The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  He entered and sat in his accustomed place where so many times past he was treated to dainties and rewards.

  “You may wonder about the delay,” Edna spoke more formally today to him than usual. “Galway, we have, I fear, bad news. . . . A telegram has arrived. . . . Mrs. Aveline is afraid to open it. . . .”

  Having said this much, Edna left the room, allowing the swinging door which separated the kitchen from the rest of the house to close behind her and then continue its swing backwards and forwards like the pendulum of a clock.

  Galway turned his eyes to the huge white cake with the yellow center which she had expressly cut for him. The solid silver fork in his hand was about to come down on the thick heavily frosted slice resting sumptuously on hand-painted china. Just then he heard a terrible cry rushing through the many rooms of the house and coming, so it seemed, to stop directly at him and then cease and disappear into the air and the nothingness about him. His mouth became dry, and he looked about like one who expects unknown and immediate danger. The fork fell from his brown calloused muscular hand. The cry was now repeated if anything more loudly, then there was a cavernous silence, and, after some moments, steady prolonged hopeless weeping. He knew it was Mrs. Aveline. The telegram must have brought bad news. He sat on looking at the untasted cake. The yellow of its center seemed to stare at him.

  Edna now came through the swinging door, her eyes red, a pocket handkerchief held tightly in her right hand, her opal necklace slightly crooked. “It was Mrs. Aveline’s mother, Galway. . . . She is dead. . . . And such a short time since Mrs. Aveline’s husband died, too, you know. . . .”

  Galway uttered some words of regret, sympathy, which Edna did not hear, for she was still listening to any sound which might try to reach her from beyond the swinging door.

  At last turning round, she spoke: “Why, you haven’t so much as touched your cake. . . .” She looked at him almost accusingly.

  “She has lost her own mother. . . .” Galway said this after some struggle with his backwardness.

  But Edna was studying the cake. “We can wrap it all up, the rest of it, Galway, and you can have it to sample at home, when you will have more appetite.” She spoke comfortingly to him. She was weeping so hard now she shook all over.

  “These things come out of the blue,” she managed to speak at last in a neutral tone as though she was reading from some typewritten sheet of instructions. “There is no warning very often as in this case. The sky itself might as well have fallen on us. . . .”

  Edna had worked for Mrs. Aveline for many years. She always wore little tea aprons. She seemed to do nothing but go from the kitchen to the front parlor or drawing room, and then return almost immediately to where she had been in the first place. She had supervised the children’s party today, ceaselessly walking around, and looking down on each young head, but one wondered exactly what she was accomplishing by so much movement. Still, without her, Mrs. Aveline might not have been able to run the big house, so people said. And it was also Edna Gruber who had told Mrs. Aveline first of Galway’s indispensable and sterling dependability. And it was Galway Edna always insisted on summoning when nobody else could be found to do some difficult and often unpleasant and dirty task.

  “So, Galway, I will have the whole ‘second’ cake sent over to you just as soon as I find the right box to put it in. . . .”

  He rose as Edna said this, not having eaten so much as a crumb. He said several words which hearing them come from his own mouth startled him as much as if each word spoken had appeared before him as letters in the air.

  “I am sorry . . . and grieve for her grief. . . . A mother’s death. . . . It is the hardest loss.”

  Then he heard the screen door closing behind him. The birds were still, and purple clouds rested in the west, with the evening star sailing above the darkest bank of clouds as yellow as the heads of any of the birthday children. He crossed himself.

  Afterwards he stood for some time in Mr. Teyte’s great green backyard, and admired the way his gardener’s hands had kept the grass beautiful for the multimillionaire, and given it the endowment of both life and order. The wind stirred as the light failed, and flowers which opened at evening gave out their faint delicate first perfume, in which the four-o’clocks’ fragranace was pronounced. On the ground near the umbrella tree something glistened. He stooped down. It was the sheepshears, which he employed in trimming the ragged grass about trees and bushes, great flower beds, and the hedge. Suddenly, stumbling in the growing twilight he cut his thumb terribly on the shears. He walked dragging one leg now as if it was his foot which he had slashed. The gush of blood somehow calmed him from his other sad thoughts. Before going inside Mr. Teyte’s great house, he put the stained sheepshears away in the shed, and then walked quietly to the kitchen and sat down at the lengthy pine table which was his accustomed place here, got out some discarded linen napkins, and began making himself a bandage. Then he remembered he should have sterilized the wound. He looked about for some iodine, but there was none in the medicine cabinet. He washed the quivering flesh of the wound in thick yellow soap. Then he bandaged it and sat in still communion with his thoughts.

  Night had come. Outside the katydids and crickets had begun an almost dizzying chorus of sound, and in the far distant darkness tree frogs and some bird with a single often repeated note gave the senses a kind of numbness.

