"That"s when you should have started to pray," she said. "What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time?"
"Turn to the right, it was a wall," The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain"t recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come."
"Maybe they put you in by mistake," the old lady said vaguely.
"Nome," he said. "It wasn"t no mistake. They had the papers on me."
"You must have stolen something," she said.
The Misfit sneered slightly. "n.o.body had nothing I wanted," he said. "It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself."
"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you."
"That"s right," The Misfit said.
"Well then, why don"t you pray?" she asked trembling with delight suddenly.
"I don"t want no hep," he said. "
"I"m doing all right by myself."
Bobby Lee and Hiram came ambling back from the woods. Bobby Lee was dragging a yellow shirt with bright blue parrots in it.
"Thaw me that shirt, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. The shirt came flying at him and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The grandmother couldn"t name what the shirt reminded her of. "No, lady," The Misfit said while he was b.u.t.toning it up, "I found out the crime don"t matter. You can do one thing or you can do an another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you"re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it."
The children"s mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn"t get her breath. "Lady," he asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?"
"Yes, thank you," the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and she was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep that lady up, Hiram," The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch, "and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that little girl"s hand."
"I don"t want to hold hands with him," June Star said. "He reminds me of a pig."
The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram and her mother.
Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the skv nor any sun.There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus, Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.
"Yes"m," The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus thown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn"t committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course" he said, "they never shown me my papers. That"s why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you"ll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you"ll have something to prove you ain"t been treated right."I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can"t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."
There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain"t punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You"ve got good blood! I know you wouldn"t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray!Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I"ll give you all the money I"ve got."
"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."
There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!" as if her heart would break.
"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead." The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn"t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it"s nothing for you to do but throwaway everything and follow Him, and if He didn"t, then it"s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can-by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.
"Maybe He didn"t raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her.
"I wasn"t there so I can"t say He didn"t," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain"t right I wasn"t there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn"t be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother"s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man"s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you"re one of my babies. You"re one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his gla.s.ses and began to clean them.
Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child"s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.
Without his gla.s.ses, The Misfit"s eyes were red rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and throw her where you thrown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.
"She was a talker, wasn"t she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.
"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.
"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It"s no real pleasure in life."
A Late Encounter with the Enemy (1953)
GENERAL SASH was a hundred and four years old. He lived with his granddaughter, Sally Poker Sash, who was sixty-two years old and who prayed every night on her knees that he would live until her graduation from college. The General didn"t give two slaps for her graduation but he never doubted he would live for it. Living had got to be such a habit with him that he couldn"t conceive of any other condition. A graduation exercise was not exactly his idea of a good time, even if, as she said, he would be expected to sit on the stage in his uniform. She said there would be a long procession of teachers and students in their robes but that there wouldn"t be anything to equal him in his uniform. He knew this well enough without her telling him, and as for the d.a.m.n procession, it could march to h.e.l.l and back and not cause him a quiver. He liked parades with floats full of Miss Americas and Miss Daytona Beaches and Miss Queen Cotton Products. He didn"t have any use for processions and a procession full of schoolteachers as about as deadly as the River Styx to his way of thinking. However, he was willing to sit on the stage in his uniform so that they could see him.
Sally Poker was not as sure as he was that he would live until her graduation. There had not been any perceptible change in him for the last five years, but she had the sense that she might be cheated out of her triumph because she so often was. She had been going to summer school every year for the past twenty because when she started teaching, there were no such things as degrees. In those times, she said, everything was normal but nothing had been normal since she was sixteen, and for the past twenty summers, when she should have been resting, she had had to take a trunk in the burning heat to the state teacher"s college; and though when she returned in the fall, she always taught in the exact way she had been taught not to teach, this was a mild revenge that didn"t satisfy her sense of justice. She wanted the General at her graduation because she wanted to show what she stood for, or, as she said, "what all was behind her," and was not behind them. This them was not anybody in particular. It was just all the upstarts who had turned the world on its head and unsettled the ways of decent living.
