The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  But the wallpaper was already in flames in the room where Alice was proposing to the Dragon. “Have no fear, Alice D.,” the Dragon spoke to her. “If it looks like a fire, we’ll exit. But I must have a frosty drink, my dear. You understand that, of course. You have been unhappy so long, dear Alice, and though I could never love you as you require because you are only a little girl still—”

  “You will grow to love me,” she quoted from a favorite novel.

  “Love you? Let me finish,” the Dragon said. “I will adopt you, if not love you. For one thing I am perfectly indifferent to tardiness of any kind. You will live in my palatial castle and do as you please. After all, you are as much legally mine as theirs. . . .”

  “We’ve got to leave, Alice,” Mrs. Drummond was wringing her hands. “The entire house is in flames . . . the attic’s going now, see, look out there . . . it’s already fallen on the front yard. We’ve notified the fire department. Good-bye, Alice, my dear . . . I’m afraid escape is out of the question for you.” She had noticed the girl was being hugged tightly by the big animal.

  “Good-bye, my dear,” Mr. Drummond spoke to Alice. He had on his fireman’s hat, as he was a member of the auxiliary fire department. “Good-bye, sir,” he said to the Dragon.

  “We have nothing to fear from flames,” the Dragon told Alice, as she nestled against his scales.

  “I’ve never felt cooler, Draggie, never felt so much at ease.”

  THE HOUSE BURNED entirely down, and the water from the firemen’s hoses quenched the thirst of the huge animal, who had sat on during the entire conflagration hugging Alice Drummond to his scales.

  “THEY WERE TWINED together like two lilies,” the local press described their position. The townspeople at first understood that Alice Drummond had been burnt to an unrecognizable cinder, and hence Mrs. Drummond had permitted the Dragon to take her off to Green Dragon Lodge with no more feeling than a shrug of the shoulder.

  But when all learned that she had not so much as suffered a singeing of one of her curls, everybody began going to Dragon Lodge in hopes of catching a glimpse of the pair.

  Whether the Dragon had finally fallen in love with Alice, after being disinterested in little girls except for his liking to frighten them, was not known. But Alice showed by her every movement and gesture that she was hopelessly attached to the Green Dragon. She radiated joy.

  MRS. DRUMMOND, IN an interview with the girl who stood between the front paws of the Dragon, threw up to her all that they had done for her. “You were a very expensive child, my dear,” Mrs. Drummond said. “You ate your weight in food every other month. We are poor people as a result of having provided for you . . .”

  Alice said nothing, and Mrs. Drummond, unable to bear silence when she was having a quarrel with anybody, shrieked in anger and came up as was her custom to slap the girl to sleep, but the Dragon at the moment she was about to strike the girl emitted a kind of steam which drove the stepmother back.

  “You’re too young to know happiness like this, Alice,” she said, on leaving, “and you’ll pay for every hour of joy you enjoy with that hideous animal . . . This is good-bye, Alice. I’ve done all I know I can for you. Good-bye, and may you be brought to a realization of your selfish ways and pay for it dearly.” Mr. Drummond who had hidden behind his wife now came out and seconded his wife’s statements. “Happiness is much too good for both of you,” he said.

  “Shall we go on with our lessons in being late for everything, Alice, my dear,” the Dragon inquired. “Or would you like a cup of hot turtle soup . . .”

  “I am so happy since we ran off together, Draggie, it don’t make much difference . . . I want to enjoy all of our happiness to the full while I have it.”

  She embraced the Dragon, and they went back into Dragon Lodge and had a delicious cup of hot turtle soup.

  AND NOW IT was Mildred Terry’s turn to come to Dragon Lodge, and complain: “I would be ashamed of myself if I were you,” she addressed the Green Dragon. “Living with a spoiled little snipe who never did a thing for a soul. You’ll never know the real kind of happiness, Dragon. Never.”

  The Dragon listened patiently to all Mildred said.

