The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

by Carson McCullers

  There was only a bed and a desk in the room. Bill was sitting hunched over the desk, reading Popular Mechanics. She went up behind him and put her arms around his shoulders. ‘Hey, you old son-of-a-gun.’

  He did not begin tussling with her like he used to do. .Hey,’ he said, and shook his shoulders a little.

  ‘Will it bother you if I stay in here a little while?’

  ‘Sure--I don’t mind if you want to stay.’

  Mick knelt on the floor and untied the string on the big hatbox. Her hands hovered over the edge of the lid, but for some reason she could not make up her mind to open it ‘I been thinking about what I’ve done on this already,’ she said.

  ‘And it may work and it may not.’

  Bill went on reading. She still knelt over the box, but did not open it. Her eyes wandered over to Bill as he sat with his back to her. One of his big feet kept stepping on the other as he read. His shoes were scuffed. Once their Dad had said that all Bill’s dinners went to his feet and his breakfast to one ear and his supper to the other ear, that was a sort of mean thing to say and Bill had been sour over it for a month, but it was funny.

  His ears flared out and were very red, and though he was just out of high school he wore a size thirteen shoe. He tried to hide his feet by scraping one foot behind the other when he stood up, but that only made it worse.

  Mick opened the box a few inches and then shut it again. She felt too excited to look into it now. She got up and walked around the room until she could calm down a little. After a few minutes she stopped before the picture she had painted at the free government art class for school kids last winter. There was a picture of a storm on the ocean and a sea gull being dashed through the air by the wind. It was called ‘Sea Gull with Back Broken in Storm.’ The teacher had described the ocean during the first two or three lessons, and that was what nearly everybody started with. Most of the kids were like her, though, and they had never really seen the ocean with their own eyes.

  That was the first picture she had done and Bill had tacked it on his wall. All the rest of her pictures were full of people.

  She had done some more ocean storms at first--one with an airplane crashing down and people jumping out to save themselves, and another with a trans-Atlantic liner going down and all the people trying to push and crowd into one little lifeboat.

  Mick went into the closet of Bill’s room and brought out some other pictures she had done in the class--some pencil drawings, some water-colors, and one canvas with oils. They were all full of people. She had imagined a big fire on Broad Street and painted how she thought it would be. The flames were bright green and orange and Mr. Brannon’s restaurant and the First National Bank were about the only buildings left.

  People were lying dead in the streets and others were running for their lives. One man was in his nightshirt and a lady was trying to carry a bunch of bananas with her. Another picture was called ‘Boiler Busts in Factory,’ and men were jumping out of windows and running while a knot of kids in overalls stood scrouged together, holding the buckets of dinner they had brought to their Daddies. The oil painting was a picture of the whole town fighting on Broad Street. She never knew why she had painted this one and she couldn’t think of the right name for it. There wasn’t any fire or storm or reason you could see in the picture why all this battle was happening. But there were more people and more moving around than in any other picture. This was the best one, and it was too bad that she couldn’t think up the real name. In the back of her mind somewhere she knew what it was.

  Mick put the picture back on the closet shelf. None of them were any good much. The people didn’t have fingers and some of the arms were longer than the legs. The class had been fun, though. But she had just drawn whatever came into her head without reason--and in her heart it didn’t give her near the same feeling that music did. Nothing was really as good as music.

  Mick knelt down on the floor and quickly lifted the top of the big hatbox. Inside was a cracked ukulele strung with two violin strings, a guitar string and a banjo string. The crack on the back of the ukulele had been neatly mended with sticking plaster and the round hole in the middle was covered by a piece of wood. The bridge of a violin held up the strings at the end and some sound-holes had been carved on either side.

  Mick was making herself a violin. She held the violin in her lap. She had the feeling she had never really looked at it before. Some time ago she made Bubber a little play mandolin out of a cigar box with rubber bands, and that put the idea into her head. Since that she had hunted all over everywhere for the different parts and added a little to the job every day. It seemed to her she had done everything except use her head.

  ‘Bill, this don’t look like any real violin I ever saw.’ He was still reading--‘Yeah--?’

  ‘It just don’t look right. It just don’t--’ She had planned to tune the fiddle that day by screwing the pegs. But since she had suddenly realized how all the work had turned out she didn’t want to look at it. Slowly she plucked one string after another. They all made the same little hollow-sounding ping.

  ‘How anyway will I ever get a bow? Are you sure they have to be made out of just horses’ hair?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bill impatiently.

  ‘Nothing like thin wire or human hair strung on a limber stick would do?’

  Bill rubbed his feet against each other and didn’t answer.

  Anger made beads of sweat come out on her forehead.

  Her voice was hoarse. ‘It’s not even a bad violin. It’s only a cross between a mandolin and a ukulele. And I hate them. I hate them--’ Bill turned around.

  ‘It’s all turned out wrong. It won’t do. It’s no good. ‘Pipe down,’ said Bill. ‘Are you just carrying on about that old broken ukulele you’ve been fooling with? I could have told you at first it was crazy to think you could make any violin. That’s one thing you don’t sit down and make--you got to buy them. I thought anybody would know a thing like that. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt yon if you found out for yourself.’

