Beetlecreek

Chapter One

Always when he looked in the mirror his eyes were different. Sometimes they peered from out of the broken glass asking an unanswerable question, sometimes they were angry and damning, sometimes they were sullen and brooding—­too often they were the eyes of a dead man, jellied and blank. This ritual of looking at himself went on every day as soon as he got out of bed. His thick, blunt fingers would clutch at each other, moving back and forth slowly like the antennae of insects. His long, fleshy nose with its countless red pinpricks would expand and contract in time to his breathing and the gray-­striped lips that refused to open over the severe outward slant of the front teeth would strain themselves into the subtlest kind of smile. There were deep vertical wrinkles along his cheek and at the corners of his eyes which gave an impression of kindliness. These wrinkles moved up and down, restlessly recording the changing climates of his emotions. Thus he would stand, sometimes for over an hour, a silent ugly man who could no longer tell whether he was inside the mirror or inside himself.

Bill Trapp had not long been at the mirror that afternoon when he heard a rustling in the bushes near the stonewall. Quickly he ran his hand through his matted hair and put on a huge felt hat. He walked very slowly, half on tiptoes, until he arrived at a bush. There, he kneeled down on the cold mud and parted the branches. He waited until he heard the rustling again and then rose high enough to see the intruders. His heart beat fast as it always did. Always when they came he would look into their faces. He would be filled with uncontrollable excitement knowing that he was seeing them while they couldn’t see him. Faster and faster his heart would beat until, filled with shame and rage, he would rush out at them waving his arms wildly, shouting, almost screaming long after they had disappeared down the road.

In fifteen years he had had only one visitor, a tramp who came to his door to beg because he was too proud to beg from the Negroes down by the bridge. He gave coffee and sandwiches to this tramp, who, as soon as he had finished eating, went away. Once, some colored ladies started to come into the yard and he chased them away with his shotgun. Sometimes, out of a furious impulse to break the clammy silence, he would begin singing songs he had heard in the towns along the river. Once a week, when he went to town to fetch the provisions he needed to live on or to sell the fruits and vegetables he grew, he found himself still talking in whispers, and people who spoke with him then would whisper too.

This time there were four boy Negroes under the tree. Three of them, wild-­eyed and grinning, were signaling frantically to the boy in the tree to hurry and throw down to them some of the waxy, red apples.

The face of the boy in the tree held Bill Trapp’s attention. He had never seen this boy before although the faces of the others were all familiar. All the boys were between the ages of thirteen and fifteen but the face of this boy seemed at once younger and older. It was a gentle, pear-­shaped face; the eyes were clever and slanted and there was a serious monkey expression on it as the boy tried to concentrate on reaching for the apples.

For almost ten minutes the white man watched. Soon he felt the familiar itchy nervousness coming. But instead of rage this time, he was filled with curiosity. Very careful not to rustle the leaves, he rose to his feet; then, slowly and silently, he walked toward where the boys were crouching.

As soon as they saw him, the boys on the ground fled shrieking, but he paid no attention to them. His eyes were on the boy in the tree and toward him he walked. Even as he came nearer and nearer the tree and saw that the boy made no move to escape, he felt that it was he himself who should be fleeing. Closer and closer he came to the tree and slower and slower became his footsteps. Then, as he realized there was no backing away, that he would have to speak to the boy, he was filled with complete panic. His sweaty fingers deep through the holes in his pocket pulled at the long hairs of his thigh.

The boy’s eyes swept back and forth like the eyes of a movable valentine. His pouting lips were parted and he breathed with difficulty.

“Come down,” Bill Trapp said, and while the words were still forming on his lips, he realized that by an act of his own will he was ending his fifteen years of silence and solitude.

He bade the boy Negro sit down on the porch while he went into the shack, mumbling incoherently that he had something to do. The moment he was inside, he peeped out the window and was surprised that the boy seemed not to be frightened but was relaxed against the two-­by-­four support of the roof. Realizing that the boy was not going to run away as he had at first hoped and feared, he experienced a strange feeling—­a feeling of tenderness toward the boy and indeed, to all people. With no more preparation than that—­in one instant—­the fifteen-­year-­old desire to be alone was wiped away.

