Clock Without Hands (26 page)

"I don't trust you," Verily said. He realized for the first time that Verily was a fierce woman. Her voice was no longer humble, but fierce. "This woman will figure out my govment papers, pay me forty dollars a week..."

"Well, go to her!"

"Right now?"

Although the Judge had seldom raised his voice to a servant, he shouted, "Now, God dammit! I'll be glad to be rid of you!"

Although Verily had a temper, she would not let herself speak. Her purplish, wrinkled lips just grimaced with anger. She went to the back porch and carefully put on her hat with the pink roses. She did not even glance around the kitchen where she had worked for nearly fifteen years, nor did she tell the Judge goodby as she stomped away through the back door.

The house was absolutely silent and the Judge was afraid. He was afraid that if he was left alone there in his own house he would have a stroke. Jester would not be back from school until afternoon and he could not be left alone. He remembered that as a little boy Jester would scream in the darkness, "Somebody! Anybody!" The Judge felt like screaming that now. Until the house became silent, the Judge never knew how necessary the voice of the house was to him. So he went to the courthouse square to pick up a servant, but times had changed. No longer could one pick up a Nigra in the courthouse square. He asked three Nigras but they were all employed, and they looked at the Judge as though he was out of his mind. So he went to the barbershop. He had a haircut, a shampoo, a shave and, to kill time, a manicure. Then when everything had been done for him at the barbershop, he went to the Green Room at the Taylor Hotel to kill some more time. He took two hours over his lunch at the Cricket Tea Room and then he went around to see J. T. Malone at the pharmacy.

Rootless and dismal, the Judge passed three days in this way. Because he was afraid to be alone at home, the Judge was always on the streets of Milan or in the Green Room at the Taylor Hotel, at the barbershop, or sitting on one of the white benches of the courthouse square. At suppertime, he fried steaks for himself and Jester, and Jester washed the dishes.

As servants had always been available to him as a part of his way of life, it never occurred to him to go to an agency. The house got dirty. How long this sad state of affairs would have lasted is hard to say. One day he went to the pharmacy and asked J. T. Malone if Mrs. Malone could help him out in finding a servant. J.T. promised to talk with Mrs. Malone.

The January days were glossy blue and gold and there was a warm spell. In fact, it was a false spring. J. T. Malone, revived by the new turn of the weather, thought he was better and planned a journey. Alone and secretly he was going to Johns Hopkins. On that first fatal visit Dr. Hayden had given him a year or fifteen months to live, and already ten months had passed. He felt so much better that he wondered if the Milan GP's hadn't been mistaken. He told his wife that he was going to Atlanta to attend a pharmaceutical convention, and the secrecy and deceit pleased him so that he was almost gay when he set out on his northward journey. With a feeling of guilt and recklessness he traveled pullman, killed time in the club car, ordered two whiskeys before lunch and the seafood platter, although liver was the special on the menu.

The next morning it was raining in Baltimore and Malone was cold and damp as he stood in the waiting room explaining to the receptionist what he wanted. "I want the best diagnostician in this hospital because the GP's in my hometown are so far behind the times I don't trust them."

There followed the now familiar examinations, the wait for slides and tests, and finally the too-familiar verdict. Sick with rage, Malone took the day coach back to Milan.

The next day he went to Herman Klein and put his watch down on the counter. "This watch loses about two minutes every week," he said pettishly to the jeweler. "I demand that my watch keep strict railroad time." For in his limbo of waiting for death, Malone was obsessed with time. He was always deviling the jeweler, complaining that his watch was two minutes too slow or three minutes too fast.

"I overhauled this watch just two weeks ago. And where are you going that you have to be on strict railroad time?"

Rage made Malone clench his fists until the knuckles whitened and swear like a child. "What the hell business is it of yours where I'm going! What the fuckin hell!"

The jeweler looked at him, abashed by the senseless anger.