  Sometimes she hated Bill more than anyone else in the world.

  He was different entirely from what he used to be. She started to slam the violin down on the floor and stomp on it, but instead she put it back roughly into the hatbox. The tears were hot in her eyes as fire. She gave the box a kick and ran from the room without looking at Bill.

  As she was dodging through the hall to get to the back yard she ran into her Mama.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? What have you been into now?’

  Mick tried to jerk loose, but her Mama held on to her arm.

  Sullenly she wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Her Mama had been in the kitchen and she wore her apron and house-shoes. As usual she looked as though she had a lot on her mind and didn’t have time to ask her any more questions.

  ‘Mr. Jackson has brought his two sisters to dinner and there won’t be but just enough chairs, so today you’re to eat in the kitchen with Bubber.’

  ‘That's hunky-dory with me,’ Mick said.

  Her Mama let her go and went to take off her apron. From the dining-room there came the sound of the dinner bell and a sudden glad outbreak of talking. She could hear her Dad saying how much he had lost by not keeping up his accident insurance until the time he broke his hip. That was one thing her Dad could never get off his mind--ways he could have made money and didn’t. There was a clatter of dishes, and after a while the talking stopped.

  Mick leaned on the banisters of the stairs. The sudden crying had started her with the hiccups. It seemed to her as she thought back over the last month that she had never really believed in her mind that the violin would work. But in her heart she had kept making herself believe. And even now it was hard not to believe a little. She was tired out. Bill wasn’t ever a help with anything now. She used to think Bill was the grandest person in the world. She used to follow after him every place he went out--fishing in the
woods, to the clubhouses he built with other boys, to the slot machine in the back of Mr. Brannon’s restaurant--everywhere. Maybe he hadn’t meant to let her down like this. But anyway they could never be good buddies again.

  In the hall there was the smell of cigarettes and Sunday dinner. Mick took a deep breath and walked back toward the kitchen. The dinner began to smell good and she was hungry.

  She could hear Portia’s voice as she talked to Bubber, and it was like she was half-singing something or telling him a story.

  ‘And that is the various reason why I’m a whole lot more fortunate than most colored girls,’ Portia said as she opened the door. ‘Why?’ asked Mick.

  Portia and Bubber were sitting at the kitchen table eating their dinner. Portia’s green print dress was cool-looking against her dark brown skin. She had on green earrings and her hair was combed very tight and neat.

  ‘You all time pounce in on the very tail of what somebody say and then want to know all about it,’ Portia said. She got up and stood over the hot stove, putting dinner on Mick’s plate.

  ‘Bubber and me was just talking about my Grandpapa’s home out on the Old Sardis Road. I was telling Bubber how he and my uncles owns the whole place themself. Fifteen and a half acre. They always plants four of them in cotton, some years swapping back to peas to keep the dirt rich, and one acre on a hill is just for peaches. They haves a mule and a breed sow and all the time from twenty to twenty-five laying hens and fryers. They haves a vegetable patch and two pecan trees and plenty figs and plums and berries. This here is the truth. Not many white farms has done with their land good as my Grandpapa.’

  Mick put her elbows on the table and leaned over her plate.

  Portia had always rather talk about the farm than anything else, except about her husband and brother. To hear her tell it you would think that colored farm was the very White House itself.

  ‘The home started with just one little room. And through the years they done built on until there’s space for my Grandpapa, his four sons and their wives and childrens, and my brother Hamilton. In the parlor they haves a real organ and a gramophone. And on the wall they haves a large picture of my Grandpapa taken in his lodge uniform. They cans all the fruit and vegetables and no matter how cold and rainy the winter turns they pretty near always haves plenty to eat.’

  ‘How come you don’t go live with them, then?’ Mick asked.

  Portia stopped peeling her potatoes and her long, brown fingers tapped on the table in time to her words. ‘This here the way it is. See--each person done built on his room for his family. They all done worked hard during all these years. And of course times is hard for everbody now. But see--I lived with my Grandpapa when I were a little girl. But I haven’t never done any work out there since. Any time, though, if me and Willie and Highboy gets in bad trouble us can always go back.’

  ‘Didn’t your Father build on a room? ’ Portia stopped chewing. ‘Whose Father? You mean my Father?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mick. ‘You know good and well my Father is a colored doctor right here in town.’ Mick had heard Portia say that before, but she had thought it was a tale. How could a colored man be a doctor? .This here the way it is. Before the tune my Mama married my Father she had never known anything but real kindness. My Grandpa is Mister Kind hisself. But my Father is different from him as day is from night.’

  ‘Mean?’asked Mick.

  ‘No, he not a mean man,’ Portia said slowly. ‘It just that something is the matter. My Father not like other colored mens. This here is hard to explain. My Father all the time studying by hisself. And a long time ago he taken up all these notions about how a fambly ought to be. He bossed over ever little thing in the house and at night he tried to teach us children lessons.’

  ‘That don’t sound so bad to me,’ said Mick.

