In a Shallow Grave Read online

  “Oh. Well, you didn’t like taking and fetching messages, that’s for sure.”

  “Never denied you, did I?” Quintus shot back.

  He got so now he read on and on in the books to himself, and didn’t always share with me aloud. Anyhow he knew at noon now I was most sleepy (together with the fact that I didn’t have no shadow) owing to the fact the runaway, as he called him, kept me up all night.

  I woke up a little later in the P.M. however long enough, my head against a young poplar tree, to hear Quintus’ honey voice going it again:

  “With one son dead at his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand and held his rifle with the other, and com­manded the men to sell their lives as dearly as they could. Yet the remorseless spirit which governed the stern Puritan that terrible night on the Pottawatomie had departed . . .”

  “Who you reading about now, Quintus?” I queried, noticing too just like he had said there was damned few shadows about still.

  “Why, John Brown,” he answered right back. “Well, if you ain’t turning into a God-damned Yankee now before my eyes.”

  “You should beware of Daventry.” Quintus spoke in a hollow whisper, leaning over me to say this with his glasses still on, and the book laid down on some pine needles.

  “It’s too late to beware of anybody,” I told him . . .

  Then looking at him so close to me, I said, “There’s an eyewinker loose in the corner of your left eye, and it’s going to get into your pupil and blind you if you ain’t careful . . . Here, let me take it out before it gets into the inside of your eye.”

  I removed the eyewinker.

  “Don’t read anymore today, Quints. I’m already so full of ideas you have give me from all those damned tomes from my grandfather’s bookshelves. Jesus Christ, readin’ to me about John Brown though is the limit . . . I say, Quintus . . .”

  That was the same P.M. Mrs. Gondess from the King William Savings and Loan Association appeared and had herself announced by Daventry before she billowed into the sitting room. Quintus was rubbing my feet because I had begun to have a spell, and there Mrs. Gondess stood before us in a white expensive hand-sewn dress, with a big brooch, and a long string of blue beads and smelling of face powder for ten miles.

  “Have a seat, ma’am,” I said, disentangling myself from Quintus and stepping over him at last, while he quickly moved away into the next room where he began reading.

  Mrs. Gondess stood looking from room to room, but with her gaze more or less focused on the ceiling of each room her eyes visited. Then smiling sadly but still not see­ing me, she said, “I won’t stay, Garnet,” and then her whole head and gaze were lowered like at evening prayer.

  She talked about the crops and the weather while avoiding as her main occupation looking at me direct, but of course she had to steal a few peeks at me on account of the human eye always manages to see even more than it may want to.

  “The land taxes, Garnet,” she said at last, and you would have thought she had mentioned the gayest subject in all of time.

  “What about them, Mrs. Gondess?”

  “Have you not received the notices?” she cried, her gaiety approaching laughter . . . “We’ve informed you, Garnet . . . You’re in arrears, payment after payment after payment in arrears . . .”

  I waited but was really watching Daventry, who stood waiting some distance from us speakers and reminded me of a church usher waiting to get his cue to pass the collec­tion plate.

  “I can’t believe,” she went on, but her gaiety had gone, and her mouth had frozen, “I find it, that is, implausible that you have not received our notices.”

  And then in the kind of voice one of Quintus’ books describe as ringing, but was closer to screeching, or come to think of it croaking, she deafened us with “You have got to pay those taxes or be thrown off your land!”

  I picked up a toothpick I had laid down on a little hand-painted saucer and touched my two front teeth with it, and then put it down.

  “I’d think the God-damned Army would pay them for me,” I said after a minute.

  “No, no, no!” She began in earnest now whether because of the profanity or fear more would come or because she was ready to spout. “I called you on the phone about it last February,” she reminded me . . . “Garnet, Garnet, you don’t want to lose this fine property over some little back taxes. Just think how far back it goes in your family. Why truth to tell, you are one of the oldest Virginians . . .”

  We both stopped our wrangling because we could hear Quintus reading aloud to himself. At first I had thought it was birds. Quintus’ out-loud reading had embarrassed Mrs. Gondess, or made her feel awkward or something, and it sort of threw a monkey wrench into what we were talk­ing about, so that there was a long, I mean a preposterous, pause and silence, during which Daventry now finally entered the room in earnest and sat down near the banker.

  “You’re not going to throw a man who gave his life for his country off his own land and into the road?” Daventry started in.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” She turned to me for an explanation of this speech from my applicant.

  “Mr. Potter Daventry,” I introduced him.

  She said “How do you do” very quickly and then turned her full attention to him, her back turned toward me now like a slammed door.

  “Of course Garnet won’t be dispossessed, but he has to pay these back taxes, or he may . . . It’s gone to the courts, you see. I can’t begin to tell you how serious . . .”

  There was more and more, but all I could do and all I remember is how much I admired Daventry, I don’t know why, I mean he had a stern beauty as he kind of made her quail before him, and almost promise to stop dispossession.

  Finally though she was gone and away in a big shined Cadillac chauffeured by some snooty colored guy with a garrison cap. But her visit cast a pall over all of us.

