Collected Stories of Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  The young man blushed. "Why, much obliged. You see, when I come in I had to wash and I didn't get a chance to eat my supper." His sunburned hand hovered hesitantly over the two tarts until he chose the one that was stickier and a little crushed around the edges. He had a warm musical voice—with the vowels long drawn and the final consonants unsounded.

  They ate in silence with the slow enjoyment of those who know the worth of food. Then when his tart was finished the Jew moistened his fingertips with his mouth and wiped them with his handkerchief. The young man watched and gravely copied him. Dark was coming. Already the pine trees in the distance were blurred and there were flickering lights in the lonely little houses set back in the fields along the way. The Jew had been looking intently out the window and at last he turned to the young man and asked with a nod of his head toward the fields outside: "What is that?"

  The young man strained his eyes and saw above the trees in the distance the outline of a smokestack. "Can't tell from here," he said. "It might be a gin or even a sawmill."

  "I mean out there all around—growing."

  The young man was puzzled. "I can't see what it is you're talkin' about."

  "The plants with the white flowers."

  "Why man!" said the southerner slowly. "That's cotton."

  "Cotton," repeated the Jew. "Of course. I should have known."

  There was a long pause in which the young man looked at the Jew with anxiety and fascination. Several times he wet his lips as though about to speak. After some deliberation he smiled genially to the Jew and nodded his head with elaborate reassurance. And then (God knows from what experience in what small-town Greek café) he leaned over so that his face was only a few inches from the Jew's and said with a labored accent: "You Greek fallow?"

  The Jew, bewildered, shook his head.

  But the young man nodded and smiled even more insistently. He repeated his question in a very loud voice. "I say you Greek fallow?"

  The Jew drew back into his corner. "I can hear O.K. I just do not understand that idiom."

  The summer twilight faded. The bus had left the dusty road and was travelling now on a paved but winding highway. The sky was a deep somber blue and the moon was white. The fields of cotton (belonging perhaps to some huge plantation) were behind them and now on either side of the road the land was fallow and uncultivated. Trees on the horizon made a dark black fringe against the blue of the sky. The atmosphere had a dusky lavender tone and perspective was curiously difficult, so that objects which were far appeared near and things close at hand seemed distant. Silence had settled in the bus. There was only the vibrant throb of the motor, so constant that by now it was scarcely realized.

  The sunburned young man sighed. And the Jew glanced quickly into his face. The southerner smiled and asked the Jew in a soft voice: "Where is your home, sir?"

  To this question the Jew had no immediate answer. He pulled out shreds of tobacco from the end of his cigarette until it was too mangled for further use and then stamped out the stub on the floor. "I mean to make my home in the town where I am going—Lafayetteville."

  This answer, careful and oblique, was the best that the Jew could give. For it must be understood at once that this was no ordinary traveller. He was no denizen of the great city he had left behind him. The time of his journey would not be measured by hours, but by years—not by hundreds of miles, but by thousands. And even such measurements as these would be in only one sense accurate. The journey of this fugitive—for the Jew had fled from his home in Munich two years before—more nearly resembled a state of mind than a period of travelling computable by maps and timetables. Behind him was an abyss of anxious wandering, suspense, of terror and of hope. But of this he could not speak with a stranger.

  "I'm only going a hundred and eight miles away," said the young man. "But this is the furtherest I've ever been away from home."

  The Jew raised his eyebrows with polite surprise.

  "I'm going to visit with my sister who's only been wedded about a year. I think a mighty lot of this sister and now she's—" He hesitated and seemed to be rummaging in his mind for some choice and delicate expression. "She's with young." His blue eyes fastened doubtfully on the Jew as though uncertain that a man who had never before seen cotton would understand this other fundament of nature.

  The Jew nodded and bit his lower lip with restrained amusement.

  "Her time is just about here and her husband is cooking his tobacco. So I thought maybe I would come in handy."

  "I hope she will have an easy time," the Jew said.

