Read Online The Grass Harp by Truman Capote - Free Book Online Page B

over the ridge into the cemetery.
    Overhead two squawking crows crossed, recrossed, as though making an evil sign. I crept toward the woods—near me, then, I heard boots cutting through the grass. It was the Sheriff; with him was a man called Will Harris. Tall as a door, buffalo-shouldered, Will Harris had once had his throat eaten out by a mad dog; the scars were bad enough, but his damaged voice was worse: it sounded giddy and babyfied, like a midget’s. They passed so close I could have untied Will’s shoes. His tiny voice, shrilling at the Sheriff, jumped with Morris Ritz’s name and Verena’s: I couldn’t make out exactly, except something had happened about Morris Ritz and Verena had sent Will to bring back the Sheriff. The Sheriff said: “What in hell does the woman want, an army?” When they were gone I sprang up and ran into the woods.
    In sight of the China tree I hid behind a fan of fern: I thought one of the Sheriff’s men might still be hanging around. But there was nothing, simply a lonely singing bird. And no one in the tree-house: smoky as ghosts, streamers of sunlight illuminated its emptiness. Numbly I moved into view and leaned my head against the tree’s trunk; at this, the vision of the houseboatreturned: our laundry flapped, the geranium bloomed, the carrying river carried us out to sea into the world.
    “Collin.” My name fell out of the sky. “Is that you I hear? are you crying?”
    It was Dolly, calling from somewhere I could not see—until, climbing to the tree’s heart, I saw in the above distance Dolly’s dangling childish shoe. “Careful boy,” said the Judge, who was beside her, “you’ll shake us out of here.” Indeed, like gulls resting on a ship’s mast, they were sitting in the absolute tower of the tree; afterwards, Dolly was to remark that the view afforded was so enthralling she regretted not having visited there before. The Judge, it developed, had seen the approach of the Sheriff and his men in time for them to take refuge in those heights. “Wait, we’re coming,” she said; and, with one arm steadied by the Judge, she descended like a fine lady sweeping down a flight of stairs.
    We kissed each other; she continued to hold me. “She went to look for you—Catherine; we didn’t know where you were, and I was so afraid, I …” Her fear tingled my hands: she felt like a shaking small animal, a rabbit just taken from the trap. The Judge looked on with humbled eyes, fumbling hands; he seemed to feel in the way, perhaps because he thought he’d failed us in not preventing what had happened to Catherine. But then, what could he have done? Had he gone to her aid he would only have got himself caught: they weren’t fooling, the Sheriff, Big Eddie Stover and the others. I was the one to feel guilty. If Catherine hadn’t gone to look for me they probably never would have caught her. I told of what had taken place in the field of grass.
    But Dolly really wanted not to hear. As though scattering a dream she brushed back her veil. “I want to believe Catherine is gone: and I can’t. If I could I would run to find her. I want to believe Verena has done this: and I can’t. Collin, what do youthink: is it that after all the world is a bad place? Last night I saw it so differently.”
    The Judge focused his eyes on mine: he was trying, I think, to tell me how to answer. But I knew myself. No matter what passions compose them, all private worlds are good, they are never vulgar places: Dolly had been made too civilized by her own, the one she shared with Catherine and me, to feel the winds of wickedness that circulate elsewhere: No, Dolly, the world is not a bad place. She passed a hand across her forehead: “If you are right, then in a moment Catherine will be walking under the tree—she won’t have found you or Riley, but she will have come back.”
    “By the way,” said the Judge, “where
is
Riley?”
    He’d run ahead of me, that was the last I’d seen of him;