  ‘listen here. You see most of the time he were very quiet. But then some nights he would break out hi a kind of fit. He could get madder than any man I ever seen. Everbody who know my Father say that he was a sure enough crazy man. He done wild, crazy things and our Mama quit him. I were ten years old at the time. Our Mama taken us children with her to Grandpapa’s farm and us were raised out there. Our Father all the time wanted us to come back. But even when our Mama died us children never did go home to live. And now my Father stay all by hisself.’

  Mick went to the stove and filled her plate a second time.

  Portia’s voice was going up and down like a song, and nothing could stop her now.

  ‘I doesn’t see my Father much--maybe once a week--but I done a lot of thinking about him. I feels sorrier for him than anybody I knows. I expect he done read more books than any white man in this town. He done read more books and he done worried about more things. He full of books and worrying. He done lost God and turned his back to religion. All his troubles come down just to that.’

  Portia was excited. Whenever she got to talking about God--or Willie, her brother, or Highboy, her husband--she got excited.

  ‘Now, I not a big shouter. I belongs to the Presbyterian Church and us don’t hold with all this rolling on the floor and talking in tongues. Us don’t get sanctified ever week and wallow around together. In our church we sings and lets the preacher do the preaching. And tell you the truth I don’t think a little singing and a little preaching would hurt you, Mick. You ought to take your little brother to the Sunday School and also you plenty big enough to sit in church. From the biggity way you been acting lately it seem to me like you already got one toe in the pit.’

  ‘Nuts,’ Mick said.

  ‘Now Highboy he were Holiness boy before us were married.

  He loved to get the spirit ever Sunday and shout and sanctify hisself. But after us were married I got him to join with me, and although it kind of hard to keep him quiet sometime I think he doing right well.’

  ‘I don’t believe in God any more than I do Santa Oaus,’ Mick said.

  ‘You wait a minute! That’s why it sometime seem to me you favor my Father more than any person I ever knowed.’

  ‘Me? You say I favor him?’

  ‘I don’t mean in the face or in any kind of looks. I was speaking about the shape and color of your souls.’

  Bubber sat looking from one to the other. His napkin was tied around his neck and in his hand he still held his empty spoon.

  ‘What all does God eat?’ he asked.

  Mick got up from the table and stood in the doorway, ready to leave. Sometimes it was fun to devil Portia. She started on the same tune and said the same thing over and over--like that was all she knew.

  ‘Folks like you and my Father who don’t attend the church can’t never have nair peace at all. Now take me here--I believe and I haves peace. And Bubber, he haves his peace too. And my Highboy and my Willie likewise. And it seem to me just from looking at him this here Mr. Singer haves peace too. I done felt that the first time I seen him.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ Mick said. ‘You’re crazier than any father of yours could ever be.’

  ‘But you haven’t never loved God nor even nair person. You hard and tough as cowhide. But just the same I knows you.

  This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don’t love and don’t have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined. Won’t nothing help you then.’

  ‘What, Portia?’ Bubber asked. ‘What kind of things does He eat?’

  Mick laughed and stamped out of the room.

  She did roam around the house during the afternoon because she could not get settled. Some days were just like that. For one thing the thought of the violin kept worrying her. She could never have made it like a real one--and after all those weeks of planning the very thought of it made her sick. But how could she have been so sure the idea
would work? So dumb? Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.

  Mick did not want to go back into the rooms where the family stayed. And she did not want to have to talk to any of the boarders. No place was left but the street--and there the sun was too burning hot. She wandered aimlessly up and down the hall and kept pushing back her rumpled hair with the palm of her hand. ‘Hell,’ she said aloud to herself. ‘Next to a real piano I sure would rather have some place to myself than anything I know.’

  That Portia had a certain kind of niggery craziness, but she was O.K. She never would do anything mean to Bubber or Ralph on the sly like some colored girls. But Portia had said that she never loved anybody. Mick stopped walking and stood very still, rubbing her fist on the top of her head.

  What would Portia think if she really knew? Just what would she think? She had always kept things to herself. That was one sure truth.

  Mick went slowly up the stairs. She passed the first landing and went on to the second. Some of the doors were open to make a draught and there were many sounds in the house.

  Mick stopped on the last flight of stairs and sat down. If Miss Brown turned on her radio she could hear the music. Maybe some good program would come on.

  She put her head on her knees and tied knots in the strings of her tennis shoes. What would Portia say if she knew that always there had been one person after another? And every time it was like some part of her would bust in a hundred pieces.

  But she had always kept it to herself and no person had ever known.

  Mick sat on the steps a long time. Miss Brown did not turn on her radio and there was nothing but the noises that people made. She thought a long time and kept hitting her thighs with her fists. Her face felt like it was scattered in pieces and she could not keep it straight. The feeling was a whole lot worse than being hungry for any dinner, yet it was like that. I want--I want--I want--was all that she could think about--but just what this real want was she did not know.

  After about an hour there was the sound of a doorknob being turned on the landing above. Mick looked up quickly and it was Mister Singer. He stood in the hall for a few minutes and his face was sad and calm. Then he went across to the bathroom. His company did not come out with him. From where she was sitting she could see part of the room, and the company was asleep on the bed with a sheet pulled over him.