In a Shallow Grave Read online

  “So how did you find the Widow Rance?” I said in my tough soldier voice, which some people have described as coming from my big size thirteen shoes.

  He sat down, and looked nowhere now in particular. “She accepted the letter,” he began, “but then she made me read it to her.” He passed his hand over his face, and a strand of his corn-tassel hair came down.

  “That’s new,” I informed him. “Of course, the other bearers was mostly black fellows, so maybe your color has something to do with it.”

  I ushered him now to come with me into the parlor, where we hardly ever went because it is the most stiff and grandfathery of all the rooms.

  “Where did she have you sit?” I wondered after we got settled.

  “We went into a parlor like this one,” Daventry replied, looking around this unfamiliar part of the house. “She offered me some shortbread and coffee.”

  He stood up then, sort of bending like a young choke-cherry tree in one of our bad winds. “Then, Garnet,” he went on, “as I said she made me read the letter to her, but instead of reading it once or even twice, I had to read it a dozen times . . .”

  “And you obliged her . . . a dozen?” I sort of gasped. It was me now that was not looking at him, and he was looking at me full in the face like I was any other fellow he had ever met.

  “She is a beautiful young woman.”

  Later I realized he had said this sentence in a prayerful way.

  “The way I came upon her,” I began, like when I talk to myself, “is like this. I was walking in the woods shortly after I come back from over there you know.” I stopped just a second on that word there, “I had been back only a short time, and everything looked different. I mean I could find my way around but it was like I was using a map of a place I had never yet visited, for the real terrain didn’t seem like mine or where I was born. But I knew of course her house, it is one of the biggest and whitest in this part of the state. It was night on this time of my return home, and I stopped in a clump of woods, and without warning see her in her kitchen. She had no lights on but a kerosene lamp. I knew her at once after all the years, and I was about to turn back into the clump of woods and go the short stretch home, when all of a sudden she took off her blouse, and began to work up some kind of ointment there in the palm of one hand, which later I was to learn was cocoa butter, and she began to massage her nipples with this butter, oh so gently so tenderly, and I became so excited. I was like somebody who had eat of some strange plant, I had to hold my own mouth shut with my handkerchief, I bit my lips not to cry out and terrify her. I was so aroused, Daventry, so beside myself, I fell to the base of an old pine tree. I came then all over myself like I had burst open all my insides through and through, I felt like all my manhood had gushed out of me. She turned out the light by and by and I lay at the base of the tree on a carpet of pine needles. I don’t know if I had passed out or not. I lay on them pine needles carpet till morning . . .”

  There began to be a division of work in my household largely owing to the fact that Daventry didn’t have all his front teeth and when he read to me this imperfection of his made me not understand all the words and his tongue moving across the upper part of his mouth like a snake’s also got a bit on my nerves but only when he read.

  But just before the division was made and Quintus appointed as reader, I think Daventry suspected me, I mean suspected about me going to the dance hall. I mean I think he knew I had a secret. I didn’t know yet about his secret. But then he was all secrets. He should have been called Secret Daventry instead of Potter Daventry. Yes, his Christian name he kept a secret too for some weeks, and can you blame him, for Potter is about the worst name I ever heard baptized on a boy, if Daventry ever was baptized.

  Quintus then was reinstated for reading, and he was sitting in a big straw-bottomed chair with dime-store glasses on, reading to me out of one of the more ancient of the books I have inherited:

  “Before the victory of Lucius Lucullus in the war against Mithridates, that is down to 74 B.C., there were no cherry tress in Italy. Lucullus first imported them from Pontus . . .”

  “Where you going, Daventry?” I interrupted the reading, or rather just punctuated it, for Quintus went right on:

  “. . . and in 120 years they have crossed the ocean and got as far as Britain.”

  “Why, the Widow Rance asked me to stop by her place this evening,” he replied to my question.

  “But all the same no attention has succeeded in getting cherries to grow in Egypt. Of cherries the Arponian are the reddest, and the Lutatian the blackest, while the Caecilian kind is . . .”

  “All right, Quints,” I said, “that will do for the P.M.”

  I walked over to where Daventry was sort of slouching by the kitchen screen door, his hand in midair about to reach for the latch.

  “You know I haven’t had time to write her a message today,” I told him.

  “I know that,” he replied, sort of uppity I thought. I swallowed hard.

  The understanding was you go only when you bear messages were the words that were about to come forth, but I checked them, and said instead. “Supposing you sit down a while until I pen a short message for you to take her.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice.

  “Suit yourself,” he mumbled.

  I knew then he had been invited back by the Widow. My head was swimming, yet I had to go through with the pretense of writing her something. No words at all would come to me, except the usual old salutation My Only Darling when here she was driven to retch when she only thought of me, and yet, wait a moment now, I had been told nonetheless by two different parties she kept my letters, so at least the letters was all right and that gave me the second wind to give out.

