The Early Stories of Truman Capote

  —

  It was quite dark when Miss Belle started climbing up the hill towards home. Dark came quickly on these winter days. It came so suddenly today that it frightened her at first. There was no glowing sunset, only the pearl grayness of the sky deepening into rich black. The snow was still falling and the road was slushy and cold. The wind was stronger and there was the sharp cracking of dead limbs. She bent under the weight of her heavy basket. It had been a good day. Mr. Johnson had given her almost one-third of a ham and that little Olie Peterson had had quite a few unsalable vegetables. She would not have to go back for at least two weeks.

  When she reached the house, she stopped a minute for breath, letting the hamper slip to the ground. Then, she walked to the edge of the land and started picking some of the huge rose-like Japonicas; she crushed one against her face but she did not feel its touch. She gathered an arm load and started back to the hamper, when suddenly she thought she heard a voice. She stood still and listened, but there was only the wind to answer.

  She felt herself slipping down and could not help it; she grabbed into the darkness for support, but there was only emptiness. She tried to cry out for help but no sound came. She felt great waves of emptiness sweeping over her; fleeting scenes swept through her. Her life—utter futility and a momentary glimpse of Lillie, of Jed, and a sharp picture of her mother with a long lean cane.

  —

  I remember it was a cold winter day when Aunt Jenny took me down to the old run down place where Miss Belle lived. Miss Belle had died during the night and an old colored fellow that lived there on the place had found her. Just about everybody in town was going out to have a look. They hadn’t moved her yet because the coroner hadn’t given permission. So we saw her just as she had died. It was the first time I had ever seen a dead person and I’ll never forget it.

  She was lying in the yard by those Japonica trees of hers. All the wrinkles were smoothed on her face, and the bright flowers were scattered all over.

  She looked so small and really young. There were little flakes of snow in her hair and one of those flowers was pressed close against her cheek. I thought she was one of the most beautiful things that I had ever seen.

  Everybody said how sad it was and everything, but I thought this was strange as they were the ones who used to laugh and make jokes about her.

  Well, Miss Belle Rankin was certainly an odd one and probably a little touched, but she really looked lovely that cold February morning with that flower pressed against her cheek and lying there so still and quiet.

  If I Forget You

  Grace had stood waiting on the porch for him for almost an hour. When she had seen him down in town that afternoon he had said he would be there at eight. It was almost eight-ten. She sat down in the porch swing. She tried not to think of his coming or even to look down the road in the direction of his house. She knew that if she thought about it, it would never happen. He just wouldn’t ever come.

  “Grace, are you still out there, hasn’t he come yet?”

  “No, Mother.”

  “Well you can’t sit out there for the rest of the night, come right back into this house.”

  She didn’t want to go back in, she didn’t want to have to sit in that stuffy old living room and watch her father read the news and her mother work the cross word puzzles. She wanted to stay out here in the night where she could breathe and smell and touch it. It seemed so palpable to her that she could feel its texture like fine blue satin.

  “Here he comes now, Mother,” she lied, “he’s coming up the road now, I’m going to run and meet him.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort, Grace Lee,” said her mother’s sonorous voice.

  “Yes, Mother, yes! I’ll be back as soon as I say goodbye.”

  She tripped down the porch steps and out into the road before her mother could say anything more.

  She had made up her mind that she was going to just keep right on walking until she met him, even if she had to walk all the way to his house. This was a big night for her, not exactly a happy one, but it was a beautiful one anyway.

  He was going to leave town, after all these years. It would seem so funny after he was gone. She knew nothing would ever be quite the same again. Once in school, when Miss Saaron asked the pupils to write a poem, she had written a poem about him, it was so good that it had been published in the town paper. She had called it “In the Soul of the Night.” She recited the first two lines as she sauntered along the moon drenched road.

  My loves is a Bright Strong light,

  That shuts out the darkness of the Night.

