A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates
She opened the door. Insects were swirling around his headlights.
“You want money to buy another purse?” he said.
“No.”
“I thought that's maybe what you wanted.”
Clara had never thought of that. She felt hot and ashamed. After a moment the man said slowly, “Look, if you want to see me before I leave—come early tomorrow. But you better stay away.”
She nodded and ran down the lane.
Her brain was pounding with terror. She had never done anything like this, had never gone so far. She felt driven by the same God that had possessed the minister, making his voice shrill and furious at once, making his legs jerk him about on that platform. God had torn out of that man's mouth sobs and groans of desperation; Clara understood what he must have felt.
She ran along the big low building until she came to their place. Then she stopped. The door was open and the lights were on. “Is she out there?” her father's voice said. Clara paused, outside the circle of light, then came forward. Carleton was sitting inside, on the end of his cot. Clara saw Nancy's face. Roosevelt and Rodwell were hiding behind her. Carleton got to his feet and came to the doorway. He walked so carefully that she knew he was drunk.
“Somebody seen you where you shouldn't of been,” he said. His face was ugly. Clara did not move. She saw his arm draw back even before he knew what he was going to do.
“Bitch just like your mother!” he said.
He began to beat her. Inside, Nancy shrieked for help. Clara tried to break away but could not because he was holding her. Lights came on. Someone yelled out. Carleton was swearing at her, words she had heard all her life but had never understood, and now she understood them all—they were to show hate, to show that someone wanted to kill you. Then Carleton let her go. He stumbled backward and she saw that two men were holding on to him. “They want to get up an' leave, they don't stay home, they run off—the bitches—just like their mother,” Carleton shouted. “They don't stay home but run off ! Bitches don't love nobody— Clara don't give a damn, my Clara—” He began to sob. Someone shook his shoulders to quiet him down.
“You let that girl alone tonight, you hear?” a man said.
“She run off an'— Dirty filthy bitch like all of them—”
“Walpole, are you goin to let her alone?”
They got him inside and on the cot. He fell asleep almost at once, as soon as his head was down. Clara rubbed her face and saw that it was bleeding. She looked at Nancy just once and then quit looking. She knew that Nancy had been in the tavern somewhere, that Nancy was the one who'd seen her, but she did not care. The blood that ran into her mouth was the only real thing: she could taste that. Roosevelt and Rodwell, her brothers, were nothing to her. Let them look. Let them snicker. Nancy was nothing. Her father, snoring damply on the bed, his face flushed and his shirt unbut-toned to show his sunken chest and his soft, spreading stomach, was real to her now but not for long.
The neighbors went back to bed. Nancy turned off the light. They lay in the dark and listened to Carleton snore, and then everyone went to sleep except Clara. She lay still and thought. It was as if a great cooling breeze had been blowing toward her for years and now it had overtaken her and was going to carry her with it. That was all.
10
Carleton woke up. Someone was shouting in his face.
“What's wrong with you? Get up!”
He opened his eyes to see a strange woman shouting down at him. She had a round leathery face with exaggerated eyes that could have been anyone's—a man's or a woman's.
“How long are you goin to lay there? Goddamn you! Your darling little daughter is run off and we got to get to work—it's goin on six, what the hell's wrong with you?”
He pushed Nancy away and sat up. His eyes darted around the room.
“We got to get out there before the bus leaves,” Nancy said viciously. “I fed the kids while you laid there snorin—what's wrong with you these days? Can't take a little drinkin no more? It ain't like you worked those two days—what a big joke! Get all the way out there an' the man tells you poor bastards it's all off—”
Carleton got to his feet. He was wearing his clothes from yesterday; his shoes were still on. Inside his stomach a hard knot was forming. He stood with his shoulders hunched and his head bowed, listening and not listening to Nancy, paying close attention to the knot in his stomach. It was familiar but might get out of hand yet. He was getting ready to think about Clara.
“You all right?” Nancy said.
She put one arm around him. He did not move. “You look kinda sick,” she said. Carleton pushed her gently away. He did not want to move fast for fear he would get something into motion he could not stop. “Yeah—like I said about Clara—she ran off,” Nancy said. She had a whining, defensive voice. “You shouldn't of hit her like that, she ain't a bad kid. You know it. I don't blame her for runnin off, I run off myself, I wasn't goin to take none of that crap from nobody—”
Carleton bent over the basin and splashed cold water onto his face. It was strange, but he could feel the water running down the outside of his skin as if it were far away from him, while he himself contemplated it from somewhere deep inside.
“We better get out there. It's goin to be hot today,” Nancy said. His silence made her nervous; she was speaking almost quietly now. “Honey, are you all right?”
