Collected Stories Page 29

  And then instead of turning at his usual corner he walked up another block to the library steps and said good-bye to her there and they both looked back at the same time and smiled as she entered the Public Library door. That heavy oak door with its foolish brass knocker and elaborate molding had never admitted her with so little resistance. It seemed to swing open from someone pushing inside. She stepped away to avoid a collision. But there was nobody but her, it was her own frail grasp that had drawn it so easily open!

  The room inside was wonderfully light and spacious. Brilliance was refracted from every surface, from the yellow oak tables and chairs, from ink pads and pencils, even from old Miss Jamison’s knobby cheekbones.

  What alacrity, what spontaneous good humor she displayed all that morning to the library patrons!

  Miss Jamison watched her sourly and suffered from gas on the stomach.

  “I tell you he deliberately overcharged me three cents on the grits and four on the canned asparagus!” shrieked Mrs. Austin. She drummed the grocery counter with her blue knuckles. “Seven cents isn’t much but it just irritates me beyond all bearing to have somebody try to put something over on me like that, just as though I didn’t know simple arithmetic when I’ve been keeping house and watching accounts for going on thirty years!”

  When Haskell returned to the counter he showed them conclusively that the mistake was not his, the mistake was in Mrs. Austin’s own computations, but this only whetted her fury, so that when he had gone to the back of the store again she leaned over the counter and whispered stridently to Mr. Owens:

  “There is something about him that I don’t like anyhow. I never did and I’m not the only one that don’t! I’ve heard others say the same thing. There’s something about him that’s just irritating to people. I just can’t say what it is, but if I was you, Mr. Owens, I wouldn’t truck with him in this store. I’d have him out of here so fast it would make his head swim!”

  “Hmmm,” said Mr. Owens. The young man was neat and courteous and he was very reliable—but nobody seemed to like him.

  Haskell was given his notice that very next morning, while he was standing behind the butcher’s huge white refrigerator tying about his lean waist the immaculate strings of an apron with fingers that were as delicate in their precision as the fingers of a young woman.

  “Sorry I have to let you go,” said Mr. Owens. “You’ve done your work well but you haven’t made a good impression on the customers, you just haven’t pleased ‘em somehow—I’ve had sev’ral complaints.”

  Haskell looked at him dumbly: “What?”

  “You heard me,” said Mr. Owens. “I can’t keep you here.”

  He started to move away. Haskell followed.

  “Why don’t they like me, Mr. Owens? What have they got against me?”

  Mr. Owens made an impatient gesture: “How should I know? It’s something about you, I guess!”

  He felt a curious relief when Haskell was gone—shouted good morning to all his customers with a heartiness that fairly rattled the canned goods off the shelves.

  Haskell went home at once and packed his valise. On his way to the station he dropped in at the library to return a volume of Emerson’s Essays that Miss Rose had taken out for him the night before.

  “Sorry I won’t get to read them,” he said. “I’m leaving town.”

  “You’re taking a trip?” she asked, trembling.

  “No, I’m leaving for good,” he told her. “I’ve lost my job.”

  “Why? Why?”

  “I don’t know why,” he said. “Mr. Owens says it’s something about me.”

  A stranger came up to the counter and asked for a book of Edna Ferber’s about pioneers.

  “Haskell!” she called.

  But he had already gone out the library door. She saw his oddlyshaped hat bobbing across the window. She would have pursued him except for the stranger’s presence, his eyes fixed on her, pinioning her attention coldly like a blade thrust down on quivering, agonized wings…

  About noon Miss Jamison came in and asked her what was the matter and she said she guessed that she had caught a spring cold.

  She didn’t confess what had actually happened till about a week later when Miss Jamison noticed Haskell’s absence from his usual place on Saturday afternoon.

  “He’s gone,” said Miss Rose. “He got fired from the store and left town.”

  Miss Jamison whinnied exultantly. “Gracious! Not even able to hold a clerical job!”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” said Miss Rose.

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t his fault. But there was something about him that I didn’t like. I don’t know what it was, but I guess Mr. Owens must have felt the same way.”

