The Morning and the Evening (16 page)

“Now I call that right friendly,” Buck said. “This ain't no bad little old town.”

“Heck, it's going to be part of Memphis some day, the way Memphis is growing,” Red said. “People will be moving to Marigold and driving to Memphis to work.”

“I live to see the day,” Homer said.

“You'll be in the right business then, Homer,” Red said.

“Huh,” Homer said. “I'll be ninety-five years old before that ever comes about.”

“Naw, I'm telling you,” Red said. He backed the car from the curb, turned, waited for the light to finish turning green and then headed down the long straight stretch of highway, straight into the afternoon sun, toward home.

“You know I was just thinking,” Buck French said, suddenly. “What nigger's going to cough up a dollar to get his dog vaccinated?”

“What?” Hoyt said.

“That sign that was on the post office in Whitehill. It said a dollar to vaccinate your dog,” Buck said.

“Shucks, there's plenty white folks ain't going to pay no dollar to get a needle stuck in some mangy dog they own,” Red said.

“And there's kids with dogs ain't never going to get 'em vaccinated,” Hoyt said. “And there's strays.”

“That mad-dog scare's liable to spread right on to Marigold in a week or less,” Buck said. “I tell you, if there's one thing I don't want to have truck with it's a rabid dog.”

“Lord,” Red said, settling down to the drive. “Seems like time you get one thing off your mind, there's something else.”

Chapter Eight

The judge sat upright in his black robe and blinked solemnly through steamy bifocals, his eyes enormous and blurred. Idly he drew back his long loose sleeve and wrote in the proper blank on the paper before him: Jake Darby. After it were two printed words: Insanity Suspect. He peered over his glasses at the man.

Four others had gone before him, one a woman he had almost not committed. Standing there, she had looked like any one of the ordinary middle-aged women in his Sunday-school class. Her yellowed white hair was neatly curled and tucked full of heavy black hairpins. She wore a navy-blue crepe dress that he knew in summer had had white piqué collar and cuffs. Now for fall and winter it had multicolored striped taffeta ones. Her navy straw was set squarely forward on her forehead. She had told a long plausible story, familiar to him. In essence, nobody wanted her. Her few remaining relatives were distant and tolerated her at all only because she had a little money they hoped someday to inherit. Certainly he believed that and was about to say, “Petition rejected,” when at the saving moment she said, “What's really the matter with them is they're jealous. Perry Como's in love with me.”

Now this one, who looked obviously not right.

“Mister Darby,” the judge said, leaning forward, “I've read this petition and heard from your guardian the selfsame reasons why you should be committed to the state hospital at Lee. Do you have anything to say in your own behalf?”

The man did not say anything. He did not even look at the judge and the judge could not have said exactly where he was looking. With a vacant stare he looked into a place no one else could see. Perhaps that was what insanity was, the judge thought, and sighed. After thirty years on the bench observing the sane and the supposedly insane, he had given up really trying to draw a line between the two.

He read to himself the first statement on the outline before him: “(I) The said person is insane (not feebleminded or an idiot), being at large is injurious to self and disadvantageous to the community, and should be committed to a hospital.” The folks of Mister Darby's town had sworn to this. Who was he, the judge, who had never seen the fellow before, to say that they were wrong? He looked over at the man who had appeared as guardian. He had ceased to chew his gum and looked back at the judge expectantly. This Mister Veazey had said that he had three kids and was afraid to let them run about free in his town any longer.

Sighing, the judge picked up the paper and read aloud: “It is ordered that Jake Darby be declared and is hereby adjudged insane and be committed to the State Hospital, to be treated and dealt with in accordance with the law and regulations of said Institution. If in the future any means shall be available, either as a part of the estate of said insane person, or of any member of his family liable for his maintenance under the law, then, in either of such events, monies advanced by Forrest County shall be repaid to the County, and such insane person shall be and become a private pay patient so long as his means justify that status.”

“You don't have to worry about that,” J. T. Veazey said.

“What's that?” the judge said, looking up.

“I said, you don't have to worry about that,” J. T. said.

“Never mind,” the judge said. He read again: “A copy of these proceedings shall be delivered along with said insane person to the superintendent of said Institution.” He signed his name wearily and said, “The hearing's over.”

J. T. got up. His rear felt cut through to the bone. The proceedings had been long and his chair a hard wooden one with a ridge down the center. He was anxious to move about and to be out of the overheated airless room where the sheriff had continuously smoked cigars. But something kept him lingering, something he wanted to say. To who? he wondered. The sheriff, the judge, Jake? Yes, Jake, he thought. He walked over to where Jake stood, his shirt soaked through with sweat. He turned and looked at J. T. as he walked up, and already there was something different in his eyes. He stared as if J. T. were a stranger. “Jake,” J. T. said. “Don't you know me, boy?”

Jake made no sign.

J. T. wanted to say he was sorry. He opened his mouth to do so, and suddenly he said to himself, Well, I'll be a God-damned son of a bitch.

Tears swelled up and overran his eyes. He pressed Jake's arm and said, “Take care of yourself, boy.”

Then he turned and hurried out of the room, down the short corridor and out into the day. The temperature had dropped overnight and the season become the the near-winter it was. The warm spell was over. J. T. went to his car and got in and turned on the heater. He drove off shivering and sobbing and snuffling his nose, wiping his eyes so he could see how to drive. Turning onto the highway, he said aloud, “Jesus Christ, old man. I'm glad nobody else come with you.”

Chapter Nine

They were all moving about him now, people going in every direction. He stood still and presently, as he had known someone would, a man took his elbow and began to guide him. He stood in a group then, while people came and went, and occasionally he glanced their way. He had not slept for a long time, not since the time they had put him in a room he could not get out of, with many dogs coming and going beyond the bars that confined him. People, standing close, had talked to him off and on, peering, talking as if they had expected him to answer. He could only turn away. He was afraid with strangers to make any sound, and he could not understand why these had expected so much of him.

