Had I a Hundred Mouths Read online

  We had other meetins and was plainly in love; and when we married, runnin off to Groveton to do it, everybody in town said things about the marriage because he uz thirty and I uz seventeen.

  We moved to this house owned by the Picketts, with a good big clothesyard and a swing on the porch, and I made it real nice for me and Raymon Emmons, made curtains with fringe, putt jardinears on the front bannisters and painted the fern buckets. We furnished those unfurnished rooms with our brand new lives, and started goin along.

  Between those years and this one I’m tellin about them in, there seems a space as wide and vacant and silent as the Neches River, with my life then standin on one bank and my life now standin on the other, lookin acrost at each other like two diffrent people wonderin who the other can really be.

  How did Raymon Emmons die? Walked right through a winda and tore hisself all to smithereens. Walked right through a second-story winda at the depot and fell broken on the tracks—nothin much left a Raymon Emmons after he walked through that winda—broken his crown, hon, broken his crown. But he lingered for three days in Victry Hospital and then passed, sayin just before he passed away, turnin towards me, “I hope you’re satisfied.…”

  Why did he die? From grievin over his daughter and mine, Chitta was her name, that fell off a horse they uz both ridin on the Emmonses’ farm. Horse’s name was King and we had im shot.

  Buried im next to Chitta’s grave with iz insurance, two funerals in as many weeks, then set aroun blue in our house, cryin all day and cryin half the night, sleep all broken and disturbed of my rest, thinkin oh if he’d come knockin at that door right now I’d let him in, oh I’d let Raymon Emmons in! After he died, I set aroun sayin “who’s gonna meet all the hours in a day with me, whatever is in each one—all those hours—who’s gonna be with me in the mornin, in the ashy afternoons that we always have here, in the nights of lightnin who’s goan be lyin there, seen in the flashes and makin me feel as safe as if he uz a lightnin rod (and honey he wuz); who’s gonna be like a light turned on in a dark room when I go in, who’s gonna be at the door when I open it, who’s goin to be there when I wake up or when I go to sleep, who’s goin to call my name? I cain’t stand a life of just me and our furniture in a room, who’s gonna be with me?” Honey it’s true that you never miss water till the well runs dry, tiz truly true.

  Went to talk to the preacher, but he uz no earthly help, regalin me with iz pretty talk, he’s got a tongue that will trill out a story pretty as a bird on a bobwire fence—but meanin what?—sayin “the wicked walk on every hand when the vilest men are exalted”—now what uz that mean?—; went to set and talk with Fursta Evans in her Millinary Shop (who’s had her share of tumult in her sad life, but never shows it) but she uz no good, sayin “Girl pick up the pieces and go on… here try on this real cute hat” (that woman had nothin but hats on her mind—even though she taught me my life, grant cha that—for brains she’s got hats). Went to the graves on Sundays carryin potplants and cryin over the mounds, one long wide one and one little un—how sad are the little graves a childrun, childrun ought not to have to die it’s not right to bring death to childrun, they’re just little toys grownups play with or neglect (thas how some of em die, too, honey, but won’t say no more bout that); but all childrun go to Heaven so guess it’s best—the grasshoppers flyin all roun me (they say graveyard grasshoppers spit tobacco juice and if it gets in your eye it’ll putt your eye out) and an armadilla diggin in the crepemyrtle bushes—sayin “dirt lay light on Raymon Emmons and iz child,” and thinkin “all my life is dirt I’ve got a famly of dirt.” And then I come back to set and scratch aroun like an armadilla myself in these rooms, alone; but honey that uz no good either.

