The Ballad of the Sad Café-9

百度搜索 The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories 天涯 或 The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.

    There were footsteps behind him, then a voice: "Cousin Lymon, your dinner is set out upoable."

    "My appetite is poor tonight," said the hunchback, who had beeing sweet snuff all the day. "There is a sourness in my mouth."

    "Just a pick," said Miss Amelia. "The breast, the liver, and the heart."

    Together they went bato the bright café, and sat down with Henry Macy. Their table was the largest one in the café, and on it there was a bouquet of s lilies in a Coca Cola bottle. Miss Amelia had finished with her patient and was satisfied with herself. From behind the closed office door there had e only a few sleepy whimpers, and before the patient could wake up and bee terrified it was all over. The child was now slung across the shoulder of his father, sleeping deeply, his little arms dangling loose along his fathers back, and his puffed-up face very red -- they were leaving the café to go home.

    Henry Macy was still silent. He ate carefully, making no noise when he swallowed, and was not a third as greedy as Cousin Lymon who had claimed to have no appetite and was now putting down helping after helping of the dinner. Occasionally Henry Macy looked across at Miss Amelia and again held his peace.

    It ical Saturday night. An old couple who had e in from the try hesitated for a moment at the doorway, holding each others hand, and finally decided to e ihey had lived together so long, this old try couple, that they looked as similar as twins. They were brown, shriveled, and like two little walkis. They left early, and by midnight most of the other ers were gone. Rosser e and Merlie Ryan still played checkers, and Stumpy MacPhail sat with a liquor bottle on his table (his wife would not allow it in the home) and carried on peaceabl9９lib?e versations with himself. Henry Macy had not yet gone away, and this was unusual, as he almost always went to bed soon after nightfall. Miss Amelia yawned sleepily, but Lymon was restless and she did not suggest that they close up for the night.

    Finally, at one oclock, Henry Macy looked up at the er of the ceiling and said quietly to Miss Amelia: "I got a letter today."

    Miss Amelia was not oo be impressed by this, because all sorts of business letters and catalogues came addressed to her.

    "I got a letter from my brother," said Henry Macy.

    The hunchback, who had been goose-stepping about the café with his hands clasped behind his head, stopped suddenly. He was quick to sense any ge imosphere of a gathering. He gla each fa the room and waited.

    Miss Amelia scowled and hardened her right fist "You are wele to it," she said.

    "He is on parole. He is out of the peiary."

    The faiss Amelia was very dark, and she shivered although the night was warm. Stumpy MacPhail and Merlie Ryan pushed aside their checker game. The café was very quiet.

    "Who?" asked Cousin Lymon. His large, pale ears seemed to grow on his head and stiffen. "What?"

    Miss Amelia slapped her hands palm down oable. "Because Marvin Macy is a --" But her voice hoarsened and after a few moments she only said: "He belongs to be in that peiary the balance of his life."

    "What did he do?" asked Cousin Lymon.

    There was a long pause, as no one kly how to ahis. "He robbed three filling stations," said Stumpy MacPhail. But his words did not sound plete and there was a feeling of si uioned.

    The hunchback was impatient. He could not bear to be left out of anything, even a great misery. The name Marvin Marcy was unknown to him, but it tantalized him as did aion of subjects which others knew about and of which he was ignorant -- such as any refereo the old sawmill that had been torn down before he came, or a ce word about poor Morris Fiein, or the recolle of a that had occurred before his time. Aside from this inborn curiosity, the hunchback took a great i in robbers and crimes of all varieties. As he strutted around the table he was muttering the words "released on parole" and "peiary" to himself. But although he questioned insistently, he was uo find anything, as nobody would dare to talk about Marvin Macy before Miss Amelia in the c9９ｌib?afé.

    "The letter did not say very much," said Henry Macy. "He did not say where he was going."

    "Humph!" said Amelia, and her face was still hardened and very dark. "He will never set his split hoof on my premises."

    She pushed back her chair from the table, and made ready to close the café. Thinking about Marvin Macy may have set her to brooding, for she hauled the cash register back to the kit and put it in a private place. Henry Macy went off down the dark road. But Henry Ford Crimp and Merlie Ryan lingered for a time on the front porch. Later Merlie Ryan was to make certain claims, to swear that on that night he had a vision of what was to e. But the town paid no attention, for that was just the sort of thing that Merlie Ryan would claim. Miss Amelia and Cousin Lymon talked for a time in the parlor. And when at last the hunchback thought that he could sleep she arrahe mosquito ing over his bed and waited until he had finished with his prayers. The on her long nightgown, smoked two pipes, and only after a long time went to sleep.

    That autumn py time. The crops around the tryside were good, and over at the Forks Falls market the price of tobacco held firm that year. After the long hot summer the first cool days had a  bright sweetness. Goldenrod grew along the dusty roads, and the sugar e was ripe and purple. The bus came each day from Cheehaw to carry off a few of the younger children to the solidated school to get an education. Boys hunted foxes in the pinewoods, winter quilts were aired out on the wash lines, and sweet potatoes bedded in the ground with straw against the colder months to e. In the evening, delicate shreds of smoke rose from the eys, and the moon was round and e iumn sky. There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall. Sometimes, late in the night when there was no wind, there could be heard iowhin wild whistle of the train that goes through Society City on its way far off to the North.

    For Miss Amelia Evans this was a time of great activity. She was at work from dawn until sundown. She made a new and bigger denser for her still, and in one week ran off enough liquor to souse the whole ty. Her old mule was dizzy from grinding so much shum, and she scalded her Mason jars and put aear preserves. She was looking freatly to the first frost, because she had traded for three tremendous hogs, and inteo make much barbecue, chitterlins, and sausage.

