Collected Stories of Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  Frankie pulled the knife from the door and laid it on the kitchen table. Then she spat on her palm and rubbed her hands together.

  Berenice said finally: "Frances Addams, you going to do that once too often."

  "I never miss outside of a few inches."

  "You know what your father said about knife-throwing in this house."

  "I warned you to quit picking with me."

  "You are not fit to live in a house," said Berenice.

  "I won't be living in this one much longer. I'm going to run away from home."

  "And a good riddance to a big old bad rubbage," said Berenice.

  "You wait and see. I'm leaving town."

  "And where you think you are going?"

  Frankie looked at all the corners of the room, and then said, '"I don't know."

  "I do," said Berenice. "You going crazy. That's where you going."

  "No," said Frankie. She stood very still, looking around the queerly pictured wall, and then she closed her eyes. "I'm going to Winter Hill. I'm going to the wedding. And I swear to Jesus by my two eyes I'm never coming back here any more."

  She had not been sure that she would throw the knife until it struck and shivered on the stairway door. And she had not known that she would say these words until already they were spoken. The swear was like the sudden knife; she felt it strike in her and tremble. Then when the words were quiet, she said again:

  "After the wedding I'm not coming back."

  Berenice pushed back the damp bangs of Frankie's hair and finally she asked: "Sugar? You serious?"

  "Of course!" said Frankie. "Do you think I would stand here and swear that swear and tell a story? Sometimes, Berenice, I think it takes you longer to realize a fact than it does anybody who ever lived."

  "But," said Berenice, "you say you don't know where you're going. You going, but you don't know where. That don't make no sense to me."

  Frankie stood looking up and down the four walls of the room. She thought of the world, and it was fast and loose and turning, faster and looser and and bigger than ever it had been before. The pictures of the war sprang out and clashed together in her mind. She saw bright flowered islands and a land by a northern sea with the gray waves on the shore. Bombed eyes and the shuffle of soldiers' feet. Tanks and a plane, wing broken, burning and downward-falling in a desert sky. The world was cracked by the loud battles and turning a thousand miles a minute. The names of places spun in Frankie's mind: China, Peachville, New Zealand, Paris, Cincinnati, Rome. She thought of the huge and turning world until her legs began to tremble and there was sweat on the palms of her hands. But still she did not know where she should go. Finally she stopped looking around the four kitchen walls and said to Berenice:

  "I feel just exactly like somebody has peeled all the skin off me. I wish I had some cold good chocolate ice cream."

  Berenice had her hands on Frankie's shoulders and was shaking her head and staring with the live eye narrowed into Frankie's face.

  "But every word 1 told you was the solemn truth," she said. "I'm not coming back here after the wedding."

  There was a sound, and when they turned they saw that Honey and T. T. Williams were standing in the doorway. Honey, though he was her foster brother, did not resemble Berenice—and it was almost as though he came from some foreign country, like Cuba or Mexico. He was light-skinned, almost lavender in color, with quiet narrow eyes like oil, and a limber body. Behind him stood T. T. Williams, and he was very big and black; he was gray-haired, older even than Berenice, and he wore a church suit with a red badge in the buttonhole. T. T. Williams was a beau of Berenice, a well-off colored man who owned a colored restaurant. Honey was a sick, loose person. The army would not include him, and he had shoveled in a gravel pit until he broke one of his insides and could not do heavy work any more. They stood dark and grouped together in the door.

  "What you all creep up like that for?" asked Berenice. "I didn't even hear you."

  "You and Frankie too busy discussing something," said T.T.

  "I am ready to go," said Berenice. "I been ready. But do you wish a small little quickie before we start?"

  T. T. Williams looked at Frankie and shuffled his feet. He was very proper, and he liked to please everybody, and he always wanted to do the right thing.

  "Frankie ain't no tattle-tale," said Berenice. "Is you?"

