The Complete Short Stories

  “How old is she?” Mr. Shiftlet asked casually.

  “Fifteen, sixteen,” the old woman said. The girl was nearly thirty but because of her innocence it was impossible to guess.

  “It would be a good idea to paint it too,” Mr. Shiftlet remarked. “You don’t want it to rust out.”

  “We’ll see about that later,” the old woman said.

  The next day he walked into town and returned with the parts he needed and a can of gasoline. Late in the afternoon, terrible noises issued from the shed and the old woman rushed out of the house, thinking Lucynell was somewhere having a fit. Lucynell was sitting on a chicken crate, stamping her feet and screaming, “Burrddttt! bddurrddtttt!” but her fuss was drowned out by the car. With a volley of blasts it emerged from the shed, moving in a fierce and stately way. Mr. Shiftlet was in the driver’s seat, sitting very erect. He had an expression of serious modesty on his face as if he had just raised the dead.

  That night, rocking on the porch, the old woman began her business, at once. “You want you an innocent woman, don’t you?” she asked sympathetically. “You don’t want none of this trash.”

  “No’m, I don’t,” Mr. Shiftlet said.

  “One that can’t talk,” she continued, “can’t sass you back or use foul language. That’s the kind for you to have. Right there,” and she pointed to Lucynell sitting cross-legged in her chair, holding both feet in her hands.

  “That’s right,” he admitted. “She wouldn’t give me any trouble.”

  “Saturday,” the old woman said, “you and her and me can drive into town and get married.”

  Mr. Shiftlet eased his position on the steps.

  “I can’t get married right now,” he said. “Everything you want to do takes money and I ain’t got any.”

  “What you need with money?” she asked.

  “It takes money,” he said. “Some people’ll do anything anyhow these days, but the way I think, I wouldn’t marry no woman that I couldn’t take on a trip like she was somebody. I mean take her to a hotel and treat her. I wouldn’t marry the Duchesser Windsor,” he said firmly, “unless I could take her to a hotel and giver something good to eat.

  “I was raised thataway and there ain’t a thing I can do about it. My old mother taught me how to do.”

  “Lucynell don’t even know what a hotel is,” the old woman muttered. “Listen here, Mr. Shiftlet,” she said, sliding forward in her chair, “you’d be getting a permanent house and a deep well and the most innocent girl in the world. You don’t need no money. Lemme tell you something: there ain’t any place in the world for a poor disabled friendless drifting man.”

  The ugly words settled in Mr. Shiftlet’s head like a group of buzzards in the top of a tree. He didn’t answer at once. He rolled himself a cigarette and lit it and then he said in an even voice, “Lady, a man is divided into two parts, body and spirit.”

  The old woman clamped her gums together.

  “A body and a spirit,” he repeated. “The body, lady, is like a house: it don’t go anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile: always on the move, always . . .”

  “Listen, Mr. Shiftlet,” she said, “my well never goes dry and my house is always warm in the winter and there’s no mortgage on a thing about this place. You can go to the courthouse and see for yourself. And yonder under that shed is a fine automobile.” She laid the bait carefully. “You can have it painted by Saturday. I’ll pay for the paint.”

  In the darkness, Mr. Shiftlet’s smile stretched like a weary snake waking up by a fire. After a second he recalled himself and said, “I’m only saying a man’s spirit means more to him than anything else. I would have to take my wife off for the weekend without no regards at all for cost. I got to follow where my spirit says to go.”

  “I’ll give you fifteen dollars for a weekend trip,” the old woman said in a crabbed voice. “That’s the best I can do.”

  “That would hardly pay for more than the gas and hotel,” he said. “It wouldn’t feed her.”

  “Seventeen-fifty,” the old woman said. “That’s all I got so it isn’t any use you trying to milk me. You can take a lunch.”

  Mr. Shiftlet was deeply hurt by the world “milk.” He didn’t doubt that she had more money sewed up in her mattress but he had already told her he was interested in her money. “I’ll make that do,” he said and rose and walked off without treating with her further.

