“Singleton was only the instrument,” Calhoun said. “Partridge itself is guilty.” He finished his drink in a gulp and put down the glass.
The boy was looking at him as if he were mad. “Patridge can’t shoot nobody,” he said in a high exasperated voice.
Calhoun put his dime on the counter and left. The last car had turned at the end of the block. He thought he observed less activity. People had obviously hastened away at the sight of the hearse. Two doors from him an old man leaned out of a hardware store and glared up the street where the procession had disappeared. Calhoun’s need to communicate was urgent. He approached diffidently. “I understand that was the last funeral,” he said.
The old man put a hand behind his ear.
“The funeral of the innocent man,” Calhoun shouted and nodded up the street.
The old man cleared his nostrils loudly. His expression was not affable. “The only bullet that went right,” he said in a rasping voice. “Biller was a wastrel. Drunk at the time.”
The boy scowled. “I suppose the other five were heroes?” he suggested archly.
“Fine men,” the old man said. “Perished in the line of duty. We givem a hero’s fu’nel—all five in one big service. Biller’s folks tried to rush up the undertaker so they could get Biller in on it but we saw to it Biller didn’t make it. Would have been a disgrace.”
My God, the boy thought.
“The only thing Singleton ever did good was to rid us of Biller,” the old man continued. “Now somebody ought to rid us of Singleton. There he is at Quincy, living in the laper luxury, laying in a cool bed at no expense, eating up your taxes and mine. They should have shot him on the spot.”
This was so appalling that Calhoun was speechless.
“Going to keep him there, they ought to charge him board,” the old man said.
With a contemptuous glance, the boy walked off. He crossed the street to the courthouse square, moving at an odd angle in order to put as much distance between himself and the old fool as quickly as possible. Here benches were scattered beneath the trees. He found an unoccupied one and sat down. To the side of the courthouse steps, several viewers stood admiring the “jail” where Singleton had been locked with the goat. The pathos of his friend’s situation was borne in on him with a rush of empathy. He felt himself flung in the privy, the padlock clicked, he glared between the rotting planks at the fools howling and cavorting outside. The goat made an obscene noise; he saw that he was confined with the spirit of the community.
“Six men was shot here,” an odd muffled voice close by said.
The boy jumped.
A small white girl whose tongue was curled in the mouth of a Coca-Cola bottle was sitting in a patch of sand at his feet, watching him with a detached gaze. Her eyes were the same green as the bottle. She was barefooted and had straight white hair. She withdrew her tongue from the bottle with an explosive sound. “A bad man did it,” she said.
The boy felt the kind of frustration that accompanies contact with the certainty of children. “No,” he said, “he was not a bad man.”
The child put her tongue back in the bottle and withdrew it silently, her eyes on him.
“People were not good to him,” he explained. “They were mean to him. They were cruel. What would you do if someone were cruel to you?”
“Shoot them,” she said.
“Well, that’s what he did,” Calhoun said, frowning.
She continued to sit there and did not take her eyes off him. Her gaze might have been the depthless gaze of Partridge itself.
“You people persecuted him and finally drove him mad,” the boy said. “He wouldn’t buy a badge. Was that a crime? He was the Outsider here and you couldn’t stand that. One of the fundamental rights of man,” he said, glaring through the child’s transparent stare, “is the right not to behave like a fool. The right to be different,” he said hoarsely, “My God. The right to be yourself.”
Without taking her eyes off him, she lifted one of her feet and set it on her knee.
“He was a bad bad bad man,” she said.
Calhoun got up and walked off, glaring In front of him. His indignation swathed his vision in a kind of haze. He saw none of the activity around him distinctly. Two high school girls in bright skirts and jackets swung into his path and shrilled, “Buy a ticket for the beauty contest tonight. See who’ll be Miss Partridge Azalea!” He swerved sharply to the side and did not throw them so much as a glance. Their giggles followed him until he was past the courthouse and onto the block behind it. He stood there a moment, undecided what he would do next. He faced a barber shop which looked empty and cool. After a moment he entered it.
