Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  L.W.? Link Williams. Link Williams. Mrs. Crunch’s nephew, or whatever he was, the tall arrogant young man who did not look like Bill Hod but resembled him, the way he held his head, the way he talked, even the eyes.

  Bill Hod was no threat. At least he told himself that all the time; he told himself over and over again, as he hurried home on his days off, that Bill Hod would never encumber himself by permanently annexing a woman, not even Mamie Powther. And the closer he got to the house, the more convinced he became that Mamie had now, finally, gone off with Hod. But she hadn’t. And then he would be certain that she never would, and the knowledge would last about a week or ten days and then he would begin to wonder and to doubt, and hurry home to make certain. But Link Williams, Mamie—

  He shivered. Perhaps she was telling him in this curious, subtle, not really to be understood, business of the cigarette case, had placed it where he would certainly find it, and thus would know that she and Link—

  He put the case back in the drawer, piled the handkerchiefs on top of it, slowly, carefully, force of habit making him square them up, line them up, one on top of the other, taking a long time to do it because his hands were trembling. Mamie laughed whenever she saw him carefully arranging the contents of a drawer, “Law, Powther,” she said, “you musta spent half your life in the army, must spent half your life puttin’ things in piles.”

  He would pretend the cigarette case was not there. It would be the easiest way for everybody. It meant Mamie would have to figure out some more direct way of telling him whatever it was she was trying to tell him about herself and Link. If he had seen Link Williams before they moved in here, if Mrs. Crunch had said, “I have a very handsome young nephew, if you cherish your wife, your life, if you have a susceptible, loving wife, do not, under any circumstances, do not live under the same roof with my handsome unscrupulous young nephew.”

  Link Williams belonged to the Copper breed, so did Hod. You could tell by looking at them, by listening to them, that they weren’t to be trusted, that no woman was safe around them, not really. Mamie. For instance, it wouldn’t have been safe to leave Mamie around Old Copper. What the dickens was he thinking about anyway, mind all in a jumble.

  If Mrs. Crunch had only said, well, that day he stood wiping his feet so carefully on the doormat, instead of saying, “How did you know about the apartment?” she should have said, “I have a very handsome, very lawless young nephew.”

  Even if she had said it, he wouldn’t have believed her. Because looking at her he would have said that her nephew— Was Link Williams her nephew? He couldn’t be, not with that handsome closed arrogant cruel gambler’s face, with those expressionless gambler’s eyes, he couldn’t be her nephew, couldn’t have in his veins any of the same blood that had produced short, plump, hawknosed, kindly faced, kind-but-proud-faced, expressive-eyed Mrs. Abigail Crunch. It was a mobile face, a dead-give-away face, give away of whatever she was thinking, so were the plump, moving, always-in-motion, always gesturing hands. With that white hair piled on top of her head, with the very black eyebrows—well, it was a face and head you couldn’t easily forget. She had New England aristocrat written all over her, in the straight back, in the quick but not hurrying short steps she took that meant she covered a lot of ground but was never guilty of striding down the street, in the Yankee twang to her speech. She wore the kind of clothes he liked, simple, unadorned and yet completely feminine, white gloves on Sundays, small black leather pocketbooks, carefully polished shoes, pretty small hats, a feather the only gay note on her best felt hat, and the seams in her stockings always straight.

  He had met her, walked along Dumble Street with her, when she went marketing in the morning, tan cotton gloves on her hands, the fingers so neatly, so cleverly darned, the darning so beautiful that only an expert would notice that the gloves had been darned; a market basket over her arm, and her pocketbook in the basket; and he knew just as though he had looked inside it that it contained a clean linen handkerchief that would smell faintly sweet (violet or lilac or lavender), the front doorkey, and a billfold and small pencil with a pad; and on the pad would be a list, the grocery list, containing all the items that she would want that particular day, so that this one trip, early in the morning, would take care of all her needs.

  In Mrs. Crunch’s house, there would not be, say at five o’clock, that harumscarum running to the store for the thousand-and-one things that had been forgotten as there always were in his house. Mamie never knew what she was going to have for supper until the very last minute. She would start for the store, forget her purse and hurry back to the house to get it, laughing at herself, as she came in. He had seen her change her mind about an entire meal at the sight of a choice cut of meat at the butcher’s; she would hurry home with the meat and ten minutes later she’d send Shapiro scurrying to the store for potatoes and before Shapiro could get back in the house, Kelly would be sent out to get butter and bread. The only reason J.C. wasn’t employed in this marathon to and from the store was because he couldn’t be trusted on an errand with or without money; J.C. just never bothered to come back at all and was usually found hanging over the dock, looking down at the river, with that awful concentration of the very young.

  Breakfast was the same way; at least two members of the family had to go to the corner store and back before the Powthers could break their fast in the morning. He should have married a woman like Mrs. Crunch, who never had to diet, who would never under any circumstances have permitted familiarities from a man to whom she was not married, whose every word, every look, every gesture told you that.

  Then Mamie was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, tall, all soft flesh and curves, all soft warm flesh, saying, “Pow-ther! Pow-ther! I’ve called you two times already.”