  “What was it?” demanded Miss Rose.

  “Well, it must have been partly the way that he looked at you and smiled all the time and said how nice everything was and you knew that he didn’t mean a word of it!”

  “Oh, but he did, he was sincerely anxious to please iwryone!”

  “Anxious, yes, that’s the word!”

  “That’s nothing against him!”

  “It’s nothing for him, either.”

  “People are just malicious!” said Miss Rose. “I can’t understand them, they’re all so mean and malicious!”

  She gave her colleague a look that included her so definitely in this general indictment that Miss Jamison moved nervously to the other end of the counter and hummed a Scottish ballad off-key.

  During the night it had rained and all morning it had cleared till now at the sun’s meridian, or shortly thereafter, the air was as keen and brilliant as a polished blade is. There was not much warmth in it yet but it was replete with sound and motion: boxcars shunting about the freight yards, whistles screaming urgently, sparrows restlessly crossing the windows, dropping lime on the damp gray stone, at intersections the traffic signals changing and cars moving onward or halting…

  At one forty-five Miss Rose put on her tweed jacket, which she now wore every day, and walked to the corner drugstore for milk and a sandwich. In windows she caught her image, angular, tall, her wrists too long for the sleeves of the brown tweed jacket, the hem of the skirt—yes!—uneven.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  “Milk and a cream cheese sandwich.”

  (Published 1946)

  The Yellow Bird

  Alma was the daughter of a Protestant minister named Increase Tutwiler, the last of a string of Increase Tutwilers who had occupied pulpits since the Reformation came to England. The first American progenitor had settled in Salem, and around him and his wife. Goody Tutwiler, née Woodson, had revolved one of the most sensational of the Salem witch trials. Goody Tutwiler was cried out against by the Circle Girls, a group of hysterical young ladies of Salem who were thrown into fits whenever a witch came near them. They claimed that Goody Tutwiler afflicted them with pins and needles and made them sign their names in the devil’s book quite against their wishes. Also one of them declared that Goody Tutwiler had appeared to them with a yellow bird which she called by the name of Bobo and which served as interlocutor between herself and the devil to whom she was sworn. The Reverend Tutwiler was so impressed by these accusations, as well as by the fits of the Circle Girls when his wife entered their presence in court, that he himself finally cried out against her and testified that the yellow bird named Bobo had flown into his church one Sabbath and, visible only to himself, had perched on his pulpit and whispered indecent things to him about several younger women in the congregation. Goody Tutwiler was accordingly condemned and hanged, but this was by no means the last of the yellow bird named Bobo. It had manifested itself in one form or another, and its continual nagging had left the Puritan spirit fiercely aglow, from Salem to Hobbs, Arkansas, where the Increase Tutwiler of this story was preaching.

  Increase Tutwiler was a long-winded preacher. His wife sat in the front pew of the church with a palm-leaf fan which she would agitate violently when her husband had p
reached too long for anybody’s endurance. But it was not always easy to catch his attention, and Alma, the daughter, would finally have to break into the offertory hymn in order to turn him off. Alma played the organ, the primitive kind of organ that had to be supplied with air by an old Negro operating a pump in a stifling cubicle behind the wall. On one occasion the old Negro had fallen asleep, and no amount of discreet rapping availed to wake him up. The minister’s wife had plucked nervously at the strings of her palm-leaf fan till it began to fall to pieces, but without the organ to stop him. Increase Tutwiler ranted on and on, exceeding the two hour mark. It was by no means a cool summer day, and the interior of the church was yellow oak, a material that made you feel as if you were sitting in the middle of a fried egg.

