The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [50]
It was over, and she sat very stiff with her arms around her knees. Another program came on the radio and she put her fingers in her ears. The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.
The radio and the lights in the house were turned off. The night was very dark. Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh with her fists. She pounded the same muscle with all her strength until the tears came down her face. But she could not feel this hard enough. The rocks under the bush were sharp.
She grabbed a handful of them and began scraping them up and down on the same spot until her hand was bloody. Then she fell back to the ground and lay looking up at the night.
With the fiery hurt in her leg she felt better. She was limp on the wet grass, and after a while her breath came slow and easy again.
Why hadn’t the explorers known by looking at the sky that the world was round? The sky was curved, like the inside of a huge glass ball, very dark blue with the sprinkles of bright stars. The night was quiet. There was the smell of warm cedars. She was not trying to think of the music at all when it came back to her. The first part happened hi her mind just as it had been played. She listened in a quiet, slow way and thought the notes out like a problem in geometry so she would remember. She could see the shape of the sounds very clear and she would not forget them.
Now she felt good. She whispered some words out loud: ‘Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do.’ Why did she think of that? Everybody in the past few years knew there wasn’t any real God. When she thought of what she used to imagine was God she could only see Mister Singer with a long, white sheet around him. God was silent--maybe that was why she was reminded. She said the words again, just as she would speak them to Mister Singer: ‘Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do.’
This part of the music was beautiful and clear. She could sing it now whenever she wanted to. Maybe later on, when she had just waked up some morning, more of the music would come back to her. If ever she heard the symphony again there would be other parts to add to what was already in her mind. And maybe if she could hear it four more times, just four more times, she would know it all. Maybe.
Once again she listened to this opening part of the music.
Then the notes grew slower and soft and it was like she was sinking down slowly into the dark ground.
Mick awoke with a jerk. The air had turned chilly, and as she was coming up out of the sleep she dreamed old Etta Kelly was taking all the cover. ‘Gimme some blanket --’ she tried to say. Then she opened her eyes. The sky was very black and all the stars were gone. The grass was wet.
She got up in a hurry because her Dad would be worried. Then she remembered the music. She couldn’t tell whether the time was midnight or three in the morning, so she started beating it for home in a rush. The air had a smell in it like autumn. The music was loud and quick in her mind, and she ran faster and faster on the sidewalks leading to the home block.
2
BY OCTOBER THE days were blue and cool. Biff Brannon changed his light seersucker trousers for dark-blue serge ones.
Behind the counter of the café he installed a machine that made hot chocolate. Mick was very partial to hot chocolate, and she came in three or four times a week to drink a cup. He served it to her for a nickel instead of a dime and he wanted to give it to her free. He watched her as she stood behind the counter and he was troubled and sad. He wanted to reach out his hand and touch her sunburned, tousled hair--but not as he had ever touched a woman. In him there was an uneasiness, and when he spoke to her his voice had a rough, strange sound.
There were many worries on his mind. For one thing, Alice was not well. She worked downstairs as usual from seven in the morning until ten at night, but she walked very slowly and brown circles were beneath her eyes. It was in the business that she showed this illness most plainly. One Sunday, when she wrote out the day