The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  “Would you buy me another whiskey now?” Fenton asked him.

  When they returned to their seats Fenton immediately dozed off and did not waken until the last act which, whether due to his refreshing sleep or to the fact the actors seemed to talk less and do more, was rather frighteningly good to him. Hayden Banks seemed to murder the woman named Desdemona (Aurelia Wilcox in real life) with such satisfaction and enjoyment that he felt it stood with some of the better murder shows he had seen at the All Night Theater. He applauded quite loudly, and Bruno, smiling, finally held his hand and said, “Don’t overdo it.”

  After the performance, Bruno invited Fenton to meet the entire cast, and as drinks were being served now in the dressing room, Fenton drank four or five additional whiskies to the congratulations of nearly all present. At times Fenton would have sober moments and remember Aurelia Wilcox patting his hair or Hayden Banks giving him a hug and kiss, or the young man who played Iago and who looked even more like a valentine devil off the stage whispering in his ear.

  “Hayden says we’re to go on to his apartment and wait for him there,” Bruno explained finally to Fenton, showing him at the same time a tiny key to the great man’s rooms.

  “YOU WERE EXTREMELY rude to Hayden Banks. You act like a savage when you’re with people. I’ve never met anybody like you. What on earth is West Virginia if you are typical?”

  They were in Hayden Banks’ apartment and Fenton, instead of replying to Bruno’s remarks, was looking about, comparing it with Grainger’s mansion. The walls had been painted so that they resembled the ocean, and so skillfully done that one actually thought he was about to go into water. Fenton stared at the painting for a long while, noticing in the distance some small craft, a dwarf moon and the suggestion of dawn in the far distance.

  “Arden Carruthers did that painting,” Bruno said. “Arden Carruthers is one of the most promising of the younger artists and this mural will be worth a small fortune some day.”

  Bruno was smoking something strange smelling which Fenton recognized as one of the persistent odors of the All Night Theater. As he smoked, he drew nearer to Fenton, and his expression of critical disapproval of the boy suddenly vanished.

  “What are you clenching your fists for, as though you were going into the prize ring?” Bruno said.

  Fenton sniffed at the cigarette and then suddenly knew what it must be. It was what had changed Bruno.

  “You are very beautiful looking. The Italian Renaissance all over again in your face,” Bruno said. He kept standing right over Fenton as though he were a bird that was going to come down on top of his head. He kept staring right into the crown of his head.

  Fenton suddenly reached out and with violence seizing Bruno’s wrist cried, “Give me some of that,” so that the cigarette nearly fell from his fingers.

  “Have you ever had any?” Bruno wanted to know.

  “Give me some,” Fenton said again, remembering now with terrifying insistence the smell in the All Night Theater. He felt that he could really dominate this man now as much as he could Claire. At the same time he was terribly afraid. He felt that something decisive and irrevocable was about to happen.

  “Just smoke a little of it and don’t inhale as deep as I did,” Bruno said nervously. “I don’t think you know how.”

  Fenton took the cigarette and began inhaling deeply.

  “Now stop,” Bruno said. “I don’t have a warehouse of those.”

  “No wonder somebody was following you,” Fenton laughed.

  “I wonder which one of us is more scared of the other,” Bruno said finally, and he sat down at Fenton’s feet.

  Fenton was about to say that he was not afraid of anybody, but Bruno began babbling about Fenton’s shoes. “Where on earth did you get those? They’re privately manufactured!” He stared at Fenton with renewed respect and interest. “You didn’t get those in West Virginia.”

  Bruno stared at Fenton again.

  “You haven’t killed anybody, have you?” he said finally.

  Fenton stared at him and he went on agitatedly, “Why you’ve finished that entire cigarette. I hope you know what you’ve done and what it was. I’m not responsible for you, remember.”

  “Who the fuck is responsible?” Fenton said.

  “Don’t use that language,” Bruno sniggered, and then got up swiftly and sat down beside Fenton. He began kissing his hair, and then slowly unbuttoning his shirt. He took off all his clothes, as from a doll, piece by piece, without resistance or aid, but left on at the last the privately manufactured shoes. . . .

