James Purdy: In a Shallow Grave

I grinned then in spite of myself.

“So,” I chose my own words carefully, “are you home to stay, Quintus, after this sex and tequila spree in Old Mexico . . . or did you just come past to crow over me in all your riches and splendor . . . ?”

“I know where I belong,” Quintus began again, “but I ain’t told you why I come back, you see.”

“I thought it was ’cause you got tired of sex, you said.”

“ One night ,” he began, and again it was like the old days when he would recite to me out of the hard books whose long crawling sentences and tales of times and deeds so long forgotten make the mind pain and slow down, he spoke of a garden fragrant with jasmine in this Old Mexico town where he had gone. “ One night I had taken a seat in an antique carved chair, and whether it was the fragrance of the strange flowers or what, I looked up and seen . . . Daventry . . . ”

I buried my head in my hands.

“ It was him all right ,” Quintus went on implacable, “ just like he looked in life, Garnet .”

I covered my ears then too, but his words rung through to my brain and hammered there.

“ He said to me, ‘Go home, Quintus, for he needs you, go home at once . . .’”

There was this prolonged cessation of talk then during which only the water hydrant dripped, which has needed fixing with a new washer for a year or more.

I brought my eyes to the level of his eyes after a while, and my face must have been as red as when it was the stain of mulberry, and I said, “And did you just obey him or was there some small part of you wanted to come home?”

“Well,” Quintus replied, taking off his new jacket and the gold tie and clasp, “after all, I am as you always say a Virginia boy, and I thought I’d stay with you until your wedding with the Widow takes place at least . . .”

“That’ll be a long stay, then, Quints . . . Did you hear in town too how she has applicants and sends them here with letters to be read to me, just like the position I was in once . . . ?”

I heard Quintus’ old laugh then, and I almost laughed myself, but stopped . . .

“ I wonder why he never has appeared to me, Quintus ,” I started up, going back to his having seen the apparition in Mexico . . . “ When I wanted it so . . . When . . . ”

“Well,” Quintus spoke, eyeing me a little concernedly, but taking off his shoes and rubbing his own feet now, “maybe, Garnet, it’s because he figures he’s with you all the time anyhow . . .”

“Oh, I see,” I said hopefully. “Well maybe that’s the way it has to be after all.”

The screen door moved under the April breeze, and I could just visualize the first peach blossoms that would be coming out in not too many days, and I took another look at Quintus’ togs and his big gold watch with the chain spread over his broad chest. I listened then also to hear if the ocean would make any kind of comment on the prodi­gal’s return, but no matter how I pricked up my ears, as Quintus went off into his own part of the house to turn in, strain as I would I couldn’t hear another sound at all of any kind outside. Of course it was terrible late, and calm this time of night, and the last of the bad weather was past.