The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

by Carson McCullers

  Mick looked over the hall and dining-room one last time. By the hat rack she stopped before the picture of Old Dirty-Face.

  This was a photo of her Mama’s grandfather. He was a major way back in the Civil War and had been killed in a battle.

  Some kid once drew eyeglasses and a beard on his picture, and when the pencil marks were erased it left his face all dirty.

  That was why she called him Old Dirty-Face. The picture was in the middle of a three-part frame. On both sides were pictures of his sons. They looked about Bubber’s age. They had on uniforms and their faces were surprised. They had been killed in battle also. A long time ago.

  Tm going to take this down for the party. I think it looks common. Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bubber said. ‘Are we common, Mick?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  She put the picture underneath the hat rack. The decoration was O.K. Mister Singer would be pleased when he came home. The rooms seemed very empty and quiet. The table was set for supper. And then after supper it would be time for the party. She went into the kitchen to see about the refreshments.

  ‘You think everything will be all right?’ she asked Portia.

  Portia was making biscuits. The refreshments were on top of the stove. There were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate snaps and punch. The sandwiches were covered with a damp dishcloth. She peeped at them but didn’t take one.

  ‘I done told you forty times that everthing going to be all right,’ Portia said. ‘Just soon as I come back from fixing supper at home I going to put on that white apron and serve the food real nice. Then I going to push off from here by nine-thirty.

  This here is Saturday night and Highboy and Willie and me haves our plans, too.’

  ‘Sure,’ Mick said. ‘I just want you to help out till things sort of get started--you know.’

  She gave in and took one of the sandwiches. Then she made Bubber stay with Portia and went into the middle room. The dress she would wear was laying out on the bed. Hazel and Etta had both been good about lending her their best clothes--considering that they weren’t supposed to come to the party.

  There was Etta’s long blue crepe de chine evening dress and some white pumps and a rhinestone tiara for her hair. These clothes were really gorgeous. It was hard to imagine how she would look in them.

  The late afternoon had come and the sun made long, yellow slants through the window. If she took two hours over dressing for the party it was time to begin now. When she thought about putting on the fine clothes she couldn’t just sit around and wait. Very slowly she went into the bathroom and shucked off her old shorts and shirt and turned on the water.

  She scrubbed the rough parts of her heels and her knees and especially her elbows. She made the bath take a long time.

  She ran naked into the middle room and began to dress. Silk teddies she put on, and silk stockings. She even wore one of Etta’s brassieres just for the heck of it. Then very carefully she put on the dress and stepped into the pumps. This was the first time she had ever worn an evening dress. She stood for a long time before the mirror. She was so tall that the dress came up two or three inches above her ankles--and the shoes were so short they hurt her. She stood in front of the mirror a long tune, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other.

  Six different ways she tried out her hair. The cowlicks were a little trouble, so she wet her bangs and made three spit curls.

  Last of all she stuck the rhinestones in her hair and put on plenty of lipstick and paint. When she finished she lifted up her chin and half-closed eyes like a movie star. Slowly she turned her face from one side to the other. It was beautiful she looked--just beautiful.

  ‘She didn’t feel like herself at all. She was somebody different from Mick Kelly entirely. Two hours had to pass before the party would begin, and she was ashamed for any of the family to see her dressed so far ahead of time. She went into the bathroom again and locked the door. She couldn’t mess up her dress by sitting down, so she stood in the middle of the floor. The close walls around her seemed to press hi all the excitement. She felt so different from the old Mick Kelly that she knew this would be better than anything else in all her whole life--this party.

  ‘Yippee! The punch!’

  ‘The cutest dress--’

  ‘Say! You solve that one about the triangle forty-six by twen--’

  ‘Lemme by! Move out my way!’ The front door slammed every second as the people swarmed into the house. Sharp voices and soft voices sounded together until there was just one roaring noise. Girls stood in bunches in their long, fine evening dresses, and the boys roamed around in clean duck pants or R.O.T.C. uniforms or new dark fall suite. There was so much commotion that Mick couldn’t notice any separate face or person. She stood by the hat rack and stared around at the party as a whole.