The barber, alone in the shop, raised his head from behind the paper he was reading. Calhoun asked for a haircut and sat down gratefully in the chair. The barber was a tall emaciated fellow with eyes that might have faded from some deeper color. He looked to be a man who had suffered himself. He put the bib on the boy and stood staring at his round head as if it were a pumpkin he was wondering how to slice. Then he twirled the chair so that Calhoun faced the mirror. He was confronted with an image that was round-faced, unremarkablelooking and innocent. The boy’s expression turned fierce. “Are you eating up this slop like the rest of them?” he asked belligerently.
“Come again?” the barber said.
“Do the tribal rites going on here improve the barber trade? All these doings, all these doings,” he said impatiently.
“Well,” the barber said, “last year it was a thousand extra people here and this year it looks to be more—on account,” he said, “of the tragedy.”
“The tragedy,” the boy repeated and stretched his mouth.
“The six that was shot,” the barber said.
“That tragedy,” the boy said. “And what about the other tragedy—the man who was persecuted by these idiots until he shot six of them?”
“Oh him,” the barber said.
“Singleton,” the boy said. “Did he patronize your place?”
The barber began clipping his hair. A peculiar expression of disdain had come over his face at the mention of the name. “Tonight it’s a beauty contest,” he said, “tomorrow night it’s a band concert, Thursday afternoon it’s a big parade with Miss…”
“Did you or didn’t you know Singleton?” Calhoun interrupted.
“Known him well,” the barber said and shut his mouth.
A tremor went through the boy as he realized that Singleton had probably sat in the chair he himself was now sitting in. He searched his face in the mirror desperately for its hidden likeness to the man. Slowly he saw it appear, a secret message brought to light by the heat of his feelings. “Did he patronize your shop?” he asked and held his breath for the answer.
“Him and me was related by marriage,” the barber said indignantly, “but he never come in here. He was too big a skinflint to have his hair cut. He cut his own.”
“An unpardonable crime,” Calhoun said in a high voice.
“His second cousin married my sister-in-law,” the barber said, “but he never known me on the street. Pass him as close as I am to you and he’d keep going. Kept his eye on the ground all the time like he was following a bug.”
“Preoccupied,” the boy muttered. “He doubtless didn’t know you were on the street.”
“He known it,” the barber said and his mouth curled unpleasantly. “He known it. I clip hair and he clipped coupons and that was that. I clip hair,” he repeated as if this sentence had a particularly satisfying ring to his ears, “and he clipped coupons.”
The typical have-not psychology, Calhoun thought. “Was the Singleton family once wealthy?” he asked.
“It wasn’t but half of him Singleton,” the barber said, “and the Singleton’s claimed there wasn’t none of him Singleton. One of the Singleton girls gone off on a nine-months vacation and come back with him. Then they all died off and left him their money. It’s no telling what the other half of him is. Somethi
ng foreign I would judge.” His tone insinuated more.
“I begin to get the picture,” Calhoun said.
“He ain’t clipping no coupons now,” said the barber.
“No,” Calhoun said and his voice rose, “now he’s suffering. He’s the scapegoat. He’s laden with the sins of the community. Sacrificed for the guilt of others.”
The barber paused, his mouth partway open. After a moment he said in a more respectful voice, “Reverend, you got him wrong. He wasn’t a church-going man.”
The boy reddened. “I’m not a church-going man myself,” he said.
The barber seemed stopped again. He stood holding the scissors uncertainly.
“He was an individualist,” Calhoun said. “A man who would not allow himself to be pressed into the mold of his inferiors. A non-conformist. He was a man of depth living among caricatures and they finally drove him mad, unleashed all his violence on themselves. Observe,” he continued, “that they didn’t try him. They simply had him committed at once to Quincy. Why? Because,” he said, “a trial would have brought out his essential innocence and the real guilt of the community.”