  Frankie would not even answer such a question. Honey wore a dark red rayon slack suit and she said: "That sure is a cute suit you got on, Honey. Where did you get it?"

  Honey could talk like a white school-teacher; his lavender lips could move as quick and light as butterflies. But he only answered with a colored word, a dark sound from the throat that can mean anything. "Ahhnnh," he said.

  The glasses were before them on the table, and the hair-straightening bottle that held gin, but they did not drink. Berenice said something about Paris and Frankie had the extra feeling that they were waiting for her to leave. She stood in the door and looked at them. She did not want to go away.

  "You wish water in yours, T.T.?" asked Berenice.

  They were together around the table and Frankie stood extra in the door alone. "So long, you all," she said.

  "'Bye Sugar," said Berenice. "You forget all that foolishness we was discussing. And if Mr. Addams don't come home by dark, you go on over to the Wests'. Go play with John Henry."

  "Since when have I been scared of the dark?" said Frankie. "So long."

  "So long," they said.

  She closed the door, but behind her she could hear their voices. With her head against the kitchen door she could hear the murmuring dark sounds that rose and fell in a gentle way. Ayee—ayee. And then Honey spoke above the idle wash of voices and he asked: "What was it between you and Frankie when we come in the house?" She waited, her ear pressed close against the door, to hear what Berenice would say. And finally the words were: "Just foolishness. Frankie was carrying on with foolishness." She listened until at last she heard them go away.

  The empty house was darkening. She and her father were alone at night, as Berenice went to her own home direcdy after supper. Once they had rented the front bedroom. It was the year after her grandmother died, when Frankie was nine. They rented the front bedroom to Mr. and Mrs. Marlowe. The only thing Frankie remembered about them was the remark said at the last, that they were common people. Yet for the season they were there, Frankie was fascinated by Mr. and Mrs. Marlowe and the front room. She loved to go in when they were away and carefully, lightly meddle with their things—with Mrs. Marlowe's atomizer which skeeted perfume, the gray-pink powder puff, the wooden shoe-trees of Mr. Marlowe. They left mysteriously after an afternoon that Frankie did not understand. It was a summer Sunday and the hall door of the Marlowes' room was open. She could see only a portion of the room, part of the dresser and only the footpiece of the bed with Mrs. Marlowe's corset on it. But there was a sound in the quiet room she could not place, and when she stepped over the threshold she was startled by a sight that, after a single glance, sent her running to the kitchen, crying: Mr. Marlowe is having a fit! Berenice had hurried through the hall, but when she looked into the front room, she merely bunched her lips and banged the door. And evidently told her father, for that evening he said the Marlowes would have to leave. Frankie had tried to question Berenice and find out what was the matter. But Berenice had only said that they were common people and added that with a certain party in the house they ought at least to know enough to shut a door. Though Frankie knew she was the certain party, still she did not understand. What kind of a fit was it? she asked. But Berenice would only answer: Baby, just a common fit. And Frankie knew from the voice's tones that there was more to it than she was told. Later she only remembered the Marlowes as common people, and being common they owned common things—so that long after she had ceased to think about the Marlowes or fits, remembering merely the name and the fact that once they had rented the front bedroom, she associated common people with gray-pink powder puffs
and perfume atomizers. The front bedroom had not been rented since.

  Frankie went to the hall hatrack and put on one of her father's hats. She looked at her dark ugly mug in the mirror. The conversation about the wedding had somehow been wrong. The questions she had asked that afternoon had all been the wrong questions, and Berenice had answered her with jokes. She could not name the feeling in her, and she stood there until dark shadows made her think of ghosts.