"If you can't give me proper service I'll take my trade elsewhere!" Taking his watch, Malone left the shop, leaving Herman Klein to stare after him with puzzled surprise. They had been mutually loyal customers for close on to twenty years.

Malone was going through a time when he was often subject to these fits of sudden rage. He could not think directly of his own death because it was unreal to him. But these rages, unprovoked and surprising even to himself, stormed frequently in his once calm heart. Once he was picking out pecans with Martha to decorate some cake or other when he hurled the nutcracker to the floor and jabbed himself viciously with the nut picker. On tripping over a ball that Tommy had left on the stairs, he threw it with such force that it broke a pane of the front door. These rages did not relieve him. When they were over, Malone was left with the feeling that something awful and incomprehensible was going to happen that he was powerless to prevent.

Mrs. Malone found the Judge a servant, so he was rescued from the streets. She was nearly full Indian and very silent. But the Judge was no longer afraid to be alone in the house. He no longer wanted to call, "Somebody! Anybody!" for the presence of another human being consoled him so that the house with the stained glass window, the pier table with the mirror, the familiar library and dining room and parlor was no longer silent. The cook was named Lee, and the meals were sloven, badly cooked and badly served. When she served soup at the beginning of dinner, her thumbs were stuck a half inch into the sloshing soup. But she had never heard of social security and could neither read nor write, which gave the Judge some subtle satisfaction. Why, he did not question.

Sherman did not altogether make good his threat of leaving the Judge, but the relation had much deteriorated. He came every day and gave him his injections. Then, sullen and looking put upon, he would idle in the library, sharpening pencils, reading immortal poetry to the Judge, fixing their noon toddies and so forth. He would not write any letters about the Confederate money. Although the Judge knew he was deliberately acting ugly and he was not getting a lick of work out of him, except for the injections, the Judge let him stay on, hoping things might change for the better. He would not even allow the old Judge the pleasure of bragging about his grandson and his decision to go into law. When he would mention the subject, Sherman would hum rudely or yawn like an alligator. The Judge often repeated, "The devil has work for idle hands." When the Judge said that, he looked directly at Sherman, but Sherman only looked directly back at him.

One day the Judge said, "I want you to go to my office in the courthouse and look in the steel filing case under 'Clippings.' I want to read my clippings from the newspapers. Little as you know it, I am a great man."

"The steel filing case under 'C' for 'Clippings,'" Sherman repeated, for he was delighted with the errand. He had never been in the Judge's office and he had yearned to.

"Don't monkey around with my important papers. Just take the newspaper clippings."

"I don't monkey around," Sherman said.

"Give me a toddy before you go. It's twelve o'clock."

Sherman did not share the noon toddy, but went straight to the courthouse. On the door of the office there was printed on the frosted glass a sign saying:
CLANE & SON, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW
. With a little thrill of pleasure, Sherman unlocked the door and went into the sunny room.

After taking out the file marked "Clippings," he took his time to meddle with other papers in the steel cabinet. He was not looking for anything in particular, just a born meddler, and he was mad that the Judge had said "Don't monkey around." But at one o'clock that afternoon, while the Judge was eating his dinner, Sherman found the folder which held the papers from Johnny's brief. He saw the name Sherman. Sherman? Sherman? Except for this Sherman, I am the only one I know of who has that name. How many Shermans are there in town? As he read the papers, his head swayed. At one o'clock that afternoon he found out that there was a man of his own race whom the Judge had had executed, and his name was Sherman. And there was a white woman who was accused of fucking the Negro. He could not believe it. Could he ever be sure? But a white woman, blue eyes, was all so otherwise than he had dreamed. It was like some eerie, agonizing crossword puzzle. And he, Sherman ... Who am I? What am I? All that he knew at that hour was that he was sick. His ears were waterfalls of disgrace and shame. No, Marian Anderson had not been his mother, nor Lena Home, nor Bessie Smith, nor any of the honeyed ladies of his childhood. He had been tricked. He had been cheated. He wanted to die like the Negro man had died. But he would never fool around with a white person, that was for sure. Like Othello, that cuckoo Moor! Slowly he replaced the folder, and when he returned to the Judge's house he walked like a sick man.

