The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (71 page)

And the Spaniard would have looked small down there, all the way down below. Suppose there were a little guitar, no bigger than a watch. Eugene stood waiting there as if he listened to sirens. Then within himself he felt a strange sensation, strange in itself but, alas, he recognized it. He had felt it before—always before when very tired, and always when lying in bed at night, with Emma asleep beside him. Something round would be in his mouth. But its size was the thing that was strange.

It was as if he were trying to swallow a cherry but found he was only the size of the stem of the cherry. His mouth received and was explored by some immensity. It became more and more immense while he waited. All knowledge of the rest of his body and the feeling in it would leave him; he would not find it possible to describe his position in the bed, where his legs were or his hands; his mouth alone felt and it felt enormity. Only the finest, frailest thread of his own body seemed to exist, in order to provide the mouth. He seemed to have the world on his tongue. And it had no taste—only size.

He held on to the Spaniard and once more, feebly, with an arm or a leg, he tried to move him, to break away. The fog flowed into his throat and made him laugh. His laugh was repeated, an uncertain distance away. Eugene heard, then by chance saw, a man and girl moving along by their own light, a flashlight, skirting the brink just above, ahead of the night falling. They circled near. He heard them laugh, and in the dusk he flung back his head and could look up into the gleam of their teeth—was that happiness? Teeth bared like the rats, the same as in hunger or stress?

As he gasped, the sweet and the salt, the alyssum and the sea affected him as a single scent. It lulled him slightly, blurring the moment. The now calming ocean, the pounding of a thousand gentlenesses, went on into darkness and obscurity. He felt himself lifted up in the strong arms of the Spaniard, up above the bare head of the other man. Now the second hat blew away from him too. He was without a burden in the world.

Pillowed on great strength, he was turned in the air. It was greatest comfort. It was too bad that circling in his mind the daylong foreboding had to return, that he had yet to open the door and climb the stairs to Emma. There she waited in the front room, shedding her tears standing up, like a bride, with the white curtains of the bay window hanging heavy all around her.

When his body was wheeled another turn, the foreboding like a spinning ball was caught again. This time the vision—some niche of clarity, some future—was Emma MacLain turning around and coming part way to meet him on the stairs. Still like a rumble, her light and young-like tread, that could cause his whole body to be shaken with tenderness and mystery, crossed the floor. She lifted both arms in the wide, aroused sleeves and brought them together around him. He had to sink upon the frail hall chair intended for the coats and hats. And she was sinking upon him and on his mouth putting kisses like blows, returning him awesome favors in full vigor, with not the ghost of the salt of tears.

If he could have spoken! It was out of this relentlessness, not out of the gush of tears, that there would be a child again. Could it be possible that everything now could wait? If he could have stopped everything, until that pulse, far back, far inside, far within now, could shake like the little hard fist of the first spring leaf!

He was brought over and held by the knees in the posture of a bird, his body almost upright and his forearms gently spread. In his nostrils and relaxing eyes and around his naked head he could feel the reach of fine spray or the breath of fog. He was upborne, open-armed. He was only thinking, My dear love comes.

He heard a loud, emotional cry—a bellow—from some other throat than his own, and heard it sink to the deepest rumbling. That was his Spaniard.

And the next moment—"Oh, is he going to throw him over?" a feminine voice with some eagerness in it was crying. The sweethearts were coming, on a lower road. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, teasing a little fellow like that, scaring him?" the girl's voice continued. "Put him down and pick up one your own size, or Billy will teach you."

Then, or even before then, Eugene was lowered and set down again. His dangling heels, one of which had gone to sleep, kicked at the rock and then his feet stood on it. In the purple of night there was struck a little pasteboard match. Two big common toothy sweethearts stood there in its light, and the next moment vanished in the fog looking pleased with each other.

The mask face of the Spaniard, with hair swirling about it, was left shining there by matchlight. It turned one way and the other, looked up and down. It exuded sweat.

So now, the Spaniard took hold of Eugene's arm and guided him carefully by the instant's light of one match after another and the emergent light of the wreathed, racing moon. The world was not dark, but pale. The mist flowed from their fingers and rolled behind their heels. They looked together for the thread of the way back. They seized hands at perilous places and took mistaken hold of streaming thorn bushes with a chorus of outcries. They retreated at points and tried the way again. They both jumped at scuttling sounds, though the Spaniard made some inimitable Spanish noise that sounded as though it might have, before now, made rats go back. When was it they came to the easy part of the path, then to the road? Next, the whole sound of the sea faded behind the windbreak of trees, which in the wet fog smelled of black pepper.

