The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [80]
No white person will be allowed a passport--and if they get into the country they will have no legal rights.
I hate the whole white race and will work always so that the colored race can achieve revenge for all their sufferings. That is my ambition.
Doctor Copeland felt the fever warm in his veins. The ticking of the clock on his desk was loud and the sound jarred his nerves. How could he give the award to a boy with such wild notions as this? What should he decide? The other essays were without any firm content at all. The young people would not think. They wrote only about their ambitions and omitted the last part of the tide altogether. Only one point was of some significance. Nine out of the lot of twenty-five began with the sentence, ‘I do not want to be a servant.’ After that they wished to fly airplanes, or be prizefighters, or preachers or dancers. One girl’s sole ambition was to be kind to the poor.
The writer of the essay that troubled him was Lancy Davis. He had known the identity of the author before he turned the last sheet over and saw the signature. Already he had some trouble with Lancy. His older sister had gone out to work as a servant when she was eleven years old and she had been raped by her employer, a white man past middle age. Then a year or so later he had received an emergency call to attend Lancy.
Doctor Copeland went to the filing case in his bedroom where he kept notes on all of his patients. He took out the card marked ‘Mrs. Dan Davis and Family’ and glanced through the notations until he reached Lancy’s name. The date was four years ago. The entries on him were written with more care than the others and in ink: ‘thirteen years old--past puberty.
Unsuccessful attempt self-emasculation. Oversexed and hyperthyroid. Wept boisterously during two visits, though little pain. Voluble--very glad to see Lucy Davis--mother washerwoman. Intelligent talk through paranoiac.
Environment fair with one exception and well worth watching and all possible help. Keep contact. Fee: $1 (?)’
‘It is a difficult decision to make this year,’ he said to Portia.
‘But I suppose I will have to confer the award on Lancy Davis.’
‘If you done decide, then--come tell me about some of these here presents.’
The gifts to be distributed at the party were in the kitchen.
There were paper sacks of groceries and clothing, all marked with a red Christmas card. Anyone who cared to come was invited to the party, but those who meant to attend had stopped by the house and written (or had asked a friend to write) their names in a guest book kept on the table in the hall for that purpose. The sacks were piled on the floor. There were about forty of them, each one depending in size on the need of the receiver. Some gifts were only small packages of nuts or raisins and others were boxes almost too heavy for a man to lift The kitchen was crowded with good things. Doctor Copeland stood in the doorway and his nostrils quivered with pride.
I think you done right well this year. Folks certainly have been kindly.’
‘Pshaw!’ he said. This is not a hundredth part of what is needed.’
‘Now, there you go, Father! I know good and well you just as pleased as you can be. But you don’t want to show it.
You got to find something to grumble about. Here we haves about four pecks of peas, twenty sacks of meal about fifteen pounds of side meat, mullet, six dozen eggs, plenty grits, jars of tomatoes and peaches. Apples and two dozen oranges. Also garments. And two mattresses and four blankets. I call this something!’
‘A drop in the bucket.’
Portia pointed to a large box in the corner. These here--what you intend to do