  Once he had asked her if she really loved him. She had said, “I love you for now, but we’re just kids, this is just puppy love.” But she knew she had lied, at least lied to herself, for now, for this brief moment, she knew that she loved him and then only a month ago she was quite sure it was all very childish and silly. But now that he was going away she knew this was not so. Once he had told her, after the poem episode, that she shouldn’t take it so seriously, after all she was only sixteen. “Why, by the time we’re twenty, if someone was to mention our names to one another we probably wouldn’t even recognize the name.” She had felt terrible about that. Yes, he would probably forget her. And now he was going away and she might never see him again. He might become a great engineer just like he wanted to be, and she’d still be sitting down here in a little southern town no one ever heard of. “Maybe he won’t forget me,” she told herself. “Maybe he’ll come back to me and take me away from here to some big place like New Orleans or Chicago or even New York.” It made her wild eyed with happiness just to think of it.

  The smell of the pine woods on either side of the road made her think of all the good times they had had picnicking and horseback riding and dancing.

  She remembered the time he had asked her to go to the junior prom with him. That was when she had first known him. He was so awfully good looking and she was so proud of herself, no one would have ever thought that little Grace Lee with her green eyes and freckles would ever have walked off with a prize like him. She had been so proud and so excited that she had almost forgotten how to dance. She had been so embarrassed when she mistook the lead and he had stepped on her foot and torn her silk stocking.

  And just when she had convinced herself that this was real romance her mother had gone and said that they were just children and after all children just couldn’t possibly know what real “affection” was, as she termed it.

  Then the girls in town, who were purple with envy, started a “We Don’t Like Grace Lee Campaign.” “Look at the little fool,” they would whisper, “just throwing herself at him.” “Why she’s no better than a—than a—harlot.” “I’d give a pretty penny to know what those two have been up to, but I suppose it would be too shocking for my ears.”

  Her pace quickened, she got mad just when she thought of it, those smug little prigs. She never would forget the fight she had had with Louise Beavers the time she had caught her reading a letter she had written aloud to a lot of laughing girls in the school wash room. Louise had stolen the letter out of one of Grace’s books and she was reading it aloud to them all with great, mocking gestures, and making a joke out of something that wasn’t funny at all.

  “Oh, well, that’s just a lot of trivial nonsense anyway,” she thought.

  The moon shone brightly in the sky, pale, wan little clouds hung around the surface like a fine lace shawl. She stared at it. She would soon be at his house. Just up this hill and down and there she would be. It was a fine little house, it was solid and substantial. It was just the perfect place for him to live, she thought.

  Sometimes she thought it was just a lot of sentiment, this puppy love, but now she was certain that it wasn’t. He was going to leave. He was going away to live with his aunt in New Orleans. His aunt was an artist, she did not like that very much. She had heard that artists were queer people.

  He had not told her until yesterday that he was
leaving. He must have been a little afraid too, she thought, and now I’m the one that’s afraid. Oh, how happy everyone would be now that he was leaving and she wouldn’t have him anymore, she could just see their laughing faces.

  She brushed the light blonde hair out of her eyes. There was a cool wind blowing through the tree tops. She was nearing the crest of the hill, and suddenly she knew that he was coming up the other side and that they were going to meet at the top. She grew hot all over so sure was her premonition. She did not want to cry, she wanted to smile. She felt in her pocket for the picture of herself he had asked her to bring. It was a cheap snapshot that a man had taken of her at a carnival that had passed through the town. It didn’t even look much like her.

  Now that she was almost there she didn’t want to go any further. As long as she hadn’t actually said goodbye she still had him. She went and sat in the soft evening grass by the side of the road to wait for him.

  “All I hope for,” she said as she stared up into the dark, moon filled sky, “is that he doesn’t forget me, I suppose that’s all I have a right to hope for.”

  The Moth in the Flame

  All afternoon Em had lain on the steel-framed bed. She had a scrap quilt pulled over her legs. She was just lying there and thinking. The weather had turned cold, even for Alabama.

