The House of Breath

by Reginald Gibbons

  VII

  LED BY THIS HAND you go to the well, made of stone and minaretted by a slender windlass where the rusty and battered bucket hangs like a ruined bell on a rotted and raveled rope in its tower. If I should cry down some name in this well, you think, what voice would rouse and speak out of this well to me? You cry down the name of Sue Emma Starnes, calling “Swimma-a-a! Swimma-a-a-a!’ (come in ‘fore dark) and you hear the round wavering answer, like a voice heard under water, “And all the daughters of musick shall be brought low…”

  And then the long story, told out like a speaking mouth filled with wind, opening and closing in the wind:

  “Well, when Swimma finished Charity High,” the well-voice says, “she stayed around home for awhile but then got restless and packed her suitcase and went to Dallas to stay with Maidie, her sister, you know. Right away that girl blossomed out in Dallas, it was just her style.

  “Got her a job in J. C. Pennys sellin paints and hatchets and hardware things, but soon they learned that Swimma Starnes didn’t belong back with the hardware. She had talent at fixin and arrangin and when they saw that she was right smart at decoratin they put her in the windows, gave her the job of sprucin up the showwindows. Naturally Swimma loved to be in a showwindow, don’t you just know? It was the Ganchion in her.

  “Then because she had a real cute shape, built like a carnival kewpie doll, she got this job modelin at Neiman Marcuses. This really changed Swimma, let me tell you. Got to smokin cigarettes through a cigarette holder long as a beanshooter, would wear her black hair (she’s part Indian, you know) piled up on her head one day like a African and flowin all down her back the next like a huzzy. She moved right out of her sister Maidie’s duplex into a suite at the Stoneleigh Manor, said Maidie was an old fogy and ought to move back to the sticks, meanin Charity, and made fun of the Sunshine Boys that practiced ever Wednesday night at the duplex.

  “‘You oughta go back home and hep Mama and Papa,’ Maidie said to her, and this made Swimma so mad she had one of her tantrums, shoutin, ‘I’m not going back there, it’s a cinch. Why should I go back there, that’s where you belong. I’m not going to wash over a rickety ole washstand covered with oilcloth and ruin my complexion with lava soap and go out through the cold and rain to the privy when I can have Princess Pat Preparations and a pink ruffled boudoir in a suite all my own with adjoinin bath at the Stoneleigh.’

  “Now just a word of well-wisdom here. You remember Ola Peabody’s neck—how it was scaly like the bark of a tree? The end of all beauty and swank is Ola’s neck, scaly and crusted and crinkled. Josh left Ola for a twenty-two-year-old girl. His marriage to Ola was as if he had abused her and deformed her for twenty-seven years and then throwed her on a trash pile. Look what marriage does to a woman. Look what it did to poor Ola—a big tumor is all she has; and gray dry hair and a scaly neck. No childrun, she could never have any. While Josh has kept himself up good, with still good teeth, never went to a dentist in his life (except once when he thought he had pyorrheah and we nearly had to bury him because he thought all his front teeth would turn black—and I wish they had)—and a figure so straight and no pot like middle-aged men have and not even bald. He found this girl Eula Pearl and is startin his youth all over again with her. These nasty men. Men are so nasty, hair all over ‘em—did you ever see a man that wouldn’t scratch where it itched, I don’t care where it is? Nasty things, that’s all they think of. ‘I want youth and beauty,’ Josh said. Why of course, so do all of us want youth and beauty, but how can Ola have youth and beauty after being bounced around, used like a drayhorse, after liftin and scrubbin and servin him like a servant? Josh is a big Shrine, wears that tasseled cap often as he can, laughin and struttin and bitin a cigar. I wonder if those Shrines know what he’s done in his personal life? Ola ought to write them a good letter about him and tell them all what he has done. That’s what Miz Shively did. When she found out what was going on between Brother Shively, preacher of the First Baptist Church, and Mrs. Branch, a widow, she just called a meetin of the Board on Tuesday evenin and read before them a letter about what she had found out. That was the end of Brother Shively, he was transferred to Beaumont.

  “But the point is that the end of all beauty is Ola’s neck, scaly and crusted and crinkled like a work-glove.