  The next thing Fenton remembered he was standing naked in the middle of the room, boxing; he was boxing the chandelier and had knocked down all the lamps, he had split open Bruno’s face and Bruno was weeping and held ice packs to his mouth.

  Then the next thing he remembered was Bruno standing before him with Hayden Banks who looked exactly like the murdered Desdemona. Bruno had a gun in his hand and was ordering him to leave.

  “Don’t you ever come back if you don’t want to go to jail,” Bruno said, as Fenton went out the door dressed in clothes that did not look like his own.

  Morning is the most awful time. And this morning for Fenton was the one that shattered everything he had been or known; it marked the limits of a line, not ending his youth but making his youth superfluous, as age to a god.

  He seemed to be awake and yet he had the feeling he had never been awake. He was not even sure it was morning. He was back in the old house, in Claire’s room, and though he was staring at Claire he knew that his staring was of no avail, that he already knew what had happened and the staring was to prevent him from telling himself what he saw. He could not remember anything at that moment, he had even forgotten Bruno Korsawski and the production of Othello starring some immortal fruit.

  Then the comfortable thought that it was breakfast time and that he would go out and get Claire his rolls and coffee. He was so happy he was here with Claire and he realized again how necessary Claire was to him, and how real he was compared to the Parkhearsts and the Brunos and the Graingers.

  “Claire,” he said softly. He went over to the bed and began shaking him. The room seemed suddenly deadly cold and he thought of the winter that would come and how uninhabitable this deserted old wreck would be. . . . And Claire, he recognized, almost as with previous knowledge, was as cold as the room. And yet he was not surprised. . . .

  He sat there suddenly wondering why he was not surprised that Claire was cold. And at the same time he was surprised that he could be so cold. He shook him again.

  “Claire,” he said.

  He began to be aware of a splitting headache.

  He got up and turned on the sickly light. He was careful somehow not to get too close to Claire now that he had turned on the light, but stood at a safe distance, talking to him, telling him how he was going to get him some breakfast.

  “Some good hot coffee will make you feel like a new boy, Claire,” he said.

  And then suddenly he began to weep, choking sobs, and these were followed by laughter so unlike his own that he remained frozen with confusion.

  “I’m going right now, hear?” he said to Claire. “I’ll be right back with the coffee. . . .” Then he laughed again. The silence of the room was complete.

  He hurried to the lunch stand and then ran all the way back with the steaming coffee and rolls.

  He bent down over Claire but was somewhat careful not to look at his face. His head ached as though the sockets of his eyes were to burst. He kept talking to Claire all the time, telling him how they were going back to West Virginia as soon as he got a little money saved up; they would buy a stock farm later and raise Black Angus cattle, and have a stable of horses. It was not impossible, Claire, he said.

  He held Claire’s head up but still without looking and tried to pour coffee down his throat. “This coffee’s strong enough to revive a stiff,” he laughed, ignoring the coffee’s running down the boy’s neck, ignoring th
at none of the coffee had even got into his mouth.

  “Eat this bread,” he said and put some to Claire’s mouth. He pressed the small piece of roll heavily against the blue lips, smashing it to the coffee-moistened cold lips.

  “Eat this, drink this,” Fenton kept saying, but now he no longer tried to administer the bread and coffee. “Eat and drink.”

  We have to go back, Claire. We want to go back to West Virginia, you know you do.

  Then as though another person had entered the room and commanded him, Fenton stood up, and pulled the light down as far as he could to search mercilessly the face and body of Claire.

  The light showed Claire’s neck swollen and blue with marks, the neck broken softly like a small bird’s, the hair around his neck like ruffled young feathers, the eyes had come open a little and seemed to be attempting to focus on something too far out of his reach. The brown liquid of the coffee like blood smeared the paste of the offering of bread around his mouth.

  Fenton looked down at his hands.

  After that he did not know what happened, or how long he stayed in the room, trying to feed Claire, trying to talk to him, trying to tell him about Black Angus in West Virginia.