  “I could have made a wonderful life for both of us,” Mildred tried to go on, but was weeping too hard. “A lot you ever cared about me. I sacrificed my youth for you, and this is what I get. You’ll wake up one day, both of you, and discover the kind of person you are living with, and no punishment can be greater than that, none in the world.

  “Good-bye, and try to learn from your mistakes,” Mildred finished, and disappeared into the leafy streets of Centerville.

  THE DRAGON CAME out, green as cabbage. Their luggage was all neatly in a pile about them, and they were leaving now to go to the Everglades to live. There was one tiny place in it, the Dragon knew, which would be lonesome, private, and natural. There they would live out their lives together, never having to care about being late, or indeed early.

  “Good-bye, Centerville,” they both cried as the Dragon took off, his wings making a great din over the streets of Centerville . . . “Good-bye,” Alice shouted, “I won’t be back, I’m afraid, or rather am not afraid.”

  That was the last the Drummonds, Mildred Terry, or Centerville ever saw of them, and after a while nobody believed there had been an Alice Drummond, and certainly nobody believed there had been a Green Dragon. But of course there was, there were. . . .

  EASY STREET

  Mother Green and her faithful friend Viola Daniels, shut away as they were in their old four story brownstone, at the end of the mews, were unprepared for a sudden change in this unfrequented neighborhood. Big trucks with deafening sound equipment had moved in, men with bullhorns were shouting at other men up and down the street, and the whole area was roped off from access to the adjoining neighborhood.

  Mother Green had recently celebrated her 96th birthday, and her companion Viola (she looked on her as a daughter more than an attendant) was some thirty years younger.

  Their neighbors spoke of them as ladies in retirement who seldom ventured out into the great city beyond. At the unusual noise and tumult today the two friends stood at the windows in wonderment and incipient alarm.

  Then all at once (it was July) a summer thunderstorm of unusual violence struck the neighborhood. Hail and blinding downpour and, as the newspaper called it, “dangerous and prolonged lightning” descended. The thunder was so loud no one had ever heard such peals. It reminded the older men of the sounds of battle and bombing.

  The rain continued to come down in unpitying volume, interspersed with hailstones the size of duck eggs.

  The two retired ladies drew away from the window and pulled down the blinds, but curiosity tempted them to occasionally peek outside.

  What they saw was that all the men and the bullhorns and the trucks and the infernal shouting had ended. The disturbers of the peace could have been swept out to sea, who knows. Except for the unceasing downpour the street was as quiet as an uninhabited island.

  It was then they caught sight of somebody seeking shelter from the flood. He was standing under their tiny front porch, drenched to the skin, his clothes so tight pressed against his body he resembled a naked drowned man, and such streams of wetness came over his face he appeared to be weeping in torrents.

  Catching sight of Mother Green and Viola, the stranger made frantic gestures in their direction with his dripping hands.

  “Open the door for him,” Mother Green spoke to Viola.

  Viola was taken aback by such a command, for Mother Green seldom if ever admitted anybody inside, and her voice now rang out like that of some woman preacher.

  Viola hesitated only a minute. She flung open the door, and the drenched man staggered inside, and whether from being blinded by the torrent or through weakness, slipped and fell on his knees in front of the two ladies.

  Streams of water flowed from his sopping vestments.

  Meanwhile Mother Green was whispering to Viola tha
t in the little closet off the parlor there was a man’s bathrobe left from a roomer who had stayed with them some years ago, and a number of towels.

  The stranger was given the bathrobe and towels and was ushered into the “little room” off the parlor. The two ladies waited uneasily for him to come out.

  Many things crossed the two women’s minds of course. Such as who, in fact, had she admitted to their solitary domain. What if he was dangerous or wanted by the authorities.

  When their visitor emerged, Viola let out a short gasp, and Mother Green gave out a sound somewhere between astonishment and relief.

  They saw the stranger was, like Mother Green, a very dark African, but he was also very young. His almond-shaped eyes betokened something very like benediction.

  He sat down on the carpet and crossed his bare legs. He gave out his name which was Bewick Freeth.