  At last Alma despaired of reviving the Negro and got to her feet. “Papa,” she said. But the old man didn’t look at her. “Papa,” she repeated, but he went right on. The whole congregation was whispering and murmuring. One stout old lady seemed to have collapsed, because two people were fanning her from either side and holding a small bottle to her nostrils. Alma and her mother exchanged desperate glances. The mother half got out of her seat. Alma gave her a signal to remain seated. She picked up the hymnbook and brought it down with such terrific force on the bench that dust and fiber spurted in all directions. The minister stopped short. He turned a dazed look in Alma’s direction. “Papa,” she said, “it’s fifteen minutes after twelve and Henry’s asleep and these folks have got to get to dinner, so for the love of God, quit preaching.”

  Now Alma had the reputation of being a very quiet and shy girl, so this speech was nothing short of sensational. The news of it spread throughout the Delta, for Mr. Tutwiler’s sermons had achieved a sort of unhappy fame for many miles about. Perhaps Alma was somewhat pleased and impressed by this little celebration that she was accordingly given on people’s tongues the next few months, for she was never quite the same shy girl afterwards. She had not had very much fun out of being a minister’s daughter. The boys had steered clear of the rectory, because when they got around there they were exposed to Mr. Tutwiler’s inquisitions. A boy and Alma would have no chance to talk in the Tutwiler porch or parlor while the old man was around. He was obsessed with the idea that Alma might get to smoking, which he thought was the initial and, once taken, irretrievable step toward perdition. “If Alma gets to smoking,” he told his wife, “I’m going to denounce her from the pulpit and put her out of the house.” Every time he said this Alma’s mother would scream and go into a faint, as she knew that every girl who is driven out of her father’s house goes right into a good-time house. She was unable to conceive of anything in between.

  Now Alma was pushing thirty and still unmarried, but about six months after the episode in the church, things really started popping around the minister’s house. Alma had gotten to smoking in the attic, and her mother knew about it. Mrs. Tutwiler’s hair had been turning slowly gray for a number of years, but after Alma took to smoking in the attic, it turned snow-white almost overnight. Mrs. Tutwiler concealed the terrible knowledge that Alma was smoking in the attic from her husband, and she didn’t even dare raise her voice to Alma about it because the old man might hear. All she could do was stuff the attic door around with newspapers. Alma would smoke; she claimed it had gotten a hold on her and she couldn’t stop it now. At first she only smoked twice a day, but she began to smoke more as the habit grew on her. Several times the old man had said he smelled smoke in the house, but so far he hadn’t dreamed that his daughter would dare take up smoking. But his wife knew he would soon find out about it, and Alma knew he would too. The question was whether Alma cared. Once she came downstairs with a cigarette in her mouth, smoking it, and her mother barely snatched it out of her mouth before the old man saw her. Mrs. Tutwiler went into a faint, but Alma paid no attention to her, just went on out of the house, lit another cigarette, and walked down the street to the drugstore.

  It was unavoidable that sooner or later people who had seen Alma smoking outside the house, which she now began to do pretty regularly, would carry the news back to the preacher. There were plenty of old women who were ready and able to do it. They had seen her smoking in the White Star drugstore while she was having her afternoon Coke, puffing on the cigarette between sips of the Coke and carrying on a conversation with the soda jerk, just like anyone from that set of notorious high school girls that the whole town had been talking about for several generations. So one day the minister came into his wife’s bedroom and said to her, “I have been told that Alma has taken to smoking.”

  His manner was deceptively calm. The wife sensed that this was not an occasion for her to go into a faint, so she didn’t. She had to keep her wits about her this time—that is, if she had any left after all she had been through with Alma’s smoking.

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t know what to do about it. It’s true.”

  “You know what I’ve always said,” her husband replied. “If Alma gets to smoking, out she goes.”

  “Do you want her to go into a good-time house?” inquired Mrs. Tutwiler.

  “If that’s where she’s going, she can go,” said the preacher, “but not until I’ve given her something that she’ll always remember.”

