The Ballad of the Sad Café-10

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    Miss Amelia did not e home until almost dark. They heard the rattle of her automobile while she was still a long distance away, then the slam of the door and a bumping noise as though she were hauling something up the front steps of her premises. The sun had already set, and in the air there was the blue smoky glow of early winter evenings. Miss Amelia came down the back steps slowly, and t..group in her yard waited very quietly. Few people in this world could stand up to Miss Amelia, and against Marvin Macy she had this special and bitter hate. Everyone waited to see her burst into a terrible holler, snatch up some dangerous object, and chase him altogether out of town. At first she did not see Marvin Macy, and her face had the relieved and dreamy expression that was natural to her when she reached home after having gone some distance away.

    Miss Amelia must have seen Marvin Mad Cousin Lymon at the same instant. She looked from oo the other, but it was not the wastrel from the peiary on whom she finally fixed her gaze of sick amazement. She, and everyone else, was looking at Cousin Lymon, and he was a sight to see.

    The hunchback stood at the end of the pit, his pale face lighted by the soft glow from the sm oak fire. Cousin Lymon had a very peculiar aplishment, which he used whenever he wished to ingratiate himself with someone. He would stand very still, and with just a little tration, he could wiggle his large pale ears with marvelous quiess and ease. This trick he always used when he wao get something special out of Miss Amelia, and to her it was irresistible. Now as he stood there the hunchbacks ears were wiggling furiously on his head, but it was not Miss Amelia at whom he was looking this time. The hunchback was smiling at Marvin Macy with areaty that was o desperation. At first Marvin Macy paid no attention to him, and when he did finally gla the hunchback it was without any appreciation whatsoever.

    "What ails this Brokeback?" he asked with a rough jerk of his thumb.

    No one answered. And Cousin Lymon, seeing that his aplishment was getting him nowhere, added new efforts of persuasion. He fluttered his eyelids, so that they were like pale, trapped moths in his sockets. He scraped his feet around on the ground, waved his hands about, and finally began doing a little trotlike dance. In the last gloomy light of the winter afternoon he resembled the child of a shaunt.

    Marvin Macy, alone of all the people in the yard, was unimpressed.

    "Is the runt throwing a fit?" he asked, and when no one answered he stepped forward and gave Cousin Lymon a cuff on the side of his head. The hunchback staggered, then fell ba the ground. He sat where he had fallen, still looking up at Marvin Macy, and with great effort his ears managed one last forlorn little flap.

    Now everyouro Miss Amelia to see what she would do. In all these years no one had so much as touched a hair of Cousin Lymons head, although many had had the itch to do so. If anyone even spoke crossly to the hunchback, Miss Amelia would cut off this rash mortals credit and find ways of making things go hard for him a long time afterward. So now if Miss Amelia had split open Marvin Macys head with the ax on the back poro one would have been surprised. But she did nothing of the kind.

    There were times when Miss Amelia seemed to go into a sort of trance. And the cause of these trances was usually known and uood. For Miss Amelia was a fine doctor, and did not grind up s roots and other untried ingredients and give them to the first patient who came along; whenever she ied a new medie she always tried it out first on herself. She would swallow an enormous dose and spend the following day walking thoughtfully bad forth from the café to the brick privy. Often, when there was a sudden keen gri<big></big>pe, she would stand quite still, her queer eyes staring down at the ground and her fists ched; she was trying to decide which an was being worked upon, and what misery the new medie might be most likely to cure. And now as she watched the hunchbad Marvin Macy, her face wore this same expression, teh reing some inain, although she had taken no new medie that day.

    &quot;That will learn you, Brokeback,&quot; said Marvin Macy.

    Henry Macy pushed back his limp whitish hair from his forehead and coughed nervously. Stumpy MacPhail and Merlie Ryan shuffled their feet, and the children and black people oskirts of the property made not a sound. Marvin Macy folded the knife he had been honing, and after looking about him fearlessly he swaggered out of the yard. The embers i were turning to gray feathery ashes and it was now quite dark.

    That was the way Marvin Macy came back from the peiary. Not a living soul in all the town was glad to see him. Even Mrs. Mary Hale, who was a good woman and had raised him with love and care -- at the first sight of him even this old foster mother dropped the skillet she was holding and burst into tears. But nothing could faze that Marvin Macy. He sat on the back steps of the Hale house, lazily pig his guitar, and when the supper was ready, he pushed the children of the household out of the way and served himself a big meal, although there had been barely enough hoecakes and white meat to go round. After eatitled himself in the best and warmest sleeping pla the front room and was untroubled by dreams.

    Miss Amelia did not open the café that night. She locked the doors and all the windows very carefully, nothing was seen of her and Cousin Lymon, and a lamp burned in her room all the night long.

    Marvin Macy brought with him bad fortune, right from the first, as could be expected. The  day the weather turned suddenly, and it became hot. Even in the early m there was a sticky sultriness imosphere, the wind carried the rotten smell of the s, and delicate shrill mosquitoes webbed the green millpond. It was unseasonable, worst than August, and much damage was done. For nearly everyone in the ty who owned a hog had copied Miss Amelia and slaughtered the day before. And what sausage could keep in such weather as this? After a few days there was everywhere the smell of slowly spoili, and an atmosphere of dreary waste. Worse yet, a family reuniohe Forks Falls highork roast and died, every one of them. It lain that their hog had been ied -- and who could tell whether the rest of the meat was safe or not? People were torween the longing for the good taste of pork, and the fear of death. It was a time of waste and fusion.

