Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  She still didn’t believe that he was sick. He was a big man, six feet tall, weighing two hundred pounds, and he looked even bigger than usual, mountainous. Perhaps it was the way his body sagged in the chair. His head lolled on his shoulder, as though it had no connection with his neck, his spine. His mouth was open and a little trickle of saliva was running out of his mouth, down the side of his cheek. His arms were hanging down, dangling, the hands open, limp, dangling too. The drunks who slept under The Hangman in the summer looked just like this, smelt just like this, sounded just like this, the same queer snoring issued from their throats. The only thing—his hands—. She touched both of them. They were cold. His hands were always warm, great big warm hands.

  Then Frances was bringing the new doctor into the parlor. Dr. Easter. A black man, young, she supposed, but with a manner so pompous, so dignified, that he might have been seventy-odd. He didn’t even open his bag, he felt for the Major’s pulse, he leaned over and apparently listened to his breathing, just with his ear, and then straightened up and said, “We must get him in bed. At once.”

  Why he’s a West Indian, Abbie thought. She said, “Is he—”

  He interrupted her, “I do not know, madam. He is very ill. I cannot discuss the case now. There is no time. Miss Jackson, I will need help. We must get him in bed. At once.”

  He made her feel in the way. So did Frances. Frances was at the telephone again. And almost immediately, there were two men at the front door, and then they were in the parlor. Perhaps it wasn’t that fast. But it seemed so. When, finally, she went upstairs into the bedroom, they had undressed the Major, put him to bed. The smell of whiskey was gone. She could see now that they were right, he was terribly, terribly sick. It was incredible. He had never been sick in all the years they had been married. The color of his skin had changed. It was gray. Skin gray. He lay motionless under the sheets, under the soft rose-colored blanket, the magnificent head perfectly still on the pillows, the bigboned hands still too, the hands open, fingers straight out, all of them, on the rose-colored blanket.

  He never lay still when he was in bed. He turned and twisted in his sleep as though sleep were an enemy and he determined to destroy it, to fight the sheets and the blankets and the pillows which were the enemy’s first line of defense. In the morning, in the winter, he was always lying on his side, the covers pulled over his big shoulders, so that when she first woke up she always thought she had been sleeping in a tent, the covers were tent-like, lifted up by the Major’s shoulders, and drafts played around her neck and back, down the tunnel that the covers formed. When the Major got out of a bed it looked like a battleground, all furrowed and riddled, the sheets rumpled, the blankets on the floor. She used to wonder if this bed-mauling was a family trait, just as some families run to cleft palates and buck teeth and rheumatism, so perhaps the Crunches for generations back had been bed-maulers, unable to lie still in a bed, congenitally forced to twist and turn, and pull the sheets and push the blankets and punch the pillows, warring against sleep. She would cast one last disgusted look at him, and then go quietly down the stairs to make the morning coffee.

  About seven o’clock she would hear his footsteps on the stairs, heavy and yet quick. He came down the stairs singing in that sweet pure tenor voice, a voice utterly incongruous in so big a man, “You must wake and call me early, call me early, Mother dear,” and she supposed he timed it because when he reached the kitchen door he let his voice out, “For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, Mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.” Then he kissed her and patted her hand, saying, “Well, Abbie, another day—more dough—as the baker said to the bread mixer,” and let out a roar of laughter, so loud and with so much lung power behind it, or perhaps it was the pitch, anyway his laughter made the plates, the cups, and saucers on the table rattle.

  She sat there by his bedside all night. There had been something else that would have told her how dreadfully sick he was, something more than his lying so still. When she first came into the room Frances and Dr. Easter had been leaning over him, and when they saw her, they straightened up and stood aside, drawing back, away from the bed, no expression on their faces. It was that standing aside that told her he might not survive. People stood aside like that, not saying anything, when the chief mourner came into the room to view the body for the first time.