  ‘Everybody get a prom card and start signing up.’

  At first the room was too loud for anyone to hear and pay attention. The boys were so thick around the punch bowl that the table and the vines didn’t show at all. Only her Dad’s face rose up above the boys’ heads as he smiled and dished up the punch into the little paper cups. On the seat of the hat rack beside her were a jar of candy and two handkerchiefs. A couple of girls thought it was her birthday, and she had thanked them and unwrapped the presents without telling them she wouldn’t be fourteen for eight more months.

  Every person was as clean and fresh and dressed up as she was. They smelled good. The boys had their hair plastered down wet and slick. The girls with their different-colored long dresses stood together, and they were like a bright hunk of flowers. The start was marvelous. The beginning of this party was O.K.

  ‘I’m part Scotch Irish and French and--’

  ‘I got German blood--’ She hollered about the prom cards one more time before she went into the dining-room. Soon they began to pile in from the hall. Every person took a prom card and they lined up in bunches against the walls of the room. This was the real start now.

  It came all of a sudden in a very queer way--this quietness.

  The boys stood together on one side of the room and the girls were across from them. For some reason every person quit making noise at once. The boys held their cards and looked at the girls and the room was very still. None of the boys started asking for proms like they were supposed to do. The awful quietness got worse and she had not been to enough parties to know what she should do. Then the boys started punching each other and talking. The girls giggled--but even if they didn’t look at the boys you could tell they only had their minds on whether they were going to be popular or not. The awful quietness was gone now, but there was something jittery about the room.

  After a while a boy went up to a girl named Delores Brown.

  As soon as he had signed her up the other boys all began to rush Delores at once. When her whole card was full they started on another girl, named Mary. After that everything suddenly stopped again. One or two extra girls got a couple of proms--and because she was giving the party three boys came up to her. That was all.

  The people just hung around in the dining-room and the hall.

  The boys mostly flocked around the punch bowl and tried to show off with each other. The girls bunched together and did a lot of laughing to pretend like they were having a good time. The boys thought about the girls and the girls thought about the boys. But all that came of it was a queer feeling in the room.

  It was then she began to notice Harry Minowitz. He lived in the house next door and she had known him all her life.

  Although he was two years older she had grown faster than him, and in the summer-time they used to wrestle and fight out on the plot of grass by the street. Harry was a Jew boy, but he did not look so much like one. His hair was light brown and straight. Tonight he was dressed very neat, and when he came in the door he had hung a grown man’s panama hat with a feather in
it on the hat rack.

  It wasn’t his clothes that made her notice him. There was something changed about his face because he was without the horn-rimmed specs he usually wore. A red, droopy sty had come out on one of his eyes and he had to cock his head sideways like a bird in order to see. His long, thin hands kept touching around his sty as though it hurt him. When he asked for punch he stuck the paper cup right into her Dad’s face. She could tell he needed his glasses very bad. He was nervous and kept bumping into people. He didn’t ask any girl to prom except her--and that was because it was her party.

  All the punch had been drunk. Her Dad was afraid she would be embarrassed, so he and her Mama had gone back to the kitchen to make lemonade. Some of the people were on the front porch and the sidewalk. She was glad to get out in the cool night air. After the hot, bright house she could smell the new autumn in the darkness.

  Then she saw something she hadn’t expected. Along the edge of the sidewalk and in the dark street there was a bunch of neighborhood kids. Pete and Sucker Wells and Baby and Spareribs--the whole gang that started at below Bubber’s age and went on up to over twelve. There were even kids she didn’t know at all who had somehow smelled a party and come to hang around. And there were kids her age and older that she hadn’t invited either because they had done something mean to her or she had done something mean to them. They were all dirty and in plain shorts or draggle-tailed knickers or old everyday dresses. They were just hanging around in the dark to watch the party. She thought of two feelings when she saw those kids--one was sad and the other was a kind of warning.

