The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [273]
“No,” he said, “go ahead on.”
“Well so long then,” she said.
He raised the hat enough to reveal a bald palely speckled head. The hall door closed behind her. He began to tremble with excitement. He reached behind him and drew the coat into his lap. When he got it on, he waited until he had stopped panting, then he gripped the arms of the chair and pulled himself up. His body felt like a great heavy bell whose clapper swung from side to side but made no noise. Once up, he remained standing a moment, swaying until he got his balance. A sensation of terror and defeat swept over him. He would never make it. He would never get there dead or alive. He pushed one foot forward and did not fall and his confidence returned. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he muttered, “I shall not want.” He began moving toward the sofa where he would have support. He reached it. He was on his way.
By the time he got to the door, she would be down the four flights of steps and out of the building. He got past the sofa and crept along by the wall, keeping his hand on it for support. Nobody was going to bury him here. He was as confident as if the woods of home lay at the bottom of the stairs. He reached the front door of the apartment and opened it and peered into the hall. This was the first time he had looked into it since the actor had knocked him down. It was dank-smelling and empty. The thin piece of linoleum stretched its moldy length to the door of the other apartment, which was closed. “Nigger actor,” he said.
The head of the stairs was ten or twelve feet from where he stood and he bent his attention to getting there without creeping around the long way with a hand on the wall. He held his arms a little way out from his sides and pushed forward directly. He was halfway there when all at once his legs disappeared, or felt as if they had. He looked down, bewildered, for they were still there. He fell forward and grasped the banister post with both hands. Hanging there, he gazed for what seemed the longest time he had ever looked at anything down the steep unlighted steps; then he closed his eyes and pitched forward. He landed upside down in the middle of the flight.
He felt presently the tilt of the box as they took it off the train and got it on the baggage wagon. He made no noise yet. The train jarred and slid away. In a moment the baggage wagon was rumbling under him, carrying him back to the station side. He heard footsteps rattling closer and closer to him and he supposed that a crowd was gathering. Wait until they see this, he thought.
“That him,” Coleman said, “one of his tricks.”
“It’s a damm rat in there,” Hooten said.
“It’s him. Git the crowbar.”
In a moment a shaft of greenish light fell on him. He pushed through it and cried in a weak voice, “Judgement Day! Judgement Day! You idiots didn’t know it was Judgement Day, did you?”
“Coleman?” he murmured.
The Negro bending over him had a large surly mouth and sullen eyes.
“Ain’t any coal man, either,” he said. This must be the wrong station, Tanner thought. Those fools put me off too soon. Who is this nigger? It ain’t even daylight here.
At the Negro’s side was another face, a woman’s—pale, topped with a pile of copper-glinting hair and twisted as if she had just stepped in a pile of dung.
“Oh,” Tanner said, “it’s you.”
The actor leaned closer and grasped him by the front of his shirt. “Judgement day,” he said in a mocking voice. “Ain’t no judgement day, old man. Cept this. Maybe this here judgement day for you.”
Tanner tried to catch hold of a banister-spoke to raise himself but his hand grasped air. The two faces, the black one and the pale one, appeared to be wavering. By an effort of will he kept them focused before him while he lifted his hand, as light as a breath, and said in his jauntiest voice, “Hep me up, Preacher. I’m on my way home!”
His daughter found him when she came in from the grocery store. His hat had been pulled down over his face and his head and arms thrust between the spokes of the banister;