The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  I loved the beautiful expression in his hazel eyes and in the large almost fierce black pupils as he stared at me.

  “Do you miss Uncle Enos?” I wondered later that day when we were together.

  “No,” he said in a sharp, loud voice.

  I was both glad and sad because of the remark. Why I felt both things I don’t exactly know. I guess it was his honesty.

  He was honest like a pane of the finest window glass. I loved his openness. Oh, how I trusted him. And that trust was never betrayed.

  I saw at last there was someone I loved. And my love was as pure as his honesty was perfect.

  My secret had given us a bond, one to the other.

  IN THOSE LONG winter evenings on the edge of the Canadian wildlands, there was little to do but doze, then come awake and talk, sip our wine so sparingly (I would not allow him to have more than a half glass an evening), and there was our talk. We talked about the same things over and again, but we never wearied one another. We were always talking at length on every subject—except the main one. And I knew he was waiting to hear me on that very one.

  “How long has it been now, Delia,” his voice sounded as if it were coming from a room away.

  At first I was tempted to reply, “How long has it been from what?” Instead I answered, “Three years more or less.”

  “And you told no one in all this time?”

  “I could not tell anyone because for a while I thought maybe I had mislaid them, but even as I offered this excuse, Clyde, I knew I could not be mistaken. I knew something, yes let that word be the right one, something was taking my jewels. Oh why do I say my. They never belonged to me, dear boy. I never affected jewels. I did not like the feel of them against my skin or clothes. Perhaps they reminded me of the dead.”

  “So that is all you know then,” he spoke after minutes of silence.

  I had to laugh almost uproariously at his tone. “I am laughing, dear Clyde, because you spoke so like an old judge just then. Addressing me as a dubious witness! And dubious witness I am to myself! I accuse myself—of not knowing anything!”

  “Could we go to the room where you kept them?” he wondered.

  I hesitated.

  “No?” he said in a forthright almost ill-humored way.

  “It’s a long way up the stairs, and I have never liked that big room where I kept them. Then there are the keys. Many many keys to bother and fumble with.”

  “Then we won’t go,” he muttered.

  “No, we will, Clyde. We will go.”

  Ah, I had forgotten indeed what a long way up to the big room it was. Even Clyde got a bit tired. Four or five or more flights.

  “Well, it’s a real castle we live in, my dear,” I encouraged him as we toiled upwards.

  “You must have a good heart and strong lungs,” he said, and he smiled and brought his face very close to mine.

  Then I pulled out my flashlight, or as my grandfather would have called it, my torch.

  “Now the next flight,” I explained, “has poor illumination.”

  As we approached that terrible door, I brought out the heavy bunch of keys.

  “Put this long key, Clyde, in the upper lock, and then this smaller key, when you’ve unlocked the top one, place it in the lower one here.”

  He did it well, and we went through the door where of course another bigger door awaited us.

  “Now, Clyde, here is the second bunch of keys. Put the upper key to the large keyhole above, give the door a good shove, and we can go in.”

  He fumbled a little, and I believe I heard him swear for the first time. (Well, his Uncle Enos was a profane old cuss.)

  We entered. There were fewer cobwebs now than when I had come in so many months before.

  “See all these velvet cases spread out over the oak table there,” I said. “In the red velvet large cases were the jewels. Their jewels.”

  He looked around, and I gave him my torch. But then I remembered there was an upper light, and I turned it on.

  He shut off the torch. He seemed in charge of it all and much older than his twenty years then. I felt safe, comfortable, almost sleepy from my trust in him.

  “Look there, will you,” he exclaimed.

  I put on my long-distance glasses and looked where he pointed.

  He bent down to touch something on the floor under the red velvet cases.

  I took off my glasses and stared.

  “What is it, Clyde?” I said.

  “Don’t you see,” he replied in a hushed way. “It’s a white feather. A white bird’s feather. Very pretty, isn’t it.” He raised up the feather toward my trembling hand.