  I have split up the household chores now between Quintus and Daventry, and soon we are going to give a big party here when everything is painted and the Congoleum rugs brought down from the attic. We are also going to grow plants indoors so that in the winter it will look gay here. I am sure you found Daventry the most . . .

  The pen had froze in my hands, for I became aware Daventry himself was standing over me watching my hand. The effrontery, the nerve, the cool gall. But instead of taking my ire out on Daventry it was poor Quintus now I rated and abused, for I could hear his honey voice still reading from that old Roman history book, like an elocution pupil, droning on about a Roman cherry which has an agreeable flavor but only if it is eaten under the tree on which it grows as it is so delicate that it won’t stand carriage.

  “Stop it! Stop that!” I found myself shouting so close to Quintus’ glasses that they fogged over, but that devil went right on with his reading aloud.

  I licked the envelope, handed the letter to Daventry, and rushed fleeing from my own house into the meadow and then begun to climb the cliff, but of course I could not go to the ruined dance hall now because the sun had not quite sunk out of sight in the western hills.

  I sat down then under a little scrub pine, and waited for old Sol to sink like an immense egg yolk into the black skillet of clouds.

  Then I heard the pine needles move and Quintus was kneeling down by me, his book in his hand, and went on reading to me. I was too stunned by this mutiny on the part of both my hired men to say a word but sort of eavesdropped you might say on what he was reading, and the thought that neither he nor I really understood what the book was saying sort of struck me funny, though that was the whole point of choosing this kind of book. I required reading that would not make too much sense and would keep down the terrible pain that rises up from my lower guts and is followed by dizziness and lightheadedness, but I think Quintus loved to read things which didn’t have any meaning or relevance to him either, but anyhow he read a sentence that late afternoon that kind of left a lasting impression on me, if not him:

  “It is a remarkable fact that the three chief natural elements, water, air, and fire, have neither taste, smell nor any flavor whatsoever.”

  “Read that once again, Quints
,” I commanded him. But Quintus went right on with the next sentence, informing me,

  “In the meantime we find that there are ten kinds of flavors, sweet, luscious, unctuous, bitter, rough, acrid, sharp, harsh, acid and salt.

  “My day’s work is up!” Quintus said, looking at an old pocket watch.

  “Do you know something, Quints?” I began. “I think Daventry is . . . is . . . is . . .”

  Quintus took off his store glasses and blinked at me.

  “What do you think, Quintus?” I said finally, looking off into the now dark west.

  “I think you think,” he began in a kind of sassing way, “I think you think they sweet on one another without they having had any time yet for even getting acquainted.”

  And then gazing at me with his big almond-shaped eyes, he began nodding again and again at me until at last irritated with this repeated movement I took hold of his head in both my hands and held it quiet like I was stopping the pendulum of a clock.

  I don’t know what time Daventry came home that night, I had drifted out to dreamland, I was dreaming about a black woman who had come in to make me a pan of rice, and she was having trouble getting little brown specks out of it which she said had to be removed before she could serve it to me.

  Then gradually out of this dream I felt the warmth of a human presence next to me, and not opening my eyes for fear—well, yes, just for fear—I gradually moved my fin­gers, which by the way had burst open again owing to my injuries, revealing, if one cared to look, the bones, anyhow my fingers moved over and found a hand on my coverlet, and the hand closed over my fingers. I did not need to open my eyes to know it was Daventry.

  “There is something troubling me,” he began, “and I got to confide to somebody. Will you hear me out?”

  “You’ve made love to the Widow Rance, haven’t you?” I whispered, but for some reason I let him go on holding my hand, though his powerful grip hurt the flesh.

  “Oh, are you raving. That ain’t what is on my mind, Garnet, at all.”

  “But I can tell by the way you paused there is something between you two.”

  “Well, she did kiss me good night.” His voice was sultry and distempered as he got this out.

  “You see,” I cried, throwing off his grasp, but he took my hand again in his and held it.

  “I can’t ever love again, Garnet,” he started up again. “So be easy. I got to get this confession off my chest mean­while.”

  “You don’t love the Widow Rance?”

  “No, of course not. How could I love anybody after what I done, and after what may happen to me?”

  “Why don’t you love her when she is so luscious beauti­ful?” I wondered, working myself up.

  “Listen here, Garnet. When I was in Utah, I had this terrible fight with two men come up to me one night be­hind the Ebenezer Baptist Church, which adjoins my father’s sheep ranch. They jumped me, Garnet, with knives. I think they mistook me for somebody else. They didn’t want my money. They simply said,‘The world isn’t big enough for us with you in it . . .’ Garnet, are you listening to me?”

  “Just tell me outright you didn’t have the Widow Rance tonight.” I leaned up on one elbow.

  “Oh, Garnet, God Awmighty, how could I love any­body when I’ve got this heavy burden?”

  “Did you lose your teeth in this fight?” I questioned on. He nodded or maybe he shook his head, though it was so dark it was more by the way the air moved as he whirled his long head of hair than by my seeing him do so.

