The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (29 page)

Sunday dinner was a family meal. Men who drank beer by themselves on weeknights brought their wives and little kids with them on Sunday. The highchair they kept in the back was often needed. It was two-thirty and though many tables were occupied the meal was almost over. Biff had been on his feet for the past four hours and was tired. He used to stand for fourteen or sixteen hours and not notice any effects at all. But now he had aged. Considerably. There was no doubt about it.

Or maybe matured was the word. Not aged--certainly not-yet. The waves of sound in the room swelled and subsided against his ears. Matured. His eyes smarted and it was as though some fever in him made everything too bright and sharp.

He called to one of the waitresses: ‘Take over for me will you, please? I’m going out.’

The street was empty because of Sunday. The sun shone bright and clear, without warmth. Biff held the collar of his coat close to his neck. Alone in the street he felt out of pocket.

The wind blew cold from the river. He should turn back and stay in the restaurant where he belonged. He had no business going to the place where he was headed. For the past four Sundays he had done this. He had walked in the neighborhood where he might see Mick. And there was something about it that was not quite right. Yes. Wrong. He walked slowly down the sidewalk opposite the house where she lived. Last Sunday she had been reading the funny papers on the front steps. But this time as he glanced swiftly toward the house he saw she was not there. But tilted the brim of his felt hat down over his eyes. Perhaps she would come into the place later. Often on Sunday after supper she came for a hot cocoa and stopped for a while at the table where Singer was sitting. On Sunday she wore a different outfit from the blue skirt and sweater she wore on other days. Her Sunday dress was wine-colored silk with a dingy lace collar. Once she had had on stockings--with runs in them. Always he wanted to set her up to something, to give to her. And not only a sundae or some sweet to eat--but something real. That was all he wanted for himself--to give to her. Biff’s mouth hardened. He had done nothing wrong but in him he felt a strange guilt. Why? The dark guilt in all men, unreckoned and without a name. On the way home Biff found a penny lying half concealed by rubbish in the gutter. Thriftily he picked it up, cleaned the coin with his handkerchief, and dropped it into the black pocket purse, he carried. It was four o’clock when he reached the restaurant. Business was stagnant. There was not a single customer in the place. Business picked up around five. The boy he had recently hired to work part time showed up early. The boy’s name was Harry Minowitz. He lived in the same neighborhood with Mick and Baby. Eleven applicants had answered the ad in the paper, but Harry seemed to be best bet. He was well developed for his age, and neat. Biff had noticed the boy’s teeth while talking to him during the interview. Teeth were always a good indication. His were large and very clean and white. Harry wore glasses, but that would not matter in the work. His mother made ten dollars a week sewing for a tailor down the street, and Harry was an only child.

‘Well,’ Biff said. ‘You’ve been with me a week, Harry. Think you’re going to like it?’

‘Sure, sir. Sure I like it.’ Biff turned the ring on his finger. ‘Let’s see. What time do you get off from school?’

‘Three o’clock, sir.’

‘Well, that gives you a couple of hours for study and recreation. Then here from six to ten. Does that leave you enough time for plenty of sleep? ‘ ‘Plenty. I don’t need near that much.’

‘You need about nine and a half hours at your age, son. Pure, wholesome sleep.’ He felt suddenly embarrassed. Maybe Harry would think it was none of his business. Which it wasn’t anyway. He started to turn aside and then thought of something.

‘You go to Vocational?’

Harry nodded and rubbed his glasses on his shirtsleeve.

‘Let’s see. I know a lot of girls and boys there. Alva Richards--I know his father. And Maggie Henry. And a kid named Mick Kelly--’ He felt as though his ears had caught afire. He knew himself to be a fool. He wanted to turn and walk away and yet he only stood there, smiling and mashing his nose with his thumb. ‘You know her?’ he asked faintly.

‘Sure, I live right next door to her. But in school I’m a senior while she’s a freshman.’

Biff stored this meager information neatly in his mind to be thought over later when he was alone. ‘Business will be quiet here for a while,’ he said hurriedly. Til leave it with you. By now you know how to handle things. Just watch any customers drinking beer and remember how many they’ve drunk so you won’t have to ask them and depend on what they say. Take your time making change and keep track of what goes on.’

