The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  Sensing the boy might be conscious, he asked, “Do you know where you are, Rory?”

  The boy’s eyelids fluttered, his mouth twitched and then said, “General Yoxtheimer’s.”

  Moses was unable to restrain a gasp, for General Yoxtheimer was one of his remote ancestors who had fought the Revolutionary War and in several Indian uprisings. And it was furthermore the General’s house where they were now present.

  “And who was General Yoxtheimer?” Moses whispered.

  The boy thrashed about now frantically, and then shaking his head, managed: “Died . . . the Indians.”

  “You mean they killed the General?” Moses was barely able to inquire.

  No one, Moses reflected, could have known General Yoxtheimer had been killed in an Indian massacre. Even he had only lately learned this fact from a very old history of the Revolutionary period he had found in a library in Chicago.

  “Do you hear me, Rory?”

  There was no response.

  “Do you, Rory?”

  “I hear a man who is a card player and gambler.”

  Moses, to his own embarrassment and chagrin, let out a swear word, and now to his sudden anger he heard a strange laugh come from his visitor.

  Moses sat on by the bedside of Rory Hawley, deep in thoughts he would never have thought himself capable of entertaining before.

  Everyone of course in town knew that Moses Swearingen was fond of card playing and gambling and had initiated many young men into the practice. But the boy’s mentioning the fact of his card playing and betting could hardly be proof of psychic ability, but could be mere repetition of what he had heard in his wandering about the streets when he should have been at school.

  “Who let you in on the fact I am a gambler,” Moses finally said after a long silence between them.

  The silence was broken only after four or five minutes.

  “You broke your mother’s heart betting away your inheritance.”

  Having mumbled these words, Rory started up as if coming out of a deep slumber. Rising from the bed, he shouted something unintelligible or words in a foreign language.

  Moses groaned and wondered what he was up against with such a boy.

  “Who was it brought me here?” Rory now spoke in his ordinary wide-awake voice, and he came over to where Moses sat and seized him by the hand.

  Moses was astonished at the strength of the boy’s own hand in view of his otherwise rather delicate appearance.

  “Who else brought you here but me,” Moses snapped. “I brought you!”

  Rory stood looking at Moses carefully. And it was then that Moses was convinced that maybe he did not have someone who had second sight on his hands, but a someone at any rate who was different from anyone he had ever known before.

  For a while Swearingen wondered if the local authorities might not call on him and demand to know why young Rory Hawley was staying with him.

  But as the days passed and there was no visit from “above,” he reflected that the village of Gilboa was so bankrupt it could no longer even pay for a police force.

  The condition of the boy showed every kind of neglect. His clothing was much too large for him, as were his shoes. And though a handsome fellow, everything about him indicated inveterate neglect. His teeth looked like they needed attention for they were almost black in places. His hair, a beautiful shade of the same color as his mother’s (if, Moses mused, she was his mother), was long unaccustomed to tonsorial care, if indeed he had ever set foot in a barber shop. His fingernails were broken and some blackened. From wearing the wrong-size shoes his toenails were discoloured and broken. And under his paper-thin shirt (he wore no undershirt) one could count every one of his ribs.

  Moses now ushered his visitor to the kitchen which was nearly as large as Vesta’s banquet room.

  The cook had left several dishes sitting atop the stove, all ready to be heated.

  Moses took the lid off one or two of the pots to see what might tempt his guest, and he noticed with a kind of bitter amusement the boy’s nose wrinkled and moved as he got a whiff of the victuals.

  Without asking Rory’s preference, Moses heated a soup of turkey, leeks, cabbage and potatoes.

  He set the dish down before Rory and handed him an oversize silver spoon.

  When Rory only stared at the streaming dish, Moses shouted, “Eat.”

  Rory dove in at this command. Moses grinned, noticing the boy did not bother to wipe his mouth and chin from his dribbling. He was too busy swallowing.

  Moses picked up a stiff linen napkin and methodically wiped the boy’s mouth.

