The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [19]
‘How anyway will I ever get a bow? Are you sure they have to be made out of just horses’ hair?’
‘Yeah,’ said Bill impatiently.
‘Nothing like thin wire or human hair strung on a limber stick would do?’
Bill rubbed his feet against each other and didn’t answer.
Anger made beads of sweat come out on her forehead.
Her voice was hoarse. ‘It’s not even a bad violin. It’s only a cross between a mandolin and a ukulele. And I hate them. I hate them--’ Bill turned around.
‘It’s all turned out wrong. It won’t do. It’s no good. ‘Pipe down,’ said Bill. ‘Are you just carrying on about that old broken ukulele you’ve been fooling with? I could have told you at first it was crazy to think you could make any violin. That’s one thing you don’t sit down and make--you got to buy them. I thought anybody would know a thing like that. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt yon if you found out for yourself.’
Sometimes she hated Bill more than anyone else in the world.
He was different entirely from what he used to be. She started to slam the violin down on the floor and stomp on it, but instead she put it back roughly into the hatbox. The tears were hot in her eyes as fire. She gave the box a kick and ran from the room without looking at Bill.
As she was dodging through the hall to get to the back yard she ran into her Mama.
‘What’s the matter with you? What have you been into now?’
Mick tried to jerk loose, but her Mama held on to her arm.
Sullenly she wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Her Mama had been in the kitchen and she wore her apron and house-shoes. As usual she looked as though she had a lot on her mind and didn’t have time to ask her any more questions.
‘Mr. Jackson has brought his two sisters to dinner and there won’t be but just enough chairs, so today you’re to eat in the kitchen with Bubber.’
‘That's hunky-dory with me,’ Mick said.
Her Mama let her go and went to take off her apron. From the dining-room there came the sound of the dinner bell and a sudden glad outbreak of talking. She could hear her Dad saying how much he had lost by not keeping up his accident insurance until the time he broke his hip. That was one thing her Dad could never get off his mind--ways he could have made money and didn’t. There was a clatter of dishes, and after a while the talking stopped.
Mick leaned on the banisters of the stairs. The sudden crying had started her with the hiccups. It seemed to her as she thought back over the last month that she had never really believed in her mind that the violin would work. But in her heart she had kept making herself believe. And even now it was hard not to believe a little. She was tired out. Bill wasn’t ever a help with anything now. She used to think Bill was the grandest person in the world. She used to follow after him every place he went out--fishing in the woods, to the clubhouses he built with other boys, to the slot machine in the back of Mr. Brannon’s restaurant--everywhere. Maybe he hadn’t meant to let her down like this. But anyway they could never be good buddies again.
In the hall there was the smell of cigarettes and Sunday dinner. Mick took a deep breath and walked back toward the kitchen. The dinner began to smell good and she was hungry.
She could hear Portia’s voice as she talked to Bubber, and it was like she was half-singing something or telling him a story.
‘And that is the various reason why I’m a whole lot more fortunate than most colored girls,’ Portia said as she opened the door. ‘Why?’ asked Mick.
Portia and Bubber were sitting at the kitchen table eating their dinner. Portia’s green print dress was cool-looking against her dark brown skin. She had on green earrings and her hair was combed very tight and neat.
‘You all time pounce in on the very tail of what somebody say and then want to know all about it,’ Portia said. She got up and stood over the hot stove, putting dinner on Mick’s plate.
‘Bubber and me was just talking about my Grandpapa’s home out on the Old Sardis Road. I was telling Bubber how he and my uncles owns the whole place themself. Fifteen and a half acre. They always plants four of them in cotton, some years swapping back to peas to keep the dirt rich, and one acre on a hill is just for peaches. They haves a mule and a breed sow and all the time from twenty to twenty-five laying hens and fryers. They haves a vegetable patch and two pecan trees and plenty figs and plums and berries. This here is the truth. Not many white farms has done with their land good as my Grandpapa.