The Moviegoer - Walker Percy [51]
“Well, all I wanted you to know was that when I acted on impulse—”
“I always act on impulse. I believe in saying what you mean and meaning what you say.”
“I can see that.”
“You just ask Joyce what I said about you.”
“Joyce?”
“My roommate.”
“What did you say?”
“You just ask her.”
I look up and down the beach. “I don’t see her.”
“I don’t mean now, you jackass.”
We swim and lie down together. The remarkable discovery forces itself upon me that I do not love her so wildly as I loved her last night. But at least there is no malaise and we lie drowsing in the sun, hands clasped in the other’s back, until the boat whistle blows.
Yet loves revives as we spin homewards along the coast through the early evening. Joy and sadness come by turns, I know now. Beauty and bravery make you sad, Sharon’s beauty and my aunt’s bravery, and victory breaks your heart. But life goes on and on we go, spinning along the coast in a violet light, past Howard Johnson’s and the motels and the children’s carnival. We pull into a bay and have a drink under the stars. It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh.
“My mother has a fishing camp at Bayou des Allemands. Would you like to stop there?”
She nods into my neck. She has become tender toward me and now and then presses my cheek with her hand.
Just west of Pearl River a gravel road leaves the highway and winds south through the marshes. All at once we are in the lonely savannah and the traffic is behind us. Sharon still hides her face in my neck.
A lopsided yellow moon sheds a feeble light over the savannah. Faraway hummocks loom as darkly as a flotilla of ships. Awkwardly we walk over and into the marsh and’ along the boardwalk. Sharon cleaves to me as if, in staying close, she might not see me.
I cannot believe my eyes. It is difficult to understand. We round a hummock and there is the camp ablaze like the Titanic. The Smiths are home.
2
My half brothers and sisters are eating crabs at a sawbuck table on the screened porch. The carcasses mount toward a naked light bulb.
They blink at me and at each other. Suddenly they feel the need of a grown-up. A grown-up must certify that they are correct in thinking that they see me. They all, every last one, look frantically for their mother. Thérèse runs to the kitchen doorway.
“Mother! Jack is here!” She holds her breath and watches her mother’s face. She is rewarded. “Yes, Jack!”
“Jean-Paul ate some lungs.” Mathilde looks up from directly under my chin.
My half brother Jean-Paul, the son of my mother, is a big fat yellow baby piled up like a buddha in his baby chair, smeared with crab paste and brandishing a scarlet claw. The twins goggle at us but do not leave off eating.
Lonnie has gone into a fit of excitement in his wheelchair. His hand curls upon itself. I kiss him first and his smile starts his head turning away in a long trembling torticollis. He is fourteen and small for his age, smaller than Clare and Donice, the ten-year-old twins. But since last summer when Duval, the oldest son, was drowned, he has been the “big boy.” His dark red hair is nearly always combed wet and his face is handsome and pure when it is not contorted. He is my favorite, to tell the truth. Like me, he is a moviegoer. He will go see anything. But we are good friends because he knows I do not feel sorry for him. For one thing, he has the gift of believing that he can offer his sufferings in reparation for men’s indifference to the pierced heart of Jesus Christ. For another thing, I would not mind so much trading places with him. His life is a serene business.
My mother is drying her hands on a dishcloth.
“Well well, look who’s here,” she says but does not look.
Her hands dry, she rubs her nose vigorously with her three middle fingers held straight up. She has hay fever and crabs make it worse. It is a sound too well known to me to be remembered, this quick jiggle up and down and the little wet wringing