When the trees opened out and they reached pavement, some city corner and its streetlight, they were so cold it was foregone they should go in the nearest café for coffee.

Eugene pulled away, combed back his hair, and led the way now.

"Two coffees!" he said loudly to the bare room when they were seated at the counter.

It was warm here. The Spaniard began to smoke, and sat with eyes shut, even when the waitress came out.

Large, middle-aged, big-boned, she moved up in a loose, grand style. Her face was large. All her features were made to seem bigger than life by paint, a pinkish mouth painted over her real mouth, eyebrows put on with brown grease in bands half an inch wide with perfect curves. Her eyes were small, so that with the mascara and the shadows painted on their lids they looked like flopping black butterflies. She had hennaed hair, somewhat greasy. She wore jewelry worth about eleven dollars and a quarter all together, Eugene saw—hoops of gold in her ears, a lavalier around her neck, four bracelets, and rings on both hands. There on her one body the illusions of gold, of silver, and of diamonds were all gone.

"One coffee with milk," Eugene said to her, "one black," and she turned from him. Her way of response was dramatic—soliloquy, and with an accent.

"Meelk, meelk, there is one who wants meelk," she said, striding up and then down behind the counter but not going away or looking at her customers or consulting further.

"And pastry."

"Oh, no. Pastry is no more." She had a resonant, brooding voice—there was something likeable and understandable about her, with her unbelievable accent. "A long time too you will wait for sandwiches." She shook her head. "All people here tonight waiting, waiting.—If sandwiches, what kind of bread, too? It is imporrrtant for me to know this."

"Two coffees. One with milk," Eugene said. He nodded at her.

When the waitress brought the coffees, cups swimming in their saucers, she marched off without bringing any sugar. Eugene, remembering the three lumps the Spaniard used, glanced at him.

The Spaniard met his glance, and his great black brows slowly lifted and his eyes implored like the eyes of a dog. The shell-rimmed glasses, sanded and smeared, he took off and held in his hand a moment, then put back on. He gave another imploring look. But Eugene only sat there. The Spaniard tried to bring back the waitress with his Spanish, then with a wave of the arm. And at first she only looked at him dreamily without moving, there at the back with her arm propped against the curtain. But then, swinging her hips weightily, she came. He had clapped his hands together; it woke her right up, like applause. She brought in a sugar jar with a spout.

"It was
sugar
you wanted," she said to the Spaniard, with baby-talk on top of her accent, as though it had been sugar, sugar for a long time. She patted him on the head. "Go to hell," she said resonantly to Eugene. "In my country I have a husband. He too is a little man, and sits up as small as you. When he is bad, I peek him up, I stand him on the mantel-piece." She held out her palm; Eugene could not help but peek in it. He paid—his last penny; there was a streetcar token left—one.

"Well, that will be all," Eugene said, to nobody.

The Spaniard had crumbs, sand, sugar, and ashes on him. Outside, back on the corner, the two men turned to each other almost formally. Eugene could only think, in their parting moment, Suppose there had been pastry, would the Spaniard finally have lowered himself to pay? Then he flew out to catch a streetcar.

The Spaniard was left waiting, for what one never would know, alone in the night on a dark corner at the edge of the city. Perhaps he was not so proud now! At the last glance, he seemed to be looking in the sky for the little moon.

Eugene raced up the stairs to the flat and opened the door. There was the smell of strong hot chowder. Emma was in the kitchen but there was feminine talking-away—her great friend, Mrs. Herring from next door, had evidently come to stay for supper. Right away he thought he might as well not tell them anything.

"You've left your hat somewhere," Emma told him. "I'll be burying you next from pneumonia." Then, with a stamp of her foot, she showed him—and also Mrs. Herring, who was evidently seeing it for the second or third time—where the hot grease had splattered on her hand today.

There couldn't have been a peep out of Mr. Bertsinger, it occurred to Eugene as he threw off his raincoat. Maybe he was dead!

