The people by me primitively guess that I am enemy and hate me: not alone for being different, or disdaining work, or worse, not doing any; but for something that would seem, if spoken for them, words of magic; for I take their souls away — I know it — and I play with them; I puppet them up to something; I march them through strange crowds and passions; I snuffle at their roots.
From the first they saw me watching. I can’t disguise my interest. They expected, I suppose, that I would soon be round with stories. I would tell Miss Matthew of Mr. Wallace, and Mr. Wallace of Mrs. Turk, and Miss Matthew and Mr. Wallace and Mrs. Turk would take the opportunity to tell me all they knew of one another, all they knew about diseases, all they thought worthy of themselves and could remember of their relatives, and the complete details of their many associations with violent forms of death. But when I communicated nothing to them; when I had nothing, in confidence, to say to anyone; then they began to treat my eyes like marbles and to parade their lives indifferently before me, as if I were, upon my porch, a motionless, graven idol, not of their religion, in my niche; yet I somehow retained my mystery, my potency, so that the indifference was finally superficial and I fancy they felt a compulsion to be observed—watched in all they did. I should say they dread me as they dread the supernatural. How Mr. Wallace dreads it, dead as he nearly is, twisted on his cane. Every morning, when he can, he comes down the block past my porch, his left arm hung like a shawl from his shoulder, shuffling his numb feet, poking cracks. “I’ll have to go back.” His voice is hoarse and loud. “I used to walk to the end of the street.” He mops his face and dries his running eyes. “Hot,” he shouts, propped against his cane. “Last summer I went to the end.” The cane comes out of his belly. He sways. Will he die like this? palsy seize him? sweat break before that final clip of pain and his surprise? The cane will gouge cement. His hat will float into my privet hedge and the walk drive blood from his nose.
He turns at last and I relax. His eyes are anxious for a friend to cry at, to bellow to a stop. He squints up the street, and if, by any chance, someone appears, Mr. Wallace grins and howls hello. He inches forward, pounds the walk, roars reports of weather for the middle of the night. “Know what it was at one? Eighty-seven. June, not hell we’re in, but eighty-seven. I ain’t even eighty-seven. There was a cloud across the moon at two. It rained alongside five but nothing cooled.” And the dawn was gray as soapy water. Fog lay between garages. A star, almost hidden by the morning light, fell past the Atlas stack and died near Gemini. The friend is fixed and Mr. Wallace closes, his face inflamed, his eyeballs rolling. He describes the contours of his aches, the duration, strength, and quality of every twinge, the subtle nuances of vague internal hurts. He distinguishes blunt pains from sharp, pale ones from bright, wiry from watery, morning, night. His brown teeth grin. Is it better, he discourses, to suffer when it’s hot or when it’s cold, while standing or sitting, reading or walking, young or old?
“I say it’s better to be cold. You’ll say not. I know what you’ll say. You’ll say, ‘The knuckle, now, if rapped when cold, will ring.’ I know. A cold shin on the sharp, hard edge of something — that’s a real one. I know. Never mind. Hurts are all fires. Keep you warm. Know those fellows like that fellow in a book I read about? His name was Scott. You know him? Froze. Scott. If I’d been with him, freezing, I’d of pounded on me some great sore so when I hit it I would burn all over. Keep you warm. Say, they didn’t think of that, did they? Froze. I read about it. I read a lot, except for seeing, or I would. Half an hour. I used to, all the time. My eyes burn though. Your eyes burn sometimes? Scott. Froze. Hey, you know freezing’s quiet. Ha! You know — it’s warm!”
Mr. Wallace wavers on his stick and spits. The whole street echoes with him. His friend dwindles.
Portents are next. They follow pain as pain the weather. Anyone is a friend of Mr. Wallace who will stay.
