The Mortgaged Heart Page 3

  MARGARITA G. SMITH

  SHORT STORIES

  Editor's Note

  DURING THE COMPILATION of this book, I have always called this first group of stories the "Carson Smith" stories, since that is the by-line that appears on the majority of them. Much of this early material was written in 1935 and 1936 for Sylvia Chatfield Bates' evening class at New York University when Carson was eighteen and nineteen. When the teacher's comment was saved, I include it. Only two manuscripts had no by-line: "The Aliens" and the one long untitled piece. Although I can be certain that both manuscripts predate The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, I can't be sure whether they were written before or after her marriage to Reeves McCullers at nineteen. None of these early stories that remained unpublished at Carson's death have been changed except for corrections of misspellings, typographical errors and some repetitions. Her own handwritten corrections on the original manuscripts have been followed as carefully as possible.

  Although "Sucker" was not published until 1963 in the Saturday Evening Post (since then it has been widely reprinted), the magazine carried a note from the author saying: "...I think it was my first short story; at least it was the first story I was proud to read to my family ... I wrote it when I was seventeen, and my daddy had just given me my first typewriter. I remember writing the story in longhand, and then painfully typing it out..."

  As the agent's letter which we include here indicates, Carson believed enough in "Court in the West Eighties" at the time she wrote it to have had it sent out when "Sucker" was making the rounds. And although "Poldi" is obviously part of the "court," too, there is nothing in the files that would indicate that Carson made any effort to get this published. Instead, the young author lifted out a phrase that Miss Bates underlined and put it in "Wunderkind," referring to notes of music falling over each other "like a handful of marbles dropped downstairs." Attentive readers will see other such examples taken from her previously unpublished work.

  Since Carson regarded "Sucker" as her first real story and, indeed, does not seem to have submitted the majority of these early manuscripts, perhaps the remaining material ("Poldi," "Breath from the Sky," "The Orphanage," "Instant of the Hour After," "The Aliens" and the last untitled piece) should be referred to as "exercises," in deference to the author. Whatever they are called, these examples of her early work are most interesting in their own right and are amazing for one so young.

  "Wunderkind" was written in Miss Bates' class. In her comment she suggested that Carson make specific revisions and then submit the story to the Story magazine contest of 1936. Carson heeded Miss Bates' advice: it was published in Story's December 1936 issue when Carson was nineteen. I include it here, even though it appealed in her collection The Ballad of the Sad Café, because it marks the beginning of her professional career. Although Story also bought "Like That" the same year, it never appeared in the magazine and was recently discovered among the Story magazine archives at the Princeton University Library.

  "The Aliens" and the untitled piece will be more interesting to the readers who know the author's novels. Both reflect the South of the Thirties and Carson's growing social consciousness. They take on even more importance when we see them suggesting later characters and themes. Although neither may have been intended as short stories (I have a feeling they were both early attempts at novels) I include them here because they seem to stand alone as stories. I suspect that "The Aliens" came first. There were three different versions of this manuscript, but the version included here seems to me to be the most self-contained. Any attempts to continue with Felix Kerr were abandoned until Mr. Minowitz appears in the untitled material.

  Although a hint of the mute in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is seen in the silent redhead in "Court in the West Eighties," we know definitely that Mr. Minowitz eventually becomes Mr. Singer. Carson herself says, in "The Flowering Dream" (p. 274 in this volume), "For a whole year I worked on The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter without understanding it at all. Each character was talking to a central character, but why, I didn't know ... I had been working for five hours and I went outside. Suddenly, as I walked across a road, it occurred to me that Harry Minowitz, the character all the other characters were talking to, was a different man, a deaf mute, and immediately the name was changed to John Singer..." I have come to refer to this untitled piece as "a little bit of everything" since it also seems to contain the beginnings of Mick in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and of Frankie in The Member of the Wedding.

  I have tried to give some of the more obvious examples of the foreshadowing process that goes on in these early "exercises" included in this section. Many more "exercises" were found in Carson's papers, but an effort has been made to pick those which prefigure later works and which are self-contained and unfragmented. Ultimately, the choice from all this unpublished material was arbitrary because I chose what I really liked the best.

  Since this volume is to show in part the growth of a writer, included here is the working outline of "The Mute," previously published in Oliver Evans' biography The Ballad of Carson McCullers. When Carson was living in the South, married to James Reeves McCullers, Sylvia Chatfield Bates wrote to her suggesting that if she were working on a long piece of fiction she should submit an outline to the Houghton Mifflin Fellowship Awards contest. She sent this outline along with a few chapters, and Houghton Mifflin published the novel as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter in 1940. There is no accounting for the jump from the early searching and somewhat rambling material of "The Aliens" and the untitled piece to the maturity of vision and execution seen in this outline where she focuses clearly on a major first novel. Since she did not entirely stick to the outline, it gives evidence of a further stage in her development.

