The Complete Stories (66 page)

The barber's face lightened. “You're a lawyer, ain't you?” he asked.

“No,” the boy said sullenly. “I'm a writer.”

“Ohhh,” the barber murmured. “I known it must be something like that.” After a moment he said, “What you written?”

“He never married?” Calhoun went on rudely. “He lived alone in the Singleton place in the country?”

“What there was of it,” the barber said. “He wouldn't have spent a nickel to keep it from falling down and no woman wouldn't have had him. That was the one thing he always had to pay for,” he said and made a vulgar noise in his cheek.

“You know because you were always there,” the boy said, barely able to control his disgust for this bigot.

“Naw,” the barber said, “it was just common knowledge. I clip hair,” he said, “but I don't live like a hog, I got plumbing in my house and a refrigerator that spits ice cubes into my wife's hand.”

“He was not a materialist,” Calhoun said. “There were things that meant more to him than plumbing. Independence, for instance.”

“Ha,” the barber snorted. “He wasn't so independent. Once lightning almost struck him and those that saw it said you should have seen him run. Took off like bees were swarming in his pants. They liked to died laughing,” and he gave a hyena-like laugh himself and slapped his knee.

“Loathsome,” the boy murmured.

“Another time,” the barber continued, “somebody went out there and put a dead cat in his well. Somebody was always doing something to see if they could make him turn loose a little money. Another time…”

Calhoun began fighting his way out of the bib as if it were a net he was caught in. When he was free of it, he thrust his hand in his pocket and brought out a dollar which he flung on the startled barber's shelf. Then he made for the door, letting it slam behind him in judgment on the place.

The walk back to his aunts' did not calm him. The colors of the azaleas had deepened with the approach of sundown and the trees rustled protectively over the old houses. No one here had a thought for Singleton, who lay on a cot in a filthy ward at Quincy. The boy felt now in a concrete way the force of his innocence, and he thought that to do justice to all the man had suffered, he would have to write more than a simple article. He would have to write a novel; he would have to show, not say, how primary injustice operated. Preoccupied with this, he went four doors past his aunts' house and had to turn and go back.

His Aunt Bessie met him at the door and drew him into the hall. “Told you we'd have a sweet surprise for you!” she said, pulling him by the arm into the parlor.

On the sofa sat a rangy-looking girl in a lime-green dress. “You remember Mary Elizabeth,” his Aunt Mattie said, “—the cute little trick you took to the picture show once when you were here.” Through his rage he recognized the girl who had been reading under the tree. “Mary Elizabeth is home for her spring holidays,” his Aunt Mattie said. “Mary Elizabeth is a real scholar, aren't you, Mary Elizabeth?”

Mary Elizabeth scowled, indicating she was indifferent to whether she was a real scholar or not. She gave him a look which told him plainly she expected to enjoy this no more than he did.

His Aunt Mattie gripped the knob of her cane and began to lift herself from her chair. “We're going to have supper early,” the other one said, “because Mary Elizabeth is going to take you to the beauty contest and it begins at seven.”

“Great,” the boy said in a tone that would be lost on them but he hoped not on Mary Elizabeth.

Throughout the meal he ignored the girl completely. His repartee with his aunts was markedly cynical but they did not have sense enough to understand his allusions and laughed like idiots at everything he said. Twice they called him “Baby Lamb” and the girl smirked. Otherwise she did nothing to suggest she was enjoying herself. Her round face was still childish behind her glasses. Retarded, Calhoun thought.

When the meal was over and they were on the way to the beauty contest, they continued to say nothing to each other. The girl, who was several inches taller than he, walked slightly in advance of him as if she would like to lose him on the way, but after two blocks she stopped abruptly and began to rummage in a large grass bag she carried. She took out a pencil and held it between her teeth while she continued to rummage. After a minute she brought up from the bottom of the bag two tickets and a stenographer's note pad. With these out, she closed the pocketbook and walked on.

“Are you going to take notes?” Calhoun inquired in a tone heavy with irony.

