In the morning at breakfast, he did not eat and did not sit down. He stood beside his chair and delivered his ultimatum while his mother sipped her coffee as if she were both alone in the room and in great pain. "I have stood this," he said, "for as long as I am able. Since I see plainly thaty ou care nothing about me, about my peace or comfort or working conditions, I am about to take the only step open to me. I will give you one more day. If you bring the girl back into this house this afternoon, I leave. You can choose-her or me." He had more to say but at that point his voice cracked and he left.
At ten o"clock his mother and Sarah Ham left the house.
At four he heard the car wheels on the gravel and rushed to the window. As the car stopped, the dog stood up, alert, shaking.
He seemed unable to take the first step that would set him walking to the closet in the hall to look for the suitcase.He was like a man handed a knife and told to operate on himself if he wished to live. His huge hands clenched helplessly.His expression was a turmoil of indecision and outrage.His pale blue eyes seemed to sweat in his broiling face.He closed them for a moment and on the back of his lids, his father"s image leered at him. Idiot! the old man hissed, idiot! The criminal s.l.u.t stole your gun! See the sheriff! See the sheriff!
It was a moment before Thomas opened his eyes. He seemed newly stunned. He stood where he was for at least three minutes, then he turned slowly like a large vessel reversing its direction and faced the door. He stood there a moment longer, then he left, his face set to see the ordeal through.
He did not know where he would find the sheriff. The man made his own rules and kept his own hours. Thomas stopped first at the jail where his office was, but he was not in it. He went to the courthouse and was told by a clerk that the sheriff had gone to barbershop across the street. "Yonder"s the deppity," the clerk said and pointed out the window to the large figure of a man in a checkered shirt, who was leaning against the side of a police car, looking into s.p.a.ce.
"It has to be the sheriff," Thomas said and left for the barbershop. As little as he wanted anything to do with the sheriff, he realized that the man was at least intelligent and not simply a mound of sweating flesh.
The barber said the sheriff had just left. Thomas started back to the courthouse and as he stepped on to the sidewalk from the street, he saw a lean, slightly stooped figure gesticulating angrily at the deputy.
Thomas approached with an aggressiveness brought on by nervous agitation. He stopped abruptly three feet away and said in an over-loud voice, "Can I have a word with you?" without adding the sheriff"s name, which was Farebrother.
Farebrother turned his sharp creased face just enough to take Thomas in, and the deputy did likewise, but neither spoke. The sheriff removed a very small piece of cigarette from his lip and dropped it at his feet. "I told you what to do," he said to the deputy. Then he moved off with a slight nod that indicated Thomas could follow him if he wanted to see him.The deputy slunk around the front of the police car and got inside.
Farebrother, with Thomas following, headed across the courthouse square and stopped beneath a tree that shaded a quarter of the front lawn. He waited, leaning slightly forward, and lit another cigarette.
Thomas began to blurt out his business. As he had not had time to prepare his words, he was barely coherent. By repeating the same thing over several times, he managed at length to get out what he wanted to say. When he finished, the sheriff was still leaning slightly forward, at an angle to him, his eyes on nothing in particular. He remained that way without speaking. Thomas began again, slower and in a lamer voice, and Farebrother let him continue for some time before he said, "We had her oncet." He then allowed himself a slow, creased, all-knowing, quarter smile.
"I had nothing to do with that," Thomas said. "That was my mother."
Farebrother squatted.
"She was trying to help the girl," Thomas said. "She didn"t know she couldn"t be helped."
"Bit off more than she could chew, I reckon," the voice below him mused.
"She has nothing to do with this," Thomas said. "She doesn"t know I"m here. The girl is dangerous with that gun."
"He," the sheriff said, "never let anything grow under his feet. Particularly nothing a woman planted."
"She might kill somebody with that gun," Thomas said weakly, looking down at the round top of the Texas type hat.
There was a long time of silence.
"Where"s she got it?" Farebrother asked.
"I don"t know. She sleeps in the guest room. It must be in there, in her suitcase probably," Thomas said.
Farebrother lapsed into silence again.
"You could come search the guest room," Thomas said in a strained voice. "I can go home and leave the latch off the front door and you can come in quietly and go upstairs and search her room."
Farebrother turned his head so that his eyes looked boldly at Thomas"s knees. "You seem to know how it ought to be done," he said. "Want to swap jobs?"