  Sometimes she held his hand, that big powerful hand—a hand that was all compassion and tenderness, and that might somewhere else and under a different set of circumstances have been the hand of a surgeon because the fingers were enormously sensitive, controlled, skilful. Sometimes she prayed, kneeling by the side of the bed, burying her face in her hands, aware that the sheets smelt ever so faintly of lavender. Pride once in the fine sheets, in the box springs, the hair mattress, the soft blankets, pride in anything now worthless, meaningless. Don’t let him die. Her fault. She should have known that he wasn’t drunk. He was sick. Dear God, don’t let him die. I can’t live without him. I wouldn’t want to.

  At intervals during the night Dr. Easter came into the room. She knew he was doing everything he could for the Major. But his breathing didn’t change, except that the sound, and maybe it was her imagination, perhaps she had grown accustomed to it, but it wasn’t as loud. Frances was, she thought, always somewhere in the room.

  Toward morning Frances said, “Go downstairs, Abbie. Go outside and get some air. I’ll be right here. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  She went reluctantly. If he died it would be her fault. It would be murder really. She should have known. She should have called the doctor the moment the Major came in the house. She let him sit there. “He’s got newspapers all around him.” Link’s young voice. Reproach, wasn’t it? The new carpet. Newspapers. The Monmouth Chronicle. Yesterday’s. Spread out on the floor.

  She stood outside on the front steps. It was beginning to get light. There were a few stars still in the sky. Or was that just the tears in her eyes? Tears. Not stars. It was daylight. The Hangman bulked large and dark off to the right. Dear God, don’t let him die. She looked down at the sidewalk. There was something written there. Right in front of the house. She went down the steps, not wanting to read whatever it was, afraid not to, remembering the stories about the prophetic power of Cesar the Writing Man who went all over Monmouth writing verses from the Bible on the sidewalks. Always writing on Dumble Street.

  At first she couldn’t make it out. There were so many scrolls and flourishes and curlicues and small adorning parts, in pink, red, blue, and yellow chalk, that it seemed to be just a pattern, intricate in design, drawn on the sidewalk. Her eyes kept filling up with tears, they welled up, again and again, so that she could not see clearly. She kept wiping them away with the back of her hand. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Dear God, don’t let him die. Don’t let him die. I mustn’t cry. I mustn’t cry.

  She made herself stop crying so that she could see what Cesar had written on the sidewalk in front of her house. Having read it, she was assailed by fear, by horror, so that she trembled and cried out, in refutation, “NO! NO! NO!” And the morning was suddenly unbearable, the sun coming out, the air filled with the smell of the river, fog blowing in from the river, damp and cold on her face. She leaned over and read it again: “At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.”

  She turned and went back in the house, aware of a dreadful giddiness that made her want to pitch forward on her face, fall forward and never get up, went up the stairs, swiftly, listening, listening, listening now for the same sound that had made her so angry when she first heard it, wanting to hear it now, praying that she would still hear it. She stopped in the doorway of the bedroom and heard the peculiar snorelike breathing of the Major, definitely not as loud, not even as loud as when she left the room.

  His hands were still cold but they responded to her touch. He knew her. Apparently he could only convey his recognition
of her by a slight sustained pressure of his hand.

  That night he died. Just before he died he tried to sit up, seemed to bow, and he said, “The house—Abbie—the house—” She couldn’t understand the rest of it, the rest of it was just a muttering in his throat, and then he pitched forward and she caught him in her arms.

  Blank space. Just weeping. And then the funeral. I will not cry. Where did all these people come from? I will not cry. I will not make a sound. And all the flowers. So many flowers. The whole front of the colored Congregational Church covered with flowers. When they were first married she had suggested that they attend the white Congregational Church and he had said, “I’d never get to be a deacon in the white church. And that’s all right. I want to be a deacon so I’m going to belong to the colored church.” I will not make a sound. So many people. So many flowers. Old men with bleary eyes. He bought snuff for them, and chewing tobacco. Colored ones and white ones. The Governor was crying. So was his wife. Right across the aisle. And children. How strange. But he always had lollipops in his pocket. Young men, too. Colored ones and white ones. He always had a good story to tell. Born storyteller.