The barber’s face lightened. “You’re a lawyer, ain’t you?” he asked.
“No,” the boy said sullenly. “I’m a writer.”
“Ohhh,” the barber murmured. “I known it must be something like that.” After a moment he said, “What you written?”
“He never married?” Calhoun went on rudely. “He lived alone in the Singleton place in the country?”
“What there was of it,” the barber said. “He wouldn’t have spent a nickel to keep it from falling down and no woman wouldn’t have had him. That was the one thing he always had to pay for,” he said and made a vulgar noise in his cheek.
“You know because you were always there,” the boy said, barely able to control his disgust for this bigot.
“Naw,” the barber said, “it was just common knowledge. I clip hair,” he said, “but I don’t live like a hog. I got plumbing in my house and a refrigerator that spits ice cube’s into my wife’s hand.”
“He was not a materialist,” Calhoun said. “There were things that meant more to him than plumbing. Independence, for instance.”
“Ha,” the barber snorted. “He wasn’t so independent. Once lightning almost struck him and those that saw it said you should have seen him run. Took off like bees were swarming in his pants. They liked to died laughing,” and he gave a hyena-like laugh himself and slapped his knee.
“Loathsome,” the boy murmured.
“Another time,” the barber continued, “somebody went out there and put a dead cat in his well. Somebody was always doing something to see if they could make him turn loose a little money. Another time…”
Calhoun began fighting his way out of the bib as if it were a net he was caught in. When he was free of it, hŤ thrust his hand in his pocket and brought out a dollar which he flung on the startled barber’s shelf. Then he made for the door, letting it slam behind him in judgment on the place.
The walk back to his aunts’ did not calm him. The colors of the azaleas had deepened with the approach of sundown and the trees rustled protectively over the old houses. No one here had a thought for Singleton, who lay on a cot in a filthy ward at Quincy. The boy felt now in a concrete way the force of his innocence, and he thought that to do justice to all the man had suffered, he would have to write more than a simple article. He would have to write a novel; he would have to show, not say, how primary injustice operated. Preoccupied with this, he went four doors past his aunts’ house and had to turn and go back.
His Aunt Bessie met him at the door and drew him into the hall. “Told you we’d have a sweet surprise [or you!” she said, pulling him by the arm into the parlor.
On the sofa sat a rangy-looking girl in a lime-green dress. “You remember Mary Elizabeth,” his Aunt Mattie said, “—the cute little trick you took to the picture show once when you were here.” Through his rage he recognized the girl who had been reading under the tree. “Mary Elizabeth is home for the spring holidays,” his Aunt Mattie said. “Mary Elizabeth is a real scholar, aren’t you, Mary Elizabeth?”
Mary Elizabeth scowled, indicating she was, indifferent to whether she was a real scholar or not. She gave him a Iook which told him plainly she expected to enjoy this no more than he did.
His Aunt Mattie gripped the knob of her cane and began to lift herself from her chair. “We’re going to have supper early,” the other one said, “because Mary Elizabeth is going to take you to the beauty contest and it begins at seven.”
“Great,” the boy said in a tone that would be lost on them but he hoped not on Mary Elizabeth.
Throughout the meal he ignored the girl completely. His repartee with his aunts was markedly cynical but they did not have sense enough to understand his allusions and laughee like idiots at everything he said. Twice they called him “Babyboy” and the girl smirked. Otherwise she did nothing to suggest she was enjoying herself. Her round face was still childish behind her glasses. Retarded, Calhoun thought.
When the meal was over and they were on the way to the beauty contest, they continued to say nothing to each other. The girl, who was several inches taller than he, walked slight]y n advance of him as if she would like to lose him on the way, but after two blocks she stopped abruptly and began to rummage in a huge grass bag she carried. She took out a pencil and held it between her teeth while she continued to rummage. After a minute she brought up from the bottom of the bag two tickets and a stenographer’s note pad. With these out, she closed the pocketbook and walked on.
