The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [71]
‘I wonder has Harry still got his gold piece,’ Spareribs said.
‘What gold piece?’
‘When a Jew boy is born they put a gold piece in the bank for him. That’s what Jews do.’
‘Shucks. You got it mixed up,’ she said. ‘It’s Catholics you’re thinking about. Catholics buy a pistol for a baby soon as it’s born. Some day the Catholics mean to start a war and kill everybody else.’
‘Nuns give me a funny feeling,’ Spareribs said. ‘It scares me when I see one on the street.’
She sat down on the steps and laid her head on her knees. She went into the inside room. With her it was like there was two places--the inside room and the outside room. School and the family and the things that happened every day were in the outside room. Mister Singer was in both rooms. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room. The songs she thought about were there. And the symphony. When she was by herself hi this inside room the music she had heard that night after the party would come back to her. This symphony grew slow like a big flower in her mind. During the day sometimes, or when she had just waked up in the morning, a new part of the symphony would suddenly come to her. Then she would have to go into the inside room and listen to it many times and try to join it into the parts of the symphony she remembered. The inside room was a very private place. She could be in the middle of a house full of people and still feel like she was locked up by herself.
Spareribs stuck his dirty hand up to her eyes because she had been staring off at space. She slapped him.
‘What is a nun?’ Bubber asked.
‘A Catholic lady,’ Spareribs said. ‘A Catholic lady with a big black dress that comes up over her head.’
She was tired of hanging around with the kids. She would go to the library and look at pictures in the National Geographic.
Photographs of all the foreign places in the world. Paris, France. And big ice glaciers. And the wild jungles in Africa.
‘You kids see that Ralph don’t get out in the street,’ she said.
Bubber rested the big rifle on his shoulder. ‘Bring me a story back with you.’
It was like that kid had been born knowing how to read. He was only in the second grade but he loved to read stories by himself--and he never asked anybody else to read to him.
‘What kind you want this time?’
‘Pick out some stories with something to eat in them. I like that one a whole lot about them German kids going out in the forest and coming to this house made out of all different kinds of candy and the witch. I like a story with something to eat in it.’
‘I’ll look for one,’ said Mick.
‘But I’m getting kinda tired of candy,’ Bubber said. ‘See if you can’t bring me a story with something like a barbecue sandwich in it. But if you can’t find none of them I’d like a cowboy story.’
She was ready to leave when suddenly she stopped and stared.
The kids stared too. They all stood still and looked at Baby Wilson coming down the steps of her house across the street.
‘Ain’t Baby cute!’ said Bubber softly.
Maybe it was the sudden hot, sunny day after all those rainy weeks. Maybe it was because their dark winter clothes were ugly to them on an afternoon like this one. Anyway Baby looked like a fairy or something in the picture show. She had on her last year’s soiree costume--with a little pink-gauze skirt that stuck out short and stiff, a pink body waist, pink dancing shoes, and even a little pink pocketbook. With her yellow hair she was all pink and white and gold--and so small and clean that it almost hurt to watch her. She prissed across the street in a cute way, but would not turn her face toward them.
‘Come over here,’ said Bubber. ‘Lemme look at your little pink pocketbook--’ Baby passed them along the edge of the street with her head held to one side. She had made up her mind not to speak to them.
There was a strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, and when Baby reached it she stood still for a second and then turned a handspring.
‘Don’t pay no mind to her,’ said