She meant to stand on that platform in August with the General sitting in his wheel chair on the stage behind her and she meant to hold her head very high as if she were saying, "See him! See him! My kin, all you upstarts! Glorious upright old man standing for the old traditions! Dignity! Honor! Courage! See him!" One night in her sleep she screamed, "See him! See him!" and turned her head and found him sitting in his wheel chair behind her with a terrible expression on his face and with all his clothes off except the general"s hat and she had waked up and had not dared to go back to sleep again that night.
For his part, the General would not have consented even to attend her graduation if she had not promised to see to it that he sit on the stage. He liked to sit on any stage. He considered that he was still a very handsome man. When he had been able to stand up, he had measured five feet four inches of pure game c.o.c.k. He had white hair that reached to his shoulders behind and he would not wear teeth because he thought his profile was more striking without them. When he put on his full-dress general"s uniform, he knew well enough that there was nothing to match him anywhere.
This was not the same uniform he had worn in the War between the States. He had not actually been a general in that war. He had probably been a foot soldier; he didn"t remember what he had been; in fact, he didn"t remember that war at all. It was like his feet, which hung down now shriveled at the very end of him, without feeling, covered with a blue-gray afghan that Sally Poker had crocheted when she was a little girl. He didn"t remember the Spanish-American War in which he had lost a son; he didn"t even remember the son. He didn"t have any use for history because he never expected to meet it again. To his mind, history was connected with processions and life with parades and he liked parades.People were always asking him if he remembered this or thata dreary black procession of questions about the past. There was only one event in the past that had any significance for him and that he cared to talk about: that was twelve years ago when he had received the general"s uniform and had been in the premiere.
"I was in that preemy they had in Atlanta," he would tell visitors sitting on his front porch. "Surrounded by beautiful guls. It wasn"t a thing local about it. It was nothing local about it. Listen here. It was a nashnul event and they had me in it-up onto the stage. There was no bob-tails at it. Every person at it had paid ten dollars to get in and had to wear his tuxseeder. I was in this uniform. A beautiful gul presented me with it that afternoon in a hotel room."
"It was in a suite in the hotel and I was in it too, Papa," Sally Poker would say, winking at the visitors. "You weren"t alone with any young lady in a hotel room."
"Was, I"d a known what to do," the old General would say with a sharp look and the visitors would scream with laughter."This was a Hollywood, California, gul," he"d continue. "She was from Hollywood, California, and didn"t have any part in the pitcher.Out there they have so many beautiful guls that they don"t need that they call them a extra and they don"t use them for nothing but presenting people with things and having their pitchers taken.They took my pitcher with her. No, it was two of them. One on either side and me in the middle with my arms around each of them"s waist and their waist ain"t any bigger than a half a dollar."
Sally Poker would interrupt again. "It was Mr. Govisky that gave you the uniform, Papa, and he gave me the most exquisite corsage. Really, I wish you could have seen it. It was made with gladiola petals taken off and painted gold and put back together to look like a rose. It was exquisite. I wish you could have seen it, it was..."
"It was as big as her head," the General would snarl. "I was tellin it. They gimme this uniform and they gimme this seward and they say, ""Now General, we don"t want you to start a war on us.All we want you to do is march right up on that stage when you"re innerduced tonight and answer a few questions. Think you can do that?""Think I can do it!" I say. "Listen here. I was doing things before you were born," and they hollered."
