《心是孤独的猎手》.(The.Heart.Is.a.Lonely.Hunter).(美)卡森·麦卡勒斯.文字版.pdf
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中文名: 心是孤独的猎手
原名: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
作者: (美)
资源格式: PDF
版本: 英文文字版
出版社: Penguin Classics
书号: 9780141185224
发行时间: 2000年
地区: 美国
语言: 英文
心是孤独的猎手 简介:
心是孤独的猎手 内容简介:
《心是孤独的猎手》作者麦卡勒斯的第一部长篇小说,也是她一举成名的作品和最具震撼力的代表作,居“现代文库20世纪百佳英文小说”第17位,曾被评为百部最佳同性恋小说之一。
《心是孤独的猎手》故事的背景类似于《伤心咖啡馆之歌》中炎热的南方小镇。小说中两个聋哑男子的同性之爱令人感动,而同性之恋又是若有若无的,时而激烈,时而沉默。
《心是孤独的猎手》主旨凸显的是麦卡勒斯式的主题:孤独是绝对的,最深切的爱也无法改变人类最终极的孤独。绝望的孤独与其说是原罪,不如说是原罪的原罪。
《心是孤独的猎手》作者卡森·麦卡勒斯,20世纪美国最重要的作家之一,1917年2月19日生于美国佐治亚州的Columbus。29岁后瘫痪。1967年9月29日麦卡勒斯在纽约州的Nyack去世,时年50岁。
心是孤独的猎手 目录:
part one
part two
part three
Part One
IN THE town there were two mutes, and they were always
together. Early every morning they would come out from
the house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the
street to work. The two friends were very different. The
one who always steered the way was an obese and
dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out
wearing a yellow or green polo shirt stuffed sloppily into
his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it
was colder he wore over this a shapeless gray sweater.
His face was round and oily, with half-closed eyelids and
lips that curved in a gentle, stupid smile. The other mute
was tall. His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He
was always immaculate and very soberly dressed.
Every morning the two friends walked silently together until
they reached the main street of the town. Then when they
came to a certain fruit and candy store they paused for a
moment on the sidewalk outside. The Greek, Spiros
Antonapoulos, worked for his cousin, who owned this fruit
store. His job was to make candies and sweets, uncrate the
fruits, and to keep the place clean. The thin mute, John Singer,nearly always put his hand on his friend's arm and looked for a
second into his face before leaving him. Then after this good-
bye Singer crossed the street and walked on alone to the
jewelry store where he worked as a silverware engraver.
In the late afternoon the friends would meet again. Singer
came back to the fruit store and waited until Antonapoulos
was ready to go home. The Greek would be lazily unpacking a
case of peaches or melons, or perhaps
2
looking at the funny paper in the kitchen behind the store
where he cooked. Before their departure Antonapoulos always
opened a paper sack he kept hidden during the day on one of
the kitchen shelves. Inside were stored various bits of food he
had collected—a piece of fruit, samples of candy, or the butt-
end of a liverwurst. Usually before leaving Antonapoulos
waddled gently to the glassed case in the front of the store
where some meats and cheeses were kept. He glided open the back of the case and his fat hand groped lovingly for some
particular dainty inside which he had wanted. Sometimes his
cousin who owned the place did not see him. But if he noticed
he stared at his cousin with a warning in his tight, pale face.
Sadly Antonapoulos would shuffle the morsel from one corner
of the case to the other. During these times Singer stood very
straight with his hands in his pockets and looked in another
direction. He did not like to watch this little scene between the
two Greeks. For, excepting drinking and a certain solitary
secret pleasure, Antonapoulos loved to eat more than anything
else in the world.
In the dusk the two mutes walked slowly home together. At
home Singer was always talking to Antonapoulos. His hands
shaped the words in a swift series of designs. His face was
eager and his gray-green eyes sparkled brightly. With his thin,strong hands he told Antonapoulos all that had happened
during the day.
Antonapoulos sat back lazily and looked at Singer. It was
seldom that he ever moved his hands to speak at all— and
then it was to say that he wanted to eat or to sleep or to drink.
These three things he always said with the same vague,fumbling signs. At night, if he were not too drunk, he would
kneel down before his bed and pray awhile. Then his plump
hands shaped the words 'Holy Jesus,' or 'God,' or 'Darling
Mary.' These were the only words Antonapoulos ever said.
Singer never knew just how much his friend understood of all
the things he told him. But it did not matter.
They shared the upstairs of a small house near the business
section of the town. There were two rooms. On the oil stove in
the kitchen Antonapoulos cooked all of their meals. There
were straight, plain kitchen chairs for Singer and an
overstuffed sofa for Antonapoulos. The bedroom
3
was furnished mainly with a large double bed covered with an
eiderdown comforter for the big Greek and a narrow iron cot
for Singer.
Dinner always took a long time, because Antonapoulos loved
food and he was very slow. After they had eaten, the big
Greek would lie back on his sofa and slowly lick over each
one of his teeth with his tongue, either from a certain delicacy or because he did not wish to lose the savor of the meal—
while Singer washed the dishes.
Sometimes in the evening the mutes would play chess. Singer
had always greatly enjoyed this game, and years before he had
tried to teach it to Antonapoulos. At first his friend could not
be interested in the reasons for moving the various pieces
about on the board. Then Singer began to keep a bottle of
something good under the table to be taken out after each
lesson. The Greek never got on to the erratic movements of
the knights and the sweeping mobility of the queens, but he
learned to make a few set, opening moves. He preferred the
white pieces and would not play if the black men were given
him. After the first moves Singer worked out the game by
himself while his friend looked on drowsily. If Singer made
brilliant attacks on his own men so that in the end the black
king was killed, Antonapoulos was always very proud and
pleased.
The two mutes had no other friends, and except when they
worked they were alone together. Each day was very much
like any other day, because they were alone so much that
nothing ever disturbed them. Once a week they would go to
the library for Singer to withdraw a mystery book and on
Friday night they attended a movie. Then on payday they
always went to the ten-cent photograph shop above the Army
and Navy Store so that Antonapoulos could have his picture
taken. These were the only places where they made customary
visits. There were many parts in the town that they had never
even seen.
The town was in the middle of the deep South. The summers
were long and the months of winter cold were very few.
Nearly always the sky was a glassy, brilliant azure and the sun
burned down riotously bright. Then the light, chill rains of
November would come, and perhaps later there would be frost
and some short months of cold. The winters were changeable,but the summers always4
were burning hot. The town was a fairly large one. On the
main street there were several blocks of two- and three-story
shops and business offices. But the largest buildings in the
town were the factories, which employed a large percentage of
the population. These cotton mills were big and flourishing and most of the workers in the town were very poor. Often in
the faces along the streets there was the desperate look of
hunger and of loneliness.
But the two mutes were not lonely at all. At home they were
content to eat and drink, and Singer would talk with bis hands
eagerly to his friend about all that was in his mind. So the
years passed in this quiet way until Singer reached the age of
thirty-two and had been in the town with Antonapoulos for ten
years.
Then one day the Greek became ill. He sat up in bed with his
hands on his fat stomach and big, oily tears rolled down his
cheeks. Singer went to see his friend's cousin who owned the
fruit store, and also he arranged for leave from his own work.
The doctor made out a diet for Antonapoulos and said that he
could drink no more wine. Singer rigidly enforced the doctor's
orders. All day he sat by his friend's bed and did what he
could to make the time pass quickly, but Antonapoulos only
looked at him angrily from the corners of his eyes and would
not be amused.
The Greek was very fretful, and kept finding fault with the
fruit drinks and food that Singer prepared for him. Constantly
he made his friend help him out of bed so that he could pray.
His huge buttocks would sag down over his plump little feet
when he kneeled. He fumbled with his hands to say 'Darling
Mary' and then held to the small brass cross tied to his neck
with a dirty string. His big eyes would wall up to the ceiling
with a look of fear in them, and afterward he was very sulky
and would not let his friend speak to him.
Singer was patient and did all that he could. He drew little
pictures, and once he made a sketch of his friend to amuse
him. This picture hurt the big Greek's feelings, and he refused
to be reconciled until Singer had made his face very young
and handsome and colored his hair bright yellow and his eyes
china blue. And then he tried not to show his pleasure.
Singer nursed his friend so carefully that after a week
5
Antonapoulos was able to return to his work. But from that
time on there was a difference in their way of life. Trouble
came to the two friends.
Antonapoulos was not ill any more, but a change had come in him. He was irritable and no longer content to spend the
evenings quietly in their home. When he would wish to go out
Singer followed along close behind him. Antonapoulos would
go into a restaurant, and while they sat at the table he slyly put
lumps of sugar, or a pepper-shaker, or pieces of silverware in
bis pocket. Singer always paid for what he took and there was
no disturbance. At home he scolded Antonapoulos, but the big
Greek only looked at him with a bland smile.
The months went on and these habits of Antonapoulos grew
worse. One day at noon he walked calmly out of the fruit store
of his cousin and urinated in public against the wall of the
First National Bank Building across the street. At times he
would meet people on the sidewalk whose faces did not please
him, and he would bump into these persons and push at them
with his elbows and stomach. He walked into a store one day
and hauled out a floor lamp without paying for it, and another
time he tried to take an electric train he had seen in a
showcase.
For Singer this was a time of great distress. He was
continually marching Antonapoulos down to the courthouse
during lunch hour to settle these infringements of the law.
Singer became very familiar with the procedure of the courts
and he was in a constant state of agitation. The money he had
saved in the bank was spent for bail and fines. All of his
efforts and money were used to keep his friend out of jail
because of such charges as theft, committing public
indecencies, and assault and battery.
The Greek cousin for whom Antonapoulos worked did not
enter into these troubles at all. Charles Parker (for that was the
name this cousin had taken) let Antonapoulos stay on at the
store, but he watched him always with his pale, tight face and
he made no effort to help him. Singer had a strange feeling
about Charles Parker. He began to dislike him.
Singer lived in continual turmoil and worry. But
Antonapoulos was always bland, and no matter what
happened the gentle, flaccid smile was still on his face. In all6
the years before it had seemed to Singer that there was
something very subtle and wise in this smile of his friend. He
had never known just how much Antonapoulos understood
and what he was thinking. Now in the big Greek's expression Singer thought that he could detect something sly and joking.
He would shake his friend by the shoulders until he was very
tired and explain things over and over with his hands. But
nothing did any good.
All of Singer's money was gone and he had to borrow from the
jeweler for whom he worked. On one occasion he was unable
to pay bail for bis friend and Antonapoulos spent the night in
jail. When Singer came to get him out the next day he was
very sulky. He did not want to leave. He had enjoyed his
dinner of sowbelly and cornbread with syrup poured over it.
And the new sleeping arrangements and his cellmates pleased
him.
They had lived so much alone that Singer had no one to help
him in his distress. Antonapoulos let nothing disturb him or
cure him of his habits. At home he sometimes cooked the new
dish he had eaten in the jail, and on the streets there was never
any knowing just what he would do.
And then the final trouble came to Singer.
One afternoon he had come to meet Antonapoulos at the fruit
store when Charles Parker handed him a letter. The letter
explained that Charles Parker had made arrangements for his
cousin to be taken to the state insane asylum two hundred
miles away. Charles Parker had used his influence in the town
and the details were already settled. Antonapoulos was to
leave and to be admitted into the asylum the next, week.
Singer read the letter several times, and for a while he could
not think. Charles Parker was talking to him across the
counter, but he did not even try to read his lips and
understand. At last Singer wrote on the little pad he always
carried in his pocket:
You cannot do this. Antonapoulos must stay with me.
Charles Parker shook his head excitedly. He did not know
much American. 'None of your business,' he kept saying over
and over.
7
Singer knew that everything was finished. The Greek was
afraid that some day he might be responsible for his cousin.
Charles Parker did not know much about the American
language—but he understood the American dollar very well,and he had used his money and influence to admit his cousin to the asylum without delay.
There was nothing Singer could do.
The next week was full of feverish activity. He talked and
talked. And although his hands never paused to rest he could
not tell all that he had to say. He wanted to talk to
Antonapoulos of all the thoughts that had ever been in his
mind and heart, but there was not time. His gray eyes glittered
and his quick, intelligent face expressed great strain.
Antonapoulos watched him drowsily, and his friend did not
know just what he really understood.
Then came the day when Antonapoulos must leave. Singer
brought out Ms own suitcase and very carefully packed the
best of their joint possessions. Antonapoulos made himself a
lunch to eat during the journey. In the late afternoon they
walked arm in arm down the street for the last time together. It
was a chilly afternoon in late November, and little huffs of
breath showed in the air before them.
