But never mind that, for that was all in the past.
The air in the kitchen was hot and it seemed to be humming. I guess my blood was kind of overheated. My hand fell down in my lap between my legs. My head was tired, and almost before I known what I was doing, I had it out and had started playing with it. I don’t want that, I said. So I got up quick and went around to the big rain barrel out back and thrown water in my face and over my body. But the water only seemed to make it stiffer. It showed no signs of going back down neither. I put my two hands on it and jerked a little. It was a real big thing. Two hands just barely covered it. And so I set down there beside the rain barrel and jerked my peter. The moon was out and as white as a blond girl’s head. I thought about Alice, but that didn’t do much good, and jerking wasn’t much fun so I quit and just set there and groaned and slapped at mosquitoes. There was no wind. There wasn’t a breath of air stirring. I looked upstairs. The lamp was on in their bedroom. I listened awhile and I could hear them grunting. Yes, they was at it again. (I could hear them grunting together like a pair of pigs in a sty in a dusty place in the sun when the spring’s getting warm.) I thought of her legs, just as soft as silk without a dark hair on them, and of her titties, the biggest that I ever seen on a young woman’s body, the color of sorghum molasses halfway down and the rest pure white with little sweat beads on them. Then of her belly. Round and bulging out. And it would sure be good to press up against it or get her body turned over and up on the knees a little and then climb on and stick it up and under. Jesus, all the way in, right on up to the hilt, and then start working it in and out and feel it getting hotter until she started to pant and all of that hot, wet stuff come off between you. Good, good, good. The best thing in the world, that burning sensation and then the running over, the sweet relaxing and letting all of it go, shot off inside her, leaving you weak and satisfied completely and ready for sleep. Yes, there was nothing like it in all the world, nothing able to compare with it even. Just that thing and nothing more is perfect. The rest is shit. All of the rest is nothing hardly but shit. But that thing’s good, and if you never had nothing else but that, no money, no property, no success in the world, and still had that, why, that would make it still worth living for you. Yes, you could come on home to a house with a tin roof on it in blazing heat and look for water and not find a drop to drink and look for food and not find a single crumb of it. But if on the bed you had you a naked woman, maybe not even terribly young and good-looking, and she looked up and said, I want it. Daddy.… why, then I say you got a square deal out of life and anybody that don’t think so has just not fucked the right woman.
But that sort of thinking was doing me no good at all so I went back in the kitchen and filled and lit my pipe. I looked at the sink with the dishes piled up in it. A lot of improvement this Myrtle had made on the place. But then she wasn’t a woman. A woman’s a woman but a cunt is just a cunt, and that’s what this Myrtle was, she was just a cheap piece of tail. I could use one, there wasn’t no doubt about that. But if I brought one home to live with me, by God it would have to be one that I was able to feel a little respect for.
I went to the screen door to pee and waited several minutes before I could. A long way off I heard a hound-dog baying. It sounded sad. In spite of myself, I went right back to my old train of thoughts. I thought of the Gallaway girl and the nights we spent out there at Moon Lake, dancing and drinking and carrying on in a boathouse. She used to French me as well as everything else. If I had wanted to talk, I could of told people how she used to French me. No clean woman would do it. An old whore told me its what they call a snake-fuck, that tongue-wiggling business, but I’ve got to admit it sure feels good to have that thing done to you, and she was an expert.
Of course, I known it was doing no good whatsoever to run over all those memories in my mind, like shuffling through a worn-out deck of cards, but it just seemed like my mind was set on that subject and nothing would stop it. It’s like the preacher says, the gates of the soul is got to close on the body and keep the body out or the body will break them down and overrun the soul and everything else decent in you. The fact of the matter is, though, I never did seem to have any gates to close. I was made without them. Some people are, I guess. Just made without them, and that was sure enough the case with me. I’d say to myself. This sort of thing is dirty, and I’d remember what the preacher had said and make a struggle to close the gates on the body. I’d reach for the gates to close them and find I hadn’t a thing to catch hold of. I thought to myself, as I stood there on the steps. You freak of nature, you’re letting in mosquitoes and not accomplishing anything but that. So I turned around and went back in the kitchen. One place was as hot as another. At least in there I had a chair to set on. So I seated myself in a chair at the kitchen table. I propped my feet up on the edge of the table. Between my legs that big old thing was throbbing. Yep, just burning and throbbing like a bee had stung it, and not a gate did I have to close against it.
I guess my trouble was partly a lack of schooling. I never think of anything much to do but drinking and screwing and trying my damnest to make something out of the place and not having much luck at it. I guess if a fellow could pick up a book at night, that ought to make a good deal of difference with him. Oh, I could read, I could make out most of the words, but dogged if reading would close them gates on the body. I tried it awhile and then I would close the book and throw it down in disgust. Made-up stuff was not satisfying to me. They’s not one word of truth in all this writing, I used to think, and the fellow that wrote it is trying to fool the public. So I’d come back to what I was struggling against. Poker, I like to play that but always seem to come out at the little end of the horn. I like to go in town and look at a movie or go to a carnival show’, but only ever so often, not all the time the way some people do it. Looking at them screen stars don’t close the gates on the body and don’t ever think that it does. I’ve seen young boys that w’ould play with themselves at the movies, and I don’t blame them. They’s nothing that makes a fellow? quite so horny as setting there in the dark and looking up at one of them beautiful actresses messing around in a little pair of lace step-ins or a fancy warapper. The screen industry is run by Jew’s with hot pants and that’s why they put on all of these sexy pictures. You come back out and there ain’t one inch of the soul that ain’t overrun by the longings of the body.