"He was the hit of the show," Sally Poker would say, but she didn"t much like to remember the premiere on account of what had happened to her feet at it. She had bought a new dress for the occasiona long black crepe dinner dress with a rhinestone buckle and a bolero-and a pair of silver slippers to wear with it, because she was supposed to go up on the stage with him to keep him from falling. Everything was arranged for them. A real limousine came at ten minutes to eight and took them to the theater. It drew up under the marquee at exactly the right time, after the big stars and the director and the author and the governor and the mayor and some less important stars. The police kept traffic from jamming and there were ropes to keep the people off who couldn"t go. All the people who couldn"t go watched them step out of the limousine into the lights. Then they walked down the red and gold foyer and an usherette in a Confederate cap and little short skirt conducted them to their special seats. The audience was already there and a group of UDC members began to clap when they saw the General in his uniform and that started everybody to clap. A few more celebrities came after them and then the doors closed and the lights went down.
A young man with blond wavy hair who said he represented the motion-picture industry came out and began to introduce everybody and each one who was introduced walked up on the stage and said how really happy he was to be here for this great event. The General and his granddaughter were introduced sixteenth on the program.He was introduced as General Tennessee Flintrock Sash of the Confederacy, though Sally Poker had told Mr. Govisky that his name was George Poker Sash and that he had only been a major. She helped him up from his seat but her heart was beating so fast she didn"t know whether she"d make it herself.
The old man walked up the aisle slowly with his fierce white head high and his hat held over his heart. The orchestra began to play the Confederate Battle Hymn very softly and the UOC members rose as a group and did not sit down again until the General was on the stage. When he reached the center of the stage with Sally Poker just behind him guiding his elbow, the orchestra burst out in a loud rendition of the Battle Hymn and the old man, with real stage presence, gave a vigorous trembling salute and stood at attention until the last blast had died away. Two of the usherettes in Confederate caps and short skirts held a Confederate and a Union flag crossed behind them.
The General stood in the exact center of the spotlight and it caught a weird moon-shaped slice of Sally Poker-the corsage, the rhinestone buckle and one hand clenched around a white glove and handkerchief. The young man with the blond wavy hair inserted himself into the circle of light and said he was really happy to have here tonight for this great event, one, he said, who had fought and bled in the battles they would soon see daringly reacted on the screen, and "Tell me, General," he asked, "how old are you?"
"Niiiiiinnttty-two!" the General screamed.
The young man looked as if this were just about the most impressive thing that had been said all evening. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "let"s give the General the biggest hand we"ve got!" and there was applause immediately and the young man indicated to Sally Poker with a motion of his thumb that she could take the old man back to his seat now so that the next person could be introduced; but the General had not finished. He stood immovable in the exact center of the spotlight, his neck thrust forward, his mouth slightly open, and his voracious gray eyes drinking in the glare and the applause. He elbowed his granddaughter roughly away. "How I keep so young," he screeched, "I kiss all the pretty guls!"
This was met with a great din of spontaneous applause and it was at just that instant that Sally Poker looked down at her feet and discovered that in the excitement of getting ready she had forgotten to change her shoes: two brown Girl Scout oxfords protruded from the bottom of her dress. She gave the General a yank and almost ran with him off the stage. He was very angry that he had not got to say how glad he was to be here for this event and on the way back to his seat, he kept saying as loud as he could, "I"m glad to be here at this preemy with all these beautiful guls!" but there was another celebrity going up the other aisle and n.o.body paid any attention to him. He slept through the picture, muttering fiercely every now and then in his sleep.
Since then, his life had not been very interesting. His feet were completely dead now, his knees worked like old hinges, his kidneys functioned when they would, but his heart persisted doggedly to beat. The past and the future were the same thing to him, one forgotten and the other not remembered; he had no more notion of dying than a cat. Every year on Confederate Memorial Day, he was bundled up and lent to the Capitol City Museum where he was displayed from one to four in a musty room full of old photographs, old uniforms, old artillery, and historic doc.u.ments. All these were carefully preserved in gla.s.s cases so that children would not put their hands on them. He wore his general"s uniform from the premiere and sat, with a fixed scowl, inside a small roped area. There was nothing about him to indicate that he was alive except an occasional movement in his milky gray eyes, but once when a bold child touched his sword, his arm shot forward and slapped the hand off in an instant. In the spring when the old homes were opened for pilgrimages, he was invited to wear his uniform and sit in some conspicuous spot and lend atmosphere to the scene. Some of these times he only snarled at the visitors but sometimes he told about the premiere and the beautiful girls.