  “We were filming out there,” he said, and he stretched his right arm in the direction of the downpour.

  Neither then nor later did the ladies take in the word “filming.” If it was heard at all, it was not understood.

  But what made the impression now on the older woman was she heard in the stranger’s speech the unmistakable accent of Alabama from where she had come so many decades ago.

  Replying to her question if she was right about his speech, Bewick did not smile so much as grin, and all his gleaming white teeth reinforced his good looks.

  It slipped out then both Mother Green and Bewick Freeth were from almost the very same section of Alabama, near a small lake, and the name Tallassee was mentioned.

  Both ladies could now relax and smile.

  Mother Green, at hearing the town named in a peremptory, even a slightly grand manner, urged Viola to go to the kitchen and bring some refreshment.

  Bewick smiled at hearing her order and closed his eyes.

  Mother Green liked the way he tasted the drink he was given, in small almost delicate sips, nodding his head with each sip as a kind of thank-you.

  Yes, she saw she had not been mistaken in him, had not run any risk. And meanwhile the sound of Alabama in his speech brought back to her in a rush her almost forgotten memories of the South she had put behind her.

  Looking at him closely, she wondered at times if she was not “seeing things.” The terrible storm, his sudden appearance, their reckless admitting of a total stranger—Mother Green did wonder, but she knew she was right. She knew then she must have been meant to know Bewick Freeth.

  Viola Daniels listened then as the visitor and Mother Green spoke. Viola Daniels was light-skinned and what Mother Green sometimes joked was that she looked almost more white even than an octoroon, while the more one looked at their visitor his very dark skin stood out deeper in hue.

  Mother Green was easy then, not only because of his Alabama speech but the deep darkness of his face, as well as his long eyelashes, and she could sense the sweetness of his breath coming to her in waves.

  LATER, MUCH LATER as Mother Green recalled his coming, it was as if they had been expecting him. He had walked in and they had spoken to him like he had been there before. No stranger. Even the glimpse Mother Green got of an earring in his left ear was no surprise to her.

  They set aside for him the large front guest room up two flights of stairs. It had not been resided in for some years.

  Bewie, as he asked to be called, one day after some time noticing Mother Green’s limp, asked if she was in some discomfort from the way she walked.

  Mother Green hesitated and fidgeted.

  “She suffers from bunions,” Viola informed him, and Mother Green stared reproachfully at her.

  Bewie in a strange gesture clasped his hands.

  “I know the very thing,” he cried in the face of Mother Green’s displeasure her affliction had been made known.

  The next day Bewie instructed Viola to prepare a small basin of mildly hot water to which he added some herbs he had purchased.

  Had he not done another thing, his bathing of Mother Green’s painful feet would have insured him a refuge with them.

  Only Viola looked a bit uneasy. More and more she had a kind of bewildered air.

  “What is it, Viola, dear?” Mother Green wondered while Bewie busied himself with some self-appointed task in the kitchen.

  “Nothing, Mother.”

  “You act a little put out,” the older woman spoke almost in a whisper.

  Yes, she saw perhaps Viola was hurt or maybe just jealous. And her almost white face between Mother Green and Bewie’s fierce complexions may have been a cause. She felt in a way set aside. And she wanted more than anything to be close to them, important to both.

  Mother Green patted Viola’s hand and kissed her middle finger. “It’s all all right, Viola,” she whispered.

  AND SO IT began, their life together, Mother Green and Viola and this perfect stranger from Alabama.

  He did not tell them what his work or calling was from outside. He only indicated that he would be out from part of the day and perhaps even some of the night.

  “It’s my present livelihood,” he added, letting them know he would have to be absent every so often.

  It all seemed unsurprising at least to Mother Green—as in a dream even the unbelievable will be perfectly believable.

  He had come to stay with them and they were to respect his absences and his sparse explanations. “It’s his livelihood,” Mother Green repeated his words to Viola.