The Judge had just waked from his nap; it was afternoon when Sherman came back. Not being a noticer, the Judge did not notice Sherman's shaken face and trembling hands. He asked Sherman to read the files aloud and Sherman was too broken not to obey.

The Judge would repeat phrases Sherman read, such as: A
fixed star in the galaxy of Southern statesmanship. A man of vision, duty and honor. A glory to this fair state and to the South.

"See?" the old Judge said to Sherman.

Sherman, still shaken, said in a quavering voice, "You have a slice of ham like a hog!"

The Judge, still wrapped up in his own greatness, thought it was some compliment and said, "What's that, boy?" For although the Judge had bought a hearing aid and a new magnifying glass, his sight and hearing were failing rapidly and he had not got second sight and the improvement of all his senses.

Sherman did not answer, because having a slice of ham like a hog was one thing, but it was not insult enough for his life and the fucking blue eyes and who they came from. He was going to
do something, do something, do something.
But when he wanted to slam down the sheaf of papers he was so weak that he just put them limply on the table.

When Sherman had gone, the Judge was left alone. Putting his magnifying glass close to the clipping, he read out loud to himself, still wrapped up in his greatness.

THE GREEN-GOLD
of the early spring had darkened to the dense, bluish foliage of early May and the heat of summer began to settle over the town again. With the heat came violence and Milan got into the newspapers:
The Flowering Branch Ledger, The Atlanta Journal, The Atlanta Constitution,
and even
Time
Magazine. A Negro family moved into a house in a white neighborhood and they were bombed. No one was killed, but three children were hurt and vicious feeling mounted in the town.

At the time of the bombing, Sherman was in trouble. He wanted to
do something, do something, do something,
but he did not know what he could do. The bombing went into his black book. And slowly he started to go out of line. First he drank water at the white fountain in the courthouse square. No one seemed to notice. He went to the white men's room at the bus station. But he went so hurriedly and furtively that again no one noticed. He sat on a back pew at the Baptist Church. Again, no one noticed except at the end of the service, and an usher directed him to a colored church. He sat down in Whelan's drugstore. A clerk said, "Get away, nigger, and never come back." All these separate acts of going out of line terrified him. His hands were sweaty, his heart lurching. But terrified as he was, he was more disturbed by the fact that nobody seemed to notice him except the clerk at Whelan's. Harassed and suffering, I've
got to do something, do something, do something
beat like a drum in his head.

Finally he did something. When he gave the Judge his injections in the morning, he substituted water instead of insulin. For three days that went on and he waited. And again in that creepy way nothing seemed to happen. The Judge was as crickety as ever and did not seem sick at all. But although he hated the Judge and thought he ought to be wiped from the face of the earth, he knew all along it should have been a political murder. He could not kill him. If it were a political murder, maybe with a dagger or with a pistol he could have, but not in that sneaky way of substituting water for insulin. It was not even noticed. The fourth day he went back to insulin. Urgent, unceasing the drum beat in his head.

Meanwhile, the Judge, no noticer, was pleasant and unusually agreeable. This infuriated Sherman. It got to the point that with the Judge, as well as other white men, there was no motive for his hate, just compulsion. Wanting to go out of line and afraid, wanting to be noticed and afraid to be noticed, Sherman was obsessed those early May days. I
have got to do something, do something, do something.

But when he did something it was so strange and zany that even he could not understand it. One glassy late afternoon while he was passing through the Judge's backyard going to the lane, Jester's dog, Tige, jumped on his shoulders and licked his face. Sherman would never know why he did what he did. But deliberately he picked up a clothesline, made a noose of it, and hanged the dog on an elm branch. The dog struggled only for a few minutes. The deaf old Judge did not hear his strangled yelps and Jester was away.