  George and all the other men from over the countryside were out looking for crazy old Sadie Hopkins. She had escaped from the jail. Poor old Sadie, thought Em, runnin’ all over in those swamps and fields. She used to be such a pretty girl—just got mixed up with the wrong folks, I guess. Gone plumb crazy.

  Em looked out the window of her cabin; the sky was dark and slate gray and the fields looked as if they had been frozen into furrows. She pulled the quilt closer about her. It certainly was lonesome out in this country, not another farm for four miles, fields on one side, swamp and woods on the other. She felt that maybe she had been born to be lonesome just as some people are born blind or deaf.

  She stared around the small room, the four walls closing in around her. She sat silent, listening to the cheap alarm clock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Suddenly the strangest feeling crept up her back, a feeling of fear and horror. She felt her scalp tingle. She knew, like a flash of blinding light, that there was someone watching her, someone standing very near and watching her with cold, calculating, insane eyes.

  For a moment she lay so still that she could hear the pounding of her heart, and the clock sounded like a sledge hammer beating against a hollow stump. Em knew that she wasn’t imagining things; she knew there was some cause for this fright; she knew by instinct, an instinct so clear and vital that it filled her whole body.

  Slowly she got up and gazed about the room. She saw nothing; yet she felt that there was someone staring at her, following her every move.

  She picked up the first thing that she touched, a stick of lighting wood. Then she called in a bold voice, “Who is it? What do you want?”

  Only cold silence met her questions. Despite the actual physical cold she grew hot all over; she felt her cheeks burning.

  “I know you’re here,” she screamed hysterically. “What do you want? Why don’t you show yourself? Come out, you sneakin’—”

  Then she heard a voice, tired and frightened, behind her.

  “It’s only me, Em—Sadie, you know, Sadie Hopkins.”

  Em whirled around. The woman who stood in front of her was half naked, her hair hanging wildly about her scratched and bruised face. Her legs were all marked with blood.

  “Em,” she pleaded, “please help me. I’m tired and hungry. Hide me someplace. Don’t let them catch me, please don’t. They’ll lynch me; they think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy; you know that, Em. Please, Em.” She was crying.

  Em was too shocked and dazed to reply. She stumbled and sat down on the edge of the bed. “What are you doin’ in here, Sadie? How did you get in?”

  “I came through the back door,” the crazy woman answered. “I’ve got to hide someplace. They’re headin’ this way through the swamps and they’ll find him soon. Oh, I didn’t mean to do it; I didn’t mean it, Em. The Lord knows I didn’t mean it.”

  Em looked at her blankly. “What are you talkin’ about?” she asked.

  “That Henderson boy,” cried Sadie. “He caught up with me in the woods. He was holdin’ me and clawin’ me and screamin’ for the others. I didn’t know what to do; I was scared. I tripped him; he fell over backwards, and I jumped on him and hit him in the head with a big rock. I just couldn’t seem to stop hittin’ him. I only meant to knock him out, but when I looked—OH, GOD!”

  Sadie leaned back against the door, and began to chuckle and then to laugh. Soon the whole room was filled with wild, hysterical laughter. The dusk had fallen, and the bright flames from the limestone fireplace played weird shadows around the room. They danced in the blackness of the insane woman’s eyes; they seemed to lash her hysteria into a wilder frenzy.

  Em sat on the bed, horrified and dazed, her eyes filled with bewilderment and terror. She was hypnotized by Sadie, and her dark, evil laughter.

  “But you’ll let me stay, won’t you, Em?” the woman shrieked. Then she looked into Em’s eyes. She stopped laughing. “Please, Em,” she begged. “I don’t want them to catch me. I don’t want to die; I want to live. They’ve done this to me; they’ve made me the way I am.”

  She looked into the fire. She knew that she would have to go. Then presently she asked, “Em, what part of the swamp aren’t they going to cover today?”

