The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  She took the ticking watch down to Mother Green who stared openmouthed at it and agreed, oh yes it was a sign.

  NEHEMIAH HIGHSTEAD ACCOMPANIED by two lawyers arrived in weather even more stormy than the day when Bewick Freeth had entered the lives of the two ladies.

  Nehemiah was an elderly black man who wore very thick colored glasses from which there extended a fluttering kind of frayed ribbon. His right hand trembled and he continually wiped his eyes with a large handkerchief from which there came a faint sweetish aroma.

  “This is a very strange bequest, ladies,” one of the attorneys finally began after looking about from ceiling to floor suspiciously. “Mr. Freeth came to our offices only a few days before his sudden decease.”

  Viola Daniels’ full attention now rested on Mother Green whose face was devoid of expression. Had she heard the word decease? And having heard it did she understand it, understand, that is, what Viola had tried to tell her time and again that their Bewie was no more.

  “You are the sole inheritors of what is more than a modest fortune. Much more!” the attorney continued.

  He waited sleepily peevishly for his statement to take hold of his auditors as a judge will wait before he gives the verdict.

  “He also provided for Mr. Highstead to look in on you ladies and be of any assistance as you may wish. Reverend Highstead was an acquaintance of Mr. Freeth from the actor’s first days in the city. He is the pastor of the Ebenezer Resurrection Church which is on the other side of town. It would be completely up to you as to how much and to what extent you would request his support.”

  Viola nudged Mother Green from time to time as the old woman kept closing her eyes and breathing heavily, but the three gentlemen appeared not to notice this.

  Finally the second attorney drew out from a Moroccan satchel a sheaf of papers. “If you ladies then will sign here on these dotted lines,” he pushed the stiff legal pages to Mother Green.

  Grasping tightly the pen he gave her she was able to sign:

  Elgiva Green

  The attorney repeated the name she had put down, confirming that she was the Mother Green designated in the will. It was, strange to say, the first time Viola Daniels had heard Mother Green’s Christian name spoken out loud.

  When the ladies had signed, Nehemiah Highstead rose, bowed his head, and asked everyone to join him in prayer.

  It went something like this, as Viola recalled it some time later, “We are gathered here today chosen to represent a young man who went under the name of Bewick Freeth, originally from Tallassee, Alabama, who gained brief but almost universal fame as a film actor. We applaud his devotion to Mother Green and Viola Daniels and his generosity in bequeathing these two respectable ladies with his entire fortune. May the Almighty grant us the wisdom that we can administer it with integrity and zeal. We ask thee, eternal Master, to bless us all as we stand here in prayer and supplication.”

  No one could have foreseen the result of the two ladies coming into what even to wealthy persons would have been a sizable fortune.

  Their disbelief they had inherited so much money was followed by a kind distemper and unwillingness to accept their change of fortune.

  Ladies from the Ebenezer Resurrection Church called frequently not merely to rejoice with Mother Green and Viola so much as to give them the courage to accept their unbelievable change of circumstance. They also discreetly suggested that some of the money could go to the Church.

  Mother Green hardly heard anything anybody said to her. She began to live in many different divisions of time. There were her early years in Alabama, then there were her later years of toil and poverty, followed by her proprietorship of the ramshackle mansion, and then the time when Bewick Freeth came out of the friendless blue and the unknown to stay with her and minister to her needs; then there was the time when Bewick, having left her without a word of goodbye, showered her with wealth.

  She sat in the front window of the old mansion she now owned and nodded to passersby. She was the Mother Green then people came to recognize. She would raise her hand in blessing to them in the manner of an old film star herself. Everyone thought she was Bewick’s mother. And at certain times of the day she herself may have thought so, for hour by hour her impression of reality changed.

  “We missed knowing he was a world-famous movie star,” Viola would confide sleepily to the visitors who now dropped in as if Mother Green’s house was a sort of gathering place. Mostly young ones came. Crazy about their idol. They wanted to see too where he hung his clothes. But their request to go upstairs was vetoed of course.