If he had died before Sally Poker"s graduation, she thought she would have died herself. At the beginning of the summer term, even before she knew if she would pa.s.s, she told the Dean that her grandfather, General Tennessee Flintrock Sash of the Confederacy, would attend her graduation and that he was a hundred and four years old and that his mind was still clear as a bell. Distinguished visitors were always welcome and could sit on the stage and be introduced. She made arrangements with her nephew, John Wesley Poker Sash, a Boy Scout, to come wheel the General"s chair.She thought how sweet it would be to see the old man in his courageous gray and the young boy in his clean khaki-the old and the new, she thought appropriately-they would be behind her on the stage when she received her degree.
Everything went almost exactly as she had planned. In the summer while she was away at school, the General stayed with other relatives and they brought him and John Wesley, the Boy Scout, down to the graduation. A reporter came to the hotel where they stayed and took the General"s picture with Sally Poker on one side of him and John Wesley on the other. The General, who had had his picture taken with beautiful girls, didn"t think much of this.He had forgotten precisely what kind of event this was he was going to attend but he remembered that he was to wear his uniform and carry the sword.
On the morning of the graduation, Sally Poker had to line up in the academic procession with the B. S."s in Elementary Education and she couldn"t see to getting him on the stage herself, but John Wesley, a fat blond boy of ten with an executive expression, guaranteed to take care of everything. She came in her academic gown to the hotel and dressed the old man in his uniform. He was as frail as a dried spider. "Aren"t you just thrilled, Papa?" she asked. "I"m just thrilled to death!"
"Put the soward acrost my lap, damm you," the old man said, "where it"ll shine."
She put it there and then stood back looking at him. "You look just grand," she said.
"G.o.d damm it," the old man said in a slow monotonous certain tone as if he were saying it to the beating ot his heart. "G.o.d damm every G.o.d dam thing to h.e.l.l."
"Now, now," she said and left happily to join the procession.
The graduates were lined up behind the Science building and she found her place just as the line started to move. She had not slept much the night before and when she had, she had dreamed of the exercises, murmuring, "See him, see him?" in her sleep but waking up every time just before she turned her head to look at him behind her. The graduates had to walk three blocks in the hot sun in their black wool robes and as she plodded stolidly along she thought that if anyone considered this academic procession something impressive to behold, they need only wait until they saw that old General in his courageous gray and that clean young Boy Scout stoutly wheeling his chair across the stage with the sunlight catching the sword. She imagined that John Wesley had the old man ready now behind the stage.
The black procession wound its way up the two blocks and started on the main walk leading to the auditorium. The visitors stood on the gra.s.s, picking out their graduates. Men were pushing back their hats and wiping their foreheads and women were lifting their dresses slightly from the shoulders to keep them from sticking to their backs. The graduates in their heavy robes looked as if the last beads of ignorance were being sweated out of them. The sun blazed off the fenders of automobiles and beat from the columns of the buildings and pulled the eye from one spot of glare to another.It pulled Sally Poker"s toward the big red Coca-Cola machine that had been set up by the side of the auditorium. Here she saw the General parked, scowling and hatless in his chair in the blazing sun while John Wesley, his blouse loose behind, his hip and cheek pressed to the red machine, was drinking a Coca-Cola. She broke from the line and galloped to them and s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottle away.She shook the boy and thrust in his blouse and put the hat on the old man"s head. "Now get him in there!" she said, pointing one rigid finger to the side door of the building.
