The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [52]
This part of the music was beautiful and clear. She could sing it now whenever she wanted to. Maybe later on, when she had just waked up some morning, more of the music would come back to her. If ever she heard the symphony again there would be other parts to add to what was already in her mind. And maybe if she could hear it four more times, just four more times, she would know it all. Maybe.
Once again she listened to this opening part of the music.
Then the notes grew slower and soft and it was like she was sinking down slowly into the dark ground.
Mick awoke with a jerk. The air had turned chilly, and as she was coming up out of the sleep she dreamed old Etta Kelly was taking all the cover. ‘Gimme some blanket --’ she tried to say. Then she opened her eyes. The sky was very black and all the stars were gone. The grass was wet.
She got up in a hurry because her Dad would be worried. Then she remembered the music. She couldn’t tell whether the time was midnight or three in the morning, so she started beating it for home in a rush. The air had a smell in it like autumn. The music was loud and quick in her mind, and she ran faster and faster on the sidewalks leading to the home block.
2
BY OCTOBER THE days were blue and cool. Biff Brannon changed his light seersucker trousers for dark-blue serge ones.
Behind the counter of the café he installed a machine that made hot chocolate. Mick was very partial to hot chocolate, and she came in three or four times a week to drink a cup. He served it to her for a nickel instead of a dime and he wanted to give it to her free. He watched her as she stood behind the counter and he was troubled and sad. He wanted to reach out his hand and touch her sunburned, tousled hair--but not as he had ever touched a woman. In him there was an uneasiness, and when he spoke to her his voice had a rough, strange sound.
There were many worries on his mind. For one thing, Alice was not well. She worked downstairs as usual from seven in the morning until ten at night, but she walked very slowly and brown circles were beneath her eyes. It was in the business that she showed this illness most plainly. One Sunday, when she wrote out the day’s menu on the typewriter, she marked the special dinner with chicken a la king at twenty cents instead of fifty, and did not discover the mistake until several customers had already ordered and were ready to pay. Another time she gave back two fives and three ones as change for ten dollars. Biff would stand looking at her for a long time, rubbing his nose thoughtfully and with his eyes half-closed.
They did not speak of this together. At night he worked downstairs while she slept, and during the morning she managed the restaurant alone. When they worked together he stayed behind the cash register and looked after the kitchen and the tables, as was their custom. They did not talk except on matters of business, but Biff would stand watching her with his face puzzled.
Then in the afternoon of the eighth of October there was a sudden cry of pain from the room where they slept. Biff hurried upstairs. Within an hour they had taken Alice to the hospital and the doctor had removed from her a tumor almost the size of a newborn child. And then within another hour Alice was dead.
Biff sat by her bed at the hospital in stunned reflection. He had been present when she died. Her eyes had been drugged and misty from the ether and then they hardened like glass.
The nurse and the doctor withdrew from the room. He continued to look into her face. Except for the bluish pallor there was little difference. He noted each detail about her as though he had net watched her every day for twenty-one years.
Then gradually as he sat there his thoughts turned to a picture that had long been stored inside him.
The cold green ocean and a hot gold strip of sand. The little children playing on the edge of the silky line of foam. The sturdy brown baby girl, the thin little naked boys, the half-grown children running and calling out to each other with sweet,