Charles Parker was to travel with his cousin, but he stood
apart from them at the station. Antonapoulos crowded into the
bus and settled himself with elaborate preparations on one of
the front seats. Singer watched him from the window and his
hands began desperately to talk for the last time with his
friend. But Antonapoulos was so busy checking over the
various items in his lunch box that for a while he paid no
attention. Just before the bus pulled away from the curb he
turned to Singer and his smile was very bland and remote—as
though already they were many miles apart.
The weeks that followed didn't seem real at all. All day Singer
worked over his bench in the back of the jewelry store, and
then at night he returned to the house alone. More than
anything he wanted to sleep. As soon as he came home from
work he would lie on his cot and try to doze awhile. Dreams
came to him when he lay there half-asleep. And in all of them
Antonapoulos was there. His hands would jerk nervously, for
in his dreams he was talk-8
ing to his friend and Antonapoulos was watching him.
Singer tried to think of the time before he had ever known his
friend. He tried to recount to himself certain things that had
happened when he was young. But none of these things he
tried to remember seemed real.There was one particular fact that he remembered, but it was
not at all important to him. Singer recalled that, although he
had been deaf since he was an infant, he had not always been
a real mute. He was left an orphan very young and placed in
an institution for the deaf. He had learned to talk with his
hands and to read. Before he was nine years old he could talk
with one hand in the American way—and also could employ
both of his hands after the method of Europeans. He had
learned to follow the movements of people's lips and to
understand what they said. Then finally he had been taught to
speak.
At the school he was thought very intelligent. He learned the
lessons before the rest of the pupils. But he could never
become used to speaking with his lips. It was not natural to
him, and his tongue felt like a whale in his mouth. From the
blank expression on people's faces to whom he talked in this
way he felt that his voice must be like the sound of some
animal or that there was something disgusting in his speech. It
was painful for him to try to talk with his mouth, but his hands
were always ready to shape the words he wished to say. When
he was twenty-two he had come South to this town from
Chicago and he met Antonapoulos immediately. Since that
time he had never spoken with his mouth again, because with
his friend there was no need for this.
Nothing seemed real except the ten years with Antonapoulos.
In his half-dreams he saw his friend very vividly, and when he
awakened a great aching loneliness would be in him.
Occasionally he would pack up a box for Antonapoulos, but
he never received any reply. And so the months passed hi this
empty, dreaming way.
In the spring a change came over Singer. He could not sleep
and his body was very restless. At evening he would walk
monotonously around the room, unable to work off a new
feeling of energy. If he rested at all it was only during a few
hours before dawn—then he would drop bluntly into
9
a sleep that lasted until the morning light struck suddenly
beneath his opening eyelids like a scimitar.
He began spending his evenings walking around the town. He
could no longer stand the rooms where Antonapoulos had lived, and he rented a place in a shambling boarding-house not
far from the center of the town.
He ate his meals at a restaurant only two blocks away. This
restaurant was at the very end of the long main street and the
name of the place was the New York Cafe. The first day he
glanced over the menu quickly and wrote a short note and
handed it to the proprietor.
Each morning for breakfast I want an egg, toast, and coffee
0.15
For lunch I want soup (any kind), a meat sandwich, and milk
— 0.25
Please bring me ut dinner three vegetables (any kind but
cabbage), fish or meat, and a glass of beer—
0.35
Thank you.
The proprietor read the note and gave him an alert, tactful
glance. He was a hard man of middle height, with a beard so
dark and heavy that the lower part of his face looked as
though it were molded of iron. He usually stood in the corner
by the cash register, his arms folded over his chest, quietly
observing all that went on around him. Singer came to know
this man's face very well, for he ate at one of his tables three
times a day.
Each evening the mute walked alone for hours in the street.
Sometimes the nights were cold with the sharp, wet winds of
March and it would be raining heavily. But to him this did not
matter. His gait was agitated and he always kept his hands
stuffed tight into the pockets of his trousers. Then as the
weeks passed the days grew warm and languorous. His
agitation gave way gradually to exhaustion and there was a
look about him of deep calm. In his face there came to be a
brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very
sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the
streets of the town, always silent and alone.10
2
\_f N A black, sultry night in early summer Biff Brannon
stood behind the cash register of the New York Cafe. It was
twelve o'clock. Outside the street lights had already been
turned off, so that the light from the cafe made a sharp, yellow
rectangle on the sidewalk. The street was deserted, but inside the cafe there were half a dozen customers drinking beer or
Santa Lucia wine or whiskey. Biff waited stolidly, his elbow
resting on the counter and his thumb mashing the tip of his
long nose. His eyes were intent. He watched especially a
short, squat man in overalls who had become drunk and
boisterous. Now and then his gaze passed on to the mute who
sat by himself at one of the middle tables, or to others of the
customers before the counter. But he always turned back to
the drunk in overalls. The hour grew later and Biff continued
to wait silently behind the counter. Then at last he gave the
restaurant a final survey and went toward the door at the back
which led upstairs.
Quietly he entered the room at the top of the stairs. It was dark
inside and he walked with caution. After he had gone a few
paces his toe struck something hard and he reached down and
felt for the handle of a suitcase on the floor. He had only been
in the room a few seconds and was about to leave when the
light was turned on.
Alice sat up in the rumpled bed and looked at him. 'What you
doing with that suitcase?' she asked. 'Can't you get rid of that
lunatic without giving him back what he's already drunk up?'
'Wake up and go down yourself. Call the cop and let him get
soused on the chain gang with cornbread and peas. Go to it,Misses Brannon.'
'I will all right if he's down there tomorrow. But you leave that
bag alone. It don't belong to that sponger any more.'
'I know spongers, and Blount's not one,' Biff said. 'Myself—I
don't know so well. But I'm not that kind of a thief.'
Calmly Biff put down the suitcase on the steps outside.
11
The air was not so stale and sultry in the room as it was
downstairs. He decided to stay for a short while and douse his
face with cold water before going back.
'I told you already what I'll do if you don't get rid of that
fellow for good tonight. In the daytime he takes them naps at
the back, and then at night you feed him dinners and beer. For
a week now he hasn't paid one cent. And all his wild talking
and carrying-on will ruin any decent trade.'
'You don't know people and you don't know real business,'
Biff said. The fellow in question first came in here twelve days ago and he was a stranger in the town. The first week he
gave us twenty dollars' worth of trade. Twenty at the
minimum.'
'And since then on credit,' Alice said. Tive days on credit, and
so drunk it's a disgrace to the business. And besides, he's
nothing but a bum and a freak.'
'I like freaks,' Biff said.
'I reckon you dol I just reckon you certainly ought to, Mister
Brannon—being as you're one yourself.'
He rubbed his bluish chin and paid her no attention. For the
first fifteen years of their married life they had called each
other just plain Biff and Alice. Then in one of their quarrels
they had begun calling each other Mister and Misses, and
since then they had never made it up enough to change it.
Tm just warning you he'd better not be there when I come
down tomorrow.'
Biff went into the bathroom, and after he had bathed his face
he decided that he would have time for a shave. His beard was
black and heavy as though it had grown for three days. He
stood before the mirror and rubbed his cheek meditatively. He
was sorry he had talked to Alice. With her, silence was better.
Being around that woman always made him different from his
real self. It made him tough and small and common as she
was. Biff's eyes were cold and staring, half-concealed by the
cynical droop of his eyelids. On the fifth finger of his
calloused hand there was a woman's wedding ring. The door
was open behind him, and in the mirror he could see Alice
lying in the bed.
'Listen,' he said. The trouble with you is that you don't have
any real kindness. Not but one woman Fve ever known had
this real kindness I'm talking about'12
'Well, I've known you to do things no man in this world would
be proud of. I've known you to------'
'Or maybe it's curiosity I mean. You don't ever see or notice
anything important that goes on. You never watch and think
and try to figure anything out. Maybe that's the biggest
difference between you and me, after all.'
Alice was almost asleep again, and through the mirror he
watched her with detachment. There was no distinctive point about her on which he could fasten his attention, and his gaze
glided from her pale brown hair to the stumpy outline of her
feet beneath the cover. The soft curves of her face led to the
roundness of her hips and thighs. When he was away from her
there was no one feature that stood out in his mind and he
remembered her as a complete, unbroken figure.
The enjoyment of a spectacle is something you have never
known,' he said.
Her voice was tired. That fellow downstairs is a spectacle, all
right, and a circus too. But I'm through putting up with him.'
'Hell, the man don't mean anything to me. He's no relative or
buddy of mine. But you don't know what it is to store up a
whole lot of details and then come upon something real.' He
turned on the hot water and quickly began to shave.
It was the morning of May 15, yes, that Jake Blount had come
in. He had noticed him immediately and watched. The man
was short, with heavy shoulders like beams. He had a small,ragged mustache, and beneath this his lower lip looked as
though it had been stung by a wasp. There were many things
about the fellow that seemed contrary. His head was very
large and well-shaped, but his neck was soft and slender as a
boy's. The mustache looked false, as if it had been stuck on for
a costume party and would fall off if he talked too fast. It
made him seem almost middle-aged, although his face with its
high, smooth forehead and wide-open eyes was young. His
hands were huge, stained, and calloused, and he was dressed
in a cheap white-linen suit. There was something very funny
about the man, yet at the same time another feeling would not
let you laugh.
He ordered a pint of liquor and drank it straight in half an
hour. Then he sat at one of the booths and ate a big
13
chicken dinner. Later he read a book and drank beer. That was
the beginning. And although Biff had noticed Blount very
carefully he would never have guessed about the crazy things
that happened later. Never had he seen a man change so many
times in twelve days. Never had he seen a fellow drink so
much, stay drunk so long.
Biff pushed up the end of his nose with his thumb and shaved his upper lip. He was finished and his face seemed cooler.
Alice was asleep when he went through the bedroom on the
way downstairs.
The suitcase was heavy. He carried it to the front of the
restaurant, behind the cash register, where he usually stood
each evening. Methodically he glanced around the place. A
few customers had left and the room was not so crowded, but
the set-up was the same. The deaf-mute still drank coffee by
himself at one of the middle tables. The drunk had not stopped
talking. He was not addressing anyone around him in
particular, nor was anyone listening. When he had come into
the place that evening he wore those blue overalls instead of
the filthy linen suit he had been wearing the twelve days. His
socks were gone and his ankles were scratched and caked with
mud.
Alertly Biff picked up fragments of his monologue. The
fellow seemed to be talking some queer kind of politics again.
Last night he had been talking about places he had been—
about Texas and Oklahoma and the Carolinas. Once he had
got on the subject of cat-houses, and afterward his jokes got so
raw he had to be hushed up with beer. But most of the time
nobody was sure just what he was saying. Talk—talk—talk.
The words came out of his throat like a cataract. And the thing
was that the accent he used was always changing, the kinds of
words he used. Sometimes he talked like a linthead and
sometimes nice a professor. He would use words a foot long
and then slip up on his grammar. It was hard to tell what kind
of folks he had or what part of the country he was from. He
was always changing. Thoughtfully Biff fondled the tip of his
nose. There was no connection. Yet connection usually went
with brains. This man had a good mind, all right, but he went
from one thing to another without any reason behind it at all.
He was like a man thrown off his track by something.14
Biff leaned his weight on the counter and began to peruse the
evening newspaper. The headlines told of a decision by the
Board of Aldermen, after four months' deliberation, that the
local budget could not afford traffic lights at certain dangerous
intersections of the town. The left column reported on the war
in the Orient. Biff read them both with equal attention. As his eyes followed the print the rest of his senses were on the alert
to the various commotions that went on around him. When he
had finished the articles he still stared down at the newspaper
with his eyes half-closed. He felt nervous. The fellow was a
problem, and before morning he would have to make some
sort of settlement with him. Also, he felt without knowing
why that something of importance would happen tonight. The
fellow could not keep on forever.
Biff sensed that someone was standing in the entrance and he
raised his eyes quickly. A gangling, towheaded youngster, a
girl of about twelve, stood looking in the doorway. She was
dressed in khaki shorts, a blue shirt, and tennis shoes—so that
at first glance she was like a very young boy. Biff pushed
aside the paper when he saw her, and smiled when she came
up to him.
'Hello, Mick. Been to the Girl Scouts?'
'No,' she said. 'I don't belong to them.'
