The artist took him roughly by the arm and propellet him between the two mirrors. "Now.look," he said, angry at having his work ignored.
Parker looked, turned white and moved away. The eyes in the reflected face continued to look at him-still, straight, all-demanding, enclosed in silence.
"It was your idea, remember," the artist said. "I would have advised something else."
Parker said nothing. He put on his shirt and went out the door while the artist shouted, "I'll expect all of my money!"
Parker headed toward a package shop on the corner. He bought a pint of whiskey and took it into a nearby alley and drank it all in five minutes. Then he moved on to a pool hall nearby which he frequented when he came to the city. It was a well-lighted barn-like place with a bar up one side and gambling machines on the other and pool tables in the back. As soon as Parker entered, a large man in a red and black checkered shirt hailed him by slapping him on the back and yelling, "Yeyyyyyy boy! O. E. Parker!"
Parker was not yet ready to be struck on the back. "Lay off," he said, "I got a fresh tattoo there."
"What you got this time?" the man asked and then yelled to a few at the machines. "O.E.'s got him another tattoo."
"Nothing special this time," Parker said and slunk ova: to a machine that was not being used.
"Come on," the big man said, 'let's have a look at O.E.'s tattoo," and while Parker squirmed in their hands, they pulled up his shirt. Parker felt all the hands drop away instantly and his shirt fell again like a veil over the face. There was a silence in the pool room which seemed to Parker to grow from the circle around him until it extended to the foundations under the building and upward through the beams in the roof.
Finally some one said, "Christ!" Then they all broke into noise at once. Parker turned around, an uncertain grin on his face.
"Leave it to O.E.!" the man in the checkered shirt said. "That boy's a real card!"
"Maybe he's gone and got religion," some one yelled.
"Not on your life," Parker said.
"O.E.'s got religion and is witnessing for Jesus, ain't you, O.E.?" a little man with a piece of cigar in his mouth said wryly. "An original way to do it if I ever saw one."
"Leave it to Parker to think of a new one!" the fat man said.
"Yyeeeeeeyyyyyyy boy!" someone yelled and they all began to whistle and curse in compliment until Parker said, "Aaa shut up."
"What'd you do it for?" somebody asked.
"For laughs," Parker said. "What's it to you?"
"Why ain't you laughing then?" somebody yelled. Parker lunged into the midst of them and like a whirlwind on a summer's day there began a fight that raged amid overturned tables and swinging fists until two of them grabbed him and ran to the door with him and threw him out. Then a calm descended on the pool hall as nerve shattering as if the long barn-like room were the ship from which Jonah had been cast into the sea.
Parker sat for a long time on the ground in the alley behind the pool hall, examining his soul. He saw it as a spider web of facts and lies that was not at all important to him but which appeared to be necessary in spite of his opinion. The eyes that were now forever on his back were eyes to be obeyed. He was as certain of it as he had ever been of anything. Throughout his life, grumbling and sometimes cursing, often afraid, once in rapture, Parker had obeyed whatever instinct of this kind had come to him-in rapture when his spirit had lifted at the sight of the tattooed man at the fair, afraid when he had joined the navy, grumbling when he had married Sarah Ruth.
The thought of her brought him slowly to his feet. She would know what he had to do. She would clear up the rest of it, and she would at least be pleased. It seemed to him that, all along, that was what he wanted, to please her. His truck was still parked in front of the building where the artist had his place, but it was not far away. He got in it and drove out of the city and into the country night. His head was almost clear of liquor and he observed that his dissatisfaction was gone, but he felt not quite like himself. It was as if he were himself but a stranger to himself, driving into a new country though everything he saw was familiar to him, even at night.
He arrived finally at the house on the embankment, pulled the truck under the pecan tree and got out. He made as much noise as possible to assert that he was still in charge here, that his leaving her for a night without word meant nothing except it was the way he did things. He slammed the car door, stamped up the two steps and across the porch and rattled the door knob. It did not respond to his touch. "Sarah Ruth!" he yelled, 'let me in."
There was no lock on the door and she had evidently placed the back of a chair against the knob. He began to beat on the door and rattle the knob at the same time.
He heard the bed springs screak and bent down and put his head to the keyhole, but it was stopped up with paper. "Let me in!" he hollered, bamming on the door again. "What you got me locked out for?"
A sharp voice close to the door said, "Who's there?"
"Me," Parker said, "O.E."
He waited a moment.
"Me," he said impatiently, "O.E."
Still no sound from inside.
He tried once more. "O.E.," he said, bamming the door two or three more times. "O. E. Parker. You know me."
There was a silence. Then the voice said slowly, "I don't know no O.E."
"Quit fooling," Parker pleaded. "You ain't got any business doing me this way. It's me, old O.E., I'm back. You ain't afraid of me."
"Who's there?" the same unfeeling voice said.
Parker turned his head as if he expected someone behind him to give him the answer. The sky had lightened slightly and there were two or three streaks of yellow floating above the horizon. Then as he stood there, a tree of light burst over the skyline.
Parker fell back against the door as if he had been pinned there by a lance.
"Who's there?" the voice from inside said and there was a quality about it now that seemed final. The knob rattled and the voice said peremptorily, "Who's there, I ast you?"
Parker bent down and put his mouth near the stuffed keyhole. "Obadiah," he whispered and all at once he felt the light pouring through him, turning his spider web soul into a perfect arabesque of colors, a garden of trees and birds and beasts.
"Obadiah Elihue!" he whispered.
The door opened and he stumbled in. Sarah Ruth loomed there, hands on her hips. She began at once, "That was no hefty blonde woman you was working for and you'll have to pay her every penny on her tractor you busted up. She don't keep insurance on it. She came here and her and me had us a long talk and I "
Trembling, Parker set about lighting the kerosene lamp.
"What's the matter with you, wasting that keresene this near daylight?" she demanded. "1 ain't got to look at you."
A yellow glow enveloped them. Parker put the match down and began to unbutton his shirt.
"And you ain't going to have none of me this near morning," she said.
"Shut your mouth," he said quietly. "Look at this and then I don't want to hear no more out of you." He removed the shirt and turned his back to her.
"Another picture," Sarah Ruth growled. "I might have known you was off after putting some more trash on yourself."
Parker's knees went hollow under him. He wheeled around and cried, "Look at it! Don't just say that! Look at it!"
"I done looked," she said.
"Don't you know who it is?" he cried in anguish.