The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (20 page)

Ralph sat up in his wagon, his hat crooked on his head, and he was fretful. Spareribs had his new rifle with him. The sky was a wonderful blue.

‘We waited for you a long time, Mick,’ Bubber said. ‘Where you been?’

She jumped up the front steps three at a time and threw her sweater toward the hat rack. ‘Practicing on the piano in the gym.’

Every afternoon she stayed after school for an hour to play.

The gym was crowded and noisy because the girls’ team had basketball games. Twice today she was hit on the head with the ball. But getting a chance to sit at a piano was worth any amount of knocks and trouble. She would arrange bunches of notes together until the sound came that she wanted. It was easier than she had thought. After the first two or three hours she figured out some sets of chords in the bass that would fit in with the main tune her right hand was playing. She could pick out almost any piece now. And she made up new music too. That was better than just copying tunes. When her hands hunted out these beautiful new sounds it was the best feeling she had ever known.

She wanted to learn how to read music already written down.

Delores Brown had taken music lessons for five years. She paid Delores the fifty cents a week she got for lunch money to give her lessons. This made her very hungry all through the day. Delores played a good many fast, runny pieces--but Delores did not know how to answer all the questions she wanted to know. Delores only taught her about the different scales, the major and minor chords, the values of the notes, and such beginning rules as those.

Mick slammed the door of the kitchen stove. ‘This all we got to eat?’

‘Honey, it the best I can do for you,’ Portia said. Just cornpones and margarine. As she ate she drank a glass of water to help wash down the swallows.

‘Quit acting so greedy. Nobody going to snatch it out your hand.’

The kids still hung around in front of the house. Bubber had put his slingshot in his pocket and now he played with the rifle. Spareribs was ten years old and his father had died the month before and this had been his father’s gun--All the smaller kids loved to handle that rifle. Every few minutes Bubber would haul the gun up to his shoulder. He took aim and made a loud pow sound.

‘Don’t monkey with the trigger,’ said Spareribs. I got the gun loaded.’

Mick finished the cornbread and looked around for something to do. Harry Minowitz was sitting on his front porch banisters with the newspaper. She was glad to see him. For a joke she threw up her arm and hollered to him, ‘Heil!’ But Harry didn’t take it as a joke. He went into his front hall and shut the door. It was easy to hurt his feelings. She was sorry, because lately she and Harry had been right good friends. They had always played in the same gang when they were kids, but in the last three years he had been at Vocational while she was still in grammar school. Also he worked at part-time jobs. He grew up very suddenly and quit hanging around the back and front yards with kids. Sometimes she could see him reading the paper in his bedroom or undressing late at night. In mathematics and history he was the smartest boy at Vocational. Often, now that she was in high school too, they would meet each other on the way home and walk together. They were in the same shop class, and once the teacher made them partners to assemble a motor. He read books and kept up with the newspapers every day. World politics were all the time on his mind. He talked slow, and sweat stood out on his forehead when he was very serious about something. And now she had made him mad with her.

‘I wonder has Harry still got his gold piece,’ Spareribs said.

‘What gold piece?’

‘When a Jew boy is born they put a gold piece in the bank for him. That’s what Jews do.’

‘Shucks. You got it mixed up,’ she said. ‘It’s Catholics you’re thinking about. Catholics buy a pistol for a baby soon as it’s born. Some day the Catholics mean to start a war and kill everybody else.’

‘Nuns give me a funny feeling,’ Spareribs said. ‘It scares me when I see one on the street.’

She sat down on the steps and laid her head on her knees. She went into the inside room. With her it was like there was two places--the inside room and the outside room. School and the family and the things that happened every day were in the outside room. Mister Singer was in both rooms. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room. The songs she thought about were there. And the symphony. When she was by herself hi this inside room the music she had heard that night after the party would come back to her. This symphony grew slow like a big flower in her mind. During the day sometimes, or when she had just waked up in the morning, a new part of the symphony would suddenly come to her. Then she would have to go into the inside room and listen to it many times and try to join it into the parts of the symphony she remembered. The inside room was a very private place. She could be in the middle of a house full of people and still feel like she was locked up by herself.