  On Saturday the three of them drove into town in the car that the paint had barely dried on and Mr. Shiftlet and Lucynell were married in the ordinary’s office while the old woman witnessed. As they came out of the courthouse, Mr. Shiftlet began twisting his next in his collar. He looked morose and bitter as if he had been insulted while someone held him. “That didn’t satisfy me none,” he said. “That was just something a woman in an office did, nothing but paperwork and blood tests. What do they know about my blood? If they was to take my heart and cut it out,” he said, “they wouldn’t know a thing about me. It didn’t satisfy me at all.”

  “It satisfied the law,” the old woman said sharply.

  “The law,” Mr. Shiftlet said and spit. “It’s the law that don’t satisfy me.”

  He had painted the car dark green with a yellow band around it just under the windows. The three of them climbed in the front seat and the old woman said, “Don’t Lucynell look pretty? Looks like a baby doll.” Lucynell was dressup up in a white dress that her mother had uprooted from a trunk and there was a Panama hat on her head with a bunch of red wooden cherries on the brim. Every now and then her placid expression was changed by a sly isolated little thought like a shoot of green in the desert. “You got a prize!” the old woman said.

  Mr. Shiftlet didn’t even look at her.

  They drove back to the house to let the old woman off and pick up the lunch. When they were ready to leave, she stood staring in the window of the car, with her fingers clenched around the glass. Tears began to seep sideways out of her eyes and run along the dirty creases in her face. “I ain’t ever been parted with her for two days before,” she said.

  Mr. Shiftlet started the motor.

  “And I wouldn’t let no man have her but you because I seen you would do right. Goodbye, Sugarbaby,” she said, clutching at the sleeve of the white dress. Lucynell looked straight at her and didn’t seem to see her there at all. Mr. Shiftlet eased the car forward so that she had to move her hands.

  The early afternoon was clear and open and surrounded by pale blue sky. Although the car would go only thirty miles an hour, Mr. Shiftlet imagined a terrific climb and dip and swerve that went entirely to his head so that he forgot his morning bitterness. He had always wanted an automobile but he had never been able to afford one before. He drove very fast because he wanted to make Mobile by nightfall.

  Occasionally he stopped his thoughts long enough to look at Lucynell in the seat beside him. She had eaten the lunch as soon as they were out of the yard and now she was pulling the cherries off the hat one by one and throwing them out the window. He became depressed in spite of the car. He had driven about a hundred miles when he decided that she must be hungry again and at the next small town they came to, he stopped in front of an aluminum-painted eating place called The Hot Spot and took her in and ordered her a plate of ham and grits. The ride had made her sleepy and as soon as she got up on the stool, she rested her head on the counter and shut her eyes. There was no one in The Hot Spot but Mr. Shiftlet and the boy behind the counter, a pale youth with a greasy rag hung over his shoulder. Before he could dish up the food, she was snoring gently.

  “Give it to her when she wakes up,” Mr. Shiftlet said. “I’ll pay for it now.”

  The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink-gold hair and the half-shut sleeping eyes. Then he looked up and stared at Mr. Shiftlet. “She looks like an angel of Gawd,” he murmured.

  “Hitchhike
r,” Mr. Shiftlet explained. “I can’t wait. I got to make Tuscaloosa.”

  The boy bent over again and very carefully touched his finger to a strand of the golden hair and Mr. Shiftlet left.

  He was more depressed than ever as he drove on by himself. The late afternoon had grown hot and sultry and the country had flattened out. Deep in the sky a storm was preparing very slowly and without thunder as if it meant to drain every drop of air from the earth before it broke. There were times when Mr. Shiftlet preferred not to be alone. He felt too that a man with a car had a responsibility to others and he kept his eye out for a hitchhiker. Occasionally he saw a sign that warned: “Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own.”

  The narrow road dropped off on either side into dry fields and here and there a shack or a filling station stood in a clearing. The sun began to set directly in front of the automobile. It was a reddening ball that through his windshield was slightly flat on the bottom and top. He saw a boy in overalls and a gray hat standing on the edge of the road and he slowed the car down and stopped in front of him. The boy didn’t have his hand raised to thumb the ride, he was only standing there, but he had a small cardboard suitcase and his hat was set on his head in a way to indicate that he had left somewhere for good. “Son,” Mr. Shiftlet said, “I see you want a ride.”

