Flowering Judas and Other Stories: A Library of America eBook Classic

by Katherine Anne Porter

  Oh, yes, well. . . run along. She was going to wash windows. The country was so beautiful! She doubted they’d have a moment to enjoy it. He meant to go, but he could not until he had said that if she wasn’t such a hopeless melancholiac she might see that this was only for a few days. Couldn’t she remember anything pleasant about the other summers? Hadn’t they ever had any fun? She hadn’t time to talk about it, and now would he please not leave that rope lying around for her to trip on? He picked it up, somehow it had toppled off the table, and walked out with it under his arm.

  Was he going this minute? He certainly was. She thought so. Sometimes it seemed to her he had second sight about the precisely perfect moment to leave her ditched. She had meant to put the mattresses out to sun, if they put them out this minute they would get at least three hours, he must have heard her say that morning she meant to put them out. So of course he would walk off and leave her to it. She supposed he thought the exercise would do her good.

  Well, he was merely going to get her coffee. A four-mile walk for two pounds of coffee was ridiculous, but he was perfectly willing to do it. The habit was making a wreck of her, but if she wanted to wreck herself there was nothing he could do about it. If he thought it was coffee that was making a wreck of her, she congratulated him: he must have a damned easy conscience.

  Conscience or no conscience, he didn’t see why the mattresses couldn’t very well wait until tomorrow. And anyhow, for God’s sake, were they living in the house, or were they going to let the house ride them to death? She paled at this, her face grew livid about the mouth, she looked quite dangerous, and reminded him that housekeeping was no more her work than it was his: she had other work to do as well, and when did he think she was going to find time to do it at this rate?

  Was she going to start on that again? She knew as well as he did that his work brought in the regular money, hers was only occasional, if they depended on what she made—and she might as well get straight on this question once for all!

  That was positively not the point. The question was, when both of them were working on their own time, was there going to be a division of the housework, or wasn’t there? She merely wanted to know, she had to make her plans. Why, he thought that was all arranged. It was understood that he was to help. Hadn’t he always, in summers?

  Hadn’t he, though? Oh, just hadn’t he? And when, and where, and doing what? Lord, what an uproarious joke!

  It was such a very uproarious joke that her face turned slightly purple, and she screamed with laughter. She laughed so hard she had to sit down, and finally a rush of tears spurted from her eyes and poured down into the lifted corners of her mouth. He dashed towards her and dragged her up to her feet and tried to pour water on her head. The dipper hung by a string on a nail and he broke it loose. Then he tried to pump water with one hand while she struggled in the other. So he gave it up and shook her instead.

  She wrenched away, crying out for him to take his rope and go to hell, she had simply given him up: and ran. He heard her high-heeled bedroom slippers clattering and stumbling on the stairs.

  He went out around the house and into the lane; he suddenly realized he had a blister on his heel and his shirt felt as if it were on fire. Things broke so suddenly you didn’t know where you were. She could work herself into a fury about simply nothing. She was terrible, damn it: not an ounce of reason. You might as well talk to a sieve as that woman when she got going. Damned if he’d spend his life humoring her! Well, what to do now? He would take back the rope and exchange it for something else. Things accumulated, things were mountainous, you couldn’t move them or sort them out or get rid of them. They just lay and rotted around. He’d take it back. Hell, why should he? He wanted it. What was it anyhow? A piece of rope. Imagine anybody caring more about a piece of rope than about a man’s feelings. What earthly right had she to say a word about it? He remembered all the useless, meaningless things she bought for herself: Why? because I wanted it, that’s why! He stopped and selected a large stone by the road. He would put the rope behind it. He would put it in the tool-box when he got back. He’d heard enough about it to last him a life-time.

  When he came back she was leaning against the post box beside the road waiting. It was pretty late, the smell of broiled steak floated nose high in the cooling air. Her face was young and smooth and fresh-looking. Her unmanageable funny black hair was all on end. She waved to him from a distance, and he speeded up. She called out that supper was ready and waiting, was he starved?

  You bet he was starved. Here was the coffee. He waved it at her. She looked at his other hand. What was that he had there?

