James Purdy: In a Shallow Grave

“And these letters!” he cried, throwing his pencil to the floor. “Don’t you understand Widow Rance has no use for . . . them. She never wants to hear from you again. She hates your letters!”

I slumped back in my chair, really done up at what he had said.

By the way, my name is Garnet Montrose. It is a name people stumble on, a fact I noticed in the first grade, at school dances (I was a great dancer, I think it is the one thing I did good, dance, I could dance all day or night to Kingdom Come, I lived at dance halls all the time before I was drafted, under the ballroom moving lights, you know, the little dappled specks of color and the girl with her young little breasts so neatly against my ribcage, well, maybe come to think of it I have known joy, my trouble then as now is I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life). As I say, people stumble on hearing my name, the first name doesn’t fit with the second, the first name, they feel, sounds like a girl’s, and the second sounds to them too historical. In the Army most often as not they just called me by two nicknames which have, to tell the truth, always puzzled me, one was Granite , and the other was Morose , and at the beginning they used to joke and pun around the first nickname and say “ Don’t let them take you for granite, soldier .” But now I am home I want only my own names used, but actually nobody calls me anything because nobody can see me to call me, you might say. I am more vague than the fog, and not even it seems to me as palpable as night.

Mr. Powell then really tore into me, he said I was an ignorant, arrogant, half-assed plantation owner, and so on, and then he fled out of the house like it was afire, and I realized I would never see him more, and would have to put in ads all over again, on the long tiresome search for a nurse, bodyguard, or whichever to watch over somebody who didn’t want to be among the land of the living even. Where would I find him, you tell me.

I looked over my file of letters to Widow Rance as I was cooling off from my battle with Mr. Powell, letters I keep faded copies of. I heard secondhand from somebody, maybe Mr. Powell himself, that the Methodist minister had paid the widow a visit, and said to her, “ Just keep the letters from him coming, he means you no harm. ”

The other thing that annoyed the applicants about me was this, they did not like what one smartass called my metaphysical speeches. I know no metaphysics or philosophy, I don’t know anything. But I would talk on two topics which are simply reality to me, joy and the meaninglessness of death. Is there joy in this world for anybody, and has death any meaning? They would, as one of the early applicants phrased it, like to foam at the mouth when I did these discussions.

None of the applicants liked anything I did or said and I will not even bother to describe the early ones, none liked anything about me as I say until, well, you wait now.

There was at least four applicants before my favorite came. And let me warn you, I do not believe he was from this world. I believe he was sent by the Maker of All Things perhaps, if such exists. I do not say that he brought me total joy, but he was the ideal applicant.

But just before he resigned, packed, and lit out, James Powell had sat down, and said a thing which considerably lightened my heart. “Garnet,” he began, in that pained cautious weary-with-sin look preachers often put on, “Widow Rance reads your letters and keeps them.”

And before I could ask any details concerning this hurricane sentence, he was gone. I ran out to the big road after him, but his old jalopy had already carried him away. I stood in the big road for quite a spell, and some people going by then in a big car with a New York license took one look at me and said, “ Where in hell are we if they are all going to look like him now? ”

These remarks about my appearance still hurt me at this stage of my life, but not like they did when I first come out of the Army, when people would stop on the street in Washington, D.C., and scream or retch, and I would go back to the Army hospital and groan and clench my hands and tear my shoelaces out of my shoes. Usually the doc was watching me by the door, and would repeat the same thing, “ These things pass, Garnet, and you are in the land of the living, remember, while all your buddies are gone. ”

But Doc is not marked with the coating of death as I am, and my buddies are at least all safe-dead, while I have been allowed to live but with the appearance of one from the under-kingdom.

“Doc,” I said, now that I had him engaged in conversation, “how do I look to other folks, do you think?”

Doc give me his speech then again about bone structure, height, posture, and my hair, yes, isn’t this sort of a joke too on me, my hair is the kind of blond hair that looks like corn tassel, and in the right light looks almost white, so that I remember my first-grade teacher had said, “ You have hair a girl would die for, ” and whilst everything else turned the color of mulberries, my hair was untouched by when I was blown up in the war, and so it has made me look even more outlandish.

My education had stopped at the eighth grade because I was incorrigible, but I had what my mother said was the bad habit of reading, but I always read books nobody else would turn more than a page of, and my knowledge is and was all disconnected, unrelated, but the main book I always kept to even after my explosion-accident was an old old one called Book of Prophecies. From it comes my only knowledge of mankind now. I read and have read to me, however, nearly everything, my house is all books and emptiness.

But James Powell’s words stayed with me—I have said this before—like big smoke rings from the cigarette billboard ads. I could see and taste his words,

WIDOW RANCE READS YOUR LETTERS AND KEEPS THEM.

I hurried to the spinet desk, I put the dippen in the violet ink, I praised the Lord almost, though my Lord you must understand I see as a kind of doglike man with a sad face Who watches the gate here, He never says anything to me, He knows my suffering, and He knows that my buddies are not as dead as I, and He knows I must walk upon the earth for a spell before going down into the total mulberry night. Anyhow, I wrote then this:

My Darling Girl,

All that I ask is that you allow me to tell you you are on my heart and mind. We will never meet again unless you should go so far as to invalidate your first edict, that I was never to darken your door, never to speak to you, and if possible never appear before you in light or darkness. I will respect your wishes, but allow me to write to you, I cannot say what is on my mind or you would think I pitied myself, the great sin according to the Big World. I do not pity myself, but I know I am as bad off as a man might ever get and yet I cling to life in you. Allow me this.

There at the door like sent by providence was the egg-man Edgar Doust. He had the practice of never looking at me even indirectly. He counted out the eggs, or the chicken wings, sometimes said, “ Garnet, we have pullet eggs today, want any? ”

“And milk, Edgar,” I would remind him, “you always forget the milk. I have a commission I’d like to ask of you, Edgar,” I said, for I spoke half in Virginia language now and half in language out of the Book of Prophecies , and also occasionally from the History of the Papacy , which I forgot to mention maybe because it is the least favorite of my books.

“And that would be?” Edgar Doust inquired.

“As soon as I lick the envelope,” I said, hurrying back to the spinet desk and putting my letter to her in it and then licking harder, “ Would you deliver this message to the Widow Rance? ”