The old man whose black clothes flowed about him, nipping at his heels as he walked, passed close and said, “Somebody ought to get him a haircut.”

“He'll get one when he gets there,” another man said.

He was led again by the elbow out into the sweet day, where a wash of cool wind chilled him. Past thin sunlight, beyond the square of ground where people walked briskly, he saw the building he had come out of this early morning; the bars that had bound him at the other place had bound him here too, at the windows and at the door. They were not taking him back there. He moved with the group still, the woman, the three men.

“Perry,” said the woman once. “Wait for me.”

In his whole life, he had not been in a car as much as he had been these last two days since he had been taken from home. Home. Above all things, he knew he had been taken from home.

Now he was in a car again, sitting straight, not moving, not looking back. He was afraid. They took him through the blue day, past shedding trees and white sunshine, on and on until he saw land such as he had never seen before rising away to a great height and falling back again: he knew he was a long way from home.

Home.

They stopped at gas stations and he looked for Homer Brown, but he was never there. They took him inside into smaller rooms than he had ever been in in his life and told him to go to the bathroom and he did, behind their turned backs. Once they gave him a sandwich and a glass of milk and when he had eaten they said, “Cake?”

He shook his head. He knew the word still: cake. Other voices and other faces, familiar to him, had said it and he had eaten it gladly. Now his stomach did not want even what he had already eaten. All he wanted was to cry.

“I wish they were all good as him,” said the man driving; he jerked his head toward Jake.

“Yeah, he's a good one,” said his helper.

The others, the three men, the woman, chattered like sparrows around him. One man, next to him, said quite comfortably, “You'd never think this was the last day of the world, would you?”

Then they began to go to sleep, nodding their heads forward, leaning against the sides of the car. But sleep was something he could not remember. He did not know how long it was since he had slept, since he had been away from home. He only knew that the last time he had it had been in his own bed. In the new places he had lain with his eyes open, knowing first that it was morning and then that it was evening and that it was all the same: time made no difference to him.

Only that first morning, in the first place, he had looked up to see Wilroy and Mary Margaret looking in at him. Wilroy had said, “But didn't you even ask 'em their names? Don't you know who they were? Just four men …”

And Mary Margaret said, “Just like that. Is it that easy to commit somebody to the insane asylum?”

The marshal said, “All I know is I got a call from Desoto to bring him there, and I ain't doing otherwise. I can't turn him loose.”

They had gone away, with Mary Margaret crying; and then Jake had cried too, turning away so that no one could see him. Behind the closed door the dogs had gone on one by one, yelping in pain, and he had chewed his knuckles until they bled, listening. Afterward he had been put into a car and driven off to a place almost the same, bigger, without the dogs. And he had stayed until they took him into the room full of people. And now he was in a car again, going a long way.

The man who helped the driver said restlessly, “Still a ways to go.”

“You wanna drive?” the driver said. He pulled to the side of the road and the first man got into the driver's seat. People woke up and yawned and said:

“Are we here?”

“What time is it?”

“Where are we?”

“How much further?”

The car was a station wagon with two upright stiff seats behind the driver's seat. Everyone shuffled about changing places; then everyone went back to sleep again. Only Jake did not move; only he did not sleep. The others had ceased talking to him; they thought he wanted to be alone.

He thought about the wind that had come cold when he was outside. It was evening, and he thought about that. There was a piece of moon already in the sky and one faint star. He was very tired and would have lured sleep if he had known how.

They arrived when evening deepened. The car followed a long driveway that swept toward a group of lighted buildings; they stopped beneath an archway, though the driveway went on and returned to the highway again. They had not seen anything for a long time but entanglements of weeds along the road and had heard only the insect sounds of night and nothing more. Now the driver said, “Here we are, folks.”

Everyone sat up to look out and one of the men, named Charlie, said, “I'm sure glad to be back here with indoor toilets instead of at home.”

“Charlie, you always do manage to get back, don't you?” said the driver. “Reckon how long they'll keep you this time?”

“A long time, maybe,” Charlie said. “I'm a whole lots crazier than I was the last time.”

They told Jake to get out of the car, and he did. He stood beneath the shelter of the archway to look about. As far as he could see there was the flat open lawn with many tall trees stretching away to the highway in the distance, which he could see only when cars, with their yellow lights, went by making a dulled sound of
whoosh
. There were round and square places in the ground where the earth had been worked and flowers grew out of them in neat clumps. Hedges were clipped round as balls and were taller than his head. It did not seem entirely, alien, but it was not the same. Almost while he watched, evening disappeared and night came; then it was dark and he could see nothing but lighted windows, the outlines of trees and a lighted doorway behind him. A man came out of the door and down the few steps, welcoming them. In the soft light from the crystal chandelier his steel-rimmed glasses glinted on his nose, his white hair shone as silvery as fish scales, luminous in the night.

“Well, I see you got here all right,” he said. He shook hands with the driver and his helper.

“Do they have television here?” the woman whispered to Charlie.

“Oh, sure,” Charlie said. “They got everything. Especially if you get sent to the new building. You ought to hope to get sent to the new building.”

The doctor turned and said, “Is that you, Charlie? You back again?” He laughed.

“Yes, sir, Doctor,” Charlie said happily. “Right back where I started from. Reckon I might as well stay this time.”

“Well, we'll see,” the doctor said. “You got to make room for others, you know.”

The drivers had taken all of the suitcases out of the car and lined them up along the steps. One of them put a shoe box into Jake's arms, and Jake held it fast. “That's all he's got,” the man said to the doctor. “Fellow brought it to the court today.”