Well, I was still in the kitchen while the night wore away, but I had a feeling that something was going to happen before the night ended and I was not mistaken.
It must have been about half past twelve when all of a sudden a big commotion begins. I heard him coughing and then her running and shouting my name in the hall.
I just set tight on the chair and waited to see what would happen.
After a while she come on down to the kitchen to fill up the water pitcher.
Didn’t you hear me calling you. Chicken? she says.
I just set there and looked at her. The way she was dressed in only her silk underwear brought into my mind a thing somebody had wrote on the wall of a Memphis bus depot. Girls sure wear some real cute little French panties, and the fellow that wrote it must of been thinking of somebody built like Myrtle.
She filled up the water pitcher and clumped it down on the table.
Lot’s took sick, she told me.
I didn’t say nothing.
He seems to be awful sick. I wanted to call a doctor but he said no, he’d be all right in the morning.
I still didn’t say a thing to her.
What’s wrong with him? she asked me after a while.
He’s got TB, I told her.
She put on a shocked expression. How bad is it? she asked me.
I told her they’d let the air out of one of his lungs at the Memphis hospital because the X-rays had showed it was all eaten up with disease.
Why didn’t somebody tell me? she asked.
She set there and whimpered a little and I said nothing but just ke
pt looking at her.
I’ve had a bad time, she told me. You don’t understand how it is with a woman like me. I used to work in a dry-goods store in Biloxi.
What are you planning to give me, I said, your life story?
No, she said. I just wanted to tell you something. Then I was thin and I hadn’t dyed my hair and I looked real pretty. I was fifteen then and I didn’t go out with the boys. I was just as nice as any girl you could think of. But you can imagine what happened. The man that managed the store kept walking by me and every time that he did he would touch my body. First on my arm, he would just pinch my arm a little, and then on my shoulders and finally on my hips. I told my girl friend about it. Honey, she said, pretend like you don’t notice, just try and ignore it and maybe hell quit after while. But she didn’t know Charlie. He pinched me harder and hung around me longer all the time. What could I do? Pretend like I didn’t notice? I told my friend and she said. Honey, just take him aside and have a sincere conversation. Tell him that you’re not used to that sort of treatment. So that’s what I done. I went in his office to the back of the store. It was late one Saturday in the middle of summer. I said, Mr. Porter, I don’t think you’re playing exactly fair and square. What do you mean? he asked me. Well, I said, you seem to be taking advantage of the fact you’re my boss to take some liberties with me which I don’t like because of my decent upbringing. But Charlie just grinned. He walked up to me and put his hands on my hips. Is this what you mean? he said. And then he kissed me. Then it was all over with me. I tried to walk one way and Charlie pushed me the other. He kicked the office door shut and backed me up against a big roller-top desk and took me by force right there. He had my cherry right there on that roller-top desk. He was a man about forty with sandy red hair. You know the sort that I mean, like a great big bull, and I fell in love with him. I got to admit that he made me happy that summer and my memories of it are still the best that I’ve got. They say that you always lose your heart with your cherry. I don’t know about that. Some girls don’t like it at first but I got to admit that from the beginning I loved it.
She wiped her eyes on the edge of the tablecloth.
Is that the end of the story? I asked her.
No, she said, the end was only beginning. He got tired of me. He said his wife had found us out and he had to let me go. Some girls would have made him trouble. I could of because I was only fifteen at the time. But I had too much pride so I just packed up and moved to Pensacola. Then to New Orleans. I finally come to Memphis. It wasn’t till then I ever worked in a house and then it was only to pay for an operation I’d had to have.
I picked up Lot on a street. He looked like a kid. Sort of thin and pitiful-looking. It touched me the way that he laid on me like a baby. He seemed so lonesome, and it’s the truth that I loved him. He slept in my arms just like a baby would and when he woke up he said would I come home with him and we’d be married. At first I laughed. It seemed ridiculous to me. But then I thought. Oh, well, as the fellow says, they’s a hell of a lot more to it, this business of sex, than a couple of people jumping up and down on each other’s eggs. So I said yes, and we set out the very next morning…
Now what shall I do? she asked.
Do about what? I asked her.
You, she said. The minute I laid eyes on you, the first glance I look at that big powerful body, I said to myself. Oh, oh, your goose is cooked. Myrtle!
So what shall I do about it?
Well, I said, when somebody’s goose is cooked the best way to have it is cooked with plenty of gravy.