They sat on at the table after the big meal. Sawing idly at the cheese and to interrupt Mrs. Herring (in honor of Mrs. Herring, who had returned from a trip, they even had a little wine), Eugene felt called on to make one remark.

"Saw Long-Hair, the guitar player, today, saw him walking along the street just like you or me. What was his name, anyway?" he asked, as if he wondered now for the first time.

"Bartolome Montalbano," Emma said and popped a grape onto her extended tongue. She added, "I have the feeling he suffers from indigestion," and drummed her breast while she swallowed. "... He's a Spaniard."

"A Spaniard? There was a Spaniard at early church this morning," Mrs. Herring offered, "that needed a haircut. He was next to a woman and he was laughing with her out loud—bad taste,
we
thought. It was before service began, it's true. He laughed first and then slapped her leg, there in Peter and Paul directly in front of me home from my trip."

Eugene tilted back in his chair, and watched Emma pop the grapes in.

"That would be him," said Emma.

"How come you weren't here yesterday?" old Mrs. Stark asked her maid, looking up from her solitaire board—inlaid wood that gave off pistol-like reports under the blows of her shuffling cards. It was September and here in the hall she imagined she could feel October at her back.

"I didn' get back from my sisters' in the country."

"And poor Miss Katie Rainey dead. What were you so busy doing?"

"Showin' my teef."

Mrs. Stark raised her voice. "Only thing I can do for people any more, in joy or sorrow, is send 'em you. You know how Miss Jinny and Mr. Ran back out on me, then you go off. Now it's here next day. Fix my breakfast and yours and go on down there. Get in the kitchen and clean it up for Miss Virgie, don't pay any attention to her. Take that ham we haven't sliced into. Start cooking for the funeral, if others didn't beat you to it yesterday."

"Yes'm."

"Mind you learn to appreciate your good kitchen when you stand over a wood stove all day."

"I was comin' back. Sister's place a place once you get to it—hard time gettin' out."

Mrs. Stark snapped her fingers. "You and all your sisters!" She rose and walked, with her walk like a girl's, to the front door, looking down over the hill, the burned, patchy grass no better than Katie Rainey's, and the thirsty shrubs; but the Morgan sweet olive, her own grandmother's age, her grandmother's tree, was blooming. She murmured over her shoulder, "I never had cause to set foot in the Rainey house for over five minutes in my life. And I don't suppose they need me now. But I hope I know what any old woman owes another old woman. It doesn't matter if it's too late. Do you hear me? Go back and put on a clean apron."

The Raineys, Miss Katie and her daughter Virgie, still held on to the house beyond the pavement, on the MacLain Road. There on the ridge the tin roof shed the light under the crape myrtle and privet, gone to trees, that edged the porch. The cannas with their scorched edges, together with the well, made the three familiar islands in the whitened grass of the yard. Across and back again, with effort but bobbinlike, had moved Miss Katie, Mrs. Fate Rainey, in her dress the hard blue of a morning-glory.

In old age Miss Katie showed what a neat, narrow head she had under the hair no longer disheveled and flyaway. When she came outdoors, her carefully dressed and carefully held head was as silver-looking as a new mailbox. It was out of the autocracy of her stroke—she had suffered "a light stroke" five years ago, "while separating my cows and calves," she would recount it—that she'd begun ordering things done by set times. When it was time for Virgie to come home from work in the afternoon, Miss Katie fretted herself for fear she wouldn't be in time to milk before dark. She still had her two favorite Jerseys, pastured near. She stood out in the front yard, or moved the best way she could back and forth, waiting for Virgie.

A fiery streak of salvia that ran around the side of the house would turn darker in the leveling light. Though the shade broadened, she still walked her narrow path, not yielding even to the kind sun. She held up poorly there, propped by an old thornstick. Bleaching down by the roadside was a chair, an old chair she sold things from once, under the borrowed shade of the chinaberry across the road; but she didn't seem to want to sit down any more, or to be quite that near the trafficking. Clear up where she was, she felt the world tremble; day and night the loggers went by, to and from Morgan's Woods. That wore her out too. While she lived, she was going to wait—and she did wait, standing up—until Virgie her daughter, past forty now and too dressed up, came home to milk Bossy and Juliette the way she should. Virgie worked for the very people that were out depleting the woods, Mr. Nesbitt's company.