From the corner of his eye he noticed that the drunk slammed
his fist down on a table and turned away from the men to
whom he had been talking. Biffs voice roughened as he spoke
to the youngster before him.
'Your folks know you're out after midnight?'
'It's O.K. There's a gang of kids playing out late on our block
tonight.'
He had never seen her come into the place with anyone her
own age. Several years ago she had always tagged behind her
older brother. The Kellys were a good-sized family in
numbers. Later she would come in pulling a couple of snotty
babies in a wagon. But if she wasn't nursing or trying to keep
up with the bigger ones, she was by herself. Now the kid stood
there seeming not to be able to make up her mind what she
wanted. She kept pushing back her damp, whitish hair with
the palm of her hand.
'I'd like a pack of cigarettes, please. The cheapest kind'.
Biff started to speak, hesitated, and then reached his
IS
hand inside the counter. Mick brought out a handkerchief and
began untying the knot in the corner where she kept her
money. As she gave the knot a jerk the change clattered to the floor and rolled toward Blount, who stood muttering to
himself. For a moment he stared in a daze at the coins, but
before the kid could go after them he squatted down with
concentration and picked up the money. He walked heavily to
the counter and stood jiggling the two pennies, the nickel, and
the dime in his palm.
'Seventeen cents for cigarettes now?'
Biff waited, and Mick looked from one of them to the other.
The drunk stacked the money into a little pile on the counter,still protecting it with his big, dirty hand. Slowly he picked up
one penny and flipped it down.
'Five mills for the crackers who grew the weed and five for the
dupes who rolled it,' he said. 'A cent for you, Biff.' Then he
tried to focus his eyes so that he could read the mottoes on the
nickel and dime. He kept fingering the two coins and moving
them around in a circle. At last he pushed them away. 'And
that's a humble homage to liberty. To democracy and tyranny.
To freedom and piracy.'
Calmly Biff picked up the money and rang it into the till.
Mick looked as though she wanted to hang around awhile. She
took in the drunk with one long gaze, and then she turned her
eyes to the middle of the room where the mute sat at his table
alone. After a moment Blount also glanced now and then in
the same direction. The mute sat silently over his glass of
beer, idly drawing on the table with the end of a burnt
matchstick.
Jake Blount was the first to speak. 'It's funny, but I been seeing
that fellow in my sleep for the past three or four nights. He
won't leave me alone. If you ever noticed, he never seems to
say anything.'
It was seldom that Biff ever discussed one customer with
another. 'No, he don't,' he answered noncommittally.
'It's funny.'
Mick shifted her weight from one foot to the other and fitted
the package of cigarettes into the pocket of her shorts. 'It's not
funny if you know anything ahout him,' she said. 'Mister
Singer lives with us. He rooms in our house.'
'Is that so?' Biff asked. 'I declare—I didn't know that'16
Mick walked toward the door and answered him without looking around. Sure. He's been with us three months now.'
Biff unrolled his shirt-sleeves and then folded them up
carefully again. He did not take his eyes from Mick as she left
the restaurant. And even after she had been gone several
minutes he still fumbled with his shirt-sleeves and stared at
the empty doorway. Then he locked his arms across his chest
and turned back to the drunk again.
Blount leaned heavily on the counter. His brown eyes were
wet-looking and wide open with a dazed expression. He
needed a bath so badly that he stank like a goat. There were
dirt beads on his sweaty neck and an oil stain on his face. His
lips were thick and red and his brown hair was matted on his
forehead. His overalls were too short in the body and he kept
pulling at the crotch of them.
'Man, you ought to know better,' Biff said finally. 'You can't
go around like this. Why, I'm surprised you haven't been
picked up for vagrancy. You ought to sober up. You need
washing and your hair needs cutting. Motherogod! You're not
fit to walk around amongst people.'
Blount scowled and bit his lower lip.
'Now, don't take offense and get your dander up. Do what I tell
you. Go back in the kitchen and tell the colored boy to give
you a big pan of hot water. Tell Willie to give you a towel and
plenty of soap and wash yourself good. Then eat you some
milk toast and open up your suitcase and put you on a clean
shirt and a pair of britches that fit you. Then tomorrow you
can start doing whatever you're going to do and working
wherever you mean to work and get straightened out.'
'You know what you can do,' Blount said drunkenly. You can
just------'
'All right,' Biff said very quietly. 'No, I can't Now you just
behave yourself.'
Biff went to the end of the counter and returned with two
glasses of draught beer. The drunk picked up his glass so
clumsily that beer slopped down on his hands and messed the
counter. Biff sipped his portion with careful relish. He
regarded Blount steadily with half-closed eyes. Blount was not
a freak, although when you first saw him he gave you that
impression. It was like something was17
deformed about him—but when you looked at him closely
each part of him was normal and as it ought to be. Therefore if
this difference was not in the body it was probably in the
mind. He was like a man who had served a term in prison or
had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with
foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had
been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had
done something that others are not apt to do.
Biff cocked his head to one side and said, 'Where are you
from?'
Nowhere.'
Now, you have to be born somewhere. North Carolina —
Tennessee—Alabama—some place.'
Blount's eyes were dreamy and unfocused. 'Carolina,' he said.
'I can tell you've been around,' Biff hinted delicately.
But the drunk was not listening. He had turned from the
counter and was staring out at the dark, empty street. After a
moment he walked to the door with loose, uncertain steps.
'Adios,' he called back.
Biff was alone again and he gave the restaurant one of his
quick, thorough surveys. It was past one in the morning, and
there were only four or five customers in the room. The mute
still sat by himself at the middle table. Biff stared at him idly
and shook the few remaining drops of beer around in the
bottom of his glass. Then he finished his drink in one slow
swallow and went back to the newspaper spread out on the
counter.
This time he could not keep his mind on the words before him.
He remembered Mick. He wondered if he should have sold
her the pack of cigarettes and if it were really harmful for kids
to smoke. He thought of the way Mick narrowed her eyes and
pushed back the bangs of her hair with the palm of her hand.
He thought of her hoarse, boyish voice and of her habit of
hitching up her khaki shorts and swaggering like a cowboy in
the picture show. A feeling of tenderness came in him. He was
uneasy.
Restlessly Biff turned his attention to Singer. The mute sat
with his hands in his pockets and the half-finished glass of
beer before him had become warm and stagnant. He18would offer to treat Singer to a slug of whiskey before he left.
What he had said to Alice was true—he did like freaks. He
had a special friendly feeling for sick people and cripples.
Whenever somebody with a harelip or T.B. came into the
place he would set him up to beer. Or if the customer were a
hunchback or a bad cripple, then it would be whiskey on the
house. There was one fellow who had had his peter and his
left leg blown off in a boiler explosion, and whenever he came
to town there was a free pint waiting for him. And if Singer
were a drinking kind of man he could get liquor at half price
any time he wanted it. Biff nodded to himself. Then neatly he
folded his newspaper and put it under the counter along with
several others. At the end of the week he would take them all
back to the storeroom behind the kitchen, where he kept a
complete file of the evening newspapers that dated back
without a break for twenty-one years.
At two o'clock Blount entered the restaurant again. He
, brought in with him a tall Negro man carrying a black bag.
\The drunk tried to bring him up to the counter for a
drink, but the Negro left as soon as he realized why he had
been led inside. Biff recognized him as a Negro doctor who
had practiced in the town ever since he could remember.
He was related in some way to young Willie back in the
kitchen. Before he left Biff saw him turn on Blount with
a look of quivering hatred.
The drunk just stood there.
·Don't you know you can't bring no nigger in a place where
white men drink?' someone asked him.
Biff watched this happening from a distance. Blount was very
angry, and now it could easily be seen how drunk he was.
'I'm part nigger myself,' he called out as a challenge.
Biff watched him alertly and the place was quiet. With his
thick nostrils and the rolling whites of his eyes it looked a
little as though he might be telling the truth.
'I'm part nigger and wop and bohunk and chink. All of those.'
There was laughter.
'And I'm Dutch and Turkish and Japanese and American.' He
walked in zigzags around the table where the mute drank his
coffee. His voice was loud and cracked.19
Tm one who knows. I'm a stranger in a strange land.'
·Quiet down,' Biff said to him.
Blount paid no attention to anyone in the place except the
mute. They were both looking at each other. The mute's eyes
were cold and gentle as a cat's and all his body seemed to
listen. The drunk man was in a frenzy.
·You're the only one in this town who catches what I mean,'
Blount said. 'For two days now 1 been talking to you in my
mind because I know you understand the things I want to
mean.'
Some people in a booth were laughing because without
knowing it the drunk had picked out a deaf-mute to try to talk
with. Biff watched the two men with little darting glances and
listened attentively.
Blount sat down to the table and leaned over close to Singer.
There are those who know and those who don't know. And
for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who
knows. Thaf s the miracle of all time—the fact that these
millions know so much but don't know this. It's like in the
fifteenth century when everybody believed the world was flat
and only Columbus and a few other fellows knew the truth.
But it's different in that it took talent to figure that the earth is
round. While this truth is so obvious it's a miracle of all
history that people don't know. You savvy.'
Biff rested his elbows on the counter and looked at Blount
with curiosity. 'Know what?' he asked.
Don't listen to him,' Blount said. 'Don't mind that flat-footed,blue-jowled, nosy bastard. For you see, when us people who
know run into each other mat's an event. It almost never
happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses
that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's
happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of
us.'
'Masons?' Biff asked.
'Shut up, you! Else 111 snatch your arm off and beat you
black with it,' Blount bawled. He hunched over close to the
mute and his voice dropped to a drunken whisper. 'And how
come? Why has this miracle of ignorance endured? Because
of one thing. A conspiracy. A vast and insidious conspiracy. Obscurantism.'
The men in the booth were still laughing at the drunk20
who was trying to hold a conversation with the mute. Only
Biff was serious. He wanted to ascertain if the mute really
understood what was said to him. The fellow nodded
frequently and his face seemed contemplative. He was only
slow—that was all. Blount began to crack a few jokes along
with this talk about knowing. The mute never smiled until
several seconds after the funny remark had been made; then
when the talk was gloomy again the smile still hung on his
face a little too long. The fellow was downright uncanny.
People felt themselves watching him even before they knew
that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a
person think that he heard things nobody else had ever heard,that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did
not seem quite human.
Jake Blount leaned across the table and the words came out as
though a dam inside him had broken. Biff could not
understand him any more. Blount's tongue was so heavy with
drink and he talked at such a violent pace that the sounds were
all shaken up together. Biff wondered where he would go
when Alice turned him out of the place. And in the morning
she would do it, too—like she said.
Biff yawned wanly, patting his open mouth with his fingertips
until his jaw had relaxed. It was almost three o'clock, the most
stagnant hour in the day or night
The mute was patient. He had been listening to Blount for
almost an hour. Now he began to look at the clock
occasionally. Blount did not notice this and went on without a
pause. At last he stopped a to roll a cigarette, and then the
mute nodded his head in the direction of the clock, smiled in
that hidden way of his, and got up from the table. His hands
stayed stuffed in his pockets as always. He went out quickly.
Blount was so drunk that he did not know what had happened.
He had never even caught on to the fact that the mute made no
answers. He began to look around the place with his mouth
open and his eyes rolling and fuddled. A red vein stood out on
his forehead and he began to hit the table angrily with his
fists. His bout could not last much longer now.'Come on over,' Biff said kindly. Your friend has gone.'
21
The fellow was still hunting for Singer. He had never seemed
really drunk like that before. He had an ugly look.
'I have something for you over here and I want to speak with
you a minute,' Biff coaxed.
Blount pulled himself up from the table and walked with big,loose steps toward the street again.
Biff leaned against the wall. In and out—in and out. After all,it was none of his business. The room was very empty and
quiet. The minutes lingered. Wearily he let his head sag
forward. All motion seemed slowly to be leaving the room.
The counter, faces, the booths and tables, the radio in the
corner, whirring fans on the ceiling—all seemed to become
very faint and still.
He must have dozed. A hand was shaking his elbow. His wits
came back to him slowly and he looked up to see what was
wanted. Willie, the colored boy in the kitchen, stood before
him dressed in his cap and his long white apron. Willie
stammered because he was excited about whatever he was
trying to say.
'And so he were 1-1-lamming his fist against this here brick w-
w-wall.'
'What's that?'
'Right down one of them alleys two d-d-doors away.'
Biff straightened bis slumped shoulders and arranged his tie.
'What?'