  The past, the present, the future became all mixed up in Mother Green’s mind. Sometimes she thought Bewie was her own flesh and blood. Again he was her hired man. Sometimes he seemed like her grandson. He was hardly ever the famed movie star the world knew him by.

  Often out of complete bewilderment and confusion as to what to do, Viola would hold Mother Green’s hand and even kiss its worn flesh.

  Once after holding her hand in hers for an unusually long spell Viola heard Mother Green say, “He’ll be back, don’t you believe now otherwise. Bewie will be back here whatever any folk may say he won’t.”

  Viola actually almost believed what Mother Green said. For how could so vital so fresh so overwhelmingly youthful a young man disappear, any more than sunbeams would one day cease to visit this world of sorrow and loss.

  IN THIS RESPLENDENT light then they went on with their lives, allowing Nehemiah Highstead and the Ebenezer Resurrection Church to tend to whatever arrangements so immense a bequest had visited upon the two retired ladies.

  “I think he was sent,” Mother Green often confided to Nehemiah on one of his frequent visits. To Viola’s relief she saw that Nehemiah acted as if he agreed with Mother Green. Yes, he was not playacting. She believed the old man too felt Bewie’s kind of splendor was not extinguished, would in fact make its presence known again.

  From then on Mother Green if not Viola always spoke about Bewie as “amongst the living” and not ever amongst the departed. “He was like her very own,” Viola often told the ladies of the Ebenezer Resurrection Church and the steady stream of young visitors who were Bewie’s followers.

  If for no other reason Mother Green’s and Viola’s daily lives were made more cheerful, more enjoyable, and yes more sociable. Their long years of lonesomeness and solitary grief (save when Bewie had come to them) was set aside for hours of joyfulness and even quiet mirth.

  The church ladies brought from their own kitchens sumptuous repasts for supper, and lighter but even perhaps more enjoyable victuals for lunch. They brought daily fresh flowers and made other arrangements for brightening the premises. They hired at times limousines and entertained the two ladies with little excursions. They even undertook to restore the ruined mansion to its original splendor.

  There was also singing, for all the ladies were members of the choir.

  And like Viola Daniels they would often agree with nearly everything Mother Green remarked, such as, “Bewie ain’t gone far,” or “Bewie will be here amongst us again, mark my words.”

  And so, even had the two ladies not inherited great wealth, the presence of the many young visitors and of old Nehemiah and the church choir ladies made Mother Green’s last days, if not quite as heavenly as the fortune teller had foretold, nonetheless a peaceable kind of half-light that suggests the growing presence of angels from beyond.

  ENTRE DOS LUCES

  Iwrite this letter to all my friends in the states to let them know the whole truth about what really happened.

  I have been told on reliable report that there is a warrant out in New York for the arrest of myself and my close friend Rico Alonso. You will remember we lived in the same string of rooms together on East Fourth Street, Manhattan, and our landlord was Felipe Parral.

  We are innocent of murdering Felipe and of all the charges except burglarizing a pet shop. We did burglar it, but we did not kill Felipe. He was found with his throat cu
t days after we have run off from him on account of we feared he would kill us. The basis of our fear was that he had gone crazy over the death of his birds, and then the fact that when we replaced the dead birds with the new ones, he thought they had come back from the dead. He has many superstitious fears, or rather he had many. Even though we told him the new birds was stolen and brought to him by us, he would not believe us. He thought they had come back from the other world because of his many sins.

  And now since Felipe is dead and gone himself, I will tell you that he once told Rico he had murdered several men in New York. Whether he told the truth or not, Rico don’t have no way of knowing of course, but Felipe swore to him he had killed them. That is why the birds coming back as he thought from hell scared him so. He had many enemies.

  TO EXPLAIN OUR situation, let me go back then to how it all happened.