  Well, it was the rope again. He stopped short. He had meant to exchange it but forgot. She wanted to know why he should exchange it, if it was something he really wanted. Wasn’t the air sweet now, and wasn’t it fine to be here?

  She walked beside him with one hand hooked into his leather belt. She pulled and jostled him a little as he walked, and leaned against him. He put his arm clear around her and patted her stomach. They exchanged wary smiles. Coffee, coffee for the Ootsum-Wootsums! He felt as if he were bringing her a beautiful present.

  He was a love, she firmly believed, and if she had had her coffee in the morning, she wouldn’t have behaved so funny. . . There was a whippoorwill still coming back, imagine, clear out of season, sitting in the crab-apple tree calling all by himself. Maybe his girl stood him up. Maybe she did. She hoped to hear him once more, she loved whippoorwills. . . He knew how she was, didn’t he?

  Sure, he knew how she was.

  He

  LIFE was very hard for the Whipples. It was hard to feed all the hungry mouths, it was hard to keep the children in flannels during the winter, short as it was: “God knows what would become of us if we lived north,” they would say: keeping them decently clean was hard. “It looks like our luck won’t never let up on us,” said Mr. Whipple, but Mrs. Whipple was all for taking what was sent and calling it good, anyhow when the neighbors were in earshot. “Don’t ever let a soul hear us complain,” she kept saying to her husband. She couldn’t stand to be pitied. “No, not if it comes to it that we have to live in a wagon and pick cotton around the country,” she said, “nobody’s going to get a chance to look down on us.”

  Mrs. Whipple loved her second son, the simple-minded one, better than she loved the other two children put together. She was forever saying so, and when she talked with certain of her neighbors, she would even throw in her husband and her mother for good measure.

  “You needn’t keep on saying it around,” said Mr. Whipple, “you’ll make people think nobody else has any feelings about Him but you.”

  “It’s natural for a mother,” Mrs. Whipple would remind him. “You know yourself it’s more natural for a mother to be that way. People don’t expect so much of fathers, some way.” This didn’t keep the neighbors from talking plainly among themselves. “A Lord’s pure mercy if He should die,” they said. “It’s the sins of the fathers,” they agreed among themselves. “There’s bad blood and bad doings somewhere, you can bet on that.” This behind the Whipples’ backs. To their faces everybody said, “He’s not so bad off. He’ll be all right yet. Look how He grows!”

  Mrs. Whipple hated to talk about it, she tried to keep her mind off it, but every time anybody set foot in the house, the subject always came up, and she had to talk about Him first, before she could get on to anything else. It seemed to ease her mind. “I wouldn’t have anything happen to Him for all the world, but it just looks like I can’t keep Him out of mischief. He’s so strong and active, He’s always into everything; He was like that since He could walk. It’s actually funny sometimes, the way He can do anything; it’s laughable to see Him up to His tricks. Emly has more accidents; I’m forever tying up her bruises, and Adna can’t fall a foot without cracking a bone. But He can do anything and not get a scratch. The preacher said such a nice thing once when he was here. He said, and I’ll remember it to my dying day, ‘The innocen
t walk with God—that’s why He don’t get hurt.’” Whenever Mrs. Whipple repeated these words, she always felt a warm pool spread in her breast, and the tears would fill her eyes, and then she could talk about something else.

  He did grow and He never got hurt. A plank blew off the chicken house and struck Him on the head and He never seemed to know it. He had learned a few words, and after this He forgot them. He didn’t whine for food as the other children did, but waited until it was given Him; He ate squatting in the corner, smacking and mumbling. Rolls of fat covered Him like an overcoat, and He could carry twice as much wood and water as Adna. Emly had a cold in the head most of the time—“she takes that after me,” said Mrs. Whipple—so in bad weather they gave her the extra blanket off His cot. He never seemed to mind the cold.

  Just the same, Mrs. Whipple’s life was a torment for fear something might happen to Him. He climbed the peach trees much better than Adna and went skittering along the branches like a monkey, just a regular monkey. “Oh, Mrs. Whipple, you hadn’t ought to let Him do that. He’ll lose His balance sometime. He can’t rightly know what He’s doing.”