  For the first time then Rory gave Moses a searching look as if he had just now become aware of Moses’ presence.

  When Rory had eaten his fill, Moses ushered him into a lavatory which like the kitchen was the size of three or four ordinary rooms.

  “Sit over here, why don’t you,” he used his drill-sergeant tone. Rory once again gave evidence that he was about to doze.

  Moses opened a drawer and took out barber’s scissors and comb.

  “I want to untangle that head of hair of yours.”

  Before Moses had really begun his barbering, he took out from the boy’s hair the remains of what looked like briars and petals of marigolds.

  Moses clicked his tongue.

  Rory, still sleepy, acted entirely indifferent to those ministrations, but occasionally sighed and let his head fall down to his chest.

  When the cutting and combing was over, Moses pointed to the wastebasket now full of the yellow tresses.

  Moses touched the down on the boy’s cheeks.

  “Quite a ways from a beard, ain’t it,” he remarked, perhaps to himself.

  For the first time in his life Moses Swearingen felt, if not outright uneasiness, a kind of fearful awe of another person. This was the turbulence he experienced in the boy’s presence.

  He had taken the boy into his mansion because he saw how needful, even desperate, the young man was.

  But instead of having ushered in a child in desperate trouble and need, he found he had taken in a kind of being who appeared barely of this world. And instead of Moses being the master, he was often to have the sinking feeling the boy held the real sway at the Villa.

  He recalled then that years ago when Rory could have not been more than three or four years old, he had seen the boy’s grandmother taking him for drives in her horse-drawn buggy. The grandmother had always stopped when she saw Moses and would exchange a few cordial greetings.

  The grandmother did not look like anyone remotely related to Rory or his mother. She was so dark-complexioned the townspeople often wondered if she did not have African blood. But older residents claimed she was, like Moses, part Shawnee.

  One cold December afternoon long ago when the wind and snow had kept everybody within doors, Moses heard a—it could not be called a knocking at his front door—it was more like the sound of a blacksmith mistaking the door for an anvil. And Moses felt all over again now the same kind of sinking feeling he had experienced at hearing the knocking as when he looked into Rory’s blazing countenance.

  The late visitor with the fierce knocking was Rory’s grandmother. Recovering from his astonishment, Moses greeted the old woman in a blithe manner foreign to his usual brusqueness.

  “Sit over here, why don’t you, by the fireplace where I’ve got a bit of kindling going to take the chill off,” Moses urged his visitor.

  The grandmother did not appear to be cold, but she chose a seat nearest the fire, and a tardy smile came over her lips.

  Without being asked, Moses produced a glass with some kind of spirits.

  His guest tasted the drink critically, and Moses for a moment thought from her strange gesture she was about to toss the contents into the blazing logs of the fireplace.

  Instead she finished her drink, and extending her glass, indicated she would care for another.

  “I have had a presentiment,” she began at last after they had both list
ened a while to the crackling sound coming from the burning logs.

  When she said no more Moses asked, “And what was its nature?”

  “Its nature—who knows, Moses. I will tell you my message though. You are to look after Rory when I’m gone.”

  “I hope that will not be soon,” he spoke under his breath so low perhaps she didn’t hear him.

  “My daughter isn’t capable of caring for even a song sparrow. But you’re a different story.” She swallowed the last of her third drink and Moses offered her another.

  “On that day, and I hope you’re listening, Moe. On that day, which may be any day or the next day or never, you are to consider Rory your own flesh and blood.”

  As a matter of fact until this very moment when Rory took residence in his mansion, Moses had forgotten almost entirely the grandmother’s December visit. In fact he had thought the night of her bequest she was perhaps crazy or, who knows, a bit drunk on his cheer.

  But now it all came back. He could almost hear the wheels of the buggy and the snorting of the half-tamed horse she kept in her barn along with a half dozen or so other untamed horses.

  Again Moses felt a chill come over him as if his visitor of so many years ago had also descended on him with bag and baggage.

  He looked up just then and saw Rory staring at him.