Spareribs stuck his dirty hand up to her eyes because she had been staring off at space. She slapped him.

‘What is a nun?’ Bubber asked.

‘A Catholic lady,’ Spareribs said. ‘A Catholic lady with a big black dress that comes up over her head.’

She was tired of hanging around with the kids. She would go to the library and look at pictures in the National Geographic.

Photographs of all the foreign places in the world. Paris, France. And big ice glaciers. And the wild jungles in Africa.

‘You kids see that Ralph don’t get out in the street,’ she said.

Bubber rested the big rifle on his shoulder. ‘Bring me a story back with you.’

It was like that kid had been born knowing how to read. He was only in the second grade but he loved to read stories by himself--and he never asked anybody else to read to him.

‘What kind you want this time?’

‘Pick out some stories with something to eat in them. I like that one a whole lot about them German kids going out in the forest and coming to this house made out of all different kinds of candy and the witch. I like a story with something to eat in it.’

‘I’ll look for one,’ said Mick.

‘But I’m getting kinda tired of candy,’ Bubber said. ‘See if you can’t bring me a story with something like a barbecue sandwich in it. But if you can’t find none of them I’d like a cowboy story.’

She was ready to leave when suddenly she stopped and stared.

The kids stared too. They all stood still and looked at Baby Wilson coming down the steps of her house across the street.

‘Ain’t Baby cute!’ said Bubber softly.

Maybe it was the sudden hot, sunny day after all those rainy weeks. Maybe it was because their dark winter clothes were ugly to them on an afternoon like this one. Anyway Baby looked like a fairy or something in the picture show. She had on her last year’s soiree costume--with a little pink-gauze skirt that stuck out short and stiff, a pink body waist, pink dancing shoes, and even a little pink pocketbook. With her yellow hair she was all pink and white and gold--and so small and clean that it almost hurt to watch her. She prissed across the street in a cute way, but would not turn her face toward them.

‘Come over here,’ said Bubber. ‘Lemme look at your little pink pocketbook--’ Baby passed them along the edge of the street with her head held to one side. She had made up her mind not to speak to them.

There was a strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, and when Baby reached it she stood still for a second and then turned a handspring.

‘Don’t pay no mind to her,’ said Spareribs. ‘She always tries to show off. She’s going down to Mister Brannon’s cafe to get candy. He’s her uncle and she gets it free.’

Bubber rested the end of the rifle on the ground. The big gun was too heavy for him. As he watched Baby walk off down the street he kept pulling the straggly bangs of his hair. ‘That sure is a cute little pink pocketbook,’ he said.

‘Her Mama always talks about how talented she is,’ said Spareribs. ‘She thinks she’s gonna get Baby in the movies.’

It was too late to go look at the National Geographic. Supper was almost ready. Ralph tuned up to cry and she took him off the wagon and put him on the ground. Now it was December, and to a kid Bubber’s age that was a long time from summer.

All last summer Baby had come out in that pink soiree costume and danced in the middle of the street. At first the kids would flock around and watch her, but soon they got tired of it. Bubber was the only one who would watch her as she came out to dance. He would sit on the curb and yell to her when he saw a car coming. He had watched Baby do her soiree dance a hundred times--but summer had been gone for three months and now it seemed new to him again.

‘I sure do wish I had a costume,’ Bubber said.

‘What kind do you want?’

‘A real cool costume. A real pretty one made out of all different colors. Like a butterfly. That’s what I want for Christmas. That and a bicycle!’

‘Sissy,’ said Spareribs.

Bubber hauled the big rifle up to his shoulder again and took aim at a house across the street. ‘I’d dance around in my costume if I had one. I’d wear it every day to school.’ Mick sat on the front steps and kept her eyes on Ralph. Bubber wasn’t a sissy like Spareribs said. He just loved pretty things.

She’d better not let old Spareribs get away with that.

