The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [241]
They came out into the flat light of day and the noise, like a deception or a concealment of rage, of the ordinary afternoon stir. As they paused on the walk, a streetcar not far away roared down a crowded street. With the air of a fool or a traitor, so the crowd felt all together—there was a feeling like a concussion in the air—a dumpy little woman tripped forward on high heels in the street, swung her purse like a hatful of flowers, spilling everything, and sank in an outrageous-looking pink color in the streetcar's path. In a moment the streetcar struck her. She was pitched about, thrown ahead on the tracks, then let alone; she was not run over by the car, but she was dead. Eugene could tell that, as they all could, by the slow swinging walk of the pair of policemen who saw everything and now had to take charge. This pair saw no use in the world to hurry now.
"Accident!" Eugene said—repeated, that is. His voice must have told the Spaniard that this should be of special interest to him. The big man stood planted, his lower lip jutted out under his cigarette, his eyes squinting. It was unquestionably a very horrible thing. Nobody hurried.
"She's dead, I'm pretty sure," Eugene said, but determined to keep his single voice a cautious one. Other voices close by were speaking. The Spaniard was shaking his head.
"Why don't the ambulance come?"
"Look at the motorman. His fault."
"She had gray hair."
Shake of the head.
"Somebody ought to pick up all those things and get them back in her purse."
"Don't they cover them up?"
"I wonder who she was."
"Who will they know to tell?"
Shake of the head.
The Spaniard shook his head.
"Let's go." Two girls spoke, turning. "I'm ready when you are."
But an inner group, a hollow square of people, hid the victim. They flanked her, and not all the time, but at moments, looked down at her. They held their ranks closed, like valuable persons. They were going to have been there. The group, business men, lady shoppers and children, seemed to consider themselves gently floating like the passengers on a raft, a little way out. One youth, hand on hip, looked with deep, idle, inward gaze at a street-sparrow by his foot, and then, beside the sparrow's little foot was the dead woman's open purse.
"Well—!"
They went around the corner, the Spaniard still shaking his head at moments. At a glance he looked as if he thought the place couldn't be any good, really.
Eugene led him to a big hotel. They entered the glitter and perfume of the lobby and through its entire maze before Eugene could discover the men's room, feeling the responsibility of the big black Spaniard like a parade he was leading.
As they stood in their caves with the echoing partition between, Eugene's head nodded and rolled once or twice, rhythmically....
Well, the music last night had not been what he had thought it would be. In prophesying that, Emma had known what she was talking about. It was not at all throbbing. It had not a great many chords, it was never loud. The Spaniard's songs were old—ancient, his program said; some of them were written for organs and for lutes; and yet, he, So-and-So, the guitarist, played them. Were the difficulties and challenges what he had sought for most? Vain old person. Yes, it is the guitar I am playing. Yes, I am a guitar player. What did you think I was?
He was in as overwhelming a degree as if he announced it from the stage—in English—an extremely careful old person, an extremely careful artist.
Eugene suddenly felt both impatient and offended with him. Not bothering to conceal his own absorption in what he was playing, the man took no notice or care that he pleased anyone else either.... No! And Eugene had not been carried away altogether by the Spaniard's music. Not by any means. Only when the man at last