The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

by Carson McCullers

  ‘There is only one way out--’ said Doctor Copeland.

  ‘Two ways. And only two ways. Once there was a time when this country was expanding. Every man thought he had a chance. Huh! But that period has gone--and gone for good.

  Less than a hundred corporations have swallowed all but a few leavings. These industries have already sucked the blood and softened the bones of the people. The old days of expansion are gone. The whole system of capitalistic democracy is rotten and corrupt. There remains only two roads ahead. One: Fascism. Two: reform of the most revolutionary and permanent kind.’

  ‘And the Negro. Do not forget the Negro. So far as I and my people are concerned the South is Fascist now and always has been.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The Nazis rob the Jews of their legal, economic, and cultural life. Here the Negro has always been deprived of these. And if wholesale and dramatic robbery of money and goods has not taken place here as in Germany, it is simply because the Negro has never been allowed to accrue wealth in the first place.’

  ‘That’s the system,’ Jake said.

  ‘The Jew and the Negro,’ said Doctor Copeland bitterly. The history of my people will be commensurate with the interminable history of the Jew--only bloodier and more violent. Like a certain species of sea gull. If you capture one of the birds and tie a red string of twine around his leg the rest of the flock will peck him to death.’

  Doctor Copeland took off his spectacles and rebound a wire around a broken hinge. Then he polished the lenses on his nightshirt. His hand shook with agitation. ‘Mr. Singer is a Jew.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong there.’

  ‘But I am positive that he is. The name, Singer. I recognized his race the first time I saw him. From his eyes. Besides, he told me so.’

  ‘Why, he couldn’t have,’ Jake insisted. ‘He’s pure Anglo-Saxon if I ever saw it. Irish and Anglo-Saxon.’

  ‘But--’

  ‘I’m certain. Absolutely.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘We will not quarrel.’ Outside the dark air had cooled so that there was a chill in the room. It was almost dawn. The early morning sky was deep, silky blue and the moon had turned from silver to white. All was still. The only sound was the clear, lonely song of a spring bird in the darkness outside. Though a faint breeze blew in from the window the air in the room was sour and close. There was a feeling both of tenseness and exhaustion.

  Doctor Copeland leaned forward from the pillow. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands clutched the counterpane. The neck of his nightshirt had slipped down over his bony shoulder. Jake’s heels were balanced on the rungs of his chair and his giant hands folded between his knees in a waiting and childlike attitude. Deep black circles were beneath his eyes, his hair was unkempt. They looked at each other and waited.

  As the silence grew longer the tenseness between them became more strained.

  At last Doctor Copeland cleared his throat and said: ‘I am certain you did not come here for nothing. I am sure we have not discussed these subjects all through the night to no purpose. We have talked of everything now except the most vital subject of all--the way out. What must be done.’

  They still watched each other and waited. In the face of each there was expectation. Doctor Copeland sat bolt upright against the pillows. Jake rested his chin in his hand and leaned forward. The pause continued. And then hesitantly they began to speak at the same time. ‘Excuse me,’ Jake said. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘No, you. You started first.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Pshaw!’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Continue.’ Jake stared at him with clouded, mystical eyes. It’s this way. This is how I see it. The only solution is for the people to know. Once they know the truth they can be oppressed no longer. Once just half of them know the whole fight is won.’

  ‘Yes, once they understand the workings of this society. But how do you propose to tell them? ‘ ‘Listen,’ Jake said. ‘Think about chain letters. If one person sends a letter to ten people and then each of the ten people sends letters to ten more--you get it?’ He faltered. ‘Not that I write letters, but the idea is the same. I just go around telling. And if in one town I can show the truth to just ten of the don’t knows, then I feel like some good has been done. See? ‘ Doctor Copeland looked at Jake in surprise. Then he snorted. ‘Do not be childish! You cannot just go about talking. Chain letters indeed! Knows and don’t-knows! ‘ Jake’s lips trembled and his brow lowered with quick anger. ‘O.K. What have you got to offer? ‘ ‘I will say first that I used to feel somewhat as you do on this question. But I have learned what a mistake that attitude is. For half a century I thought it wise to be patient.’

  ‘I didn’t say be patient.’

  ‘In the face of brutality I was prudent. Before injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the things in hand for the good of the hypothetical whole. I believed in the tongue instead of the fist. As an armor against oppression I taught patience and faith in the human soul. I know now how wrong I was. I have been a traitor to myself and to my people. All that is rot. Now is the time to act and to act quickly. Fight cunning with cunning and might with might’

  ‘But how?’ Jake asked. ‘How? ’

  ‘Why, by getting out and doing things. By calling crowds of people together and getting them to demonstrate.’

  ‘Huh! That last phrase gives you away--"getting them to demonstrate." What good will it do if you get them to demonstrate against a thing if they don’t know. You’re trying to stuff the hog by way of his ass.’

  ‘Such vulgar expressions annoy me,’ Doctor Copeland said prudishly. ‘For Christ’ sake! I don’t care if they annoy you or not’ Doctor Copeland held up his hand. ‘Let us not get so overheated,’ he said. ‘Let us attempt to see eye to eye with each other.’

