The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [121]
‘Snow,’ Mick said. ‘That’s what I want to see. Cold, white drifts of snow like in pictures. Blizzards. White, cold snow that keeps falling soft and falls on and on and on through all the winter. Snow like in Alaska.’
They both turned at the same time. They were close against each other. She felt him trembling and her fists were tight enough to crack. ‘Oh, God,’ he kept saying over and over. It was like her head was broke off from her body and thrown away. And her eyes looked up straight into the blinding sun while she counted something in her mind. And then this was the way. This was how it was. They pushed the wheels slowly along the road. Harry’s head hung down and his shoulders were bent. Their shadows were long and black on the dusty road, for it was late afternoon. ‘Listen here,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’
‘We got to understand this. We got to. Do you--any?’
‘I don’t know. I reckon not.’
‘Listen here. We got to do something. Let’s sit down.’ They dropped the bicycles and sat by a ditch beside the road. They sat far apart from each other. The late sun burned down on their heads and there were brown, crumbly ant beds all around them. ‘We got to understand this,’ Harry said. He cried. He sat very still and the tears rolled down Ms white face. She could not think about the thing that made him cry. An ant stung her on the ankle and she picked it up in her fingers and looked at it very close. ‘It’s this way,’ he said. I never had even kissed a girl before.’
‘Me neither. I never kissed any boy. Out of the family. ‘That’s all I used to think about--was to kiss this certain girl.
I used to plan about it during school and dream about it at night. And then once she gave me a date. And I could tell she meant for me to kiss her. And I just looked at her in the dark and I couldn’t That was all I had thought about--to kiss her--and when the time came I couldn’t.’
She dug a hole in the ground with her finger and buried the dead ant.
It was all my fault. Adultery is a terrible sin any way you look at it. And you were two years younger than me and just a kid.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t any kid. But now I wish I was, though.’
‘Listen here. If you think we ought to we can get married--secretly or any other way.’
Mick shook her head. ‘I didn’t like that. I never will marry with any boy.’
‘I never will marry either. I know that And I’m not just saying so--it’s true.’
His face scared her. His nose quivered and his bottom lip was mottled and bloody where he had bitten it. His eyes were bright and wet and scowling. His face was whiter than any face she could remember. She turned her head from him.
Things would be better if only he would just quit talking. Her eyes looked slowly around her--at the streaked red-and-white clay of the ditch, at a broken whiskey bottle, at a pine tree across from them with a sign advertising for a man for county sheriff. She wanted to sit quiet for a long time and not think and not say a word.
‘I’m leaving town. I’m a good mechanic and I can get a job some other place. If I stayed home Mother could read this in my eyes.’
Tell me. Can you look at me and see the difference?’
Harry watched her face a long time and nodded that he could.
Then he said: ‘There’s just one more thing. In a month or two I’ll send you my address and you write and tell me for sure whether you’re all right.’
‘How you mean?’ she asked slowly.
He explained to her. ‘All you need to write is "O.K." and then TO know.’
They were walking home again, pushing the wheels. Their shadows stretched out giant-sized on the road. Harry was bent over like an old beggar and kept wiping his nose on his sleeve.
For a minute there was a bright, golden glow over everything before the sun sank down behind the trees and their shadows were gone