  With the publication of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, she became not simply a published writer, but a celebrated one at the age of twenty-three. Readers who may know very little else of Carson's work have probably read one or two of her most famous and frequently anthologized short stories. From the stories published in Carson's lifetime, those four included here under Later Stories are some that have not been as widely read. Although all of these had national magazine publication after Carson had become an established writer, three of them, "Correspondence," "Who Has Seen the Wind?" and "Art and Mr. Mahoney," were not included in The Ballad of the Sad Café and Collected Short Stories, which contains most of her best short stories.

  At one time, Carson began adapting "Who Has Seen the Wind?" for the theater. This changed in the writing and became The Square Root of Wonderful. Although the original story has appeared in many anthologies, until now it has not appeared in a collection of Carson's work. "The Haunted Boy" was in later editions of her The Ballad of the Sad Café collection, but not the first edition, so possibly it has been missed by many of her readers.

  EARLY STORIES

  SUCKER

  IT WAS ALWAYS like I had a room to myself. Sucker slept in my bed with me but that didn't interfere with anything. The room was mine and I used it as I wanted to. Once I remember sawing a trap door in the floor. Last year when I was a sophomore in high school I tacked on my wall some pictures of girls from magazines and one of them was just in her underwear. My mother never bothered me because she had the younger kids to look after. And Sucker thought anything I did was always swell.

  Whenever I would bring any of my friends back to my room all I had to do was just glance once at Sucker and he would get up from whatever he was busy with and maybe half smile at me, and leave without saying a word. He never brought kids back there. He's twelve, four years younger than I am, and he always knew without me even telling him that I didn't want kids that age meddling with my things.

  Half the time I used to forget that Sucker isn't my brother. He's my first cousin but practically ever since I remember he's been in our family. You see his folks were killed in a wreck when he was a baby. To me and my kid sisters he was like our brother.

  Sucker used to always remember and believe every word I said.
That's how he got his nick-name. Once a couple of years ago I told him that if he'd jump off our garage with an umbrella it would act as a parachute and he wouldn't fall hard. He did it and busted his knee. That's just one instance. And the funny thing was that no matter how many times he got fooled he would still believe me. Not that he was dumb in other ways—it was just the way he acted with me. He would look at everything I did and quietly take it in.

  There is one thing I have learned, but it makes me feel guilty and is hard to figure out. If a person admires you a lot you despise him and don't care—and it is the person who doesn't notice you that you are apt to admire. This is not easy to realize. Maybelle "Watts, this senior at school, acted like she was the Queen of Sheba and even humiliated me. Yet at this same time I would have done anything in the world to get her attentions. All I could think about day and night was Maybelle until I was nearly crazy. When Sucker was a little kid and on up until the time he was twelve I guess I treated him as bad as Maybelle did me.

  Now that Sucker has changed so much it is a little hard to remember him as he used to be. I never imagined anything would suddenly happen that would make us both very different. I never knew that in order to get what has happened straight in my mind I would want to think back on him as he used to be and compare and tty to get things settled. If I could have seen ahead maybe I would have acted different.

  I never noticed him much or thought about him and when you consider how long we have had the same room together it is funny the few things I remember. He used to talk to himself a lot when he'd think he was alone—all about him fighting gangsters and being on ranches and that sort of kids' stuff. He'd get in the bathroom and stay as long as an hour and sometimes his voice would go up high and excited and you could hear him all over the house. Usually, though, he was very quiet. He didn't have many boys in the neighborhood to buddy with and his face had the look of a kid who is watching a game and waiting to be asked to play. He didn't mind wearing the sweaters and coats that I outgrew, even if the sleeves did flop down too big and make his wrists look as thin and white as a little girl's. That is how I remember him—getting a little bigger every year but still being the same. That was Sucker up until a few months ago when all this trouble began.

  Maybelle was somehow mixed up in what happened so I guess I ought to start with her. Until I knew her I hadn't given much time to girls. Last fall she sat next to me in General Science class and that was when I first began to notice her. Her hair is the brightest yellow I ever saw and occasionally she will wear it set into curls with some sort of gluey stuff. Her fingernails are pointed and manicured and painted a shiny red. All during class I used to watch Maybelle, nearly all the time except when I thought she was going to look my way or when the teacher called on me. I couldn't keep my eyes off her hands, for one thing. They are very little and white except for that red stuff, and when she would turn the pages of her book she always licked her thumb and held out her little finger and turned very slowly. It is impossible to describe Maybelle. All the boys are crazy about her but she didn't even notice me. For one thing she's almost two years older than I am. Between periods I used to try and pass very close to her in the halls but she would hardly ever smile at me. All I could do was sit and look at her in class—and sometimes it was like the whole room could hear my heart beating and I wanted to holler or light out and run for Hell.