  Again the fireplace was going just as on the night the grandmother had delivered her bequest.

  Rory now took the best seat in front of the fire, and then to Moses’ astonishment he heard the boy spit into the flames and, as if in answer, the fire turned a queer greenish color and gave an echoing sound as it ascended the ancient chimney.

  VESTA HAWLEY OFTEN found herself weeping against Frau Storeholder’s comforting bosom. She sometimes even lay prone on the carpet in front of Frau Storeholder’s chair. She was sobbing, imploring even, like a zealot before a number of votive candles.

  So carried away in grief was she that an onlooker might have thought Vesta Hawley was drunk or indeed mad by reason of her finally embracing the old woman’s feet in her sorrow.

  But she was of course neither drunk nor mad. She was consumed with guilt and with homesickness for her son.

  Whether Frau Storeholder ever listened attentively any more to this endless unburdening of Rory’s mother is questionable. She had heard the story after all so many times. Countless innumerable times.

  As if walking in his sleep young Rory often times entered his mother’s bedroom and discovered her in the embrace of one of her banqueters or lodgers. The young man of the occasion holding his mother was probably drunk for he did not appear to notice that Vesta’s son had entered the room and was staring at his embraces. For one thing Rory’s eyes were so swollen with sleep the lover of the evening might have decided the boy was not actually seeing what was transpiring. Was dreaming in fact upright!

  But Vesta knew Rory saw, even if he saw in deep slumber!

  One morning after he had surprised her with a lover, Vesta was unusually affectionate and lavish to her son. She prepared his breakfast herself: a sumptuous plate of eggs laid by the hen within the hour, a mountain of brown steamed potatoes, cornbread, grits, and gooseberry jam.

  Rory ate it all but without showing any appreciation or appetite for what he ate. At the conclusion of his meal, he took up the thick stiff hand-embroidered linen napkin and assiduously and repeatedly wiped his mouth and chin, even going on to wipe his open throat and chest, while muttering something. Tears followed slowly, painfully from his eyes as if those eyes, still flush from what he had seen the night before, were at last letting fall their water in sorrow for all the sins of the world.

  As Rory, having gathered up his schoolbooks, began to walk toward the door, Vesta followed him meekly and said softly: “Aren’t you going to kiss Mama good morning?”

  Rory shook his head.

  “Don’t you know how much I want your kisses,” she whispered.

  Rory refused to look at her.

  “Say something, or say anything even if it is a curse.”

  He only shook his head more slowly, more mournfully.

  “Do you mean you will never kiss your Mama again then, Rory?”

  He grinned unhumorously then, like a gargoyle or perhaps a frog.

  “Never again?” she begged.

  He only nodded and grinned more fiercely.

  She had closed her eyes on getting no answer to her appeal.

  Finally opening her eyes, she saw he had departed.

  Weeping and between sobs, Vesta told Frau Storeholder the story all over again for the hundredth time.

  “Didn’t Rory know I yielded to the banqueters and the roomers only to keep a roof over his head, dear Belinda? Oh do say something. Don’t be like Rory on that long ago, terrible morning. Didn’t he know I did it for him?”

  Frau Storeholder’s own eyes were widening, the pupils a deep black.

  “Tell me, Belinda,” she began to try to rise but then only fell back on her knees, looking up at her confessor.

  “Love is a very jealous god,” Frau Storeholder managed to say. She removed her glasses and put them away in their satin case.

  “I don’t know what you mean, a jealous god. Are you referring to my boy when you speak so!”

  The old woman nodded. “Love will not permit or allow for it to be shared. And you, poor child, have shared love with so many, so countless many.”

  “You are condemning me, unlike the Good Shepherd who forgave the Woman at the Well.”

  “I am not condemning you, my poor girl. I am telling you what love’s commands are. He will never allow his love to be shared with others. In your case multitudes.”

  “Tell me this,” Vesta coughed out the words as she rose from her, kneeling and exhausted, and fell into one of the antique lounge chairs.

