The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [122]
Then one Sunday when he climbed the stairs he saw that Singer’s door was open. The room was empty. He sat alone for more than two hours. At last he heard Singer’s footsteps on the stairs.
‘I was wondering about you. Where you been?’ Singer smiled. He brushed off his hat with a handkerchief and put it away. Then deliberately he took his silver pencil from his pocket and leaned over the mantelpiece to write a note.
‘What you mean?’ Jake asked when he read what the mute had written. ‘Whose legs are cut off?’
Singer took back the note and wrote a few additional sentences.
‘Huh!’ Jake said. That don’t surprise me.’
He brooded over the piece of paper and then crumpled it in his hand. The listlessness of the past month was gone and he was tense and uneasy. ‘Huh!’ he said again.
Singer put on a pot of coffee and got out his chessboard. Jake tore the note to pieces and rolled the fragments between his sweating palms. ‘But something can be done about this,’ he said after a while. ‘You know it? ‘ Singer nodded uncertainly. ‘I want to see the boy and hear the whole story. When can you take me around there? ‘ Singer deliberated. Then he wrote on a pad of paper, ‘Tonight.’ Jake held his hand to his mouth and began to walk restlessly around the room. ‘We can do something.’
9
JAKE AND SINGER waited on the front porch. When they pushed the doorbell there was no sound of a ring in the darkened house. Jake knocked impatiently and pressed his nose against the screen door. Beside him Singer stood wooden and smiling, with two spots of color on his cheeks, for they had drunk a bottle of gin together. The evening was quiet and dark. Jake watched a yellow light shaft softly through the hall. And Portia opened the door for them.
‘I certainly trust you not been waiting long. So many folks been coming that us thought it wise to unlatch the bell. You gentlemens just let me take you hats--Father been mighty sick.’
Jake tiptoed heavily behind Singer down the bare, narrow hall.
At the threshold of the kitchen he stopped short The room was crowded and hot. A fire burned in the small wood stove and the windows were closed tight. Smoke mingled with a certain Negro smell. The glow from the stove was the only light in the room. The dark voices he had heard back in the hall were silent.
‘These here are two white gentlemens come to inquire about Father,’ Portia said. ‘I think maybe he be able to see you but I better go on in first and prepare him.’
Jake fingered his thick lower lip. On the end of his nose there was a latticed impression from the front screen door. ‘That’s not it,’ he said. ‘I come to talk with your brother.’
The Negroes in the room were standing. Singer motioned to them to be seated again. Two grizzled old men sat down on a bench by the stove. A loose-limbed mulatto lounged against the window. On a camp cot in a corner was a boy without legs whose trousers were folded and pinned beneath his stumpy thighs. ‘Good evening,’ Jake said awkwardly. ‘Your name Copeland? ‘ The boy put his hands over the stumps of his legs and shrank back close to the wall. ‘My name Willie.’
‘Honey, don’t you worry none,’ said Portia. ‘This here is Mr. Singer that you heard Father speak about. And this other white gentleman is Mr. Blount and he a very close friend of Mr. Singer. They just kindly come to inquire about us in our trouble.’ She turned to Jake and motioned to the three other people in the room. This other boy leaning on the window is my brother too. Named Buddy. And these here over by the stove is two dear friends of my Father. Named Mr. Marshall Nicolls and Mr. John Roberts. I think it a good idea to understand who all is in a room with you. ‘Thanks,’ Jake said. He turned to Willie again. ‘I just want you to tell me about it so I can get it straight in my mind.’
‘This the way it is,’ Willie said. ‘I feel like my feets is still hurting. I got this here terrible misery down in my toes. Yet the hurt in my feets is down where my feets should be if they were on my l-l-legs. And not where my feets is now. It a hard thing to understand. My feets hurt me so bad all the time and I don