  A STRANGE CALM descended on us both after Clyde found the white feather. At first I was afraid to touch it. Clyde coaxed me to take it in my hand, and only after repeated urgings on his part did I do so.

  At that moment the calm descended on me as many years ago during one of my few serious illnesses old sharp-eyed Doctor Noddy had insisted I take a tincture of opium.

  Why, I wondered, did the glimpse of a white bird’s feather confer both upon me and Clyde this unusual calm. As if we had found the jewels, or at least had come to understand by what means the jewels had been taken. I say us advisedly, for by now Clyde and I were as close as mother and grandson, even husband and wife. We were so close that sometimes at night I would in my bed shudder and words (I was unaware of where they came from) filled my mouth.

  Clyde more than the jewels then—let me repeat—was my all, but the jewels were important I realized dimly only because they were the bond holding us together.

  That evening I allowed Clyde a little more than half a glass of red wine.

  “The only pleasure, Clyde,” I addressed him, “is in sipping. Gulping, swallowing spoil all the real delicate pleasure.”

  I saw his mind was on the white feather.

  He had put it on the same table the Ouija board rested on.

  “We should see it in a safe place,” Clyde said gazing at the feather.

  His statement filled me with puzzlement. I wanted to say why ever should we, but I was silent. I spilled some wine on my fresh, white dress. He rose at once and went to the back kitchen and came forward with a little basin filled with water. He carefully and painstakingly wiped away the red stain.

  “There,” Clyde said looking at where the stain had been.

  When he had taken back the basin, he sat very quietly for a while, his eyes half-closed, and then:

  “I say we should put it in a safe place.”

  “Is there any such, Clyde, now the jewels have been taken.”

  “Just the same I think we should keep the feather out where it is visible, don’t you?”

  “It is certainly a beautiful one,” I remarked.

  He nodded faintly and then raising his voice said, “It’s a clue.”

  My calm all at once disappeared. I put the wineglass down for fear I might spill more.

  “Had you never seen the feather before, Delia?” he inquired.

  The way he said my name revealed to me that we were confederates, though I would never have used this word to his face. It might have pained him. But we were what the word really meant.

  “I think it will lead us to find your jewels,” he finished, and he drank, thank heavens, still so sparingly of the wine.

  I dared not ask him what he meant.

  “I think the place for the feather,” I spoke rather loudly, “is in that large collection of cases over there where Cousin Berty kept her assortment of rare South American butterflies.”

  “I don’t think so,” Clyde said after a bit.

  “Then where would you want it?” I said.

  “On your music stand by your piano where it’s in full view.”

  “Full view?” I spoke almost crossly.

  “Yes, for it’s the clue,” he almost shouted. “The feather is our clue. Don’t you see?”

  He sounded almost angry, certainly jarring, if not unkind.

  I
dared not raise my wineglass, for I would have surely at that moment spilled nearly all of it, and I could not have stood for his cleaning my white dress again that evening. It was too great a ceremony for ruffled nerves.

  “There it shall be put, Clyde,” I said at last, and he smiled.

  HAVE I FORGOTTEN to tell how else we whiled away the very long evenings? Near the music stand where we had placed the feather stood the unused, old grand piano, by some miracle still fairly in tune.

  Clyde Furness had one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. In my youth I had attended the opera. In my day I heard all the great tenors, but it was Clyde’s voice which moved me almost to a swoon. We played what is known as parlor songs, ancient, ageless songs. My hands surprised him when he saw how nimble and quick they still were on the keys. My hands surprised me as a matter of fact. When he sang, my fingers moved like a young woman’s. When I played the piano alone, they were stiff and hit many wrong keys.

  But I saw then what he meant. As I played the parlor songs my eyes rested not only on him but on the feather. What he called—the clue.