'And they means to bring him in here and they liable to pile in
any minute------'
'Willie,' Biff said patiently. 'Start at the beginning and let me
get this straight.'
'It this here short white man with the m-m-mustache.'
·Mr. Blount. Yes>
'Well—I didn't see how it commenced. I were standing in the
back door when I heard this here commotion. Sound like a big
fight in the alley. So I r-r-run to see. And this here white man
had just gone hog wild. He were butting bis head against the
side of this brick wall and hitting with his fists. He were
cussing and fighting like I never seen a white man fight before. With just this here wall. He liable to broken his own
head the way he were carrying on. Then two white mens who
had heard the commotion come up and stand around and
look------'22
'So what happened?'
'Well—you know this here dumb gentleman—hands in
pockets—this here------'
'Mr. Singer.'
'And he come along and just stood looking around to see what
it were all about. And Mr. B-B-Blount seen him and
commenced to talk and holler. And then all of a sudden he
fallen down on the ground. Maybe he done really busted his
head open. A p-p-p-police come up and somebody done told
him Mr. Blount been staying here.'
Biff bowed his head and organized the story he had just heard
into a neat pattern. He rubbed his nose and thought for a
minute.
They liable to pile in here any minute.' Willie went to the
door and looked down the street 'Here they all come now.
They having to drag him.'
A dozen onlookers and a policeman all tried to crowd into the
restaurant. Outside a couple of whores stood looking in
through the front window. It was always funny how many
people could crowd in from nowhere when anything out of the
ordinary happened.
'No use creating any more disturbance than necessary,' Biff
said. He looked at the policeman who supported the drunk.
'The rest of them might as well clear out.'
The policeman put the drunk in a chair and hustled the little
crowd into the street again. Then he turned to Biff: 'Somebody
said he was staying here with you.'
'No. But he might as well be,' Biff said.
'Want me to take him with me?'
Biff considered. 'He won't get into any more trouble tonight.
Of course I can't be responsible—but I think this will calm
him down.'
'O.K. I'll drop back in again before I knock off.'
Biff, Singer, and Jake Blount were left alone. For the first
time since he had been brought in, Biff turned his attention to the drunk man. It seemed that Blount had hurt his jaw very
badly. He was slumped down on the table with his big hand
over his mouth, swaying backward and forward. There was a
gash in his head and the blood ran from his temple. His
knuckles were skinned raw, and he was so filthy that he
looked as if he had been pulled by the scruff of the neck from
a sewer. All the juice had
23
spurted out of him and he was completely collapsed. The mute
sat at the table across from him, taking it all in with his gray
eyes.
Then Biff saw that Blount had not hurt his jaw, but he was
holding his hand over his mouth because bis lips were
trembling. The tears began to roll down his grimy face. Now
and then he glanced sideways at Biff and Singer, angry that
they should see him cry. It was embarrassing. Biff shrugged
his shoulders at the mute and raised his eyebrows with a what-
to-do? expression. Singer cocked his head on one side.
Biff was in a quandary. Musingly he wondered just how he
should manage the situation. He was still trying to decide
when the mute turned over the menu and began to write.
you cannot think of any place for him to go he can go home
with me. First some soup and coffee would be good for him.
With relief Biff nodded vigorously.
On the table he placed three special plates of the last evening
meal, two bowls of soup, coffee, and dessert. But Blount
would not eat. He would not take his hand away from his
mouth, and it was as though his lips were some very secret
part of himself which was being exposed. His breath came in
ragged sobs and his big shoulders jerked nervously. Singer
pointed to one dish after the other, but Blount just sat with his
hand over his mouth and shook his head.
Biff enunciated slowly so that the mute could see. 'The
jitters------' he said conversationally.
The steam from the soup kept floating up into Blount's face,and after a little while he reached shakily for his spoon. He
drank the soup and ate part of his dessert. His thick, heavy lips
still trembled and he bowed his head far down over his plate.
Biff noted this. He was thinkng that in nearly every person there was some special physical part kept always guarded.
With the mute his hands. The kid Mick picked at the front of
her blouse to keep the cloth from rubbing the new, tender
nipples beginning to come out on her24
breast. With Alice it was her hair; she used never to let him
sleep with her when he rubbed oil in his scalp. And with
himself?
Lingeringly Biff turned the ring on his little finger. Anyway
he knew what it was not. Not. Any more. A sharp line cut into
his forehead. His hand in his pocket moved nervously toward
his genitals. He began whistling a song and got up from the
table. Funny to spot it in other people, though.
They helped Blount to his feet. He teetered weakly. He was
not crying any more, but he seemed to be brooding on
something shameful and sullen. He walked in the direction he
was led. Biff brought out the suitcase from behind the counter
and explained to the mute about it. Singer looked as though he
could not be surprised at anything.
Biff went with them to the entrance. 'Buck up and keep your
nose clean,' he said to Blount.
The black night sky was beginning to lighten and turn a deep
blue with the new morning. There were but a few weak,silvery stars. The street was empty, silent, almost cool. Singer
carried the suitcase with his left hand, and with his free hand
he supported Blount. He nodded goodbye to Biff and they
started off together down the sidewalk. Biff stood watching
them. After they had gone hah a block away only their black
forms showed in the blue darkness —the mute straight and
firm and the broad-shouldered, stumbling Blount holding on
to him. When he could see them no longer, Biff waited for a
moment and examined the sky. The vast depth of it fascinated
and oppressed him. He rubbed his forehead and went back
into the sharply lighted restaurant.
He stood behind the cash register, and his face contracted and
hardened as he tried to recall the things that had happened
during the night. He had the feeling that he wanted to explain
something to himself. He recalled the incidents in tedious
detail and was still puzzled.
The door opened and closed several times as a sudden spurt of customers began to come in. The night was over. Willie
stacked some of the chairs up on the tables and mopped at the
floor. He was ready to go home and was singing. Willie was
lazy. In the kitchen he was always stopping to play for a while
on the harmonica he carried
25
around with him. Now he mopped the floor with sleepy
strokes and hummed his lonesome Negro music steadily.
The place was still not crowded—it was the hour when men
who have been up all night meet those who are freshly
wakened and ready to start a new day. The sleepy waitress
was serving both beer and coffee. There was no noise or
conversation, for each person seemed to be alone. The mutual
distrust between the men who were just awakened and those
who were ending a long night gave everyone a feeling of
estrangement.
The bank building across the street was very pale in the dawn.
Then gradually its white brick walls grew more distinct. When
at last the first shafts of the rising sun began to brighten the
street, Biff gave the place one last survey and went upstairs.
Noisily he rattled the doorknob as he entered so that Alice
would be disturbed. 'Motherogod!' he said. 'What a night!'
Alice awoke with caution. She lay on the rumpled bed like a
sulky cat and stretched herself. The room was drab in the
fresh, hot morning sun, and a pair of silk stockings hung limp
and withered from the cord of the window-shade.
'Is that drunk fool still hanging around downstairs?' she
demanded.
Biff took off his shirt and examined the collar to see if it were
clean enough to be worn again. 'Go down and see for yourself.
I told you nobody will hinder you from kicking him out.'
Sleepily Alice reached down and picked up a Bible, the blank
side of a menu, and a Sunday-School book from the floor
beside the bed. She rustled through the tissue pages of the
Bible until she reached a certain passage and began reading,pronouncing the words aloud with painful concentration. It
was Sunday, and she was preparing the weekly lesson for her
class of boys in the Junior Department of her church. 'Now as
he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.
And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make
you to become fishers of men. And straightway they forsook
their nets, and followed him.'26
Biff went into the bathroom to wash himself. The silky
murmuring continued as Alice studied aloud. He listened. \ ..
and in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He
went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
And Simon and they that were with Him followed after Him.
And when they had found Him, they said unto Him, All men
seek for Thee. '
She had finished. Biff let the words revolve again gently
inside him. He tried to separate the actual words from the
sound of Alice's voice as she had spoken them. He wanted to
remember the passage as his mother used to read it when he
was a boy. With nostalgia he glanced down at the wedding
ring on his fifth finger that had once been hers. He wondered
again how she would have felt about bis giving up church and
religion.
'The lesson for today is about the gathering of the disciples,'
Alice said to herself in preparation. 'And the text is, All men
seek for Thee. '
Abruptly Biff roused himself from meditation and turned on
the water spigot at full force. He stripped off his undervest
and began to wash himself. Always he was scrupulously clean
from the belt upward. Every morning he soaped his chest and
arms and neck and feet—and about twice during the season he
got into the bathtub and cleaned all of his parts.
Biff stood by the bed, waiting impatiently for Alice to get up.
From the window he saw that the day would be windless and
burning hot. Alice had finished reading the lesson. She still
lay lazily across the bed, although she knew that he was
waiting. A calm, sullen anger rose in him. He chuckled
ironically. Then he said with bitterness: 'If you like I can sit
and read the paper awhile. But I wish you would let me sleep
now.'
Alice began dressing herself and Biff made up the bed. Deftly
he reversed the sheets in all possible ways, putting the top one
on the bottom, and turning them over and upside down. When the bed was smoothly made he waited until Alice had left the
room before he slipped off his trousers and crawled inside.
His feet jutted out from beneath the cover and his wiry-haired
chest was very dark against the pillow. He was glad he had not
told Alice about what had happened to the drunk. He had
wanted to talk
27
to somebody about it, because maybe if he told all the facts
out loud he could put his finger on the thing that puzzled him.
The poor son-of-a-bitch talking and talking and not ever
getting anybody to understand what he meant. Not knowing
himself, most likely. And the way he gravitated around the
deaf-mute and picked him out and tried to make him a free
present of everything in him.
Why?
Because in some men it is in them to give up everything
personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons—throw
it to some human being or some human idea. They have to. In
some men it is in them—The text is 'All men seek for Thee.'
Maybe that was why—maybe—He was a Chinaman, the
fellow had said. And a nigger and a wop and a Jew. And if he
believed it hard enough maybe it was so. Every person and
every thing he said he was------
Biff stretched both of his arms outward and crossed his naked
feet. His face was older in the morning light, with the closed,shrunken eyelids and the heavy, iron-like beard on his cheeks
and jaw. Gradually his mouth softened and relaxed. The hard,yellow rays of the sun came in through the window so that the
room was hot and bright. Biff turned wearily and covered his
eyes with his hands. And he was nobody but—Bartholomew
—old Biff with two fists and a quick tongue—Mister Brannon
—by himself.
J. HE sun woke Mick early, although she had stayed out mighty
late the night before. It was too hot even to drink coffee for
breakfast, so she had ice water with syrup in it and cold
biscuits. She messed around the kitchen for a while and then
went out on the front porch to read the funnies. She had
thought maybe Mister Singer would be reading the paper on
the porch like he did most Sunday mornings. But Mister Singer was not there, and later on her Dad said he came in
very late the night before and had company in his room. She
waited for Mister Singer a long time. All the other boarders
came down except him. Fi-28
29
nally she went back in the kitchen and took Ralph out of his
high chair and put a clean dress on him and wiped off his face.
Then when Bubber got home from Sunday School she was
ready to take the kids out. She let Bubber ride in the wagon
with Ralph because he was barefooted and the hot sidewalk
burned his feet. She pulled the wagon for about eight blocks
until they came to the big, new house that was being built. The
ladder was still propped against the edge of the roof, and she
screwed up nerve and began to climb.
'You mind Ralph,' she called back to Bubber. 'Mind the gnats
don't sit on his eyelids.'
Five minutes later Mick stood up and held herself very
straight. She spread out her arms like wings. This was the
place where everybody wanted to stand. The very top. But not
many kids could do it. Most of them were scared, for if you
lost your grip and rolled off the edge it would kill you. All
around were the roofs of other houses and the green tops of
trees. On the other side of town were the church steeples and
the smokestacks from the mills. The sky was bright blue and
hot as fire. The sun made everything on the ground either
dizzy white or black.
She wanted to sing. All the songs she knew pushed up toward
her throat, but there was no sound. One big boy who had got
to the highest part of the roof last week let out a yell and then
started hollering out a speech he had learned at High School
—'Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your ears!' There
was something about getting to the very top that gave you a
wild feeling and made you want to yell or sing or raise up
your arms and fly.
She felt the soles of her tennis shoes slipping, and eased
herself down so that she straddled the peak of the roof. The
house was almost finished. It would be one of the largest
buildings in the neighborhood—two stories, with very high ceilings and the steepest roof of any house she had ever seen.
But soon the work would all be finished. The carpenters
would leave and the kids would have to find another place to
play.
