The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  But his presence in the house became shorter, less frequent. Sometimes he did not come home at night. Sometimes he barely spoke to them. He became sad, downcast . . . even tearful. Once Mother Green had heard this terrible sobbing in the front parlor. She didn’t know what to do. It didn’t sound like anybody she had ever heard. It sounded almost like a heartbeat. She opened the door ever so soft and there he sat slumped in the big chair just crying his eyes out. She closed the door as soft as she had opened it, waited a while, and then called out very loud, “Bewie is that you?” When she went in the front parlor his face was as dry as chalk, and he was composed and looked like always. Yes, as Mother Green kept repeating, “Something is on his mind. Something is worrying him.”

  SOMETHING, TOO, WAS on Mother Green’s mind. She would start to say something to Viola, and then she would stop all of a sudden, or in Viola’s words “clam up.” She would clear her throat and relapse into silence.

  “Do you remember Ruby Loftus?” the old woman broke her silence.

  Viola said yes though she was not sure she did remember Ruby.

  Mother Green smiled, lapsed again into a brief silence. Then she began to speak hurriedly, “She was what they call a psychic reader. She had second sight. Well, she often read for me. What she got for me was usually mighty interesting if not exactly calming. But what she told me one time happened years ago. Before your time, Viola. She ‘read’ me, and lord how she read me. She told me that in my later years there would come into my life a wonderful presence, a shining kind of being who would bring me many of the rewards and fulfill many of the promises I had never thought would be mine. It would be harvest time.”

  Viola closed her eyes.

  “That prophecy has come to pass,” Mother Green went on. “My reward, my shining blessing has got to be Bewie Freeth.”

  Up until then Viola had never known Mother Green to offer her strong drink except in case of illness.

  Tonight she asked Viola to go to the little cupboard in the pantry and on the first shelf reach for the whisky and then pour out two glasses.

  Viola was even less used to strong drink than Mother Green, but she knew she must not disappoint her old friend after she had told her of the prophecy of the psychic reader.

  And Viola was as sure as sure could be Ruby Loftus had told the undeniable truth. Sad as Viola was that Bewie occupied so deep a place in Mother Green’s heart, a place Viola would never hold, nonetheless, Bewie Freeth, beyond the shadow of a doubt, as if foretold by an angel, had come into the old woman’s life a late blessing and a special gift.

  MOTHER GREEN WAS so happy when Bewie was around, Viola Daniels later remarked often to visitors. She never did seem to reckon it would all come to a close.

  The first night he didn’t come home, or rather the first dawn, Mother Green was calm.

  “Bewie will be home soon, mark my word,” she would smile.

  But one day was followed by another. Mother Green would hobble up to where he had his room.

  “He’ll be back if only to wear his outfits,” she told Viola.

  “Maybe we should notify the police,” Viola said one evening after several weeks went by.

  It was the only time Viola and Mother Green disagreed.

  “Don’t never say police ever again in my presence, Viola Daniels. If you have to do somethin’ get down on your knees and pray, but don’t say we should call the law.”

  MOTHER GREEN RELIED on Viola Daniels in so many ways, but principally to keep her straight on time and events. Viola knew the old woman’s memory had begun to show the effects of time.

  Often Mother Green would inquire, “When was it that Bewie came to us?”

  “Don’t you recall, Mother. He come on that blusterous July night.”

  “Which July though?”

  “Why, July last, dear.”

  But in a day or so Mother Green would ask the same question over again.

  Viola choked up then with the realization her old friend was beginning to fail, and she could not restrain a tear. She knew Mother Green was only holding to life at all because of Bewie.

  “He was her all and everything.” Viola would tell of it some time later.

  ANOTHER THING WHICH worried Viola was that Mother Green continued to steal upstairs to Bewie’s room despite the fact she had such a problem managing the rickety stairs.

  At the foot of the stairs Viola would listen. She could hear Mother Green lifting up his shirts and muttering something like, “Why ain’t you come home, Bewie, when you know we miss you so.”

  Finally though if Mother Green didn’t guess at the truth, Viola did. The truth that Bewie Freeth was gone for good.