  “So that’s all I been waiting for,” I began, “I mean I think it is the one thing I lacked, getting dispossessed, as the old girl names it . . . And you, Quintus, would have to read aloud at a time like that, God damn it . . . Don’t you think she sees we’re a outlandish enough bunch as it is with­out you mumbling and jawing and mooning aloud over there all by yourself with a book, Jesus Christ!”

  “That’s right,” Quintus countered, “go ahead and blame me for you not payin’ your taxes too, and get turned out in the road. Go on, go ahead. Blame me. When you know God-damned well she come here to fight with you, no matter what I done . . . I was engaged here to read and read I will, so don’t pull no stuff on me. I’ve been readin’ and I will read till I get good and ready to quit readin’ . . .”

  Quintus went out slamming the back door, but not very hard, and I watched him go sauntering down toward the cliffs.

  I went back into the sitting room and began to walk, sort of veering in the direction of the spinet desk, and sitting down there took out a sheet of very old scented vellum paper.

  I felt Daventry’s breath on my face as he stole up to say, “I don’t want to be the bearer of any more messages to the Widow.”

  I wheeled around. “You’ll do as you’re told, or you’ll get out! You shall bear messages for me, do you hear? . . . I have given an order. Your duties are known . . .”

  His mouth, which I now saw was beautifully formed (my attention to it had been distracted before by the ab­sence of teeth in the upper jaw), trembled, and his blue eyes looked like they were smarting.

  “All right, Garnet, I suppose if you say so . . .”

  “I do say so. Dismissed.”

  But when I turned my attention back to the scented sheet of stationery I couldn’t think of anything to say, and kept writing the same saluation again and again.

  My Dearest Girl

  My Dearest Girl

  Since I could not think of anything to write to Georgina, and since I was too mad at Quintus for reading out loud when Mrs. Gondess had been paying her call
to summon him for a reading, I began to leaf through a book on phre­nology which he had left face down on the big Turkey carpet. Without quite realizing it at the time I was the most upset I had been since I returned to the “land of the living.” I felt I would lose my own land and house. There was more to what old lady Gondess said than her polite little warnings delivered while her sheeny Cadillac waited outside with its motor running.

  I had to smile at my plight at the same time, for whereas all my other buddies had turned to grass when they were blue, discouraged or pissed-off, here I who should be lying in the same grave with them, go and pick up when in dejec­tion some old book I can’t understand and read from it or have read from it until my nerves quiet down.

  In this state of mind then I picked up the Guide to Phrenology, which was dogeared and with its spine broken and its pages badly foxed, and began the chapter

  MAN AS A GLYPH

  Man is little more than a glyph which punctuates space, but once gone is as unrecollectable as smoke or clouds.

  There kneeling before me as I looked up from this sentence was Daventry. His hair was uncombed and hung al­most down to his shoulders, and his mouth was trembling violently.

  “Think over your decision, Garnet. Do not send me . . .”

  “I’ll send you to hell, I will,” I cried, mad still that I did not have anything to write in the letter.

  “What are you here for,” I exclaimed, my voice rising to a wail, “but to deliver and fetch messages, huh? Answer me that one.”

  “You mean to treat me then like a slave in bondage because of my sharing my secret with you?”

  “You can earn your keep the same as Quintus. What’s so wonderful special about you that you can’t hoof two miles down the road to see the Widow or Georgina, as you called her the other day, with your new cosihood?”

  “You see, Garnet, you’re egging me on with her, and then you’ll turn on me!”

  “Turn, hell,” I said, somewhat peaceable again, “I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all. Matter of fact, too, I’ve run out of things to write to her. I’ve told her all I know, and she ain’t told me so much as a sigh of breath in return.”

  Daventry was rubbing my feet, as I guess he feared I was about to have an attack, though actually it was only Quintus who was supposed to do this service for me.

  “Supposing I write the letter for you then,” Daventry said, taking a rest from his rubbing.

  “Yeah, supposin’ . . . Do you know how to write good letters?”

  He nodded vigorously.

  “Well, why in cruddy hell didn’t you tell me earlier? Are you, do you mean to tell me, an educated man?”

  “I did go through college,” he admitted.

  “Another of your well-kept secrets, huh? . . . And look here, I don’t believe that shit about you killing two men.”

  “Suit yourself, Garnet.”

  “By the by, do you know what a glyph is?” I sort of cooled off a bit and begun studying the paragraph in the phrenology book.

  “No, but I can find out for you.” He was all cooperation and eagerness. And after a slight pause, rubbing my feet some more, he said, “Don’t send me, Garnet, please please don’t.”

  “You have found favor in her eyes,” I half-quoted something to him in a whisper.

  He shook his head, his eyes were full of salt tears.

  “Supposing,” I said, standing up, “supposing, Daventry, you dictate the letter, and I will write it down this time.” I let him bawl for a while, and watching him cry was the beginning of maybe the second terrible thing that had hap­pened to me in recent days. As I watched him so helpless, so downcast and downhearted, so lonely and without peo­ple, and despite his lie about being through college, so young and actually very good-looking, I had a strange glow of tenderness like I had never had for any other person be­fore, not even my buddies who was blown to bits before my open eyes.

