The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [77]
Mister Singer found the pencil and piece of paper on the kitchen table. He read it quickly and then they all looked at it The writing was round and scraggly and the smart little kid hadn’t misspelled but one word. The note said: Dear Portia, I gone to Florada. Tell every body.
Yours truly, Bubber Kelly They stood around surprised and stumped. Her Dad looked out the doorway and picked his nose with his thumb in a worried way. They were all ready to pile in the car and ride toward the highway leading south.
‘Wait a minute,’ Mick said. ‘Even if Bubber is seven years old he’s got brains enough not to tell us where he’s going if he wants to run away. That about Florida is just a trick.’
‘A trick?’ her Dad said.
‘Yeah. There only two places Bubber knows very much about.
One is Florida and the other is Atlanta. Me and Bubber and Ralph have been on the Atlanta road many a time. He knows how to start there and that’s where he’s headed. He always talks about what he’s going to do when he gets a chance to go to Atlanta.’
They went out to the automobile again. She was ready to climb into the back seat when Portia pinched her on the elbow. ‘You know what Bubber done?’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Don’t you tell nobody else, but my Bubber done also taken my gold earrings off my dresser. I never thought my Bubber would have done such a thing to me.’
Mister Brannon started the automobile. They rode slow, looking up and down the streets for Bubber, headed toward the Atlanta road.
It was true that in Bubber there was a tough, mean streak. He was acting different today than he had ever acted before. Up until now he was always a quiet little kid who never really done anything mean. When anybody’s feelings were hurt it always made him ashamed and nervous.
Then how come he could do all the things he had done today? They drove very slow out the Atlanta road. They passed the last line of houses and came to the dark fields and woods. All along they had stopped to ask if anyone had seen Bubber. ‘Has a little barefooted kid in corduroy knickers been by this way?’
But even after they had gone about ten miles nobody had seen or noticed him. The wind came in cold and strong from the open windows and it was late at night.
They rode a little farther and then went back toward town. Her Dad and Mister Brannon wanted to look up all the children in the second grade, but she made them turn around and go back on the Atlanta road again. All the while she remembered the words she had said to Bubber. About Baby being dead and Sing Sing and Warden Lawes. About the small electric chairs that were just his size, and Hell. In the dark the words had sounded terrible.
They rode very slow for about half a mile out of town, and then suddenly she saw Bubber. The lights of the car showed him up in front of them very plain. It was funny. He was walking along the edge of the road and he had his thumb out trying to get a ride. Portia’s butcher knife was stuck in his belt, and on the wide, dark road he looked so small that it was like he was five years old instead of seven.
They stopped the automobile and he ran to get in. He couldn’t see who they were, and his face had the squint-eyed look it always had when he took aim with a marble. Her Dad held him by the collar. He hit with his fists and kicked. Then he had the butcher knife in his hand. Their Dad yanked it away from him just in time. He fought like a little tiger in a trap, but finally they got him into the car. Their Dad held him in his lap on the way home and Bubber sat very stiff, not leaning against anything.
They had to drag him into the house, and all the neighbors and the boarders were out to see the commotion. They dragged him into the front room and when he was there he backed off into a corner, holding his fists very tight and with his squinted eyes looking from one person to the other Like he was ready to fight the whole crowd.
He hadn’t said one word since they came into the house until he began to scream: ‘Mick done it! I didn