The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [65]
When he returned he brought with him a scuttle of coal and some kindling. Jake watched him kneel before the hearth.
Neatly he broke the sticks of kindling over his knee and arranged them on the foundation of paper. He put the coal on according to a system. At first the fire would not draw. The flames quivered weakly and were smothered by a black roll of smoke. Singer covered the grate with a double sheet of newspapers. The draught gave the fire new life. In the room there was a roaring sound. The paper glowed and was sucked inward. A crackling orange sheet of flame filled the grate.
The first morning ale had a fine mellow taste. Jake gulped his share down quickly and wiped his mouth with file back of his hand.
There was this lady I knew a long time ago,’ he said. ‘You sort of remind me of her, Miss Clara. She had a little farm in Texas. And made pralines to sell in the cities. She was a tall, big, fine-looking lady. Wore those long, baggy sweaters and clodhopper shoes and a man’s hat. Her husband was dead when I knew her. But what I’m getting at is this: If it hadn’t been for her I might never have known. I might have gone on through life like the millions of others who don’t know. I would have just been a preacher or a linthead or a salesman.
My whole life might have been wasted.’
Jake shook his head wonderingly.
To understand you got to know what went before. You see, I lived in Gastonia when I was a youngun. I was a knock-kneed little runt, too small to put in the mill. I worked as pin boy in a bowling joint and got meals for pay. Then I heard a smart, quick boy could make thirty cents a day stringing tobacco not very far from there. So I went and made that thirty cents a day.
That was when I was ten years old. I just left my folks. I didn’t write. They were glad I was gone. You understand how those things are. And besides, nobody could read a letter but my sister.’
He waved his hand in the air as though brushing something from his face. ‘But I mean this. My first belief was Jesus.
There was this fellow working in the same shed with me. He had a tabernacle and preached every night. I went and listened and I got this faith. My mind was on Jesus all day long. In my spare time I studied the Bible and prayed. Then one night I took a hammer and laid my hand on the table. I was angry and I drove the nail all the way through. My hand was nailed to the table and I looked at it and the fingers fluttered and turned blue.’
Jake held out his palm and pointed to the ragged, dead-white scar in the center.
‘I wanted to be an evangelist. I meant to travel around the country preaching and holding revivals. In the meantime I moved around from one place to another, and when I was nearly twenty I got to Texas. I worked in a pecan grove near where Miss Clara lived. I got to know her and at night sometimes I would go to her house. She talked to me.
Understand, I didn’t begin to know all at once. That’s not the way it happens to any of us. It was gradual. I began to read. I would work just so I could put aside enough money to knock off for a while and study. It was like being born a second time.
Just us who know can understand what it means. We have opened our eyes and have seen. We’re like people from way off yonder somewhere.’
Singer agreed with him. The room was comfortable in a homey way. Singer brought out from the closet the tin box in which he kept crackers and fruit and cheese. He selected an orange and peeled it slowly. He pulled off shreds ‘ of pith until the fruit was transparent in the sun. He sectioned the orange and divided the plugs between them. Jake ate two sections at a time and with a loud whoosh spat the seeds into the fire. Singer ate his share slowly and deposited his seeds neatly in the palm of one hand. They opened two more ales.
‘And how many of us are there in this country? Maybe ten thousand. Maybe twenty thousand. Maybe a lot more. I been to a lot of places but I never met but a few of