  Here there was an interruption. By now it was quite dark and the driver of the bus pulled to the side of the road and turned on the lights inside. The sudden brightness awoke a child who had been sleeping and she began to fret. The Negroes on the back seat, for a long time silent, resumed their languorous dialogue. An old man on the front seat who spoke with the hollow insistence of the deaf began to joke with his companion.

  "Are your folks already at this town where you going?" the young man asked the Jew.

  "My family?" The Jew took off his spectacles, breathed on the lenses, and polished them on the sleeve of his shirt. "No, they will join me there when I have settled myself—my wife and my two daughters."

  The young man leaned forward so that his elbows rested on his knees and his chin was cupped in his palms. Beneath the electric light his face was round and rosy and warm. Beads of perspiration glistened on his short upper lip. His blue eyes had a sleepy look and there was something childish about the way the soft brown bangs of his hair lay damp on his forehead. "I mean to get married sometime soon," he said. "I been picking around for a long time amongst the girls. And now I got them finally narrowed down to three."

  "Three?"

  "Yeah—all fine good looking girls. And that's another reason why I thought it fit to go off on this trip just now. You see when I come back I can look at them fresh and maybe make up my mind which one I want to ask."

  The Jew laughed—a smooth hearty laugh that changed him completely. All trace of strain left his face, his head was thrown back, and his hands clasped tight. And although the joke was at his own expense, the southerner laughed with him. Then the Jew's laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun, finished with a great intake and release of breath that trailed off in a groan. The Jew closed his eyes for a moment and seemed to be according this morsel of fun a place in some inward repertoire of the ridiculous.

  The two travellers had eaten together and had laughed together. By now they were no longer strangers. The Jew settled himself more comfortably in his seat, took a tooth-pick from his vest pocket and made use of it unobtrusively, half hiding his mouth with his hand. The young man removed his tie and unbuttoned his collar to the point where brown curling hairs showed on his chest. But it was evident that the southerner was not so much at ease as was the Jew. Something perplexed him. He seemed to be trying to frame some question that was painful and difficult to ask. He rubbed the damp bangs on his forehead and rounded his mouth as though about to whistle. At last he said: "You are a foreign man?"

  "Yes."

  "You come from abroad?"

  The Jew inclined his head and waited. But the young man seemed unable to go further. And while the Jew waited for him cither to speak or to be silent the bus stopped to take on a Negro woman who had signaled from the roadside. The sight of this new passenger disturbed the Jew. The Negro was of indeterminate age and, had she not been clothed in a filthy garment that served as a dress, even her sex would have been difficult at first glance to define. She was deformed—although not in any one specific limb; the body as a whole was stunted, warped and undeveloped. She wore a dilapidated felt hat, a torn black skirt and a blouse that had been roughly fashioned from a meal sack. At one corner of her mouth there was an ugly open sore and beneath her lower lip she carried a wad of snuff. The whites of her eyes were not white at all, but of a muddy yellow color veined with red. Her face as a whole had a roving, hungry, vacant l
ook. As she walked down the aisle of the bus to take her place on the back seat the Jew turned questioningly to the young man and asked in a quiet, taut voice: "What is the matter with her?"

  The young man was puzzled. "Who? You mean the nigger?"

  "Sh—" the Jew cautioned, for they were on the next to the last seat and the Negro was just behind them.

  But already the southerner had turned in his seat and was staring behind him with such frankness that the Jew winced. "Why there's nothing the matter with her," he said when he had completed this scrutiny. "Not that I can see."

  The Jew bit his lip with embarrassment. His brows were drawn and his eyes were troubled. He sighed and looked out of the window although, because of the light in the bus and the darkness outside, there was little to be seen. He did not notice that the young man was trying to catch his eye and that several times he moved his lips as though about to speak. Then finally the young man's question was spoken. "Was you ever in Paris, France?"

  The Jew said yes.

  "That's one place I always wanted to go. I know this man was over there in the war and somehow all my life I wanted to go to Paris, France. But understand—" The young man stopped and looked earnestly into the Jew's face. "Understand it's not the wimming." (For, due either to the influence of the Jew's careful syllables or to some spurious attempt at elegance the young man actually pronounced the word "wimming.") "It's not because of the French girls you hear about."

