The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

  ‘O.K. I’ll borrow the bikes.’

  It was time for him to go to work. She watched him walk down the street. He swung his arms. Halfway down the block there was a bay tree with low branches. Harry took a running jump, caught a limb, and chinned himself. A happy feeling came in her because it was true they were real good friends.

  Also he was handsome. Tomorrow she would borrow Hazel’s blue necklace and wear the silk dress. And for dinner they would take jelly sandwiches and Nehi. Maybe Harry would bring something queer, because they ate orthodox Jew. She watched him until he turned the corner. It was true that he had grown to be a very good-looking fellow.

  Harry in the country was different from Harry sitting on the back steps reading the newspapers and thinking about Hitler.

  They left early in the morning. The wheels he borrowed were the kind for boys--with a bar between the legs. They strapped the lunches and bathing-suits to the fenders and were gone before nine o’clock. The morning was hot and sunny. Within an hour they were far out of town on a red clay road. The fields were bright and green and the sharp smell of pine trees was in the air. Harry talked in a very excited way. The warm wind blew into their faces. Her mouth was very dry and she was hungry. ‘See that house up on the hill there? Less us stop and get some water.’

  ‘No, we better wait. Well water gives you typhoid.’

  ‘I already had typhoid. I had pneumonia and a broken leg and a infected foot.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mick said. ‘Me and Bill stayed in the front room when we had typhoid fever and Pete Wells would run past on the sidewalk holding his nose and looking up at the window. Bill was very embarrassed. All my hair came out so I was bald-headed.’

  ‘I bet we’re at least ten miles from town. We’ve been riding an hour and a half--fast riding, too.’

  ‘I sure am thirsty,’ Mick said. ‘And hungry. What you got in that sack for lunch?’

  ‘Cold liver pudding and chicken salad sandwiches and pie.’

  That’s a good picnic dinner. ‘She was ashamed of what she had brought.’ I got two hard-boiled eggs--already stuffed--with separate little packages of salt and pepper. And sandwiches--blackberry jelly with butter. Everything wrapped in oil paper.

  And paper napkins.’

  ‘I didn’t intend for you to bring anything,’ Harry said. ‘My Mother fixed lunch for both of us. I asked you out here and all. We’ll come to a store soon and get cold drinks.’

  They rode half an hour longer before they finally came to the filling-station store. Harry propped up the bicycles and she went in ahead of him. After the bright glare the store seemed dark. The shelves were stacked with slabs of white meat, cans of oil, and sacks of meal. Flies buzzed over a big, sticky jar of loose candy on the counter.

  ‘What kind of drinks you got?’ Harry asked. The storeman started to name them over. Mick opened the ice box and looked inside. Her hands felt good in the cold water. ‘I want a chocolate Nehi. You got any of them? ‘ ‘Ditto,’ Harry said. ‘Make it two.’

  ‘No, wait a minute. Here’s some ice-cold beer. I want a bottle of beer if you can treat as high as that’ Harry ordered one for himself, also. He thought it was a sin for anybody under twenty to drink beer--but maybe he just suddenly wanted to be a sport. After the first swallow he made a bitter face. They sat on the steps in front of the store.

  Mick’s legs were so tired that the muscles in them jumped.

  She wiped the neck of the bottle with her hand and took a long, cold pull. Across the road there was a big empty field of grass, and beyond that a fringe of pine woods. The trees were every color of green--from a bright yellow-green to a dark color that was almost black. The sky was hot blue.

  ‘I like beer,’ she said. ‘I used to sop bread down in the drops our Dad left. I like to lick salt out my hand while I drink. This is the second bottle to myself I’ve ever had.’

  The first swallow was sour. But the rest tastes good.’

  The storeman said it was twelve miles from town. They had four more miles to go. Harry paid him and they were out in the hot sun again. Harry was talking loud and he kept laughing without any reason.

  ‘Gosh, the beer along with this hot sun makes me dizzy. But I sure do feel good,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t wait to get in swimming.’

