The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

by Eudora Welty

  "Oh, Howard."

  "Oh, Howard,"—that was Marjorie. The softness, the reproach—how was he to stop it, ever?

  "What did you say?" he asked her.

  "Oh, Howard, can't you keep track of the time? Always asking me..." She took a breath and said, "In three more months—the end of August."

  "This is May," he told her.... He almost warned her. "This is May."

  "May, June, July, August." She rattled the time off.

  "You know for sure—you're certain, it will happen when you say?" He gazed at her.

  "Why, of course, Howard, those things always happen when they're supposed to. Nothing can stop me from having the baby, that's sure." Tears came slowly into her eyes.

  "Don't cry, Marjorie!" he shouted at her. "Don't cry, don't cry!"

  "Even if you don't want it," she said.

  He beat his fist down on the old dark red cloth that covered the couch. He felt emotion climbing hand over hand up his body, with its strange and perfect agility. Helplessly he shut his eyes.

  "I expect you can find work before then, Howard," she said.

  He stood up in wonder: let it be the way she says. He looked searchingly around the room, pressed by tenderness, and softly pulled the pansy from the coat.

  Holding it out he crossed to her and dropped soberly onto the floor beside her. His eyes were large. He gave her the flower.

  She whispered to him. "We haven't been together in so long." She laid her calm warm hand on his head, covering over the part in his hair, holding him to her side, while he drew deep breaths of the cloverlike smell of her tightening skin and her swollen thighs.

  Why, this is not possible! he was thinking. The ticks of the cheap alarm clock grew louder and louder as he buried his face against her, feeling new desperation every moment in the time-marked softness and the pulse of her sheltering body.

  But she was talking.

  "If they would only give you some paving work for the three months, we could scrape something out of that to pay a nurse, maybe, for a little while afterwards, after the baby comes—"

  He jumped to his feet, his muscles as shocked by her words as if they had hurled a pick at the pavement in Columbus Circle at that moment. His sharp words overlaid her murmuring voice.

  "Work?" he said sternly, backing away from her, speaking loudly from the middle of the room, almost as if he copied his pose and his voice somehow from the agitators in the park. "When did I ever work? A year ago ... six months ... back in Mississippi ... I've forgotten! Time isn't as easy to count up as you think! I wouldn't know what to do now if they did give me work. I've forgotten! It's all past now.... And I don't believe it any more—they won't give me work now—they never will—"

  He stopped, and for a moment a look shone in his face, as if he had caught sight of a mirage. Perhaps he could imagine ahead of him some regular and steady division of the day and night, with breakfast appearing in the morning. Then he laughed gently, and moved even further back until he stood against the wall, as far as possible away from Marjorie, as though she were faithless and strange, allied to the other forces.

  "Why, Howard, you don't even hope you'll find work any more," she whispered.

  "Just because you're going to have a baby, just because that's a thing that's bound to happen, just because you can't go around forever with a baby inside your belly, and it will really happen that the baby is born—that doesn't mean everything else is going to happen and change!" He shouted across at her desperately, leaning against the wall. "That doesn't mean that I will find work! It doesn't mean we aren't starving to death." In some gesture of his despair he had brought his little leather purse from his pocket, and was swinging it violently back and forth. "You may not know it, but you're the only thing left in the world that hasn't stopped!"

  The purse, like a little pendulum, slowed down in his hand. He stared at her intently, and then his working mouth drooped, and he stood there holding the purse as still as possible in his palms.

  But Marjorie sat as undismayed as anyone could ever be, there on the trunk, looking with her head to one side. Her fullness seemed never to have touched his body. Away at his distance, backed against the wall, he regarded her world of sureness and fruitfulness and comfort, grown forever apart, safe and hopeful in pregnancy, as if he thought it strange that this world, too, should not suffer.

  "Have you had anything to eat?" she was asking him.

  He was astonished at her; he hated her, then. Inquiring out of her safety into his hunger and weakness! He flung the purse violently to the floor, where it struck softly like the body of a shot bird. It was empty.