  And then one day, I guess it uz a year after my famly died, there uz a knock on my door and it uz Fursta Evans knockin when I opened it to see. And she said “honey now listen I’ve come to visit with you and to try to tell you somethin: why are you so glued to Raymon Emmonses memry when you never cared a hoot bout him while he was on earth, you despised all the Emmonses, said they was just trash, wouldn’t go to the farm on Christmas or Thanksgivin, wouldn’t set next to em in church, broke pore Raymon Emmons’ heart because you’d never let Chitta stay with her grandparents and when you finely did the Lord purnished you for bein so hateful by takin Chitta. Then you blamed it on Raymon Emmons, hounded im night and day, said he killed Chitta, drove im stark ravin mad. While Raymon Emmons was live you’d never even give him the time a day, wouldn’t lift a hand for im, you never would cross the street for im, to you he uz just a dog in the yard, and you know it, and now that he’s dead you grieve yo life away and suddenly fall in love with im.” Oh she tole me good and proper—said, “you never loved im till you lost im, till it uz too late, said now set up and listen to me and get some brains in yo head, chile.” Said, “cause listen honey, I’ve had four husbands in my time, two of em died and two of em quit me, but each one of em I thought was goin to be the only one, and I took each one for that, then let im go when he uz gone, kept goin roun, kept ready, we got to honey, left the gate wide open for anybody to come through, friend or stranger, ran with the hare and hunted with the hound, honey we got to greet life not grieve life,” is what she said.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess that’s the way life is, you don’t know what you have till you don’t have it any longer, till you’ve lost it, till it’s too late.”

  “Anyway,” Fursta said, “little cattle little care—you’re beginnin again now, fresh and empty handed, it’s later and it’s shorter, yo life, but go on from here not there” she said. “You’ve had one kind of a life, had a husband, putt im in iz grave (now leave im there!), had a child and putt her away, too; start over, hon, the world don’t know it, the world’s fresh as ever—it’s a new day, putt some powder on yo face and start goin round. Get you a job, and try that; or take you a trip.…”

  “But I got to stay in this house,” I said. “Feel like I cain’t budge. Raymon Emmons is here, live as ever, and I cain’t get away from im. He keeps me fastened to this house.”

  “Oh poot,” Fursta said, lightin a cigarette. “Honey you’re losin ya mine. Now listen here, put on those big ole rubberboots and go clompin, go steppin high and wide—cause listen here, if ya don’t they’ll have ya up in the Asylum at Rusk sure’s as shootin, specially if you go on talkin about this ghost of Raymon Emmons the way you do.”

  “But if I started goin roun, what would people say?”

  “You can tell em it’s none of their beeswax. Cause listen honey, the years uv passed and are passin and you in ever one of em, passin too, and not gettin any younger—yo hairs gettin bunchy and the lines clawed roun yo mouth and eyes by the glassy claws of cryin sharp tears. We got to paint ourselves up and go on, young outside, anyway—cause listen honey the sun comes up and the sun crosses over and goes down—and while the sun’s up we got to get on that fence and crow. Cause night muss fall—and then thas all. Come on, les go roun; have us a Sataday night weddin ever Sataday night; forget this ole patched-faced ghost I hear you talkin about.…”

  “In this town?” I said. “I hate this ole town, always rain fallin—’cept this ain’t rain it’s rainin, Fursta, it’s rainin mildew.…”

  “O deliver me!” Fursta shouted out, and putt out her cigarette, “you won’t do. Are you afraid you’ll melt?”

  “I wish I’d melt—and run down the drains. Wish I uz rain, fallin on the dirt of certain graves I know and seepin down into the dirt, could lie in the dirt with Raymon Emmons on one side and Chitta on the other. Wish I uz dirt. …”

  “I wish you are just crazy,” Fursta said. “Come on, you’re gonna take a trip. You’re gonna get on a train and take a nonstop trip and get off at the end a the line and start all over again new as a New Year’s Baby, baby. I’m gonna see to that.”

  “Not on no train, all the king’s men couldn’t get me to ride a train again, no siree.…”

  “Oh no train my foot,” said Fursta.


  “But what’ll I use for money please tell me,” I said.

  “With Raymon Emmons’ insurance of course—it didn’t take all of it to bury im, I know. Put some acreage tween you and yo past life, and maybe some new friends and scenery too, and pull down the shade on all the water that’s gone under the bridge; and come back here a new woman. Then if ya want tew you can come into my millinary shop with me.”

  “Oh,” I said, “is the world still there? Since Raymon Emmons walked through that winda seems the whole world’s gone, the whole world went out through that winda when he walked through it.”

  Closed the house, sayin “goodbye ghost of Raymon Emmons,” bought my ticket at the depot, deafenin my ears to the sound of the tickin telegraph machine, got on a train and headed west to California. Day and night the trainwheels on the train-tracks said Raymon Emmons Raymon Emmons Raymon Emmons, and I looked through the winda at dirt and desert, miles and miles of dirt, thinkin I wish I uz dirt I wish I uz dirt. O I uz vile with grief.

