The Neon Bible

by John Kennedy Toole

  I knew what everybody thought about Mother. She didn't have any more friends down in town to say any different, so Flora's story got bigger and bigger. I knew Flora was back with the preacher and was even the head of the big people's Sunday school. It was too bad if the preacher got to be the leader in anything. Except for Bobbie Lee Taylor, everything he planned always came off right the way he wanted. When he wanted to send people out of town, they went, especially if they didn't belong to the church.

  The preacher was the head of the people that decided who was going to the state institutions like the crazy house and the poor folks' asylum. Every year he sent about one old man or woman away to the old asylum, but they didn't want to go. Everybody said you died there pretty soon, and even if the people were real old, they didn't want to die, and they cried when the preacher took them down to the train. If they didn't mind too much, he drove them to the place in his car, but those were the ones who believed him and thought it was really as nice as he said, or else they were deaf and couldn't know what was going on anyway. I saw an old woman once who couldn't move herself at all, and she couldn't even speak. One day when I was going home from the drugstore I saw the preacher take her into his car from the old place where she lived. She couldn't move or speak or anything, but her eyes were the most awful thing I ever saw anytime in my life. When I passed the car, she looked at me with a real scared look like a little mountain rabbit has when it sees it can't get away from the thing that's hunting it. I don't know why I did, but I stood there after the preacher's car left and watched it go down the street with that old woman. I guess she's still there now in the state poor home.

  Mr. Williams' wife went to the preacher's church, and that's how I found out about Mother. Mr. Williams told me the preacher and Flora were trying to see if they could get the crazy house to take Mother in. I didn't believe it when I heard it, because Mother never even saw any people in town, and nobody even saw her except for some men who still came up into the clearing to get rabbits. I tried to think of why they wanted to do a thing like that, but I couldn't think up a reason. Mr. Williams told me to tell Aunt Mae about it, because they couldn't do anything if the family wouldn't let them. I wanted to tell Aunt Mae, but lately I didn't speak with her much, so I never did. I thought about it a lot when I sat upstairs, though. I thought about how some people could do what they wanted to another person and not get put in jail by the sheriff, and I thought about Mother getting in the preacher's car and going off. That got my mind all filled up. I couldn't think about anything else when I thought about those two driving away and the preacher telling everybody after how he helped the town and helped a poor woman. But, he would say, it was only the Christian thing to do, and any good Christian would leap at doing such a thing.

  I was getting tired about what the preacher called Christian. Anything he did was Christian, and the people in his church believed it, too. If he stole some book he didn't like from the library, or made the radio station play only part of the day on Sunday, or took somebody off to the state poor home, he called it Christian. I never had much religious training, and I never went to Sunday school because we didn't belong to the church when I was old enough to go, but I thought I knew what believing in Christ meant, and it wasn't half the things the preacher did. I called Aunt Mae a good Christian, but nobody else in the valley would have because she never went to church. One day I told somebody I thought Aunt Mae was just as much a Christian as Mrs. Watkins claimed to be. It was a woman who came into the store a lot. She got to talking about some people in town, and when she came to Mrs. Watkins she said that that was a real, dedicated Christian. When I said Aunt Mae was too, she said I was a babe who didn't know the true word, or something like that in the kind of words church people use.

  When Mr. Williams didn't say any more about Flora and the preacher and Mother, it passed from my mind in a little while. But things like Jo Lynne and the way Aunt Mae was acting didn't. I still thought about Jo Lynne when I sat upstairs. Not from the windows in the room where the train was, but from the windows in my bedroom, you could see the little houses on the hill where I kissed her. They were all finished now, and they had a lot of people in them. They were lighted at night now. That made them even easier to find, and at night I would sit on the windowsill sometimes and look off at them. But I didn't like to see that part of the hill lighted up. I liked to think about it like it was the night we were there, with the houses all empty and the hill with nobody but us on it and the moonlight the only thing besides the dark. I even wondered who was living in the house where we sat on the step.