  “Well, anyway, at a personality contest of some kind Swimma won it and was sent to New York in a airplane to walk up and down in some long silk dress with-out any bosom to it, jes straps, mind you, and nekkid as a jay half-way down to her waist. She was judged a beauty everwhere and they was a flyin her all over the country like some prize heifer to show off, even to Hawaya and everplace.

  “Then she went on the stage (just like Folner Ganchion, everbody could all see it)—that little country girl Swimma Starnes that everbody knew in Charity Texis—and made a mint a money I guess and became a real celebrity, you couldn’t turn through the magazines without comin upon Swimma Starnes smokin a cigarette or cocked up on a wall like Humpty Dumpty with her long legs bare in a bathin suit no wider than a hair ribbon. Naturally she attracted the men like flies—that’s what she wanted. Like her ole grandma, had to have whiskers round her, had to have a pair of pants round her noon and night. Had more men friends than you could shake a stick at, got expensive presents flung at her from all of them, I know on account of I was told.

  “She jes disinherited all her family. While she was prancin round half-nekkid in some personality show, her pore mother Lauralee Starnes was a brushin down dirtdobbers’ nests from a outhouse in Charity Texis with a hickrystick, or spittin snuff in a tincan on the front gallry.

  “Then Lauralee and Jimbob Starnes got word, jes on a postcard from Miami, Florida, that Swimma had married, had married some rich man (we think he was a Jew) with some business, nobody knew what. And Swimma started havin the little babies with big heads. First one was a boy with a head big as a watermelon and shaped like one. That little freak lived and lived, head kept gettin bigger and bigger, and they would come and measure it and measure it, but it wouldn’t die, really got strong and healthy as an ox, and jes lay there in its bed, huge and strong and an idiot, thrashin like a whale and slobberin all over the bedclothes. The wicked have their hell right here on earth, I said. Well, that thing lived to be nine years ole and no doctor in the country could do a thing for it; until one mornin they found it dead in its bed and that uz a blessin.

  “Now Swimma will really come to her senses, we all thought; it’s taken such a tragedy to shake some sense into her head. She grieved and grieved over that little monster, had a nervous breakdown and took to heavy drinkin, and we all waited for her to come home. We thought she would divorce that rich man that people said was some big Miami gambler. But nope, she stayed on with him and what do you think? She had another bigheaded freak. Another boy. But it lived only a year. You know there’ve been a lot of freaks in Charity, that Lindalou Bell had a bigheaded baby like that and they said it uz because Simp Bell had lived round among the nigras out at Grapeland when he uz buildin the Highway through there. Oh there was a row over that—Lindalou’s famly, the Bensons (been in Charity for years and years) blamed it on Simp’s old daddy, Dr. Bell, a perpetual drunkard and had insanity somewhere in iz famly; and Simp’s famly said twuz Lindalou’s fault, that she was diseased and oh I don’t know what all, it was all terrible and one of the worse scandals of Charity, the two famlies literally fightin in the street and the whole town talkin—you know how a town talks. Then there was that little deformity that the Barkers had, turned out to be real talented, went away with a carnival as a frogboy last we heard; and the Saxton boy, blown big as a balloon, couldn’t walk with him on the sidewalk, he was so stout; and those little deaf-and-dumb children of the Royces, flashin finger language, it was so sad to see them. And there’re a lot of other Charity freaks, too, in my estimation (but they’ll all come home; like the cows they’ll all come home)—Smollett Thompson (let’s not mention him) and the rest—leave them alone and they’ll all co
me home, late or soon. What got into this house? What got into this town? Houses and towns hold their tragedies and could tell some things if they could speak. You know how Christy Ganchion left with the Skiles boy for the Merchant Marines. Something happened to Christy, somewhere, that nobody’ll ever know. Christy’s quiet as a tomb—and dumb as a doornail, some said (but I don’t believe it—still water runs deep), like Thrash Clegg, they say, but you cain’t make me believe it. Anyway when he come back they had a time with him for awhile. Then you know how he married Otey Bell from up in the woods beyond the mill and what all happened, but that’s another story, don’t ask me.