She was by herself. No one was around and it was quiet and
she could think for a while. She took from the pocket of her
shorts the package of cigarettes she had bought the night
before. She breathed in the smoke slowly. The ciga-
rette gave her a drunk feeling so that her head seemed heavy
and loose on her shoulders, but she had to finish it.
M.K.—That was what she would have written on everything
when she was seventeen years old and very famous. She
would ride back home in a red-and-white Packard automobile
with her initials on the doors. She would have M.K. written in
red on her handkerchiefs and underclothes. Maybe she would
be a great inventor. She would invent little tiny radios the size
of a green pea that people could carry around and stick in their
ears. Also flying machines people could fasten on their backs
like knapsacks and go zipping all over the world. After that
she would be the first one to make a large t ......
IN THE town there were two mutes, and they were always
together. Early every morning they would come out from
the house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the
street to work. The two friends were very different. The
one who always steered the way was an obese and
dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out
wearing a yellow or green polo shirt stuffed sloppily into
his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it
was colder he wore over this a shapeless gray sweater.
His face was round and oily, with half-closed eyelids and
lips that curved in a gentle, stupid smile. The other mute
was tall. His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He
was always immaculate and very soberly dressed.
Every morning the two friends walked silently together until
they reached the main street of the town. Then when they
came to a certain fruit and candy store they paused for a
moment on the sidewalk outside. The Greek, Spiros
Antonapoulos, worked for his cousin, who owned this fruit
store. His job was to make candies and sweets, uncrate the
fruits, and to keep the place clean. The thin mute, John Singer,nearly always put his hand on his friend's arm and looked for a
second into his face before leaving him. Then after this good-
bye Singer crossed the street and walked on alone to the
jewelry store where he worked as a silverware engraver.
In the late afternoon the friends would meet again. Singer
came back to the fruit store and waited until Antonapoulos
was ready to go home. The Greek would be lazily unpacking a
case of peaches or melons, or perhaps
2
looking at the funny paper in the kitchen behind the store
where he cooked. Before their departure Antonapoulos always
opened a paper sack he kept hidden during the day on one of
the kitchen shelves. Inside were stored various bits of food he
had collected—a piece of fruit, samples of candy, or the butt-
end of a liverwurst. Usually before leaving Antonapoulos
waddled gently to the glassed case in the front of the store
where some meats and cheeses were kept. He glided open the back of the case and his fat hand groped lovingly for some
particular dainty inside which he had wanted. Sometimes his
cousin who owned the place did not see him. But if he noticed
he stared at his cousin with a warning in his tight, pale face.
Sadly Antonapoulos would shuffle the morsel from one corner
of the case to the other. During these times Singer stood very
straight with his hands in his pockets and looked in another
direction. He did not like to watch this little scene between the
two Greeks. For, excepting drinking and a certain solitary
secret pleasure, Antonapoulos loved to eat more than anything
else in the world.
In the dusk the two mutes walked slowly home together. At
home Singer was always talking to Antonapoulos. His hands
shaped the words in a swift series of designs. His face was
eager and his gray-green eyes sparkled brightly. With his thin,strong hands he told Antonapoulos all that had happened
during the day.
Antonapoulos sat back lazily and looked at Singer. It was
seldom that he ever moved his hands to speak at all— and
then it was to say that he wanted to eat or to sleep or to drink.
These three things he always said with the same vague,fumbling signs. At night, if he were not too drunk, he would
kneel down before his bed and pray awhile. Then his plump
hands shaped the words 'Holy Jesus,' or 'God,' or 'Darling
Mary.' These were the only words Antonapoulos ever said.
Singer never knew just how much his friend understood of all
the things he told him. But it did not matter.
They shared the upstairs of a small house near the business
section of the town. There were two rooms. On the oil stove in
the kitchen Antonapoulos cooked all of their meals. There
were straight, plain kitchen chairs for Singer and an
overstuffed sofa for Antonapoulos. The bedroom
3
was furnished mainly with a large double bed covered with an
eiderdown comforter for the big Greek and a narrow iron cot
for Singer.
Dinner always took a long time, because Antonapoulos loved
food and he was very slow. After they had eaten, the big
Greek would lie back on his sofa and slowly lick over each
one of his teeth with his tongue, either from a certain delicacy or because he did not wish to lose the savor of the meal—
while Singer washed the dishes.
Sometimes in the evening the mutes would play chess. Singer
had always greatly enjoyed this game, and years before he had
tried to teach it to Antonapoulos. At first his friend could not
be interested in the reasons for moving the various pieces
about on the board. Then Singer began to keep a bottle of
something good under the table to be taken out after each
lesson. The Greek never got on to the erratic movements of
the knights and the sweeping mobility of the queens, but he
learned to make a few set, opening moves. He preferred the
white pieces and would not play if the black men were given
him. After the first moves Singer worked out the game by
himself while his friend looked on drowsily. If Singer made
brilliant attacks on his own men so that in the end the black
king was killed, Antonapoulos was always very proud and
pleased.
The two mutes had no other friends, and except when they
worked they were alone together. Each day was very much
like any other day, because they were alone so much that
nothing ever disturbed them. Once a week they would go to
the library for Singer to withdraw a mystery book and on
Friday night they attended a movie. Then on payday they
always went to the ten-cent photograph shop above the Army
and Navy Store so that Antonapoulos could have his picture
taken. These were the only places where they made customary
visits. There were many parts in the town that they had never
even seen.
The town was in the middle of the deep South. The summers
were long and the months of winter cold were very few.
Nearly always the sky was a glassy, brilliant azure and the sun
burned down riotously bright. Then the light, chill rains of
November would come, and perhaps later there would be frost
and some short months of cold. The winters were changeable,but the summers always4
were burning hot. The town was a fairly large one. On the
main street there were several blocks of two- and three-story
shops and business offices. But the largest buildings in the
town were the factories, which employed a large percentage of
the population. These cotton mills were big and flourishing and most of the workers in the town were very poor. Often in
the faces along the streets there was the desperate look of
hunger and of loneliness.
But the two mutes were not lonely at all. At home they were
content to eat and drink, and Singer would talk with bis hands
eagerly to his friend about all that was in his mind. So the
years passed in this quiet way until Singer reached the age of
thirty-two and had been in the town with Antonapoulos for ten
years.
Then one day the Greek became ill. He sat up in bed with his
hands on his fat stomach and big, oily tears rolled down his
cheeks. Singer went to see his friend's cousin who owned the
fruit store, and also he arranged for leave from his own work.
The doctor made out a diet for Antonapoulos and said that he
could drink no more wine. Singer rigidly enforced the doctor's
orders. All day he sat by his friend's bed and did what he
could to make the time pass quickly, but Antonapoulos only
looked at him angrily from the corners of his eyes and would
not be amused.
The Greek was very fretful, and kept finding fault with the
fruit drinks and food that Singer prepared for him. Constantly
he made his friend help him out of bed so that he could pray.
His huge buttocks would sag down over his plump little feet
when he kneeled. He fumbled with his hands to say 'Darling
Mary' and then held to the small brass cross tied to his neck
with a dirty string. His big eyes would wall up to the ceiling
with a look of fear in them, and afterward he was very sulky
and would not let his friend speak to him.
Singer was patient and did all that he could. He drew little
pictures, and once he made a sketch of his friend to amuse
him. This picture hurt the big Greek's feelings, and he refused
to be reconciled until Singer had made his face very young
and handsome and colored his hair bright yellow and his eyes
china blue. And then he tried not to show his pleasure.
Singer nursed his friend so carefully that after a week
5
Antonapoulos was able to return to his work. But from that
time on there was a difference in their way of life. Trouble
came to the two friends.
Antonapoulos was not ill any more, but a change had come in him. He was irritable and no longer content to spend the
evenings quietly in their home. When he would wish to go out
Singer followed along close behind him. Antonapoulos would
go into a restaurant, and while they sat at the table he slyly put
lumps of sugar, or a pepper-shaker, or pieces of silverware in
bis pocket. Singer always paid for what he took and there was
no disturbance. At home he scolded Antonapoulos, but the big
Greek only looked at him with a bland smile.
The months went on and these habits of Antonapoulos grew
worse. One day at noon he walked calmly out of the fruit store
of his cousin and urinated in public against the wall of the
First National Bank Building across the street. At times he
would meet people on the sidewalk whose faces did not please
him, and he would bump into these persons and push at them
with his elbows and stomach. He walked into a store one day
and hauled out a floor lamp without paying for it, and another
time he tried to take an electric train he had seen in a
showcase.
For Singer this was a time of great distress. He was
continually marching Antonapoulos down to the courthouse
during lunch hour to settle these infringements of the law.
Singer became very familiar with the procedure of the courts
and he was in a constant state of agitation. The money he had
saved in the bank was spent for bail and fines. All of his
efforts and money were used to keep his friend out of jail
because of such charges as theft, committing public
indecencies, and assault and battery.
The Greek cousin for whom Antonapoulos worked did not
enter into these troubles at all. Charles Parker (for that was the
name this cousin had taken) let Antonapoulos stay on at the
store, but he watched him always with his pale, tight face and
he made no effort to help him. Singer had a strange feeling
about Charles Parker. He began to dislike him.
Singer lived in continual turmoil and worry. But
Antonapoulos was always bland, and no matter what
happened the gentle, flaccid smile was still on his face. In all6
the years before it had seemed to Singer that there was
something very subtle and wise in this smile of his friend. He
had never known just how much Antonapoulos understood
and what he was thinking. Now in the big Greek's expression Singer thought that he could detect something sly and joking.
He would shake his friend by the shoulders until he was very
tired and explain things over and over with his hands. But
nothing did any good.
All of Singer's money was gone and he had to borrow from the
jeweler for whom he worked. On one occasion he was unable
to pay bail for bis friend and Antonapoulos spent the night in
jail. When Singer came to get him out the next day he was
very sulky. He did not want to leave. He had enjoyed his
dinner of sowbelly and cornbread with syrup poured over it.
And the new sleeping arrangements and his cellmates pleased
him.
They had lived so much alone that Singer had no one to help
him in his distress. Antonapoulos let nothing disturb him or
cure him of his habits. At home he sometimes cooked the new
dish he had eaten in the jail, and on the streets there was never
any knowing just what he would do.
And then the final trouble came to Singer.
One afternoon he had come to meet Antonapoulos at the fruit
store when Charles Parker handed him a letter. The letter
explained that Charles Parker had made arrangements for his
cousin to be taken to the state insane asylum two hundred
miles away. Charles Parker had used his influence in the town
and the details were already settled. Antonapoulos was to
leave and to be admitted into the asylum the next, week.
Singer read the letter several times, and for a while he could
not think. Charles Parker was talking to him across the
counter, but he did not even try to read his lips and
understand. At last Singer wrote on the little pad he always
carried in his pocket:
You cannot do this. Antonapoulos must stay with me.
Charles Parker shook his head excitedly. He did not know
much American. 'None of your business,' he kept saying over
and over.
7
Singer knew that everything was finished. The Greek was
afraid that some day he might be responsible for his cousin.
Charles Parker did not know much about the American
language—but he understood the American dollar very well,and he had used his money and influence to admit his cousin to the asylum without delay.
There was nothing Singer could do.
The next week was full of feverish activity. He talked and
talked. And although his hands never paused to rest he could
not tell all that he had to say. He wanted to talk to
Antonapoulos of all the thoughts that had ever been in his
mind and heart, but there was not time. His gray eyes glittered
and his quick, intelligent face expressed great strain.
Antonapoulos watched him drowsily, and his friend did not
know just what he really understood.
Then came the day when Antonapoulos must leave. Singer
brought out Ms own suitcase and very carefully packed the
best of their joint possessions. Antonapoulos made himself a
lunch to eat during the journey. In the late afternoon they
walked arm in arm down the street for the last time together. It
was a chilly afternoon in late November, and little huffs of
breath showed in the air before them.
Charles Parker was to travel with his cousin, but he stood
apart from them at the station. Antonapoulos crowded into the
bus and settled himself with elaborate preparations on one of
the front seats. Singer watched him from the window and his
hands began desperately to talk for the last time with his
friend. But Antonapoulos was so busy checking over the
various items in his lunch box that for a while he paid no
attention. Just before the bus pulled away from the curb he
turned to Singer and his smile was very bland and remote—as
though already they were many miles apart.
