The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  Jess had stumbled out of the uncle’s house at about daybreak. He had walked down to the stone quarry, past Five Creeks, and beyond the glue factory to where the river glided slow and not too deep this time of year. Then he went back to his own house, and got the gun.

  Ruthanna had been promised to Jess since he was a boy. It was arranged, you see, their marriage from the “beginning,” from, it seemed to Jess at that moment, before their birth.

  The young uncle was seated at breakfast, his eyes riveted on the comic section of the Sunday papers.

  Jess had walked up to him with a strange smile ruffling his mouth.

  The uncle looked up, turned his untroubled gaze and brow toward his assassin-to-be. He had no chance to beg for pardon. Jess shot once, then twice, the bowl of morning cereal was covered with red like a dish of fresh-gathered berries.

  Jess walked out with comely carriage to Ruthanna’s house. He stood before the white pillars and fired the same gun into his head, his brains and pieces of skull rushed out from under his fair curly hair onto the glass behind the pillars, onto the screen door, the blood flew like a gentle summer shower. Jess Ference lay on the front steps, the veins in his outstretched hands swollen as if they still carried blood to his stilled heart.

  HOW I BECAME A SHADOW

  How I Became a Shadow, how I live in the defile of mountains, and how I lost my Cock.

  By Pablo Rangel.

  Gonzago is to blame. He said, “That rooster is too good for a pet. He belongs in the cockfight. You give him to me, you owe me favors. I am your cousin. Give him up.”

  “Never, Gonzago,” I replied. “Nunca. I raised the little fellow from almost an egg. I never render him to you, primo.”

  “Shut your mouth that flies are always crawling in. Shut up, you whelp, when I command. That cock is too good for a pet. Hear me. You will give him up, and we will both make money. You bellyache, you say you are always broke, and then when the chance comes to make something you tell your cousin to go hang his ass up to dry. No, Pablo, listen good. The cock is as good as mine because of all the favors I done you, remember. Hear me. I am going to come take him and will fetch you another cock to take his place. Then I will enter your cock at the fight and we will get rich.”

  “I will not render him,” I told Gonzago. “I will keep my pet by me forever. You are not man enough anyhow to take him from me. If Jesus Himself come down from the clouds and said, ‘Pablo, I require you to render me your cock as an offering,’ I would reply, ‘Jesus, go back and hang again on the cross, I will not render my pet, die, Jesus, this time forever.’ ”

  “Ha, Jesus, always Him,” Gonzago snorted. “As if He cared about your cock or whether he fights or don’t fight. You fool, even your shit isn’t brown. You were born to lose. But I will teach you yet. You will not order your cousin about just because you have no wits and need others to watch out for you. . . . Hear me. . . . Tonight I will come for the cock. Hear? Tonight, for tomorrow is the cockfight, and we will win, Pablo. I have been teaching your Placido to fight while you were waiting table at the big American hotel. Caray, you did not even notice? See, Placido is ready.”

  “Ah, so that is why he is so thin and don’t eat, evil Gonzago. . . . Never, never say you will take him, though. . . . Look into my eyes, cousin, what do you see there, look good.”

  “I see nothing in your eyes but stubborn pigheaded pride. Starve to death, why don’t you, see if I care. Go with your ass to the wind forever, or die and be dead forever like Jesus. . . . But I will take your cock when I want to on account of you owe me your life, you owe me money for your keep since a boy, you owe owe owe!”

  “Nothing, Gonzago. I owe you nothing, and won’t never give up what I don’t owe for. Kill me if you want to. . . . Here is my machete my grandfather passed on to me. Take it and cut me in two, see if I care!”

  THAT NIGHT, GONZAGO returned with a big burlap sack with an iron piece that shut over the mouth. He took Placido from his little warm box. My pet gave out piteous little cries as he was grasped. I rushed over to him, but Gonzago had put him already in the sack, and run like the wind and got in his truck and drove off to the cock ring.

  I followed on foot. I did not know what I did. I smoked something, smoked it many times. I lost track of time smoking it. Then there I was at the fight sitting in the front row of seats, watching through blue clouds of smoke, not knowing yet one rooster from another.

