“You don’t suppose he’s sick,” she said. “You don’t think that, do you?”
“Who—Carlie? Our Carlie?”
“But he cries so pitiful—listen, you can hear him. Is that the cry of a well child?”
“Most likely he wants a glass of water.”
“Then I must bring him one.”
She walked into the kitchen where the floor was pocked black from the rubber tips of her canes. She drew a glass of water from the chipped enamel sink.
“Randolph!” she called.
The old man came in.
“You’ll have to help me.”
He took the glass and walked behind her as she limped on the canes. Through the living room piled high with black mahogany pieces they went, past the corroded face of the grandfather clock, past the tapestries of Venice and Pisa.
“Listen,” she said, moving her head to the door.
“Don’t hear nothing. He’s asleep by this time. Maybe just tossing in his sleep was all.”
“No; listen.”
The house was filled with quiet, the quiet that comes when the boards are too old to squeak, when the clocks have all stopped ticking, when the air is clear and still outside.
“I hear him,” the old woman said, turning to look at her husband.
He nodded.
They opened the door slowly and went into the room.
“Carlie?” the old woman said, stretching out her arm. “Carlie child, don’t you feel well?”
The room glowed soft in the April moonlight, the cool silver light that came in through the open window. It took out shadows and left everything dim, as if seen from a great distance.
“Carlie, you don’t want to talk to Mother?”
“He’s asleep, Agnes. Don’t wake him up.”
“He is not asleep. He just won’t talk.”
The old woman came forward and sat on the edge of the bed. The pain made her sigh.
“Now then,” she said. “Would you like a nice glass of water? See—Daddy has it already. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
A sudden silent wind came up, not a big one, but it rustled the gaily tinted curtains and scattered the moonlight in the room.
“Daddy, give our little boy some water.”
The old man set the glass on the nightstand. His hand shook so that some of the water spilled out onto the painted elephant.
There were many elephants in the room: red ones, yellow ones, purple ones; and orange-and-black-striped tigers tracked the elephants along the walls. Books made out of linen instead of paper and showing pictures of hens and rabbits and monkeys lay on the floor.
There were also toys on the floor. Wooden Easter eggs, hand-painted; little boats with candles inside them; a red horse that didn’t look like a horse; and dolls—there were many dolls. Mostly of cloth stuffed with cotton. Raggedy Ann was there. And Humpty-Dumpty. And The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. Punch lay on the window sill, his head split at the seams and the stained cotton trailing down over his sewn smile.
On the far wall was a single picture, night-darkened, indistinct, framed in heavy gold.
“See—he’s gone back to sleep,” the man said.
“Quiet! Randolph, don’t beller so!” The woman bent down and moved her hand slowly. “Well, he doesn’t have a fever. We can be thankful for that.”
“Let’s leave him alone. Let’s let him sleep.”
“All right,” the woman said, rising carefully so that the bed-springs would not creak. “But if he wakes again, I’m going to call a doctor.”
The man merely stared, a weak tired stare.
They went out of the room. It became quiet again.
Quiet, and as empty as before.
He ran across the drenched field, stumbling and falling, picking himself up from the mud, running on.
A young man wearing strapped overalls and a colorless shirt, sleeves rolled up over the gray underwear. Tall, unhandsome: the nose was too large; it had been broken so that now it mashed against his face. Eyes small, set well apart, but small and gray. Mouth twisted, thin-lipped. And hair like a Zulu native’s, black and kinky; though the young man’s skin beneath the week-old beard was fair, fish-belly pale and smooth.
He ran.
When he came to a silo, he fell beside it and lay gasping, forcing the air into his lungs. He lay there until his breathing became regular. Then he squatted and sat without moving.
There was the smell of wet hay in the air. From inside the long field, deep inside where they could not be seen, small creatures put heavy music out over the night-still land: over the young forests, the useless rivulets now white in the moon’s brightness, over the dark quiet silos and silent corrals and sleeping farmhouses.
But there was another sound, and the young man stiffened when he heard it.
The sound of dogs—far away, but getting closer. Yelping dogs and heavy boots tramping through the mire, and men’s voices.
The young man pulled himself up and began to run again.
He stopped many times to listen.
His shoes clattered over a rotted bridge and the noise made him yell and the yelling snapped something because he kept on yelling long after he had passed the bridge. But that took even more of his breath. So he stopped yelling.
He fell and rolled on the ground and looked for a place to hide. There was no place. No place they wouldn’t look.
He went on.
When he came to a tiny dirt road marked by a mailbox and a sign that you could no longer read, he halted. No light was on in the house up this road.
The young man began to laugh, and as suddenly stopped. His hands went about his face, as if to cover it, as he weaved up the road and fell against the door.
He tried to say something, but each time the words caught short.
“Open,” he said, finally. “It’s me. It’s Carlie.”
The man in the house stared. He wore a nightshirt and a cap. He peered into the darkness through the crack he’d made in the door.
“Quiet,” he said. “Who is it?”
Then the door was forced, and the young man came in and slammed it closed again.
