The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [35]
Doctor Copeland did not know how to begin. Sometimes he thought that he had talked so much in the years before to his children and they had understood so little that now there was nothing at all to say. After a while he wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and spoke in an uncertain voice.
‘You have hardly mentioned yourself. Tell me about your job and what you have been doing lately.’
‘Course I still with the Kellys,’ said Portia. ‘But I tells you, Father, I don’t know how long I going to be able to keep on with them. The work is hard and it always take me a long time to get through. However, that don’t bother me none. It about the pay I worries about. I suppose to get three dollars a week --but sometimes Mrs. Kelly likes a dollar or fifty cents of paying me the full amount. Course she always catches up on it soon as she able. But it haves a way of leaving me in a pinch.’
‘That is not right,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Why do you stand for it?’
‘It ain’t her fault. She can’t help it,’ said Portia. ‘Half the folks in that house don’t pay the rent, and it a big expense to keep everthing up. I tell you the truth--the Kellys is just barely keeping one jump ahead of the sheriff. They having a mighty hard time.’
‘There ought to be some other job you can get’
‘I know. But the Kellys is really grand white peoples to work for. I really fond of them as I can be. Them three little children is just like some of my own kinfolks. I feel like I done really raised Bubber and the baby. And although Mick and me is always getting into some kind of quarrel together, I haves a real close fondness for her, too.’
‘But you must think of yourself,’ said Doctor Copeland.
‘Mick, now--’ said Portia. ‘She a real case. Not a soul know how to manage that child. She just as biggity and headstrong as she can be. Something going on in her all the time. I haves a funny feeling about that child. It seem to me that one of these days she going to really surprise somebody. But whether that going to be a good surprise or a bad surprise I just don’t know. Mick puzzle me sometimes.
But still I really fond of her.’
‘You must look out for your own livelihood first.’
‘As I say, it ain’t Mrs. Kelly’s fault It cost so much to run that big old house and the rent just don’t be paid. Ain’t but one person in the house who pay a decent amount for his room and pay it on the dot without fail. And that man only been living there a short while. He one of these here deaf-and-dumb folks.
He the first one of them I ever seen close up--but he a mighty fine white man. ‘Tall, thin, with gray and green eyes?’ asked Doctor Copeland suddenly. ‘And always polite to everyone and very well dressed? Not like someone from this town--more like a Northerner or maybe a Jew?’
‘That him,’ said Portia.
Eagerness came into Doctor Copeland’s face. He crumbled his hoecake into the collard juice in his plate and began to eat with a new appetite. ‘I have a deaf-mute patient,’ he said.
‘How come you acquainted with Mr. Singer?’ asked Portia.
Doctor Copeland coughed and covered his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘I have just seen him several times.’
‘I better clean up now,’ said Portia. ‘It sure enough time for Willie and my Highboy. But with this here real sink and grand running water these little dishes won’t take me two winks.’
The quiet insolence of the white race was one thing he had tried to keep out of his mind for years. When the resentment would come to him he would cogitate and study. In the streets and around white people he would keep the dignity on his face and always be silent. When he was younger it was ‘Boy’--but now it was ‘Uncle.’ ‘Uncle, run down to that filling station on the corner and send me a mechanic’ A white man in a car had called out those words to him not long ago. ‘Boy, give me a hand with this.’ ‘Uncle, do that.’ And he would not listen, but would walk, on with the dignity in him and be silent. A few nights ago a drunken white man had come up to him and begun pulling him along the street. He had his bag with him and he was sure someone was hurt. But the drunkard had pulled him into a white man