I picked up the lamp off the table and started up the stairs. She followed behind me. At the door of Lot’s room she stopped but I kept going on. I known she would follow. I went on up to the attic and dropped my clothes on the floor beside the cot and set down on it and waited for her to come up which I known she would do. I don’t think I ever in all my life looked forward to anything so much as I did to that woman coming up to bed with me. Of course, I was horny and crazy to get my gun off, but it wasn’t just that. It was partly the fact that she was Lot’s wife and the place had gone to Lot and he was the son by marriage and I was just a wood’s colt that people accused of having some nigger blood. All that was mixed up in it. But anyhow I had never in all my life wanted anything so bad as I did for that woman to come up and go to bed with me. It wasn’t five minutes before I heard her footsteps on the stairs coming up to the attic. And then I realized that I had been praying. I had been setting there praying to God to send that woman up to me. What do you make of that? Why would God have answered a prayer like that? What sort of God would pay attention to a prayer like that coming from someone like me who is sold to the Devil when thousands of good people’s prayers, such as prayers for the sick and suffering and dying, are given no mind, no more than so many crickets buzzing outdoors in the summer. It just goes to show how little sense there is in all this religion and all this talk of Salvation. One fool is as big as another on this earth and they’re all big enough.
But that is beside the point now. The point is Lot’s wife was coming up to bed with me. And when I heard her coming, it stood straight up so you could hang a hat on it. I spread my legs and she came toward me and stooped beside the cot and stroked it and kissed it like it was something holy. She giggled and crooned and carried on something outlandish. I just lay back and looked at the sky and enjoyed it. Finally she wiggled up and got on the cot beside me. I felt of her body. So big and hot like a mountain that had a furnace inside it. I wanted to get inside that wonderful mountain. I ripped the drawers off her bottom. She pushed it up off the cot. Then I climbed on. She put the head of it in. I give a push and she yelled out, God Almighty. I drew it back and gave it another shove and she said. Oh, Blessed Mary. She said her prayers, at least that’s how it sounded, all of the time that I was giving it to her. And when I come, and she did at the same time, I swear that her yelling nearly took the roof off. Oh, Blessed Mary, Mother of God, she shouted. I had to laugh. I thought the roof would blow off. And he must have heard her downstairs because it was just about that time that he started bawling our names.
Even before I come downstairs in the morning I known Lot was dead. And sure enough he was. I found his body laying across the doorsill. He’d gotten down out of bed and crawled on the floor as far as the door to the bedroom. He’d pushed the door half open. His body was stretched out halfway over the sill, and the blood that now was dried in the hot yellow sunlight had made a stream, or what was a stream till it dried, from the foot of the bed to the spot where his head was resting. The bed was just like a hog had been kilt on it. I wasn’t surprised, because all of that livelong night we’d heard him bawling out. Myrtle, Myrtle, Myrtle. And later on he yelled my name out. Chicken, Chicken, Chicken. And once or twice she said in a half-hearted way, I reckon I better go down and make him hush that Godforsaken bawling. But I said. No, the bawling is good for his lungs. So we kept right on having our fun in the attic. The bawling quit by and by, a little while after sunup, and then it was quiet and I thought to myself. Lot’s dead.
I called to Myrtle and she come downstairs too. We stood together in front of the door and looked at him.
Poor little kid, said Myrtle. She started to cry. But not very much or for long.
It’s all for the best, I told her, and after a while she said she guessed it was, too.
We got hitched up that winter. I think she had already made up her mind to do it but stalled around for a while, pretending she couldn’t decide if she wanted to go on back to the sporting house in Memphis or stay on here. I made out like I didn’t care much which she did, so she come around and said. Yes, I’ll stay here.
So we two got hitched up on the first of December. We have our troubles but get on pretty good, as good as most young couples do in the country. We’re expecting a baby about the end of the summer. If it’s a boy we aim to call him Lot, in memory of my brother, and if it’s a girl I guess we will call her Lottie.
And now
it seems like everything in my life is straightened out. I don’t ever worry about them spiritual gates the preacher said to keep shut. Not having no gates can save you a lot of trouble. And after all, what does anyone know about the Kingdom of Heaven? It’s earth I’m after and now I am honest about it and don’t pretend I’m nothing but what I am, a lustful creature determined on satisfaction and likely as not to get my full share of it.
(Published 1954)
“Grand”
My grandmother formed quiet but deeply emotional attachments to places and people and would have been happy to stay forever and ever in one rectory, once her bedroom was papered in lemon yellow and the white curtains were hung there, once she had acquired a few pupils in violin and piano, but my grandfather always dreamed of movement and change, a dream from which he has not yet wakened in this ninety-sixth spring of his life.
Although he was married to a living poem, and must have known it, my grandfather’s sole complaints against his wife were that she had no appreciation of poetry and not much sense of humor. “When we were quite young,” he said, “I used to spend evenings reading poetry to her and she would fall asleep while I read”—which has sometimes made me wonder if her addiction to staying and his to going was the only difference which her infinite understanding had settled between them. My grandfather still is, and doubtless always has been, an unconsciously and childishly selfish man. He is humble and affectionate but incurably set upon satisfying his own impulses whatever they may be, and it was not until the last two or three years of their lives together that my grandmother began to rebel against it, and then it was for a reason that she couldn’t tell him, the reason of death being in her, no longer possible to fly in front of but making it necessary, at last, to insist on staying when he wanted to leave.