running and springing up in a hard, free way. Wonderful music nice this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.

It was over, and she sat very stiff with her arms around her knees. Another program came on the radio and she put her fingers in her ears. The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.

The radio and the lights in the house were turned off. The night was very dark. Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh with her fists. She pounded the same muscle with all her strength until the tears came down her face. But she could not feel this hard enough. The rocks under the bush were sharp.

She grabbed a handful of them and began sc.r.a.ping them up and down on the same spot until her hand was b.l.o.o.d.y. Then she fell back to the ground and lay looking up at the night.

With the fiery hurt in her leg she felt better. She was limp on the wet gra.s.s, and after a while her breath came slow and easy again.

Why hadn't the explorers known by looking at the sky that the world was round? The sky was curved, like the inside of a huge gla.s.s ball, very dark blue with the sprinkles of bright stars. The night was quiet. There was the smell of warm cedars. She was not trying to think of the music at all when it came back to her. The first part happened hi her mind just as it had been played. She listened in a quiet, slow way and thought the notes out like a problem in geometry so she would remember. She could see the shape of the sounds very clear and she would not forget them.

Now she felt good. She whispered some words out loud: 'Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do.' Why did she think of that? Everybody in the past few years knew there wasn't any real G.o.d. When she thought of what she used to imagine was G.o.d she could only see Mister Singer with a long, white sheet around him. G.o.d was silent--maybe that was why she was reminded. She said the words again, just as she would speak them to Mister Singer: 'Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do.'

This part of the music was beautiful and clear. She could sing it now whenever she wanted to. Maybe later on, when she had just waked up some morning, more of the music would come back to her. If ever she heard the symphony again there would be other parts to add to what was already in her mind. And maybe if she could hear it four more times, just four more times, she would know it all. Maybe.

Once again she listened to this opening part of the music.

Then the notes grew slower and soft and it was like she was sinking down slowly into the dark ground.

Mick awoke with a jerk. The air had turned chilly, and as she was coming up out of the sleep she dreamed old Etta Kelly was taking all the cover. 'Gimme some blanket --' she tried to say. Then she opened her eyes. The sky was very black and all the stars were gone. The gra.s.s was wet.

She got up in a hurry because her Dad would be worried. Then she remembered the music. She couldn't tell whether the time was midnight or three in the morning, so she started beating it for home in a rush. The air had a smell in it like autumn. The music was loud and quick in her mind, and she ran faster and faster on the sidewalks leading to the home block.

BY OCTOBER the days were blue and cool. Biff Brannon changed his light seersucker trousers for dark-blue serge ones.

Behind the counter of the cafe he installed a machine that made hot chocolate. Mick was very partial to hot chocolate, and she came in three or four times a week to drink a cup. He served it to her for a nickel instead of a dime and he wanted to give it to her free. He watched her as she stood behind the counter and he was troubled and sad. He wanted to reach out his hand and touch her sunburned, tousled hair--but not as he had ever touched a woman. In him there was an uneasiness, and when he spoke to her his voice had a rough, strange sound.

There were many worries on his mind. For one thing, Alice was not well. She worked downstairs as usual from seven in the morning until ten at night, but she walked very slowly and brown circles were beneath her eyes. It was in the business that she showed this illness most plainly. One Sunday, when she wrote out the day's menu on the typewriter, she marked the special dinner with chicken a la king at twenty cents instead of fifty, and did not discover the mistake until several customers had already ordered and were ready to pay. Another time she gave back two fives and three ones as change for ten dollars. Biff would stand looking at her for a long time, rubbing his nose thoughtfully and with his eyes half-closed.

They did not speak of this together. At night he worked downstairs while she slept, and during the morning she managed the restaurant alone. When they worked together he stayed behind the cash register and looked after the kitchen and the tables, as was their custom. They did not talk except on matters of business, but Biff would stand watching her with his face puzzled.

Then in the afternoon of the eighth of October there was a sudden cry of pain from the room where they slept. Biff hurried upstairs. Within an hour they had taken Alice to the hospital and the doctor had removed from her a tumor almost the size of a newborn child. And then within another hour Alice was dead.

Biff sat by her bed at the hospital in stunned reflection. He had been present when she died. Her eyes had been drugged and misty from the ether and then they hardened like gla.s.s.

The nurse and the doctor withdrew from the room. He continued to look into her face. Except for the bluish pallor there was little difference. He noted each detail about her as though he had net watched her every day for twenty-one years.

Then gradually as he sat there his thoughts turned to a picture that had long been stored inside him.

The cold green ocean and a hot gold strip of sand. The little children playing on the edge of the silky line of foam. The st.u.r.dy brown baby girl, the thin little naked boys, the half-grown children running and calling out to each other with sweet, shrill voices. Children were here whom he knew, Mick and his niece, Baby, and there were also strange young faces no one had ever seen before. Biff bowed his head.

After a long while he got up from his chair and stood in the middle of the room. He could hear his sister-in-law, Lucile, walking up and down the hall outside. A fat bee crawled across the top of the dresser, and adroitly Biff caught it in his hand and put it out the open window. He glanced at the dead face one more time, and then with widowed sedateness he opened the door mat led out into the hospital corridor.

Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs.

Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved--so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why? Biff bent close over his sewing and meditated on many things.

He sewed skillfully, and the calluses on the tips of his fingers were so hard that he pushed the needle through the cloth without a thimble. Already the mourning bands had been sewn around the arms of two gray suits, and now he was on the last.

