School was out and she had passed everysubject—some with A

plus and some by the skin of her teeth. The days 270

were long and hot. Finally she was able to work hard at music

again. She began to write down pieces for the violin and

piano. She wrote songs. Always music was in her mind. She

listened to Mister Singer's radio and wandered around the

house thinking about the programs she had heard.

•What ails Mick?' Portia asked. 'What kind of cat is it got her

tongue? She walk around and don't say a word. She not even

greedy like she used to be. She getting to be a regular lady

these days.'

It was as though in some way she was waiting—but what she

waited for she did not know. The sun burned down glaring

and white-hot in the streets. During the day she either worked

hard at music or messed with kids. And waited. Sometimes

she would look all around her quick and this panic would

come in her. Then in late June there was a sudden happening

so important that it changed everything.

That night they were all out on the porch. The twilight was

blurred and soft. Supper was almost ready and the smell of

cabbage floated to them from the open hall. All of them were

together except Hazel, who had not come home from work,

and Etta, who still lay sick in bed. Their Dad leaned back in a

chair with his sock-feet on the banisters. Bill was on the steps

with the kids. Their Mama sat on the swing fanning herself

with the newspaper. Across the street a girl new in the

neighborhood skated up and down the sidewalk on one roller

skate. The lights on the block were just beginning to be turned

on, and far away a man was calling someone.

Then Hazel come home. Her high heels clopped up the steps

and she leaned back lazily on the banisters. In the half-dark

her fat, soft hands were very white as she felt the back of her

braided hair. 'I sure do wish Etta was able to work,' she said. 'I

found out about this job today.'

'What kind of a job?' asked their Dad. 'Anything I could do, or

just for girls?'

'Just for a girl. A clerk down at Woolworth's is going to get

married next week.'

"The ten-cent store------' Mick said.

'You interested?'

The question took her by surprise. She had just been

thinking about a sack of wintergreen candy she had bought

there the day before. She felt hot and tense. She rubbed her

bangs up from her forehead and counted the first few stars.

Their Dad flipped his cigarette down to the sidewalk. •No,' he

said. 'We don't want Mick to take on too much responsibility

at her age. Let her get her growth out. Her growth through

with, anyway.'

'I agree with you,' Hazel said. 'I really do think it would be a

mistake for Mick to have to work regular. I don't think it

would be right.'

Bill put Ralph down from his lap and shuffled his feet on the

steps. 'Nobody ought to work until they're around sixteen.

Mick should have two more years and finish at Vocational—if

we can make it.'

'Even if we have to give up the house and move down in mill

town,' their Mama said. 'I rather keep Mick at home for a

while.'

For a minute she had been scared they would try to corner her

into taking the job. She would have said she would run away

from home. But the way they took the attitude they did

touched her. She felt excited. They were all talking about her

—and in a kindly way. She was ashamed for the first scared

feeling that had come to her. Of a sudden she loved all of the

family and a tightness came in her throat.

'About how much money is in it?' she asked.

Ten dollars.'

Ten dollars a week?'

'Sure,' Hazel said. 'Did you think it would be only ten a

month?'

'Portia don't make but about that much.'

'Oh, colored people------' Hazel said.

Mick rubbed the top of her head with her fist That's a whole

lot of money. A good deal.'

'It's not to be grinned at,' Bill said. "That's what I make.'

Mick's tongue was dry. She moved it around in her mouth to

gather up spit enough to talk. Ten dollars a week would buy

about fifteen fried chickens. Or five pairs of shoes or five

dresses. Or installments on a radio.' She thought about a

piano, but she did not mention that aloud.272

'It would tide us over,' their Mama said. *But at the same time

I rather keep Mick at home for a while. Now,

when Etta------'

'Wait!' She felt hot and reckless. 'I want to take the job. I can

hold it down. I know I can.' 'Listen to little Mick,' Bill said.

Their Dad picked his teeth with a matchstick and took his feet

down from the banisters. 'Now, let's not rush into anything. I

rather Mick take her time and think this out. We can get along

somehow without her working. I mean

to increase my watch work by sixty per cent soon as------'

'I forgot,' Hazel said. 'I think there's a Christmas bonus every

year.'

Mick frowned. "But I wouldn't be working then. I'd be in

school. I just want to work during vacation and then go back

to school.' 'Sure,' Hazel said quickly.

"But tomorrow I'll go down with you and take the job if I can

get it'

It was as though a great worry and tightness left the family. In

the dark they began to laugh and talk. Their Dad did a trick for

George with a matchstick and a handkerchief. Then he gave

the kid fifty cents to go down to the corner store for Coca-

Colas to be drunk after supper. The smell of cabbage was

stronger in the hall and pork chops were frying. Portia called.

