Public-domain ebook
My heart and my flesh
Language: en390 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Novels·American Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #74183.
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Prologue
As a child, Luce was running to the store to get a small can of oil, for it was growing dark and she had the lamp to fill. Across the street the lamp-lighter was lifting a burning swab of waste to the street-lamp, a gasoline lamp on the top of a high post. The lamp-lighter stood on a ladder to lift the brand, and when the lamp was lit he would take the ladder on his shoulder and walk away at an even step, the same yesterday and the same tomorrow. When he had new shoes the step was marked with crying leather. She ran past the lamp-lighter hardly giving a moment to look at him, for she knew all his ways and all his motions, all the rhythms of his feet. The street-lamp made a thin, feeble light when there was any day left in the air, but the lighter had to start on his rounds early to have all the lamps ready by the time the dark came to the last one at the end of Hill Street. The lamp flickered dimly in the light of day that was left in the air, but after a little a passer would be glad for the glow; it showed the way to the pump and helped one over the well-curb and over the stones at the crossing. On dark nights when there was a wind the mules in the livery stable cried out with great cries. There would be a wind that night making little wells of feeling pool up in one’s chest, and a thought of Mome, the city, came to her mind.
There, in Mome, all the lights were electric, and there was one great light over all the place, a high great light like a sun. It shone down on the streets and on the tall house where Mr. Preston, the richest man in the world, kept his money—the money house—and on the fountains in the square. It made a great sheet of light that spread over Mome as a sunset would spread over a hill. But there were dark alleyways for all that, and dark doorways, and at the thought deep wells of feeling would pool up in one’s chest, dark roadways and deep doorways and dark lanes where wheels had cut deep tracks. There would be houses standing high above lanes and late wagons going down into the dark. There would be a little light at the corner, electric but very little, blinking in the fog. A thief would be slipping down a dark lane with—what? one could never think what—in his hand.
In the store the boy with thin arms took her oil can and said, “A dime’s worth?” and set the can aside to wait until the man came with the key to the oil house. She stood beside the old black man who was buying a nickel’s worth of meal and a dime’s worth of bacon, her eyes on the hurrying clerk whose arms reached here and there above the barrels and weighed the sugar as it poured in a stream into a sack. She enjoyed the crowding of the store and the pageant of buying. A heroic freedom surrounded the man, old Anthony Bell, who bought lavishly, never asking the price, calling over the heads of the others, “A hundred pounds of sugar. Send it up tomorrow.” He had stepped lightly in at the doorway, a lifted head, the large gesture of shouting and the lifted cane, “Send it up tomorrow,” and then his exit while the piece went forward, the play enhanced.
Moll Peters, the negress, came heavily in at the door and stood beyond Luce, waiting her turn. She was large and fat and the belt of her apron sank into the rolls of her body and was lost from sight. She would buy freely as long as her money lasted, buying for her children on Hill Street; she cooked at the hotel and had no need to buy food for herself. “Ol’ Hog Mouth, what-all you a-buyen?” she said to a tall man who stood beyond her, a tall yellow man whose clothes were white with plaster. “You ain’t treated Moll this whole enduren year.” Her voice came from her mouth with a clatter of low half-musical squawks and softly blurred vowels delicately stressed.
“Aw, go on,” the man said. He kept in a good humor.
“It’s a God’s truth, now. Whenever did you-all ever treat Moll? Pocket full o’ money. Ol’ Stingy! Buy Moll some candy.”
“Aw go on. Buy your own candy.”
“It’s a God’s own truth, now. Whenever did you ever buy Moll any candy? Go and buy me some candy.”
“I ain’t got no money. I swear I’m got to ask credit till Sat’day for a little meal and lard. I swear.”
“Aw, buy me some candy.”
Moll was trying to make up with the yellow man. The grocer’s clerk came back with the can of oil and Luce dumped the money, a nickel and five coppers, into his large hand and turned quickly toward the door, remembering now that she must fill the lamp. She ran home through the twilight. The lamp-lighter had gone from the street now and all the lights glimmered faintly, broadly, because they had not yet been concentrated into points by the dark. They marched unevenly up the street, far past the Baptist Church, past the Seminary gate.
In the lecture room of the church Miss Charlotte Bell played the march for the children. There was to be a pageant. The girls walked to the time of the music, spreading over the platform and returning, opening the lines and making fans or closing together into a design. Theodosia Bell, Miss Charlotte’s daughter, walked first, leading, and the music of the piano said the words of the song as Miss Charlotte drummed the keys with her fingers. Miss Charlotte hardly looked at the piano as she played. She looked at the girls who were walking up and down, her head turned about, her lips bending into smiles or her head nodding. Miss Patty Thomas ran up and down before the platform telling how the march should be done. “Now, all together. Up front, Theodosia. Now down center back.” Her tongue clicked over the words and she was important beating her hands. Theodosia walked tossing her body with the up-and-down toss of the music, to the words which the girls would sing after a little, “To the tap of the drum here we come come come.” There was a stop to rearrange some of the girls.