“Are you going to take notes;” Calhoun inquired in a tone heavy with irony.
The girl looked around as if trying to identify the speaker. “Yes,” she said, “I’m going to take notes.”
“You appreciate this sort of thing?” Calhoun asked in the same tone. “You enjoy it?”
“It makes me vomit,” she said, “I’m going to finish it off with one swift literary kick.”
The boy looked at her blankly.
“Don’t let me interfere with your pleasure in it,” she said, “but this whole place is false and rotten to the core.” Her voice came with a hiss of indignation. “They prostitute azaleas!”
Calhoun was astounded. After a moment he recovered himself. “It takes no great mind to come to that conclusion,” he said haughtily. “What requires insight is finding a way to transcend it.”
“You mean a form to express it in.”
“It comes to the same thing,” he said.
They walked the next two blocks in silence but both appeared shaken. When the courthouse was in view they crossed the street to it and Mary Elizabeth stuck the tickets at a boy who stood beside an entrance that had been formed by roping in the rest of the square. People were beginning to assemble on the grass inside.
“And do we stand here while you take notes?” Calhoun asked.
The girl stopped and faced him. “Look, Baby Lamb,” she said, “you can do what you please. I’m going up to my father’s office in the building where I can work. You can stay down here and help select Miss Partridge Azalea if you want to.”
“I shall come,” he said, controlling himself, “I’d like to observe a great female writer taking notes.”
“Suit yourself,” she said.
He followed her up the courthouse steps and through a side door. His irritation was so extreme that he did not realize he had passed through the very door where Singleton had stood to shoot. They walked through an empty barnlike hall and silently up a flight of tobacco-stained steps into another barn like hall. Mary Elizabeth rooted in the grass bag for a key and then unlocked the door to her father’s office. They entered a large threadbare room lined with lawbooks. As if he were an incompetent, the girl dragged two straight chairs from one wall to a window that overlooked the porch. Then she sat down and stared out, apparently absorbed at once in the scene below.
Calhoun sat down in the other
chair. To annoy her he began to look her over thoroughly. For what seemed at least five minutes, he did not take his eyes off her as she leaned with her elbows in the window. He stared at her so long that he was afraid her image would be etched forever on his retina. Finally he could stand the silence no longer. “What is your opinion of Singleton?” he asked abruptly.
She raised her head and appeared to look through him. “A Christ-figure,” she said.
The boy was stunned.
“I mean as myth,” she said scowling. “I’m not a Christian.” She returned her attention to the scene outside. Below a bugle sounded. “Sixteen girls in bathing suits are about to appear,” she drawled. “Surely this will be of interest to you?”
“Listen,” Calhoun said fiercely, “get this through your head. I’m not interested in the damn festival or the damn azalea queen. I’m here only because of my sympathy for Singleton. I’m going to write about him. Possibly a novel.”
“I intend to write a non-fiction study,” the girl said in a tone that made it evident fiction was beneath her.
They looked at each other with open and intense dislike. Calhoun felt that if he probed sufficiently he would expose her essential shallowness. “Since our forms are different,” he said, again with his ironical smile, “we might compare findings.”
“It’s quite simple,” the girl said. “He was the scapegoat. While Partridge flings itself about selecting Miss Partridge Azalea, Singleton suffers at Quincy. He expiates…”
“I don’t mean your abstract findings,” the boy said. “I mean your concrete findings. Have you ever seen him? What did he look like? The novelist is not interested in narrow abstractions—particularly when they’re obvious. He’s…”
“How many novels have you written?” she asked.
“This will be my first,” he said coldly. “Have you ever seen him?”
“No,” she said, “that isn’t necessary for me. What he looks like makes no difference—whether he has brown eyes or blue—that’s nothing to a thinker.”
“You are probably,” he said, “afraid to look at him. The novelist is never afraid to look at the real object.”
The Complete Stories Page 48