  “Tell me, Belinda, and do not lie to me. Will Rory then never come back to me, never forgive me, never, oh yes, let me say, never love me?”

  Frau Storeholder weakly almost imperceptibly shook her head.

  “You are shaking your head like he did! Oh wicked, wicked Belinda. You are pronouncing my doom with that idle movement of your head.

  “He will never come back to me, then,” Vesta muttered.

  Even if Belinda Storeholder had replied then that Rory would return, Vesta would not have heard her.

  The final realization came that Rory would not be returning home one cold clear December morning when a young messenger arrived, holding in his hands a stiff white envelope addressed to Miss Hawley in huge Roman letters.

  Vesta for a few moments was unable to take the envelope in her hands.

  The messenger kept saying, “It’s for you, ma’am.”

  Vesta still hesitating then called Frau Storeholder to come to the door.

  She received the message.

  “Do you have any change for this young man?” Vesta inquired of Frau Storeholder. One thing about her friend which always amused Vesta was the old woman always managed to have money on her person. The change was hidden deep in a large beaded purse.

  Frau Storeholder produced a shiny fifty-cent piece and hand-fed it to Vesta. But when Vesta offered the money to the messenger (he was, she supposed, one of the young gamblers who lived at Moe’s Villa), he refused the emolument, uttering an excuse.

  “May I leave the envelope now with you, ma’am? Please do take the envelope,” the young man now quite flustered inquired.

  As Vesta appeared at this moment incapable of taking the envelope, Frau Storeholder received it for her.

  “I thank you,” he told the old woman and touched his cap. Vesta returned to the front parlour then and threw herself into one of her favorite easy chairs.

  Frau Storeholder was still holding the envelope.

  “Shall I read you what the message is,” Frau Storeholder’s voice had a kind of tenderness in it, rare for her.

  “I don’t know if I can bear for you to read it. At the same time I’ve mislaid my glasses, so I suppose you�
��ll have to oblige me. I’d just as soon throw it in the fireplace. A message from the kidnapper of my boy! What more can he want out of me!”

  Frau Storeholder had opened the envelope with a letter opener and read the few lines contained in it silently to herself.

  A very thin smile spread over her lips, and the sight of that smile, feeble though it was, heartened Vesta.

  “Read the message, then, Belinda, I am ready!”

  Frau Storeholder cleared her throat noisily, a bit like an elocution teacher, and read:

  My dear Vesta Hawley,

  As cold weather has set in would you kindly send to us as soon as possible your son’s heavy overcoat.

  Yours most respectfully,

  Moses Swearingen

  “And is that all it says, Belinda?”

  Frau Storeholder replied that it was all.

  “I was afraid Moses Swearingen was going maybe to bring court action against me.”

  “He would never do that,” Frau Storeholder assured her.

  A heavy silence now intervened. At last Frau Storeholder gave out a great sigh, and Vesta, raising her voice, said: “I have no idea where his overcoat is. The last time I saw it the moths had been into one of the sleeves. The whole coat is probably in tatters. Oh, God in heaven, why am I plagued with such a child, will you tell me!”

  “I know exactly where the overcoat is,” Frau Storeholder spoke in her most soothing tones. “I once stumbled over a whole row of gold spittoons near the coat.”

  “Those spittoons belonged to Pete,” Vesta reflected. “He chewed and was never without a plug of tobacco, let me tell you. Some time after he left me there came to see me a collector who was interested in one of my antique rockers, but when he saw the spittoons, he wanted to have them instead. I held off from selling them. Seems they are very valuable now.”

  Not wanting Vesta to begin on her reminiscences of Peter Driscoll, Frau Storeholder interrupted to say: “Let me go and see, Vesta, just what condition his overcoat is in then.”

  “Yes, go fetch it, Belinda, if there’s anything left of it. But why can’t that multi-millionaire of a Swearingen buy the boy a decent coat. He’s smothering in money, he sweats money!” She took out one of her hand-embroidered handkerchiefs and gave a snort in it which caused Frau Storeholder to flinch, for she found the sound indelicate.