  But yet, if he had gone, his duds and finery was left behind.

  Viola herself could not help stealing up the stairs and going to his closet. She took down his silk underwear, his pure cotton shirts, and once while arranging his Palm Beach suit on a handmade hanger, something fell out of one of the pockets onto the floor. The slight sound it gave out falling frightened her almost as if it was a firearm going off.

  Slowly she picked the object up. It was a newspaper clipping. And the clipping was rather recent from a Chicago newspaper. Its heading read: METEORIC RISE OF UNKNOWN YOUTH. Her eyes moved on the article! Bewick Freeth who made hosannas ring nation-wide from his two previous films is now the undisputed charismatic idol of the hour. He has never been greater, his success unanimous.

  Viola let the newsprint slip to the floor and sat down heavily on one of Mother Green’s upholstered chairs. She felt faint, she felt, yes, betrayed, perhaps even mocked. Here he had been with them and never let on who he was. Yes, he had deceived them.

  At the same time she felt he had not really lied to them. She knew he must have cared for them, a little perhaps, but, yes, he had been happy with them. He had often said he never wanted to leave, that she and Mother Green were “home to him.” And now the clipping.

  SITTING WITH MOTHER Green that evening, she was gradually aware the old woman was staring at her.

  “Yes?” Viola managed to say.

  “You look like you seen a ghost,” Mother Green said. When there was no answer from Viola the old woman clicked her tongue.

  “You know somethin’ I don’t know, Viola. You know somethin’ and you know you know somethin’.”

  “Maybe I have found out who Bewie really is, Mother Green. And how come he ain’t here anymore I guess.”

  “If you know something Viola, let’s hear it, all of it.”

  “Bewie Freeth is not like us, Alabama accent or not. He’s a famous movie star. What he was doin’ here with us, well who knows.”

  Slowly, unostentatiously, as if handing Mother Green something she had perhaps asked for, Viola handed her the clipping.

  The old woman put on her spectacles. She read and reread the article from the Chicago paper.

  To Viola’s consternation Mother Green, after putting away her spectacles, handed back the clipping to Viola without a word. Was the old woman beginning to fail, beginning not to take in things. No, not at all, Viola was sure. The truth about Bewie, the truth who he was had shocked her into this silence. After a long pause Mother Green smiled a kind of smile that meant, who knows, the dream was broken.

  DOING HER EVENING sewing, Viola stopped working for a moment and said, “Mother Green.”

  “Yes,” the old woman answered.

  “I come across upstairs in the little store room along beside the games of checkers that old German Ouija board, planchette and all.”

  Mother Green’s jaw dropped, and she reached in her side pocket for her handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

  “You don’t say,” she spoke in a far-off voice. When Viola said no more, Mother Green, adjusting the lavaliere she wore about her throat said, “You mean you want to bring Ouija out then.”

  Viola nodded. After a silence she said, “I thought, Mother Green, Ouija might explain things to us, do you reckon?”

  “You mean Bewie?�
�

  “Yes, maybe.”

  “Explain him how.”

  “You said yourself the other evening as we lingered over tea that we can barely remember when or how he came to us.”

  Mother Green sighed in an odd off-hand way. “And you think Ouija can tell us the why and how of him. And whether we’ll ever see him again.”

  The next day Viola brought the Ouija board out and set it on the card table.

  “I declare,” Mother Green said.

  When they had arranged the board both ladies admitted they hardly dared begin.

  “Do you ask Ouija somethin’, Viola, now.”

  They put both their hands on the planchette. It did not move.

  “You got to ask it, Mother Green, dear.”

  Their hands began moving slowly, sleepily after a while.

  “No, no, Viola, you ask it.”

  The board moved jerkily, stopped and then began slowly to move to the letters.

  It spelled KEWPIE.

  The ladies giggled in spite of themselves.

  The planchette moved wildly, then slowed down, then very pokily spelled

  LUKY THE DAY HE COME TO YOU

  & LUKIER THE EVENIN HE BE GONE

  LUKY LUKY LADIES

  “Mother Green, whether it’s me or Ouija, but Ouija don’t know how to spell now, do he?” Viola commented.