The boarders already waited at the table. Mick had supper in

the dining-room. The cabbage leaves were limp and yellow on

her plate and she couldn't eat. When she reached for the bread

she knocked a pitcher of iced tea over the table.

Then later she waited on the front porch by herself for Mister

Singer to come home. In a desperate way she wanted to see

him. The excitement of the hour before had died down and she

was sick to the stomach. She was going to work in a ten-cent

store and she did not want to work there. It was like she had

been trapped into something. The job wouldn't be just for the

summer—but for a long time, as long as she could see ahead.

Once they were used to the money coming in it would be

impossible to do without again. That was the way things were.

She stood in the dark and held tight to the banisters. A long

time passed and Mister Singer still did not come. At eleven

o'clock she

went out to see if she could find him. But suddenly she got

frightened in the dark and ran back home.

Then in the morning she bathed and dressed very careful.

Hazel and Etta loaned her the clothes to wear and primped her

to look nice. She wore Hazel's green silk dress and a green hat

and high-heeled pumps with silk stockings. They fixed her

face with rouge and lipstick and plucked her eyebrows. She

looked at least sixteen years old when they were finished.

It was too late to back down now. She was really grown and

ready to earn her keep. Yet if she would go to her Dad and tell

him how she felt he would tell her to wait a year. And Hazel

and Etta and Bill and their Mama, even now, would say that

she didn't have to go. But she couldn't do it. She couldn't lose

face like that. She went up to see Mister Singer. The words

came all in a rush:

'Listen—I believe I got this job. What do you think? Do you

think it's a good idea? Do you think it's O.K. to drop out of

school and work now? You think it's good?'

At first he did not understand. His gray eyes half-closed and

he stood with his hands deep down in his pockets. There was

the old feeling that they waited to tell each other things that

had never been told before. The thing she had to say now was

not much. But what he had to tell her would be right—and if

he said the job sounded O.K. then she would feel better about

it. She repeated the words slowly and waited.

'You think it's good?'

Mister Singer considered. Then he nodded yes.

She got the job. The manager took her and Hazel back to a

little office and talked with them. Afterward she couldn't

remember how the manager looked or anything that had been

said. But she was hired, and on the way out of the place she

bought ten cents' worth of Chocolate and a little modeling clay

set for George. On June the fifth she was to start work. She

stood for a long while before the window of Mister Singer's

jewelry store. Then she hung around on the corner. TT4

CARSON Me CULLERS

_l HE time had come for Singer to go to Antonapoulos again.

The journey was a long one. For, although the distance

between them was something less than two hundred miles, the

train meandered to points far out of the way and stopped for

long hours at certain stations during the night. Singer would

leave the town in the afternoon and travel all through the night

and until the early morning of the next day. As usual, he was

ready far in advance. He planned to have a full week with his

friend this visit. His clothes had been sent to the cleaner's, his

hat blocked, and his bags were in readiness. The gifts he

would carry were wrapped in colored tissue paper—and in

addition there was a deluxe basket of fruits done up in

cellophane and a crate of late-shipped strawberries. On the

morning before his departure Singer cleaned his room. In his

ice box he found a bit of left-over goose liver and took it out

to the alley for the neighborhood cat. On his door he tacked

the same sign he had posted there before, stating that he would

be absent for several days on business. During all these

preparations he moved about leisurely with two vivid spots of

color on his cheekbones. His face was very solemn.

Then at last the hour for departure was at hand. He stood on

the platform, burdened with his suitcases and gifts, and

watched the train roll in on the station tracks. He found

himself a seat in the day coach and hoisted his luggage on the

rack above his head. The car was crowded, for the most part

with mothers and children. The green plush seats had a grimy

smell. The windows of the car were dirty and rice thrown at

some recent bridal pair lay scattered on the floor. Singer

smiled cordially to his fellow-travelers and leaned back in his

seat. He closed his eyes. The lashes made a dark, curved

fringe above the hollows of his cheeks. His right hand moved

nervously inside his pocket

For a while his thoughts lingered in the town he was leaving

behind him. He saw Mick and Doctor Copeland and Jake

Blount and Biff Brannon. The faces crowded in on him out of

the darkness so that he felt smothered. He thought of the

quarrel between Blount and the Negro. The

nature of this quarrel was hopelessly confused in his mind —but each

of them had on several occasions broken out into a bitter tirade

against the other, the absent one. He had agreed with each of them in

turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not

know. And Mick —her face was urgent and she said a good deal that

he did not understand in the least. And then Biff Brannon at the New

York Caf6. Brannon with his dark, iron-like jaw and his watchful

eyes. And strangers who followed him about the streets and

buttonholed him for unexplainable reasons. The Turk at the linen

shop who flung his hands up in his face and babbled with his tongue

to make words the shape of which Singer had never imagined before.