  “I was just getting—” he started to say getting a handkerchief, and said, “I was just getting ready to come out to the kitchen.”

  He watched her walk down the hall toward the kitchen, watched the rhythmic motion of her legs, her arms, and thought, Yes, if I’d married Mrs. Crunch or someone like her I would never have wondered if I’d come home and find that she’d run off with another man; but then neither would I have known the absolute ecstasy and delight of Mamie, in the dark, in bed, the soft flesh yielding, yielding, the feel of those curves, the pressure of her arms around me.

  He would never give her up, never, never. He was going to act as though Link Williams did not exist, as though that cigarette case with its sparkling monogram did not exist, as though— Why had she put it under his handkerchiefs? Link Williams. What was he doing with a cigarette case like that? Why not? Hod probably gave it to him. Or a woman. Some rich, dissolute, white woman. Link Williams was the type they fell in love with, it was the way he was built, it was his height, and the breadth of his shoulders, and it was his face, he looked like a brute, and women, white and colored, loved men with faces like that. Let’s see, he thought, this is the middle of January. So some rich dissolute white woman probably gave it to him for a Christmas present.

  Mamie said, from the kitchen, “Come along now, Powther. Supper’s ready.”

  In the kitchen he blinked, the light was so brilliant. It was hot. Steam came from the plates on the table. Mamie always piled food on plates. J.C.’s plate was just as full of food as Shapiro’s or Kelly’s or his own. And Mamie was still on a diet because there was nothing at her place but a cup of black coffee.

  Shapiro and Kelly ate in silence. J.C. tried to talk with his mouth crammed with food, so that no one understood what he was saying, thus he carried on a monologue, a mumbling mouth-full-of-food monologue, that was also an indication of contentment because he swayed from side to side as he ate and mumbled.

  Mamie sat and glared at them as the pork chops and the yams and the kale and the corn bread disappeared from their plates. Occasionally she took a sip of the hot black bitter coffee.

  Powther threw small secret appraising
glances at the coffee cup, lipstick all around the edges, brown stains on the side where the coffee had dripped and spilled over, the saucer splotched with a whole series of dark brown rings. She used the same cup all day long, picking it up, sipping from it, refilling it with hot coffee when the stuff cooled off.

  J.C. said, “Missus Crunch—” and the rest of the sentence was lost because he had crammed his mouth full of corn bread and went on talking and chewing, talking and chewing.

  Powther wondered how he could bring the conversation around to Link Williams, how introduce his name, so that he could see how Mamie acted when his name was mentioned.

  J.C. pushed his chair away from the table, backed the length of the room, still chewing, eying Mamie as he edged toward the hall door, then he was through it, gone.

  Powther said, “I don’t think you ought to let J.C. go downstairs to Mrs. Crunch’s so much.” He heard J.C.’s footsteps, thud, thud, on the inside staircase. It wasn’t what he had planned to say, he hadn’t really planned to say anything, he was just feeling his way, if he could get a conversation started about Mrs. Crunch then perhaps he could mention Link, easily, naturally.

  Mamie glared at him. “Why not?” she said.

  “Mrs. Crunch will get tired of him.”

  No answer. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him. “Mrs. Crunch will get tired of him,” he repeated. “I don’t think you ought to let him go down there so much. It’s late. He ought to be in bed.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Powther, why don’t you shut up?” She pushed the coffee cup away, with a sudden violent jerky motion, and got up from the table.

  He watched her as she left the kitchen. She slammed the bedroom door and he listened, and could not tell whether she had turned the key in the lock.

  Kelly said, “Mamie been like that all day, Pop. Me and Sha­piro been outdoors in the rain the whole afternoon.”

  “It ain’t safe to talk to her,” Shapiro said. He stuffed his mouth full of cake, and cut himself another large wedge-shaped piece.

  “J.C. left because he knew he’d get in trouble if he stayed around here,” Kelly said. “Mamie been awful mean to him.” He watched Shapiro gulp down the cake. “Mamie say he’s got a tapeworm.” He pointed at Shapiro.

  Shapiro said, “I have not.”

  “You have too. Mamie say nobody could stuff their gut like you unless they got a tapeworm.”

  Shapiro picked up a fork with the evident intention of stabbing Kelly with it. Powther said, “That’s enough of that.”

  He got up from the table, took a key out of his pocket, unlocked a cupboard high over the kitchen sink. “Here,” he said, and handed them each a new comic book. He didn’t approve of comic books but as he evidently was going to have to contend with the boys until bedtime, he didn’t know of anything else that would keep them from killing each other while he did the dishes.

  He found an apron, tied it tight around his waist, and set to work, clearing the table, washing the dishes, scouring the pots, then scouring the sink, boiling the dish towels. He swept the kitchen and then mopped it, mopping carefully around Shapiro and Kelly, who were lying flat on their stomachs, totally absorbed in the comic books, thinking that if he’d been Old Copper, he would have taken the mop handle and pushed and prodded them out of the way.

  J.C. poked his head in through the door, looked around the kitchen, “Where’s Mamie?” he demanded.

  “Gone to bed,” Powther said. “Come on in and I’ll tell you a story.”