  Slowly the sound of Fenton’s own voice worked him from the stupor he had been in, saying again and again, “You’re dead, you little motherfucker. Dead as mud and I don’t have no need sitting here staring you down.”

  FOR A GOOD many days he walked all over the city, riding street cars when they were full so that he could shove his way in without paying, eating in cheap lunch stands when they were full and running out the back door without paying the bill. He found he could steal fruit and candy from grocery stands without much trouble. In the evening he would go to the square in front of a large gray library and listen to the revivalists and the fanatics.

  Older men sometimes invited him to a beer, men he met in the crowds in front of the speaker, but as he drank with them his mind would wander and he would say things which chilled further talk, so that after a while absently he would look around and find himself alone looking down at his hands.

  There was no respite for his misery during which time he slept in hallways, covering himself with newspapers he collected in alleys. By day he would go down to the docks and watch crews unload cargo, or he would go into a large museum where they kept the bones of prehistoric animals which he knew never existed. These big-boned monsters calmed some of his crushing grief.

  But at last there came to him an idea which gave him some solace, if not any real hope or restoration. It was that Claire must be put in a sheltered place. He must have a service, a funeral. The thought did not occur to him that Claire was really dead until then; before he had only thought how he had killed him. And the thought that anybody knew he had killed Claire or was looking for him never occurred to him. What had happened to both him and Claire was much too terrible and closed in for the rest of the world to know or care about.

  It was night when he returned to the house. He had vaguely remembered going upstairs weeks before and finding an old chest up there, an old cedar chest, perhaps, or merely an old box. He walked up the stairs now, using matches to guide his way. He heard small footsteps scamper about or it might have been only the echo of his own feet.

  He stood in the immense vacant attic with its suffocating smell of rotting wood, its soft but ticklingly clammy caress of cobwebs, the feeling of small animal eyes upon him and the imperceptible sounds of disintegration and rot. How had he known there was a chest up here? As he thought of it now he could not remember having seen it. Yet he knew it was here.

  He put himself on hands and knees and began groping for the presence of it. He came across a broken rocking chair. His kitchen matches lit up pictures on the wall, one of a girl in her wedding dress, another of a young man in hunting costume, one of Jesus among thieves. Another picture was a poem concerning Mother Love. At the extreme end of the attic and in a position which must have been directly above the room where he and Claire had lived and where Claire now lay dead was a chest; it was not a fragrant cedar chest, such as he had hoped, but an old white box with broken hinges and whose inside lid was covered with a filthy cloth.

  But even more disappointing was that inside was a gauzy kind of veil, like a wedding veil and his eye turned wearily to the picture of the girl in her wedding costume as though this veil might be the relic of that scene. But whatever the veil was, it might serve this cause. It was not a fit resting place for Claire, but it would have to do.

  He hurried now downstairs and into the room, with the sudden fear that Claire might have disappeared. He sat down beside him, and his agony was so great he scarcely noticed the overpowering stench, and at the same time he kept lighting the kitchen matches, but perhaps more to keep his mind aware of the fact of Claire’s death than to scare off the stink of death.

  It took him all night to get himself ready to carry Claire up, as though once he had put him in the chest, he was really at last dead forever. For part of the night he found that he had fallen asleep over Claire’s body, and at the very end before he carried him upstairs and deposited him, he forced himself to kiss the dead stained lips he had stopped, and said, “Up we go then, motherfucker.”

  ABOUT JESSIE MAE

  “Idon’t visit Jessie Mae’s any more because of her untidiness,” Myrtle said to Mrs. Hemlock as the two women walked through the garden, where they had been talking, toward Mrs. Hemlock’s kitchen, where Myrtle was going to copy down a special recipe for the older woman.

  “But I didn’t know it had gone so far,” Mrs. Hemlock said with mild disbelief.

  “I didn’t say it had gone too far now,” Myrtle told her. “Nothing is under any order or control, that’s all.”

  “And that I can believe,” Mrs. Hemlock agreed.

  “You see, Jessie Mae’s never had to do anything for herself,” Myrtle explained.