  ‘I got this prom with you.’ Harry Minowitz made out like he was reading on his card, but she could see nothing was written on it. Her Dad had come onto the porch and blown the whistle that meant the beginning of the first prom.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Let’s get going.’

  They started out to walk around the block. In the long dress she still felt very ritzy. ‘Look yonder at Mick Kelly!’ one of the kids in the dark hollered. ‘Look at her!’ She just walked on like she hadn’t heard, but it was that Spare-ribs, and some day soon she would catch him. She and Harry walked fast along the dark sidewalk, and when they came to the end of the street they turned down another block.

  ‘How old are you now, Mick--thirteen?’

  ‘Going on fourteen.’

  She knew what he was thinking. It used to worry her all the time. Five feet six inches tall and a hundred and three pounds, and she was only thirteen. Every kid at the party was a runt beside her, except Harry, who was only a couple of inches shorter. No boy wanted to prom with a girl so much taller than him. But maybe cigarettes would help stunt the rest of her growth.

  ‘I grew three and a fourth inches just in last year,’ she said.

  ‘Once I saw a lady at the fair who was eight and a half feet tall. But you probably won’t grow that big.’

  Harry stopped beside a dark crepe myrtle bush. Nobody was in sight. He took something out of his pocket and started fooling with whatever it was. She leaned over to see--it was his pair of specs and he was wiping them with his handkerchief.

  ‘Pardon me,’ he said. Then he put on his glasses and she could hear him breathe deep.

  ‘You ought to wear your specs all the time.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How come you go around without them?’

  The night was very quiet and dark. Harry held her elbow when they crossed the street.

  ‘There’s a certain young lady back at the party that thinks it’s sissy for a fellow to wear glasses. This certain person--oh well, maybe I am a--’ He didn’t finish. Suddenly he tightened up and ran a few steps and sprang for a leaf about four feet above his head. She just could see that high leaf in the dark. He had a good spring to his jumping and he got it the first time. Then he put the leaf in his mouth and shadow-boxed for a few punches in the dark. She caught up with him. As usual a song was in her mind. She was humming to herself. ‘What’s that you’re singing? ‘ .It’s a piece by a fellow named Mozart’ Harry felt pretty good. He was sidestepping with his feet like a fast boxer. ‘That sounds like a sort of German name.’

  ‘I reckon so.’

  ‘Fascist?’ he asked. ‘What?’

  ‘I say is that Mozart a Fascist or a Nazi? ‘ Mick thought a minute. ‘No. They’re new, and this fellow’s been dead some time.’

  ‘It’s a good thing.’ He began punching in the dark again. He wanted her to ask why. ‘I say it’s a good thing,’ he said again. ‘Why? ‘ ‘Because I hate Fascists. If I met one walking on the street I’d kill him.’ She looked at Harry. The leaves against the street light made quick, freckly shadows on his face. He was excited. ‘How come?’ she asked. ‘Gosh! Don’t you ever read the paper? You see, it’s this way--‘ They had come back around the block. A commotion was going on at her house. People were yelling and running on the sidewalk. A heavy sickness came in her belly. There’s not time to explain unless we prom around the block again. I don’t mind telling you why I hate Fascists. I’d like to tell about it.’ This was probably the first chance he had got to spiel these ideas out to somebody. But she didn’t have time to listen.

  She was busy looking at what she saw in the front of her house. ‘O.K. I’ll see you later.’ The prom was over now, so she could look and put her mind on the mess she saw.

  What had happened while she was gone? When she left the people were standing around in the fine clothes and it was a real party. Now--after just five minutes--the place looked more like a crazy house. While she was gone those kids had come out of the dark and right into the party itself. The nerve they had! There was old Pete Wells banging out of the front door with a cup of punch hi his hand. They bellowed and ran and mixed with the invited people--in their old loose-legged knickers and everyday clothes.