  Frankie went out to the street before the house and looked up into the sky. She stood staring with her fist on her hip and her mouth open. The sky was lavender and slowly darkening. She heard in the neighborhood the sound of evening voices and noticed the light fresh smell of watered grass. This was the time of the early evening when, since the kitchen was too hot, she would go for a little while outdoors. She practiced knife-throwing, or sat before the cold-drink store in the front yard. Or she would go around to the back yard, and there the arbor was cool and dark. She wrote shows, although she had outgrown all of her costumes, and was too big to act in them beneath the arbor; this summer she had written very cold shows—shows about Esquimaux and frozen explorers. Then when night had come she would go again back in the house.

  But this evening Frankie did not have her mind on knives or cold-drink stores or shows. Nor did she want to stand there staring up into the sky; for her heart asked the old questions, and in the old way of the spring she was afraid.

  She felt she needed to think about something ugly and plain, so she turned from the evening sky and stared at her own house. Frankie lived in the ugliest house in town, but now she knew that she would not be living there much longer. The house was empty, dark. Frankie turned and walked to the end of the block, and around the corner, and down the sidewalk to the Wests'. John Henry was leaning against the banisters of his front porch, with a lighted window behind him, so that he looked like a little black paper doll on a piece of yellow paper.

  "Hey," she said. "I wonder when that Papa of mine is coming home from town."

  John Henry did not answer.

  "I don't want to go back in that dark old ugly house all by myself."

  She stood on the sidewalk, looking at John Henry, and the smart political remark came back to her. She hooked her thumb in the pocket of her pants and asked: "If you were going to vote in an election, who would you vote for?"

  John Henry's voice was bright and high in the summer night. "I don't know," he said.

  "For instance, would you cast your vote for C. P. MacDonald to be mayor of this town?"

  John Henry did not answer.

  "Would you?"

  But she could not get him to talk. There were times when John Henry would not answer anything you said to him. So she had to remark without an argument behind her, and all by herself like that it did not sound so very smart: "Why, I wouldn't vote for him if he was running to be dog-catcher."

  The darkening town was very quiet. For a long time now her brother and the bride had been at Winter Hill. They had left the town a hundred miles behind them, and now were in a city far away. They were them and in Winter Hill, together, while she was her and in the same old town all by herself. The long hundred miles did not make her sadder and make her feel more far away than the knowing that they were them and both together and she was only her and parted from them, by herself. And as she sickened with this feeling a thought and explanation suddenly came to her, so that she knew and almost said aloud: They are the we of me. Yesterday, and all the twelve years of her life, she had only been Frankie. She was an I person who had to walk around and do things by herself. All other people had a we to claim, all others except her. When Berenice said we, she meant Honey and Big Mama, her lodge, or her church. The we of her father was the store. All members of clubs have a we to belong to and to talk about. The soldiers in the army can say we, and even the criminals on chain-gangs. But the old Frankie had had no we to claim, unless it would be the terrible summer we of her and John Henry and Berenice—and that was the last we in the world she wanted. Now all this was suddenly over with and changed. There was her brother and the bride, and it was as though when first she saw them something she had known inside of her: They are the we of me. And that was why it made her feel so queer, for them to be away in Winter Hill while she was left all by herself; the hull of the old Frankie left there in the town alone.

  "Why are you all bent over like that?" John Henry said.

  "I think I have a kind of pain," said Frankie. "I must have ate something."

  John Henry was still standing on the banisters, holding to the post. "Listen," she said finally. "Suppose you come on over and eat supper and spend the night with me."

  "I can't," he answered.

  "Why?"

  John Henry walked across the banisters, holding out his arms for balance, so that he was like a little blackbird against the yellow window light. He did not answer until he safely reached the other post.

  "Just because."

  "Because why?"

  He did not say anything, and so she added: "I thought maybe me and you could put up my Indian tepee and sleep out in the back yard. And have a good time."

  Still John Henry did not speak.

  "We're blood first cousins. I entertain you all the time. I've given you so many presents."

  Quietly, lightly, John Henry walked back across the banisters and then stood looking out at her with his arm around the post again.

  "Sure enough," she called. "Why can't you come?"

  At last he said, "Because, Frankie, I don't want to."

