The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [218]
Calhoun was barely able to be polite. His aunts, who thought this was a romantic outing in the rain, kissed him out the door and stood on the porch idiotically waving their handkerchiefs until he and Mary Elizabeth were in the car and gone.
The girl was much too big for the small car. She kept shifting about and twisting inside her raincoat. “The rain has beat the azaleas down,” she observed in a neutral tone.
Calhoun rudely kept silent. He was trying to obliterate her from his consciousness so that he could reestablish Singleton there. He had lost Singleton completely. The rain was coming down in gray swaths. When they reached the highway, they could barely see across the fields to a faint line of woods. The girl kept leaning forward, squinting into the opaque windshield. “If a truck were to come out of that,” she said with a gawkish laugh, “that would be the end of us.”
Calhoun stopped the car. “I’ll be glad to take you back and go on by myself,” he said.
“I have to go,” she said hoarsely, staring at him. “I have to see him.” Behind her spectacles, her eyes appeared larger than they should have been and suspiciously liquid. “I have to face this,” she said.
Roughly, he started the car again.
“You have to prove to yourself that you can stand there and watch a man be crucified,” she said. “You have to go through it with him. I thought about it all night.”
“It may give you,” Calhoun muttered, “a more balanced view of life.”
“This is personal,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand,” and she turned her head to the window.
Calhoun tried to concentrate on Singleton. Feature by feature, he brought the face together in his mind and each time he had it almost constructed, it fell apart and he was left with nothing. He drove in silence, at a reckless speed as if he would like to hit a hole in the road and see the girl go through the windshield. Every now and then she blew her nose weakly. After fifteen mlies or so the rain slackened and stopped. The treeline on either side of them became black and clear and the fields intensely green. They would have an unmistakable view of the hospital grounds as soon as these should come in sight.
“Christ only had to take it three hours,” the girl said all at once in a high voice, “but he’ll be in this place the rest of his life!”
Calhoun cut his eyes toward her. There was a fresh wet line down the side of her face. He turned his eyes away, awed and furious. “If you can’t stand this,” he said, “I can still take you home and come back by myself.”
“You wouldn’t come back by yourself,” she said, “and we’re almost there.” She blew her nose. “I want him to know that somebody takes his side. I want to say that to him no matter what it does to me.”
Through his rage, the terrible thought occurred to the boy that he would have to say something to Singleton. What could he say to him in the presence of this woman? She had shattered the communion between them. “We’ve come to listen I hope you understand,” he burst out, “I haven’t driven all this way to hear you startle Singleton with your wisdom. I’ve come to listen to him.”
“We should have brought a tape recorder!” she cried, “then we’d have what he says all our lives!”
“You don’t have elementary understanding,” Calhoun said, “if you think you approach a man like this with a tape recorder.”
“Stop!” she shrieked, leaning toward the windshield, “that’s it!”
Calhoun slammed on his brakes and looked forward wildly.
A cluster of low buildings, hardly noticeable, rose like a rich growth of warts on the hill to their right.
The boy sat helpless while the car, as if of its own volition, turned and headed toward the entrance. The letters QUINCY STATE HOSPITAL were cut in a concrete arch which it rolled effortlessly through.
“Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” the girl murmured.