  Galway knew who would bring the cake—it would be the birthday boy himself. And the gardener would be expected to eat a piece of it while Rupert stood looking on. His mouth now went dry as sand. The bearer of the cake and messenger of Mrs. Aveline’s goodness was coming up the path now, the stones of gravel rising and falling under his footsteps. Rupert liked to be near Galway whenever possible, and like his mother wanted to give the gardener gifts, sometimes coins, sometimes shirts, and now tonight food. He liked to touch Galway as he would perhaps a horse. Rupert stared sometimes at the Jamaican servant’s brown thickly muscled arms with a look almost of acute disbelief.

  Then came the step on the back porch, and the hesitant but loud knock.

  Rupert Aveline, just today aged thirteen, stood with outstretched hands bearing the cake. The gardener accepted it immediately, his head slightly bowed, and immediately lifted it out of the cake box to expose it all entire except the one piece which Edna Gruber had cut in the house expressly for the Jamaican, and this piece rested in thick wax paper separated from the otherwise intact birthday cake. Galway fell heavily into his chair, his head still slightly bent over the offering. He felt with keen unease Rupert’s own speechless wonder, the boy’s eyes fixed on him rather than the cake, though in the considerable gloom of the kitchen the Jamaican servant had with his darkened complexion all but disappeared into the shadows, only his white shirt and linen trousers betokening a visible presence.

  Galway lit the lamp, and immediately heard the cry of surprise and alarmed concern coming from the messenger, echoing in modulation and terror that of Mrs. Aveline as she had read the telegram.

  “Oh, yes, my hand,” Galway said softly, and he looked down in unison with Rupert’s horrified glimpse at his bandage—the blood having come through copiously to stain the linen covering almost completely crimson.

  “Shouldn’t it be shown to the doctor, Galway?” the boy inquired, and suddenly faint, he rested his hand on the servant’s good arm for support. He had gone very white. Galway quickly rose and helped the boy to a chair. He hurried to the sink and fetched him a glass of cold water, but Rupert refused this, continuing to touch the gardener’s arm.

  “It is your grandmother’s death, Rupert, which has made you upset. . . .”

  Rupert looked away out the window through which he could see his own house in the shimmery distance; a few lamps had been lighted over there, and the white exterior of his home looked like a ship in the shadows, seeming to move languidly in the summer night.

  In order to have something to do and because he knew Rupert wished him to eat part of the cake, G
alway removed now all the remaining carefully wrapped thick cloth about the birthday cake and allowed it to emerge yellow and white, frosted and regal. They did everything so well in Mrs. Aveline’s house.

  “You are . . . a kind . . . good boy,” Galway began with the strange musical accent which never failed to delight Rupert’s ear. “And now you are on your way to being a man,” he finished.

  Rupert’s face clouded over at this last statement, but the music of the gardener’s voice finally made him smile and nod, then his eyes narrowed as they rested on the bloodstained bandage.

  “Edna said you had not tasted one single bite, Galway,” the boy managed to speak after a struggle to keep his own voice steady and firm.

  The gardener, as always, remained impassive, looking at the almost untouched great cake, the frosting in the shape of flowers and leaves and images of little men and words concerning love, a birthday, and the year 1902.

  Galway rose hurriedly and got two plates.

  “You must share a piece of your own birthday cake, Rupert . . . I must not eat alone.”

  The boy nodded energetically.

  The Jamaican cut two pieces of cake, placed them on large heavy dinner plates, all he could find at the moment, and produced thick solid silver forks. But then as he handed the piece of cake to Rupert, in the exertion of his extending his arm, drops of blood fell upon the pine table.

  At that moment, without warning, the whole backyard was illuminated by unusual irregular flashing lights and red glares. Both Rupert and Galway rushed at the same moment to the window, and stared into the night. Their surprise was, if anything, augmented by what they now saw. A kind of torchlight parade was coming up the far greensward, in the midst of which procession was Mr. Teyte himself, a bullnecked short man of middle years. Surrounded by other men, his well-wishers, all gave out shouts of congratulation in drunken proclamation of the news that the owner of the estate had won the golf tournament. Suddenly his pals raised Mr. Teyte to their shoulders, and shouted in unison over the victory.

  Listening to the cries growing in volume, in almost menacing nearness as they approached closer to the gardener and Rupert, who stood like persons besieged, the birthday boy cautiously put his hand in that of Galway.

  Presently, however, they heard the procession moving off beyond their sequestered place, the torchlights dimmed and disappeared from outside the windows, as the celebrators marched toward the great front entrance of the mansion, a distance of almost a block away, and there, separated by thick masonry, they were lost to sound.

  Almost at that same moment, as if at some signal from the disappearing procession itself, there was a deafening peal of thunder, followed by forks of cerise lightning flashes, and the air, so still before rushed and rose in furious elemental wind. Then they heard the angry whipping of the rain against the countless panes of glass.

  “Come, come, Rupert,” Galway admonished, “your mother will be sick with worry.” He pulled from a hook an enormous mackintosh, and threw it about the boy. “Quick, now, Rupert, your birthday is over. . . .”

  They fled across the greensward where only a moment before the golf tournament victory procession with its torches had walked in dry clear summer weather. Galway who wore no covering was immediately soaked to the skin.