For his part the General felt as if there were a little hole beginning to widen in the top of his head. The boy wheeled him rapidly down a walk and up a ramp and into a building and b.u.mped him over the stage entrance and into position where he had been told and the General glared in front of him at heads that all seemed to flow together and eyes that moved from one face to another. Several figures in black robes came and picked up his hand and shook it. A black procession was flowing up each aisle and forming to stately music in a pool in front of him. The music seemed to be entering his head through the little hole and he thought for a second that the procession would try to enter it too.
He didn"t know what procession this was but there was something familiar about it. It must be familiar to him since it had come to meet him, but he didn"t like a black procession. Any procession that came to meet him, he thought irritably, ought to have floats with beautiful guls on them like the floats before the preemy. It must be something connected with history like they were always having. He had no use for any of it. What happened then wasn"t anything to a man living now and he was living now.
When all the procession had flowed into the black pool, a black figure began orating in front of it. The figure was telling something about history and the General made up his mind he wouldn"t listen, but the words kept seeping in through the little hole in his head.He heard his own name mentioned and his chair was shuttled forward roughly and the Boy Scout took a big bow. They called his name and the fat brat bowed. G.o.ddam you, the old man tried to say, get out of my way, I can stand up-but he was jerked back again before he could get up and take the bow. He supposed the noise they made was for him. If he was over, he didn"t intend to listen to any more of it. If it hadn"t been for the little hole in the top of his head, none of the words would have got to him. He thought of putting his finger up there into the hole to block them but the hole was a little wider than his finger and it felt as if it were getting deeper.
Another black robe had taken the place of the first one and was talking now and he heard his name mentioned again but they were not talking about him, they were still talking about history. "If we forget our past," the speaker was saying, "we won"t remember our future and it will be as well for we wont have one." The General heard some of these words gradually. He had forgotten history and he didn"t intend to remember it again. He had forgotten the name and face of his wife and the names and faces of his children or even if he had a wife and children, and he had forgotten the names of places and the places themselves and what had happened at them.
He was considerably irked by the hole in his head. He had not expected to have a hole in his head at this event. It was the slow black music that had put it there and though most of the music had stopped outside, there was still a little of it in the hole, going deeper and moving around in his thoughts, letting the words he heard into the dark places of his brain. He heard the words, Chickamauga, Shiloh, Johnston, Lee, and he knew he was inspiring all these words that meant nothing to him. He wondered if he had been a general at Chickamauga or at Lee. Then he tried to see himself and the horse mounted in the middle of a float full of beautiful girls, being driven slowly through downtown Atlanta.Instead, the old words began to stir in his head as if they were trying to wrench themselves out of place and come to life.
The speaker was through with that war and had gone on to the next one and now he was approaching another and all his words, like the black procession, were vaguely familiar and irritating.There was a long finger of music in the General"s head, probing various Spots that were words, letting in a little light on the words and helping them to live. The words began to come toward him and he said, Dammit! I ain"t going to have it! and he started edging backwards to get out of the way. Then he saw the figure in the black robe sit down and there was a noise and the black pool in front of him began to rumble and to How toward him from either side to the black slow music, and he said, Stop darmmit! I can"t do but one thing at a time! He couldn"t protect himself from the words and attend to the procession too and the words were coming at him fast. He felt that he was running backwards and the words were coming at him like musket fire, just escaping him but getting nearer and nearer. He turned around and began to run as fast as he could but he found himself running toward the words. He was running into a regular volley of them and meeting them with quick curses. As the music swelled toward him, the entire past opened up on him out of nowhere and he felt his body riddled in a hundred places with sharp stabs of pain and he fell down, returning a curse for every hit. He saw his wife"s narrow face looking at him critically through her round gold-rimmed gla.s.ses; he saw one of his squinting baldheaded sons; and his mother ran toward him with an anxious look; then a succession of places-Chicka_ mauga, Shiloh, Marthasville-rushed at him as if the past were the only future now and he had to endure it. Then suddenly he saw that the black procession was almost on him. He recognized it, for it had been d.o.g.g.i.ng all his days. He made such a desperate effort to see over it and find out what comes after the past that his hand clenched the sword until the blade touched bone.