“Go away,” the old man said, looking over his shoulder toward the hallway. “Get on out of here. She’ll hear you!”
“I don’t care,” the young man said. He was leaning against a wall, his face on his arm. “Let her find out. I don’t care.”
The old man transferred the flashlight to his left hand. With his right hand he struck the back of the boy’s neck.
The boy sank to the floor. “Pa, Jesus Christ. Don’t do that, Pa.”
The old man walked to the hall and pulled the door to. Then he walked back slowly, hesitating by the young man, walked to the window and pulled down the shade.
“What’d you do?” he said.
The boy shook his head.
“They don’t chase a man who never did nothing to cause trouble. What’d you do?”
The boy rubbed the knees of his overalls with his hands. “God, I didn’t even know such a girl,” he said.
The old man sat down.
“Told you I don’t know. They found a girl out in the fields, dead. Now, you got to believe me—”
“Why do I got to?”
The boy ran a hand through his kinky hair. “Look—it was Joey. I’ll tell you the truth now, Pa. It was Joey Neisen. I didn’t want nothing to do with it, but Joey’s older than me and he made me drink all that beer— Will you back me up? Please, will you say I was home all night, here, with you?”
“No,” the old man said.
“Come on, Pa. They’re out there looking for me. Please say that. Please tell them. If you do, I swear to God I’ll straighten out. Help you. I will.” He paused. “You know what they’ll do? They’ll hang me.”
The old man said nothing. He stared ahead.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, Pa—you know that. I ain’t mean, like some of them. Honest. Don’t let them put a rope around my neck, please, God, Pa.”
The dogs were close. They were coming.
“If you wake up your ma,” the old man said, slowly, “I’ll kill you before they get a chance to.”
The young man walked to the door, listened, then walked in a perfect circle, moving his lips. He said, calmly: “It was the Withers girl, Pa. Now, you know her. Flirts with everything in pants. She always had a hankering for me—you know that. Well, sir, she got me drunk and pretty soon we were out in the field. Then she played the high lady. After we got to the field, do you see? What would you do? You’d get hopping mad, just like I did. So mad you couldn’t see. So mad you wouldn’t know what you was doing.” He breathed hard and fast. “I guess—maybe—I hit her or something. Next thing I knew I was running. She was bellering.”
The old man was a quiet clay statue.
“Pa? Can’t you hear them?”
The old man nodded.
“You going to let them take me, without moving your little finger?”
The young man suddenly straightened. His face became red. He vaulted across the room and gathered the old man’s nightshirt in his hands. “Well, let me tell you, you just listen. I don’t aim to get hung just on account of some cheap little no-account whore. You just better tell them fellas I was home. You know what I’m talking about? You better tell them.”
“What would you do, son?” the old man said.
“I’d—just listen to that ‘son’ talk. Don’t it sound pretty, though.” The boy released his grip, coughed violently.
The old man dropped his flashlight, after a long moment. He looked confused. “Why did you leave us, Carlie?” he said.
“Why?” The boy laughed. “You crazy? Should I of stayed around here when she wouldn’t even look at me? Wouldn’t even touch me or talk to me, like I didn’t exist on earth—my own ma? You tell me—you tell me why. What’d I do to make her take on like that, hate me so?”
The old man shrugged. “You—growed up, boy.”
“They something sinful in that? What’d she expect me to do, stay a baby my whole life?”
“Your ma was a sick woman. I tried to tell you that! Does things to you to lose four young’uns—I don’t know. How would I know? I ain’t a woman. It was just like as if she wasn’t going to lose you any way, any way at all.”
“You think that was right? Fair?”
The old man bristled. “She’s a sick woman. Sick—can’t you get that through your brain!”
The boy smiled. “That why you treated me thataway, too? Like you wished I’d go on and get, sooner the better? And now you want to know why I left you. Pa, that’s a honest-to-God laugh. That’s a genuine laugh.”
The dogs’ howls pierced the air.
“They got to quit that,” the old man murmured. “It’ll wake Agnes. She got all upset tonight. Heard you crying.”
“Stop it! Pa, you’re going as crazy as her! Look—” The boy reached under his shirt and took out a Colt .45 pistol. He held it in front of him. “You tell them fellas I was here all evening with you.”
“I’ll tell them,” the old man said. The confusion was mostly in his eyes, like excited bugs of light. His mouth was slightly open.
Neither the old man nor his son was aware of the presence of the woman until she spoke.
“Who you going to tell what, Randolph?”
She stood in the hallway, the doorknob in her hand. “Who’s this?” she said.
The old man looked at her, then at the boy.
“Who are you, young Mister?” she said, coming forward on her canes. The yelps issued from the direction of the farthest cowshed now.
The boy’s mouth twitched.
“Carlie!” he screamed. “Carlie, Carlie, Carlie. Are you all blind?”
The old woman looked suspiciously at her husband.
The dogs were on the porch now, their claws scratching furiously at the wood.
There was a polite knock at the door.
“Tell her what to say, Pa,” the young man whispered. “Go on, tell her.” He gestured with the gun.