  Then I saw the light of my life come forward, the pet I all alone had raised and whose name I called: “Placido! Placido! Amor mío!” I yelled and shouted until the police came and took me outside and clubbed me for kicking them. I fell down on the curb and talked to its cold stones.

  After the air revived me, I stole back into the arena. Gonzago stood in the center of a knot of men. “You can have your pet back now.” He spoke to me inhaling on a cigar with an end like a volcano. “Over there, primo”—he pointed—“behind the piled up folding chairs and the flag.”

  I went there and looked down on the ground where he had pointed.

  At first I see nothing, just earth and a few cigar wrappers. Then I made out his form at last. He was all wings spread on the black soil, but with no eyes. Placido had no eyes! But I knew him still by his gold and red feathers, and his pretty head. But no eyes!

  I waited until I got possession of myself, and my heart had quit thundering in my ears. Then I came back to Gonzago. I smiled. Gonzago relaxed. “I invite you to a drink, Pablo.”

  “Fine,” I agreed.

  We went to the saloon. Gonzago ordered the best tequila. He paid, he ordered again, the money showered from his hands covered with rings.

  When he was feeling his liquor, I pretended friendship and patted him. “Gonzago,” I said, “you are a very clever man, and have my good at heart.”

  “Gracias, primo,” he said, and he relaxed some more.

  “Because of that,” I went on, “I want to share again with you. I have another cock you do not know about. A great scrapper and bigger than Placido.”

  “Is that so?” Gonzago wondered.

  “Yes, primo, come closer, please, and I will show him to you. This one is a winner. Here, here, look, Gonzago,” and I uncovered the little machete I had hidden under my coat.

  I cut swiftly like a parcel of winds across Gonzago’s unprotected brow. I reddened his eyes with one blow of my machete after another. I cut his eyes to holes like those that were left in Placido’s head.

  “Placido, amor, rest happy, Placido, be avenged. Die, Gonzago, with blind ojos, die, blind eyes!”

  Then I ran to the mountains where I move like hawks or a mountain cat, or vesper winds. But I keep Placido’s feathers against my heart. I live in the defile of mountains. I am called Shadow.

  SLEEP TIGHT

  Little Judd was about five years old when his sister Nelle mentioned the Sandman to him. Up until that time he had talked and thought mostly about fire chiefs, policemen, soldiers, and of course sailors, because his daddy had gone

  to sea.

  “ ‘Your daddy is sailing the ocean wide,’ ” Sister Nelle would sing in a fruitless endeavor to get him to sleep. But that was the one thing little Judd could not do. About dawn he slumbered for a few hours, but during the night, almost never.

  Then in despair Nelle had thought of the Sandman and told Judd he would come and put him to sleep if the boy would get quiet and promise not to turn on the radio or play with his watercolors and stain the bedclothes.

  “Sandman will come and make your eyelids heavy,” Nelle had promised him. “But only if you will be good and lie quiet and still in your bed.”

  Then Nelle would sing him another song, this last one about the red red robin who comes bob-bob-bobbing along, and Judd would grin when he heard the familiar words.

  “Sing more about the robin, why don’t you,” he coaxed her.

  Nelle would sing until she was hoarse, but it only made Judd more wakeful.

  “THERE IS NO end to your repertory
of songs, Nelle, I declare!” their mother said one evening after Nelle had come downstairs exhausted and pale from trying to put him to sleep.

  “I should never have told him about the Sandman,” Nelle confessed. “Now he keeps awake on purpose to meet him.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Nelle, where he is concerned,” Mother comforted her. “Whatever we do with regard to little Judd is bound to go wrong.” She sighed and took off her apron, folded it, and laid it in the dirty-clothes basket.

  Little Judd, as a matter of fact, had thought of almost nothing but the Sandman since Nelle had mentioned him. Yet no matter how much he had questioned his sister about him, Nelle had been unable either to describe his appearance or explain exactly how he was able to put the grains of sand on boys’ eyelids. Also, little Judd had wanted to know what sort of a box or sack the Sandman kept his sand in. Nelle was such poor help in filling out these details that the boy became much more wakeful than ever.