  Howard walked unsteadily about and came to the stove. He picked up a small clean bent saucepan, and put it down again. They had taken it with them wherever they had moved, from room to room. His hand went to the objects on the shelf as if he were blind. He got hold of the butcher knife. Holding it gently, he turned toward Marjorie.

  "Howard, what are you going to do?" she murmured in a patient, lullaby-like voice, as she had asked him so many times.

  They were now both far away, remote from each other, detached. Like a flash of lightning he changed his hold on the knife and thrust it under her breast.

  The blood ran down the edge of the handle and dripped regularly into her open hand which she held in her lap. How strange! he thought wonderingly. She still leaned back on her other arm, but she must have borne down too heavily upon it, for before long her head bowed slowly over, and her forehead touched the window sill. Her hair began to blow from the back of her head and after a few minutes it was all turned the other way. Her arm that had rested on the window sill in a raised position was just as it was before. Her fingers were relaxed, as if she had just let something fall. There were little white cloudy markings on her nails. It was perfect balance, Howard thought, staring at her arm. That was why Marjorie's arm did not fall. When he finally looked down there was blood everywhere; her lap was like a bowl.

  Yes, of course, he thought; for it had all been impossible. He went to wash his hands. The clock ticked dreadfully, so he threw it out the window. Only after a long time did he hear it hit the courtyard below.

  His head throbbing in sudden pain, he stooped and picked up his purse. He went out, after closing the door behind him gently.

  There in the city the sun slanted onto the streets. It lay upon a thin gray cat watching in front of a barber's pole; as Howard passed, she licked herself overneatly, staring after him. He set his hat on straight and walked through a crowd of children who surged about a jumping rope, chanting and jumping around him with their lips hanging apart. He crossed a street and a messenger boy banged into him with the wheel of his bicycle, but it never hurt at all.

  He walked up Sixth Avenue under the shade of the L, and kept setting his hat on straight. The little spurts of wind tried to take it off and blow it away. How far he would have had to chase it!... He reached a crowd of people who were watching a machine behind a window; it made doughnuts very slowly. He went to the next door, where he saw another window full of colored prints of the Virgin Mary and nearly all kinds of birds and animals, and down below these a shelf of little gray pasteboard boxes in which were miniature toilets and night jars to be used in playing jokes, and in the middle box a bulb attached to a long tube, with a penciled sign, "Palpitator—the Imitation Heart. Show her you Love her." An organ grinder immediately removed his hat and played "Valencia."

  He went on and in a doorway watched how the auctioneer leaned out so intimately and waved a pair of gold candlesticks at some men who puffed smoke straight up against the brims of their hats. He passed another place, with the same pictures of the Virgin Mary pinned with straight pins to the door facing, in case they had not been seen the first time. On a dusty table near his hand was a glass-ball paperweight. He reached out with shy joy and touched it, it was so small and round. There was a little scene inside made of bits of colored stuff. That was a bright land under the glass; he would like to be there. It
made him smile: it was like everything made small and illuminated and flowering, not too big now. He turned the ball upside down with a sort or instinct, and in shocked submission and pity saw the landscape deluged in a small fury of snow. He stood for a moment fascinated, and then, suddenly aware of his great size, he put the paperweight back where he had found it, and stood shaking in the door. A man passing by dropped a dime into his open hand.

  Then he found himself in the tunnel of a subway. All along the tile wall was written, "God sees me, God sees me, God sees me, God sees me"—four times where he walked by. He read the signs, "Entrance" and "Exit Only," and where someone had printed "Nuts!" under both words. He looked at himself in a chewing-gum-machine mirror and straightened his hat before entering the train.

  In the car he looked above the heads of the people at the pictures on the advertisements, and saw many couples embracing and smiling. A beggar came through with a cane and sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" like a blind man, and he too was given a dime. As Howard left the car a guard told him to watch his step. He clutched his hat. The wind blew underground, too, whistling down the tracks after the trains. He went up the stairs between two old warm Jewish women.