  I will not cry. So many people. All those women from Dumble Street who went to work in the morning with little paper bags under their arms. All here. And the tailor and the man from the bakery, and the man who had the grocery. Rich people. Poor people. Young people. Old people. I will not cry. Even the Dumble Street sporting women. Legs and bosoms, always on the verge of complete exposure, all laughter or all tears, all singing or all cursing. He lifted his hat to them as though he were bowing to the Queen of England. Empress of India. The Governor, whitehaired, leaning on a cane, a goldheaded cane exactly like the one he gave the Major. I will not cry. The Governor with tears running down his cheeks. His wife, too.

  Look straight ahead. Look at the flowers. Hold everything still inside of you. Frances keeps her hand on mine. Don’t let it go. Keep it there. All right so far. Past the prayers. Past the reading from the Scriptures. Past “Lead, Kindly Light.” I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me. How will I walk down this aisle. Not cry.

  She was not prepared for—oh, who could have. Who planned this? Not that woman. She was standing up. So she was going to sing. Now the organ. The Governor she supposed. A white organist she had never seen. The Major used to sing in the choir. Sing solos. Only three times a year. He said, “You play the organ there, Abbie. If I were to sing solos every Sunday it wouldn’t look right. People would think we’d taken over the church.” Christmas. Easter. Children’s Sunday. He sang solos then. He is risen. Hallelujah. Silent night, Holy night. Voice sweet. Sweet tenor voice. Always humming and whistling and singing.

  The strange organist was playing “Goin’ Home.” That woman was going to sing it. A big woman. Light brown. Freckles on her face. A soprano. From the Baptist Church. She had a voice like a cry from the grave. Sadness. Sorrow. Regret. Reproach—no other voice like it. The high notes a little off pitch, deliberately off pitch, so that it was no longer singing, it was a wail, echoing in the blood, in the bones.

  At the first sound of that voice, lifted now, unearthly, terrible in its sorrow, she told herself, Think of something about him that you did not like. If you don’t you’ll faint. There is a moaning in your throat and it will come out. Think fast.

  There were the stories. The stories about his family. She’d never liked those stories. He told them with gusto. He said his people were swamp niggers and laughed. There was Uncle Zeke, his great-great-uncle, who had red eyes and carried toads and roots in his pockets and could conjure. “Don’t say goodbye to me.” Told them that at a railroad station. Were the stories true? Did they have railroad stations in those days? When they got off the train, Uncle Zeke was standing on the station platform waiting for them. Uncle Zeke could rise up off his bed, in a prone position, and go around in circles, three feet up from the bed, in a prone position, around and around, bony legs thrust out straight from a white nightshirt, lids closed over the red eyes, and he always said the same thing, as he floated around circling over his bed, “Watch that straight coattail, Sam, watch that straight coattail.” Nobody had ever known what he meant by it.

  Had the Major made them up? Made up all the stories about those other long since dead members of the Crunch family. But the details were so vivid. The stories obviously handed down, handed down, always told the same way, so that they sounded true. She even knew what Uncle Zeke looked like, a small dark man who walked with a limp and his hands were unpleasant to the touch, damp and cold. Whenever anybody got sick they sent for Uncle Zeke. She even knew how his voice had sounded, a highpitched cackling, almost feminine, voice, “Zeke’ll ponder it. Zeke’ll squat down by the fire. And Zeke’ll ponder it. Hush, hush, hush. Zeke is ponderin’ it.” And wind howled down the chimney.

  Shut out the sound of that wail. Keep remembering. You didn’t like the stories. He made those people live again. They were an emotional primitive people, whose existence even in the past seemed somehow to be an affront to the things you believed in, and stood for. His great-grandfather, Theodore Crunch, bit an Irishman’s ear off in a fight in the dooryard of an inn. And another one of the male Crunches, after the Emancipation, used to glance around his dooryard and then gather up all the little pickaninnies, as he called them, and sell them off for ten dollars apiece, to anyone who would buy them, saying that he was tired of looking at them. Then the rest of the family would have to go scurrying around the countryside to get the children back.