  In California the sun was out, wide, and everbody and everthing lighted up; and oh honey the world was still there. I decided to stay a while. I started my new life with Raymon Emmons’ insurance money. It uz in San Diego, by the ocean and with mountains of dirt standin gold in the blue waters. A war had come. I was alone for a while, but not for long. Got me a job in an airplane factory, met a lotta girls, met a lotta men. I worked in fusilodges.

  There uz this Nick Natowski, a brown clean Pollock from Chicargo, real wile, real Satanish. What kind of a life did he start me into? I don’t know how it started, but it did, and in a flash we uz everwhere together, dancin and swimmin and everthing. He uz in the war and in the U.S. Navy, but we didn’t think of the war or of water. I just liked him tight as a glove in iz uniform, I just liked him laughin, honey, I just liked him ever way he was, and that uz all I knew. And then one night he said, “Margy I’m goin to tell you somethin, goin on a boat, be gone a long long time, goin in a week.” Oh I cried and had a nervous fit and said, “Why do you have to go when there’s these thousands of others all aroun San Diego that could go?” and he said, “We’re goin away to Coronada for that week, you and me, and what happens there will be enough to keep and save for the whole time we’re apart.” We went, honey, Nick and me, to Coronada, I mean we really went. Lived like a king and queen—where uz my life behind me that I thought of onct and a while like a story somebody was whisperin to me?—laughed and loved and I cried; and after that week at Coronada, Nick left for sea on his boat, to the war, sayin I want you to know baby I’m leavin you my allotment.

  I was blue, so blue, all over again, but this time it uz diffrent someway, guess cause I uz blue for somethin live this time and not dead under dirt, I don’t know; anyway I kept goin roun, kept my job in fusilodges and kept goin roun. There was this friend of Nick Natowski’s called George, and we went together some. “But why doesn’t Nick Natowski write me, George?” I said. “Because he cain’t yet,” George said, “but just wait and he’ll write.” I kept waitin but no letter ever came, and the reason he didn’t write when he could of, finely, was because his boat was sunk and Nick Natowski in it.

  Oh what have I ever done in this world, I said, to send my soul to torment? Lost one to dirt and one to water, makes my life a life of mud, why was I ever put to such a test as this O Lord, I said. I’m goin back home to where I started, gonna get on that train and backtrack to where I started from, want to look at dirt a while, can’t stand to look at water. I rode the train back. Somethin drew me back like I’d been pastured on a rope in California.

  Come back to this house, opened it up and aired it all out, and when I got back you know who was there in that house? That ole faithful ghost of Raymon Emmons. He’d been there, waitin, while I went aroun, in my goin roun time, and was there to have me back. While I uz gone he’d covered everythin in our house with the breath a ghosts, fine ghost dust over the tables and chairs and a curtain of ghost lace over my bed on the sleepin-porch.

  Took me this job in Richardson’s Shoe Shop (this town’s big now and got money in it, the war ’n oil made it rich, ud never know it as the same if you hadn’t known it before; and Fursta Evans married to a rich widower), set there fittin shoes on measured feet all day—it all started in a shoestore measurin feet and it ended that way—can you feature that? Went home at night to my you-know-what.

  Comes ridin onto the sleepinporch ever night regular as clockwork, ties iz horse to the bedstead and I say hello Raymon Emmons and we start our conversation. Don’t ask me what he says or what I say, but ever night is a night full of talkin, and it lasts the whole night through. Oh onct in a while I get real blue and want to hide away and just set with Raymon Emmons in my house, cain’t budge, don’t see daylight nor dark, putt away my wearin clothes, couldn’t walk outa that door if my life depended on it. But I set real still and let it all be, claimed by that ghost until he unclaims me—and then I get up and go roun, free, and that’s why I’m here, settin with you here in the Pass Time Club, drinkin this beer and tellin you all I’ve told.

  Honey, why am I tellin all this? Oh all our lives! So many things to tell. And I keep em to myself a long long time, tight as a drum, won’t open my mouth, just set in my blue house with that ole ghost agrievin me, until there comes a time of tellin, a time to tell, a time to putt on those big ole rubberboots.