The weeks that followed didn't seem real at all. All day Singer
worked over his bench in the back of the jewelry store, and
then at night he returned to the house alone. More than
anything he wanted to sleep. As soon as he came home from
work he would lie on his cot and try to doze awhile. Dreams
came to him when he lay there half-asleep. And in all of them
Antonapoulos was there. His hands would jerk nervously, for
in his dreams he was talk-8
ing to his friend and Antonapoulos was watching him.
Singer tried to think of the time before he had ever known his
friend. He tried to recount to himself certain things that had
happened when he was young. But none of these things he
tried to remember seemed real.There was one particular fact that he remembered, but it was
not at all important to him. Singer recalled that, although he
had been deaf since he was an infant, he had not always been
a real mute. He was left an orphan very young and placed in
an institution for the deaf. He had learned to talk with his
hands and to read. Before he was nine years old he could talk
with one hand in the American way—and also could employ
both of his hands after the method of Europeans. He had
learned to follow the movements of people's lips and to
understand what they said. Then finally he had been taught to
speak.
At the school he was thought very intelligent. He learned the
lessons before the rest of the pupils. But he could never
become used to speaking with his lips. It was not natural to
him, and his tongue felt like a whale in his mouth. From the
blank expression on people's faces to whom he talked in this
way he felt that his voice must be like the sound of some
animal or that there was something disgusting in his speech. It
was painful for him to try to talk with his mouth, but his hands
were always ready to shape the words he wished to say. When
he was twenty-two he had come South to this town from
Chicago and he met Antonapoulos immediately. Since that
time he had never spoken with his mouth again, because with
his friend there was no need for this.
Nothing seemed real except the ten years with Antonapoulos.
In his half-dreams he saw his friend very vividly, and when he
awakened a great aching loneliness would be in him.
Occasionally he would pack up a box for Antonapoulos, but
he never received any reply. And so the months passed hi this
empty, dreaming way.
In the spring a change came over Singer. He could not sleep
and his body was very restless. At evening he would walk
monotonously around the room, unable to work off a new
feeling of energy. If he rested at all it was only during a few
hours before dawn—then he would drop bluntly into
9
a sleep that lasted until the morning light struck suddenly
beneath his opening eyelids like a scimitar.
He began spending his evenings walking around the town. He
could no longer stand the rooms where Antonapoulos had lived, and he rented a place in a shambling boarding-house not
far from the center of the town.
He ate his meals at a restaurant only two blocks away. This
restaurant was at the very end of the long main street and the
name of the place was the New York Cafe. The first day he
glanced over the menu quickly and wrote a short note and
handed it to the proprietor.
Each morning for breakfast I want an egg, toast, and coffee
0.15
For lunch I want soup (any kind), a meat sandwich, and milk
— 0.25
Please bring me ut dinner three vegetables (any kind but
cabbage), fish or meat, and a glass of beer—
0.35
Thank you.
The proprietor read the note and gave him an alert, tactful
glance. He was a hard man of middle height, with a beard so
dark and heavy that the lower part of his face looked as
though it were molded of iron. He usually stood in the corner
by the cash register, his arms folded over his chest, quietly
observing all that went on around him. Singer came to know
this man's face very well, for he ate at one of his tables three
times a day.
Each evening the mute walked alone for hours in the street.
Sometimes the nights were cold with the sharp, wet winds of
March and it would be raining heavily. But to him this did not
matter. His gait was agitated and he always kept his hands
stuffed tight into the pockets of his trousers. Then as the
weeks passed the days grew warm and languorous. His
agitation gave way gradually to exhaustion and there was a
look about him of deep calm. In his face there came to be a
brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very
sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the
streets of the town, always silent and alone.10
2
\_f N A black, sultry night in early summer Biff Brannon
stood behind the cash register of the New York Cafe. It was
twelve o'clock. Outside the street lights had already been
turned off, so that the light from the cafe made a sharp, yellow
rectangle on the sidewalk. The street was deserted, but inside the cafe there were half a dozen customers drinking beer or
Santa Lucia wine or whiskey. Biff waited stolidly, his elbow
resting on the counter and his thumb mashing the tip of his
long nose. His eyes were intent. He watched especially a
short, squat man in overalls who had become drunk and
boisterous. Now and then his gaze passed on to the mute who
sat by himself at one of the middle tables, or to others of the
customers before the counter. But he always turned back to
the drunk in overalls. The hour grew later and Biff continued
to wait silently behind the counter. Then at last he gave the
restaurant a final survey and went toward the door at the back
which led upstairs.
Quietly he entered the room at the top of the stairs. It was dark
inside and he walked with caution. After he had gone a few
paces his toe struck something hard and he reached down and
felt for the handle of a suitcase on the floor. He had only been
in the room a few seconds and was about to leave when the
light was turned on.
Alice sat up in the rumpled bed and looked at him. 'What you
doing with that suitcase?' she asked. 'Can't you get rid of that
lunatic without giving him back what he's already drunk up?'
'Wake up and go down yourself. Call the cop and let him get
soused on the chain gang with cornbread and peas. Go to it,Misses Brannon.'
'I will all right if he's down there tomorrow. But you leave that
bag alone. It don't belong to that sponger any more.'
'I know spongers, and Blount's not one,' Biff said. 'Myself—I
don't know so well. But I'm not that kind of a thief.'
Calmly Biff put down the suitcase on the steps outside.
11
The air was not so stale and sultry in the room as it was
downstairs. He decided to stay for a short while and douse his
face with cold water before going back.
'I told you already what I'll do if you don't get rid of that
fellow for good tonight. In the daytime he takes them naps at
the back, and then at night you feed him dinners and beer. For
a week now he hasn't paid one cent. And all his wild talking
and carrying-on will ruin any decent trade.'
'You don't know people and you don't know real business,'
Biff said. The fellow in question first came in here twelve days ago and he was a stranger in the town. The first week he
gave us twenty dollars' worth of trade. Twenty at the
minimum.'
'And since then on credit,' Alice said. Tive days on credit, and
so drunk it's a disgrace to the business. And besides, he's
nothing but a bum and a freak.'
'I like freaks,' Biff said.
'I reckon you dol I just reckon you certainly ought to, Mister
Brannon—being as you're one yourself.'
He rubbed his bluish chin and paid her no attention. For the
first fifteen years of their married life they had called each
other just plain Biff and Alice. Then in one of their quarrels
they had begun calling each other Mister and Misses, and
since then they had never made it up enough to change it.
Tm just warning you he'd better not be there when I come
down tomorrow.'
Biff went into the bathroom, and after he had bathed his face
he decided that he would have time for a shave. His beard was
black and heavy as though it had grown for three days. He
stood before the mirror and rubbed his cheek meditatively. He
was sorry he had talked to Alice. With her, silence was better.
Being around that woman always made him different from his
real self. It made him tough and small and common as she
was. Biff's eyes were cold and staring, half-concealed by the
cynical droop of his eyelids. On the fifth finger of his
calloused hand there was a woman's wedding ring. The door
was open behind him, and in the mirror he could see Alice
lying in the bed.
'Listen,' he said. The trouble with you is that you don't have
any real kindness. Not but one woman Fve ever known had
this real kindness I'm talking about'12
'Well, I've known you to do things no man in this world would
be proud of. I've known you to------'
'Or maybe it's curiosity I mean. You don't ever see or notice
anything important that goes on. You never watch and think
and try to figure anything out. Maybe that's the biggest
difference between you and me, after all.'
Alice was almost asleep again, and through the mirror he
watched her with detachment. There was no distinctive point about her on which he could fasten his attention, and his gaze
glided from her pale brown hair to the stumpy outline of her
feet beneath the cover. The soft curves of her face led to the
roundness of her hips and thighs. When he was away from her
there was no one feature that stood out in his mind and he
remembered her as a complete, unbroken figure.
The enjoyment of a spectacle is something you have never
known,' he said.
Her voice was tired. That fellow downstairs is a spectacle, all
right, and a circus too. But I'm through putting up with him.'
'Hell, the man don't mean anything to me. He's no relative or
buddy of mine. But you don't know what it is to store up a
whole lot of details and then come upon something real.' He
turned on the hot water and quickly began to shave.
It was the morning of May 15, yes, that Jake Blount had come
in. He had noticed him immediately and watched. The man
was short, with heavy shoulders like beams. He had a small,ragged mustache, and beneath this his lower lip looked as
though it had been stung by a wasp. There were many things
about the fellow that seemed contrary. His head was very
large and well-shaped, but his neck was soft and slender as a
boy's. The mustache looked false, as if it had been stuck on for
a costume party and would fall off if he talked too fast. It
made him seem almost middle-aged, although his face with its
high, smooth forehead and wide-open eyes was young. His
hands were huge, stained, and calloused, and he was dressed
in a cheap white-linen suit. There was something very funny
about the man, yet at the same time another feeling would not
let you laugh.
He ordered a pint of liquor and drank it straight in half an
hour. Then he sat at one of the booths and ate a big
13
chicken dinner. Later he read a book and drank beer. That was
the beginning. And although Biff had noticed Blount very
carefully he would never have guessed about the crazy things
that happened later. Never had he seen a man change so many
times in twelve days. Never had he seen a fellow drink so
much, stay drunk so long.
Biff pushed up the end of his nose with his thumb and shaved his upper lip. He was finished and his face seemed cooler.
Alice was asleep when he went through the bedroom on the
way downstairs.
The suitcase was heavy. He carried it to the front of the
restaurant, behind the cash register, where he usually stood
each evening. Methodically he glanced around the place. A
few customers had left and the room was not so crowded, but
the set-up was the same. The deaf-mute still drank coffee by
himself at one of the middle tables. The drunk had not stopped
talking. He was not addressing anyone around him in
particular, nor was anyone listening. When he had come into
the place that evening he wore those blue overalls instead of
the filthy linen suit he had been wearing the twelve days. His
socks were gone and his ankles were scratched and caked with
mud.
Alertly Biff picked up fragments of his monologue. The
fellow seemed to be talking some queer kind of politics again.
Last night he had been talking about places he had been—
about Texas and Oklahoma and the Carolinas. Once he had
got on the subject of cat-houses, and afterward his jokes got so
raw he had to be hushed up with beer. But most of the time
nobody was sure just what he was saying. Talk—talk—talk.
The words came out of his throat like a cataract. And the thing
was that the accent he used was always changing, the kinds of
words he used. Sometimes he talked like a linthead and
sometimes nice a professor. He would use words a foot long
and then slip up on his grammar. It was hard to tell what kind
of folks he had or what part of the country he was from. He
was always changing. Thoughtfully Biff fondled the tip of his
nose. There was no connection. Yet connection usually went
with brains. This man had a good mind, all right, but he went
from one thing to another without any reason behind it at all.
He was like a man thrown off his track by something.14
Biff leaned his weight on the counter and began to peruse the
evening newspaper. The headlines told of a decision by the
Board of Aldermen, after four months' deliberation, that the
local budget could not afford traffic lights at certain dangerous
intersections of the town. The left column reported on the war
in the Orient. Biff read them both with equal attention. As his eyes followed the print the rest of his senses were on the alert
to the various commotions that went on around him. When he
had finished the articles he still stared down at the newspaper
with his eyes half-closed. He felt nervous. The fellow was a
problem, and before morning he would have to make some
sort of settlement with him. Also, he felt without knowing
why that something of importance would happen tonight. The
fellow could not keep on forever.
Biff sensed that someone was standing in the entrance and he
raised his eyes quickly. A gangling, towheaded youngster, a
girl of about twelve, stood looking in the doorway. She was
dressed in khaki shorts, a blue shirt, and tennis shoes—so that
at first glance she was like a very young boy. Biff pushed
aside the paper when he saw her, and smiled when she came
up to him.
'Hello, Mick. Been to the Girl Scouts?'
'No,' she said. 'I don't belong to them.'
From the corner of his eye he noticed that the drunk slammed
his fist down on a table and turned away from the men to
whom he had been talking. Biffs voice roughened as he spoke
to the youngster before him.
'Your folks know you're out after midnight?'
'It's O.K. There's a gang of kids playing out late on our block
tonight.'
He had never seen her come into the place with anyone her
own age. Several years ago she had always tagged behind her
older brother. The Kellys were a good-sized family in
numbers. Later she would come in pulling a couple of snotty
babies in a wagon. But if she wasn't nursing or trying to keep
up with the bigger ones, she was by herself. Now the kid stood
there seeming not to be able to make up her mind what she
wanted. She kept pushing back her damp, whitish hair with
the palm of her hand.
'I'd like a pack of cigarettes, please. The cheapest kind'.