  ONE NIGHT LONG after his mother and Nelle had gone to sleep downstairs, little Judd heard a strange noise. Turning round, he was sure he was looking right at the Sandman himself, who had crawled in through his open window. He was a tall dark man wearing a sort of Halloween mask, and he had long blue gloves on. There was a large red wet spot on his chest.

  He was breathing heavily and every so often he would double all up and hold his belly and say, “Owww.”

  “Sandman?” little Judd inquired.

  The dark man with the mask stared cautiously now at the boy while continuing to make his “Oww” sounds.

  “Come on now, mister, give me some of your sand, why don’t you!”

  The man hesitated for a moment, then came noiselessly over to the boy and sat down heavily on the bed beside him.

  “Did you come tonight specially for me?” the boy wondered.

  “Yes.” The man spoke after brief hesitation. “You can say that, I suppose.” He smiled ever so little and began to touch the boy’s shoulder, then stopped.

  “You’re sure you are him, though?” Judd spoke earnestly and loudly.

  The Sandman nodded weakly in response, put his finger to his lips and whispered Shhh.

  “Why don’t you give little Judd then some of your sand?” the boy also whispered.

  The Sandman started to reply but was halted abruptly by the blaring sound of police sirens outside. His eyes closed and opened nervously as if to convey the rest of his explanation.

  But little Judd, who hated the long silence of the night, clapped his hands for joy at the tumult outside. He loved anything that broke the terrible quiet in which he was always tossing and turning and wondering where his father was as he sailed over the shoreless sea.

  “I’ll give you some sand, little Judd,” the visitor spoke out now, “if you’ll promise not to tell anybody I am here.” Saying this, he stood up with difficulty. “Remember, though, if they ask you whether anybody paid you a call tonight, tell them only the Sandman. Hear? Now we’ll see about giving you quite a little pile of sand. . . .”

  “What is wrong with your chest, Sandman?” Judd questioned, staring at the stranger more closely. All of a sudden, little Judd took the man’s hand in his. Then after holding it tightly for a bit, he cried, “Why, see what you have did to my blanket! It looks like you had spilled my red watercolor paints all over it.”

  The visitor bent over lazily, and his half-opened lips touched briefly the boy’s soft yellow hair.

  “Now then, little Judd,” the man began when he saw how calm the boy had become in his presence. “I will go into that clothes closet over yonder, you see, and I will get you some grains of sand. While I am a-getting them, though, don’t you tell nobody at all I am here, dig?”

  His eyes fell to where his hand was imprisoned by the boy’s grasp. Quickly pulling his hand free, he walked to the closet and opened the door. Turning about to little Judd, he whispered in the softest tone yet, “I will go get you your sand now, Judd.”

  Below, the front door bell was ringing in alarm, and Judd could hear over that sound his mother calling out, “All right, all right,” in the same loud provoked voice she used after he had wet the bed and she would cry, “We can’t keep you in rubber pants, can we, I declare!”

  “Yes, Officer.” His mother’s voice drifted up to him while he kept his eyes fixed on the closet door.

  “No, we haven’t heard a thing, have we, Nelle?” Mother went on in a soaring, scared voice.

  Presently Judd heard footsteps scurrying up the stairs and in no time at all Sister Nelle was peeking through the half-opened door. Meantime, outside, the whole neighborhood had come awake. More sirens and police whistles shattered the air.

  “What is it, Nelle?” Judd spoke slyly, still keeping his eyes on the closet door.

  Nelle studied him carefully. “There’s been a robbery,” she began, but then stopped and looked suspiciously around the room. “Someone got shot,” she said in a very low voice. “Anyhow, you had best go back to sleep, dear. . . . It’s all over.” She seemed queer as she spoke, and her eye roved unsatisfied about the room.

  Before she could go down again, heavy unfamiliar footsteps reverberated over the threadbare stair treads.

