The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

  She hollered and pushed and was the first to try any new stunt.

  She made so much noise and moved around so fast she couldn’t notice what anybody else was doing. Her breath wouldn’t come fast enough to let her do all the wild things she wanted to do.

  The ditch down the street! The ditch! The ditch!’ She started for it first. Down a block they had put in new pipes under the street and dug a swell deep ditch. The flambeaux around the edge were bright and red in the dark. She wouldn’t wait to climb down. She ran until she reached the little wavy flames and then she jumped.

  With her tennis shoes she would have landed like a cat--but the high pumps made her slip and her stomach hit this pipe.

  Her breath was stopped. She lay quiet with her eyes closed.

  The party--For a long time she remembered how she thought it would be, how she imagined the new people at Vocational. And about the bunch she wanted to be with every day. She would feel different in the halls now, knowing that they were not something special but like any other kids. It was O.K. about the ruined party. But it was all over. It was the end.

  Mick climbed out of the ditch. Some kids were playing around the little pots of flames. The fire made a red glow and there were long, quick shadows. One boy had gone home and put on a dough-face bought in advance for Halloween. Nothing was changed about the party except her.

  She walked home slowly. When she passed kids she didn’t speak or look at them. The decoration in the hall was torn down and the house seemed very empty because everyone had gone outside. In the bathroom she took off the blue evening dress. The hem was torn and she folded it so the raggedy place wouldn’t show. The rhinestone tiara was lost somewhere. Her old shorts and shirt were lying on the floor just where she had left them. She put them on. She was too big to wear shorts any more after this. No more after this night Not any more.

  Mick stood out on the front porch. Her face was very white without the paint. She cupped her hands before her mouth and took a deep breath. ‘Everybody go home! The door is shut! The party is over!’ In the quiet, secret night she was by herself again. It was not late-yellow squares of light snowed in the windows of the houses along the streets. She walked slow, with her hands in her pockets and her head to one side. For a long time she walked without noticing the direction.

  Then the houses were far apart from each other and there were yards with big trees in them and black shrubbery. She looked around and saw she was near this house where she had gone so many times in the summer. Her feet had just taken her here without her knowing. When she came to the house she waited to be sure no person could see. Then she went through the side yard.

  The radio was on as usual. For a second she stood by the window and watched the people inside. The bald-headed man and the gray-haired lady were playing cards at a table. Mick sat on the ground. This was a very fine and secret place. Close around were thick cedars so that she was completely hidden by herself. The radio was no good tonight--somebody sang popular songs that all ended in the same way. It was like she was empty. She reached in her pockets and felt around with her fingers. There were raisins and a buckeye and a string of beads--one cigarette with matches. She lighted the cigarette and put her arms around her knees. It was like she was so empty there wasn’t even a feeling or thought in her.

  One program came on after another, and all of them were punk. She didn’t especially care. She smoked and picked a little bunch of grass blades. After a while a new announcer started talking. He mentioned Beethoven. She had read in the library about that musician--his name was pronounced with an a and spelled with double e. He was a German fellow like Mozart When he was living he spoke in a foreign language and lived in a foreign place--like she wanted to do. The announcer said they were going to play his third symphony.

  She only halfway listened because she wanted to walk some more and she didn’t care much what they played. Then the music started. Mick raised her head and her fist went up to her throat.

  How did it come? For a minute the opening balanced from one side to the other. Like a walk or march. Like God strutting in the night. The outside of her was suddenly froze and only that first part of the music was hot inside her heart. She could not even hear what sounded after, but she sat there waiting and froze, with her fists tight. After a while the music came again, harder and loud. It didn’t have anything to do with God. This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings. This music was her--the real plain her.

  She could not listen good enough to hear it all. The music boiled inside her. Which? To hang on to certain wonderful parts and think them over so that later she would not forget--or should she let go and listen to each part that came without thinking or trying to remember? Golly! The whole world was this music and she could not listen hard enough. Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart And the first part was over.

  This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored--a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of instruments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again.

  But maybe the last part of the symphony was the music she loved the best--glad and like the greatest people in the world running and springing up in a hard, free way. Wonderful music nice this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.

  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 mu
sic 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.

  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 cafe 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’s menu on the typewriter, she marked the special dinner with chicken a la king at twenty cents instead of fifty, and did not discover the mistake until several customers had already ordered and were ready to pay. Another time she gave back two fives and three ones as change for ten dollars. Biff would stand looking at her for a long time, rubbing his nose thoughtfully and with his eyes half-closed.

  They did not speak of this together. At night he worked downstairs while she slept, and during the morning she managed the restaurant alone. When they worked together he stayed behind the cash register and looked after the kitchen and the tables, as was their custom. They did not talk except on matters of business, but Biff would stand watching her with his face puzzled.

  Then in the afternoon of the eighth of October there was a sudden cry of pain from the room where they slept. Biff hurried upstairs. Within an hour they had taken Alice to the hospital and the doctor had removed from her a tumor almost the size of a newborn child. And then within another hour Alice was dead.

  Biff sat by her bed at the hospital in stunned reflection. He had been present when she died. Her eyes had been drugged and misty from the ether and then they hardened like glass.