Biff started to speak, hesitated, and then reached his
IS
hand inside the counter. Mick brought out a handkerchief and
began untying the knot in the corner where she kept her
money. As she gave the knot a jerk the change clattered to the floor and rolled toward Blount, who stood muttering to
himself. For a moment he stared in a daze at the coins, but
before the kid could go after them he squatted down with
concentration and picked up the money. He walked heavily to
the counter and stood jiggling the two pennies, the nickel, and
the dime in his palm.
'Seventeen cents for cigarettes now?'
Biff waited, and Mick looked from one of them to the other.
The drunk stacked the money into a little pile on the counter,still protecting it with his big, dirty hand. Slowly he picked up
one penny and flipped it down.
'Five mills for the crackers who grew the weed and five for the
dupes who rolled it,' he said. 'A cent for you, Biff.' Then he
tried to focus his eyes so that he could read the mottoes on the
nickel and dime. He kept fingering the two coins and moving
them around in a circle. At last he pushed them away. 'And
that's a humble homage to liberty. To democracy and tyranny.
To freedom and piracy.'
Calmly Biff picked up the money and rang it into the till.
Mick looked as though she wanted to hang around awhile. She
took in the drunk with one long gaze, and then she turned her
eyes to the middle of the room where the mute sat at his table
alone. After a moment Blount also glanced now and then in
the same direction. The mute sat silently over his glass of
beer, idly drawing on the table with the end of a burnt
matchstick.
Jake Blount was the first to speak. 'It's funny, but I been seeing
that fellow in my sleep for the past three or four nights. He
won't leave me alone. If you ever noticed, he never seems to
say anything.'
It was seldom that Biff ever discussed one customer with
another. 'No, he don't,' he answered noncommittally.
'It's funny.'
Mick shifted her weight from one foot to the other and fitted
the package of cigarettes into the pocket of her shorts. 'It's not
funny if you know anything ahout him,' she said. 'Mister
Singer lives with us. He rooms in our house.'
'Is that so?' Biff asked. 'I declare—I didn't know that'16
Mick walked toward the door and answered him without looking around. Sure. He's been with us three months now.'
Biff unrolled his shirt-sleeves and then folded them up
carefully again. He did not take his eyes from Mick as she left
the restaurant. And even after she had been gone several
minutes he still fumbled with his shirt-sleeves and stared at
the empty doorway. Then he locked his arms across his chest
and turned back to the drunk again.
Blount leaned heavily on the counter. His brown eyes were
wet-looking and wide open with a dazed expression. He
needed a bath so badly that he stank like a goat. There were
dirt beads on his sweaty neck and an oil stain on his face. His
lips were thick and red and his brown hair was matted on his
forehead. His overalls were too short in the body and he kept
pulling at the crotch of them.
'Man, you ought to know better,' Biff said finally. 'You can't
go around like this. Why, I'm surprised you haven't been
picked up for vagrancy. You ought to sober up. You need
washing and your hair needs cutting. Motherogod! You're not
fit to walk around amongst people.'
Blount scowled and bit his lower lip.
'Now, don't take offense and get your dander up. Do what I tell
you. Go back in the kitchen and tell the colored boy to give
you a big pan of hot water. Tell Willie to give you a towel and
plenty of soap and wash yourself good. Then eat you some
milk toast and open up your suitcase and put you on a clean
shirt and a pair of britches that fit you. Then tomorrow you
can start doing whatever you're going to do and working
wherever you mean to work and get straightened out.'
'You know what you can do,' Blount said drunkenly. You can
just------'
'All right,' Biff said very quietly. 'No, I can't Now you just
behave yourself.'
Biff went to the end of the counter and returned with two
glasses of draught beer. The drunk picked up his glass so
clumsily that beer slopped down on his hands and messed the
counter. Biff sipped his portion with careful relish. He
regarded Blount steadily with half-closed eyes. Blount was not
a freak, although when you first saw him he gave you that
impression. It was like something was17
deformed about him—but when you looked at him closely
each part of him was normal and as it ought to be. Therefore if
this difference was not in the body it was probably in the
mind. He was like a man who had served a term in prison or
had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with
foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had
been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had
done something that others are not apt to do.
Biff cocked his head to one side and said, 'Where are you
from?'
Nowhere.'
Now, you have to be born somewhere. North Carolina —
Tennessee—Alabama—some place.'
Blount's eyes were dreamy and unfocused. 'Carolina,' he said.
'I can tell you've been around,' Biff hinted delicately.
But the drunk was not listening. He had turned from the
counter and was staring out at the dark, empty street. After a
moment he walked to the door with loose, uncertain steps.
'Adios,' he called back.
Biff was alone again and he gave the restaurant one of his
quick, thorough surveys. It was past one in the morning, and
there were only four or five customers in the room. The mute
still sat by himself at the middle table. Biff stared at him idly
and shook the few remaining drops of beer around in the
bottom of his glass. Then he finished his drink in one slow
swallow and went back to the newspaper spread out on the
counter.
This time he could not keep his mind on the words before him.
He remembered Mick. He wondered if he should have sold
her the pack of cigarettes and if it were really harmful for kids
to smoke. He thought of the way Mick narrowed her eyes and
pushed back the bangs of her hair with the palm of her hand.
He thought of her hoarse, boyish voice and of her habit of
hitching up her khaki shorts and swaggering like a cowboy in
the picture show. A feeling of tenderness came in him. He was
uneasy.
Restlessly Biff turned his attention to Singer. The mute sat
with his hands in his pockets and the half-finished glass of
beer before him had become warm and stagnant. He18would offer to treat Singer to a slug of whiskey before he left.
What he had said to Alice was true—he did like freaks. He
had a special friendly feeling for sick people and cripples.
Whenever somebody with a harelip or T.B. came into the
place he would set him up to beer. Or if the customer were a
hunchback or a bad cripple, then it would be whiskey on the
house. There was one fellow who had had his peter and his
left leg blown off in a boiler explosion, and whenever he came
to town there was a free pint waiting for him. And if Singer
were a drinking kind of man he could get liquor at half price
any time he wanted it. Biff nodded to himself. Then neatly he
folded his newspaper and put it under the counter along with
several others. At the end of the week he would take them all
back to the storeroom behind the kitchen, where he kept a
complete file of the evening newspapers that dated back
without a break for twenty-one years.
At two o'clock Blount entered the restaurant again. He
, brought in with him a tall Negro man carrying a black bag.
\The drunk tried to bring him up to the counter for a
drink, but the Negro left as soon as he realized why he had
been led inside. Biff recognized him as a Negro doctor who
had practiced in the town ever since he could remember.
He was related in some way to young Willie back in the
kitchen. Before he left Biff saw him turn on Blount with
a look of quivering hatred.
The drunk just stood there.
·Don't you know you can't bring no nigger in a place where
white men drink?' someone asked him.
Biff watched this happening from a distance. Blount was very
angry, and now it could easily be seen how drunk he was.
'I'm part nigger myself,' he called out as a challenge.
Biff watched him alertly and the place was quiet. With his
thick nostrils and the rolling whites of his eyes it looked a
little as though he might be telling the truth.
'I'm part nigger and wop and bohunk and chink. All of those.'
There was laughter.
'And I'm Dutch and Turkish and Japanese and American.' He
walked in zigzags around the table where the mute drank his
coffee. His voice was loud and cracked.19
Tm one who knows. I'm a stranger in a strange land.'
·Quiet down,' Biff said to him.
Blount paid no attention to anyone in the place except the
mute. They were both looking at each other. The mute's eyes
were cold and gentle as a cat's and all his body seemed to
listen. The drunk man was in a frenzy.
·You're the only one in this town who catches what I mean,'
Blount said. 'For two days now 1 been talking to you in my
mind because I know you understand the things I want to
mean.'
Some people in a booth were laughing because without
knowing it the drunk had picked out a deaf-mute to try to talk
with. Biff watched the two men with little darting glances and
listened attentively.
Blount sat down to the table and leaned over close to Singer.
There are those who know and those who don't know. And
for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who
knows. Thaf s the miracle of all time—the fact that these
millions know so much but don't know this. It's like in the
fifteenth century when everybody believed the world was flat
and only Columbus and a few other fellows knew the truth.
But it's different in that it took talent to figure that the earth is
round. While this truth is so obvious it's a miracle of all
history that people don't know. You savvy.'
Biff rested his elbows on the counter and looked at Blount
with curiosity. 'Know what?' he asked.
Don't listen to him,' Blount said. 'Don't mind that flat-footed,blue-jowled, nosy bastard. For you see, when us people who
know run into each other mat's an event. It almost never
happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses
that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's
happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of
us.'
'Masons?' Biff asked.
'Shut up, you! Else 111 snatch your arm off and beat you
black with it,' Blount bawled. He hunched over close to the
mute and his voice dropped to a drunken whisper. 'And how
come? Why has this miracle of ignorance endured? Because
of one thing. A conspiracy. A vast and insidious conspiracy. Obscurantism.'
The men in the booth were still laughing at the drunk20
who was trying to hold a conversation with the mute. Only
Biff was serious. He wanted to ascertain if the mute really
understood what was said to him. The fellow nodded
frequently and his face seemed contemplative. He was only
slow—that was all. Blount began to crack a few jokes along
with this talk about knowing. The mute never smiled until
several seconds after the funny remark had been made; then
when the talk was gloomy again the smile still hung on his
face a little too long. The fellow was downright uncanny.
People felt themselves watching him even before they knew
that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a
person think that he heard things nobody else had ever heard,that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did
not seem quite human.
Jake Blount leaned across the table and the words came out as
though a dam inside him had broken. Biff could not
understand him any more. Blount's tongue was so heavy with
drink and he talked at such a violent pace that the sounds were
all shaken up together. Biff wondered where he would go
when Alice turned him out of the place. And in the morning
she would do it, too—like she said.
Biff yawned wanly, patting his open mouth with his fingertips
until his jaw had relaxed. It was almost three o'clock, the most
stagnant hour in the day or night
The mute was patient. He had been listening to Blount for
almost an hour. Now he began to look at the clock
occasionally. Blount did not notice this and went on without a
pause. At last he stopped a to roll a cigarette, and then the
mute nodded his head in the direction of the clock, smiled in
that hidden way of his, and got up from the table. His hands
stayed stuffed in his pockets as always. He went out quickly.
Blount was so drunk that he did not know what had happened.
He had never even caught on to the fact that the mute made no
answers. He began to look around the place with his mouth
open and his eyes rolling and fuddled. A red vein stood out on
his forehead and he began to hit the table angrily with his
fists. His bout could not last much longer now.'Come on over,' Biff said kindly. Your friend has gone.'
21
The fellow was still hunting for Singer. He had never seemed
really drunk like that before. He had an ugly look.
'I have something for you over here and I want to speak with
you a minute,' Biff coaxed.
Blount pulled himself up from the table and walked with big,loose steps toward the street again.
Biff leaned against the wall. In and out—in and out. After all,it was none of his business. The room was very empty and
quiet. The minutes lingered. Wearily he let his head sag
forward. All motion seemed slowly to be leaving the room.
The counter, faces, the booths and tables, the radio in the
corner, whirring fans on the ceiling—all seemed to become
very faint and still.
He must have dozed. A hand was shaking his elbow. His wits
came back to him slowly and he looked up to see what was
wanted. Willie, the colored boy in the kitchen, stood before
him dressed in his cap and his long white apron. Willie
stammered because he was excited about whatever he was
trying to say.
'And so he were 1-1-lamming his fist against this here brick w-
w-wall.'
'What's that?'
'Right down one of them alleys two d-d-doors away.'
Biff straightened bis slumped shoulders and arranged his tie.
'What?'
'And they means to bring him in here and they liable to pile in
any minute------'
'Willie,' Biff said patiently. 'Start at the beginning and let me
get this straight.'
'It this here short white man with the m-m-mustache.'
·Mr. Blount. Yes>
'Well—I didn't see how it commenced. I were standing in the
back door when I heard this here commotion. Sound like a big
fight in the alley. So I r-r-run to see. And this here white man
had just gone hog wild. He were butting bis head against the
side of this brick wall and hitting with his fists. He were
cussing and fighting like I never seen a white man fight before. With just this here wall. He liable to broken his own
head the way he were carrying on. Then two white mens who
had heard the commotion come up and stand around and
look------'22
'So what happened?'
'Well—you know this here dumb gentleman—hands in
pockets—this here------'
'Mr. Singer.'