  There was sand in the road and they had to throw all their weight on the pedals to keep from bogging. Harry’s shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. He still kept talking. The road changed to red clay and the sand was behind them. There was a slow colored song in her mind--one Portia’s brother used to play on his harp. She pedaled in time to it.

  Then finally they reached the place she had been looking for.

  ‘This is it! See that sign that says PRIVATE? We got to climb the bob-wire fence and then take that path there--see!’ The woods were very quiet. Slick pine needles covered the ground. Within a few minutes they had reached the creek. The water was brown and swift. Cool. There was no sound except from the water and a breeze singing high up in the pine trees.

  It was like the deep, quiet woods made them timid, and they walked softly along the bank beside the creek.

  ‘Don’t it look pretty.’

  Harry laughed. ‘What makes you whisper? Listen here!’ He clapped his hand over his mouth and gave a long Indian whoop that echoed back at them. ‘Come on. Let’s jump in the water and cool off.’

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘O.K. Then we’ll eat first. We’ll eat half the lunch now and half later on when we come out’ She unwrapped the jelly sandwiches. When they were finished Harry balled the papers neatly and stuffed them into a hollow tree stump. Then he took his shorts and went down the path.

  She shucked off her clothes behind a bush and struggled into Hazel’s bathing-suit The suit was too small and cut her between the legs.

  ‘You ready?’ Harry hollered.

  She heard a splash in the water and when she reached the bank Harry was already swimming. ‘Don’t dive yet until I find out if there are any stumps or shallow places,’ he said. She just looked at his head bobbing in the water. She had never intended to dive, anyway. She couldn’t even swim. She had been in swimming only a few times in her life--and then she always wore water-wings or stayed out of parts that were over her head. But it would be sissy to tell Harry. She was embarrassed. All of a sudden she told a tale: ‘I don’t dive any more. I used to dive, high dive, all the time. But once I busted my head open, so I can’t dive any more.’ She thought for a minute. ‘It was a double jack-knife dive I was doing. And when I came up there was blood all in the water.

  But I didn’t think anything about it and just began to do swimming tricks. These people were hollering at me. Then I found out where all this blood in the water was coming from.

  And I never have swam good since.’

  Harry scrambled up the bank. ‘Gosh! I never heard about that.’

  She meant to add on to the tale to make it sound more reasonable, but instead she just looked at Harry. His skin was light brown and the water made it shining. There were hairs on his chest and legs. In the tight trunks he seemed very naked. Without his glasses his face was wider and more handsome. His eyes were wet and blue. He was looking at her and it was like suddenly they got embarrassed.

  The water’s about ten feet deep except over on the other bank, and there it’s shallow.’

  ‘Less us get going. I bet that cold water feels good.’

  She wasn’t scared. She felt the same as if she had got caught at the top of a very high tree and there was nothing to do but just climb down the best way she could--a dead-calm feeling. She edged off the bank and was in ice-cold water. She held to a root until it broke in her hands and then she began to swim.

  Once she choked and went under, but she kept going and didn’t lose any face. She swam and reached the other side of the bank where she could touch bottom. Then she felt good.

 
She smacked the water with her fists and called out crazy words to make echoes.

  Watch here!’ Harry shimmied up a tall, thin little tree. The trunk was limber and when he reached the top it swayed down with him. He dropped into the water.

  ‘Me too! Watch me do it!’

  ‘That’s a sapling.’

  She was as good a climber as anybody on the block. She copied exactly what he had done and hit the water with a hard smack. She could swim, too. Now she could swim O.K.

  They played follow the leader and ran up and down the bank and jumped in the cold brown water. They hollered and jumped and climbed. They played around for maybe two hours. Then they were standing on the bank and they both looked at each other and there didn’t seem to be anything new to do. Suddenly she said: ‘Have you ever swam naked?’

  The woods was very quiet and for a minute he did not answer.

  He was cold. His titties had turned hard and purple. His lips were purple and his teeth chattered. ‘I-I don’t think so.’