  Mrs. Whipple almost screamed out at the neighbor. “He does know what He’s doing! He’s as able as any other child! Come down out of there, you!” When He finally reached the ground she could hardly keep her hands off Him for acting like that before people, a grin all over His face and her worried sick about Him all the time.

  “It’s the neighbors,” said Mrs. Whipple to her husband. “Oh, I do mortally wish they would keep out of our business. I can’t afford to let Him do anything for fear they’ll come nosing around about it. Look at the bees, now. Adna can’t handle them, they sting him up so; I haven’t got time to do everything, and now I don’t dare let Him. But if He gets a sting He don’t really mind.”

  “It’s just because He ain’t got sense enough to be scared of anything,” said Mr. Whipple.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Mrs. Whipple, “talking that way about your own child. Who’s to take up for Him if we don’t, I’d like to know? He sees a lot that goes on, He listens to things all the time. And anything I tell Him to do He does it. Don’t never let anybody hear you say such things. They’d think you favored the other children over Him.”

  “Well, now I don’t, and you know it, and what’s the use of getting all worked up about it? You always think the worst of everything. Just let Him alone, He’ll get along somehow. He gets plenty to eat and wear, don’t He?” Mr. Whipple suddenly felt tired out. “Anyhow, it can’t be helped now.”

  Mrs. Whipple felt tired too, she complained in a tired voice. “What’s done can’t never be undone, I know that as good as anybody; but He’s my child, and I’m not going to have people say anything. I get sick of people coming around saying things all the time.”

  In the early fall Mrs. Whipple got a letter from her brother saying he and his wife and two children were coming over for a little visit next Sunday week. “Put the big pot in the little one,” he wrote at the end. Mrs. Whipple read this part out loud twice, she was so pleased. Her brother was a great one for saying funny things. “We’ll just show him that’s no joke,” she said, “we’ll just butcher one of the sucking pigs.”

  “It’s a waste and I don’t hold with waste the way we are now,” said Mr. Whipple. “That pig’ll be worth money by Christmas.”

  “It’s a shame and a pity we can’t have a decent meal’s vittles once in a while when my own family comes to see us,” said Mrs. Whipple. “I’d hate for his wife to go back and say there wasn’t a thing in the house to eat. My God, it’s better than buying up a great chance of meat in town. There’s where you’d spend the money!”

  “All right, do it yourself then,” said Mr. Whipple. “Christamighty, no wonder we can’t get ahead!”

  The question was how to get the little pig away from his ma, a great fighter, worse than a Jersey cow. Adna wouldn’t try it: “That sow’d rip my insides out all over the pen.” “All right, old fraidy,” said Mrs. Whipple, “He’s not scared. Watch Him do it.” And she laughed as though it was all a good joke and gave Him a little push towards the pen. He sneaked up and snatched the pig right away from the teat and galloped back and was over the fence with the sow raging at His heels. The little black squirming thing was screeching like a baby in a tantrum, stiffening its back and stretching its mouth to the ears. Mrs. Whipple took the pig with her face stiff and sliced its throat with one stroke. When He saw the blood He gave a great jolting breath and ran away. “But He’ll forget and eat plenty, just the same,” thought Mrs. Whipple. Whenever she was thinking, her lips moved making words. “He’d eat it all if I didn’t stop Him. He’d eat up every mouthful from the other two if I’d let Him.”

  She felt badly about it. He was ten years old now and a third again as large as Adna, who was going on fourteen. “It’s a shame, a shame,” she kept saying under her breath, “and Adna with so much brains!”

  She kept on feeling badly about all sorts of things. In the first place it was the man’s work to butcher; the sight of the pig scraped pink and naked made her sick. He was too fat and soft and pitiful-looking. It was simply a shame the way things had to happen. By the time she had finished it up, she almost wished her brother would stay at home.