Biff shut himself in his room downstairs. This was the place where he kept his files. The room had only one small window and looked out on the side alley, and the air was musty and cold. Huge stacks of newspapers rose up to the ceiling. A home-made filing case covered one wall. Near the door there was an old-fashioned rocking-chair and a small table laid with a pair of shears, a dictionary, and a mandolin. Because of the piles of newspaper it was impossible to take more than two steps in any direction. Biff rocked himself in the chair and languidly plucked the strings of the mandolin. His eyes closed and he began to sing in a doleful voice: I went to the animal fair.

The birds and the beasts were there, And the old baboon by the light of the moon Was combing his auburn hair.

He finished with a chord from the strings and the last sounds shivered to silence in the cold air.

To adopt a couple of little children. A boy and a girl. About three or four years old so they would always feel like he was their own father. Their Dad. Our Father. The little girl like Mick (or Baby?) at that age. Round cheeks and gray eyes and flaxen hair. And the clothes he would make for her--pink crepe de Chine frocks with dainty smocking at the yoke and sleeves. Silk socks and white buckskin shoes. And a little red-velvet coat and cap and muff for winter. The boy was dark and black-haired. The little boy walked behind him and copied the things he did. In the summer the three of them would go to a cottage on the Gulf and he would dress the children in their sun suits and guide them carefully into the green, shallow waves. And then they would bloom as he grew old. Our Father. And they would come to him with questions and he would answer them.

Why not? Biff took up his mandolin again. ‘Tum-ti-tim-ti-tee, ti-tee, the wedding of the painted doll’ The mandolin mocked the refrain. He sang through all the verses and wagged his foot to the time. Then he played ‘K-K-K-Katie,’ and ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song.’ These pieces were like the Agua Florida in the way they made him remember. Everything. Through the first year when he was happy and when she seemed happy even too. And when the bed came down with them twice in three months. And he didn’t know that all the time her brain was busy with how she could save a nickel or squeeze out an extra dime. And then him with Rio and the girls at her place. Gyp and Madeline and Lou. And then later when suddenly he lost it. When he could lie with a woman no longer. Motherogod! So that at first it seemed everything was gone.

Lucile always understood the whole setup. She knew the kind of woman Alice was. Maybe she knew about him, too. Lucile would urge them to get a divorce. And she did all a person could to try to straighten out their messes.

Biff winced suddenly. He jerked his hands from the strings of the mandolin so that a phrase of music was chopped off. He sat tense in his chair. Then suddenly he laughed quietly to himself. What had made him come across this? Ah, Lordy Lordy Lord! It was the day of his twenty-ninth birthday, and Lucile had asked him to drop by her apartment when he finished with an appointment at the dentist’s. He expected from this some little remembrance--a plate of cherry tarts or a good shirt. She met him at the door and blindfolded his eyes before he entered. Then she said she would be back in a second. In the silent room he listened to her footsteps and when she had reached the kitchen he broke wind. He stood in the room with his eyes blindfolded and pooted. Then all at once he knew with horror he was not alone. There was a titter and soon great rolling whoops of laughter deafened him. At that minute Lucile came back and undid his eyes. She held a caramel cake on a platter. The room was full of people. Leroy and that bunch and Alice, of course. He wanted to crawl up the wall. He stood there with his bare face hanging out, burning hot all over. They kidded him and the next hour was almost as bad as the death of his mother--the way he took it.

Later that night he drank a quart of whiskey. And for weeks after--Motherogod! Biff chuckled coldly. He plucked a few chords on his mandolin and started a rollicking cowboy song. His voice was a mellow tenor and he closed his eyes as he sang. The room was almost dark. The damp chill penetrated to his bones so that his legs ached with rheumatism. .

At last he put away his mandolin and rocked slowly in . the darkness. Death. Sometimes he could almost feel it in the room with him. He rocked to and fro in the chair. What did he understand? Nothing. Where was he headed? Nowhere. What did he want? To know. What? A meaning. Why? A riddle.

Broken pictures lay like a scattered jigsaw puzzle in his head.

Alice soaping in the bathtub. Mussolini’s mug. Mick pulling the baby in a wagon. A roast turkey on display. Blount’s mouth. The face of Singer. He felt himself waiting. The room was completely dark. From the kitchen he could hear Louis singing.

