James Purdy: In a Shallow Grave

I guess she looked more beautiful than ever, but I got to thinking that if you could forget his vacant teeth, Daventry was possessed of a better complexion and his hair would have graced Absalom of old. But of course she was the beautiful woman of this vicinity, only she was after all, I realized now, just human.

“Well, Georgina,” I said, “so you have humbled yourself this much . . .”

“I would apologize, Garnet, if I could. I know I have not been good to you. And I thank you, if I haven’t said so before, for all you did for this country.”

“Hollow,” I said. I had just about enough strength to say it.

“I have also kept your letters,” she proceeded, “because they are from a hero.”

“That ain’t any reason for even readin’ them. I didn’t write them to you as a hero.”

“However that may be, Garnet,” she continued, lowering those long gorgeous eyelashes and folding her shell-pink hands that had never done any more work than rinse out her breakfast dishes or maybe shake out a tiny rug . . . “I have come here to ask you a favor,” she finished.

“And that is?”

“I know, Garnet, I deserve your contempt and coldness, but pray, for what you felt for me before you went so far away and fought for us all . . .”

Here of course she began to bawl, but I was a stone wall to tears by now.

“You know I think, Garnet, what has happened . . .”

“Speak your piece, Georgina, speak it out . . .” I was able to say that much by rising up to a sitting position, after which exertion I plumped back onto the pillow cases.

“Daventry told me that I would require . . . your per­mission if not your blessing . . .”

“Aha,” I grinned.

“So I have come for that permission, for oh, Garnet, I do love him so very much . . . But he will not leave you without your blessing.”

“Daventry is welcome to you,” I said. “And it.”

“You won’t turn against him when he is mine?”

I couldn’t speak now. I think I may have wanted to, but you see my strength had completely gone. I could not even call for Quintus.

“You might say,” she reflected, her attention straying for a moment to take in a little path of day lilies outside that had run wild, “that I have come to ask his hand in marriage of you.”

“Then take it, and take him,” I told her.

“But you don’t say it with your blessing.”

“I bless him and all he does because he’s blessed me . . . But beware,” I warned her then.

“Don’t say it,” she begged me. “Just give me the right to marry him.”

“I have been reading or had read to me,” I began after I had calmed down a bit, “strange old books from my grand­fathers library, Georgina . . . And we, that is Quints and me, has read there all sorts of prophecies, prognostications, forecasts and so on, and have consulted flowers and herbs, at least Quintus swears he has. Daventry too has looked into the eye of the future more than most . . .”

She was weeping hard now, a true picture of a woman in love. I wanted to hate her but I was too sick through and through. His blood maybe had curdled in me—anyhow I had not eat or drunk a thing since that terrible drink he give me.

“What I mean is,” I consoled her, “enjoy him all you can, for the future is dark, do you mind me? . . . There ain’t no future . . .”

“Oh, Garnet, bless you, bless you . . .”

“That’s not needful, Widow Rance. I’ve been blessed already . . .”

She looked me full in the face, and then she got up and left.

She had only been gone the space of a few moments when I raised up with some difficulty, for I had not felt up to even my own morbid self after that ceremony with the tin cups and Daventry, and I run after her calling in a voice that made echoes all through the cliffs and little woodlands nearby “ Georgina! Wait up! ”

I had to hold on to one of the white cedar trees that grew along the shortcut to her house in order to get back my breath, and this time she waited as composed and toler­ant as if I was the bridegroom or at least the desirable best man.

“I wanted you to know,” I gasped out to her, “that it was Daventry who saved my house and land from being dispossessed . . . Don’t ask me how he did it,” I vetoed the questions that I saw beginning to form themselves on her mouth. “All I can say at this juncture is he did the trick that saved me . . . My house and land, you understand,” I repeated . . .

Yes, she was sweet, yes she has luscious, yes she was so adorable, and then she was gone. I held on to the white cedar until I had a queer feeling I was part of its limbs and resin. It was more alive though than me, more knowing I do believe, and it had all its branches and sap.

Daventry spent more time with Georgina then, which was only to be expected since they were to be married, but come to think of it he didn’t spend hardly any more time with her now than he had when he was a bearer of my messages. That is, he had always spent more time with her than maybe I was aware of . . . His betrothal brought about a change of course in our household, for the main task of it had been centered around my writing the letters to the Widow and having them sent by hand. The reading to me from old tomes by Quintus and sometimes by Daventry was actually only to get me warmed up to write the love letters. Now all this had changed. I wrote no more letters to anybody, and Quintus was more and more apt to read only to himself than read to me, and what he read was deeper and deeper as time went on, and he finally read from books that don’t make any sense at all. Gradually I came to the realization that Quintus was either a whole sight smarter than me or else he was the damnedest play­actor that ever drew breath and understood even less of what he read than I did hearing, but the fact is I believe he understood more of it than I did, which is not to say he got much out of it but the labor.

The real billowing tossing part of Quintus’ grief over his ma had subsided a little, but a kind of weighty eager restless something had settled over him now, his hands was too nervous to be satisfied anymore turning pages of books, his eyes didn’t look the same, and there were little wrinkles around the corner of his mouth that wasn’t there before, and his nose, which is a handsome nose stole from some English slave driver I reckon, looked thin and peaked. But I could tell even though I tried not even to say it to myself that he was going to run off and leave me too.

“Do you think, Quintus,” I said to him one day cautious-cautious even to broach such a subject, “do you think now that what he done for us stopped the sheriff?”

“Daventry?” he replied knowing damn well who else did I mean by he.

He put his book down, and I picked it up and snorted. It was a history of weather.

“He is afraid of the wind, that’s for sure.” Quintus watched me leaf through his book.

“Quintus, why do you stay with me?” I said going back to something I felt in the air too, my fear now that he would leave me likewise.

He stirred and his nose moved down toward my hands clasped over the book which I had closed.

“Don’t have nobody else to choose to stay with, guess,” he mumbled.

“You don’t feel looked down to and abused by me, like those newspapers you used to read against white people.”

“Oh, I suppose I do. I suppose you’re an enemy deep down and under, but I believe I told you the truth, there ain’t nobody else to choose . . .”

“You stay with me then because I don’t mean nothing to you one way or another.”

“You mean a thing to me or so . . .” It took him a long time to get this said.

“Well, Daventry said he loved me.” I picked my way through all this snaky labyrinth.