Clock Without Hands (17 page)

Thinking of freedom was like thinking of snow. Surely, in the autumn of that year, he would have Mr. Harris take over the pharmacy and he would take a vacation. He would know again the secret stealth of snow and feel the blessed cold. So Malone walked wearily to his own home.

"When you have a vacation like this, Hon, I don't think it's a real vacation just to trudge around town, not in this heat."

"I wasn't thinking of the heat, although this town in summer is hot as the hinges of hell."

"Well, Ellen's been trying herself."

"What do you mean?" Malone said alarmed.

"Just trying herself, and crying, crying all afternoon in her bedroom."

Quickly Malone went up to Ellen's bedroom and Mrs. Malone followed. Ellen was in the bed in her pretty little blue and pink girl's room, sobbing. Malone could not bear to see Ellen cry, for she was his heart. A little tremor came over his tired body. "Baby, baby, what is it?"

Ellen turned her face to him, "Oh, Daddy, I'm so much in love."

"Well, why does that make my heart-child cry?"

"Because he doesn't even know I'm on the earth. We pass on the street and everywhere and he just waves in a casual way and goes on."

Mrs. Malone said, "That's all right, darling, one of these days when you are older you will meet Mr. Right and all will end well."

Ellen sobbed more vehemently and Malone hated his wife for it was the silliest thing a mother could say. "Baby, baby, who is it?"

"Jester. I'm so much in love with Jester."

"Jester Clane!" Malone thundered.

"Yes, Jester. He is so handsome."

"Darling, love," Malone said, "Jester Clane is not worth one inch of your little finger." As Ellen still sobbed, he regretted that he had toted the turnip greens to the old Judge, although the old Judge was innocent of all this. Trying so much to make amends, he said, "And after all, heart-child, this is only puppy love, thank goodness." But as he said these words he knew they were just as silly and comfortless as Mrs. Malone's were. "Darling, in the cool of the afternoon, why don't we go to the pharmacy and pick up a quart of that ripple-fudge ice cream for supper." Ellen cried for a while, but later in the afternoon, which was not cool, they went in the family car to the pharmacy and picked up some ripple-fudge ice cream.

J. T. M
ALONE
was not the only one who was worried about the Judge those months; Jester had begun to be concerned about his grandfather. Selfish, selfish, selfish as he was, with a hundred problems of his own, he still worried about his grandfather. The Judge's wild enthusiasm for his "amanuensis" just carried him away. It was Sherman this, Sherman that, all day long. His grandfather dictated letters in the morning, then at noon they had a drink together. Then when he and his grandfather had their dinner in the dining room, Sherman made himself a "slight sandwich" and ate it in the library. He had told the Judge that he wanted to think over the morning's correspondence, that he didn't want to be distracted by conversations with Verily in the kitchen, and that a heavy noon dinner was bad for his work and concentration.

The Judge had agreed with this arrangement, pleased that his correspondence was pondered so seriously, pleased as pie about everything these days. He had always spoiled servants, giving them costly, but often very peculiar, gifts for Christmas and birthdays. (A fancy dress nowhere near the right size or a hat nobody would be caught dead in or brand new shoes that did not fit.) Although most of the servants had been female churchgoers who never drank, a few had been in a different category. Yet whether they were teetotalers or the drinking kind, the Judge never checked his liquor shelf in the sideboard. Indeed, Paul, the old gardener (a wizard with roses and border flowers), had died of cirrhosis of the liver after gardening and drinking twenty years at the Judge's.

Although Verily knew the Judge was a born spoiler, she was amazed at Sherman Pew and the liberties he took in the Judge's household.

"Won't eat in the kitchen because he says he wants to think about letters," she grumbled. "It's because he's too uppity to eat with me in the kitchen as he belongs. Fixing himself party sandwiches and eating in the liberry, if you please! He's going to ruin the liberry table."

"How?" the Judge asked.

"Eating them party sandwiches on them trays," Verily said stubbornly.