“Whose little girl is this? What’s her name?”
“Luce. She’s Luce Jarvis.”
“She lives down the street a way.”
It was Miss Charlotte who had answered the last. Luce walked near the end of the line and they were off again to the tap of the music, some of them lilting to the time, some heavily laboring, unaware of the beat. If Miss Charlotte nodded her head to the patter of feet she smiled the next instant, but when the song was done, while Miss Patty talked to the children about what they should do, Miss Charlotte sat as if she did not hear, and then her lips were without life and a darkness seemed to have come over her. She looked then at the piano keys, her hands in her lap, or her younger child, Annie, would creep up beside her and push her little face into her broad shoulder.
A boy was taken to the platform to say a piece, Miss Patty showing him how, and the other children went to the seats or they spread about on the floor. “To the tap of the drum here we come come come” had been set aside now, and a girl said, “I like that song.” “It’s a Faust march,” Miss Charlotte said. The word “Faust” fitted to Miss Charlotte’s mouth after it had been said and remained hers entirely, whatever it meant. The Bells lived a little way up the street past the well from which Luce drank, past the street-light, the house standing under a great tree and near two other trees. Looking at Miss Charlotte after she had grown dark, the music ended, her face heavy, Luce thought of the word Anthony, Anthony Bell, the old man, father to Horace Bell who was Miss Charlotte’s husband. Anthony Bell, as words, made a sort of singing in her thought if they came forward as tone, or if they lay quiet they were reminiscent of the faint kindness offered by drama, by enriched being. He was an old man and a scholar, as was said. Luce remembered their house with Miss Charlotte walking on the lower gallery and saw the planes of her pale dress as she stood a moment before one of the large square pillars. Anthony Bell came and went behind her, stepping along the gallery in his easy slippers, taking a morning walk. Now the voice of the boy tattled endlessly over the piece he was learning to say and the little girls lolled together, teasing one another slyly. Luce went into Miss Patty’s feet as they twinkled about and she felt the flutter of the skirt as it swept her ankles, and she knew what it was to be two slim little shoes buckled over two insteps that rested on pointed toes and hour-glass heels, and to walk in harmony with someone’s thinking, up and down, objecting, agreeing, complaining, repeating. Near at hand the piano was a large black box holding an infinity of tunes somehow in its sides. She looked at Charlotte Bell where she sat waiting. The eyes were dark, averted, and the mouth had no smile. Her large shoulders were erect and her rich dress crumpled about her feet.
Charlotte Bell’s hands could fly easily over the piano if she were minded to make a tune. Sometimes in the evening old Anthony played his fiddle standing beside her as she played. Her rich white dress had many yards of small lace sewed into it in designs and her hat was off. Her dark hair was laid softly over her head and knotted at the back in a large coil. Luce looked at her and felt her presence reach past the white dress as if there were some large thing inside. Then she laid her bare. She tore away the clothes from around her shoulders and opened her body. She emptied the heart out of it and flung out the entrails, for she had seen men butcher a hog. She went searching down through blood and veins, liver and lights, smelt and kidney. Out came the fat, the guts, the ribs. She was looking for something. Then on beyond, past the flesh, to the bone, she was searching. Past the brains, past the skull bone. She flung everything aside as she took it out and went deeper, eager to find. Past the bones she came to the skin again, on the other side, and finally to the red of the yarn carpet, everything rejected, nothing found, nothing left. Quickly she reassembled Miss Charlotte. She brought back the bone, the flesh, the organs. She hooked the right arm onto its shoulder and hooked on the left. She set her head on her shoulders and fitted her back into her dress. Put together again, Miss Charlotte suggested something within, hinted of it with her turning mouth and with the slight movement of her limbs under the pretty dress, gave a brief warning of it in the way the lace was sewed into the dress and the way the two large pins were placed to hold up her hair.
All the while the red of the carpet and the smell of the carpet gave a flavor of Sunday and the catechism. There was a question then, she thought, for every answer. The little girls were weary of the boy’s speech and his dull gestures and weary of Miss Patty’s efforts to arouse his voice to eloquence. Luce looked from one to another, letting her self enter the arrogance of one, the humility of one, the stupidity of one. She saw what it would be not to know a rhythm, to march as Esther marched, on dull feet. The tone of the Sunday questioning pervaded the place, question and answer, final and done, well said. All that was asked had a reply, curt and certain. She looked at Miss Charlotte where she sat behind the piano, her eyes on the keys, and the questions took possession of the event.
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