James Purdy: In a Shallow Grave

All the time the applicants was coming and going I was thinking if only I could lay my head in her (Widow Rance’s) lap, my brow and brain would get cool, my lachrymal glands would work, and I would be my old self.

Your old sweet self.

Now as to the applicants for this job. I drew up a list of their duties on the same scraps from the ledger on which I finally wrote down the story of my life. They were to sit with me, fetch me a glass of water so I could swallow my pills, occasionally or even frequently when my feet went cold they would rub them and the skin over my heart, and see I got three square meals a day, even though I didn’t even want one, and finally read to me, though I was too nervous to sit still to hear them. They would read to me as I paced up and down the sitting room, or wherever.

So I got quite handy at shooting those questions to the applicants, while neither of us looked at the other: “Can you prepare simple food? Like say heat already prepared soup, boil coffee, rub my feet when my attack comes on and the flesh above my heart, and can you take letters to the Widow Rance?” (She had agreed to accept messages from me through the offices of an intermediary.)

Each minute, each hour lasted an eternity. I am twenty-six according to the back pages of the family Bible that lies open over there to the Book of Second Samuel, but the handwriting should say twenty-six millennia, maybe. No medicine or new pharmaceutical can help when I look in the mirror. What age is that looking back at me in that antique glass decorated with painted nasturtiums on the surrounding wood, is he human, a man, some stray animal, who is looking back at me? Somebody I never met, nor knew, nor saw . . .

But to return to the duties of these applicants. They was to sit with me, fetch me a glass of water, and so on. But I said all this before, see how wrong the docs are about my memory.

The Widow Rance is twenty-eight but sometimes acts like some old rich woman of sixty. Of her two husbands (she was first married at sixteen), the first died in the same war I was in, then she remarried his brother a year after his death, he ditto went to war and died. She told everybody that was enough, she would not remarry. Oh yes I forgot, her babies both died, she had one each by the two brothers.

James Powell, my first hired applicant, gave me the distinct impression she hated me now, and only accepted the letters because I am a hero, but we will come to James Powell first.

I can kind of see him yet if I close one eye, if I close two he disappears on me, this first applicant. What makes me remember him at all may be only that he was the first.

He stood over me, I remember, like a barber and that made me jumpy. When he brought in my scrapple and eggs, he stood behind my head at the big pine table while I ate. Finally, after the second day, I said, “ James Powell, do you have to stand behind my head always? Go to the other end of the table, and stand with your hands along the seams of your trousers, head and nose slightly raised, eyes on . . . nothing. Is that clear?”

Powell swallowed hard, I suppose with choler, and said it was.

I would eat the scrapple then but only in order to have the strength to bear my suffering for that day, as I have no taste for food.

“How old are you, Powell?”

“Would you mind calling me either by my Christian name or say Mister when you address me?”

“Of course, Mr. Powell. How old then are you?”

“Sixteen years and four months and two days.”

“I never heard of anybody that age being called ‘mister.’ ” I said this so under my breath he may not have heard it.

“It’s only fair to tell you, James,” I began, but I could not remember what I was going to say to him, and got up from the table, spinning. He rushed over to me and held me under the armpits, and we walked that way to a large overstuffed sofa, and I sort of slipped from his arms onto it.

The routine after breakfast was interrupted then by this “spell” of mine—he was to have taken a letter I was writing to the Widow—for I had this strange feeling of ice beginning to flow from my feet and legs upwards like the poison hemlock reported by Socrates’ pupil, on its way to my heart. I wanted to die, but I feared the experience of death itself.

His hands began rubbing my feet, for I guess, to give him his due, he understood my condition at that moment.

Despite my being took so bad, my mind was on having hurt his feelings by saying nobody his age could be called Mister, and considering how after all he was younger than me, a boy and a childlike one, though in some respects old and mean in his ways, I began to apologize to him somewhat profusely in order, I do believe, to keep my thoughts away from my possible death, but he was even more afflicted by my apologies, and got up in confusion and went over to a rocking chair and sat down, but kept his feet in such a position the chair would not rock with him.

“All right, I am sorry, Jim. I am sorry, Mr. Powell.”

He broke down then and began to bawl. I am not exactly sure what he was bawling over, but I suppose everything.

The second part of the day began then, as I say, when we were interrupted by my “attack” by us going into the study and I would start writing a letter to Widow Rance.

James would take a pad and pencil (he claimed to know shorthand), and I would begin to dictate:

“Dearest and only Girl”

But after that I could think of nothing to say, and finally looking up and catching the expression on his face, I let out, “See here, Mr. Powell, I don’t see why you act more miserable and more on a bed of hot coals than me.”

He was looking down at his hands and especially his fingernails, and then it began to dawn on me a little bit what was bothering him, he did not like having to rub my feet to prevent the cold from going up and reaching my heart, that is he had a real distaste for having to touch the human foot. Well, the human foot is the real nigger of the human body, as my sergeant once said to me outside our tent, mistreated, bad-smelling even in the most elegant lady, deformed by footgear, unhappy by the burdens placed on it from the time you begin to toddle, and is the first part of the body (he was thinking of soldiers) to die.

I had never quite understood the sergeant’s speech until James Powell maybe. But now it all came back to me in a rush, but I didn’t care, I mean my coming death meant nothing to me, it was the fact I had never known joy in this world that seemed so terrible, mind you I didn’t blame anybody or circumstances, but what I wondered suddenly was had anybody known joy in this world, real joy? I knew James Powell never had, there was no use asking him.

I had begun dictating my letter to Widow Rance, James’ long, untrimmed fingernails making sounds on the yellow-lined paper:

Dear Widow Rance, All I meant to say when you granted me my last interview is that I am not spying on you at all when I stand so considerably hidden by the hollyhocks which I also understand are growing on another property than your own, I am standing partially hidden as I speak to you behind these tall plants only to spare you from being upset and/or affrighted by my changed aspect since we were schoolmates, for I understand my appearance causes you to be discomfited, at least James or Mr. Powell so informs me that you are unhappy when I do appear whether behind or in front of the hollyhocks . . .

“Stop!” the first applicant called out to me . . . “Stop, do you hear? You are making fun of me . . . I never reported anything you ever said to the Widow Ranсe.”

I looked at him dumbfounded, because it was true, I did despise him, and was probably making fun of him in my heart. We certainly were not getting on.