The graduates were crossing the stage in a long file to receive their scrolls and shake the president"s hand. As Sally Poker, who was near the end, crossed, she glanced at the General and saw him sitting fixed and fierce, his eyes wide open, and she turned her head forward again and held it a perceptible degree higher and received her scroll. Once it was all over and she was out of the auditorium in the sun again, she located her kin and they waited together on a bench in the shade for John Wesley to wheel the old man out. That crafty scout had b.u.mped him out the back way and rolled him at high speed down a flagstone path and was waiting now, with the corpse, in the long line at the Coca-Cola machine.
The Life You Save May Be Your Own (1953)
THE old woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch when Mr. Shiftlet came up their road for the first time. The old woman slid to the edge of her chair and leaned forward, shading her eyes from the piercing sunset with her hand. The daughter could not see far in front of her and continued to play with her fingers. Although the old woman lived in this desolate spot with only her daughter and she had never seen Mr. Shiftlet before, she could tell, even from a distance, that he was a tramp and no one to be afraid of. His left coat sleeve was folded up to show there was only half an arm in it and his gaunt figure listed slightly to the side as if the breeze were pushing him. He had on a black town suit and a brown felt hat that was turned up ill the front and down in the back and he carried a till tool box by a handle. He came on, at an amble, up her road, his bee turned toward the sun which appeared to be balancing itself on the peak of a small mountain.
The old woman didn"t change her position until he was almost into her yard; then she rose with one hand fisted on her hip. The daughter, a large girl in a short blue organdy dress, saw him all at once and jumped up and began to stamp and point and make excited speechless sounds.
Mr. Shiftlet stopped just inside the yard and set his box on the ground and tipped his hat at her as if she were not in the least afflicted; then he turned toward the old woman and swung the hat all the way off. He had long black slick hair that hung flat from a part in the middle to beyond the tips of his ears on either side.His face descended in forehead for more than half its length and ended suddenly with his features just balanced over a jutting steeltrap jaw. He seemed to be a young man but he had a look of composed dissatisfaction as if he understood life thoroughly.
"Good evening," the old woman said. She was about the size of a cedar fence post and she had a man"s gray hat pulled down low over her head.
The tramp stood looking at her and didn"t answer. He turned his back and faced the sunset. He swung both his whole and his short arm up slowly so that they indicated an expanse of sky and his figure formed a crooked cross. The old woman watched him with her arms folded across her chest as if she were the owner of the sun, and the daughter watched, her head thrust forward and her fat helpless hands hanging at the wrists. She had long pink-gold hair and eyes as blue as a peac.o.c.k"s neck.
He held the pose for almost fifty seconds and then he picked up his box and came on to the porch and dropped down on the bottom step. "Lady," he said in a firm nasal voice, "I"d give a fortune to live where I could see me a sun do that every evening."
"Does it every evening," the old woman said and sat back down.The daughter sat down too and watched him with a cautious sly look as if he were a bird that had come up very close. He leaned to one side, rooting in his pants pocket, and in a second he brought out a package of chewing gum and offered her a piece. She took it and un peeled it and began to chew without taking her eyes off him.He offered the old woman a piece but she only raised her upper lip to indicate she had no teeth.
Mr. Shiftlet"s pale sharp glance had already pa.s.sed over everything in the yard-the pump near the corner of the house and the big fig tree that three or four chickens were preparing to roost in-and had moved to a shed where he saw the square rusted back of an automobile. "You ladies drive?" he asked.
"That car ain"t run in fifteen year," the old woman said. "The day my husband died, it quit running."
"Nothing is like it used to be, lady," he said. "The world is almost rotten."
"That"s right," the old woman said. "You from around here?"
"Name Tom T. Shiftlet," he murmured, looking at the tires.