  Mrs. Hemlock stared at her friend’s youthful face, in the late morning Florida light, the desire for more written on her own expectant mouth and heavy double chin.

  “You know Jessie Mae was twice an heiress,” and Myrtle hit the word as hard as possible in order to begin at the beginning of her knowledge.

  “I knew she had everything, of course,” Mrs. Hemlock said in somewhat hushed tones now, as though a matter of considerable delicacy had been disclosed. She looked down at her apron suddenly and removed a long ravelling which had come to rest there.

  Myrtle looked quickly at Mrs. Hemlock’s apron and said, “That’s cunning.”

  “It’s Portuguese or Spanish or something,” Mrs. Hemlock smiled, opening the back screen to her kitchen.

  “You know, you have beautiful things, Mrs. Hemlock,” Myrtle said.

  Mrs. Hemlock laughed pleasantly.

  “I love to come to your house,” Myrtle told her.

  “But I can’t understand Jessie Mae’s being untidy,” Mrs. Hemlock seemed very surprised, and she pointed quickly to a large easy chair which she had brought into her kitchen specially for her many visitors. Myrtle sat down with a great sigh of pleasure.

  “This chair!” Myrtle groaned loudly and pretended to collapse from their long earlier talk in the garden.

  Mrs. Hemlock smiled at this compliment, too, and chuckled mildly, her double chin moving slightly as if she were singing a lullaby.

  “I’m Jessie Mae’s distant cousin, you know,” Myrtle said suddenly.

  Mrs. Hemlock paused a second because she was not sure she knew this or not. But dimly, from many years back in certain St. Augustine circles, a faint recollection stirred in her brain.

  “I remember,” Mrs. Hemlock nodded, and opening the refrigerator she moved swiftly for such a stout woman to hand Myrtle a tall cool glass of fruit punch, thickly frosted, and non-alcoholic.

  “You jewel!” Myrtle almost squealed. “You think of everything. And you have everything.”

  Mrs. Hemlock could not conceal her pleasure again. Her heavy, healthy face flushed slightly fro
m the additional praise.

  “I’m alone and I have to keep busy at something,” Mrs. Hemlock glanced at her kitchen.

  “But most women wouldn’t bother,” Myrtle said. “You’re always cooking. And so generous in sending around things to we neighbors. Why you’re making us all fat, too!” Myrtle laughed loudly.

  Mrs. Hemlock started at this, but then she laughed pleasantly also.

  “I suppose eating is a sin,” Mrs. Hemlock pretended seriousness.

  “Nothing that gives one pleasure like this is,” Myrtle was firm on this point, and Mrs. Hemlock could see Myrtle was thinking of Jessie Mae again.

  “Well!” Mrs. Hemlock exclaimed, drinking now some of her own fruit punch and hoping Myrtle would go back to her first subject, “It’s nice we’re all a bit different.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Myrtle said, referring to the drink. “And I suppose it’s a secret recipe . . .”

  “No, no,” Mrs. Hemlock deprecated this, but acted abstracted now, almost as if tasting something in the drink which she had not remembered putting there. Then suddenly she broke out: “I didn’t know, as a matter of fact, you were Jessie Mae’s distant cousin.”

  Myrtle put down her glass of juice on the kitchen table, which was provided with a handsome imported linen tablecloth, fresh and spotless.

  “I really had forgotten, that is,” Mrs. Hemlock said in a kind of apology.

  “I’m really one of the last of her own people,” Myrtle spoke indifferently, but with a certain tone which implied that the relationship might be important for others to remember.

  “Jessie Mae is of course basically a fine person,” Mrs. Hemlock stated, fearful now that she had perhaps stressed the untidiness too much, even though Myrtle had brought the whole subject up in the garden.

  “Mrs. Hemlock, Jessie Mae’s in terrible shape!” Myrtle suddenly changed any direction toward or need for apology, and she stared at her drink as if she had promised herself not to touch it again.

  Mrs. Hemlock moistened her lips critically, as if she, too, did not require the refreshment now of the punch.