  In exchange for a tiny room I had on the top of his building I was to keep his apartment clean, and water and feed the birds (he was so crazy about his birds) and keep their cages clean, but never to let them out. It was a hard task to clean the cages and not let them out, but I was successful until the unlucky day I am now going to tell you about.

  His pet birds were not pets. They were more like wild animals, and I don’t think they were like any birds people in cities are familiar with. Again, they were like small mammals with a hateful even vicious streak. I was taking care of them while he was in Havana. Felipe why he kept such large birds in such a small space eludes me also.

  Felipe eludes everybody, in any case. The room smelled bad no matter how many times one cleaned their cages and aired the room even on bitter December nights in Manhattan. A bad bad odor, what a fellow I knew called fetor.

  The trouble began in earnest when Rico who rented the side room from Felipe left his transom open. The birds while I was cleaning the cage as if they seen their chance all rushed up and out through the transom. I called to them to come back as if they were human.

  I heard weak but prolonged hoarse cries coming from Rico’s room. The door was always locked, and I had been told never to bother the tenant who was said to be recovering from a severe attack of something contagious.

  I stood before this firmly locked door and asked if I could come in. For answer only the hoarse cries like someone suffocating to death. I tried the door, it was solidly locked, bolted.

  As the cries continued, there was nothing to do but follow the birds and climb through the transom also. I pulled myself through the transom with some difficulty although I weigh only around 140 pounds at that time.

  When I picked myself up from the floor in Rico’s room, I was a good deal shaken by what I saw. All the birds, they were by the way some kind of crow or ravens, but of a kind Felipe told me not native to the United States, were, it seemed, holding Rico down and pulling on his skin like it was a worm.

  He had nothing on at all but he was holding his rosary in his right hand. It was the rosary I later learned which had attracted the birds, but the Rico man thinking they meant to attack him, had struck out at the birds with the rosary, which either alarmed or frightened them, so that they began to pick and claw at him, and as he struck them again they attacked him finally in earnest.

  I picked up a broom, and as the birds then turned their anger against me, before I knew it I had killed both of them by striking hard against their heads.

  I gazed at them as they lay with their wings spread, their eyes open, their beaks streaming with blood. A little moan came from my mouth. Then I turned my attention to Rico. I was frightened to see that the two birds had badly torn his flesh, and he was crying and near hysteria.

  “Let me put something on your cuts, Rico.”

  “Cuts,” he said, “do you call them heridas just cuts.”

  “Well, whatever.” I went to the sink and got a small basin and filled it with warm soap and water, and fetched a cloth from a drawer. I bathed his wounds.

  “They have attacked me before,” he said, looking down at himself. “Whenever I paid the rent and they were loose they would get at me.”

  “Let go of your beads,” I advised him, “for your hand is badly wounded.”

  I begun cleaning out the different bleeding wounds on his hand. “Now let me put some disinfectant of some kind on them,” I said. I found a bottle of the stuff and put them on all his wounds.

  HOW CAN ANYONE describe our landlord Felipe’s anger when he returned and found his pets dead.

  We knew he had a vile disposition, but we had not seen anyone gnash his teeth the way he did. The electricity of anger went up into his coal black hair, and each hair raised, as if it was seated in its own electric chair. Froth soon formed on his lips, and his heavily muscled arms trembled like an old man who has suffered multiple strokes.

  He could not speak for many minutes, so strong was his wrath.

  “What’s your excuse,” he finally turned to Federico, whom everybody calls Rico, but today he said, “Federico!” Like it was some big curse word he had found written on a wall.

  “I was asleep,” Rico began, “for I had worked all night.”

  “That’s your story,” our landlord said. “Cuentos!” he said in shame “Cuentos!”

  “Cuentos!” Rico shouted. “Shit, I worked all night and was dead beat lyin’ here with a sore foot I got caught in the subway train the other night.”

  “I want your alibi, Rico,” he said rolling his eyes. “And I want to hear it good.”