‘A person’s got to fight for every single thing they get,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’ve noticed a lot of times that the farther down a kid comes in the family the better the kid really is. Younger kids are always the toughest. I’m pretty hard ‘cause I’ve a lot of them on top of me. Bubber --he looks sick, and likes pretty things, but he’s got guts underneath that. If all this is true Ralph sure ought to be a real strong one when he’s old enough to get around. Even though he’s just seventeen months old I can read something hard and tough in that Ralph’s face already.’

Ralph looked around because he knew he was being talked about. Spareribs sat down on the ground and grabbed Ralph’s hat off his head and shook it in his face to tease him.

‘All right!’ Mick said. ‘You know what do to you if you start him to cry. You just better watch out’

Everything was quiet. The sun was behind the roofs of the houses and the sky in the west was purple and pink. On the next block there was the sound of kids skating. Bubber leaned up against a tree and he seemed to be dreaming about something. The smell of supper came out of the house and it would be time to eat soon.

‘Lookit,’ Bubber said suddenly. ‘Here comes Baby again. She sure is pretty in the pink costume.’

Baby walked toward them slowly. She had been given a prize box of popcorn candy and was reaching in the box for the prize. She walked in that same prissy, dainty way. You could tell that she knew they were all looking at her.

‘Please, Baby--’ Bubber said when she started to pass them. ‘Lemme see your little pink pocketbook and touch your pink costume.’ Baby started humming a song to herself and did not listen. She passed by without letting Bubber play with her. She only ducked her head and grinned at him a little.

Bubber still had the big rifle up to his shoulder. He made a loud pow sound and pretended like he had shot. Then he called to Baby again--in a soft, sad voice like he was calling a little kitty. ‘Please, Baby--come here, Baby--‘ He was too quick for Mick to stop him. She had just seen his hand on the trigger when there was the terrible ping of the gun. Baby crumpled down to the sidewalk. It was like she was nailed to the steps and couldn’t move or scream. Spareribs had his arm up over his head.

Bubber was the only one that didn’t realize. ‘Get up, Baby,’ he hollered. ‘I ain’t mad with you.’

It all happened in a second. The three of them reached Baby at the same time. She lay crumpled down on the dirty sidewalk.

Her skirt was over her head, showing her pink panties and her little white legs. Her hands were open--in one there was the prize from the candy and in the other the pocketbook. There was blood all over her hair ribbon and the top of her yellow curls. She was shot in the head and her face was turned down toward the ground.

So much happened in a second. Bubber screamed and dropped the gun and ran. She stood with her hands up to her face and screamed too. Then there were many people. Her Dad was the first to get there. He carried Baby into the house.

‘She’s dead,’ said Spareribs. ‘She’s shot through the eyes. I seen her face.’

Mick walked up and down the sidewalk, and her tongue stuck in her mouth when she tried to ask was Baby killed. Mrs.

Wilson came running down the block from the beauty parlor where she worked. She went into the house and came back out again. She walked up and down in the street, crying and pulling a ring on and off her finger. Then the ambulance came and the doctor went in to Baby. Mick followed him. Baby was lying on the bed in the front room. The house was quiet as a church.

Baby looked like a pretty little doll on the bed. Except for the blood she did not seem hurt. The doctor bent over and looked at her head. After he finished they took Baby out on a stretcher. Mrs. Wilson and her Dad got into the ambulance with her.

The house was still quiet. Everybody had forgotten about Bubber. He was nowhere around. An hour passed. Her Mama and Hazel and Etta and all the boarders waited in the front room. Mister Singer stood in the doorway.

After a long time her Dad came home. He said Baby wouldn’t die but that her skull was fractured. He asked for Bubber.

Nobody knew where he was. It was dark outside. They called Bubber in the back yard and in the street. They sent Spareribs and some other boys out to hunt for him. It looked like Bubber had gone clear out of the neighborhood. Harry went around to a house where they thought he might be.

Her Dad walked up and down the front porch. ‘I never have whipped any of my kids yet,’ he kept saying. ‘I never believed in it. But I’m sure going to lay it onto that kid as soon as I get my hands on him.’

Mick sat on the banisters and watched down the dark street. ‘I can manage Bubber. Once he comes back I can take care of him all right.’

‘You go out and hunt for him. You can find him better than anybody else.’