The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [118]
‘Here you come traipsing in after everbody done finished supper. Seem to me like I never will get off from work.’
Nobody noticed her. She ate a big plateful of cabbage and salmon and finished off with junket. It was her Mama she was thinking about. The door opened and her Mama came in and told Portia that Miss Brown had said she found a bedbug in her room. To get out the gasoline.
‘Quit frowning like that, Mick. You’re coming to the age where you ought to fix up and try to look the best you can.
And hold on--don’t barge out like that when I speak with you--I mean you to give Ralph a good sponge bath before he goes to bed. Clean his nose and ears good.’
Ralph’s soft hair was sticky with oatmeal. She wiped it with a dishrag and rinsed his face and hands at the sink. Bill and Hazel finished their game. Bill’s long fingernails scraped on the table as he took up the matches. George carried Ralph off to bed. She and Portia were alone in the kitchen.
‘Listen! Look at me. Do you notice anything different?’
‘Sure I notice, Hon.’
Portia put on her red hat and changed her shoes. Well--?’
‘Just you take a little grease and rub it on your face. Your nose already done peeled very bad. They say grease is the best thing for bad sunburn.’
She stood by herself in the dark back yard, breaking off pieces of bark from the oak tree with her fingernails. It was almost worse this way. Maybe she would feel better if they could look at her and tell. If they knew.
Her Dad called her from the back steps. ‘Mick! Oh, Mick!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The telephone.’ George crowded up close and tried to listen in, but she pushed him away. Mrs. Minowitz talked very loud and excited. ‘My Harry should be home by now. You know where he is? ’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘He said you two would ride out on bicycles. Where should he be now? You know where he is?’
‘No, ma’am,’ Mick said again.
Now that the days were hot again the Sunny Dixie Show was always crowded. The March wind quieted. Trees were thick with their foliage of ocherous green. The sky was a cloudless blue and the rays of the sun grew stronger. The air was sultry.
Jake Blount hated this weather. He thought dizzily of the long, burning summer months ahead. He did not feel well. Recently a headache had begun to trouble him constantly. He had gained weight so that his stomach developed a little pouch. He had to leave the top button of his trousers undone. He knew that this was alcoholic fat, but he kept on drinking. Liquor helped the ache in his head. He had only to take one small glass to make it better. Nowadays one glass was the same to him as a quart. It was not the liquor of the moment that gave him the kick--but the reaction of the first swallow to all the alcohol which had saturated his blood during these last months. A spoonful of beer would help the throbbing in his head, but a quart of whiskey could not make him drunk.
He cut out liquor entirely. For several days he drank only water and Orange Crush. The pain was like a crawling worm in his head. He worked wearily during the long afternoons and evenings. He could not sleep and it was agony to try to read.
The damp, sour stink in his room infuriated him. He lay restless in the bed and when at last he fell asleep daylight had come.
A dream haunted him. It had first come to him four months ago. He would awake with terror--but the strange point was that never could he remember the contents of this dream. Only the feeling remained when his eyes were opened. Each time his fears at awakening were so identical that he did not doubt but what these dreams were the same. He was used to dreams, the grotesque nightmares of drink that led him down into a madman’s region of disorder, but always the morning light scattered the effects of these wild dreams and he forgot them.
This blank, stealthy dream was of a different nature. He awoke and could remember nothing. But there was a sense of menace that lingered in him long after. Then he awoke one morning with the old fear but with a faint remembrance of the darkness behind him. He had been walking among a crowd of people and in his arms he carried something. That was all he could be sure about. Had he stolen? Had he been trying to save some possession? Was he being hunted by all these people around him? He did not think so. The more he studied this simple dream the less he could understand. Then for some time afterward the dream did not return.