The day was bright and hot, and the first dead leaves of the new autumn sc.r.a.ped on the sidewalks. He had gone out early.

Each minute was very long. Before him there was infinite leisure. He had locked the door of the restaurant and hung on the outside a white wreath of lilies. To the funeral home he went first and looked carefully at the selection of caskets. He touched the materials of the linings and tested the strength of the frames.

'What is the name of the crepe of this one--Georgette?'

The undertaker answered his questions in an oily, unctuous voice.

'And what is the percentage of cremations in your business?'

Out on the street again Biff walked with measured formality.

From the west there was a warm wind and the sun was very bright. His watch had stopped, so he turned down toward the street where Wilbur Kelly had recently put out his sign as watchmaker. Kelly was sitting at his bench in a patched bathrobe. His shop was also a bedroom, and the baby Mick pulled around with her in a wagon sat quietly on a pallet on the floor. Each minute was so long that in it there was ample time for contemplation and enquiry. He asked Kelly to explain the exact use of jewels in a watch. He noted the distorted look of Kelly's right eye as it appeared through his watchmaker's loupe. They talked for a while about Chamberlain and Munich. Then as the time was still early he decided to go up to the mute's room.

Singer was dressing for work. Last night there had come from him a letter of condolence. He was to be a pallbearer at the funeral. Biff sat on the bed and they smoked a cigarette together. Singer looked at him now and then with his green observant eyes. He offered him a drink of coffee. Biff did not talk, and once the mute stopped to pat him on the shoulder and look for a second into his face. When Singer was dressed they went out together.

Biff bought the black ribbon at the store and saw the preacher of Alice's church. When all was arranged he came back home.

To put things in order--that was the thought in his mind. He bundled up Alice's clothes and personal possessions to give to Lucile. He thoroughly cleaned and straightened the bureau drawers. He even rearranged the shelves of the kitchen downstairs and removed the gaily colored crepe streamers from the electric fans. Then when this was done he sat in the tub and bathed himself all over. And the morning was done.

Biff bit the thread and smoothed the black band on the sleeve of his coat. By now Lucile would be waiting for him. He and she and Baby would ride in the funeral car together. He put away the work basket and fitted the coat with the mourning band very carefully on his shoulders. He glanced swiftly around the room to see that all was well before going out again. An hour later he was in Lucile's kitchenette. He sat with his legs crossed, a napkin over his thigh, drinking a cup of tea. Lucile and Alice had been so different in all ways that it was not easy to realize they were sisters. Lucile was thin and dark, and today she had dressed completely in black. She was fixing Baby's hair. The kid waited patiently on the kitchen table with her hands folded in her lap while her mother worked on her. The sunlight was quiet and mellow in the room. 'Bartholomew--' said Lucile. .What?'

'Don't you ever start thinking backward?'

'I don't,'said Biff.

'You know it's like I got to wear blinders all the time so I won't think sideways or in the past. All I can let myself think about is going to work every day and fixing meals and Baby's future.'

That's the right att.i.tude.'

'I been giving Baby finger waves down at the shop. But they come out so quick I been thinking about letting her have a permanent. I don't want to give it to her myself--I think maybe take her up to Atlanta when I go to the cosmetologist convention and let her get it there.'

'MotheroG.o.d! She's not but four. It's liable to scare her. And besides, permanents tend to coa.r.s.en the hair.'

Lucile dipped the comb in a gla.s.s of water and mashed the curls over Baby's ears. 'No, they don't. And she wants one.

Young as Baby is, she already has as much ambition as I got.

And that's saying plenty.'

Biff polished his nails on the palm of his hand and shook his head.

'Every time Baby and I go to the movies and see those kids in all the good roles she feels the same way I do. I swear she does, Bartholomew. I can't even get her to eat her supper afterward.'

'For goodness' sake,' Biff said.

'She's getting along so fine with her dancing and expression lessons. Next year I want her to start with the piano because I think it'll be a help for her to play some.

Her dancing teacher is going to give her a solo in the soiree. I feel like I got to push Baby all I can. Because the sooner she gets started on her career the better it'll be for both of us.'

'MotheroG.o.d!'

'You don't understand. A child with talent can't be treated like ordinary kids. That's one reason I want to get Baby out of this common neighborhood. I can't let her start to talk vulgar like these brats around her or run wild like they do.'

'I know the kids on this block,' Biff said. 'They're all right.'

Those Kelly kids across the street--the Crane boy--.

'You know good and well that none of them are up to Baby's level.'

Lucile set the last wave in Baby's hair. She pinched the kid's little cheeks to put more color in them. Then she lifted her down from the table. For the funeral Baby had on a little white dress with white shoes and white socks and even small white gloves. There was a certain way Baby always held her head when people looked at her, and it was turned that way now.

They sat for a while in the small, hot kitchenette without saying anything. Then Lucile began to cry. 'It's not like we was ever very close as sisters. We had our differences and we didn't see much of each other. Maybe it was because I was so much younger. But there's something about your own blood kin, and when anything like this happens--' Biff clucked soothingly.

'I know how you two were,' she said. It wasn't all just roses with you and she. But maybe that sort of makes it worse for you now.'

Biff caught Baby under the arms and swung her up to his shoulder. The kid was getting heavier. He held her carefully as he stepped into the living-room. Baby felt warm and close on his shoulder, and her little silk skirt was white against the dark cloth of his coat. She grasped one of his ears very tight with her little hand.