  “Well, then, what happened behind this church?” I pursued the subject dispiritedly.

  “I killed both of them, Garnet. But I didn’t know I had it in me to kill. I killed them so thorough, don’t you see? Like a executioner, trained and true.”

  “But if it was your life or theirs, Daventry . . .” He had laid his head now down over my chest, and went on like this. “Maybe,” he began again, “I was brought up too religious, I don’t know, yes of course you’re right I killed in self-defense, didn’t I? But when I laid them out there on the ground killed with their own knives—I stood a long time over their bodies, and I will never get over it, not if I live to . . .”

  “If you’re that religious will you swear on the Holy Bible you did not enjoy her body tonight, Daventry?”

  He shook so with sobs then and he was laying across me like I was his last refuge that for a minute I did not realize what was happening. For the first time since I had been ruined and stained like mulberry wine, another human being had forgot how horrible I am, and was touching me and hugging me and asking for comfort, forgetting how I look like some abortion or night-goblin, though as I told you before, in the dark somehow I am sort of good-looking again.

  I raised him up and got out of bed to get the Bible, and when I came back I lit the lamp, and held the book open for him. Even when the lamp came on, though, he did not seem to see me as nauseous this time, he put his hand on the book and swore he had not touched the body of the Widow Rance. I did not ask him if he would later.

  He slept sort of on my chest all night, but waking every now and again to tell me he could not bear the weight of having killed these two young men.

  “Well, what about me?” I finally cried, and raised his head up and looked at him in the eyes.

  “Well,” he whimpered, waiting.

  “I have killed over a hundred.”

  “I see,” he sobbed. “But they’re not coming after you for it, on account of you was sent to do it in line with your duty as a soldier.”

  “They’re not coming after you either,” I said firmly. I put my hand in his hair, and it was sopping wet with sweat. His tears also had wet my nightshirt through and through.

  “God will come for me though,” he said at last, and those words froze my spine. My jaw trembled, and I felt cold all over.

  I smoothed his hair, and finally, well, since he was the only one who had dared touch me, for the doc had done it oh so gingerly, for it was like touching the insides of a man, so that the doc had said once (I guess more in pity than revulsion), “Well, Garnet, you look like an open anatomy chart, one can see all your veins and arteries moving with their blood.”

  “Daventry,” I began after a long silence, and the words I spoke coming in fact as a considerable surprise to myself, “if the Widow wants you, you can let her have you . . . I won’t be jealous.”

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t. You know that I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” I comforted him. “You are my only friend. Maybe God sent you to me . . . Daventry, you killed in self-defense, and that was way back in Utah. What sort of men was they, by the way?”

  “Mexicans.”

  “Well, then,” I said, “you forget it.”

  “God will send his messenger.” Daventry was firm. “You’ll see.”

  “Then what about me?” I moved so that his chest came off my arms.

  “Ain’t you suffered enough?” He began to look at me, and suddenly I think he saw me again as he had the first day when he had wanted to throw up at the sight of me, but now I was the sharer of his secret and so he held me tight again, as though a little child at last had embraced the dark goblin that has hid so long by the foot of his bed.

  We didn’t sleep a wink that night, but his crying and scalding tears made my own dried-up lachrymal glands feel a bit easier. We were held then in bond to one another. Even Quintus noticed the next morning. Why do I say even. He sees through everything.

  Quintus had taken to reciting now from old books of poetry, which I don’t think either of us enjoyed, but some­times a verse here and there of what he recited would stick in my mind more than the books that was in prose, and there was some verses he read one day which kept running about in my mind forever after:

  Lilac River, as you go to sea,

  bear you any news

  of her you took from me?

  I wondered what those words meant, I mean meant to me to the point that they arrested me so and would
not leave my mind, or rather my mouth and tongue, they were always there, and then another thing Quintus said that same day after the poem which struck me almost more forcibly:

  At noon you don’t have no shadow;

  it’s then the Devil has power over you.

  Almost like somebody who is trying to gain time when he is in a tight spot I changed the subject because the verses and the warning so disturbed me, and said, “Quintus, you are getting smitten on those old books almost more than me . . . Maybe you should take a correspondence course in high school.”

  “I already been through high school,” came his icy reply.

  “Well, then college, Quints.”

  “Aha,” he said in his snottiest way, but I was not think­ing about his high-school or college career really and truly then, but about that idea of his which was pure nigger superstition I suppose about my having no shadow right then on account of it was high noon. That is how my mind works now, I am always troubled about something I thought a few minutes ago so that I don’t always hear what people say to me at this moment now, for my thoughts anyhow are far away, and so all of a sudden I said to Quintus, “That her in the Lilac River poem is Georgina” (which was the first name of the Widow Rance).

  “Oh no it ain’t,” Quintus replied, “It’s nobody.”

  “It’s anybody who hears it wants it to be.”

  He studied me for a long uneasy time, and then he said, “You’re getting awful cosy with the runaway.”