  “But is he gone forever?” Mother Green asked Ouija. The planchette was still, perfectly still.

  Viola began to see then that she should never have let Mother Green know that Bewie was a famous film actor. It was after Mother Green found out that fact that she began going down hill in no small measure. She complained too of what she called the weight of memory.

  “After a while,” Mother Green spoke in a low voice now to Viola almost as if she was praying, “there is too much to remember. And there is too much of past days to know when it happened, and sometimes there is the doubt maybe it did happen or I dreamt it. And the people! All the faces and the talk and the shoutin’ from the beginning until now. Why all those years of mine in Alabama alone would take another fifty years to tell you about.”

  But Viola was sure it was Bewie’s absence and his never coming back which pushed her down to what she called the shady side of life. “I’m going down the shady side now” she had once said before Bewie came, and now it had got worse than shady—it bespoke the deep night.

  “Where is he?” she would often shout coming out of a dozing spell in her chair.

  “Now, now Mother,” Viola would respond.

  “You don’t tell me nothin’, do you, Viola.”

  “Whatever you ask I will tell you if I know,” Viola answered.

  “I feel I am bein’ kept in the dark,” Mother Green would mumble.

  AND SO THEY spent many evenings consulting Ouija, but sort of dispiritedly now. If Ouija had had one fault, that of misspelling words, now he had a worse fault, he was tongue-tied most of the time. When not silent Ouija stammered.

  Mother Green spoke more and more of Ouija in fact as if he was a person, a person sort of like Bewie Freeth who was visiting them but wouldn’t be permanent, a kind of transient somebody, yes, like Bewie Freeth had been.

  Sometimes Viola wondered if she and Mother Green had only dreamed there was a Bewie Freeth. And Viola often thought Mother Green might be having the same thought.

  They were both waiting for something, and Bewie had intercepted the wait, but now that he was gone, as Ouija said, they would have no occupation but to wait together.

  VIOLA HAD TAKEN over the tasks that Bewie had performed, bathing Mother Green’s feet and bunions in the medicated water, cleaning sometimes the wax out of her ears (though it didn’t cure her deafness) and answering the endless query, “Do you think Bewie is ever comin’ back?”

  Then one day she up and told Mother Green Bewie had been gone for nearly a year, but she was glad for the first time Mother Green’s deafness had prevented her from hearing her words.

  Viola’s sorrow grew as she often confided to herself when alone.

  Mother Green seeing Viola’s sorrow spoke up sharply, “Viola, Viola, what ails you you are so weepy. What is going on, dear child.”

  “I didn’t know I was weepy, dear Mother,” she said trying to smile.

  “You miss Bewie, don’t you.”

  But the mention of Bewie brought back to her how Mother Green’s memory was playing tricks on her. For she always wondered where Bewie had gone, and she kept asking when he would return.

  As many times as Viola told her that Bewie was gone, and would not come back, she saw that Mother Green either did not hear this explanation or having heard it erased it from her memory. For Mother Green, Bewie was a timeless part of their life, and so if he was gone, no matter, he would be back.

  THE HEAVENS THEMSELVES seemed to give warning of what was happening, Viola Daniels would later tell people who visited.

  Mother Green and Viola heard the sound that was like thunder, only probably closer and scarier. The sky seemed to blossom with many flaming colors which then fell like stars.

  Difficult as it was now for both of the ladies to trudge up the long stairwell, they felt they had to find out what the commotion was.

  It took Mother Green nearly a half hour to reach the top. How she sighed and groaned, and her bunions were killing her. She would rest on some of the steps before going further.

  “I should have brought the smelling bottle, dear heart,” Viola muttered, but Mother Green only gave her a reproachful look.

  The top floor had great high huge windows. They no more got up there than she realized what it was.

  “Fireworks,” Mother Green exclaimed.

  “It means something,” Viola shook her head.

  “If that’s what you feel, we might consult Ouija.”

  This time Ouija was not evasive. The planchette began to move as soon as they touched it.

  Mother Green came up with a start when Viola queried, “Where’s Bewie?”