  I had suggested one or two times that, now Uncle Enos had departed, Clyde should move in with me. “There’s lots of room here; you can choose what part of the house you like and make yourself to home, godson.”

  Whenever I’d mentioned his moving in up till then, he had always pouted like a small boy. The day we found the feather I felt something had changed not only in me, in the house, in the very air we breathed—something had changed in him.

  As I went up to kiss him goodnight that evening, I noticed over his upper lip there was beginning to grow ever so softly traces of his beard.

  “What is it?” I inquired when he hesitated at the door. He touched the place on his cheek where I had kissed him.

  “Are you sure as sure can be, you still want me to move my things here?” Clyde asked.

  “I want you to, of course. You know that. Why should you walk two miles every day to Uncle Enos’s and back when it’s here the welcome mat is out.”

  “You certainly have the room don’t you,” he joked. “How many rooms have you got?” he grinned.

  “Oh I’ve almost forgotten, Clyde.”

  “Forty?” he wondered.

  I smiled. I kissed him again.

  The feather had changed everything. I must have looked at it every time I went near the piano. I touched it occasionally. It seemed to move when I picked it up as if it had breath. It was both warm and cool and so soft except for its strong shaft. I once touched it to my lips, and some tears formed in my eyes.

  “To think that Clyde is going to be under my roof,” I spoke aloud and put the feather back on the music stand.

  DR. NODDY PAID his monthly visit shortly after Clyde had come to stay with me.

  Dr. Noddy was an extremely tall man, but as if apologetic for his height he stooped and was beginning to be terribly bent so that his head was never held high but always leaned over like he was everlastingly writing prescriptions. This visit was remarkable by the fact he acted unsurprised to see Clyde Furness in my company. One would have thought from the doctor’s attitude Clyde had always lived with me.

  He began his cursory examination of me—pulse, listening to my lungs and heart, rolling back my eyelids, having me stick out my tongue.

  “The tongue and the whites of the eyes tell everything,” he once said.

  Then he gave me another box of the little purple pills to be taken on rising and on getting into bed.

  “And shan’t we examine the young man then,” Dr. Noddy spoke as if to himself.

  He had Clyde remove his shirt and undershirt much to the poor boy’s embarrassment. I went into an adjoining closet and brought out one of my grandfather’s imported dressing gowns and insisted Clyde put this on to avoid further humiliation.

  Dr. Noddy examined Clyde’s ears carefully, but his attention seemed to wander over to the music stand. After staring at it for some time and changing his eyeglasses, he then looked at Clyde’s hair and scalp and finally took out a pocket comb of his own and combed the boy’s hair meticulously.

  “Delia, he has parted his hair wrong. Come over here and see for yourself.”

  I took my time coming to where the doctor was examining my godson, and my deliberateness annoyed him. But all the time nonetheless he kept looking over at the music stand.

  “I want you to part his hair on his left side, not on his right. His hair is growing all wrong as a result. And another thing, look in his right ear. See all that wax.”

  Dr. Noddy now went over to his little doctor’s bag and drew out a small silver instrument of some kind.

  “I will give you this for his ear. Clean out the wax daily. Just as I am doing now.” Clyde gave out a little cry more of surprise than pain as the doctor cleaned his ear of the wax.

  “Now then, we should be fine.” But Dr. Noddy was no longer paying any attention to us. He was staring at the music stand, and finally he went over to it. He straightened up as much as age and rheumatism would permit.

  It was the feather of course he had been staring at so intently, so continuously!

  He picked the feather up and came over to where I was studying the instrument he had recommended for Clyde’s ear.

  “Where did this come from?” he spoke in almost angry, certainly accusatory tones.

  “Oh that,” I said, and I stuttered for the first time since I was a girl.

  “Where did it come from?” he now addressed Clyde in a kind of tone of rage.

  “Well, sir,” Clyde began but failed to continue.

  “Clyde and I found it the other day when we went to the fourth story, Dr. Noddy.”