Although the Judge was very sensitive to his own dignity, he was not so sensitive to the dignity of others. Sherman stifled his sudden rages in the Judge's presence and took them out on Gus, the new yardman, Verily, and most of all on Jester. But although the actual rage fits were smothered, the anger remained, and indeed increased. For one thing he hated reading Dickens, there were so many orphans in Dickens, and Sherman loathed books about orphans, feeling in them a reflection on himself. So when the Judge sobbed aloud over orphans, chimney sweeps, stepfathers, and all such horrors, Sherman read in a cold, inflexible voice, and glanced with cool superiority when the old fool acted up. The Judge, obtuse to the feelings of others, noticed none of this and was as pleased as pie. Laughing, drinking, sobbing at Dickens, writing whole mailsacks of letters, and never an instant bored. Sherman continued to be a jewel, a treasure, and no word could be said against him in the house. Meanwhile, in Sherman's dour but quailing heart things went steadily from bad to worse so that by the middle of autumn his feelings for the Judge were those of veiled but ever present hate.

But in spite of the soft, clean, bossy job; in spite of the fun of riling that soppy, chicken-outing Jester Clane, that autumn was the most miserable one in Sherman's entire life. Day after day he waited, his very livingness suspended in the blank vacuum of suspense. Day after day he waited for the letter, and day after day, week after week, there was no answer. Then by chance one day he met a musician friend of Zippo Mullins' who actually knew Marian Anderson, owned a signed photograph of her and everything, and from this hideous stranger he learned the truth: Madame Anderson was not his mother. Not only was she wedded to her career and too busy studying to have had the time for love affairs with princes, let alone borning him and leaving him so peculiarly in a church pew, she had never once been to Milan and could not possibly have touched his life in any way. So the hope that had lifted and made so luminous his searching heart was shattered. Forevermore? He thought so at that time. That evening he took down his records of German lieder sung by Marian Anderson and stomped on them, stomping with such despair and fury that not a groove of the records remained unshattered. Then, as the hope and the music could not be altogether silenced, he threw himself with his muddy shoes on the fine rayon bedspread and scraped his body on it as he wailed aloud.

Next morning he could not go to work as his fit had left him exhausted and hoarse. But at noon when the Judge sent him a covered tray of fresh vegetable soup with piping hot cornsticks and a lemony dessert, he was sufficiently recovered to eat the food slowly, languidly ... glad with the feeling-sick feeling and eating the cornsticks with his little finger delicately crooked. He stayed home a week and somebody else's cooking and the rest restored him. But his smooth, round face hardened and, although he did not think consciously about that cheating creep of a Madame Anderson after a while, he yearned to rob as he had been robbed.

The first of that fall was the happiest time Jester had ever known. At first lifted by the wings of song, his passion now had quieted to friendship. Sherman was in his home every day, and the security of constant presence alters passion which is fed by jeopardy and the dread of change, of loss. Sherman was at his house every day and there was no reason to believe it would not go on forever. True, Sherman went out of his way to insult him, which wounded Jester. But as the weeks passed he had learned not to let the wounding remarks be felt too deeply or too long; indeed, he was learning to defend himself. Hard as it was for Jester to make up jazzy hurtful remarks, he was learning to do it. Furthermore he was learning to understand Sherman, and understanding which conflicts with the ruthless violence of passion leads to both pity and love. Nevertheless, when Sherman was away that week, Jester was a little bit relieved; he did not have to be on his P's and Q's every instant and could relax without the fear of having to defend his pride at any moment. Another element of their relationship was Jester's dim awareness that he was the chosen one; that he was the one that Sherman used to lash out against when he wanted to lash out against the world. For Jester knew dimly that fury is unleashed more freely against those you are most close to ... so close that there is the trust that anger and ugliness will be forgiven. Jester, himself, would be angry only with his grandfather as a child ... his fits of head-banging temper were directed only toward his grandfather—not Verily, Paul, or anybody else—for he knew that his grandfather would forgive and love. So while Sherman's wounding remarks were certainly no blessing, he sensed in them a kind of trust for which he was grateful. He had bought the score of
Tristan,
and when Sherman was away it was a relief to practice it without fear of belittling wisecracks. However, when his grandfather roamed the house like a lost soul and almost couldn't eat, Jester was concerned. "I just don't see what you see in Sherman Pew."