  Early Sunday morning Mrs. Whipple dropped everything to get Him all cleaned up. In an hour He was dirty again, with crawling under fences after a possum, and straddling along the rafters of the barn looking for eggs in the hayloft. “My Lord, look at you now after all my trying! And here’s Adna and Emly staying so quiet. I get tired trying to keep you decent. Get off that shirt and put on another, people will say I don’t half dress you!” And she boxed Him on the ears, hard. He blinked and blinked and rubbed His head, and His face hurt Mrs. Whipple’s feelings. Her knees began to tremble, she had to sit down while she buttoned His shirt. “I’m just all gone before the day starts.”

  The brother came with his plump healthy wife and two great roaring hungry boys. They had a grand dinner, with the pig roasted to a crackling in the middle of the table, full of dressing, a pickled peach in his mouth and plenty of gravy for the sweet potatoes.

  “This looks like prosperity all right,” said the brother; “you’re going to have to roll me home like I was a barrel when I’m done.”

  Everybody laughed out loud; it was fine to hear them laughing all at once around the table. Mrs. Whipple felt warm and good about it. “Oh, we’ve got six more of these; I say it’s as little as we can do when you come to see us so seldom.”

  He wouldn’t come into the dining room, and Mrs. Whipple passed it off very well. “He’s timider than my other two,” she said, “He’ll just have to get used to you. There isn’t everybody He’ll make up with, you know how it is with some children, even cousins.” Nobody said anything out of the way.

  “Just like my Alfy here,” said the brother’s wife. “I sometimes got to lick him to make him shake hands with his own grandmammy.”

  So that was over, and Mrs. Whipple loaded up a big plate for Him first, before everybody. “I always say He ain’t to be slighted, no matter who else goes without,” she said, and carried it to Him herself.

  “He can chin Himself on the top of the door,” said Emly, helping along.

  “That’s fine, He’s getting along fine,” said the brother.

  They went away after supper. Mrs. Whipple rounded up the dishes, and sent the children to bed and sat down and unlaced her shoes. “You see?” she said to Mr. Whipple. “That’s the way my whole family is. Nice and considerate about everything. No out-of-the-way remarks—they have got refinement. I get awfully sick of people’s remarks. Wasn’t that pig good?”

  Mr. Whipple said, “Yes, we’re out three hundred pounds of pork, that’s all. It’s easy to be polite when you come to eat. Who knows what they had in their minds all along?”

  “Yes, that’s like you,” said Mrs. Whipple. “I don’t expect anything else from you. You’ll be telling me next tha
t my own brother will be saying around that we made Him eat in the kitchen! Oh, my God!” She rocked her head in her hands, a hard pain started in the very middle of her forehead. “Now it’s all spoiled, and everything was so nice and easy. All right, you don’t like them and you never did—all right, they’ll not come here again soon, never you mind! But they can’t say He wasn’t dressed every lick as good as Adna—oh, honest, sometimes I wish I was dead!”

  “I wish you’d let up,” said Mr. Whipple. “It’s bad enough as it is.”

  It was a hard winter. It seemed to Mrs. Whipple that they hadn’t ever known anything but hard times, and now to cap it all a winter like this. The crops were about half of what they had a right to expect; after the cotton was in it didn’t do much more than cover the grocery bill. They swapped off one of the plow horses, and got cheated, for the new one died of the heaves. Mrs. Whipple kept thinking all the time it was terrible to have a man you couldn’t depend on not to get cheated. They cut down on everything, but Mrs. Whipple kept saying there are things you can’t cut down on, and they cost money. It took a lot of warm clothes for Adna and Emly, who walked four miles to school during the three-months session. “He sets around the fire a lot, He won’t need so much,” said Mr. Whipple. “That’s so,” said Mrs. Whipple, “and when He does the outdoor chores He can wear your tarpaullion coat. I can’t do no better, that’s all.”

  In February He was taken sick, and lay curled up under His blanket looking very blue in the face and acting as if He would choke. Mr. and Mrs. Whipple did everything they could for Him for two days, and then they were scared and sent for the doctor. The doctor told them they must keep Him warm and give Him plenty of milk and eggs. “He isn’t as stout as He looks, I’m afraid,” said the doctor. “You’ve got to watch them when they’re like that. You must put more cover onto Him, too.”