  Edna was waiting at the door, as constant in attendance as if she were a caryatid now come briefly to life to receive the charge of the birthday boy from the gardener, and in quick movement of her hand like that of a magician she stripped from Rupert and surrendered back to Galway his mackintosh, and then closed the door against him and the storm.

  The Jamaican waited afterwards for a time under a great elm tree, whose leaves and branches almost completely protected him from the full fury of the sudden violent thundershower, now abating.

  From the mackintosh, however, he fancied there came the perfume of the boy’s head of blonde hair, shampooed only a few hours earlier for his party. The odor came now swiftly in great waves to the gardener’s dilating nostrils, an odor almost indistinguishable from the blossoms of honeysuckle. He held the mackintosh tightly in his hand for a moment, then drawing it closer to his mouth and pressing it hard against his nostrils, he kissed it once fervently as he imagined he saw once again the golden heads of the birthday party children assembled at the banquet table.

  SOME OF THESE DAYS

  What my landlord’s friends said about me was in a way the gospel truth, that is he was good to me and I was mean and ungrateful to him. All the two years I was in jail, nonetheless, I thought only of him, and I was filled with regret for the things I had done against him. I wanted him back. I didn’t exactly wish to go back to live with him now, mind you, I had been too mean to him for that, but I wanted him for a friend again. After I got out of jail I would need friendship, for I didn’t need to hold up even one hand to count my friends on, the only one I could even name was him. I didn’t want anything to do with him physically again, I had kind of grown out of that somehow even more while in jail, and wished to try to make it with women again, but I did require my landlord’s love and affection, for love was, as everybody was always saying, his special gift and talent.

  He was at the time I lived with him a rather well-known singer, and he also composed songs, but even when I got into my bad trouble, he was beginning to go downhill, and not to be so in fashion. We often quarreled over his not succeeding way back then. Once I hit him when he told me how much he loved me, and knocked out one of his front teeth. But that was only after he had also criticized me for not keeping the apartment tidy and clean and doing the dishes, and I threatened him with an old gun I kept. Of course I felt awful bad about his losing this front tooth when he needed good teeth for singing. I asked his forgiveness. We made up and I let him kiss me and hold me tight just for this one time.

  I remember his white face and sad eyes at my trial for breaking and entering and possession of a dangerous weapon, and at the last his tears when the judge sentenced me. My landlord could cry and not be ashamed of crying, and so you didn’t mind him shedding tears somehow. At first, then, he wrote me, for as the only person who could list himself as nearest of kin or closest tie, he was allowed by the authorities to communicate with me, and I also received little gifts from him from time to time. And then all upon a sudden the presents stopped, and shortly after that, the letters too, and then there was no word of any kind, just nothing. I realized then that I had this strong feeling for him which I had never had for anybody before, for my people had been dead from the time almost I was a toddler, and so they are shadowy and dim, whilst he is bright and clear. That is, you see, I had to admit to myself in jail (and I choked on my admission), but I had hit bottom, and could say a lot of things now to myself, I guess I was in love with him. I had really only loved women, I had always told myself, and I did not love this man so much physically, in fact he sort of made me sick to my stomach to think of him that way, though he was a good-looker with his neat black straight hair, and his robin’s-egg-blue eyes, and cheery smile. . . . And so there in my cell I had to confess what did I have for him if it was not love, and yet I had treated him meaner than anybody I had ever knowed in my life, and once come close to killing him. Thinking about him all the time now, for who else was there to think about, I found I got to talking to myself more and more like an old geezer of advanced years, and in place of calling on anybody else or any higher power, since he was the only one I had ever met in my twenty years of life who said he cared. I would find myself saying like in church, My landlord, though that term for him was just a joke for the both of us, for all he had was this one-room flat with two beds, and my bed was the little one, no more than a cot, and I never made enough to pay him no rent for it, he just said he would trust me. So there in my cell, especially at night, I would say My landlord, and finally, for my chest begin to trouble me about this time and I was short of breath often, I would just manage to get out My lord. That’s what I would call him for short. When I got out, the first thing
I made up my mind to do was find him, and I was going to put all my efforts behind the search.

  And when there was no mail now at all, I would think over all the kind and good things he done for me, and the thought would come to me which was blacker than any punishment they had given me here in the big house that I had not paid him back for his good deeds. When I got out I would make it up to him. He had took me in off the street, as people say, and had tried to make a man of me, or at least a somebody out of me, and I had paid him back all in bad coin, first by threatening to kill him, and then by going bad and getting sent to jail. . . . But when I got out, I said, I will find him if I have to walk from one ocean shore to the other.

  And so it did come about that way, for once out, that is all I did or found it in my heart to do, find the one who had tried to set me straight, find the one who had done for me, and shared and all.

  One night after I got out of jail, I had got dead drunk and stopped a guy on Twelfth Street, and spoke, Have you seen my lord? This man motioned me to follow him into a dark little theater, which later I was to know all too well as one of the porno theaters, he paid for me, and brought me to a dim corner in the back, and then the same old thing started up again, he beginning to undo my clothes, and lower his head, and I jumped up and pushed him and ran out of the movie, but then stopped and looked back and waited there as it begin to give me an idea.