  Up above, he went into a bar and had a drink of whisky, and though he could not pay for that, he had a nickel left over from the subway ride. In the back he heard a slot machine being played. He moved over and stood for a while between two friendly men and then put in the nickel. The many nickels that poured spurting and clanging out of the hole sickened him; they fell all over his legs, and he backed up against the dusty red curtain. His hat slid off onto the floor. They all rushed to pick it up, and some of them gave him handfuls of nickels to hold and bought him drinks with the rest. One of them said, "Fella, you ought not to let all hell loose that way." It was a Southern man. Howard agreed that they should all have drinks around and that his fortune belonged to them all.

  But after he had walked around outside awhile he still had nowhere in his mind to go. He decided to try the W.P.A. office and Miss Ferguson. Miss Ferguson knew him. There was an old habit he used to have of going up to see her.

  He went into the front office. He could see Miss Ferguson through the door, typing the same as ever.

  "Oh, Miss Ferguson!" he called softly, leaning forward in all his confidence. He reached up, ready to remove his hat, but she went on typing.

  "Oh, Miss Ferguson!"

  A woman who did not know him at all came into the room.

  "Did you receive a card to call?" she asked.

  "Miss Ferguson," he repeated, peering around her red arm to keep his eye on the typewriter.

  "Miss Ferguson is busy," said the red-armed woman.

  If he could only tell Miss Ferguson everything, everything in his life! Howard was thinking. Then it would come clear, and Miss Ferguson would write a note on a little card and hand it to him, tell him exactly where he could go and what he could do.

  When the red-armed woman walked out of the office, Howard tried to win Miss Ferguson over. She could be very sympathetic.

  "Somebody told me you could type!" he called softly, in complimentary tones.

  Miss Ferguson looked up. "Yes, that's right. I can type," she said, and went on typing.

  "I got something to tell you," Howard said. He smiled at her.

  "Some other time," replied Miss Ferguson over the sound of the keys. "I'm busy now. You'd better go home and sleep it off, h'm?"

  Howard dropped his arm. He waited, and tried desperately to think of an answer to that. He was gazing into the water cooler, in which minute air bubbles swam. But he could think of nothing.

  He lifted his hat with a strange jauntiness which may have stood for pride.

  "Good-bye, Miss Ferguson!"

  And he was back on the street.

  He walked further and further. It was late when he turned into a large arcade, and when he followed someone through a free turnstile, a woman marched up to him and said, "You are the ten millionth person to enter Radio City, and you will broadcast over a nationwide red-and-blue network tonight at six o'clock, Eastern standard time. What is your name, address, and phone number? Are you married? Accept these roses and the key to the city."

  She gave him a great heavy key and an armful of bright red roses. He tried to give them back to her at first, but she had not waited a moment. A ring of men with hawklike faces aimed cameras at him and all took his picture, to the flashing of lights.

  "What is your occupation?"

  "Are you married?"

  Almost in his face a large woman with feathery furs and a small brown wire over one tooth was listening, and others were waiting behind her.

  He watched for an opening, and when they were not looking he broke through and ran.

  He ran down Sixth Avenue as fast as he could, ablaze with horror, the roses nodding like heads in his arm, the key prodding his side. With his free hand he held determinedly to his hat. Doorways and intersections blurred past. All shining within was a restaurant beside him, but now it was too late to be hungry. He wanted only to get home. He could not see easily, but traffic seemed to stop softly when he ran thundering by; horses under the L drew up, and trucks kindly contracted, as if on a bellows, in front of him. People seemed to melt out of his way. He thought that maybe he was dead, and now in the end everything and everybody was afraid of him.

  When he reached his street his breath was gone. There were the children playing. They were afraid of him and let him by. He ran into the courtyard, and stopped still.

  There on the walk was the clock.