  This excitement was in her, and she said something she didn’t mean to say. ‘I would if you would. I dare you to.’

  Harry slicked back the dark, wet bangs of his hair. ‘O.K.’

  They both took off their bathing-suits. Harry had his back to her. He stumbled and his ears were red. Then they turned toward each other. Maybe it was half an hour they stood there-maybe not more man a minute. Harry pulled a leaf from a tree and tore it to pieces. ‘We better get dressed.’

  All through the picnic dinner neither of them spoke. They spread the dinner on the ground. Harry divided everything in half. There was the hot, sleepy feeling of a summer afternoon.

  In the deep woods they could hear no sound except the slow flowing of the water and the songbirds. Harry held his stuffed egg and mashed the yellow with his thumb. What did that make her remember? She heard herself breathe.

  Then he looked up over her shoulder. ‘Listen here. I think you’re so pretty, Mick. I never did think so before. I don’t mean I thought you were very ugly--I just mean that--’ She threw a pine cone in the water. ‘Maybe we better start back if we want to be home before dark.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let’s lie down. Just for a minute.’

  He brought handfuls of pine needles and leaves and gray moss. She sucked her knee and watched him. Her fists were tight and it was like she was tense all over.

  ‘Now we can sleep and be fresh for the trip home.’

  They lay on the soft bed and looked up at the dark-green pine clumps against the sky. A bird sang a sad, clear song she had never heard before. One high note like an oboe--and then it sank down five tones and called again. The song was sad as a question without words.

  ‘I love that bird,’ Harry said. ‘I think it’s a vireo.’

  ‘I wish we was at the ocean. On the beach and watching the ships far out on the water. You went to the beach one summer--exactly what is it like?’

  His voice was rough and low. Well--there are the waves.

  Sometimes blue and sometimes green, and in the bright sun they look glassy. And on the sand you can pick up these little shells. Like the kind we brought back in a cigar box. And over the water are these white gulls. We were at the Gulf of Mexico--these cool bay breezes blew all the time and there it’s never baking hot like it is here. Always--’

  ‘Snow,’ Mick said. ‘That’s what I want to see. Cold, white drifts of snow like in pictures. Blizzards. White, cold snow that keeps falling soft and falls on and on and on through all the winter. Snow like in Alaska.’

  They both turned at the same time. They were close against each other. She felt him trembling and her fists were tight enough to crack. ‘Oh, God,’ he kept saying over and over. It was like her head was broke off from her body and thrown away. And her eyes looked up straight into the blinding sun while she counted something in her mind. And then this was the way. This was how it was. They pushed the wheels slowly along the road. Harry’s head hung down and his shoulders were bent. Their shadows were long and black on the dusty road, for it was late afternoon. ‘Listen here,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We got to understand this. We got to. Do you--any?’

  ‘I don’t know. I reckon not.’

  ‘Listen here. We got to do something. Let’s sit down.’ They dropped the bicycles and sat by a ditch beside the road. They sat far apart from each other. The late sun burned down on their heads and there were brown, crumbly ant beds all around them. ‘We got to understand this,’ Harry said. He cried. He sat very still and the tears rolled down Ms white face. She could not think about the thing that made him cry. An ant stung her on the ankle and she picked it up in her fingers and looked at it very close. ‘It’s this way,’ he said. I never had even kissed a girl before.’

  ‘Me neither. I never kissed any boy. Out of the family. ‘That’s all I used to think about--was to kiss this certain girl.

  I used to plan about it during school and dream about it at night. And then once she gave me a date. And I could tell she meant for me to kiss her. And I just looked at her in the dark and I couldn’t That was all I had thought about--to kiss her--and when the time came I couldn’t.’

  She dug a hole in the ground with her finger and buried the dead ant.

  It was all my fault. Adultery is a terrible sin any way you look at it. And you were two years younger than me and just a kid.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t any kid. But now I wish I was, though.’

