The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: Part Two: Chapters 6–11

There was only one essay worthy of real consideration. Yet this paper was so childish and ill-advised that it would hardly be prudent to confer upon it the award.

There was only one essay worthy of real consideration. Yet this paper was so childish and ill-advised that it would hardly be prudent to confer upon it the award.

A woman hushed a fretful baby with a pacifier.

‘We will save ourselves. But not by prayers of mourning. Not by indolence or strong drink. Not by the pleasures of the body or by ignorance. Not by submission and humbleness. But by pride. By dignity. By becoming hard and strong. We must build strength for our real true purpose.’

He stood in the vestibule saying good-bye.

‘1920—calcif. of lymph glands—very pronounced thickening of hili. Lesions arrested—duties resumed. 1937—lesion reopened—X-ray shows—’

She was slumped over and her face was dolorous.

He rambled through the dense neighborhoods along the river that were more squalid than ever since the mills had been slack this winter.

There was a fervid outbreak of new beliefs. A young man who had worked at the dye vats in a mill claimed suddenly that a great holy power had come in him.

A family of Negroes moved into the end house on one of the most dismal streets, and this caused so much indignation that the house was burned and the black man beaten by his neighbors.

The merchants along the main street claimed he had received a large legacy and was a very rich man.

It was whispered in one browbeaten textile union that the mute was an organizer for the C.I.O.

The big Greek sat up in bed and his round face was dismal and reproachful.

The four people had been coming to his rooms now for more than seven months. They never came together—always alone. And invariably he met them at the door with a cordial smile.

Then suddenly there was a ferment. In the upheaval the steps collapsed and he felt himself falling downward.

The splendor of his friend’s raiment startled him. On various occasions he had sent him each article of the outfit, but he had not imagined how they would look when all combined.

Singer continued to laugh riotously until his breath was gone and his fingers trembled.

His smile faded and he kicked contemptuously at the blanket.

In the battling tumult of voices he alone was silent.

A glassed case in the corner held the curios he had collected—specimens of butterflies, a rare arrowhead, a curious rock shaped like a human profile.

The smell mingled with his slow ruminations. The sense of the past grew in him.

Customers lolled at the tables and there were the smell of tobacco and the rustle of newspaper.

Baby bridled fretfully. ‘Hello to Unca Biff Hon,’ she sassed.

She won’t practice her elocution—she won’t do a thing.

Biff stored this meager information neatly in his mind to be thought over later when he was alone.

The little girl like Mick (or Baby?) at that age. Round cheeks and gray eyes and flaxen hair.

He plucked a few chords on his mandolin and started a rollicking cowboy song.

The restaurant was in a hubbub.

He smiled genially to young Harry and settled himself behind the cash register.

The bowl of fruit in the window was a genteel, artistic display.

To conduct the orchestra she would wear either a real man’s evening suit or else a red dress spangled with rhinestones.

‘It was a terrible transgression. A moral wrong.’

The nights were torrid as in midsummer.

He pressed his hand to his chin to steady himself, but the obstinate trembling was difficult to control.

The bleak morning light made the windows gray. Outside it was still raining.

His thick lips worked soundlessly for a moment before he gained his poise.

He did not know where he could find the judge’s office, so he wandered uncertainly through the building, looking at the placards on the doors.

So the white man said, ‘What you want, Reverend?’
The familiar joking title nettled him.

His sense of prudence told him to go away and return later in the afternoon when the sheriff was not there. All of his life he had been circumspect in his dealings with such people.

The icy cell was permeated with a rotten odor.