Biff stood up and touched the arm of his chair to still its rocking. When he opened the door the hall outside was very warm and bright. He remembered that perhaps Mick would come. He straightened his clothes and smoothed back his hair.

A warmth and liveliness returned to him. The restaurant was in a hubbub. Beer rounds and Sunday supper had begun. He smiled genially to young Harry and settled himself behind the cash register. He took in the room with a glance like a lasso.

The place was crowded and humming with noise. The bowl of fruit in the window was a genteel, artistic display. He watched the door and continued to examine the room with a practiced eye. He was alert and intently waiting. Singer came finally and wrote with his silver pencil that he wanted only soup and whiskey as he had a cold. But Mick did not come.

SHE never even had a nickel to herself any more. They were that poor. Money was the main thing. All the time it was money, money, money. They had to pay through the nose for Baby Wilson’s private room and private nurse. But even that was just one bill. By the time one thing was paid for something else always would crop up. They owed around two hundred dollars that had to be paid right away. They lost the house. Their Dad got a hundred dollars out of the deal and let the bank take over the mortgage. Then he borrowed another fifty dollars and Mister Singer went on the note with him.

Afterward they had to worry about rent every month instead of taxes. They were mighty near as poor as factory folks. Only nobody could look down on them.

Bill had a job in a bottling plant and made ten dollars a week.

Hazel worked as a helper in a beauty parlor for eight dollars.

Etta sold tickets at a movie for five dollars. Each of them paid half of what they earned for their keep. Then the house had six boarders at five dollars a head. And Mister Singer, who paid his rent very prompt. With what their Dad picked up it all came to about two hundred dollars a month--and out of that they had to feed the six boarders pretty good and feed the family and pay rent for the whole house and keep up the payments on the furniture.

George and her didn’t get any lunch money now. She had to stop the music lessons. Portia saved the leftovers from the dinner for her and George to eat after school. All the time they had their meals in the kitchen. Whether Bill and Hazel and Etta sat with the boarders or ate in the kitchen depended on how much food there was. In the kitchen they had grits and grease and side meat and coffee for breakfast. For supper they had the same thing along with whatever could be spared from the dining-room. The big kids griped whenever they had to eat in the kitchen. And sometimes she and George were downright hungry for two or three days.

But this was in the outside room. It had nothing to do with music and foreign countries and the plans she made. The winter was cold. Frost was on the windowpanes. At night the fire in the living-room crackled very warm. All the family sat by the fire with the boarders, so she had the middle bedroom to herself. She wore two sweaters and a pair of Bill’s outgrown corduroy pants. Excitement kept her warm. She would bring out her private box from under the bed and sit on the floor to work.

In the big box there were the pictures she had painted at the government free art class. She had taken them out of Bill’s room. Also in the box she kept three mystery books her Dad had given her, a compact, a box of watch parts, a rhinestone necklace, a hammer, and some notebooks. One notebook was marked on the top with red crayon--PRIVATE. KEEP OUT. PRIVATE--and tied with a string.

She had worked on music in this notebook all the winter. She quit studying school lessons at night so she could have more time to spend on music. Mostly she had written just little tunes--songs without any words and without even any bass notes to them. They were very short. But even if the tunes were only half a page long she gave them names and drew her initials underneath them. Nothing in this book was a real piece or a composition. They were just songs in her mind she wanted to remember. She named them how they reminded her--’Africa’ and ‘A Big Fight and The Snowstorm.’

She couldn’t write the music just like it sounded in her mind.

She had to thin it down to only a few notes; otherwise she got too mixed up to go further. There was so much she didn’t know about how to write music. But maybe after she learned how to write these simple tunes fairly quick she could begin to put down the whole music in her mind.

In January she began a certain very wonderful piece called ‘This Thing I Want, I Know Not What’ It was a beautiful and marvelous song--very slow and soft. At first she had started to write a poem along with it, but she couldn’t think of ideas to fit the music. Also it was hard to get a word for the third line to rhyme with what. This new song made her feel sad and excited and happy all at once. Music beautiful as this was hard to work on. Any song was hard to write. Something she could hum in two minutes meant a whole week’s work before it was down in the notebook--after she had figured up the scale and the time and every note.