Thomas said nothing because he could not think of anything to say, but he waited doggedly. Farebrother removed the cigarette b.u.t.t from his lips and dropped it on the gra.s.s. Beyond him on the courthouse porch a group of loiterers who had been leaning at the left of the door moved over to the right where a patch of sunlight had settled.From one of the upper windows a crumpled piece of paper blew out and drifted down."I"ll come along about six," Farebrother said. "Leave the latch off the door and keep out of my way-yourself and them two women too."Thomas let out a rasping sound of relief meant to be "Thanks," and struck off across the gra.s.s like some one released. The phrase, "them two women," stuck like a burr in his brain-the subtlety of the insult to his mother hurting him more than any of Farebrother"s references to his own incompetence. As he got into his car, his face suddenly flushed. Had he delivered his mother over to the sheriff-to be a b.u.t.t for the man"s tongue? Was he betraying her to get rid of the little s.l.u.t? He saw at once that this was not the case. He was doing what he was doing for her own good, to rid her of a parasite that would ruin their peace. He started his car and drove quickly home but once he had turned in the driveway, he decided it would be better to park some distance from the house and go quietly in by the back door. He parked on the gra.s.s and on the gra.s.s walked in a circle toward the rear of the house. The sky was lined with mustard-colored streaks. The dog was asleep on the back doormat. At the approach of his master"s step, he opened one yellow eye, took him in, and closed it again.
Thomas let himself into the kitchen. It was empty and the house was quiet enough for him to be aware of the loud ticking of the kitchen clock. It was a quarter to six. He tiptoed hurriedly through the hall to the front door and took the latch off it. Then he stood for a moment listening. From behind the closed parlor door, he heard his mother snoring softly and presumed that she had gone to sleep while reading. On the other side of the hall, not three feet from his study, the little s.l.u.t"s black coat and red pocketbook were slung on a chair. He heard water running upstairs and decided she was taking a bath.
He went into his study and sat down at his desk to wait, noting with distaste that every few moments a tremor ran through him. He sat for a minute or two doing nothing.Then he picked up a pen and began to draw squares on the back of an envelope that lay before him. He looked at his watch. It was eleven minutes to six. After a moment he idly drew the center drawer of the desk out over his lap.For a moment he stared at the gun without recognition.Then he gave a yelp and leaped up. She had put it back!
Idiot! his father hissed, idiot! Go plant it in her pocketbook.
Don"t just stand there. Go plant it in her pocketbook!
Thomas stood staring at the drawer.
Moron! the old man fumed. Quick while there"s time!Go plant it in her pocketbook.
Thomas did not move.
Imbecile! his father cried.
Thomas picked up the gun.
Make haste, the old man ordered.
Thomas started forward, holding the gun away from him. He opened the door and looked at the chair. The black coat and red pocketbook were lying on it almost within reach.
Hurry up, you fool, his father said.
From behind the parlor door the almost inaudible snores of his mother rose and fell. They seemed to mark an order of time that had nothing to do with the instants left to Thomas. There was no other sound.
Quick, you imbecile, before she wakes up, the old man said.
The snores stopped and Thomas heard the sofa springs groan. He grabbed the red pocketbook. It had a skin-like feel to his touch and as it opened, he caught an unmistakable odor of the girl. Wincing, he thrust in the gun and then drew back. His face burned an ugly dull red.
"What is Tomsee putting in my purse?" she called and her pleased laugh bounced down the staircase. Thomas whirled.
She was at the top of the stair, coming down in the manner of a fashion model, one bare leg and then the other thrusting out the front of her kimona in a definite rhythm."Tomsee is being naughty," she said in a throaty voice.She reached the bottom and cast a possessive leer at Thomas whose face was now more grey than red. She reached out, pulled the bag open with her finger and peered at the gun.
His mother opened the parlor door and looked out.
"Tomsee put his pistol in my bag!" the girl shrieked.
"Ridiculous," his mother said, yawning. "What would Thomas want to put his pistol in your bag for?"
Thomas stood slightly hunched, his hands hanging helplessly at the wrists as if he had just pulled them up out of a pool of blood.
"I don"t know what for," the girl said, "but he sure did it," and she proceeded to walk around Thomas, her hands on her hips, her neck thrust forward and her intimate grin fixed on him fiercely. All at once her expression seemed to open as the purse had opened when Thomas touched it.She stood with her head c.o.c.ked on one side in an att.i.tude of disbelief. "Oh boy," she said slowly, "is he a case."
At that instant Thomas d.a.m.ned not only the girl but the entire order of the universe that made her possible.
"Thomas wouldn"t put a gun in your bag," his mother said. "Thomas is a gentleman."
The girl made a chortling noise. "You can see it in there," she said and pointed to the open purse.
You found found it in her bag, you dimwit! the old man hissed. it in her bag, you dimwit! the old man hissed.
"I found it in her bag!" Thomas shouted. "The dirty criminal s.l.u.t stole my gun!"