  ‘Suits me. I don’t want to fight with you.’ They were silent. Doctor Copeland moved his eyes from one corner of the ceiling to the other. Several times he wet his lips to speak and each time the word remained half-formed and silent in his mouth. Then at last he said: ‘My advice to you is this. Do not attempt to stand alone.’

  ‘But--’

  ‘But, nothing,’ said Doctor Copeland didactically. ‘The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.’

  ‘I see what you’re getting at.’ Doctor Copeland pulled the neck of his nightshirt up over his bony shoulder and held it gathered tight to his throat. ‘You believe in the struggle of my people for their human rights?’

  The Doctor’s agitation and his mild and husky question made Jake’s eyes brim suddenly with tears. A quick, swollen rush of love caused him to grasp the black, bony hand on the counterpane and hold it fast. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘The extremity of our need?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The lack of justice? The bitter inequality?’

  Doctor Copeland coughed and spat into one of the squares of paper which he kept beneath his pillow. ‘I have a program. It is a very simple, concentrated plan. I mean to focus on only one objective. In August of this year I plan to lead more than one thousand Negroes in this county on a march. A march to Washington. All of us together in one solid body. If you will look in the cabinet yonder you will see a stack of letters which I have written this week and will deliver personally.’ Doctor Copeland slid his nervous hands up and down the sides of the narrow bed.

  ‘You remember what I said to you a short while ago? You will recall that my only advice to you was: Do not attempt to stand alone.’

  ‘I get it,’ Jake said.

  But once you enter this it must be all. First and foremost.

  Your work now and forever. You must give of your whole self without stint, without hope of personal return, without rest or hope of rest.’

  ‘For the rights of the Negro in the South.’

  ‘In the South and here in this very county. And it must be either all or nothing. Either yes or no.’

  Doctor Copeland lean
ed back on the pillow. Only his eyes seemed alive. They burned in his face like red coals. The fever made his cheekbones a ghastly purple. Jake scowled and pressed his knuckles to his soft, wide, trembling mouth. Color rushed to his face. Outside the first pale light of morning had come. The electric bulb suspended from the ceiling burned with ugly sharpness in the dawn.

  Jake rose to his feet and stood stiffly at the foot of the bed. He said flatly: ‘No. That’s not the right angle at all. I’m dead sure it’s not. In the first place, you’d never get out of town. They’d break it up by saying it’s a menace to public health--or some such trumped-up reason. They’d arrest you and nothing would come of it. But even if by some miracle you got to Washington it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Why, the whole notion is crazy.’

  The sharp rattle of phlegm sounded in Doctor Copeland’s throat. His voice was harsh. ‘As you are so quick to sneer and condemn, what do you have to offer instead?’

  ‘I didn’t sneer,’ Jake said. ‘I only remarked that your plan is crazy. I come here tonight with an idea much better than that. I wanted your son, Willie, and the other two boys to let me push them around in a wagon. They were to tell what happened to them and afterward I was to tell why. In other words, I was to give a talk on the dialectics of capitalism--and show up all of its lies. I would explain so that everyone would understand why those boys’ legs were cut off. And make everyone who saw them know.’

  ‘Pshaw! Double pshaw!’ said Doctor Copeland furiously. I do not believe you have good sense. If I were a man who felt it worth my while to laugh I would surely laugh at that.

  Never have I had the opportunity to hear of such nonsense first hand.’

  They stared at each other in bitter disappointment and anger.

  There was the rattle of a wagon in the street outside. Jake swallowed and bit his lips. ‘Huh!’ he said finally. ‘You’re the only one who’s crazy. You got everything exactly backward.

  The only way to solve the Negro problem under capitalism is to geld every one of the fifteen million black men in these states.’

  ‘So that is the kind of idea you harbor beneath your ranting about justice.’

  ‘I didn’t say it should be done. I only said you couldn’t see the forest for the trees.’ Jake spoke with slow and painful care.

  ‘The work has to start at the bottom. The old traditions smashed and the new ones created. To forge a whole new pattern for the world. To make man a social creature for the first time, living in an orderly and controlled society where he is not forced to be unjust in order to survive. A social tradition in which--’ Doctor Copeland clapped ironically. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘But the cotton must be picked before the cloth is made. You and your crackpot do-nothing theories can--’

  ‘Hush! Who cares whether you and your thousand Negroes straggle up to that stinking cesspool of a place called Washington? What difference does it make? What do a few people matter--a few thousand people, black, white, good or bad? When the whole of our society is built on a foundation of black lies.’

  ‘Everything!’ Doctor Copeland panted. ‘Everything! Everything! ‘Nothing!’

  ‘The soul of the meanest and most evil of us on this earth is worth more in the sight of justice than--’

  ‘Oh, the Hell with it!’ Jake said. ‘Balls!’

  ‘Blasphemer!’ screamed Doctor Copeland. ‘Foul blasphemer!’ Jake shook the iron bars of the bed. The vein in his forehead swelled to the point of bursting and his face was dark with rage. ‘Short-sighted bigot!’