  Deliberately Em sat up, her eyes burning with hysterical tears. “They aren’t goin’ to cover the Hawkins’ section till tomorrow.” When she had told the lie, she felt her stomach sink; she felt as if she were falling through a thousand years.

  “Goodbye, Em.”

  “Goodbye, Sadie.”

  Sadie walked out of the front door and Em watched her until she reached the edge of the swamp and disappeared into its dark jungle-like depths.

  Part II

  Em collapsed onto the bed and began to cry. She cried until she fell into a feverish sleep. She was awakened by the sound of men talking. She looked out into the dark yard and saw George and Hank Simmons and Bony Yarber coming toward the house.

  Quickly she jumped up, got a wet cloth, and wiped her face. She turned up a lamp in the kitchen and was sitting reading when the men came in.

  “Hello, honey,” said George, depositing a kiss on her cheek. “Gosh, but you’re hot. Are you feelin’ all right?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Hello, Em,” said the other two men.

  She didn’t bother to return their salutation. She sat reading. They each took a drink of water from the dipper.

  “Boy, that sure tastes good,” said George, “but how about somethin’ with a little more punch to it, eh, boys?” He nudged Bony.

  Suddenly Em laid down her magazine. Cautiously she looked around at them.

  “Did—did,” her voice quavered a little bit, “did you find Sadie?”

  “Yes,” answered George, “we found her in one of those whirlpools over in Hawkins’ mirey part of the swamp. She’d drowned, committed suicide, I guess. But let’s don’t talk about it; it was God-awful. It was—”

  But he didn’t finish. Em jumped up from the table, knocked the lamp over, and ran into the bedroom.

  “Now, what the hell do you suppose is eatin’ her, I wonder,” said George.

  Swamp Terror

  “Well, I’m shore tellin’ you, Jep, you just ain’t got the sense you wuz born with if you gonna go on in these woods lookin’ for that convict.”

  The boy who spoke was small, with a nut-brown face covered with freckles. He looked eagerly at his companion.

  “Listen here,” Jep said. “I know very well whut I’m doin’—an’ I don’t need none of yo’ advice or none of yo’ sassy mouth.”

  “Boy, I do believe you is crazy. Whut would yo’ ma say if she was to know you was out here in t
hese spooky ol’ woods lookin’ fo’ some ol’ convict?”

  “Lemmie, I’m not askin’ fo’ none of yo’ mouth, an’ I sho’ ain’t askin’ fo’ you to be taggin’ along here with me. Now you can go on back—Pete an’ I will go on and find that ol’ buzzard—then we two, just us two, will go down an’ tell those searchin’ parties where he be. Won’t we, Pete, ol’ boy?” He patted a brown-and-tan dog trotting along by his side.

  They walked on a little farther in silence. The boy called Lemmie was undecided what to do. The woods were dark and so quiet. Occasionally a bird would flutter or sing in the trees, and when their path ran near the stream they could hear it moving swiftly along over the rocks and tiny waterfalls. Yes, indeed, it was too quiet. Lemmie hated the thought of walking back to the edge of the woods alone, but he hated the idea of going on with Jep even worse.

  “Well, Jep,” he said finally, “I guess I’ll just mosey on back. I’m shore not goin’ on into this place any farther, not with all these trees an’ bushes every place that ol’ convict could hide behind, an’ jump on you, an’ kill you deader’n an ol’ doorknob.”

  “Aw, go on back, you big sissy. I hope he gits you while you is goin’ back thru’ the ol’ woods by yuhself.”

  “Well, so long—I guess I’ll be seein’ you in school tomorrow.”

  “Maybe. So long.”

  Jep could hear Lemmie running back through the underbrush, his feet scurrying like a scared rabbit. “That’s what he is,” thought Jep, “just a scared rabbit. What a baby Lemmie is. We never should have brought him along with us, should we’ve, Pete?”

  He demanded the last vocally, and the old brown-and-tan dog, perhaps frightened by the silence being too suddenly interrupted, let out a quick, scared, little bark.