"That boy's a jewel, a veritable treasure," the Judge said placidly. His voice changed when he added, "Besides, it's not a short time I've known the boy and I feel responsible for him."

"Responsible how?"

"It's because of me that the boy is an orphan."

"I don't dig it," Jester protested. "Don't talk in riddles."

"It's too sorry a business to be discussed, especially between you and me."

Jester answered, "Anything I despise is for somebody to tell just half a story, work up a person's interest and then don't go on."

"Well, forget it," his grandfather said. He added with a glib addendum that Jester knew was only a sort of camouflage to the truth, "After all, he was the colored caddy who saved my life when I was flailing and drowning in the golf pond."

"That's just a detail and not the real truth."

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," the Judge said in a maddening voice.

Deprived of the joys and the busyness of Sherman, the Judge wanted to rope in Jester, who was too busy with his own life and school to be roped in. Jester would not read immortal poetry, or play poker, and even the correspondence did not interest Jester a hoot. So the sadness and tedium returned to the Judge. After the manifold interests and activities of those months, solitaire bored him and he had read every speck of all the issues of the
Ladies' Home Journal
and
McCall's.

"Tell me," Jester said suddenly, "since you imply you know so much about Sherman Pew, did you ever know his mother?"

"Unfortunately, I did."

"Why don't you tell Sherman who she is. Naturally he wants to know."

"That is a pure case where ignorance is bliss."

"One time you say knowledge is power and another time you say ignorance is bliss. Which side are you on? Anyway I don't believe a particle in any of those old saws."

Absentmindedly Jester was tearing up the spongy rubber ball the Judge used to exercise his left hand. "Some people think it's the act of a weakling ... to commit suicide ... and other people think it takes a lot of guts to do it. I still wonder why my father did it. And an all-around athlete, graduated with all honors from the University of Georgia, why did he do it?"

"It was just a fleeting depression," the Judge said, copying J. T. Malone's words of consolation.

"It doesn't seem an all-around athlete thing to do."

While his grandfather carefully laid out the cards for a game of solitaire, Jester wandered to the piano. He began to play
Tristan,
his eyes half closed and his body swaying. He had already inscribed the score:

For my dear friend Sherman Pew
Ever faithfully,
John Jester Clane

The music gave Jester goose pimples, it was so violent yet shimmering.

Nothing pleased Jester more than giving a fine present to Sherman, whom he loved. On the third day of Sherman's absence Jester picked some mums and autumn leaves from his garden and bore them proudly to the lane. He put the flowers in an iced-tea pitcher. He hovered over Sherman as though he was dying, which annoyed Sherman.

Sherman lay languidly on the bed and when Jester was arranging the flowers he said in a sassy, languid voice: "Have you ever stopped to consider how much your face resembles a baby's behind?"

Jester was too shocked to take it in, let alone reply.

"Innocent, dopey, the very living image of a baby's behind."

"I'm not innocent," Jester protested.

"You certainly are. It shows in your dopey face."

Jester, like all young things, was a great one for gilding the lily. Hidden in his bouquet of flowers was a jar of caviar which he had bought from the A & P that morning; now with the violence and insolence of this new attack he did not know what to do with the hidden caviar which Sherman claimed to eat by the ton-fulls. Since his flowers had been set so peculiarly at nought ... not a word of thanks or even an appreciative look ... Jester did wonder what to do with the hidden caviar, for he could not stand to be humiliated further. He hid the caviar in his hip pocket. So he had to sit gingerly in a sideways position. Sherman, with pretty flowers in the room which he appreciated but didn't bother to thank Jester for or mention, well fed with somebody else's cooking, and rested, felt well enough to tease Jester. (Little did he know that he had already teased himself out of a jar of genuine caviar which he would have displayed in the most conspicuous shelf in the frigidaire for many months before serving it to his most distinguished guests.)