  There was Aunt Hal, who wore men’s shoes, and who could conjure, and who had her conjure books buried with her, and the story was that a white man offered a thousand dollars for the conjure books but the surviving Crunches did not dare sell them, because Aunt Hal had warned them, on her deathbed, “Them books goes in the casket with me. Anybody takes ’em out, I’ll be back. If I has to come back, I’ll take every one of you niggers over Jordan with me.”

  Aunt Hal stood six foot in her stocking feet, Aunt Hal wore long black skirts, Aunt Hal had a deep voice, bass, like a man’s voice. Her eyes were the black unfathomable eyes of a witch, a gypsy. When one of the early Crunches died, Aunt Hal wasn’t invited to the funeral. But when the funeral procession got under way, there was Aunt Hal perched on the back of the hearse, riding in the procession, leading the way, holding on with one hand, and with the other hand thumbing her nose at the mourners in the carriages following the hearse. Somebody shouted, “Whip up them horses! Whip ’em up!” And the hearse started going faster and faster, Aunt Hal, holding on, jouncing up and down, faster, faster, and the dead Crunch in the casket completely forgotten. The living Crunches thrust their heads out of the windows of the carriages following the hearse, shouting, “Whip ’em up! Whip them horses! When Hal falls off ride her down! Ride Hal down!” An ungodly crew. None of the stories were ever about goodness and mercy, always death and cruelty. People stopped and stared and wondered at the sight, horses stretched out straight, hoofbeats, fast, furious, the carriages swaying, Hal clutching the sides of the hearse, refusing to be jolted off, and finally, at the cemetery, as the casket was being lowered into the grave, she spat at them, spat at all those darkskinned Crunches who stood glaring at her across the open grave, and said, “Well! I come to the funeralizin’ anyway. Didn’ I?” Deep bass voice. Man’s voice.

  The story about Hal, the remembered story, took her down the aisle of the church, following behind the body of the last of the Crunches, the last Theodore Crunch. Home to his fathers. Gone to his long home. Crunches waiting for him. This one, the last of them, never had the son he wanted. Never had any children. A man who loved boys and gardens and horses. Loved boys. So they adopted Link. At the Major’s insistence. Where was Link? He wasn’t at the service. She thought about him that one time, coming out of the church. Then not again. Forgetting him as though he had never existed. Because she believed that it was her fault that the Major died.

 
All those years ago, and she remembered it as though it had happened yesterday. Had never really gotten over it. Because there was always the feeling that it was her fault that the Major died. But there had been the smell of whiskey and because of it she hadn’t really looked at him, wouldn’t look at him. Bill Hod brought him home and there was the smell of whiskey.

  As she sat there in the kitchen she heard somebody whistling. Then Bill Hod went past the back door. Why, he’s been up there all this time. She hadn’t heard his footsteps coming down the stairs. He had made no sound at all. There was just the whistled tune, seemingly descending the outside back stairs, coming down, by itself, nearer and nearer. A tune she’d heard before. Where? Of course. The tune that Link had been whistling when he left the house, the tune that Mamie Powther had been singing while she hung clothes on the line: “I’m lonesome—lonesome.”

  I don’t know what to do, she thought. Then she straightened up. She would make some tea and then she would go and ask Frances to help her figure out some way, some polite way, of course, by which she could get rid of the Powthers quickly.

  The twelve o’clock whistle sounded at the Treadway Munitions Company. Tea for lunch? No. She heated soup and rolls and fixed a salad. Then set the table as carefully as though she were expecting a guest, thinking, I’ve always been the Englishman dressing for dinner even in the jungle. Then she sat down at the table and bowed her head as she said the blessing.

  “What you doin’?”

  She gave a little jump. J.C. was standing in the kitchen, right near the table. His expression was exactly like that she had seen on the faces of a group of people over on Franklin Avenue who were standing in a semicircle looking down at something—a mixture of puzzlement and awe and fear. Ordinarily she avoided crowds that collected on the street, but there was something so extraordinary in the faces of these people that she had stopped to find out why. There on the sidewalk, motionless, oblivious to the crowd standing back at a respectful distance, was a praying mantis. Now she thought, wanting to laugh, I must have looked exactly like that mantis to this dirty little boy; and he was dirty—his face, his hands, his clothes.