  It lay on its face, and scattered about it in every direction were wheels and springs and bits of glass. He bent over and looked at the tiny little pieces.

  At last he climbed the stairs. Somehow he tried to unlock the door with the key to the city. But the door was not locked at all, and when he got inside, he looked over to the window and there was Marjorie on the little trunk. Then the roses gave out deep waves of fragrance. He stroked their soft leaves. Marjories arm had fallen down; the balance was gone, and now her hand hung out the window as if to catch the wind.

  Then Howard knew for a fact that everything had stopped. It was just as he had feared, just as he had dreamed. He had had a dream to come true.

  He backed away slowly, until he was out of the room. Then he ran down the stairs.

  On the street corner the first person he saw was a policeman watching pigeons flying.

  Howard went up and stood for a little while beside him.

  "Do you know what's up there in that room?" he asked finally. He was embarrassed to be asking anything of a policeman and to be holding such beautiful flowers.

  "What is that?" asked the policeman.

  Howard bent his head and buried his eyes, nose, and mouth in the roses. "A dead woman. Marjorie is dead."

  Although the street-intersection sign was directly over their heads, and in the air where the pigeons flew the chimes of a clock were striking six, even the policeman did not seem for a moment to be sure of the time and place they were in, but had to consult his own watch and pocket effects.

  "Oh!" and "So!" the policeman kept saying, while Howard in perplexity turned his head from side to side. He looked at him steadily, memorizing for all time the nondescript, dusty figure with the wide gray eyes and the sandy hair. "And I don't suppose the red drops on your pants are rose petals, are they?"

  He grasped the staring man finally by the arm.

  "Don't be afraid, big boy. I'll go up with you," he said.

  They turned and walked back side by side. When the roses slid from Howard's fingers and fell on their heads all along the sidewalk, the little girls ran stealthily up and put them in their hair.

  A CURTAIN OF GREEN

  Every day one summer in Larkin's Hill, it rained a little. The rain was a regular thing, and would come about two o'clock in the afternoon.

  One day, almost as late as five o'clock, the sun was still shining. It seemed almost to spin in a tiny gro
ove in the polished sky, and down below, in the trees along the street and in the rows of flower gardens in the town, every leaf reflected the sun from a hardness like a mirror surface. Nearly all the women sat in the windows of their houses, fanning and sighing, waiting for the rain.

  Mrs. Larkin's garden was a large, densely grown plot running downhill behind the small white house where she lived alone now, since the death of her husband. The sun and the rain that beat down so heavily that summer had not kept her from working there daily. Now the intense light like a tweezers picked out her clumsy, small figure in its old pair of men's overalls rolled up at the sleeves and trousers, separated it from the thick leaves, and made it look strange and yellow as she worked with a hoe—over-vigorous, disreputable, and heedless.

  Within its border of hedge, high like a wall, and visible only from the upstairs windows of the neighbors, this slanting, tangled garden, more and more over-abundant and confusing, must have become so familiar to Mrs. Larkin that quite possibly by now she was unable to conceive of any other place. Since the accident in which her husband was killed, she had never once been seen anywhere else. Every morning she might be observed walking slowly, almost timidly, out of the white house, wearing a pair of the untidy overalls, often with her hair streaming and tangled where she had neglected to comb it. She would wander about for a little while at first, uncertainly, deep among the plants and wet with their dew, and yet not quite putting out her hand to touch anything. And then a sort of sturdiness would possess her—stabilize her; she would stand still for a moment, as if a blindfold were being removed; and then she would kneel in the flowers and begin to work.

  She worked without stopping, almost invisibly, submerged all day among the thick, irregular, sloping beds of plants. The servant would call her at dinnertime, and she would obey; but it was not until it was completely dark that she would truthfully give up her labor and with a drooping, submissive walk appear at the house, slowly opening the small low door at the back. Even the rain would bring only a pause to her. She would move to the shelter of the pear tree, which in mid-April hung heavily almost to the ground in brilliant full leaf, in the center of the garden.