'And he come along and just stood looking around to see what
it were all about. And Mr. B-B-Blount seen him and
commenced to talk and holler. And then all of a sudden he
fallen down on the ground. Maybe he done really busted his
head open. A p-p-p-police come up and somebody done told
him Mr. Blount been staying here.'
Biff bowed his head and organized the story he had just heard
into a neat pattern. He rubbed his nose and thought for a
minute.
They liable to pile in here any minute.' Willie went to the
door and looked down the street 'Here they all come now.
They having to drag him.'
A dozen onlookers and a policeman all tried to crowd into the
restaurant. Outside a couple of whores stood looking in
through the front window. It was always funny how many
people could crowd in from nowhere when anything out of the
ordinary happened.
'No use creating any more disturbance than necessary,' Biff
said. He looked at the policeman who supported the drunk.
'The rest of them might as well clear out.'
The policeman put the drunk in a chair and hustled the little
crowd into the street again. Then he turned to Biff: 'Somebody
said he was staying here with you.'
'No. But he might as well be,' Biff said.
'Want me to take him with me?'
Biff considered. 'He won't get into any more trouble tonight.
Of course I can't be responsible—but I think this will calm
him down.'
'O.K. I'll drop back in again before I knock off.'
Biff, Singer, and Jake Blount were left alone. For the first
time since he had been brought in, Biff turned his attention to the drunk man. It seemed that Blount had hurt his jaw very
badly. He was slumped down on the table with his big hand
over his mouth, swaying backward and forward. There was a
gash in his head and the blood ran from his temple. His
knuckles were skinned raw, and he was so filthy that he
looked as if he had been pulled by the scruff of the neck from
a sewer. All the juice had
23
spurted out of him and he was completely collapsed. The mute
sat at the table across from him, taking it all in with his gray
eyes.
Then Biff saw that Blount had not hurt his jaw, but he was
holding his hand over his mouth because bis lips were
trembling. The tears began to roll down his grimy face. Now
and then he glanced sideways at Biff and Singer, angry that
they should see him cry. It was embarrassing. Biff shrugged
his shoulders at the mute and raised his eyebrows with a what-
to-do? expression. Singer cocked his head on one side.
Biff was in a quandary. Musingly he wondered just how he
should manage the situation. He was still trying to decide
when the mute turned over the menu and began to write.
you cannot think of any place for him to go he can go home
with me. First some soup and coffee would be good for him.
With relief Biff nodded vigorously.
On the table he placed three special plates of the last evening
meal, two bowls of soup, coffee, and dessert. But Blount
would not eat. He would not take his hand away from his
mouth, and it was as though his lips were some very secret
part of himself which was being exposed. His breath came in
ragged sobs and his big shoulders jerked nervously. Singer
pointed to one dish after the other, but Blount just sat with his
hand over his mouth and shook his head.
Biff enunciated slowly so that the mute could see. 'The
jitters------' he said conversationally.
The steam from the soup kept floating up into Blount's face,and after a little while he reached shakily for his spoon. He
drank the soup and ate part of his dessert. His thick, heavy lips
still trembled and he bowed his head far down over his plate.
Biff noted this. He was thinkng that in nearly every person there was some special physical part kept always guarded.
With the mute his hands. The kid Mick picked at the front of
her blouse to keep the cloth from rubbing the new, tender
nipples beginning to come out on her24
breast. With Alice it was her hair; she used never to let him
sleep with her when he rubbed oil in his scalp. And with
himself?
Lingeringly Biff turned the ring on his little finger. Anyway
he knew what it was not. Not. Any more. A sharp line cut into
his forehead. His hand in his pocket moved nervously toward
his genitals. He began whistling a song and got up from the
table. Funny to spot it in other people, though.
They helped Blount to his feet. He teetered weakly. He was
not crying any more, but he seemed to be brooding on
something shameful and sullen. He walked in the direction he
was led. Biff brought out the suitcase from behind the counter
and explained to the mute about it. Singer looked as though he
could not be surprised at anything.
Biff went with them to the entrance. 'Buck up and keep your
nose clean,' he said to Blount.
The black night sky was beginning to lighten and turn a deep
blue with the new morning. There were but a few weak,silvery stars. The street was empty, silent, almost cool. Singer
carried the suitcase with his left hand, and with his free hand
he supported Blount. He nodded goodbye to Biff and they
started off together down the sidewalk. Biff stood watching
them. After they had gone hah a block away only their black
forms showed in the blue darkness —the mute straight and
firm and the broad-shouldered, stumbling Blount holding on
to him. When he could see them no longer, Biff waited for a
moment and examined the sky. The vast depth of it fascinated
and oppressed him. He rubbed his forehead and went back
into the sharply lighted restaurant.
He stood behind the cash register, and his face contracted and
hardened as he tried to recall the things that had happened
during the night. He had the feeling that he wanted to explain
something to himself. He recalled the incidents in tedious
detail and was still puzzled.
The door opened and closed several times as a sudden spurt of customers began to come in. The night was over. Willie
stacked some of the chairs up on the tables and mopped at the
floor. He was ready to go home and was singing. Willie was
lazy. In the kitchen he was always stopping to play for a while
on the harmonica he carried
25
around with him. Now he mopped the floor with sleepy
strokes and hummed his lonesome Negro music steadily.
The place was still not crowded—it was the hour when men
who have been up all night meet those who are freshly
wakened and ready to start a new day. The sleepy waitress
was serving both beer and coffee. There was no noise or
conversation, for each person seemed to be alone. The mutual
distrust between the men who were just awakened and those
who were ending a long night gave everyone a feeling of
estrangement.
The bank building across the street was very pale in the dawn.
Then gradually its white brick walls grew more distinct. When
at last the first shafts of the rising sun began to brighten the
street, Biff gave the place one last survey and went upstairs.
Noisily he rattled the doorknob as he entered so that Alice
would be disturbed. 'Motherogod!' he said. 'What a night!'
Alice awoke with caution. She lay on the rumpled bed like a
sulky cat and stretched herself. The room was drab in the
fresh, hot morning sun, and a pair of silk stockings hung limp
and withered from the cord of the window-shade.
'Is that drunk fool still hanging around downstairs?' she
demanded.
Biff took off his shirt and examined the collar to see if it were
clean enough to be worn again. 'Go down and see for yourself.
I told you nobody will hinder you from kicking him out.'
Sleepily Alice reached down and picked up a Bible, the blank
side of a menu, and a Sunday-School book from the floor
beside the bed. She rustled through the tissue pages of the
Bible until she reached a certain passage and began reading,pronouncing the words aloud with painful concentration. It
was Sunday, and she was preparing the weekly lesson for her
class of boys in the Junior Department of her church. 'Now as
he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.
And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make
you to become fishers of men. And straightway they forsook
their nets, and followed him.'26
Biff went into the bathroom to wash himself. The silky
murmuring continued as Alice studied aloud. He listened. \ ..
and in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He
went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
And Simon and they that were with Him followed after Him.
And when they had found Him, they said unto Him, All men
seek for Thee. '
She had finished. Biff let the words revolve again gently
inside him. He tried to separate the actual words from the
sound of Alice's voice as she had spoken them. He wanted to
remember the passage as his mother used to read it when he
was a boy. With nostalgia he glanced down at the wedding
ring on his fifth finger that had once been hers. He wondered
again how she would have felt about bis giving up church and
religion.
'The lesson for today is about the gathering of the disciples,'
Alice said to herself in preparation. 'And the text is, All men
seek for Thee. '
Abruptly Biff roused himself from meditation and turned on
the water spigot at full force. He stripped off his undervest
and began to wash himself. Always he was scrupulously clean
from the belt upward. Every morning he soaped his chest and
arms and neck and feet—and about twice during the season he
got into the bathtub and cleaned all of his parts.
Biff stood by the bed, waiting impatiently for Alice to get up.
From the window he saw that the day would be windless and
burning hot. Alice had finished reading the lesson. She still
lay lazily across the bed, although she knew that he was
waiting. A calm, sullen anger rose in him. He chuckled
ironically. Then he said with bitterness: 'If you like I can sit
and read the paper awhile. But I wish you would let me sleep
now.'
Alice began dressing herself and Biff made up the bed. Deftly
he reversed the sheets in all possible ways, putting the top one
on the bottom, and turning them over and upside down. When the bed was smoothly made he waited until Alice had left the
room before he slipped off his trousers and crawled inside.
His feet jutted out from beneath the cover and his wiry-haired
chest was very dark against the pillow. He was glad he had not
told Alice about what had happened to the drunk. He had
wanted to talk
27
to somebody about it, because maybe if he told all the facts
out loud he could put his finger on the thing that puzzled him.
The poor son-of-a-bitch talking and talking and not ever
getting anybody to understand what he meant. Not knowing
himself, most likely. And the way he gravitated around the
deaf-mute and picked him out and tried to make him a free
present of everything in him.
Why?
Because in some men it is in them to give up everything
personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons—throw
it to some human being or some human idea. They have to. In
some men it is in them—The text is 'All men seek for Thee.'
Maybe that was why—maybe—He was a Chinaman, the
fellow had said. And a nigger and a wop and a Jew. And if he
believed it hard enough maybe it was so. Every person and
every thing he said he was------
Biff stretched both of his arms outward and crossed his naked
feet. His face was older in the morning light, with the closed,shrunken eyelids and the heavy, iron-like beard on his cheeks
and jaw. Gradually his mouth softened and relaxed. The hard,yellow rays of the sun came in through the window so that the
room was hot and bright. Biff turned wearily and covered his
eyes with his hands. And he was nobody but—Bartholomew
—old Biff with two fists and a quick tongue—Mister Brannon
—by himself.
J. HE sun woke Mick early, although she had stayed out mighty
late the night before. It was too hot even to drink coffee for
breakfast, so she had ice water with syrup in it and cold
biscuits. She messed around the kitchen for a while and then
went out on the front porch to read the funnies. She had
thought maybe Mister Singer would be reading the paper on
the porch like he did most Sunday mornings. But Mister Singer was not there, and later on her Dad said he came in
very late the night before and had company in his room. She
waited for Mister Singer a long time. All the other boarders
came down except him. Fi-28
29
nally she went back in the kitchen and took Ralph out of his
high chair and put a clean dress on him and wiped off his face.
Then when Bubber got home from Sunday School she was
ready to take the kids out. She let Bubber ride in the wagon
with Ralph because he was barefooted and the hot sidewalk
burned his feet. She pulled the wagon for about eight blocks
until they came to the big, new house that was being built. The
ladder was still propped against the edge of the roof, and she
screwed up nerve and began to climb.
'You mind Ralph,' she called back to Bubber. 'Mind the gnats
don't sit on his eyelids.'
Five minutes later Mick stood up and held herself very
straight. She spread out her arms like wings. This was the
place where everybody wanted to stand. The very top. But not
many kids could do it. Most of them were scared, for if you
lost your grip and rolled off the edge it would kill you. All
around were the roofs of other houses and the green tops of
trees. On the other side of town were the church steeples and
the smokestacks from the mills. The sky was bright blue and
hot as fire. The sun made everything on the ground either
dizzy white or black.
She wanted to sing. All the songs she knew pushed up toward
her throat, but there was no sound. One big boy who had got
to the highest part of the roof last week let out a yell and then
started hollering out a speech he had learned at High School
—'Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your ears!' There
was something about getting to the very top that gave you a
wild feeling and made you want to yell or sing or raise up
your arms and fly.
She felt the soles of her tennis shoes slipping, and eased
herself down so that she straddled the peak of the roof. The
house was almost finished. It would be one of the largest
buildings in the neighborhood—two stories, with very high ceilings and the steepest roof of any house she had ever seen.
But soon the work would all be finished. The carpenters
would leave and the kids would have to find another place to
play.
She was by herself. No one was around and it was quiet and
she could think for a while. She took from the pocket of her
shorts the package of cigarettes she had bought the night
before. She breathed in the smoke slowly. The ciga-
rette gave her a drunk feeling so that her head seemed heavy
and loose on her shoulders, but she had to finish it.
M.K.—That was what she would have written on everything
when she was seventeen years old and very famous. She
would ride back home in a red-and-white Packard automobile
with her initials on the doors. She would have M.K. written in
red on her handkerchiefs and underclothes. Maybe she would
be a great inventor. She would invent little tiny radios the size
of a green pea that people could carry around and stick in their
ears. Also flying machines people could fasten on their backs
like knapsacks and go zipping all over the world. After that
she would be the first one to make a large t ......
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