  "The buildings—the boulevards?"

  "No," said the young man with a puzzled shake of his head. "It's not any of those things. That's how come I can't understand it. Because when I think about Paris just one thing is in my mind." He closed his eyes thoughtfully. "I always see this little narrow street with tall houses on both sides. It's dark and it's cold and raining. And nobody is in sight except this French fellow standing on the corner with his cap pulled down over his eyes." The young man looked anxiously into the Jew's face. "Now how come I would have this homesick feeling for something like that? Why—do you reckon?"

  The Jew shook his head. "Maybe too much sun," he said finally.

  Soon after this the young man reached his destination—a little crossroads village that appeared to be deserted. The southerner took his time about leaving the bus. He pulled down his tin suitcase from the rack and shook hands with the Jew. "Goodbye, Mister—" The fact that he did not know the name seemed to come as a sudden surprise to him. "Kerr," said the Jew. "Felix Kerr." Then the young man was gone. At the same stop the Negro woman—that derelict of humanity the sight of whom had so disturbed the Jew—left the bus also. And the Jew was alone again.

  He opened his lunch box and ate the sandwich made with rye bread. Afterward he smoked a few cigarettes. For a time he sat with his face close to the window screen and tried to gather some impression of the landscape outside. Since nightfall clouds had gathered in the sky and there were no stars. Now and then he saw the dark outline of a building, vague stretches of land, or a clump of trees close to the roadside. At last he turned away.

  Inside the bus the passengers had setded down for the night. A few were sleeping. He looked about him with a certain rather jaded curiosity. Once he smiled to himself, a thin smile that sharpened the corners of his mouth. But then, even before the last trace of this smile had faded, a sudden change came over him. He had been watching the deaf old man in overalls on the front seat and some small observation seemed suddenly to cause in him intense emotion. Over his face came a swift grimace of pain. Then he sat with his head bowed, his thumb pressed to his right temple and his fingers massaging his forehead.

  For this Jew was grieving. Although he was careful of his checked threadbare trousers, although he had eaten with enjoyment and had laughed, although he hopefully awaited this new strange home that lay ahead of him—in spite of these things there was a long dark sorrow in his heart. He did not grieve for Ada, his good wife to whom he had been faithful for twenty-seven years, or for his little daughter, Grissel, who was a charming child. These two—God be willing—would join him here as soon as he could prepare for them. Neither was this grief concerned with his anxiety for his friends, nor with the loss of his home, his security, and his content. The Jew sorrowed for his elder daughter, Karen, whose whereabouts and state of welfare were unknown to him.

  And grief such as this is not a constant thing, demanding in measure, taking its toll in fixed proportion. Rather (for the Jew was a musician) such grief is like a subordinate but urgent theme in an orchestral work—an endless motive asserting itself with all possible variations of rhythm and tonal coloring and melodic structure, now suggested nervously in flying-spiccato passage from the strings, again emerging in the pastoral melancholy of the English horn, or sounding at times in a strident but truncated version down deep among the brasses. And this theme, although for the most part subtly concealed, affects by its sheer insistence the music as a whole far more than the apparent major melodies. And also there are times in this orchestral work when this motive which has been restrained so long will at a signal volcanically usurp all other musical ideas, commanding the full orchestra to recapitulate with fury all that hitherto had been insinuated. But with grief there is a difference here. For it is no fixed summons, such as the signal from the conductor's hand, that activates a dormant sorrow. It is the uncalculated and the indirect. So that the Jew could speak of his daughter with composure and without a quiver could pronounce her name. But when on the bus he saw a deaf man bend his head to one side to hear some bit of conversation the Jew was at the mercy of his grief. For his daughter had the habit of listening with her face turned slightly away and of looking up with one quick glance only when the speaker was done. And this old man's casual gesture was the summons that released in him the grief so long restrained—so that the Jew winced and bowed his head.