  Now I believe in tellin, while we’re live and goin roun; when the tellin time comes I say spew it out, we just got to tell things, things in our lives, things that’ve happened, things we’ve fancied and things we dream about or are haunted by. Cause you know honey the time to shut you mouth and set moultin and mildewed in yo room, grieved by a ghost and fastened to a chair, comes back roun again, don’t worry honey, it comes roun again. There’s a time ta tell and a time ta set still ta let a ghost grieve ya. So listen to me while I tell, cause I’m in my time atellin, and you better run fast if you don wanna hear what I tell, cause I’m goin ta tell….

  The world is changed, let’s drink ower beer and have us a time, tell and tell and tell, let’s get that hot bird in a cole bottle tonight. Cause next time you think you’ll see me and hear me tell, you won’t: I’ll be flat where I cain’t budge again, like I wuz all that year, settin and hidin way… until the time comes roun again when I can say oh go way ole ghost of Raymon Emmons, go way ole ghost and lemme be!

  Cause I’ve learned this and I’m gonna tell ya: there’s a time for live things and a time for dead, for ghosts and for flesh ’n bones: all life is just a sharin of ghosts and flesh. Us humans are part ghost and part flesh—part fire and part ash—but I think maybe the ghost part is the longest lastin, the fire blazes but the ashes last forever. I had fire in California (and water putt it out) and ash in Texis (and it went to dirt); but I say now, while I’m tellin you, there’s a world both places, a world where there’s ghosts and a world where there’s flesh, and I believe the real right way is to take our worlds, of ghosts or of flesh, take each one as they come and take what comes in em: take a ghost and grieve with im, settin still; and take the flesh ’n bones and go roun; and even run out to meet what worlds come in to our lives, strangers (like you), and ghosts (like Raymon Emmons) and lovers (like Nick Natowski)… and be what each world wants us to be.

  And I think that ghosts, if you set still with em long enough, can give you over to flesh ’n bones; and that flesh ’n bones, if you go roun when it’s time, can send you back to a faithful ghost. One provides the other.

  Saw pore Raymon Emmons all last night, all last night seen im plain as day.

  THE GRASSHOPPER’S BURDEN

  Here was this school building in the town, holding young and old, this stone building that looked from the front like a great big head with flat skull of asphalt and gravel and face of an insect that might be eating up the young through its opening and closing mouth of doors; and across its forehead were written the words: “Dedicated to all high emprise, the building of good citizens of the world, the establishment of a
community of minds and hearts, free men and women.”

  In this building and in its surrounding yards were many people, children and teachers—it was a world:

  This was a rainy afternoon in Social Studies and Quella could not stand hearing the story of Sam Houston read out by different people in the class. She was just waiting for two-thirty, when she would get her pass to go to the auditorium where the May Fete in which she was a Royal Princess (and one of two elected by the whole school) would be practiced.

  Miss Morris, who would never at any time in her life have been a Royal Princess, she was so ordinary, was the Social Studies teacher and listening as she sat in good posture at her desk to the story of Sam Houston as if it were a brand-new tale just being told for the first time. She did not like to sign a pass—for anything, May Fetes included. Miss Morris had a puckered mouth just like a purse drawn up. She knew everything about children, whether they told a story about undone homework; and especially about boys, if they had been smoking or had a jawbreaker hidden over their last tooth, or a beanshooter in their blouse—she surmised a beanshooter so dreadfully that it might have been a revolver concealed there. And when she fussed at a boy who was mean by stealing a girl’s purse and going through it, showing all a girl’s things to other boys in the class, Miss Morris would draw her pursey mouth so tight that she seemed to have no lips at all and stitches would crack the powder around it. Then she would shake this boy hard, often causing bubblegum or jawbreakers to fall from him everywhere and roll hard on the floor under all the seats. She did not like to sign a pass.

  But Quella must have an early pass, not only to keep from having to read her turn at Sam Houston but to give her time to go get her hair ready for the May Fete practice. She thought what an early pass might be for—not to go to the Nurse to see if she had mumps because it felt sore by her ear, because yesterday she had said this and caused a lot of attention, but all the M’s in her row and the L’s and N’s on both sides of her row shrank away from her and even Helena McWorthy had not wanted to go around with her between classes, the way they did, seeing what was in the halls together, or let her use her powder puff or blue woman’s comb, just to get mumps. And she could not have something in her eye because not long ago she had got an easy pass from Miss Stover in Math for this and the Nurse, a little mean woman that smelled like white, had said, “I find nothing whatsomever in your eye that does not naturally belong there,” and wrote this on a note to Miss Stover and then glared at her with the whites of her eyes.