“By then I was twenty-three. I suppose many of my neighbors thought that I went into shock, because for a long time I didn’t venture outside my house except for the barest necessities, and even then at the checkout lines I would ignore their eyes. But it wasn’t that. I was simply making up my mind. I knew how much money I had, how long I could keep paying the bills, how long the creditors would take after I quit paying before they would refuse to absorb any more loss at the request of their conscience, turn off the electricity, snip off my heat supply and demand the three keys which allowed free, unobstructed coming and going from the house. I knew that when this time came I would have to be prepared to move and go on, but I didn’t intend to be fooled into picking out a direction before I’d made up my mind how I was going to feel about what’d happened to me. I refused, in other words, to let the experience have any direct control over my life for the worse, and sat down to decide, practically speaking, just how things were with me.
“There were two things which struck me with particular force. First: the lunch pail. He never went to work without a packed lunch pail. I always filled it after the news and I couldn’t remember a time when he’d forgotten to take it. And every time I’d arrive at an explanation for his disappearance and secret activities, I was reminded of the lunch pail.” She stopped talking.
“Go on,” said Della.
“He never forgot his lunch pail. The second thing was when after the police sounded the river—I believe that’s the term—anyway, with hooks and such they brought up a body from the mud bottom, a man with pockets filled with sand and small rocks. He had no identification on him and they wanted me to see if he held any resemblance to my husband. So I went down to the morgue with them, but when we arrived and before we were inside, an inspector stepped out, helping a middle-aged woman by supporting her arm. She was in tears, and he quietly told the policeman who had brought me that they already had positive identification and that I could go home. It wasn’t my husband. It was then, looking at that other woman, that I was reminded that I knew what it felt like to have someone dead: Cecil was not, and could not be, dead. Because I knew what that felt like. I knew that feeling too well, and if Cecil had been dead though outside my immediate knowledge, I would have known. That night he’d left his lunch pail. Something had been in his mind.
“So with these two things—the knowledge of his living, and the knowledge of him and lunch pails—I did the only thing to save my own pride. I quit caring and divorced him. I moved again, and lived by myself, working at a button factory. I expected to never have anything to do with marriage or men for as long as I lived.”
John reached out and touched her, imposing silence. Wilson’s breathing was heavy. Every once in a while he would jerk, moving in some faraway dream, keeping ahead of the foxes. Della looked at Sarah in the smoky night light and thought, There’s still something not revealed—something that you’ve kept from me. You’ve not explained it all.
What happened in Della’s mind was unusual. She took it upon herself to get to the bottom of Sarah’s strangeness, and spent the next several years visiting her and watching her closely. She talked to her friends incessantly about how Sarah did this and Sarah did that, as though trying to prove by a lengthy induction that her son’s wife was completely human. And they listened to her, half out of not wanting to be unkind and half out of interest in hearing some passing clue that would solve the mystery in everyone else’s mind: What was she like when the shades were pulled and she turned her attention to her senses? It was many, many years before this idea even dawned upon Della—that the secret could be in the flesh, in Sarah’s hips and thighs and arms and hands, and not inside. She looked for something beneath the skin, something in Sarah’s personality to explain it, not thinking for a moment that there was personality and something else, different and completely made up of senses. Her discovery of this came much later. Her neighbors in town never took it upon themselves to invite her over to their houses on Saturday night, or any other night that it might start, to listen to the joyous moaning, screaming cat howls that came from John’s house and went on for as long as several hours, each wavering note cutting through the stillness. Nor did they explain to her that they’d gotten to enjoy lying in bed, listening and wondering. On infrequent Sunday afternoons when the air would be full, their children would ask, “Mommy, why does she make those noises? They frighten me.” “There’s no reason to be frightened. It’s all very natural.” But the only thing they could promise was that it didn’t have to be frightening, if you kept your wits about you when you heard it come ripping through the quick evening air.
They never talked about it to Della, and seldom among themselves, because the shrieking cat howls cut deep into them, like the voice of hidden, repressed desires, fantasies not actualized, abandoned but not forgotten. Hearing her was like listening to the screams of your own imprisoned passions.
Wilson had only one dog left—a fourteen-year-old beagle named Cindy, who still carried herself with dignity, though her legs were stiff and crooked and hardly held her up when she ate.
THREE
Eight men were in the garage. It was July, very hot, and cold sodas were pulled one after another out of the machine. It was no cooler in the garage except for the company and the absence of the pressing issues of field work. John moved at a snail’s pace, but never completely stopped, taking apart a chain saw and welding together an auger cracked away from the shaft. It seemed the sweltry air grudgingly made room for them when they moved, swirling thick around their arms and faces, wringing out beads of dark sweat.
“You know, it’s where we’ve forced them. They had nothing to do with it. Could’ve been us if the situation was reversed.”
“But they seem to excel in some fields, naturally. It comes from them coming from Africa—the drums and dances and all.”
“I don’t recall ever hearing about basketball being played over there.”
“Or football, or razor fighting.”
“Or baseball.”
“Wait a minute—they’re not better.”
“Take the percentages. Take the percentages. What’s the total population of—”
“It’s like the Jews. It’s being denied something, like they were denied complete freedom in business. So naturally they learned to be good.”
“That’s something different. They could learn that. But I could never learn how to be more coordinated.”
“They don’t seem to be too intelligent, and you could say they were denied good educations.”
“Who?”
“The Negroes.”
“Even when they’re given a chance they don’t really try. Talk to anyone who ever taught in a mixed school. They don’t want to learn, and there’s nothing you can do about it. What do you do, call their parents in?”
“Or parent. Usually the old man don’t live at home.”
“They don’t respect authority.”
“Jesus, how can you expect them to? Look at the—”
“We know it ain’t their fault. But it’s true. They don’t respect authority. They live in the streets. They commit more crimes. They take drugs and all of ’em drink heavily. It’s a matriarchal society—”
“A lot of ’em don’t work.”
“It’s our fault.”
“I know that.