  At night, in bed, I would imagine about Maybelle. Often this would keep me from sleeping until as late as one or two o'clock. Sometimes Sucker would wake up and ask me why I couldn't get settled and I'd tell him to hush his mouth. I suppose I was mean to him lots of times. I guess I wanted to ignore somebody like Maybelle did me. You could always tell by Sucker's face when his feelings were hurt. I don't remember all the ugly remarks I must have made because even when I was saying them my mind was on Maybelle.

  That went on for nearly three months and then somehow she began to change. In the halls she would speak to me and every morning she copied my homework. At lunch time once I danced with her in the gym. One afternoon I got up nerve and went around to her house with a carton of cigarettes. I knew she smoked in the girls' basement and sometimes outside of school—and I didn't want to take her candy because I think that's been run into the ground. She was very nice and it seemed to me everything was going to change.

  It was that night when this trouble really started. I had come into my room late and Sucker was already asleep. I felt too happy and keyed up to get in a comfortable position and I was awake thinking about Maybelle a long time. Then I dreamed about her and it seemed I kissed her. It was a surprise to wake up and see the dark. I lay still and a little while passed before I could come to and understand where I was. The house was quiet and it was a very dark night.

  Sucker's voice was a shock to me. "Pete?..."

  I didn't answer anything or even move.

  "You do like me as much as if I was your own brother, don't you, Pete?"

  I couldn't get over the surprise of everything and it was like this was the real dream instead of the other.

  "You have liked me all the time like I was your own brother, haven't you?"

  "Sure," I said.

  Then I got up for a few minutes. It was cold and I was glad to come back to bed. Sucker hung on to my back. He felt little and warm and I could feel his warm breathing on my shoulder.

  "No matter what you did I always knew you liked me."

  I was wide awake and my mind seemed mixed up in a strange way. There was this happiness about Maybelle and all that—but at the same time something about Sucker and his voice when he said these things made me take notice. Anyway I guess you understand people better when you are happy than when something is worrying you. It was like I had never really thought about Sucker until then. I felt I had always been mean to him. One night a few weeks before I had heard him crying in the dark. He said he had lost a boy's beebee gun and was scared to let anybody know. He wanted me to tell him what to do. I was sleepy and tried to make him hush and when he wouldn't I kicked at him. That was just one of the things I remembered. It seemed to me he had always been a lonesome kid. I felt bad.

  There is something about a dark cold night that makes you feel close to someone you're sleeping with. When you talk together it is like you are the only people awake in the town.

  "You're a swell kid, Sucker," I said.

  It seemed to me suddenly that I did like him more than anybody else I knew—more than any other boy, more than my sisters, more in a certain way even than Maybelle. I felt good all over and it was like when they play sad music in the movies. I wanted to show Sucker how much I really thought of him and make up for the way I had always treated him.

  We talked for a good while that night. His voice was fast and it was like he had been saving up these things to tell me for a long time. He mentioned that he was going to try to build a canoe and that the kids down the block wouldn't let him in on their football team and I don't know what all. I talked some too and it was a good feeling to think of him taking in everything I said so seriously. I even spoke of Maybelle a little, only I made out like it was her who had been running after me all this time. He asked questions about high school and so forth. His voice was excited and he kept on talking fast like he could never get the words out in time. When I went to sleep he was still talking and I could still feel his breathing on my shoulder, warm and close.

  During the next couple of weeks I saw a lot of Maybelle. She acted as though she really cared for me a little. Half the time I felt so good I hardly knew what to do with myself.

  But I didn't forget about Sucker. There were a lot of old things in my bureau drawer I'd been saving—boxing gloves and Tom Swift books and second rate fishing tackle. All this I turned over to him. We had some more talks together and it was really like I was knowing him for the first time. When there was a long cut on his cheek I knew he had been monkeying around with this new first razor set of mine, but I didn't say anything. His face seemed different now
. He used to look timid and sort of like he was afraid of a whack over the head. That expression was gone. His face, with those wide-open eyes and his ears sticking out and his mouth never quite shut, had the look of a person who is surprised and expecting something swell.

  Once I started to point him out to Maybelle and tell her he was my kid brother. It was an afternoon when a murder mystery was on at the movie. I had earned a dollar working for my Dad and I gave Sucker a quarter to go and get candy and so forth. With the rest I took Maybelle. We were sitting near the back and I saw Sucker come in. He began to stare at the screen the minute he stepped past the ticket man and he stumbled down the aisle without noticing where he was going. I started to punch Maybelle but couldn't quite make up my mind. Sucker looked a little silly—walking like a drunk with his eyes glued to the movie. He was wiping his reading glasses on his shirt tail and his knickers flopped down. He went on until he got to the first few rows where the kids usually sit. I never did punch Maybelle. But I got to thinking it was good to have both of them at the movie with the money I earned.

  I guess things went on like this for about a month or six weeks. I felt so good I couldn't settle down to study or put my mind on anything. I wanted to be friendly with everybody. There were times when I just had to talk to some person. And usually that would be Sucker. He felt as good as I did. Once he said: "Pete, I am gladder that you are like my brother than anything else in the world."