  For a long time the Jew sat tense in his seat and rubbed his forehead. Then at eleven o'clock the bus made a scheduled stop. By turns the passengers hastily visited a cramped, stale urinal. Later in a café they gulped down drinks and ordered food that could be carried away and eaten with the hands. He had a beer and on his return to the bus prepared for sleep. He took from his pocket a fresh, unfolded handkerchief and, settling himself in his corner with his head resting in the crotch made by the side of the bus and the rounded back of his seat, he placed the handkerchief over his eyes to guard them from the light. He rested quietly with his legs crossed and his hands clasped loosely in his lap. By midnight he was sleeping.

  Steadily, in darkness, the bus travelled southward. Sometime in the middle of the night the dense summer clouds dispersed and the sky was clear and starry. They were travelling down the long coastal plain that lies to the east of the Appalachian hills. The road wound through melancholy fields of cotton, and tobacco, through long and lonesome stretches of pine woods. The white moonlight made dreary silhouettes of the tenant shacks close by the roadside. Now and then they went through dark, sleeping towns and sometimes the bus stopped to take on or leave off some traveller. The Jew slept the heavy sleep of those who are mortally tired. Once the jolting of the bus caused his head to fall forward on his chest but this did not disturb his slumber. Then just before daylight, the bus reached a town somewhat larger than most of those through which they had been passing. The bus stopped and the driver laid his hand on the Jew's shoulder to awaken him. For at last his journey was ended.

  Untitled Piece

  The young man at the table of the station lunch room knew neither the name nor the location of the town where he was, and he had no knowledge of the hour more exact than that it was some time between midnight and morning. He realized that he must already be in the south, but that there were many more hours journeying before he would reach home. For a long time he had sat at the table over a half finished bottle of beer, relaxed to a gangling position—with his thighs fallen loose apart and with one foot stepping on the other ankle. His hair needed cutting and hung down softly ragged over his forehead and his expression as he
stared down at the table was absorbed, but mobile and quick to change with his shifting thoughts. The face was lean and suggestive of restlessness and a certain innocent, naked questioning. On the floor beside the boy were two suitcases and a packing box, each tagged neatly with a card on which was typewritten his name—Andrew Leander, and an address in one of the larger towns in Georgia.

  He had come into the place in a drunken turmoil, caused partly by the swallows of corn a man on the bus had offered him, mostly by a surge of expectancy that had come to him during the last few hours of travelling. And that feeling was not unaccountable. Three years before, when he was seventeen years old, the boy had left home in an inner quandary of violence, a gawky wanderer going with fear into the unknown, expecting never to come back. And now after these three years he was returning.

  Sitting at the table in the lunch room of that little nameless town, Andrew had become more calm. All during the time of his absence he had put away thoughts of his home town and his family—of his Dad and his sisters, Sara and Mick, and of the colored girl Vitalis, who worked for them. But as he sat with his beer (so completely a stranger, that it was as though he were magically suspended from the very earth) the memories of all of them at home revolved inside him with the clarity of a reel of films—sometimes precise and patterned, again in a chaos of disorder.

  And there was one little episode that kept recurring again and again in his mind, although until that night he had not thought of it in years. It was about the time he and his sister made a glider in the back yard, and perhaps he kept remembering it because the things he had felt at that time were so much like the expectancy this journey now brought.

  At that time they had all been kids and at the age when all the new things they learned about on the radio and in books and at the movies could set them wild with eagerness. He had been thirteen, Sara a year younger, and little Mick (she didn't count in things like this) was still in kindergarten. He and Sara had read about gliders in a science magazine in the school library and immediately they began to build one in their back yard. (They began to build it one afternoon in the middle of the week and by Saturday they had worked so hard that it was almost finished.) The article had not given any exact directions for making the glider; they had had to go by the way they imagined it should be and to use whatever materials they could find. Vitalis would not give them a sheet to cover the wings and so they had to cut up his canvas camping tent to use instead. For the frame they used some bamboo sticks and some light wood they snitched from the carpenters who were building a garage up on the next block. When it was finished the glider was not very big, and seemed very different from the ones they had seen in the movies—but he and Sara kept telling each other than it was just as good and that there was nothing to keep their ship from flight.