A certain mill foreman and an old black woman. A businessman on

the main street and an urchin who solicited soldiers for a whorehouse

near the river. Singer wriggled his shoulders uneasily. The train

rocked with a smooth, easy motion. His head nodded to rest on his

shoulder and for a short while he slept.

When he opened his eyes again the town was far behind him. The

town was forgotten. Outside the dirty window there was the brilliant

midsummer countryside. The sun slanted in strong, bronze-colored

rays over the green fields of the new cotton. There were acres of

tobacco, the plants heavy and green like some monstrous jungle

weed. The orchards of peaches with the lush fruit weighting down the

dwarfed trees. There were miles of pastures and tens of miles of

wasted, washed-out land abandoned to the hardier weeds. The train

cut through deep green pine forests where the ground was covered

with the slick brown needles and the tops of the trees stretched up

virgin and tall into the sky. And farther, a long way south of the

town, the cypress swamps—with the gnarled roots of the trees

writhing down into the brackish waters, where the gray, tattered moss

trailed from the branches, where tropical water flowers blossomed in

dankness and gloom. Then out again into the open beneath the sun

and the indigo-blue sky.

Singer sat solemn and timid, his face turned fully toward the window.

The great sweeps of space and the hard, elemental coloring almost

blinded him. This kaleidoscopic variety of scene, this abundance of

growth and color,276

seemed somehow connected with his friend". His thoughts

were with Antonapoulos. The bliss of their reunion almost

stifled him. His nose was pinched and he breathed with quick,

short breaths through his slightly open mouth.

Antonapoulos would be glad to see him. He would enjoy the

fresh fruits and the presents. By now he would be out of the

sick ward and able to go on an excursion to the movies, and

afterward to the hotel where they had eaten dinner on the first

visit. Singer had written many letters to Antonapoulos, but he

had not posted them. He surrendered himself wholly to

thoughts of his friend.

The half-year since he had last been with him seemed neither

a long nor a short span of time. Behind each waking moment

there had always been his friend. And this submerged

communion with Antonapoulos had grown and changed as

though they were together in the flesh. Sometimes he thought

of Antonapoulos with awe and self-abasement, sometimes

with pride—always with love unchecked by criticism, freed of

will. When he dreamed at night the face of his friend was

always before him, massive and gentle. And in his waking

thoughts they were eternally united.

The summer evening came slowly. The sun sank down behind

a ragged line of trees in the distance and the sky paled. The

twilight was languid and soft. There was a white full moon,

and low purple clouds lay over the horizon. The earth, the

trees, the unpainted rural dwellings darkened slowly. At

intervals mild summer lightning quivered in the air. Singer

watched all of this intently until at last the night had come,

and his own face was reflected in the glass before him.

Children staggered up and down the aisle of the car with

dripping paper cups of water. An old man in overalls who had

the seat before Singer drank whiskey from time to time from a

Coca-Cola bottle. Between swallows he plugged the bottle

carefully with a wad of paper. A little girl on the right combed

her hair with a sticky red lollipop. Shoeboxes were opened

and trays of supper were brought in from the dining-car.

Singer did not eat. He leaned back in his seat and kept

desultory account of all that went on around him. At last the

car settled down. Children lay on the broad plush seats and

slept, while men and women

doubled up with their pillows and rested as best they could.

Singer did not sleep. He pressed his face close against the

glass and strained to see into the night. The darkness was

heavy and velvety. Sometimes there was a patch of moonlight

or the flicker of a lantern from the window of some house

along the way. From the moon he saw that the train had turned

from its southward course and was headed toward the east.

The eagerness he felt was so keen that his nose was too

pinched to breathe through and his cheeks were scarlet. He sat

there, his face pressed close against the cold, sooty glass of

the window, through most of the long night journey.

The train was more than an hour late, and the fresh, bright

summer morning was well under way when they arrived.

Singer went immediately to the hotel, a very good hotel where

he had made reservations in advance. He unpacked his bags

and arranged the presents he would take to Antonapoulos on

the bed. From the menu the bellboy brought him he selected a

luxurious breakfast—broiled bluefish, hominy, French toast,

and hot black coffee. After breakfast he rested before the

electric fan in his underwear. At noon he began to dress. He

bathed and shaved and laid out fresh linen and his best

seersucker suit At three o'clock the hospital was open for

visiting hours. It was Tuesday and the eighteenth of July.

