Read Online Collected Stories of Carson McCullers by Carson Mccullers - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Carson Mccullers
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brilliance. She stared with trembling, open lips, listening to the sound her breath made. "Motherâ"
The end of the word was smothered by the first cough. She leaned over the side of the chair, feeling them beat at her chest like great blows risen from some unknown part inside her. They came, one after another with equal force. And when the last toneless one had wrenched itself clear she was so tired that she hung with unresisting limpness on the chair arm, wondering if the strength to raise her dizzy head would ever again be hers.
In the gasping minute that followed, the eyes that were still before her stretched to the vastness of the sky. She looked, and breathed, and struggled up to look again.
Mrs. Lane had turned away. But in a moment her voice rang out bitterly bright. "Goodbye, petâI'll run along now. Miss Whelan'll be out in a minute and you'd better go right in. So longâ"
As she crossed the lawn Constance thought she saw a delicate shudder shake her shouldersâa movement as perceptible as that of a crystal glass that had been thumped too soundly.
Miss Whelan stood placidly in her line of vision as they left. She only had a glimpse of Howard's and Mick's half naked bodies and the towels they flapped lustily at each other's rears. Of King thrusting his panting head above the broken window glass with its dingy tape. But she heard the overfed roar of the engine, the frantic stripping of the gears as the car backed from the driveway. And even after the last sound of the motor had trailed into silence, it was as though she could still see her mother's strained white face bent over the wheelâ
"What's the matter?" asked Miss Whelan calmly. "Your side's not hurting you again, I hope."
She turned her head twice on the pillow.
"There now. Once you're in again you'll be all right."
Her hands, limp and colorless as tallow, sank over the hot wetness that streamed down her cheeks. And she swam without breath in a wide, ungiving blueness like the sky's.
The Orphanage
How the Home came to be associated with the sinister bottle belongs to the fluid logic of childhood, for at the beginning of this episode I must have been not more than seven. But the Home, as a dwelling for the orphans in our town, might have in its mysterious ugliness been partly to blame. It was a large, gabled house, painted in a blackish green, and set back in a rake-printed front yard that was absolutely bare except for two magnolia trees. The yard was surrounded by a wrought iron fence, and the orphans were seldom to be seen there when you stopped on the sidewalk to gaze inside. The back yard, on the other hand, was for a long time a secret place to me; the Home was on a corner, and a high board fence concealed what went on inside, but when you passed there would be the sound of unseen voices and sometimes a noise like that of clanging metal. This secrecy and the mysterious noises made me very much afraid. I would often pass the Home with my Grandmother, on the way home from the main street of town, and now, in memory, it seems that we always walked by in twilight wintertime. The sounds behind the board fence seemed tinged with menace in the fading light, and the iron picket gate in front was to the touch of a finger bitter cold. The gloom of the grassless yard and even the gleams of yellow light from the narrow windows seemed somehow in keeping with the dreadful knowledge that came to me about this time.
My initiator was a little girl named Hattie, who must have been about nine or ten. I don't remember her last name, but there are some other facts about this Hattie that are unforgettable. For one thing, she told me that George Washington was her uncle. Another time she explained to me what made colored people colored. If a girl, said Hattie, kissed a boy she turned into a colored person, and when she was married her children were colored, too. Only brothers were excepted from this law. Hattie was a small child for her age, with
The end of the word was smothered by the first cough. She leaned over the side of the chair, feeling them beat at her chest like great blows risen from some unknown part inside her. They came, one after another with equal force. And when the last toneless one had wrenched itself clear she was so tired that she hung with unresisting limpness on the chair arm, wondering if the strength to raise her dizzy head would ever again be hers.
In the gasping minute that followed, the eyes that were still before her stretched to the vastness of the sky. She looked, and breathed, and struggled up to look again.
Mrs. Lane had turned away. But in a moment her voice rang out bitterly bright. "Goodbye, petâI'll run along now. Miss Whelan'll be out in a minute and you'd better go right in. So longâ"
As she crossed the lawn Constance thought she saw a delicate shudder shake her shouldersâa movement as perceptible as that of a crystal glass that had been thumped too soundly.
Miss Whelan stood placidly in her line of vision as they left. She only had a glimpse of Howard's and Mick's half naked bodies and the towels they flapped lustily at each other's rears. Of King thrusting his panting head above the broken window glass with its dingy tape. But she heard the overfed roar of the engine, the frantic stripping of the gears as the car backed from the driveway. And even after the last sound of the motor had trailed into silence, it was as though she could still see her mother's strained white face bent over the wheelâ
"What's the matter?" asked Miss Whelan calmly. "Your side's not hurting you again, I hope."
She turned her head twice on the pillow.
"There now. Once you're in again you'll be all right."
Her hands, limp and colorless as tallow, sank over the hot wetness that streamed down her cheeks. And she swam without breath in a wide, ungiving blueness like the sky's.
The Orphanage
How the Home came to be associated with the sinister bottle belongs to the fluid logic of childhood, for at the beginning of this episode I must have been not more than seven. But the Home, as a dwelling for the orphans in our town, might have in its mysterious ugliness been partly to blame. It was a large, gabled house, painted in a blackish green, and set back in a rake-printed front yard that was absolutely bare except for two magnolia trees. The yard was surrounded by a wrought iron fence, and the orphans were seldom to be seen there when you stopped on the sidewalk to gaze inside. The back yard, on the other hand, was for a long time a secret place to me; the Home was on a corner, and a high board fence concealed what went on inside, but when you passed there would be the sound of unseen voices and sometimes a noise like that of clanging metal. This secrecy and the mysterious noises made me very much afraid. I would often pass the Home with my Grandmother, on the way home from the main street of town, and now, in memory, it seems that we always walked by in twilight wintertime. The sounds behind the board fence seemed tinged with menace in the fading light, and the iron picket gate in front was to the touch of a finger bitter cold. The gloom of the grassless yard and even the gleams of yellow light from the narrow windows seemed somehow in keeping with the dreadful knowledge that came to me about this time.
My initiator was a little girl named Hattie, who must have been about nine or ten. I don't remember her last name, but there are some other facts about this Hattie that are unforgettable. For one thing, she told me that George Washington was her uncle. Another time she explained to me what made colored people colored. If a girl, said Hattie, kissed a boy she turned into a colored person, and when she was married her children were colored, too. Only brothers were excepted from this law. Hattie was a small child for her age, with
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