  Then I stopped worrying about Aunt Mae. One day when I came in from the store she was sitting in the kitchen running her hands along the oilcloth on the table.

  "Come in here, hon," she said when she heard me coming in the house. I felt like going right up to the train room, because I didn't feel like being around her with the sorry eyes. When she heard me start up the stairs, she called again. "Come here, hon. In the kitchen."

  I went in there, and she had a faraway look. She was looking out the back door into the clearing where I guess Mother was somewhere in the pines, which were large enough now to compare with any in the hills.

  "Sit down. Here by the table. Mother's back there." She pushed a chair out for me with her foot. "Well, how was work today?"

  "Okay, Aunt Mae."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing. Things were just slow. Nobody came in hardly, excepting some old lady who always does and asks for things half-price."

  She looked at me for a while, and that was why I didn't feel like going and talking with her. I looked the other way so I wouldn't see her eyes.

  "I got something to tell you, Dave."

  I saw her hand go across the table to some paper I never noticed before. It was a letter, or it must have been, because it was in an envelope.

  "I got a letter from Clyde today that I'm going to read to you."

  I didn't say anything, and she handed it to me.

  "Here, you read it for yourself, hon."

  I opened the envelope and took out the letter. It was printed in red pencil on old tan line paper like I used to use in grade school with Mrs. Watkins.

  Dear Mae,

  I have got good news for us. Bill here says he will use us on his radio show. If he likes us. I think he will Mae. You don't have to hurry here. You got a week to make it. I have a nice room here. Bill says maybe we can make records to. Theres a lot of money in them. I know. You will like Nashville. You said you have never been here. They got all kinds of radio shows. Write me a letter love and say when you will get here. This is a big chance.

  With Love,

  Clyde

  After I finished it, I read it again. It still said the same thing, and it sounded crazy to me. I looked at Aunt Mae, but she wasn't sitting at the table. She was washing some dishes over at the sink. After a while she turned around.

  "Well, hon, what do you think about it?"

  "I don't know, Aunt Mae. What does it mean?"

  "Clyde thinks he can get us a good job, a permanent one, in Nashville on the radio or records."

  Nashville. That sounded strange to me. Aunt Mae in Nashville.

  "What about me and Mother?"

  "That's it, hon. That's what I'm afraid about, but if we get a job, I can send for you two. This man Bill told Clyde it wouldn't be long before he could get us something. Don't you see? I can make a lot of money."

  The whole thing sounded funny to me. Aunt Mae in Nashville with Clyde. She didn't know how long she was going to be. And Mother. What would I do with her? I was scared of her even with Aunt Mae around. And what would we eat? I still didn't say anything to Aunt Mae, though.

  "Look, hon, I'm taking the bus out of here the day after tomorrow. And don't worry. It won't be long before you and Mother get a train ticket from me, you hear?"

  All at once the whole thing hit me the way it should have at first. She was really planning to leave me with Mother.
My mind got all filled again, and I looked up at Aunt Mae.

  "But what am I going to do with Mother? I work all day, and she's up here, and what are we going to eat? If I was. . ."

  "There's nothing to worry about, hon, really. I been with her all day. She just sits in your poppa's old cabbage patch or somewhere around the house. She isn't trouble. I know you can leave her here all day and she won't get in trouble."

  I tried to think about what Aunt Mae was saying, but I couldn't. I just knew she really meant she was going. If I knew about it a week before or something, maybe I could think about what to do around the house while she was gone, but this was all of a sudden. I was really going to be left in the house with Mother to do everything for her. Aunt Mae in Nashville and Poppa in Italy and me here with Mother. It all ran together in my mind so fast I couldn't stop any of it long enough to think on it. I just looked down at the oilcloth. It was the same oilcloth on the table for as long as we lived in the house, but the shiny top part was wearing away in little creases and lines all over it, and the stiff cloth underneath was showing. I ran my fingers over the little cloth parts and let the rough rub on my skin. It felt so different from the slippery oilcloth.