He ran to the mirror and looked at himself. He tried to smile. For years and years he hadn’t washed his teeth. He found a broken piece of comb and tried to do something with his hair. He found two cracked cups and filled them with cider he had bought recently from the A&P. These he carried out to the boy on the porch who turned with wide-­eyed surprise to face him. Still trembling, he offered one of the cups to the boy. They drank nervously and silently. Neither would look at the other.

“I didn’ mean nothing by it,” the boy said finally, holding the empty cup close to his ear as if he were listening to a seashell.

The sound of the boy’s voice came as a shock to him, came as a clap of thunder, and he didn’t know what he should say.

“You kids should ask for the fruit . . . all you had to do was ask and you coulda had all you wanted.”

The cider was all gone—­they each had had three cups—­and there was no longer any excuse for the boy to stay. Once, the boy turned toward him and looked straight into his eyes. Bill Trapp blushed and tried desperately to pry his mouth open in some kind of smile. He felt dizzy, tingling all over with thoughts that appeared and disappeared in his consciousness like so many fireflies. He kept saying to himself: Chase the kid away, give him a bawling out and chase him away. Instead, he asked the boy his name. And then asked him where he lived, realizing after a few moments that he was having a conversation with him. The boy’s name was Johnny Johnson. He was from Pittsburgh and had come to stay with his aunt and uncle while his mother was in the hospital. He wanted to look at the boy’s face again to see if he was scared. He found himself rooting in his nostril, wiping his thick finger on his pants. But the boy didn’t see this and he was relieved. He coughed and began to fidget.

“I could tell you something, Johnny, about being here all by yourself. I never would of chased nobody away ’cept they don’t ask. I come from respectable folks and I respect people’s property.” But he saw that the boy wasn’t listening.

When he looked toward where the boy was looking, he saw the gate burst open and a tall, distracted-­looking Negro run into the yard. He looked questioning at Johnny and even moved closer to the boy as if to protect himself.

“That’s my uncle,” Johnny said.

“What’s he want?” Bill Trapp asked. “I’ve got my rights and I respect people’s property. . . .”

“What’re you doing with that boy?” the man demanded, grasping hold of Johnny’s hand as if to pull him away.

Bill Trapp couldn’t open his mouth to speak. He was deaf. There was too much sound about him. He could hear the clock on the table inside the house. What did it mean, having these people on his porch? He was afraid, but he had gone this far, there was no turning back.

“He wasn’t hurting me, Uncle David,” the boy said. “We was just talking.”

“I respect people’s property, mister. I’m a law-­abidin citizen. I’m an old man now. But I don’t hurt nobody. See all this place here. I built it up. We come from respectable folks.” He got up and went into the house. When he came out he brought a bottle of dandelion wine. The Negro man and boy became very quiet.

They drank; their breaths and sighs were in unison. They stole looks at each other from out of the corner of their eyes. And then the Negro man laughed.

“So you’re Mister Bill Trapp?” he said. “Well, sir, it’s a pleasure to be here with you. A real pleasure.”

“I don’t have many visitors,” Bill Trapp said. “I’m what you call a retired man. I’ve done my share. But I could tell you a thing or two about being here all alone, no one to talk to. Gets so you forget a lot of things. But we come from respectable folks. I don’t mean nobody no harm.”

The light faded to near darkness and the three of them were still sitting there. To Bill Trapp it was like something out of his fantastic dreams to have the Negro man and boy on his porch. There was a lot of talk. The Negro man talked continuously with a nervous, jerky flow of words that Bill Trapp finally gave up trying to follow. He had been too long alone. He remembered a warning feeling which came to him, a feeling which as soon as it came he hastened to brush away. He felt vaguely that he was in danger. But dominating all that he was feeling was the tremendous resolution not to go back to the lonely ways of before. He was conscious of a change of life in him, a change that seemed to have come suddenly but which he knew was prepared for years before.

Before his visitors left, he recklessly promised to meet the man that night, promised to go with him to Telrico’s Café.

Alone once more, still trembling, he went to the mirror and looked at his eyes. They were milky damp. His eyelids were sweating. This time he stayed at the mirror until it was so dark he could see only the slightest reflection on the whites of his eyes. What kind of mad thing had he let himself in for? He stayed up just long enough to warm himself a can of beans. By six o’clock he was undressed and in bed speculating on whether or not he would get up to meet the Negro man. He was hot and sweating. He kept the lamp lit so that he could watch the clock. Slowly and meticulously, his clumsy fingers pulled hairs from his thighs.