  ‘Listen here. If you think we ought to we can get married--secretly or any other way.’

  Mick shook her head. ‘I didn’t like that. I never will marry with any boy.’

  ‘I never will marry either. I know that And I’m not just saying so--it’s true.’

  His face scared her. His nose quivered and his bottom lip was mottled and bloody where he had bitten it. His eyes were bright and wet and scowling. His face was whiter than any face she could remember. She turned her head from him.

  Things would be better if only he would just quit talking. Her eyes looked slowly around her--at the streaked red-and-white clay of the ditch, at a broken whiskey bottle, at a pine tree across from them with a sign advertising for a man for county sheriff. She wanted to sit quiet for a long time and not think and not say a word.

  ‘I’m leaving town. I’m a good mechanic and I can get a job some other place. If I stayed home Mother could read this in my eyes.’

  Tell me. Can you look at me and see the difference?’

  Harry watched her face a long time and nodded that he could.

  Then he said: ‘There’s just one more thing. In a month or two I’ll send you my address and you write and tell me for sure whether you’re all right.’

  ‘How you mean?’ she asked slowly.

  He explained to her. ‘All you need to write is "O.K." and then TO know.’

  They were walking home again, pushing the wheels. Their shadows stretched out giant-sized on the road. Harry was bent over like an old beggar and kept wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  For a minute there was a bright, golden glow over everything before the sun sank down behind the trees and their shadows were gone on the road before them. She felt very old, and it was like something was heavy inside her. She was a grown person now, whether she wanted to be or not.

  They had walked the sixteen miles and were in the dark alley at home. She could see the yellow light from their kitchen.

  Harry’s house was dark--his mother had not come home. She worked for a tailor in a shop on a side street.

  Sometimes even on Sunday. When you looked through the window you could see her bending over the machine in the back or pushing a long needle through the heavy pieces of goods. She never looked up while you watched her. And at night she cooked these orthodox dishes for Harry and her.

  ‘Listen here--’ he said.

  She waited in the dark, but he did not finish. They shook hands with each other and Harry walked up the dark
alley between the houses. When he reached the sidewalk he turned and looked back over his shoulder. A light shone on his face and it was white and hard. Then he was gone.

  ‘This here is a riddle,’ George said.

  ‘I listening.’

  Two Indians was walking on a trail. The one in front was the son of the one behind but the one behind was not his father.

  What kin was they?’

  ‘Less see. His stepfather.’

  George grinned at Portia with his little square, blue teeth.

  ‘His uncle, then.’

  ‘You can’t guess. It was his mother. The trick is that you don’t think about a Indian being a lady.’

  She stood outside the room and watched them. The doorway framed the kitchen like a picture. Inside it was homey and clean. Only the light by the sink was turned on and there were shadows in the room. Bill and Hazel played black-jack at the table with matches for money. Hazel felt the braids of her hair with her plump, pink fingers while Bill sucked in his cheeks and dealt the cards in a very serious way. At the sink Portia was drying the dishes with a clean checked towel. She looked thin and her skin was golden yellow, her greased black hair slicked neat. Ralph sat quietly on the floor and George.was trying a little harness on him made out of old Christmas tinsel.

  This here is another riddle, Portia. If the hand of a clock points to half-past two--’ She went into the room. It was like she had expected them to move back when they saw her and stand around in a circle and look. But they just glanced at her. She sat down at the table and waited.

  ‘Here you come traipsing in after everbody done finished supper. Seem to me like I never will get off from work.’

  Nobody noticed her. She ate a big plateful of cabbage and salmon and finished off with junket. It was her Mama she was thinking about. The door opened and her Mama came in and told Portia that Miss Brown had said she found a bedbug in her room. To get out the gasoline.

  ‘Quit frowning like that, Mick. You’re coming to the age where you ought to fix up and try to look the best you can.

  And hold on--don’t barge out like that when I speak with you--I mean you to give Ralph a good sponge bath before he goes to bed. Clean his nose and ears good.’