His mother gasped at the sound of the other presence in his voice. The old lady"s sybil-like face turned pale.
"Found it my eye!" Sarah Ham shrieked and started for the pocketbook, but Thomas, as if his arm were guided by his father, caught it first and s.n.a.t.c.hed the gun. The girl in a frenzy lunged at Thomas"s throat and would actually have caught him around the neck had not his mother thrown herself forward to protect her.
Fire! the old man yelled.
Thomas fired. The blast was like a sound meant to bring an end to evil in the world. Thomas heard it as a sound that would shatter the laughter of s.l.u.ts until all shrieks were stilled and nothing was left to disturb the peace of perfect order.
The echo died away in waves. Before the last one had faded, Farebrother opened the door and put his head inside the hall. His nose wrinkled. His expression for some few seconds was that of a man unwilling to admit surprise. His eyes were clear as gla.s.s, reflecting the scene. The old lady lay on the floor between the girl and Thomas.
The sheriff"s brain worked instantly like a calculating machine. He saw the facts as if they were already in print: the fellow had intended all along to kill his mother and pin it on the girl. But Farebrother had been too quick for him.They were not yet aware of his head in the door. As he scrutinized the scene, further insights were flashed to him. Over her body, the killer and the s.l.u.t were about to collapse into each other"s arms. The sheriff knew a nasty bit when he saw it. He was accustomed to enter upon scenes that were not as bad as he had hoped to find them, but this one met his expectations.
Everything That Rises Must Converge (1961)
HER doctor had told Julian"s mother that she must lose twenty pounds on account of her blood pressure, so on Wednesday nights Julian had to take her downtown on the bus for a reducing cla.s.s at the Y. The reducing cla.s.s was designed for working girls over fifty, who weighed from 165 to 200 pounds. His mother was one of the slimmer ones, but she said ladies did not tell their age or weight. She would not ride the buses by herself at night since they had been integrated, and because the reducing cla.s.s was one of her few pleasures, necessary for her health, and free, she said Julian could at least put himself out to take her, considering all she did for him. Julian did not like to consider all she did for him, but every Wednesday night he braced himself and took her.
She was almost ready to go, standing before the hall mirror, putting on her hat, while he, his hands behind him, appeared pinned to the door frame, waiting like Saint Sebastian for the arrows to begin piercing him. The hat was new and had cost her seven dollars and a half. She kept saying, "Maybe I shouldn"t have paid that for it. No, I shouldn"t have. I"ll take it off and return it tomorrow. I shouldn"t have bought it."
Julian raised his eyes to heaven. "Yes, you should have bought it," he said. "Put it on and let"s go." It was a hideous hat. A purple velvet flap came down on one side of it and stood up on the other; the rest of it was green and looked like a cushion with the stuffing out. He decided it was less comical than jaunty and pathetic. Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.
She lifted the hat one more time and set it down slowly on top of her head. Two wings of gray hair protruded on either side of her florid face, but her eyes, sky-blue, were as innocent and untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten. were it not that she was a widow who had struggled fiercely to feed and clothe and put him through school and who was supporting him still, "until he got on his feet," she might have been a little girl that he had to take to town.
"It"s all right, it"s all right," he said. "Let"s go." He opened the door himself and started down the walk to get her going. The sky was a dying violet and houses stood out darkly against it, bulbous liver-colored monstrosities of a uniform ughness though no two were alike. Since this had been a fashionable neighborhood forty years ago, his mother persisted in thinking they did well to have an apartment in it. Each house had a narrow collar of dirt around it in which sat, usually, a grubby child. Julian walked with his hands in his pockets, his head down and thrust forward and his eyes glazed with the determination to make himself completely numb during the time he would be sacrificed to her pleasure.
The door closed and he turned to find the dumpy figure, surmounted by the atrocious hat, coming toward him. "Well," she said, "you only live once and paying a little more for it, I at least won"t meet myself coming and going."
"Some day I"ll start making money," Julian said gloomily-he knew he never would-"and you can have one of those jokes whenever you take the fit." But first they would move. He visualized a place where the nearest neighbors would be three miles away on either side.
"I think you"re doing fine," she said, drawing on her gloves. "You"ve only been out of school a year. Rome wasn"t built in a day."
She was one of the few members of the Y reducing cla.s.s who arrived in hat and gloves and who had a son who had been to college. "It takes time," she said, "and the world is in such a mess. This hat looked better on me than any of the others, though when she brought it out I said, "Take that thing back. I wouldn"t have it on my head," and she said, "Now wait till you see it on," and when she put it on me, I said, "We-ull," and she said, "If you ask me, that hat does something for you and you do something for the hat, and besides," she said, "with that hat, you won"t meet yourself coming and going.""