  The nurse and the doctor withdrew from the room. He continued to look into her face. Except for the bluish pallor there was little difference. He noted each detail about her as though he had net watched her every day for twenty-one years.

  Then gradually as he sat there his thoughts turned to a picture that had long been stored inside him.

  The cold green ocean and a hot gold strip of sand. The little children playing on the edge of the silky line of foam. The sturdy brown baby girl, the thin little naked boys, the half-grown children running and calling out to each other with sweet, shrill voices. Children were here whom he knew, Mick and his niece, Baby, and there were also strange young faces no one had ever seen before. Biff bowed his head.

  After a long while he got up from his chair and stood in the middle of the room. He could hear his sister-in-law, Lucile, walking up and down the hall outside. A fat bee crawled across the top of the dresser, and adroitly Biff caught it in his hand and put it out the open window. He glanced at the dead face one more time, and then with widowed sedateness he opened the door mat led out into the hospital corridor.

  Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs.

  Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved--so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why? Biff bent close over his sewing and meditated on many things.

  He sewed skillfully, and the calluses on the tips of his fingers were so hard that he pushed the needle through the cloth without a thimble. Already the mourning bands had been sewn around the arms of two gray suits, and now he was on the last.

  The day was bright and hot, and the first dead leaves of the new autumn scraped on the sidewalks. He had gone out early.

  Each minute was very long. Before him there was infinite leisure. He had locked the door of the restaurant and hung on the outside a white wreath of lilies. To the funeral home he went first and looked carefully at the selection of caskets. He touched the materials of the linings and tested the strength of the frames.

  ‘What is the name of the crepe of this one--Georgette?’

  The undertaker answered his questions in an oily, unctuous voice.

  ‘And what is the percentage of cremations in your business?’

  Out on the street again Biff walked with measured formality.

  From the west there was a warm wind and the sun was very bright. His watch had stopped, so he turned down toward the street where Wilbur Kelly had recently put out his sign as watchmaker. Kelly was sitting at his bench in a patched bathrobe. His shop was also a bedroom, and the baby Mick pulled around with her in a wagon sat quietly on a pallet on the floor. Each minute was so long that in it there was ample time for contemplation and enquiry. He asked Kelly to explain the exact use of jewels in a watch. He noted the distorted look of Kelly’s right eye as it appeared through his watchmaker’s loupe. They talked for a while about Chamberlain and Munich. Then as the time was still early he decided to go up to the mute’s room.

  Singer was dressing for work. Last night there had come from him a letter of condolence. He was to be a pallbearer at the funeral. Biff sat on the bed and they smoked a cigarette together. Singer looked at him now and then with his green observant eyes. He offered him a drink of coffee. Biff did not talk, and once the mute stopped to pat him on the shoulder and look for a second into his face. When Singer was dressed they went out together.

  Biff bought the black ribbon at the store and saw the preacher of Alice’s church. When all was arranged he came back home.

  To put things in order--that was the thought in his mind. He bundled up Alice’s clothes and personal possessions to give to Lucile. He thoroughly cleaned and straightened the bureau drawers. He even rearranged the shelves of the kitchen downstairs and removed the gaily colored crepe streamers from the electric fans. Then when this was done he sat in the tub and bathed himself all over. And the morning was done.

  Biff bit the thread and smoothed the black band on the sleeve of his coat. By now Lucile would be waiting for him. He and she and Baby would ride in the funeral car together. He put away the work basket and fitted the coat with the mourning band very carefully on his shoulders. He glanced swiftly around the room to see that all was well before going out again. An hour later he was in Lucile’s kitchenette. He sat with his legs crossed, a napkin over his thigh, drinking a cup of tea. Lucile and Alice had been so different in all way
s that it was not easy to realize they were sisters. Lucile was thin and dark, and today she had dressed completely in black. She was fixing Baby’s hair. The kid waited patiently on the kitchen table with her hands folded in her lap while her mother worked on her. The sunlight was quiet and mellow in the room. ‘Bartholomew--’ said Lucile. .What?’

  ‘Don’t you ever start thinking backward?’

  ‘I don’t,’said Biff.

  ‘You know it’s like I got to wear blinders all the time so I won’t think sideways or in the past. All I can let myself think about is going to work every day and fixing meals and Baby’s future.’

  That’s the right attitude.’

  ‘I been giving Baby finger waves down at the shop. But they come out so quick I been thinking about letting her have a permanent. I don’t want to give it to her myself--I think maybe take her up to Atlanta when I go to the cosmetologist convention and let her get it there.’

  ‘Motherogod! She’s not but four. It’s liable to scare her. And besides, permanents tend to coarsen the hair.’

  Lucile dipped the comb in a glass of water and mashed the curls over Baby’s ears. ‘No, they don’t. And she wants one.

  Young as Baby is, she already has as much ambition as I got.

  And that’s saying plenty.’

  Biff polished his nails on the palm of his hand and shook his head.

  ‘Every time Baby and I go to the movies and see those kids in all the good roles she feels the same way I do. I swear she does, Bartholomew. I can’t even get her to eat her supper afterward.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ Biff said.

  ‘She’s getting along so fine with her dancing and expression lessons. Next year I want her to start with the piano because I think it’ll be a help for her to play some.