  “A glyph,” he said, through his choking grief, “a glyph, Garnet, must mean judging by the context of the sentence you have your finger on, a sign standing for something else.”

  “That’s clear as mud.” I slammed the book shut.

  I went over to an old card table, and took up a stenographers pad, and a sharp pencil. “All right, Daventry,” I said, “shoot!”

  He mooned a while longer, not even bothering to wipe his face dry of his tears, he just let them dry on him like a three-year-old.

  My Only Darling,

  he began,

  When I told you the last time you were all I had you did not believe me. Believe me now, dearest. Without you, without the knowledge you are there beyond the maple grove, in your beautiful white-pillared house, my days would be without sunshine or hope. I do not expect you to return my love, I owe you my life if you will let me tell you how I adore you. By grant­ing me this favor, you will have granted me all. Do not detain my messenger, dear girl, but read the message, if you like, in his presence, and then dismiss him. Yours, for all time, ever,

  Garnet Montrose

  As I formed the last letter of my name, we both exchanged what was like one single same terrible look, a look like two shots which met and exploded together in the air.

  I knew as I watched Daventry go with the message he himself had composed that it was going to happen, but I didn’t know the full terrible effect it was to have on me. I mean I thought I could die, was going to die pretty shortly, but I didn’t know there was so much pain left in my body that should already be dead. But when Quintus heard him leave, I think he knowed it, for he came into my bedroom, where I was already like laid out, and looked at me hard. “I don’t want to be read to, Quints,” I said. “Do you want your nightshirt put on?” he said, “It ain’t late enough to go to sleep,” I pointed out. “Well, you’re in bed though.”

  “All right, put me in my nightshirt, why don’t you?” He had a terrible time getting me into it, for all of a sudden all the strength and power had gone out of my body, like it had when they first brought me into that army hospital and even the nurses and orderlies let out little moans and oh’s.

  “Your white master ain’t feelin so good today, Quints,” I mumbled when he got me in between the sheets.

  “Should I call the doc?”

  I just shook my head a good many times because the motion kept me from feeling so dizzy.

  Quintus began rubbing my feet, I think in pure desperation, and all at once I said a thing that made me as sick as if I had heard it on the news broadcast: He will fuck her tonight.

  “Oh no he won’t, Garnet,” Quintus answered back. “She’s too upper for him.”

  “Don’t you spoil me now.” I tried to raise my voice, and laughed.

  It got fearful hot that night, well, we was about in July if I remember this review of my life, I think I saw a few fireflies floating around which means it was getting later into the summer.

  That was the time Quints and me became almost as close as Daventry and me was getting before he stepped into the trap I had laid for him—to use his way of explaining it all.

  “I ain’t going to die, Quints, so you don’t need to sit up.”

  Well, he was already asleep in that mammoth old stuffed chair. He slept good and snored as loud as a water buffalo, but when the pains came I would hold his hand tight but he never woke up.

  You see, I would talk to myself, telling myself the same story I have already told so many times, but it helped explain things somehow when I got in this state, when I was blown up, all my veins and arteries moved from the inside where they belong to the outside so that as that army doc put it, I have been turned inside out in all respects.

  The hall clock struck three in the morning. Quintus stirred a little. A helpful breeze came drifting in, and brought me Quintus’ smell, which was like those night moths that hit you in the chest when you run sometimes through the woods as a boy.

  “Quints,” I shook him, “what do I smell like? You never told me.”

  “Stale shortbread,�
�� he spoke in his sleep.

  “Are you awake, Quints?”

  “Old socks,” he said. He was sound asleep but he heard me too.

  When morning came he brought me my coffee, but my tongue was hanging out, and my eyes were losing their focus. Daventry had not showed.

  “Can’t you drink so much as a swallow?” Quints watched me try to down a sip of his strong brew. If I could have seen him I would have knowed he was scared, petrified, sick almost as me, etc., but my eyes did not focus now at all.

  “I’ll call Doc then,” he mumbled, going off.

  I couldn’t move then to do a thing.

  I don’t remember anything till evening, and Doc come in with his old beat-up bag which might have looked black but was now just all wrinkles and creases and holes but with still enough leather to hold the medicines and syringe. He took out the needle right away the minute he seen me and I knew I was in for oblivion for maybe a day.

  Doc told Quints a lot of things then, I could hear the words but not know the meaning, yet I knew kind of, it was like I had consumed a whole haymow of grass, and then I didn’t want to die after all, this life which was not worth the candle—I wanted to keep after all.

  “Doc,” I began, trying to see in which corner of the room he was sitting, “Doc, can you hold me till Daventry comes, or did the son of a bitch go to Utah?”

  I could sort of imagine the questioning look on the doc’s face, and the last I heard was Quintus telling him something on the subject of due taxes and dispossession.

  It was after dawn, the birds were making a big fuss still, though they make their biggest to-do of course before dawn, but I knew it was after dawn by the way the light was pearl-gray on the cliff out there. So I wasn’t in the next world, but I wasn’t glad after all to be back, because of the pain.