  J.C. loved fairy stories, and Powther, feeling suddenly sorry for him, feeling that J.C. needed a mother and didn’t have one, and that he must therefore be both mother and father to him in this storytelling, said, “Here, you sit on my lap and I’ll tell you a new story.”

  Powther cleared his throat, said, slowly, “Once upon a time,” and Shapiro and Kelly looked up from the comic books, and he thought, It’s got to be extra good to hold their attention.

  “Once upon a time,” he said again, “there was a princess with golden hair who was kept chained deepdown in a dark cold dungeon. The guardian of the door that led into the dungeon was a wicked giant who was blind in one eye. The princess cried all the time because she was hungry and the giant beat her and the only food he gave her was dry hard bread and water. But he brought her precious jewels to play with, great diamonds and emeralds and rubies and sapphires and pearls; and beautiful clothes to wear. When the giant left to go about his dreadful business of robbing innocent people who passed through the woods, he would leave his dog to guard the princess. The dog was a ferocious white bulldog, also blind in one eye, and if anyone ventured near the castle he would growl; and his growling was so fearful that they went on their way again.

  “One day, Gaylord, the valet in the king’s palace, a man who was small in stature but quick of movement, and noted for his kindness and the quickness of his thinking, was walking through the wood. As he neared the castle, he thought he heard sobs. He tried to enter, but he could not gain entrance because of the ferocious dog who guarded the entrance. He turned and walked away, puzzled, and he made up his mind to return again and explore the place when he had the golden needle with him. Gaylord was a persistent man, and not to be discouraged by danger or the threat of danger, for he was really a prince in disguise. He had been kidnaped and taken away from his kingdom at the orders of a jealous uncle. He was severely beaten and left for dead but an old peasant woman who lived on the edge of the forest where he had been left, found him, and nursed him back to health. After he recovered his health, he looked after the old woman, took such good care of her, that on her deathbed she gave him a small round silver case, almost like a tube, but heavily and curiously carved.

  “‘Open it,’ she said. ‘Careful, now.’ To his surprise he found a very fine golden needle inside the case.

  “‘It will sew by itself,’ she told him. ‘You say, Stitch, Needle, stitch this leather, and it will stitch for you. It will stitch anything, water, wine, soap, wood, stone, fire. Guard it well. It has been in my family for five hundred years. I have no children to pass it on to so I will give it to you. You have been like a son to me. And whoever has this needle will always have whatsoever he wants.’

  “A week later, Gaylord returned to the castle. This time he had the needle with him. The dog growled and would not permit him to pass the entrance. Gaylord said, ‘Stitch, Needle,’ The needle looked like a small flaming sunset flashing about the eyes of the dog, stitching up both eyes, just in case the blind eye was not blind, as so often happens in real life where a blind eye is often a fake, based on an old rumor that nobody knows whether or not it is true and it possibly isn’t true, because most rumors are started by someone who has something to gain by it, and to be thought blind in one eye when you weren’t would give a person an advantage over other people.

  “The dog emitted piercing cries of pain, and ran and ran, put his head down to the ground and rubbed his eyes on the ground and the needle stitched the dog’s heavy leather collar to the stone wall.

  “Gaylord said, ‘Well done, Needle,’ and held out the small round silver tube and the needle came flashing through the air and settled inside the tube.

  “He then went unmolested into the castle, and followed the sound of the sobs, and went down into the dungeon and found the beautiful goldenhaired princess chained there, with a great golden goblet beside her, half full of water. She said, ‘Save me, save me, kind sir!’

  “At that moment the giant entered the dungeon and lunged toward Gaylord. Gaylord said, ‘Stitch, Needle! Stitch both his eyes, Needle!’ and held out the small round silver tube and the needle flashed through the air, and stitched both the giant’s eyes. The giant let out a roar of rage and pain; and started blundering around in the dungeon, hands outstretched before him. Gaylord said, ‘Stitch, Needle! Stitch hand to stone!’ The needle flashed through the air and when the giant blundered near one of the walls
of the dungeon, the needle stitched the giant’s hand to the stone.

  “Gaylord said, ‘Well done, Needle!’ and the needle came flashing through the air and settled inside the small round silver tube that Gaylord held out.

  “Gaylord then took the keys from the giant’s girdle and unlocked the padlock, and released the beautiful princess with the long golden hair.

  “They left the castle together, their arms clasped around each other’s waists. Then they returned to Gaylord’s rightful kingdom where they were married and lived happily forever after.”

  J.C. said, “Tell it again! Tell it again!”

  Shapiro and Kelly had long since left the comic books on the kitchen floor. They were leaning against Powther now, and they said, together, “Whew! Tell it again, Pop. Tell it again.”

  “Not tonight. It’s too late,” Powther said. He felt a little glow of pride, of accomplishment, it was a good story. But he wouldn’t tell it again.

  He washed all three of them, helped all three into their night clothes, tucked them under the covers, opened the window, turned out the light. When he closed the door of the bedroom J.C. was saying, “All gold. She was all gold. She came right in the front door— Stitch stone to leather.” But because he left the “s” sound off words, he was really saying, “Titch tone to leather.”