The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [78]
‘You can’t get me! Nobody can get me!’ he kept yelling.
Mick shook him by the shoulder. She told him the things she had said were stories. He finally knew what she was saying but he wouldn’t hush. It looked like nothing could stop that screaming.
‘I hate everybody! I hate everybody!’ They all just stood around. Mister Brannon rubbed his nose and looked down at the floor. Then finally he went out very quietly. Mister Singer was the only one who seemed to know what it was all about. Maybe this was because he didn’t hear that awful noise. His face was still calm, and whenever Bubber looked at him he seemed to get quieter. Mister Singer was different from any other man, and at times like this it would be better if other people would let him manage. He had more sense and he knew things that ordinary people couldn’t know. He just looked at Bubber, and after a while the kid quieted down enough so that their Dad could get him to bed.
In the bed he lay on his face and cried. He cried with long, big sobs that made him tremble all over. He cried for an hour and nobody in the three rooms could sleep. Bill moved to the living-room sofa and Mick got into bed with Bubber. He wouldn’t let her touch him or snug up to him. Then after another hour of crying and hiccoughing he went to sleep.
She was awake a long time. In the dark she put her arms around him and held him very close. She touched him all over and kissed him everywhere. He was so soft and little and there was this salty, boy smell about him. The love she felt was so hard that she had to squeeze him to her until her arms were tired. In her mind she thought about Bubber and music together. It was like she could never do anything good enough for him. She would never hit him or even tease him again. She slept all night with her arms around his head. Then in the morning when she woke up he was gone. But after that night there was not much of a chance for her to tease him any more--her or anybody else. After he shot Baby the kid was not ever like little Bubber again. He always kept his mouth shut and he didn’t fool around with anybody.
Most of the time he just sat in the back yard or in the coal house by himself. It got closer and closer toward Christmas time. She really wanted a piano, but naturally she didn’t say anything about that. She told everybody she wanted a Micky Mouse watch. When they asked Bubber what he wanted from Santa Claus he said he didn’t want anything. He hid his marbles and jack-knife and wouldn’t let anyone touch his story books.
After that night nobody called him Bubber any more. The big kids in the neighborhood started calling him Baby-Killer Kelly. But he didn’t speak much to any person and nothing seemed to bother him. The family called him by his real name--George. At first Mick couldn’t stop calling him Bubber and she didn’t want to stop. But it was funny how after about a week she just naturally called him George like the others did.
But he was a different kid--George--going around by himself always like a person much older and with nobody, not even her, knowing what was really in his mind.
She slept with him on Christmas Eve night. He lay in the dark without talking. ‘Quit acting so peculiar,’ she said to him. ‘Less talk about the wise men and the way the children in Holland put out their wooden shoes instead of hanging up their stockings.’
George wouldn’t answer. He went to sleep.
She got up at four o’clock in the morning and waked everybody in the family. Their Dad built a fire in the front room and then let them go into the Christmas tree and see what they got. George had an Indian suit and Ralph a rubber doll. The rest of the family just got clothes. She looked all through her stocking for the Mickey Mouse watch but it wasn’t there. Her presents were a pair of brown Oxford shoes and a box of cherry candy. While it was still dark she and George went out on the sidewalk and cracked nigger-toes