The old man tried to speak. His mouth moved.
“Yes, who is it?” the old woman called. “Who’s there? Please be quiet,” she said, “or you’ll wake my baby.”
“It’s Joe Barton,” the voice answered. “Like to come in, if I can. Important.”
“Ma!”
The knocks got louder and quicker, and the dogs thrashed and scratched and whined.
The young man took the old woman by the shoulders. He shook her; gently, though, not hard. “Look at me! Hey. Hey, Ma.”
“Randolph, go see who’s at the door. They’re making so much noise. Randolph—”
The young man looked into cool green eyes, eyes that seemed to pass through him; then he threw his head back and yelled, one time.
The doorknob began to twirl, turned and rattled from the outside.
“Mr. Phillips! We know the boy’s there. Why don’t you—”
The young man pointed his gun at the door and pulled the trigger.
A big jagged hole appeared in the wood and there was a shout on the other side, a shout of pain, and the sound of something heavy dropping.
“Randolph, tell them to be quiet. Can’t you hear them? What are they doing to make so much noise?”
The young man ran out of the living room, through the hallway. As he did so, the front door was pushed suddenly inward.
Faces appeared at the windows.
The young man stopped in the hall. Then he chose a door, opened it quickly and stepped inside.
The room was dark and quiet.
There were toys on the floor, pictures on the walls. And also on the wall, an oval portrait in a square gilt frame. A portrait of a woman holding a small child. The child was smiling; so was the woman. She wore a dark dress—it had been tinted blue with oils in the picture—and her hair hung in tubular curls. The child was dressed in a playsuit: it had a colored stipple effect, retouched so that the short pants and shirt seemed one. The child wore a little round cap, carefully cocked to one side to permit the dark kinky twists of his hair to show.
The young man in the room looked at the portrait. His hand, the one that did not hold the gun, reached out and gripped the edge of the frame harshly.
Then the hand dropped.
There were loud voices in the house now.
He aimed the gun at the picture and fired. Smoke curled from a wide slash in the portrait. He fired again, and again, until the faces were completely obliterated.
Then he hurled the emptied pistol at the door.
A woman’s voice rose above the others: “Let me go in. Let me see to him. I know my Carlie.”
And the voices turned into a soft mumble.
The young man looked out the window and pulled his head back sharply. Three men stood outside.
He struck something with his foot. It was a book. A large book. The light from the moon was strong and the words could be read, the words on the very first page.
This book belongs to Carlie Lee Phillips.
He held the book. Went to a corner, holding the book.
The door opened, flooding light.
A woman stood in the doorway, balanced on canes.
There were men behind the woman.
They had guns.
“Carlie,” the woman said.
The young man in the corner stood up, questioningly.
“Carlie,” she said, and walked into the room.
“Be careful . . .”
The young man stared.
“What’s she doing?” a voice came. “Where’s she going?”
The woman walked to the bed, kept her eyes on the bed. She sat down. “Carlie,” she said. “Are you upset? Is there anything Mother can do?”
The men watched the woman on the bed, watched her make stroking motions in the empty air with her hand, watched the expression on her face.
T
hen they came into the room.
They stepped over the books and the boats and the elephants, past the red horse and the doll with the bleeding head.
They went to the young man and led him outside and took him away from the house.
The Murderers
The pale young man in the bright red vest leaned back, sucked reflectively at a Russian candy pellet—the kind with real Jamaican rum inside—and said, yawning: “Let’s kill somebody tonight.”
“Herbie, please!” the other man said. He re-adjusted his fingers on the strings of the large guitar and plucked out a few loose chords.
“Come listen, all you boys ’n girls,” he sang,
“I’se jest from Tuckyhoe;
I’m gwine’a sing a little song:
My name’s Jim Crow.
Weel about ’n turn about and do jes’ so,
Ebry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.
Ohhh, arter I been—”
“Stop!” Herbert Foss put his hands to his ears. “You depress me. Besides, you’re off key—utterly, hopelessly.”
“Liar!” Ronald Raphael flung the guitar clear across the room. “I despise you,” he said. “You know that, of course?”
“Of course.”
They sat quietly for a while. That is, Herbert did; his younger friend lay belly-down on the rug, outstretched legs encased in chartreuse slacks, quite still but for the slow motion of his several toes, which waggled in their straw-thonged sandals like small snakes.
The room had grown dark. A little moonlight sifted through the dense foliage of the outside garden and through the heavy leaded French window, making shadows where the African masks and imitation shrunken heads hung on the walls. From the bathroom a fresco of a naked green woman without a face glowed; otherwise, the room was dark.
Herbert got up from his chair and walked over to one of the many bookcases. Upon a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal was a clay-colored skull, and upon the skull was a candle. Herbert lit the candle. It flickered.
“Why not?” he said.
“Why not what?”
“Murder somebody.”
Ronald gathered himself into a squatting position. “Anyone particular you have in mind?”
“Don’t be foolish. No—I’ve given the matter some thought and it’s really quite priceless. Though I ought to warn you: it involves courage.”
The Hunger and Other Stories Page 15