The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (15 page)

BY OCTOBER the days were blue and cool. Biff Brannon changed his light seersucker trousers for dark-blue serge ones.

Behind the counter of the cafe he installed a machine that made hot chocolate. Mick was very partial to hot chocolate, and she came in three or four times a week to drink a cup. He served it to her for a nickel instead of a dime and he wanted to give it to her free. He watched her as she stood behind the counter and he was troubled and sad. He wanted to reach out his hand and touch her sunburned, tousled hair--but not as he had ever touched a woman. In him there was an uneasiness, and when he spoke to her his voice had a rough, strange sound.

There were many worries on his mind. For one thing, Alice was not well. She worked downstairs as usual from seven in the morning until ten at night, but she walked very slowly and brown circles were beneath her eyes. It was in the business that she showed this illness most plainly. One Sunday, when she wrote out the day’s menu on the typewriter, she marked the special dinner with chicken a la king at twenty cents instead of fifty, and did not discover the mistake until several customers had already ordered and were ready to pay. Another time she gave back two fives and three ones as change for ten dollars. Biff would stand looking at her for a long time, rubbing his nose thoughtfully and with his eyes half-closed.

They did not speak of this together. At night he worked downstairs while she slept, and during the morning she managed the restaurant alone. When they worked together he stayed behind the cash register and looked after the kitchen and the tables, as was their custom. They did not talk except on matters of business, but Biff would stand watching her with his face puzzled.

Then in the afternoon of the eighth of October there was a sudden cry of pain from the room where they slept. Biff hurried upstairs. Within an hour they had taken Alice to the hospital and the doctor had removed from her a tumor almost the size of a newborn child. And then within another hour Alice was dead.

Biff sat by her bed at the hospital in stunned reflection. He had been present when she died. Her eyes had been drugged and misty from the ether and then they hardened like glass.

The nurse and the doctor withdrew from the room. He continued to look into her face. Except for the bluish pallor there was little difference. He noted each detail about her as though he had net watched her every day for twenty-one years.

Then gradually as he sat there his thoughts turned to a picture that had long been stored inside him.

The cold green ocean and a hot gold strip of sand. The little children playing on the edge of the silky line of foam. The sturdy brown baby girl, the thin little naked boys, the half-grown children running and calling out to each other with sweet, shrill voices. Children were here whom he knew, Mick and his niece, Baby, and there were also strange young faces no one had ever seen before. Biff bowed his head.

After a long while he got up from his chair and stood in the middle of the room. He could hear his sister-in-law, Lucile, walking up and down the hall outside. A fat bee crawled across the top of the dresser, and adroitly Biff caught it in his hand and put it out the open window. He glanced at the dead face one more time, and then with widowed sedateness he opened the door mat led out into the hospital corridor.

Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs.

Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved--so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why? Biff bent close over his sewing and meditated on many things.

He sewed skillfully, and the calluses on the tips of his fingers were so hard that he pushed the needle through the cloth without a thimble. Already the mourning bands had been sewn around the arms of two gray suits, and now he was on the last.

The day was bright and hot, and the first dead leaves of the new autumn scraped on the sidewalks. He had gone out early.

Each minute was very long. Before him there was infinite leisure. He had locked the door of the restaurant and hung on the outside a white wreath of lilies. To the funeral home he went first and looked carefully at the selection of caskets. He touched the materials of the linings and tested the strength of the frames.

‘What is the name of the crepe of this one--Georgette?’

The undertaker answered his questions in an oily, unctuous voice.

‘And what is the percentage of cremations in your business?’

Out on the street again Biff walked with measured formality.

From the west there was a warm wind and the sun was very bright. His watch had stopped, so he turned down toward the street where Wilbur Kelly had recently put out his sign as watchmaker. Kelly was sitting at his bench in a patched bathrobe. His shop was also a bedroom, and the baby Mick pulled around with her in a wagon sat quietly on a pallet on the floor. Each minute was so long that in it there was ample time for contemplation and enquiry. He asked Kelly to explain the exact use of jewels in a watch. He noted the distorted look of Kelly’s right eye as it appeared through his watchmaker’s loupe. They talked for a while about Chamberlain and Munich. Then as the time was still early he decided to go up to the mute’s room.

Singer was dressing for work. Last night there had come from him a letter of condolence. He was to be a pallbearer at the funeral. Biff sat on the bed and they smoked a cigarette together. Singer looked at him now and then with his green observant eyes. He offered him a drink of coffee. Biff did not talk, and once the mute stopped to pat him on the shoulder and look for a second into his face. When Singer was dressed they went out together.

Biff bought the black ribbon at the store and saw the preacher of Alice’s church. When all was arranged he came back home.

To put things in order--that was the thought in his mind. He bundled up Alice’s clothes and personal possessions to give to Lucile. He thoroughly cleaned and straightened the bureau drawers. He even rearranged the shelves of the kitchen downstairs and removed the gaily colored crepe streamers from the electric fans. Then when this was done he sat in the tub and bathed himself all over. And the morning was done.

Biff bit the thread and smoothed the black band on the sleeve of his coat. By now Lucile would be waiting for him. He and she and Baby would ride in the funeral car together. He put away the work basket and fitted the coat with the mourning band very carefully on his shoulders. He glanced swiftly around the room to see that all was well before going out again. An hour later he was in Lucile’s kitchenette. He sat with his legs crossed, a napkin over his thigh, drinking a cup of tea. Lucile and Alice had been so different in all ways that it was not easy to realize they were sisters. Lucile was thin and dark, and today she had dressed completely in black. She was fixing Baby’s hair. The kid waited patiently on the kitchen table with her hands folded in her lap while her mother worked on her. The sunlight was quiet and mellow in the room. ‘Bartholomew--’ said Lucile. .What?’