  “You climbed all the way up there, did you,” the old man mumbled, but his attention was all on the feather. “May I keep this for the time being,” he said turning brusquely to me.

  “If you wish, doctor, of course,” I told him when I saw his usual bad temper was asserting itself.

  “Unless, Delia, you have some use for it.”

  Before I could think I said, “Only as a clue, Dr. Noddy.”

  “What?” Dr. Noddy almost roared.

  Taking advantage of his deafness, I soothed him by saying, “We thought it rather queer, didn’t we, Clyde, that there was a feather in the room where I used to keep my grandmother’s jewels.”

  Whether Dr. Noddy heard this last statement or not, I do not know. He put the feather in his huge leather wallet and returned the wallet inside his outer coat with unusual and irritable vigor.

  “I will be back then in a month. Have Clyde here drink more well water during the day.” Staring at me then, he added, “He’s good company I take for you, Delia Mattlock.”

  Before I could even say yes, he was gone, slamming the big front door behind him.

  Dr. Noddy’s visit had spoiled something. I do not know exactly how otherwise to describe it. A kind of gloom settled over everything.

  Clyde kept holding his ear and touching his beautiful hair and his scalp.

  “Does your ear pain you, Clyde?” I finally broke the silence.

  “No,” he said after a very long pause. “But funny thing is I hear now better.”

  “We always called earwax beeswax when I was a girl,” I said. Clyde snickered a little but only I believe to be polite.

  “He took the feather, didn’t he,” Clyde came out of his reverie.

  “And I wonder why, Clyde. Of course, Dr. Noddy is among other things a kind of outdoorsman. A naturalist they call it. Studies animals and birds.”

  “Oh that could explain it then, maybe.”

  “Not quite,” I disagreed. “Did you see how he kept staring at the feather on the music stand?”

  “I did. That’s about all he did while he was here.”

  I nodded. “I never take his pills. Oh, I did at the beginning, but they did nothing for me that I could appreciate. Probably they are made of sugar. I’ve heard doctors often give some of their patients sugar pills.”r />
  “He certainly changed the part in my hair. Excuse me while I look in the mirror over there now, Delia.”

  Clyde went over to the fifteen foot high mirror brought from England so many years gone by. He made little cries of surprise or perhaps dismay as he looked at himself in the glass.

  “I don’t look like me,” he said gruffly and closed his eyes.

  “If you don’t like the new part in your hair, we can just comb it back the way it was.”

  “No, I think maybe I like the new way it’s parted. Have to get used to it I suppose, that’s all.”

  “Your hair would look fine with any kind of a part you chose. You have beautiful hair.”

  He mumbled a thank you and blushed.

  “I had a close girl-chum at school, Irma Stairs. She had the most beautiful hair in the world. The color they call Titian. She let it grow until it fell clear to below her knees. When she would let it all down sometimes just to show me, I could not believe my eyes. It made me a little uneasy. I like your hair though, Clyde, even better.”

  “What do you think he wants to keep the white feather for?” Clyde wondered.

  We walked toward the piano just then as if from a signal.

  I opened the book of parlor songs, and we began our singing and playing hour.

  He sang “Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming.” It made the tears come. Then he sang a rollicking sailor’s song.

  But things were not right after the doctor’s visit.

  “It’s time for our glass of wine,” I said, rising from the piano. “We need it after old Dr. Noddy.”

  A GREAT UNEASINESS, even sadness, now came over both of us.

  I have for many years had the bad habit of talking to myself or, what was considered worse, talking out my own thoughts aloud even in front of company.

  Dr. Noddy’s having walked off with the feather Clyde and I had found in the jewel room was the source of our discontent.

  Thinking Clyde was dozing after his sipping his wine, I found myself speaking aloud of my discomfiture and even alarm.

  “He is making us feel like the accused,” I said, and then I added more similar thoughts.

  To my surprise I heard Clyde answering me, which was very unlike himself.