James Purdy: In a Shallow Grave

“Then,” he went on, but looking down at the dispossession papers, “as to spying on you, that’s a damned dirty fucking lie and you know it. We followed you because we was worried about you. Not to get anything on you. After all, Garnet, I have leveled with you, told you I am a wanted man and all, but I killed in self-defense, and on my dad’s land. And finally,” he said, and he was beginning to bawl now, and the spit from his lips flying in every which way, “this little traitor of a Quintus telling tales out of school. Well maybe I said I did love you, so what? Is that any crime . . . ?”

“But what do you mean by it, Daventry?” I said in a soft voice, but any voice the sound only of a tiny locust leaf blowing through the soft summer air would have been too loud at that moment, for the next second he was at my throat, strangling me, and shouting, “What do you think I meant by it, damn you, can’t I love somebody without me being put on trial for murder?”

He let loose of me almost immediately then, as I guess he more than realized I had such a thin tie holding me to this world anyhow.

“I’ll pack and leave now,” he said quietly and went off into his part of the house to get ready.

I knew then that if I didn’t get up I would never get up again, I knew then though my pride had never been so high, and my spirit so ignoble, I knew if he went I would, yes, I would die at last, and though I wanted to die I didn’t want to die without him, all because mostly of that speech he had just made, no, it was all of him, from the moment I seen him with his yellow hair and no front teeth and his sweet smile looking at me from the jungle of trees, I even liked, to tell the truth, the way he had vomited when he took me in the first time.

He was tying a bandana around his neck when I got into the room, but he never once looked at me. I went up to him several times, but he paid no more attention to me than if I was his shadow or the hollyhock bush that was looking through the window at him. I fell at his knees not because I had planned to go down on my knees before him, I was as a matter of fact passing out, and knelt to break my fall, but I knew I had to say what I had to say, for if I didn’t I would be done for, so I said, “ Don’t you ever leave me, Daventry. ”

“How’s this?” he said, his savage face bearing down on me, and I knew then he had killed.

“You forgive me before you go, but if you go, Daventry, I think my heart will break. Don’t forgive me if you don’t want to. All I said to you was a lie.”

“A lie, huh, yeah for once you said it. Worst lie I ever heard.”

He was looking though at Quintus, who had followed us on back and who I could kind of feel was even more troubled now than when he had been at his own ma’s funeral.

“Don’t go and leave him, Daventry,” Quintus spoke up. “You can’t desert him now,” he pleaded.

“You know my secret,” I spoke up, “you know you do.”

He had just turned to look at me when this new hemorrhage came out of both my ears at the same time, and he and Quintus started toward me, but I didn’t want them to do anything because the pressure that had been building up in my head was leaving me, and all the blood pouring out gave me such a good free feeling just then.

“It’s all right, I can tell I’m all right,” I told them, “Don’t do nothing just yet. Just get cloths and clean up the mess.” I leaned against the bed and watched them. “But don’t let Daventry out of the house, you hear,” I addressed Quintus, “don’t let him . . .”

Shortly afterwards when everything quieted down I heard Daventry playing the mouth-organ. Quintus was sitting by me looking through a set of old seed catalogues he had found in the attic, trying to decide, I guess, if he could find anything particular to read to me after what had occurred, and he had begun a few times to read little bits and pieces of paragraphs, like one I remember even now:

“Varieties of wheat are not the same everywhere, and where they are the same they do not always bear the same names. The most widely known are common wheat and hard wheat . . .”

I motioned for Quintus to be silent, for what I was hearing was too beautiful. I knowed what it was and I didn’t. It was my mouth-organ of course which Daventry had found and which I hadn’t played for so long, long before I went into the army, but hear how he played it! He made it sound almost like a flute. I remember too he was playing “On the Alamo.”

Quintus went on pretending he was reading now to himself, but his eyes didn’t really move from one side of the page to the other, and I knew he was listening.

When Daventry stopped playing we clapped. He came out of the bedroom grinning to beat the band.

But as I turned away from him owing to being so moved, my face all wreathed in smiles at the hearing of how he could turn an old harmonica into a beautiful solo instru­ment and about to congratulate him through my embarrass­ment and happiness, who do I see but a man at the side door who I recognize as the sheriff.

I got up and went out to speak to him.

The sheriff had some more of these legal papers, and I was about to take them from his hand when another hand snatched them from out my grasp. It was Daventry of course.

“Now you look here, officer . . .”

I marveled so at him talking up to the law like that when here he must be wanted in I don’t know how many states, or on the other hand, I thought, still marveling at him, maybe he ain’t wanted nowhere, and this talk of him being a murderer is one of his tales, for I was pretty sure by then Daventry was crazy.

When I left for the Army I did not know one crazy person, but while I was in service I got to know enough for several lifetimes, I got to know more than most doctors ever know in their lives unless they are crazy-specialists. But Daventry was crazy in a way you will never find in any other man. He was divine-crazy or heaven-crazy, I mean God had touched him, for instance when he said he loved me I knew what he meant, but I wanted to play the part of an ordinary soldier from Virginia and spurn him, when the truth of it was I loved him from the beginning but my deformity, my being turned inside out would not allow me at first to see he loved me for what I am. I knew then there was God, and that Daventry had been sent for me, and I knew also he would leave me. That is why I didn’t care anything about what the sheriff said, and this puzzled Daventry, for he knew he was going to leave me, but he wanted me to be left in a safe quiet place, but I didn’t care any more. Of course I still loved the Widow Rance, Georgina, would always love her, but Daventry was more. When he played the harmonica I knew he was not human.

“You’ve got to fight for your house and land,” Daventry was haranguing me. Our quarrel had long blown over of course. “You can’t let them put you out on the big road with your furniture, Garnet. You served your country. They can’t do this to you. Now you listen to me . . .”

He told me the strategy we were to take, he mentioned the names of Mrs. Gondess and I heard the sheriffs sur­name several times (Mr. Hespe), but I had taken to smok­ing his grass more than I should have at this time and didn’t pay close attention, which annoyed him.

“Can’t you do anything with this son of a bitch?” Daventry finally appealed to Quintus.

“I can’t and I won’t,” Quintus replied, still poring over another catalogue he was stuck on at the moment concern­ing crops and animal husbandry.

“Then there’s nothing to do but put all his furniture out by the side of the road, for tomorrow they’re coming in . . . Unless I can think up something, that is . . .”

Daventry’s attention was very gradually and slowly diverted to a recent local newspaper that had been allowed to lie undisturbed and unread on the carpet. His gaze grad­ually became riveted to something in it, maybe a headline. He stooped down to pick it up oh so slow, like he had found a telegram there from his sheriff. I can still see the expression on his face as he looked at something that was printed there and which he roved his eye over in astonished disbelief. I could see his lips move as he took in the print, and then he looked up at me, dropping the paper, as if he had found something published there that I had said against him.