The girl looked around as if trying to identify the speaker. “Yes,” she said, “I'm going to take notes.”

“You appreciate this sort of thing?” Calhoun asked in the same tone. “You enjoy it?”

“It makes me vomit,” she said, “I'm going to finish it off with one swift literary kick.”

The boy looked at her blankly.

“Don't let me interfere with your pleasure in it,” she said, “but this whole place is false and rotten to the core.” Her voice came with a hiss of indignation. “They prostitute azaleas!”

Calhoun was astounded. After a moment he recovered himself. “It takes no great mind to come to that conclusion,” he said haughtily. “What requires insight is finding a way to transcend it.”

“You mean a form to express it in.”

“It comes to the same thing,” he said.

They walked the next two blocks in silence but both appeared shaken. When the courthouse was in view they crossed the street to it and Mary Elizabeth stuck the tickets at a boy who stood beside an entrance that had been formed by roping in the rest of the square. People were beginning to assemble on the grass inside.

“And do we stand here while you take notes?” Calhoun asked.

The girl stopped and faced him. “Look, Baby Lamb,” she said, “you can do what you please. I'm going up to my father's office in the building where I can work. You can stay down here and help select Miss Partridge Azalea if you want to.”

“I shall come,” he said, controlling himself, “I'd like to observe a great female writer taking notes.”

“Suit yourself,” she said.

He followed her up the courthouse steps and through a side door. His irritation was so extreme that he did not realize he had passed through the very door where Singleton had stood to shoot. They walked through an empty barnlike hall and silently up a flight of tobacco-stained steps into another barnlike hall. Mary Elizabeth rooted in the grass bag for a key and then unlocked the door to her father's office. They entered a large threadbare room lined with lawbooks. As if he were an incompetent, the girl dragged two straight chairs from one wall to a window that overlooked the porch. Then she sat down and stared out, apparently absorbed at once in the scene below.

Calhoun sat down in the other chair. To annoy her he began to look her over thoroughly. For what seemed at least five minutes, he did not take his eyes off her as she leaned with her elbows in the window. He stared at her so long that he was afraid her image would be etched forever on his retina. Finally he could stand the silence no longer. “What is your opinion of Singleton?” he asked abruptly.

She raised her head and appeared to look through him. “A Christ-figure,” she said.

The boy was stunned.

“I mean as myth,” she said scowling. “I'm not a Christian.” She returned her attention to the scene outside. Below a bugle sounded. “Sixteen girls in bathing suits are about to appear,” she drawled. “Surely this will be of interest to you?”

“Listen,” Calhoun said fiercely, “get this through your head. I'm not interested in the damn festival or the damn azalea queen. I'm here only because of my sympathy for Singleton. I'm going to write about him. Possibly a novel.”

“I intend to write a non-fiction study,” the girl said in a tone that made it evident fiction was beneath her.

They looked at each other with open and intense dislike. Calhoun felt that if he probed sufficiently he would expose her essential shallowness. “Since our forms are different,” he said, again with his ironical smile, “we might compare findings.”

“It's quite simple,” the girl said. “He was the scapegoat. While Partridge flings itself about selecting Miss Partridge Azalea, Singleton suffers at Quincy. He expiates…'”

“I don't mean your abstract findings,” the boy said. “I mean your concrete findings. Have you ever seen him? What did he look like? The novelist is not interested in narrow abstractions—particularly when they're obvious. He's…”

“How many novels have you written?” she asked.

“This will be my first,” he said coldly. “Have you ever seen him?”

“No,” she said, “that isn't necessary for me. What he looks like makes no difference—whether he has brown eyes or blue—that's nothing to a thinker.”

“You are probably,” he said, “afraid to look at him. The novelist is never afraid to look at the real object.”

“I would not be afraid to look at him,” the girl said angrily, “if it were at all necessary. Whether he has brown eyes or blue is nothing to me.”