  “I am tellin’ you what happened and that ain’t an alibi or nothing else, I am giving you the facts of what occurred, so don’t foam at the mouth at me like a mad dog, or I’ll pack and go.”

  “You don’t leave owin’ me five months’ back rent.”

  Now Rico rolled his eyes.

  “All right, what’s your excuse,” Felipe turned to me, leaving Rico thinking about all his back rent, I guess.

  “I don’t have none, boss.”

  “Skip that boss shit.”

  “I was lax.”

  “You was born lax, and all your ancestors was born lax back to Eve and Adam. So what else is recent?”

  “I said I was careless and didn’t notice the transom was open.”

  “What did I tell you about leavin’ the cages open.”

  “I have seen you leave them cage doors open yourself.”

  “Yeah but me leavin’ ’em open, since I’m in my right mind, and you leavin’ them open is two different stories, chulo.”

  “All right, they’re your birds and your birds’ cage doors. I stand corrected.”

  “You bet your ass you are corrected. Do you know how much them birds was worth?”

  “I suppose ten or twenty dollars not countin’ their beaks and claws.”

  “You should be on the stage,” he said coming up close to me. “Look,” he said, to me, “I’ll tell you what them birds is worth, or was worth. Five thousand a piece on account of they talk, do dances, and wink at you like clowns.”

  “I don’t have that much money to give you for their death,” I told him.

  “You bet your black dirty soul, you don’t. All right. All right. You killed the best friends I ever had.” Turning to Rico, he said, “How many times have I told you to keep that Goddamn transom closed.”

  “I got to breathe, man. I got to have air.”

  “There’s too much air in there, you claimed last winter, from ten thousand cracks in the wall. Now it’s barely June, and you say there ain’t air. I tell you, fellows, I am a ruined man. I’m through.”

  THAT NIGHT RICO and I burglared the pet shop. It was easy, because the owner must have forgot to lock his back door. We just walked in, took the covers off the cages, and chose two ravens, I think they was. We wrapped them in a blanket and carried them against us, leavin’ the cages behind, and went to Felipe’s room.

  He was so drunk he didn’t hear us come in, didn’t hear us put the new birds in the cage.

  That night I slept in Rico’s room.

  There
was a knock on our door as we was eating breakfast. It was him, Felipe. We both saw he had maybe lost his mind.

  “They’re back,” he cried. I saw clearly now he had as I say lost his mind. “They’re back,” he kept sayin’, “they’re back. They’ve returned from the dead.”

  “No, no, Felipe, we replaced them for you.”

  “Don’t lie, hijo de puta, don’t lie. The birds come back from the dead. I buried them so good too in a fashionable cemetery in Brooklyn.”

  He began eating one of our breakfast rolls, famished like, and drank half of the coffee in my cup.

  “They went to hell,” he went on, “and then they told them down there I missed them so much they could return and take me back down below to be with them again.” He began bawling.

  Rico and I looked at one another. We’re sorry we had burgled the shop and brought him this new trouble, that is by bringing back the dead birds to life we saw we had driven him over the edge. Felipe was crazy.

  BUT AS THE days passed, he calmed down a bit. Both ravens spoke Spanish whereas the dead birds only said things like, “Sailors sail the seven seas,” or “Put on the tea kettle, dear.” But Felipe paid no mind.

  One night late while Felipe was drunk, Rico and I packed our valises, and went to the Greyhound station. We thought for quite a while where to go. Then we bought tickets one way for Tulsa, Oklahoma. We felt he would never follow us there. We got stuck for a while in Laredo, then finally crossed the border and headed towards Parras de la Fuente.

  But believe me Felipe’s death cannot be laid at our door. Though we did wrong by robbing the pet shop we did not kill Felipe. He was found lying in a pool of blood and there was no trace of the birds. He must have somehow made the whole thing come down on himself. It was his way to always carry on and never let a thing rest. “He was crazier than the devil on Christmas,” as Rico always says.