The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [96]
Then from noon until five in the morning he worked downstairs. And all day Sunday. The business was losing money. There were many slack hours. Still at meal-times the place was usually full and he saw hundreds of acquaintances every day as he stood guard behind the cash register.
‘What do you stand and think about all the time?’ Jake Blount asked him. ‘You look like a Jew in Germany.’
‘I am an eighth part Jew,’ Biff said. ‘My Mother’s grandfather was a Jew from Amsterdam. But all the rest of my folks that I know about were Scotch-Irish.’
It was Sunday morning. Customers lolled at the tables and there were the smell of tobacco and the rustle of newspaper.
Some men in a corner booth shot dice, but the game was a quiet one.
‘Where’s Singer?’ Biff asked. ‘Won’t you be going up to his place this morning?’
Blount’s face turned dark and sullen. He jerked his head forward. Had they quarreled--but how could a dummy quarrel? No, for this had happened before. Blount hung around sometimes and acted as though he were having an argument with himself. But pretty soon he would go--he always did--and the two of them would come in together, Blount talking.
‘You live a fine life. Just standing behind a cash register. Just standing with your hand open.’
Biff did not take offense. He leaned his weight on his elbows and narrowed his eyes. ‘Let’s me and you have a serious talk.
What is it you want anyway?’
Blount smacked his hands down on the counter. They were warm and meaty and rough. ‘Beer. And one of them little packages of cheese crackers with peanut butter in the inside.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Biff said. ‘But well come around to it later.’
The man was a puzzle. He was always changing. He still drank like a crazy fish, but liquor did not drag him down as it did some men. The rims of his eyes were often red, and he had a nervous trick of looking back startled over his shoulder. His head was heavy and huge on his thin neck. He was the sort of fellow that kids laughed at and dogs wanted to bite. Yet when he was laughed at it cut him to the quick--he got rough and loud like a sort of clown. And he was always suspecting that somebody was laughing. Biff shook his head thoughtfully. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘What makes you stick with that show? You can find something better than that. I could give you a part-time job here.’
‘Christamighty! I wouldn’t park myself behind that cash box if you was to give me the whole damn place, lock, stock, and barrel.’There he was. It was irritating. He could never have friends or even get along with people. Talk sense,’ Biff said. ‘Be serious.’ A customer had come up with his check and he made change. The place was still quiet. Blount was restless. Biff felt him drawing away. He wanted to hold him. He reached for two A-1 cigars on the shelf behind the counter and offered Blount a smoke. Warily his mind dismissed one question after another, and then finally he asked: ‘If you could choose the time in history you could have lived, what era would you choose? ‘ Blount licked his mustache with his broad, wet tongue. ‘If you had to choose between being a stiff and never asking another question, which would you take? ‘ ‘Sure enough,’ Biff insisted. ‘Think it over.’ He cocked his head to one side and peered down over his long nose. This was a matter he liked to hear others talk about. Ancient Greece was his. Walking in sandals on the edge of the blue Aegean. The loose robes girdled at the waist. Children. The marble baths and the contemplations in the temples. ‘Maybe with the Incas. In Peru.’ Biff’s eyes scanned over him, stripping him naked. He saw Blount burned a rich, red brown by the sun, his face smooth and hairless, with a bracelet of gold and precious stones on his forearm. When he closed his eyes the man was a good Inca. But when he looked at him again the picture fell away. It was the nervous mustache that did not belong to his face, the way he jerked his shoulder, the Adam’s apple on his thin neck, the bagginess of his trousers. And it was more than that. ‘Or maybe around 1775.’
‘That was a good time to be living,