The starfall past the Atlas stack — a cruel sign. They are all bad, the signs are. Evil is above us. “Evil’s in the air we breathe or we would live forever.” Mr. Wallace draws the great word out as he’s doubtless heard his preacher. The cane rises with difficulty. The tip waves above the treetops. “There,” bellows Mr. Wallace, his jowls shaking. “There!” And he hurls the cane like a spear. “Smoke, sonny, comes out and hides the sky and poisons everything. I’ve got a cough.” His hand is tender on his chest. He taps with it. He hacks, and stumbles. Spit bubbles on the walk and spreads. The friend or friendly stranger bobs and smiles and flees while Mr. Wallace waits, expecting the return of his cane. “I can’t bend,” he almost whispers, peering at the disappearing back. His smile stays, but the corners of his mouth twitch. Wearily his eyes cross.
“Cane cane cane,” Mr. Wallace calls. His wife hurries. “Cane cane,” Mr. Wallace calls. She waves her hanky. “Cane,” he continues until it’s handed back. “Hot.” Mrs. Wallace nods and mops his brow. She settles his hat and smooths his sleeve. “You threw your cane again,” she says. Mr. Wallace grows solemn. “I tried to kill a squirrel, pumpkin.” Mrs. Wallace leads him home, her face in tears.
What a noise he makes! I thought I couldn’t stand it when I came. His puffed face frightened me. His eyes were holes I fell in. I dodged his shadow lest it cover me, and felt a fool. He’s not so old, sixty perhaps; but his eyes run, his ears ring, his teeth rot. His nose clogs. His lips pale and bleed. His knees, his hips, his neck and arms, are stiff. His feet are sore, the ankles swollen. His back, head and legs ache. His throat is raw, his chest constricted, and all his inner organs — heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, and bowels — are weak. Hands shake. His hair is falling. His flesh lies slack. His cock I vision shriveled to a string, and each breath of life he draws dies as it enters his nose and crosses his tongue. But Mr. Wallace has a strong belly. It is taut and smooth and round, like a baby’s, and anything that Mr. Wallace chooses to put into it mashes up speedily, for Mr. Wallace, although he seeps and oozes and excretes, has never thrown up in his life.
I could hear him walking. That was worst. When I raked the yard I faced in his direction and went in when I saw him coming. With all my precautions his voice would sometimes boom behind me and I would jump, afraid and furious. His moist mouth gaped. His tongue curled over his bent brown teeth. I knew what Jonah felt before the whale’s jaws latched. Mr. Wallace has no notion of the feelings he creates. I swear he stinks of fish on such occasions. I feel the oil. It’s a tactile nightmare, an olfactory dream — as if my smell and touch divided from my hearing, taste, and vision, and while I watched his mouth and listened to its greeting, fell before whales in Galilee, brine stung and bruised while the fish smell grew as it must grow in the mouth of a whale, and the heat of an exceptionally hardy belly rose around.
More and more I knew my budding world was ruined if he were free in it. As a specimen Mr. Wallace might be my pride. Glory to him in a jar. But free! Better to release the sweet moving tiger or the delicate snake, the monumental elephant. I was just a castaway to be devoured. It was bad luck and I rocked and I cursed it. Mr. Wallace spouted and I paced the porch with Ahab’s anger and his hate. Mrs. Mean wanted my attention. She passed across my vision, brilliant with energy, like the glow of a beacon. Each time my stomach churned. Her children tumbled like balls on the street, like balls escaping gloves and bats; and on the day the boy Toll raced in front of Mr. Wallace like a bolting cat and swung around a sapling like a rock at the end of a string, deadly as little David, then I saw how. Well, that’s all over now. Mr. Wallace dreads me as the others do. He inches by. He looks away. He mumbles and searches the earth with his cane. When Mr. Wallace completes his death they will wind crape around his cane and stick it in his grave. Mrs. Wallace will stand by to screech and I shall send — what shall I send? — I shall send begonias with my card. I say Good Morning, Mr. Wallace, how did you pass the night? and Mr. Wallace’s throat puffs with silence. I cannot estimate how much this pleases me. I feel I have succeeded to the idleness of God.