‘Don’t you ever start thinking backward?’

‘I don’t,’said Biff.

‘You know it’s like I got to wear blinders all the time so I won’t think sideways or in the past. All I can let myself think about is going to work every day and fixing meals and Baby’s future.’

That’s the right attitude.’

‘I been giving Baby finger waves down at the shop. But they come out so quick I been thinking about letting her have a permanent. I don’t want to give it to her myself--I think maybe take her up to Atlanta when I go to the cosmetologist convention and let her get it there.’

‘Motherogod! She’s not but four. It’s liable to scare her. And besides, permanents tend to coarsen the hair.’

Lucile dipped the comb in a glass of water and mashed the curls over Baby’s ears. ‘No, they don’t. And she wants one.

Young as Baby is, she already has as much ambition as I got.

And that’s saying plenty.’

Biff polished his nails on the palm of his hand and shook his head.

‘Every time Baby and I go to the movies and see those kids in all the good roles she feels the same way I do. I swear she does, Bartholomew. I can’t even get her to eat her supper afterward.’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ Biff said.

‘She’s getting along so fine with her dancing and expression lessons. Next year I want her to start with the piano because I think it’ll be a help for her to play some.

Her dancing teacher is going to give her a solo in the soiree. I feel like I got to push Baby all I can. Because the sooner she gets started on her career the better it’ll be for both of us.’

‘Motherogod!’

‘You don’t understand. A child with talent can’t be treated like ordinary kids. That’s one reason I want to get Baby out of this common neighborhood. I can’t let her start to talk vulgar like these brats around her or run wild like they do.’

‘I know the kids on this block,’ Biff said. ‘They’re all right.’

Those Kelly kids across the street--the Crane boy--.

‘You know good and well that none of them are up to Baby’s level.’

Lucile set the last wave in Baby’s hair. She pinched the kid’s little cheeks to put more color in them. Then she lifted her down from the table. For the funeral Baby had on a little white dress with white shoes and white socks and even small white gloves. There was a certain way Baby always held her head when people looked at her, and it was turned that way now.

They sat for a while in the small, hot kitchenette without saying anything. Then Lucile began to cry. ‘It’s not like we was ever very close as sisters. We had our differences and we didn’t see much of each other. Maybe it was because I was so much younger. But there’s something about your own blood kin, and when anything like this happens--’ Biff clucked soothingly.

‘I know how you two were,’ she said. It wasn’t all just roses with you and she. But maybe that sort of makes it worse for you now.’

Biff caught Baby under the arms and swung her up to his shoulder. The kid was getting heavier. He held her carefully as he stepped into the living-room. Baby felt warm and close on his shoulder, and her little silk skirt was white against the dark cloth of his coat. She grasped one of his ears very tight with her little hand.

‘Unca Biff! Watch me do the split.’

Gently he set Baby on her feet again. She curved both arms above her head and her feet slid slowly in opposite directions on the yellow waxed floor. In a moment she was seated with one leg stretched straight in front of her and one behind. She posed with her arms held at a fancy angle, looking sideways at the wall with a sad expression.

She scrambled up again. ‘Watch me do a handspring. Watch me do a--’

‘Honey, be a little quieter,’ Lucile said. She sat down beside Biff on the plush sofa. ‘Don’t she remind you a little of him--something about her eyes and face?’

‘Hell, no. I can’t see the slightest resemblance between Baby and Leroy Wilson.’

Lucile looked too thin and worn out for her age. Maybe it was the black dress and because she had been crying. ‘After all, we got to admit he’s Baby’s father,’ she said.

‘Can’t you ever forget about that man?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I always been a fool about two things. And that’s Leroy and Baby.’

Bill’s new growth of beard was blue against the pale skin of his face and his voice sounded tired. ‘Don’t you ever just think a thing through and find out what’s happened and what ought to come from that? Don’t you ever use logic--if these are the given facts this ought to be the result?’

‘Not about him, I guess.’

Biff spoke in a weary manner and his eyes were almost closed.

‘You married this certain party when you were seventeen, and afterward there was just one racket between you after another.

You divorced him. Then two years later you married him a second time. And now he’s gone off again and you don’t know where he is. It seems like those facts would show you one thing--you two are not suited to each other. And that’s aside from the more personal side--the sort of man this certain party happens to be anyway.’

‘God knows I been realizing all along he’s a heel. I just hope he won’t ever knock on that door again.’

‘Look, Baby,’ Biff said quickly. He laced his fingers and held up his hands. ‘This is the church and this is the steeple. Open the door and here are God’s people.’

Lucile shook her head. ‘You don’t have to bother about Baby. I tell her everything. She knows about the whole mess from A to Z.’

‘Then if he comes back you’ll let him stay here and sponge on you just as long as he pleases--like it was before?’

‘Yeah. I guess I would. Every time the doorbell or the phone rings, every time anybody steps up on the porch, something in the back of my mind thinks about that man.’ Biff spread out the palms of his hands. ‘There you are.’ The clock struck two.

The room was very close and hot. Baby turned another handspring and made a split again on the waxed floor. Then Biff took her up into his lap. Her little legs dangled against his shin. She unbuttoned his vest and burrowed her face into him.

‘Listen,’ Lucile said. ‘If I ask you a question will you promise to answer me the truth?’

‘Sure.’

‘No matter what it is?’

Biff touched Baby’s soft gold hair and laid his hand gently on the side of her little head. ‘Of course.’

‘It was about seven years ago. Soon after we was married the first time. And he came in one night from your place with big knots all over his head and told me you caught him by the neck and banged his head against the side of the wall. He made up some tale about why you did it, but I want to know the real reason.’