  "Look, hon. Maybe I shouldn't do this, but I never had a chance like it before, even when I was young. I can get on the radio and records. Are you listening, Dave? It don't seem like you hear anything I'm saying. Look. Quit your job at the store. Then you can stay here all day with Mother, you hear? In a week, or maybe two, you'll get the tickets to Nashville from me. And Dave, when you get to Nashville, maybe you can go back to school at one of the good ones they have there. Cities have good schools, Dave, and I'll be getting enough money for you to quit this work and finish your education. Now, tell Mr. Williams tomorrow that you want to quit."

  I wanted to ask Aunt Mae a lot of things, but I didn't. I wanted to know what I was going to eat, and Mother too, with her gone off. And in Nashville with Clyde. I knew Clyde was old, but then I didn't know about him either. When I saw him with her, he didn't act old, and that was all else I knew. Quitting the job with Mr. Williams was something I didn't want to do. If I went and quit, I lost just about the best job I could get anywhere. And Mr. Williams would think I didn't appreciate what he did for me just giving me the job.

  Aunt Mae passed by my chair and kissed me on top of my head. I didn't do anything but just kept looking out the back door to where Mother was somewhere in the pines. It was beginning to get dark, and she usually came in then. Pretty soon I saw her coming under the light green needles in the dimness with her skirt held up like a basket to hold some cones she must have picked up under the trees. I looked at her nearing the back steps and tried to think of living alone with her, even if it was for just two weeks. That funny tingling ran up the inside of my legs from my heels, and I just sat there and kept rubbing my finger over the worn-off places on the oilcloth.

  Aunt Mae reached up and turned on the light when Mother came in. She went and closed the old screen because Mother's hands were holding in the cones. Mother came over to the table and dumped the cones out in a pile in the middle of the oilcloth. Her hands were all full of clay from pulling the cones out the ground, and leaves were stuck all in her skirt.

  "There," she said.

  I looked up at her, and she looked at me and smiled. I smiled back, but I was surprised at the way she looked. She looked like she got older during the day, even from when I saw her in the morning. I knew she was still looking at me, so I looked out the back door at the dark setting in between the pines, but I was thinking about how Mother looked with her face all like leather the way they stretched it to make drums, and her hair like white wire. I thought about her eyes with that funny look, and then I thought of when she was pretty and soft and I used to kiss her and hold on to her, but now I was afraid of her and didn't want to get near her.

  Aunt Mae made a sign to me to leave the kitchen so Mother could eat.

  The next day I went down to the store and told Mr. Williams I had to quit. He thought I was trying to make fun at first. Then I told him I really meant it, that I had to because Aunt Mae was leaving me with Mother for a while. He looked at me with that sad kind of look like Aunt Mae's, and I wished he would stop and let me go. He went over to the cash register and got out some money and put it in an envelope and gave it to me. I didn't know what to say, and I guess he didn't know either, so I left, but I did thank him, and I was glad. Then, on my way back up the hill, I thought maybe it was wrong to take the money from him. But I didn't go back.

  The day after that was the day Aunt Mae was leaving. She didn't have enough money to take the train, so she was going on the bus. I watched her pack up in her room and helped her close the top of the old suitcase she owned. I was careful not to bend her scrapbook, which was right on top of her clothes, when I finally got the lock to snap. She put on her hat, the same one she wore the day she came to live with us, and she didn't even think about it, but I did.

  When she was ready to leave, we looked for Mother, but she wasn't anywhere around. I guessed she was in the back, but we didn't have time to find her. The bus came through in thirty minutes.

  I picked up Aunt Mae's suitcase and looked at the stickers from New Orleans and Biloxi and Mobile while she got the hatpin through her hair. The wind was getting cold as we got on the porch, so I closed the front door behind us. As we walked down the path, Aunt Mae talked about what I was to do about food, and where to find the cans in the kitchen and the pan to fry eggs, and when she would write about the tickets, but I didn't listen to everything she said. I was thinking about the way we used to walk together when I was a little boy. Aunt Mae wore the same big hat then, but it looked a lot newer and brighter, and I never saw many big hats like that anymore. But Aunt Mae looked about the same, except she had clothes like anybody in the valley now, and not the different things she wore at first. It was when I was thinking that that I thought of how old Aunt Mae really was. I guess I never thought much about her age because she was so healthy the way she did everything. But Aunt Mae was really old, I thought all of a sudden, and I looked down at her hair. It was as yellow as always. And I felt sorry for her. I don't know why I did. Maybe it was thinking about her having to go all the way to Nashville and being with Clyde.