  A great man dressed in a blue uniform stood at the door, behind whom, looking white and little, was Mother.

  “Everything seems to be all right in here,” the police sergeant announced, as if to the room itself. He crossed the threshold and his hand rested for a moment over the hinge of the closet door.

  The sergeant smiled then at Judd. “You hear anything, sonny?”

  “Just the Sandman,” Judd replied in his accustomed sharp tone of voice. Nelle smiled embarrassedly at his reply.

  The sergeant and Mother left the room.

  “We can’t be too careful, Mrs. Bond.” The sergeant’s voice came to Judd’s ears as strong and loud as when he had stood by the closet door. “We’d like to search the yard again and the basement.”

  Judd heard his mother crying then; Nelle went out into the hall, and her footsteps could soon be heard retreating downstairs. More sirens screamed, coming very close to home, and a man called something through a bullhorn.

  “You can come out, Sandman,” Judd whispered. There was no answer from the closet.

  “Sandman,” Judd whispered a little louder. “Come out, and give me some sand. I want to go to sleep. Please . . . pretty please!”

  The upstairs was quiet now, but he could hear people moving about down below, and the sergeant was saying something comforting to Mother.

  “You needn’t be afraid, Mrs. Bond. He is probably a long way from here by now. . . . And our detail will remain here throughout the night. . . .”

  Nelle’s voice now rose up too: “It’s all right, Mother. . . . Please don’t cry so hard. . . .”

  “Sandman,” Judd said out loud.

  Just as he spoke, the closet door came open wide, and the Sandman stared, rigid, into the room, but not really looking in the direction of the boy. The wet red circle on his chest had grown larger and covered almost all of his shirt. His eyes looked different also, like little bonfires about to go out.

  All at once the Sandman pitched forward, and then, as if trying to break his fall, he twisted and landed face up on the floor.

  “What on earth was that noise?” Mother cried from her chair in the kitchen. “My God, don’t tell me . . .”

  Judd stepped over the Sandman, hurried to the door, opened it, and called down, “It’s all right, Mama. I upset the big chair.”

  “All right, dearest,” Mother replied, forgetting to correct him for being awake. “I will be up to see you presently.”

  Little Judd was the happiest he had been since the day he and his daddy had played Grizzly Bear together. His dad had imitated a fierce bear and then just before he was going to bite him, little Judd had shot his daddy with a toy BB gun, and he had fallen down and lain very still.

  Little Judd now went into the closet where the Sandman had been hiding an
d got his toy gun. He shot the Sandman four or five times. But the Sandman did not play right, as his daddy had. Instead he made strange sounds, which were not too pleasant, and a kind of pink foam formed on his lips, which had never happened with his dad.

  Little Judd saw also that the Sandman was very black, and indeed he had never set eyes on anybody that dark except once when a parade had gone by near his house and a large file of dark men and women had shouted and screamed and waved flags.

  “Where is the sand you promised me?” little Judd complained.

  He looked at the nozzle of his gun and then studied the way the red wet spot on the Sandman’s chest kept growing still larger. It was summer and the visitor had very little on except his thin stained shirt and his blue trousers. His feet were naked.

  He decided the Sandman had been playing with his watercolors in the closet, which explained the red, or was it he had shot the Sandman so hard he had hurt him with his gun? Whatever it was, it made him want to do watercolors with the wet red that was coming from the Sandman.

  “Judd?” he heard his mother’s voice from below. “Judd, darling?”

  He hurried to the door, opened it softly, and called down Yes

  to her.

  “You’re sure you’re all right, precious?” Judd made kissing sounds in reply and then said, cupping his hands so perhaps only his mother would hear him, “The Sandman has been here.”

  He heard his mother laugh and put her coffee cup down with a bang.

  Behind the closed door, little Judd made a drawing on his watercolor paper of a ship at sea and a sailor looking at the rough waves.

  There was so much watercolor red, though, that his paint box was suddenly flooded with it. It was the best watercolor he had ever used, thick and yet runny. No wonder Nelle had talked so much about the Sandman if he brought such good colors to paint with.