At the asylum he sought Antonapoulos first in the sick ward

where he had been confined before. But at the doorway of the

room he saw immediately that his friend was not there. Next

he found his way through the corridors to the office where he

had been taken the time before. He had his question already

written on one of the cards he carried about with him. The

person behind the desk was not the same as the one who had

been there before. He was a young man, almost a boy, with a

half-formed, immature face and a lank mop of hair. Singer

handed him the card and stood quietly, his arms heaped with

packages, his weight resting on his heels.

The young man shook his head. He leaned over the desk and

scribbled loosely on a pad of paper. Singer read what he had

written and the spots of color drained from his cheekbones

instantly. He looked at the note a long time, 278

his eyes cut sideways and his head bowed. For it was written

there that Antonapoulos was dead.

On the way back to the hotel he was careful not to crush the

fruit he had brought with him. He took the packages up to his

room and then wandered down to the lobby. Behind a potted

palm tree there was a slot machine. He inserted a nickel but

when he tried to pull the lever he found that the machine was

jammed. Over this incident he made a great to-do. He

cornered the clerk and furiously demonstrated what had

happened. His face was deathly pale and he was so beside

himself that tears rolled down the ridges of his nose. He

flailed his hands and even stamped once with his long,

narrow, elegantly shoed foot on the plush carpet. Nor was he

satisfied when his coin was refunded, but insisted on checking

out immediately. He packed his bag and was obliged to work

energetically to make it close again. For in addition to the

articles he had brought with him he carried away three towels,

two cakes of soap, a pen and a bottle of ink, a roll of toilet

paper, and a Holy Bible. He paid his bill and walked to the

railway station to put his belongings in custody. The train did

not leave until nine in the evening and he had the empty

afternoon before him.

This town was smaller than the one in which he lived. The

business streets intersected to form the shape of a cross. The

stores had a countrified look; there were harnesses and sacks

of feed in half of the display windows. Singer walked

listlessly along the sidewalks. His throat felt swollen and he

wanted to swallow but was unable to do so. To relieve this

strangled feeling he bought a drink in one of the drugstores.

He idled in the barber shop and purchased a few trifles at the

ten-cent store. He looked no one full in the face and his head

drooped down to one side like a sick animal's.

The afternoon was almost ended when a strange thing

happened to Singer. He had been walking slowly and

irregularly along the curb of the street. The sky was overcast

and the air humid. Singer did not raise his head, but as he

passed the town pool room he caught a sidewise glance of

something that disturbed him. He passed the pool room and

then stopped in the middle of the street. Listlessly he retraced

his steps and stood before the open

door of the place. There were three mutes inside and they

were talking with their hands together. All three of them were

coatless. They wore bowler hats and bright ties. Each of them

held a glass of beer in his left hand. There was a certain

brotherly resemblance between them.

Singer went inside. For a moment he had trouble taking his

hand from his pocket. Then clumsily he formed a word of

greeting. He was clapped on the shoulder. A cold drink was

ordered. They surrounded him and the fingers of their hands

shot out like pistons as they questioned him.

He told his own name and the name of the town where he

lived. After that he could think of nothing else to tell about

himself. He asked if they knew Spiros Antonapoulos. They

did not know him. Singer stood with his hands dangling loose.

His head was still inclined to one side and his glance was

oblique. He was so listless and cold that the three mutes in the

bowler hats looked at him queerly. After a while they left him

out of their conversation. And when they had paid for the

rounds of beers and were ready to depart they did not suggest

that he join them.

Although Singer had been adrift on the streets for half a day

he almost missed his train. It was not clear to him how this

happened or how he had spent the hours before. He reached

the station two minutes before the train pulled out, and barely

had time to drag his luggage aboard and find a seat. The car he

chose was almost empty. When he was settled he opened the

crate of strawberries and picked them over with finicky care.

The berries were of a giant size, large as walnuts and in full-

blown ripeness. The green leaves at the top of the rich-colored

fruit were like tiny bouquets. Singer put a berry in his mouth

and though the juice had a lush, wild sweetness there was

already a subtle flavor of decay. He ate until his palate was

dulled by the taste and then rewrapped the crate and placed it

on the rack above him. At midnight he drew the window-

shade and lay down on the seat. He was curled in a ball, his

coat pulled over his face and head. In this position he lay in a

stupor of half-sleep for about twelve hours. The conductor had

to shake him when they arrived.

Singer left his luggage in the middle of the station floor. Then

he walked to the shop. He greeted the jeweler for whom he

worked with a listless turn of his head. When280

he went out again there was something heavy in his pocket For a

while he rambled with bent head along the streets. But the

unrefracted brilliance of the sun, the humid heat, oppressed him. He

returned to his room with swollen eyes and an aching head. After

resting he drank a glass of iced coffee and smoked a cigarette. Then

when he had washed the ash tray and the glass he brought out a pistol

from his pocket and put a bullet in his chest.

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