    During these weeks there was a quality about Miss Amelia that many people noticed. She laughed often, with a deep ringing laugh, and her whistling had a sassy, tuneful trickery. She was forever trying out her strength, lifting up heavy objects, or pokiough biceps with her finger. One day she sat down to her typewriter and wrote a story -- a story in which there were fners, trap doors, and millions of dollars. Cousin Lymon was with her always, traipsing along behind her coat-tails, and wheched him her face had a bright, soft look, and when she spoke his here lingered in her voice the uone of love.

    The first cold spell came at last. When Miss Amelia awoke one m there were frost flowers on the windowpanes, and rime had silvered the patches of grass in the yard. Miss Amelia built a r fire i stove, the out of doors to judge the day. The air was cold and sharp, the sky pale green and cloudless. Very shortly people began to e in from the try to find out what Miss Amelia thought of the weather; she decided to kill the biggest hog, and wot round the tryside. The hog was slaughtered and a low oak fire started in the barbecue pit. There was the warm smell of pig blood and smoke in the back yard, the stamp of footsteps, the ring of voices in the winter air. Miss Amelia walked around giving orders and soon most of the work was done.

    She had some particular busio do in Cheehaw that day, so after making sure that all was going well, she ked up her car and got ready to leave. She asked Cousin Lymon to e with her, in fact, she asked him seven times, but he was loath to leave the otion and wao remain. This seemed to trouble Miss Amelia, as she always liked to have him o her, and roo be terribly homesick when she had to go any distance away. But after asking him seven times, she did ne him any further. Before leaving she found a stid drew a heavy line all around the barbecue pit, about two feet back from the edge, and told him not to trespass beyond that boundary. She left after dinner and inteo be back before dark.

    Now, it is not so rare to have a truck or an automobile pass along the road and through the town on the way from Cheehaw to somewhere else. Every year the tax collector es tue with rich people such as Miss Amelia. And if somebody iown, such as Merlie Ryan, takes a notion that he  ive to get a car o, or to pay down three dollars and have a firic icebox such as they advertise iore windows of Cheehaw, then a city man will e out asking meddlesome questions, finding out all his troubles, and ruining his ces of buying anything on the installment plan. Sometimes, especially sihey are w on the Forks Falls highway, the cars hauling the  gang e through the town. And frequently people in automobiles get lost and stop to inquire how they  find the right road again. So, late that afternoon it was nothing unusual to have a truck pass the mill and stop in the middle of the road he café of Miss Amelia. A man jumped down from the back of the truck, and the truck went on its way.

    The man stood in the middle of the road and looked about him. He was a t<mark></mark>all man, with brown curly hair, and slow-moving, deep-blue eyes. His lips were red and he smiled the lazy, half-mouthed smile of the braggart. The man wore a red shirt, and a wide belt of tooled leather; he carried a tin suitcase and a guitar. The first person iown to see this newer was Cousin Lymon, who had heard the shifting gears and e around to iigate. The hunchback stuck his head around the er of the porch, but did not step out altogether into full view. He and the man stared at each other, and it was not the look of twers meeting for the first time and swiftly summing up each other. It eculiar stare they exged between them, like the look of two criminals whnize each other. Then the man in the red shirt shrugged his left shoulder and turned away. The face of the hunchback was very pale as he watched the man go down the road, and after a few moments he began to follow along carefully, keeping many paces away.

    It was immediately known throughout the town that Marvin Macy had e back again. First, he went to the mill, propped his elbows lazily on a window sill and looked inside. He liked to watch others hard at work, as do all born loafers. The mill was thrown into a sort of numb fusion. The dyers left the hot vats, the spinners and weavers fot about their maes, and even Stumpy MacPhail, who was foreman, did not kly what to do. Marvin Macy still smiled his wet half-mouthed smiles, and when he saw his bro<var>藏书网</var>ther, his bragging expression did not ge. After looking over the mill Marvin Macy went down the road to the house where he had been raised, a his suitcase and guitar on the front porch. Then he walked around the millpond, looked over the church, the three stores, and the rest of the town. The hunchback trudged along quietly at some distance behind him, his hands in his pockets, and his little face still very pale.

    It had grown late. The red winter sun was setting, and to the west the sky was deep gold and crimsed ey swifts flew to their s; lamps were lighted. Now and then there was the smell of smoke, and the warm rich odor of the barbecue slowly cooking i behind the café. After making the rounds of the town Marvin Macy stopped before Miss Amelias premises ahe sign above the porch. Then, not hesitating to trespass, he walked through the side yard. The mill whistle blew a thin, lonesome blast, and the days shift was done. Soon there were others in Miss Amelias back yard beside Marvin Macy -- Henry Ford Crimp, Merlie Ryan, Stumpy MacPhail, and any number of children and people who stood around the edges of the property and looked on. Very little was said. Marvin Macy stood by himself on one side of the pit, and the rest of the people clustered together oher side. Cousin Lymon stood someart from everyone, and he did not take his eyes from the faarvin Macy.

    &quot;Did you have a good time in the peiary?&quot; asked Merlie Ryan, with a silly giggle.

    Marvin Macy did not answer. He took fr<tt>.t>om his hip pocket a large knife, ope slowly, and hohe blade on the seat of his pants. Merlie Ryan grew suddenly very quiet ao stand directly behind the broad back of Stumpy MacPhail.

百度搜索 The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories 天涯 或 The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.