  The boy didn’t say he did or he didn’t but he opened the door of the car and got in, and Mr. Shiftlet started driving again. The child held the suitcase on his lap and folded his arms on top of it. He turned his head and looked out the window away from Mr. Shiftlet. Mr. Shiftlet felt oppressed. “Son,” he said after a minute, “I got the best old mother in the world so I reckon you only got the second best.”

  The boy gave him a quick dark glance and then turned his face back out the window.

  “It’s nothing so sweet,” Mr. Shiftlet continued, “as a boy’s mother. She taught him his first prayers at her knee, she give him love when no other would, she told him what was right and what wasn’t, and she seen that he done the right thing. Son,” he said, “I never rued a day in my life like the one I rued when I left that old mother of mine.”

  The boy shifted in his seat but he didn’t look at Mr. Shiftlet. He unfolded his arms and put one hand on the door handle.

  “My mother was a angel of Gawd,” Mr. Shiftlet said in a very strained voice. “He took her from heaven and giver to me and I left her.” His eyes were instantly clouded over with a mist of tears. The car was barely moving.

  The boy turned angrily in the seat. “You go to the devil!” he cried. “My old woman is a flea bag and yours is a stinking pole cat!” and with that he flung the door open and jumped out with his suitcase into the ditch.

  Mr. Shiftlet was so shocked that for about a hundred feet he drove along slowly with the door still open. A cloud, the exact color of the boy’s hat and shaped like a turnip, had descended over the sun, and another, worse looking, crouched behind the car. Mr. Shiftlet felt that the rottenness of the world was about to engulf him. He raised his arm and let it fall again to his breast. “Oh Lord!” he prayed. “Break forth and wash the slime from this earth!”

  The turnip continued slowly to descend. After a few minutes there was a guffawing peal of thunder from behind and fantastic raindrops, like tin-can tops, crashed over the rear of Mr. Shiftlet’s car. Very quickly he stepped on the gas and with his stump sticking out the window he raced the galloping shower into Mobile.

  The River

  The child stood glum and limp in the middle of the dark living room while his father pulled him into a plaid coat. His right arm was hung in the sleeve but the father buttoned the coat anyway and pushed him forward toward a pale spotted hand that stuck through the half-open door.

  “He ain’t fixed right,” a loud voice said from the hall.

  “Well then for Christ’s sake fix him,” the father muttered. “It’s six o’clock in the morning.” He was in his bathrobe and barefooted. When he got the child to the door and tried to shut it, he found her looming in it, a speckled skeleton in a long pea-green coat and felt helmet.

  “And his and my carfare,” she said. “It’ll be twict we have to ride the car.”

  He went in the bedroom again to get the money and when he came back, she and the boy were both standing in the middle of the room. She was taking stock. “I couldn’t smell those dead cigarette butts long if I was ever to come sit with you,” she said, shaking him down in his coat.

  “Here’s the change,” the father said. He went to the door and opened it wide and waited.

  After she had counted the money she slipped it somewhere inside her coat and walked over to a watercolor hanging near the phonograph. “I know what time it is,” she said, peering closely at the black lines crossing into broken planes of violent color. “I ought to. My shift goes on at ten p.m. and don’t get off till five and it takes me one hour to ride the Vine Street car.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said. “Well, we’ll expect him back tonight, about eight or nine?”

  “Maybe later,” she said. “We’re going to the river to a healing. This particular preacher don’t get around this way often. I wouldn’t have paid for that,” she said, nodding at the painting, “I would have drew it myself.”

  “All right, Mrs. Connin, we’ll see you then,” he said drumming on the door.

  A toneless voice called from the bedroom, “Bring me an ice pack.”

  “Too bad his mamma’s sick,” Mrs. Connin said. “What’s her trouble? “

  “We don’t know,” he muttered.