  ‘White--’ Doctor Copeland’s voice failed him. He struggled and no sound would come. At last he was able to bring forth a choked whisper: ‘Fiend.’

  The bright yellow morning was at the window. Doctor Copeland’s head fell back on the pillow. His neck twisted at a broken angle, a fleck of bloody foam on his lips. Jake looked at him once before, sobbing with violence, he rushed headlong from the room.

  Now she could not stay in the inside room. She had to be around somebody all the time. Doing something every minute. And if she was by herself she counted or figured with numbers. She counted all the roses on the living-room wall-paper. She figured out the cubic area of the whole house. She counted every blade of grass in the back yard and every leaf on a certain bush. Because if she did not have her mind on numbers this terrible afraidness came in her. She would be walking home from school on these May afternoons and suddenly she would have to think of something quick. A good thing--very good. Maybe she would think about a phrase of hurrying jazz music. Or that a bowl of jello would be in the refrigerator when she got home. Or plan to smoke a cigarette behind the coal house. Maybe she would try to think a long way ahead to the time when she would go north and see snow, or even travel somewhere in a foreign land. But these thoughts about good things wouldn’t last. The jello was gone in five minutes and the cigarette smoked. Then what was there after that? And the numbers mixed themselves up in her brain. And the snow and the foreign land were a long, long time away. Then what was there? Just Mister Singer. She wanted to follow him everywhere. In the morning she would watch him go down the front steps to work and then follow along a half a block behind him. Every afternoon as soon as school was over she hung around at the corner near the store where he worked. At four o’clock he went out to drink a Coca-Cola. She watched him cross the street and go into the drugstore and finally come out again.

  She followed him home from work and sometimes even when he took walks. She always followed a long way behind him. And he did not know.

  She would go up to see him in his room. First she scrubbed her face and hands and put some vanilla on the front of her dress. She only went to visit him twice a week now, because she didn’t want him to get tired of her. Most always he would be sitting over the queer, pretty chess game when she opened the door. And then she was with him.

  ‘Mister Singer, have you ever lived in a place where it snowed in the winter-time?’

  He tilted his chair back against the wall and nodded.

  ‘In some different country than this one--in a foreign place?’

  He nodded yes again and wrote on his pad with his silver pencil. Once he had traveled to Ontario, Canada--across the river from Detroit Canada was so far up north that the white snow drifted up to the roofs of the houses. That was where the Quints were and the St. Lawrence River. The people ran up and down the streets speaking French to each other. And far up in the north there were deep forests and white ice igloos.

  The arctic region with the beautiful northern lights.

  ‘When you was in Canada did you go out and get any fresh snow and eat it with cream and sugar? Once I read where it was mighty good to eat that way.’

  He turned his head to one side because he didn’t understand.

  She couldn’t ask the question again because suddenly it sounded silly. She only looked at him and waited. A big, black shadow of his head was on the wall behind him. The electric fan cooled the thick, hot air. All was quiet. It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.

  ‘I was just asking you about Canada--but it didn’t amount to anything, Mister Singer.’

  Downstairs in the home rooms there was plenty of trouble.

  Etta was still so sick that she couldn’t sleep crowded three in a bed. The shades were drawn and the dark room smelled bad with a sick smell. Etta’s job was gone, and that meant eight dollars less a week besides the doctor’s bill.

  Then one day when Ralph was walking around in the kitchen he burned himself on the hot kitchen stove. The bandages made his hands itch and somebody had to watch him all the time else he would bust the blisters. On George’s birthday they had bought him a little red bike
with a bell and a basket on the handlebars. Everybody had chipped in to give it to him. But when Etta lost her job they couldn’t pay, and after two installments were past due the store sent a man out to take the wheel away. George just watched the man roll the bike off the porch, and when he passed George kicked the back fender and then went into the coal house and shut the door.

  It was money, money, money all the time. They owed to the grocery and they owed the last payment on some furniture.

  And now since they had lost the house they owed money there too. The six rooms in the house were always taken, but nobody ever paid the rent on time.

  For a while their Dad went over every day to hunt another job.

  He couldn’t do carpenter work any more because it made him jittery to be more than ten feet off the ground. He applied for many jobs but nobody would hire him. Then at last he got this notion.

  ‘It’s advertising, Mick,’ he said. I’ve come to the conclusion that’s all in the world the matter with my watch-repairing business right now. I got to sell myself. I got to get out and let people know I can fix watches, and fix them good and cheap.

  You just mark my words. Fm going to build up this business so I’ll be able to make a good living for this family the rest of my life. Just by advertising.’

  He brought home a dozen sheets of tin and some red paint. For the next week he was very busy. It seemed to him like this was a hell of a good idea. The signs were all over the floor of the front room. He got down on his hands and knees and took great care over the printing of each letter. As he worked he whistled and wagged his head. He hadn’t been so cheerful and glad in months. Every now and then he would have to dress in his good suit and go around the corner for a glass of beer to calm himself. On the signs at first he had: Wilbur Kelly Watch Repairing Very Cheap and Expert. ‘Mick, I want them to hit you right bang in the eye. To stand out wherever you see them.’