“There is more to it,” Calhoun said, “than whether he has brown eyes or blue. You might find your theories enriched by the sight of him. And I don't mean by finding out the color of his eyes. I mean your existential encounter with his personality. The mystery of personality,” he said, “is what interests the artist. Life does not abide in abstractions.”

“Then what's keeping you from going and having a look at him?” she said. “What are you asking me what he looks like for? Go see for yourself.”

The words fell on his head like a sack of rocks. After a moment he said, “Go see for yourself? Go see where?”

“At Quincy,” the girl said. “Where do you think?”

“They wouldn't let me see him,” he said. The suggestion was appalling to him; for some reason he could not at the moment understand, it struck him as unthinkable.

“They would if you said you were kin to him,” she said. “It's only twenty miles from here. What's to stop you?”

He was about to say, “I'm not kin to him,” but he stopped and reddened furiously on the edge of the betrayal. They were spiritual kin.

“Go see whether his eyes are brown or blue and have yourself a little old exis…”

“I take it,” he said, “that if I go you would like to go along? Since you aren't afraid to see him.”

The girl paled. “You won't go,” she said. “You're not up to the old exis…”

“I will go,” he said, seeing his opportunity to shut her up. “And if you care to go with me, you can be at my aunts' at nine in the morning. But I doubt,” he added, “that I'll see you there.”

She thrust forward her long neck and glared at him. “Oh yes you will,” she said. “You'll see me there.”

She returned her attention to the window and Calhoun looked at nothing. Each seemed sunk suddenly in some mammoth private problem. Raucus cheers came intermittently from outside. Every few minutes there was music and clapping but neither took any notice of it, or of each other. Finally the girl pulled away from the window and said, “If you've got the general idea, we can leave. I prefer to go home and read.”

“I had the general idea before I came,” Calhoun said.

*   *   *

He saw her to her door and when he had left her, his spirits lifted dizzily for an instant and then collapsed. He knew that the idea of going to see Singleton would never have occurred to him alone. It would be a torturing experience, but it might be his salvation. The sight of Singleton in his misery might cause him suffering sufficient to raise him once and for all from his commercial instincts. Selling was the only thing he had proved himself good at; yet it was impossible for him to believe that every man was not created equally an artist if he could but suffer and achieve it. As for the girl, he doubted if the sight of Singleton would do anything for her. She had that particular repulsive fanaticism peculiar to smart children—all brain and no emotion.

He spent a restless night, dreaming in snatches of Singleton. At one point he dreamed he was driving to Quincy to sell Singleton a refrigerator. When he awoke in the morning, a slow rain was descending indifferently. He turned his head to the gray window pane. He could not remember what he had dreamed but he sensed it had been unpleasant. A vision of the girl's flat face came to him. He thought of Quincy and saw rows and rows of low red buildings with rough heads sticking out of barred windows. He tried to concentrate on Singleton but his mind shied from the thought. He did not wish to go to Quincy. He remembered that it was a novel he was going to write. His desire to write a novel had gone down overnight like a defective tire.

While he lay in bed, the drizzle turned into a steady downpour. The rain might keep the girl from coming, or at least she might think she could use it as an excuse. He decided to wait until exactly nine o'clock and if she had not shown up by then to be off. He would not go to Quincy but would go home. It would be better to see Singleton at a later date when he would perhaps have responded to treatment. He got up and wrote the girl a note to be left with his aunts, saying he presumed she had decided, upon consideration, that she was not equal to the experience. It was a very concise note and he ended it, “Cordially yours.”

She arrived at five minutes to nine and stood dripping in his aunts' hall, a tubular bundle of baby-blue plastic from which nothing showed but her face. She was holding a damp paper sack and her large mouth was twisted in an uncertain smile. Overnight she had apparently lost some of her self-assurance.

Calhoun was barely able to be polite. His aunts, who thought this was a romantic outing in the rain, kissed him out the door and stood on the porch idotically waving their handkerchiefs until he and Mary Elizabeth were in the car and gone.