  He was waiting for Alma when she came in from her afternoon smoke and Coke at the White Star drugstore. Soon as she walked into the door he gave her a good, hard slap, with the palm of his hand on her mouth, so that her front teeth bit into her lip and it started bleeding. Alma didn’t blink an eye, she just drew back her right arm and returned the slap with good measure. She had bought a bottle of something at the drugstore, and while her father stood there, stupefied, watching her, she went upstairs with the mysterious bottle in brown wrapping paper. And when she came back down they saw that she had peroxided her hair and put on lipstick. Alma’s mother screamed and went into one of her faints, because it was evident to her that Alma was going right over to one of the good-time houses on Front Street. But all the iron had gone out of the minister’s character then. He clung to Alma’s arm. He begged and pleaded with her not to go there. Alma lit up a cigarette right there in front of him and said, “Listen here. I’m going to do as I please around here from now on, and I don’t want any more interference from you!”

  Before this conversation was finished the mother came out of her faint. It was the worst faint she had ever gone into, particularly since nobody had bothered to pick her up off the floor. “Alma,” she said weakly, “Alma!” Then she said her husband’s name several times, but neither of them paid any attention to her, so she got up without any assistance and began to take a part in the conversation. “Alma,” she said, “you can’t go out of this house until that hair of yours grows in dark again.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Alma.

  She put the cigarette back in her mouth and went out the screen door, puffing and drawing on it and breathing smoke out of her nostrils all the way down the front walk and down to the White Star drugstore, where she had another Coke and resumed her conversation with the boy at the soda counter. His name was Stuff—that was what people called him—and it was he who had suggested to Alma that she would look good as a blonde. He was ten years younger than Alma but he had more girls than pimples.

  It was astonishing the way Alma came up fast on the outside in Stuff’s affections. With the new blond hair you could hardly call her a dark horse, but she was certainly running away with the field. In two weeks’ time after the peroxide she was going steady with Stuff; for Alma was smart enough to know there were plenty of good times to be had outside the good-time houses on Front Street, and Stuff knew that, too. Stuff was not to be in sole possession of her heart. There were other contenders, and Alma could choose among them. She started going out nights as rapidly as she had taken up smoking. She stole the keys to her father’s Ford sedan and drove to such nearby towns as Lakewater, Sunset, and Lyons. She picked up men on the highway and went out “juking” with them, making th
e rounds of the highway drinking places; never got home till three or four in the morning. It was impossible to see how one human constitution could stand up under the strain of so much running around to night places, but Alma had all the vigor that comes from generations of firm believers. It could have gone into anything and made a sensation. Well, that’s how it was. There was no stopping her once she got started.

  The home situation was indescribably bad. It was generally stated that Alma’s mother had suffered a collapse and that her father was spending all his time praying, and there was some degree of truth in both reports. Very little sympathy for Alma came from the older residents of the community. Certain little perfunctory steps were taken to curb the girl’s behavior. The father got the car key out of her pocket one night when she came in drunk and fell asleep on the sofa, but Alma had already had some duplicates of it made. He locked the garage one night. Alma climbed through the window and drove the car straight through the closed door.

  “She’s lost her mind,” said the mother. “It’s that hair bleaching that’s done it. It went right through her scalp and now it’s affecting her brain.”

  They sat up all that night waiting for her, but she didn’t come home. She had run her course in that town, and the next thing they heard from Alma was a card from New Orleans. She had got all the way down there. “Don’t sit up,” she wrote. “I’m gone for good. I’m never coming back.”

  Six years later Alma was a character in the old French Quarter of New Orleans. She hung out mostly on “Monkey Wrench Corner” and picked up men around there. It was certainly not necessary to go into a good-time house to have a good time in the Quarter, and it hadn’t taken her long to find that out. It might have seemed to some people that Alma was living a wasteful and profligate existence, but if the penalty for it was death, well, she was a long time dying. In fact she seemed to prosper on her new life. It apparently did not have a dissipating effect on her. She took pretty good care of herself so that it wouldn’t, eating well and drinking just enough to be happy. Her face had a bright and innocent look in the mornings, and even when she was alone in her room it sometimes seemed as if she weren’t alone—as if someone were with her, a disembodied someone, perhaps a remote ancestor of liberal tendencies who had been displeased by the channel his blood had taken till Alma kicked over the traces and jumped right back to the plumed-hat cavaliers.