Julian thought he could have stood his lot better if she had been selfish, if she had been an old hag who drank and screamed at him. He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith. Catching sight of his long, hopeless, irritated face, she stopped suddenly with a grief-stricken look, and pulled back on his arm. "Wait on me," she said. "I"m going back to the house and take this thing off and tomorrow I"m going to return it. I was out of my head. I can pay the gas bill with that seven-fifty."
He caught her arm in a vicious grip. "You are not going to take it back," he said. "I like it."
"Well," she said, "I don"t think I ought..."
"Shut up and enjoy it," he muttered, more depressed than ever.
"With the world in the mess it"s in," she said, "it"s a wonder we can enjoy anything. I tell you, the bottom rail is on the top." Julian sighed.
"Of course," she said, "if you know who you are, you can go anywhere." She said this every time he took her to the reducing cla.s.s. "Most of them in it are not our kind of people," she said, "but I can be gracious to anybody. I know who I am."
"They don"t give a d.a.m.n for your graciousness," Julian said savagely. "Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven"t the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are."
She stopped and allowed her eyes to flash at him. "I most certainly do know who I am," she said, "and if you don"t know who you are, I"m ashamed of you."
"Oh h.e.l.l," Julian said.
"Your great-grandfather was a former governor of this state," she said. "Your grandfather was a prosperous landowner. Your grandmother was a G.o.dhigh."
"Will you look around you," he said tensely, "and see where you are now?" and he swept his arm jerkily out to indicate the neighborhood, which the growing darkness at least made less dingy.
"You remain what you are," she said. "Tour great-grandfather had a plantation and two hundred slaves."
"There are no more slaves," he said irritably.
"They were better off when they were," she said. He groaned to see that she was off on that topic. She rolled onto it every few days like a train on an open track. He knew every stop, every junction, every swamp along the way, and knew the exact point at which her conclusion would roll majestically into the station: "It"s ridiculous. It"s simply not realistic. They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence."
"Let"s skip it," Julian said.
"The ones I feel sorry for," she said, "are the ones that are half white. They"re tragic."
"Will you skip it?"
"Suppose we were half white. We would certainly have mixed feelings."
"I have mixed feelings now," he groaned.
"Well let"s talk about something pleasant," she said. "I remember going to Grandpa"s when I was a little girl. Then the house had double stairways that went up to what was really the second floor-all the cooking was done on the first. I used to like to stay down in the kitchen on account of the way the walls smelled. I would sit with my nose pressed against the plaster and take deep breaths. Actually the place belonged to the G.o.dhighs but your grandfather Chestny paid the mortgage and saved it for them. They were in reduced circ.u.mstances," she said, "but reduced or not, they never forgot who they were."
"Doubtless that decayed mansion reminded them," Julian muttered. He never spoke of it without contempt or thought of it without longing. He had seen it once when he was a child before it had been sold. The double stairways had rotted and been torn down. Negroes were living it. But it remained in his mind as his mother had known it. It appeared in his dreams regularly. He would stand on the wide porch, listening to the rustle of oak leaves, then wander through the high-ceilinged hall into the parlor that opened onto it and gaze at the worn rugs and faded draperies. It occurred to him that it was he, not she, who could have appreciated it. He preferred its threadbare elegance to anything he could name and it was because of it that all the neighborhoods they had lived in had been a torment to him-whereas she had hardly known the difference. She called her insenseitivity "being adjustable."
"And I remember the old darky who was my nurse, Caroline. There was no better person in the world. I"ve always had a great respect for my colored friends," she said. "I"d do anything in the world for them and they"d..."
"Will you for G.o.d"s sake get off that subject?" Julian said. When he got on a bus by himself, he made it a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother"s sins.
"You"re mighty touchy tonight," she said. "Do you feel all right?"
"Yes I feel all right," he said. "Now lay off."
She pursed her lips. "Well, you certainly are in a vile humor," she observed. "I just won"t speak to you at all."
They had reached the bus stop. There was no bus in sight and Julian, his hands still jammed in his pockets and his head thrust forward, scowled down the empty street. The frustration of having to wait on the bus as well as ride on it began to creep up his neck like a hot hand. The presence of his mother was borne in upon him as she gave a pained sigh. He looked at her bleakly. She was holding herself very erect under the preposterous hat, wearing it like a banner of her imaginary dignity. There was in him an evil urge to break her spirit. He suddenly unloosened his tie and pulled it off and put it in his pocket.
She stiffened. "Why must you look like that when you take me to town?" she said. "Why must you deliberately embarra.s.s me?"
"If you"ll never learn where you are," he said, "you can at least learn where I am."