James Purdy: In a Shallow Grave

“He’s delirious,” Quintus told me as I was dragging in a big chest of drawers.

I went into the room and looked at him. We had bandaged his chest and side where he had slashed himself. I caught a sudden glimpse of myself in the mirrror. I have never seen such a face. There was blood on my mouth and chin, but looking a bit closer I did not think I looked so horrible as usual, I mean I looked sort of almost human. I studied myself though only a split second for I had to tend to Daventry now.

“ We wasn’t evicted .” I spoke this to Quintus after another long spell of time had passed. He was reading as usual, but he read silently now, hardly ever giving me any of his information.

He took off his glasses and stared at me.

“Maybe the sheriff will come tomorrow,” he suggested.

“Did you ever hear of an eviction that didn’t take place? Huh-huh,” I answered my own question. “There won’t be any eviction. Something’s changed . . .”

As I sat by his bed, he sort of come to gradually and said in a hoarse changed voice . . . “ Garnet? ”

“I’m right beside you, Daventry.”

“You didn’t vomit up any of my blood, did you?” he questioned.

As he said this I did turn quite nauseous and began to retch, and he sprung up out of bed like a wildcat and pressed his hand against my lips, so that whatever the liquid was that was spoiling to come out would go back into me.

“You mustn’t lose a drop, Garnet . . . I have saved you, I believe. Wish I could save myself . . .”

“Can’t I save you?”

“No, you can’t, Garnet.”

The wind had come up and he listened to it so carefully. He listened to the wind in a way like Quintus read books, like he had already understood what the wind was saying before he began to listen.

“ Daventry, you are a messenger, aren’t you? ” I don’t know why I said this, and I don’t know what I meant when I said it. Often though I do say things, they come out of me, like Daventry’s blood tried to come out from my mouth, and the words have a meaning, but I don’t know what they signify. As Daventry said once later on before he left us for good, “ Garnet, you are a vessel in which is flowing the underground river of life. ”

“Oh, that wind, that wind!” he cried.

“It’s not a hurricane,” I comforted him. “But it’s wind.” He shook his head mournfully.”I never heard such a terrible wind.”

“It’ll stop in a little while,” I tried to comfort him. “Don’t listen to it meanwhile . . .”

“Why, what was that?” He suddenly let out a cry and took hold of my shoulder blade with a grip of iron. “What is it?”

I had to listen myself very carefully for you see I am so used to all the sounds around here and pay no special mind to them, whilst Daventry coming from so far off, prac­tically the South China seas, is aware of and studies every little whichever noise.

“That awful sound like a lion or an elephant!” And he raised his right hand upwards.

“Daventry, you do surprise me. That’s the ocean you hear, that’s the ocean’s own voice.”

His face relaxed in a grin. “Oh go on with you,” he quipped. “I guess I walked into that one.”

“Well, he is trumpeting and hollering a lot . . .”

Everything indeed shook, everything trembled, and then everything got deathly quiet, except for the ocean, which still moaned and hammered on the sand, and splashed and howled and then sort of whined even, and kept beating.

He was looking at my mouth and I got an uneasy feeling again. He picked up a box of kleenex, wetted a sheet of it with his own mouth, and wiped my mouth off, I don’t know what it had on it he felt it should be cleaned, I dared not ask.

“Will you remember me as much as you do your buddies who was with you in the war?” he inquired.

I was so terribly moved my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth.

He didn’t ask the question again. I wanted to tell him I would remember him forever, nobody had ever impressed me like Daventry, but I could not say a thing, for if I had spoken I would have vomited, and he had forbid that.

Then the first thing I knew I was looking out the window, and the sun was coming up like a gold watch over the stilled ocean.

I always got up earlier than either Quintus or Daventry because I am the light sleeper.

I was drinking this cup of strong coffee, with a little fresh honey in it, when I saw the mailman get out of his delivery truck, and take out a big letter which he peered down at and which I later discovered had a special delivery stamp on it.

I watched the mailman walk up the front path, from the road, and then I jumped up and walked out to meet him halfway for I didn’t want him to wake my applicants.

“Couldn’t get here yesterday night on account of the storm,” the mailman began. Actually all he was doing was staring at all my furniture by the roadside, its heirloom wood ruined by wet.

The special delivery was from Mrs. Gondess, and I opened it in front of the mailman because to tell the truth I thought this was what you were supposed to do.

It was a cold, disappointed letter, informing me that all my back taxes had been paid by a Veterans Organization in Richmond, who had heard of my hard-pressed situation. Mrs. Gondess said she hoped I would have learned from this harrowing experience in which I had put everybody including myself to such hardship and worry.

“You would judge,” I began, looking from the mailman to the ruined wood of my grandfather’s furniture, “that we was about to have an auction. Fact is though we ain’t, not now anyhow . . .”

He began to move off in the direction of his truck, but I detained him with, “Do you think,” I put to him, as his eye roved over the wet commodes and bedsteads and chif­foniers, “that anybody ever learns from experience?” . . . a question that was prompted by Mrs. Gondess’ letter of course.

The mailman grinned. “By the time,” he said, “you’ve learned from one experience you’re up against some new one with no experience to help you with it, and so you make all the same mistakes again only in a new setting . . .”

I went on studying my special-delivery letter.

“ His shed blood turned the trick ,” I said. I got cold all over and I realized I was going to have an attack.

The next thing I knew I was lying under two hand-sewn quilts from Quintus’ ma’s house. They were so silk-smooth and quite beautiful but covered with the sweat that poured down from me. I forget whether I have mentioned that I have contracted at least two strains of malaria that don’t have no cure in this country, and I have another strain that sort of responds to quinine.

It was night again by now, so that day beginning when I had read the letter had just vanished away like the dew, and Quintus was poking me in the ribs, and he had to re­peat the thing he was saying several times: “ She is outside a-asking to talk with you. ”

I knew who he meant so I didn’t bother to reply. At first I thought I would act cute and say “ Mrs. Gondess? ” but I knew that old harridan-hellion would never darken my door again unless she could dispossess me for sure of course. No, I knew who she was. There was only one she in my life anyhow, and she is everywhere. But it did fell me more or less that she had come to see me in her own person.

The Widow Rance stood before me then in a big shim­mering cloak people wear around here in hurricane season. She removed it, and was in her creamy summer dress.

I had just enough strength to motion her to sit down beside me.

I don’t know if she looked at my face or not. There was nothing else of me to look at for my hands and body were wrapped in Quintus’ ma’s quilts.