  Baby Wilson messed around on the front porch--and Baby wasn’t more than four years old. Anybody could see she ought to be home in bed by now, same as Bubber. She walked down the steps one at a time, holding the punch high up over her head. There was no reason for her to be here at all. Mister Brannon was her uncle and she could get free candy and drinks at his place any time she wanted to. As soon as she was on the sidewalk Mick caught her by the arm. ‘You go right home, Baby Wilson. Go on, now.’ Mick looked around to see what else she could do to straighten things out again like they ought to be. She went up to Sucker Wells. He stood farther down the sidewalk, where it was dark, holding his paper cup and looking at everybody in a dreamy way. Sucker was seven years old and he had on shorts. His chest and feet were naked. He wasn’t causing any of the commotion, but she was mad I as hell at what had happened.

  She grabbed Sucker by the shoulders and began to shake him.

  At first he held his jaws tight, but after a minute his teeth began to rattle. ‘You go home, Sucker Wells. You quit hanging around where you’re not invited.’ When she let him go, Sucker tucked his tail and walked slowly down the street.

  But he didn’t go all the way home. After he got to the corner she saw him sit down on the curb and watch the party where he thought she couldn’t see him.

  For a minute she felt good about shaking the spit out of Sucker. And then right afterward she had a bad worry feeling in her and she started to let him come back. The big kids were the ones who messed up everything. Real brats they were, and with the worst nerve she had ever seen.

  Drinking up the refreshments and ruining the real party into all this commotion. They slammed through the front door and hollered and bumped into each other. She went up to Pete Wells because he was the worst of all. He wore his football helmet and butted into people. Pete was every bit of fourteen, yet he was still stuck in the seventh grade. She went up to him, but he was too big to shake like Sucker. When she told him to go home he shimmied and made a nose dive at her.

  ‘I been in six different states. Florida, Alabama--. Made out of silver cloth with a sash. The party was all messed up. Everybody was talking at once
.

  The invited people from Vocational were mixed with the neighborhood gang. The boys and the girls still stood in separate bunches, though---and nobody prommed. In the house the lemonade was just about gone. There was only a little puddle of water with floating lemon peels at the bottom of the bowl. Her Dad always acted too nice with kids. He had served out the punch to anybody who stuck a cup at him.

  Portia was serving the sandwiches when she went into the dining-room. In five minutes they were all gone. She only got one--a jelly kind with pink sops come through the bread.

  Portia stayed in the dining-room to watch the party. ‘I having too good a time to leave,’ she said. ‘I done sent word to Highboy and Willie to go on with the Saturday Night without me. Everbody so excited here I going to wait and see the end of this party.’

  Excitement--that was the word. She could feel it all through the room and on the porch and the sidewalk. She felt excited, too. It wasn’t just her dress and the beautiful way her face looked when she passed by the hat rack mirror and saw the red paint on her cheeks and the rhinestone tiara in her hair. Maybe it was the decoration and all these Vocational people and kids being jammed together.

  ‘Watch her run!’

  ‘Ouch! Cut it out--’

  ‘Act your age!’

  A bunch of girls were running down the street, holding up their dresses and with the hair flying out behind them. Some boys had cut off the long, sharp spears of a Spanish bayonet bush and they were chasing the girls with them.

  Freshmen in Vocational all dressed up for a real prom party and acting just like kids. It was half playlike and half not playlike at all. A boy came up to her with a sticker and she started running too.

  The idea of the party was over entirely now. This was just a regular playing-out. But it was the wildest night she had ever seen. The kids had caused it. They were like a catching sickness, and their coming to the party made all the other people forget about High School and being almost grown. It was like just before you take a bath in the afternoon when you might wallow around in the back yard and get plenty dirty just for the good feel of it before getting into the tub. Everybody was a wild kid playing out on Saturday night--and she felt like the very wildest of all.