  “But anyway—one at a time, I’m speakin of Swimma Starnes, now—after this second freak of Swimma’s died she jes went straight to the dogs, they say. She got to be jes common trash. Her rich husband divorced her, then, after he had ruint her, but still she wouldn’t come home.

  “Well, and then we heard that she had gone to New Orleens and played around and drunk around and married a little ole jockey. Seen his picture once and he’s as drawn up and spiney as Ole Man Nay and looks a hundred years old, bout as big as a banty, but they have to be that little, they say, so as to be light on a racin horse. He had a lotta money, too. Swimma had always said that she was going to find a man with lots a money and get out of this town. She sure did, too.

  “And then they discovered oil over round Conroe, the Miracle City. Ole Jimbob Starnes’ father had owned some land around there, and who should pop up in Charity one bright day but Miss Swimma Starnes, grinnin out of furs that haltered her like a horsecollar and practically dragged the ground, and on her head a whole bluebird for a hat, tail (as long as you know what) and all. Her wicked life had clawed deep lines all over her face as though she had been fightin wilecats and her eyes were swollen and sick lookin. Because of arthritis (from liquor poisonin, we heard) she dragged one leg a little, but you couldn’t hardly notice it if you didn’t look for it. She smelled oil, that Swimma, all the way over in New Orleens she smelled it. She was all sugar and cream, bringin as a present a seashell that had written on it PLAYGROUND OF THE WORLD—thas all she brought, ceptin herself; and pore ole Lauralee, sick, sweepin the floors before her—until Swimma found out that the Starnes hadn’t paid taxes on that land for years—now how could they? we knew that—and then you shoulda heard the Princess Swimma.

  “‘You ole fogies here in Charity don’t know what the world’s like beyond the riverbottoms, sit here and shrivel up and blow away in the wind; and when you get a chance to make a little money and rise above all this and get some security and a little ease you let it slip through your fingers like sawdust, letting everything rot and go to pot and seed, I’m ashamed of all of you, haven’t got any more sense than a stick of stovewood, you make me tarred.’

  “All of this in some accent, New York or Loosiana or Florida accent, I don’t know, I cain’t do it right, but not like Charity talks. Oh she was a devil.

  “Well, she went back to New Orleens-that little ole banty come drivin up for her in a black sedan of some kind longer’n the Katy Locomotive and they went off ballin the jack in a cloud of black Charity dust. Pore ole Lauralee.

  “Know where she is now? Back in Texis far’s Borger, that clost but no farther (that little banty jockey jes flew away, don’t know where or why, guess the last racin-horse Swimma saw him on jes kept going). Runs a boardin house (and a little of everthing else) for oilmen, hope she’s satisfied, somebody that saw her said she’ll hear a dirty joke from any roughneck that comes in and sets down with one to tell, laughin loud and slap-pin her thigh and talkin about anything. Has a diamon ring big as a hensegg and a wart on her nose (and I’m glad) which she says is a beautyspot…. Lauralee still said till she died, pore ole thing, that Swimma’d come back home to Charity, but she didn’t. But this’s not all…