"I"m pleased to meet you," the old woman said. "Name Lucynell Crater and daughter Lucynell Crater. What you doing around here, Mr. Shiftlet?"
He judged the car to be about a 1928 or "29 Ford. "Lady," he said, and turned and gave her his full attention, "lemme tell you something.There"s one of these doctors in Atlanta that"s taken a knife and cut the human heart-the human heart," he repeated, leaning forward, "out of a man"s chest and held it in his hand," and he held his hand out, palm up, as if it were slightly weighted with the human heart, "and studied it like it was a day-old chicken, and lady," he said, allowing a long significant pause in which his head slid forward and his clay-colored eyes brightened, "he don"t know no more about it than you or me."
"That"s right," the old woman said.
"Why, if he was to take that knife and cut into every corner of it, he still wouldn"t know no more than you or me. What you want to bet?"
"Nothing," the old woman said wisely. "Where you come from, Mr. ShiftIet?"
He didn"t answer. He reached into his pocket and brought out a sack of tobacco and a package of cigarette papers and rolled himself a cigarette, expertly with one hand, and attached it in a hanging position to his upper lip. Then he took a box of wooden matches from his pocket and struck one on his shoe. He held the burning match as if he were studying the mystery of flame while it traveled dangerously toward his skin. The daughter began to make loud noises and to point to his hand and shake her finger at him, but when the flame was just before touching him, he leaned down with his hand cupped over it as if he were going to set fire to his nose and lit the cigarette.
He flipped away the dead match and blew a stream of gray into the evening. A sly look came over his face. "Lady," he said, "nowadays, people"ll do anything anyways. I can tell you my name is Tom T. ShiftIet and I come from Tarwater, Tennessee, but you never have seen me before: how you know I ain"t lying? How you know my name ain"t Aaron Sparks, lady, and I come from Singleberry, Georgia, or how you know it"s not George Speeds and I come from Lucy, Alabama, or how you know I ain"t Thompson Bright from Toolafalls, Mississippi?"
"I don"t know nothing about you," the old woman muttered, irked.
"Lady," he said, "people don"t care how they lie. Maybe the best I can tell you is, I"m a man; but listen lady," he said and paused and made his tone more ominous still, "what is a man?"
The old woman began to gum a seed. "What you carry in that tin box, Mr. ShiftIet?" she asked.
"Tools," he said, "put back.I"m a carpenter."
"Well, if you come out here to work, I"ll be able to feed you and give you a place to sleep but I can"t pay. I"ll tell you that before you begin," she said.
There was no answer at once and no particular expression on his face. He leaned back against the two-by-four that helped support the porch roof. "Lady," he said slowly, "there"s some men that some things mean more to them than money." The old woman rocked without comment and the daughter watched the trigger that moved up and down in his neck. He told the old woman then that all most people were interested in was money, but he asked what a man was made for. He asked her if a man was made for money, or what. He asked her what she thought she was made for but she didn"t answer, she only sat rocking and wondered if a one-armed man could put a new roof on her garden house. He asked a lot of questions that she didn"t answer. He told her that he was twenty-eight years old and had lived a varied life. He had been a gospel singer, a foreman on the railroad, an a.s.sistant in an undertaking parlor, and he come over the radio for three months with Uncle Roy and his Red Creek Wranglers. He said he had fought and bled in the Arm Service of his country and visited every foreign land and that everywhere he had seen people that didn"t care if they did a thing one way or another.He said he hadn"t been raised thataway.
A fat yellow moon appeared in the branches of the fig tree as if it were going to roost there with the chickens. He said that a man had to escape to the country to see the world whole and that he wished he lived in a desolate place like this where he could see the sun go down every evening like G.o.d made it to do.
"Are you married or are you single?" the old woman asked.
There was a long silence. "Lady," he asked finally, "where would you find you an innocent woman today? I wouldn"t have any of this trash I could just pick up."