  Fall was really all over the hills. The pines lashed each other in the wind up high, but down near the ground it was sort of still, and yet it was windy too, but not as windy as up high where the pines ended. Some leaves from the bushes that grew in the open blew around our feet and ran down the path in front of us to town. I wished I had a coat with me because my arms were beginning to get bumpy like they always did when it was cold. Aunt Mae didn't have a coat either, and I knew it was going to be even colder in Nashville, but when I told her she said we didn't have time to go back to the house to get one.

  We got down into town under the bright blue sky. The leaves that had followed us down the hill joined some others in the streets and blew along in the gutters and up through yards and onto the windows of moving cars, where they stayed just like they were pasted until the car stopped moving. The bus stopped in front of the barbershop, so we got down to where it was on Main and waited by the curb. Aunt Mae's suitcase was heavy, and I was glad to put it down.

  Aunt Mae looked down the street to see if the bus was coming, and when she turned around, I saw her eyes were wet along the bottom.

  "It's the cold breeze, hon. Always makes my eyes water."

  We waited there for what seemed a whole hour before the bus came. Then I heard it roaring somewhere far away, and I went out into the street to make a sign at the driver when he got near. It stopped about a block away. I picked up the suitcase, and we both ran to where the driver was opening the door. Aunt Mae got up on the first step and then got down again and kissed me, and I kissed her. I wanted to tell her not to go, but I handed her the suitcase, and the door closed. Somewhere in the dark inside I saw her waving at me. I waved back and smiled. Then the engine started and
it pulled away. The bad smell of a bus got in my nose, so I stepped back on the sidewalk and watched it till it was gone around the far hill, and that was the last time I saw Aunt Mae.

  Nine

  It was getting dark when I got back to the house. All the way up the path I thought of how long it would be until I got the tickets from Aunt Mae and what we would do until they came. The wind was really up strong now. It was cold too, and when I got near the house I began to run. I closed my eyes because I knew the path by heart and didn't open them again until I felt the cinders crunching under my feet.

  When I got into the house I closed all the windows because the wind was blowing through every room like it was the outdoors. I lit the old stove in the kitchen and opened a can of corn and put it in a pot. Then I wondered where Mother was. I opened the back door and called out into the wind, but then I remembered she never answered a call from somebody, and anyway, she always came inside when it was dark. The dark scared her.

  She was probably upstairs, so I didn't think about it. When the corn was hot, I poured it in a plate and put some butter on it and got some bread and ate. The wind whistled around the corner of the kitchen, and I heard the pines in Poppa's clearing slapping each other with that sort of swishing sound they made. I could see the hill in the morning with needles and small branches everywhere and leaves from the bushes pressed up against everything. The cinders would be all covered with green things from all over, and the little animals would be acting wild. The wind always made them that way.

  When I finished, I put the plate in the sink with all the other dishes. I looked at all the greasy plates and glasses, and I thought of how I was going to have to wash them all and wished Aunt Mae didn't take too long to write about the tickets. Then I stood there and thought how she just went off and didn't think about me taking Mother on a train, and I thought of leaving the valley. I was going to leave the valley for the first time, but Aunt Mae never told me anything about what to do about the things we had in the house, and there were a lot of other things you had to do before you could just pick up and move, and I didn't know where to write her a letter about what I was supposed to do. I looked up at the old greasy bulb on the cord. It never seemed to burn out, but it was the one we used all the time. I never remembered seeing anybody change it. And I thought that I was really alone with Mother like that bulb hanging from a cord it couldn't get off of.