  THEN, AS THE stranger stayed on, Viola’s uneasiness grew. Often she would go to the big hall mirror and look at her own face. She saw that not only was Mother Green closer to him because he spoke in an Alabama accent, but closer likewise because like her his face was the welcome dark color.

  “You will always be dear to me,” Mother Green said one afternoon when they were alone and she realized Viola was grieving.

  Viola tried to swallow her pride and went about as before, caring for Mother Green. In fact, after the arrival of Bewie she was more attentive and caring than before, if that was possible.

  But Viola as if confiding to herself would think, “Bewie is everything to her. More than if he were her own flesh and blood.”

  ONE DAY MOTHER Green acted a little uneasy. “Where do you suppose Bewie goes? We don’t as a matter of fact know much about him now do we,” she reflected.

  “We don’t know nothin’, you mean.”

  “Oh Viola, who is he, yes, who is this Bewie?”

  Mother Green then held Viola’s hand tight in hers.

  ONE THING OF course they could not help noticing. Bewie hardly ever returned without he was carrying a heavy package or two.

  At the ladies’ look of astonishment, he sat down and said in a joking tone, “My wardrobe. In my profession, you have to look your best. And the film people of course insist on it.”

  Again the word film did not register with the ladies. And they were too shy to ask him outright what required so many clothes.

  The clothes, or the wardrobe to use his term, intrigued Mother Green and Viola. They spent—yes hours discussing all the clothes he was required to possess because, yes, his livelihood made them a necessity.

  The curiosity became too strong for Mother Green. One afternoon she told Viola she would like to go upstairs to see how he kept his room.

  Viola frowned, “Those stairs are steep and rickety. And dangerous!”

  “Oh you can come along then and steady me, Viola dear.”

  Mother Green was nearly a cripple from her bunions, but she must see how he kept his room.

  It was more than a big surprise to her.

  She opened the big closet door and stared at some brand-new three-piece suits, fancy cravats, big-brimmed straw hats, and shiny elegant high-shoes.

  “All bandbox new!” Mother Green sighed and sat down on the easy chair Viola had brought from downstairs.

  “What are you doing?” Mother Green exclaimed, for she saw Viola had brought with her the big thermos bottle.

  “I fe
tched us some hot coffee.”

  Mother Green sipped the steaming brew.

  “What did I ever do, Viola, to deserve a child like you.”

  A little sob escaped Viola, undetected probably by Mother Green.

  SO THE MYSTERY of Bewie deepened. Yes, who was he after all, and where did the expensive suits and shoes and ties and gold cufflinks come from.

  Yet both Mother Green and Viola believed in him. He did not scare them. Even had he had no Alabama accent, he was one of them they were sure. He was not really a stranger in spite of his mysterious ways.

  IF ONLY MOTHER Green loved me as much as she does Bewie, Viola would sometimes speak out aloud, knowing of course Mother Green’s deafness would not let her hear.

  It appeared to Viola Daniels at times that both Mother Green and Bewie had returned to Alabama to take up again their life in the South and converse in their unforgettable Alabama speech.

  Viola sometimes thought about running away. But where could she go after all. She was no longer young. Who would want her. And beside all that she would never have the heart to leave Mother Green.

  “Let her love Bewie more than me!” Viola would then say out loud.

  “What’s you talking about over there,” Mother Green would say in a joking voice.

  “I hardly know myself, Mother Green,” Viola would say in a loud voice, and then the two ladies would both laugh.

  It became if possible less and less clear both to Mother Green and Viola Daniels how and why Bewie had become part of their lives. It was especially unclear at times how he had appeared at all. Once Viola almost got the word out, “Like a housebreaker!” but she caught herself from saying it at the last moment. But it would have been true maybe to say an apparition.

  “We always knew Bewie,” Viola said long afterward.

  SOMETHING HAD BEEN on Bewie’s mind. Perhaps that’s why he was so happy always performing so many tasks for Mother Green. He tidied the place up. He even washed the large front windows. And one evening he insisted on preparing a real Southern dinner for them.