  Ouija responded, “IN THE SWEET BY-AND-BY.”

  “And what do you mean by-and-by, Ouija?” Viola asked as Mother Green stared at the board.

  Viola stirred uneasily for she knew Mother Green was alert tonight.

  “HE GONE,” Ouija responded.

  At this, Mother Green sat up very straight in her chair but retained her hand on the planchette.

  “Gone where?” Viola raised her voice.

  Ouija moved at once.

  “GONE TO CAMP GROUND.”

  “Where Camp Ground?”

  Ouija did not move. Viola raised her voice, but the planchette was still, and then finally Ouija spelled again:

  “CAMP GROUND.”

  VIOLA DANIELS’ OWN memory was getting almost as bad as Mother Green’s, and it wasn’t exactly due to her drinking the strong spirits she found in the cupboard. No, Viola’s memory was not what it was, say, the day Bewie had arrived.

  She tried to remember how she had learned for a proven fact that Bewie had passed over.

  Soon after their episode with the Ouija, one day while out shopping, Viola in one of her now common absentminded spells, found herself more than a few blocks away from Mother Green’s, in a kind of promenade where there were expensive shops, saloons, and motion picture theaters. She saw that one of the movie houses was draped in black cloth, and there were wreaths and flowers and signs all everywhere. Her eye caught sight of the marquee. She stopped dead in her tracks. She kept reading over and again the lettering:

  “YOU WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US BEWIE.

  FOREVER AND A DAY”

  Viola braced herself and went up to a uniformed man who was in charge of inspecting tickets as you went into the theater.

  “Excuse me,” she began. The uniformed man looked at her carefully and blinked.

  “Tell me if Bewie Freeth. . . .”

  He did not let Viola finish but pointed to a large oversize photo from a newspaper. Without her glasses Viola was hardly able to read
the print, but finally at least one sentence came clear. Yes, Bewie Freeth was no more, had, in the words of Ouija, gone to Camp Ground.

  IT WAS SEVERAL nights later that the first of the gatherings outside Mother Green’s house began. They were mostly of young men, some of whom played every so often on a horn, others on a sax, and still others blew on what looked like a little cornet. When they quit playin’ they shouted to passersby, “Bewie lived here for your information!”

  Viola crept out on the frail front porch.

  A smothered shout went up from the musicians.

  There was the strong smell of something smoky, and as if it were their final number, each of the players took out big handkerchiefs and waved them at her in token, one supposed in tribute, to their idol Bewie.

  Mother Green slept through it and other “live” performances that would take place as a tribute to their hero.

  Looking at Mother Green after one of these performances, Viola heard her own voice say, “Lucky you, dear heart, you don’t know what this is all about on account of I wouldn’t know how to tell you, and I don’t understand it maybe any better than you do or would.”

  “So, he in the sweet by-and-by,” Viola said later that night to herself after she had had a shot of spirits in the kitchen.

  TIME GOT MORE and more mixed up. After the night of the fireworks there was a long vacant pause in everything.

  Viola was the first to say she thought something was about to bring them news.

  And this time it was not Ouija who warned them, no it was a ticking sound Viola heard coming from Bewie’s closet.

  Viola trembled and even sobbed a little. Yet she had to investigate what on earth was making a ticking sound in the clothes closet.

  It took her a long time to locate where the sound was coming from. She had no idea Bewie would carry an old-fashioned very heavy, yes, antique pocket watch. Why it seemed to weigh three pounds.

  She removed it from his breast pocket. The sparkling gold watch was ticking! After all these—was it months or years?

  Later Viola talked with a very venerable watchmaker, oh Mother Green said he must have gone back to the early days after emancipation. Watches and clocks, old Tyrrwhit assured her, like dead people, sometimes would come to life whether by means of a loud noise, or a building shaking, or often because of an earthquake or cyclone, a very old clock or watch, that had not ticked for ages, would all of a sudden begin ticking away. Clocks he assured Viola were imbued with a spirit all their own, and a watchmaker, a good watchmaker, knows the clock has a mind and knowledge superior to the watchmaker.