  "Fool jackass!" she screamed. "I only asked you because I thought you looked so ugly and so lonesome."

  Lightly John Henry jumped down from the banisters. And his voice as he called back to her was a clear child's voice.

  "Why, I'm not a bit lonesome."

  Frankie rubbed the wet palms of her hands along the sides of her shorts and said in her mind: Now turn around and take yourself on home. But in spite of this order, she was somehow unable to turn around and go. It was not yet night. Houses along the street were dark, lights showed in windows. Darkness had gathered in the thick-leaved trees and shapes in the distance were ragged and gray. But the night was not yet in the sky.

  "I think something is wrong," she said. "It is too quiet. I have a peculiar warning in my bones. I bet you a hundred dollars it's going to storm."

  John Henry watched her from behind the banister.

  "A terrible terrible dog-day storm. Or maybe even a cyclone."

  Frankie stood waiting for the night. And just at that moment a horn began to play. Somewhere in the town, not far away, a horn began a blues tune. The tune was grieving and low. It was the sad horn of some colored boy, but who he was she did not know. Frankie stood stiff, her head bent and her eyes closed, listening. There was something about the tune that brought back to her all of the spring: flowers, the eyes of strangers, rain.

  The tune was low and dark and sad. Then all at once, as Frankie listened, the horn danced into a wild jazz spangle that zigzagged upward with sassy nigger trickiness. At the end of the jazz spangle the music rattled thin and far away. Then the tune returned to the first blues song, and it was like the telling of that long season of trouble. She stood there on the dark sidewalk and the drawn tightness of her heart made her knees lock and her throat feel stiffened. Then, without warning, the thing happened that at first Frankie could not believe. Just at the time when the tune should be laid, the music finished, the horn broke off. All of a sudden the horn stopped playing. For a moment Frankie could not take it in, she felt so lost.

  She whispered finally to John Henry West: "He has stopped to bang the spit out of his horn. In a second he will finish."

  But the music did not come again. The tune was left broken, unfinished. And the drawn tightness she could no longer stand. She felt she must do something wild and sudden that never had been done before. She hit herself on the head with her fist, but that did not help any at all. And she began to talk aloud, although at
first she paid no attention to her own words and did not know in advance what she would say.

  "I told Berenice that I was leaving town for good and she did not believe me. Sometimes I honestly think she is the biggest fool that ever drew breath." She complained aloud, and her voice was fringed and sharp like the edge of a saw. She talked and did not know from one word to the next what she would say. She listened to her own voice, but the words she heard did not make much sense. "You try to impress something on a big fool like that and it's just like talking to a block of cement. I kept on telling and telling and telling her. I told her I had to leave this town for good because it is inevitable."

  She was not talking to John Henry. She did not see him any more. He had moved from the lighted window; but he was still listening from the porch, and after a little while he asked her:

  "Where?"

  Frankie did not answer. She was suddenly very still and quiet. For a new feeling had come to her. The sudden feeling was that she knew deep in her where she would go. She knew, and in another minute the name of the place would come to her. Frankie bit the knuckles of her fist and waited: but she did not hunt for the name of the place and did not think about the turning world. She saw in her mind her brother and the bride, and the heart in her was squeezed so hard that Frankie almost felt it break.

  John Henry was asking in his high child voice: "You want me to eat supper and sleep in the tepee with you?"

  She answered: "No."

  "You just a little while ago invited me!"

  But she could not argue with John Henry West or answer anything he said. For it was just at that moment that Frankie understood. She knew who she was and how she was going into the world. Her squeezed heart suddenly opened and divided. Her heart divided like two wings. And when she spoke her voice was sure.

  "I know where I'm going," she said.

  He asked her: "Where?"

  "I'm going to Winter Hill," she said. "I'm going to the wedding."

  She waited, to give him a chance to say: "I already knew that, anyhow." Then finally she spoke the sudden truth aloud.