    The cause of all this, Marvin Macy, had no shame in him. He was seen everywhere. During work hours he loafed about the mill, looking in at the windows, and on Sundays he dressed in his red shirt and paraded up and down the road with his guitar. He was still handsome -- with his brown hair, his red lips, and his broad strong shoulders; but the evil in him was now too famous for his good looks to get him anywhere. And this evil was not measured only by the actual sins he had itted. True, he had robbed those filling stations. And before that he had ruihe te girls in the ty, and laughed about it Any number of wicked things could be listed against him, but quite apart from these crimes there was about him a secret meahat g to him almost like a smell. Ahing -- he never sweated, not even in August, and that surely is a sign worth p over.

    Now it seemed to the town that he was more dangerous than he had ever been before, as in the peiary in Atlanta he must have learhe method of laying charms. Otherwise how could his effe Cousin Lymon be explained? For since first setting eyes on Marvin Macy the hunchback ossessed by an unnatural spirit. Every minute he wao be following along behind this jailbird, and he was full of silly schemes to attract attention to himself. Still Marvin Macy either treated him hatefully or failed to notice him at all. Sometimes the hunchback would give up, perch himself on the banister of the front porch much as a sick bird huddles on a telephone wire, and grieve publicly.

    &quot;But why?&quot; Miss Amelia would ask, staring at him with her crossed, gray eyes, and her fists closed tight.

    &quot;Oh, Marvin Macy,&quot; groahe hunchback, and the sound of the name was enough to upset the rhythm of his sobs so that he hiccuped. &quot;He has been to Atlanta.&quot;

    Miss Amelia would shake her head and her face was dark and hardeo begin with she had no patieh any traveling; those who had made the trip to Atlanta or traveled fifty miles from home to see the o -- those restless people she despised. &quot;Going to Atlanta does no credit to him.&quot;

    &quot;He has been to the peiary,&quot; said the hunchback, miserable with longing.

    How are you going tue against suvies as these? In her perplexity Miss Amelia did not herself sound any too sure of what she was saying. &quot;Been to the peiary, Cousin Lymon? Why, a trip like that is no travel t about.&quot;

    During these weeks Miss Amelia was closely watched by everyone. She went about absent-mindedly, her face remote as though she had lapsed into one of her gripe trances. For some reason, after the day of Marvin Macys arrival, she put aside her overalls and wore always the red dress she had before this time reserved for Sundays, funerals, and sessions of the court. Then as the weeks passed she began to take some steps to clear up the situation. But her efforts were hard to uand. If it hurt her to see Cousin Lymon follow Marvin Macy about the town, why did she not make the issues clear ond for all, ahe hunchback that if he had dealings with Marvin Macy she would turn him off the premises? That would have been simple, and Cousin Lymon would have had to submit to her, or else face the sorry business of finding himself loose in the world. But Miss Amelia seemed to have lost her will; for the first time in her life she hesitated as to just what course to pursue. And, like most people in such a position of uainty, she did t<samp>藏书网</samp>he worst thing possible -- she began following several courses at once, all of them trary to each other.

    The café ened every night as usual, and, strangely enough, when Marvin Macy came swaggering through the door, with the hunchback at his heels, she did not turn him<q>藏书网</q> out. She even gave him free drinks and smiled at him in a wild, crooked way. At the same time she set a terrible trap for him out in the s that surely would have killed him if he had got caught. She let Cousin Lymon invite him to Sunday dinner, and then tried to trip him up as he went doweps. She began a great campaign of pleasure for Cousin Lymon -- making exhausting trips to various spectacles being held in distant places, driving the automobile thirty miles to a Chautauqua, taking him to Forks Falls to watch a parade. All in all it was a distrag time for Miss Amelia. In the opinion of most people she was well on her way in the climb up fools hill, and everyone waited to see how it would all turn out.

    The weather turned cold again, the winter oown, and night came before the last shift in the mill was done. Childre on all their garments when they slept, and women raised the backs of their skirts to toast themselves dreamily at the fire. After it raihe mud in the road made hard frozen ruts, there were faint flickers of lamplight from the windows of the houses, the peach trees were sy and bare. In the dark, silent nights of wiime the café was the warm ter point of the town, the lights shining shtly that they could be seen a quarter of a mile away. The great iron stove at the back of the room roared, crackled, and turned red. Miss Amelia had made red curtains for the windows, and from a salesman who passed through the town she bought a great bunch of paper roses that looked very real.

    But it was not only the warmth, the decorations, and the brightness, that made the café what it was. There is a deeper reason why the café was so precious to this town. And this deeper reason has to do with a certain pride that had not hitherto been known in these parts. To uand this new pride the cheapness of human life must be kept in mind. There were allenty of people clustered around a mill -- but it was seldom that every family had enough meal, garments, and fat back to go the rounds. Life could bee one long dim scramble just to get the things o keep alive. And the fusing point is this: All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there es a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.

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.