  “We’ll ask the preacher to pray for her. He’s healed a lot of folks. The Reverend Bevel Summers. Maybe she ought to see him sometime.”

  “Maybe so,” he said. “We’ll see you tonight,” and he disappeared into the bedroom and left them to go.

  The little boy stared at her silently, his nose and eyes running. He was four or five. He had a long face and bulging chin and half-shut eyes set far apart. He seemed mute and patient, like an old sheep waiting to be let out.

  “You’ll like this preacher,” she said. “The Reverend Bevel Summers. You ought to hear him sing.”

  The bedroom door opened suddenly and the father stuck his head out and said, “Goodbye, old man. Have a good time.”

  “Goodbye,” the little boy said and jumped as if he had been shot.

  Mrs. Connin gave the watercolor another look. Then they went out into the hall and rang for the elevator. “I wouldn’t have drew it,” she said.

  Outside the gray morning was blocked off on either side by the unlit empty buildings. “It’s going to fair up later,” she said, “but this is the last time we’ll be able to have any preaching at the river this year. Wipe your nose, Sugar Boy.”

  He began rubbing his sleeve across it but she stopped him. “That ain’t nice,” she said. “Where’s your handkerchief?”

  He put his hands in his pockets and pretended to look for it while she waited. “Some people don’t care how they send one off,” she murmured to her reflection in the coffee shop window. “You pervide.” She took a red and blue flowered handkerchief out of her pocket and stooped down and began to work on his nose. “Now blow,” she said and he blew. “You can borry it. Put it in your pocket.”

  He folded it up and put it in his pocket carefully and they walked on to the corner and leaned against the side of a closed drugstore to wait for the car. Mrs. Connin turned up her coat collar so that it met her hat in the back. Her eyelids began to droop and she looked as if she might go to sleep against the wall. The little boy put a slight pressure on her hand.

  “What’s your name?” she asked in a drowsy voice. “I don’t know but only your last name. I should have found out your first name.”

  His name was Harry Ashfield and he had never thought at any time before of changing it. “Bevel,” he said.

  Mrs. Connin raised herself from the wall. “Why
ain’t that a coincident!” she said. “I told you that’s the name of this preacher!”

  “Bevel,” he repeated.

  She stood looking down at him as if he had become a marvel to her. “I’ll have to see you meet him today,” she said. “He’s no ordinary preacher. He’s a healer. He couldn’t do nothing for Mr. Connin though. Mr. Connin didn’t have the faith but he said he would try anything once. He had this griping in his gut.”

  The trolley appeared as a yellow spot at the end of the deserted street.

  “He’s gone to the government hospital now,” she said, “and they taken one-third of his stomach. I tell him he better thank Jesus for what he’s got left but he says he ain’t thanking nobody. Well I declare,” she murmured, “Bevel!”

  They walked out to the tracks to wait. “Will he heal me?” Bevel asked.

  “What you got?”

  “I’m hungry,” he decided finally.

  “Didn’t you have your breakfast?”

  “I didn’t have time to be hungry yet then,” he said.

  “Well when we get home we’ll both have us something,” she said. “I’m ready myself.”

  They got in the car and sat down a few seats behind the driver and Mrs. Connin took Bevel on her knees. “Now you be a good boy,” she said, “and let me get some sleep. Just don’t get off my lap.” She lay her head back and as he watched, gradually her eyes closed and her mouth fell open to show a few long scattered teeth, some gold and some darker than her face; she began to whistle and blow like a musical skeleton. There was no one in the car but themselves and the driver and when he saw she was asleep, he took out the flowered handkerchief and unfolded it and examined it carefully. Then he folded it up again and unzipped a place in the innerlining of his coat and hid it in there and shortly he went to sleep himself.

  Her house was a half-mile from the end of the car line, set back a little from the road. It was tar-paper brick with a porch across the front of it and a tin top. On the porch there were three little boys of different sizes with identical speckled faces and one tall girl who had her hair up in so many aluminum curlers that it glared like the roof. The three boys followed them inside and closed in on Bevel. They looked at him silently, not smiling.