  “When they buried Christy Ganchion, who should crop up for the funeral but Miss Perfecto. (You know they had the services in the old house, not in the church, and the casket was so big (he was a big man) they had to putt it through the winda under the chinaberry tree. They putt him in’s old room, kept him there for three days with always a light on; and walkin down the road past the house you could see through the chinaberry leaves and through the winda Christy lyin there in iz box in iz room quiet as ever.) Only the young ones was left, Starnes and Ganchion—Maidie (she was there with her two boys, grown men) and Berryben (not there, still away somewhere) and Swimma. Hattie Clegg come in from Houston, and drawn with her Bell’s Palsy, pore ole thing, best Christian in this world, what a life she’s had. Swimma seemed the same. Said she was still looking for a good man (she’d run through I don’t know how many like a pig eatin acorns). Anyway, turns out that when Granny Ganchion died (finely, after livin on and on and sayin, ‘I’ll live to be a hunderd just to hound you all’; they had her goiter taken out, said twood bring back her hearin, and some said it did, that that’s what killed her, that towards the last she heard Christy, and that when she heard the whine of the planeing mill, dyin, she said, ‘Listen, what’s that? I knew it; wherever I go, above or below, there’ll be a sawmill.’ They’d had to lock the cellardoor after she got so feeble, to keep her from going down to the rootcellar to find something she said was waitin for her to come and get.) she’d left a little money in a fruitjar for Christy. There uz only Christy and Malley left now and Christy left Malley in the house with the Cleggs next door to look after her (they come over one day, to borry something no doubt, and found Malley dead in her chair by the opened shutter. Mice had made nests in the windasill out of the gray hair she’d combed out as she set there day in and day out, and there uz even sparrows’ nests in the shutters and dirtdobber hives. Some said she’d opened the shutter to call out to a wagon that uz passin by; and others that she’d seen somebody she knew comin acrost Bailey’s Pasture—we’ll never know. It’s all so sad, the life of this house, and seems like nothing but deaths, but then that’s the way anything ends, finally, ain’t it? We all have to die…) and went away to Houston, nobody knew what for but seemed like he was lookin for something. Somebody said they saw him wanderin in the streets lookin like a dead man, and passed him by; others said he was sellin newspapers on a corner, and still some more said he’d joined a Mission. Anyway it turns out that Swimma was in Houston too and that she come to Christy on the street corner and got money from him often, sayin she uz sick and broke. No wonder she come to his funeral, they had this between them. I think this death nearly killed her, but you’d never know it, she’d never let on she was hurt by anything, never in her life.

  “She jes made a list of all the old dishes after the burial and left. Maidie said she only wanted the churn that Aunty her mother had churned in.

  “Something wild and cussed in that girl—but something else, too; cain’t put your finger on it. She’ll come to a violent end, you watch. We’ll all hear of it one day, just wait’n see. It’s jes the saddest thing I ever heard tell of.

  “Pore ole Lauralee Starnes…”

  And then the well-voice dies away and somewhere in the long grownover yard you think you hear Swimma’s husky girl’s voice, crying as she flung down cousins into statues among the stickerburrs.

  VIII

  YOU CRY down, “Hattie. Hattie, Hattie Clegg!” and wait; and then you hear a faraway watery voice that rises from deep below to the surface like a bubble, bubbling and warbling, “Ho-o-o-ome-ho-o-o-ome,” and breaks and says like a silvery crying: “Anybody home…?” and echoes “Ho-o-o-ome…” It is the calling voice of Hattie Clegg who lived in the crumbling house beyond this house and used to come so often to see everybody in this house, always calling at the back door “Anybody home…?” before she went off to Houston to work for the S.P.

  “Nobody is at home anymore anywhere in the world…” Hattie’s voice murmurs; and you want to answer, “Hattie, Hattie, every home in the world is no home for you and me, we are meant to go from home to home and call if they are home (and only strangers break out throu
gh some unconsidered door like a bird out of a clock and chime terror) and leave again, for some other door.”

  And then Hattie speaks out of the well to you…

  “After a bizniss course at Miz Cratty’s Select Bizniss College in Palestine, where I learned Gregg Shorthand and comtometer and typin, I came to the city, got this job with the rayroad, been here twenty-five years.

  “O my folks! Never shoulda left Charity, I guess, but helped em there, ever paycheck I got, sent a tithe of it home to em, Mama and Papa and Willadean and Gilbert and Thrash.

  “Got Willadean through high school, struggled to get her finished only to see her marry a widower from up at Sanderson with three childrun. Something in Charity ruined Willadean, prissed her all up and sent her straight to ruination. It uz that C.C.C. Camp out at Groveton did it; made a wicked girl out of Willadean. Then she worked at the C.O.D. Cafe, met all the wrong kind, the sawmill boys and the roughnecks from the oilfields and the just plain tramps of Charity.

  “Willadean O Willadean, I nursed you like my very own when you was little, washed you in winter by the cookstove, wiped off smut from your little hands twenty times a day, washed you and fed you and played with you under the shadetree and swang you in the tireswing, shook down pussimons and called doodlebugs and picked goobers—anything you wanted. Carried you on my hip round the place, day in and day out, till I pulled my side loose, made me slouched like I am today. Can still feel you astride my hip, clingin there like a little warm possum on to me wherever I went. Sometimes you was as heavy as a croakersack of roastinears, but I went on totin you, pullin my very insides out for you.