The ball in his stomach threatened him for an instant but he fought it down. He didn't want to throw up and have that taste in his mouth. The water on his face made his skin itch and he watched his hand come up to rub it. He watched his fingers scratch at his skin, then he forgot about scratching and stood with one hand up to his face in a pose of abstract thinking. His brain was just now waking up. It told him harshly that he had a lot of thinking to do—he had to get things sorted out. For weeks, months, years he had been letting things accumulate. If he did not get them straight and understand them he would never be able to get free of them and begin a new life.
“Is the baby all right?” he said.
“Sure.” Nancy sounded touched by this.
“How much money do you have?”
“What?”
“How much money?”
“You mean—right now?”
“I gave you three dollars Friday.”
“I—I had to buy food—”
“Here. Take this.” He reached deep in his pocket and took out a soiled ball of material that might have been silk. He unwrapped it and gave her a few dollars from it; he did not notice how she was staring at him. She might have been waiting for him to hit her, so white and strained was her face. “That should help, then you'll make somethin today. Twelve or fifteen today, you an' the kids.”
“Where are you goin?”
He put the rest of the money back in his pocket. At the mirror he crouched so that he could see his face. The knot in his stomach grew tighter: that did not seem to be his face staring helplessly back out at him. “Christ,” he said. He rubbed his eyes, his mouth. Everything was stale from his drunken sleep. An image came to him of Clara cringing back from his hands—but he shook it away. He knew that he would have a lot to shake out of his mind before he could stop thinking.
“Honey, are you goin after her? Carleton?”
He left the room and stepped into the bright, innocent sunlight, making a face. He might have been walking past a stranger who was pleading with him, pulling at his arm. Nancy said, frightened, “Where the hell will you look? Carleton? I mean—where are you goin? She'll be back! You don't want to make no trouble with people from town—”
Carleton tucked his shirt into his trousers, raising his aching shoulders as high as he could. His two boys were waiting patiently outside. They looked at him. He glanced at them as he might have glanced at two strange boys, one with a lowered, pinkish head and the other with a careful blank face that was poised upon a body about to break into a run at any second. They both had Carleton's look—a long, narrow, thin face—and
She followed him along the lane, tugging at his arm. “Look, she'll be back. Clara likes you real well—she'll be back—she only took a few things, an' no money—”
She followed him out to the road. Carleton pushed her back, still without looking at her. He walked in a precarious falling motion forward, as if he were listening to something ahead of him. Nancy began to cry. She cried loudly. As he walked toward town he heard her swearing at him, shrieks of words that flew right by his head and did not hurt him. “I'll kill that baby! That goddamn dirty baby!” she screamed.
He listened to her screaming, then he stopped hearing her. He seemed to pass beyond her screaming and beyond her life with no more effort than he might have walked past a crazy woman on the road.
When he reached town he was soaked with sweat. A dusty clock in a gas station said four-thirty but he knew from the sun that it was around six. The town had not yet gotten out of bed, only a few places were open. He walked along the road until there were some dirt paths and he walked on them, up the incline to the railroad tracks and then down on the other side. There were lots of weeds growing by the tracks and many junked and rusting cars and parts. On the other side of the tracks he saw a restaurant that was open. He went inside and asked about Clara. A few truck drivers were sitting at the counter. They watched him closely, as if there were something in his voice that he himself did not know about. “I did see a girl like that last night,” the waitress said. She had high-piled brown hair and a very young face; as she spoke to Carleton the freckles around her nose seemed to get darker, showing how young she was. She was almost as young as Clara. Carleton waited, listening to her with his shoulders back and straight even though they ached. He did not seem surprised that the first person he should ask would have seen Clara. The girl talked earnestly, about that other, lost girl she'd seen, about her long blond hair and blue dress and even a yellow purse—she was excited to think she could remember so much and looked up at Carleton as if awaiting praise for so much information. “Who was she with? Who was he?” Carleton asked, cutting her off. The girl gave a name Carleton had never heard before, but he knew he would not forget it. “Where does he live?” he said patiently, again cutting her off. She told him. It was necessary for her to come out from behind the counter, pretending to be a little frightened, glancing at the truck drivers as she spoke to Carleton. She went to the door and even outside with him, pointing down the street.
He walked off, not hurrying. He did not even want to hurry; it wasn't to maintain his pride that he walked slowly. It was just that he knew he had to go a certain distance before he allowed that hard ball in his stomach to take over.
The house was a nice little house on a side street. In the front yard were beds of flowers that confused him—he had not expected flowers. But when the door opened and a middle-aged woman stared up at him, her face drawn and pale and her hair untidy, he was not surprised. “Is your son home?” he said politely. She clutched a robe of some kind around her. It smelled like mothballs. He could sense her thinking of something to say and then forgetting it because she was so upset. He waited while she went to get her son. Standing on the porch, inside the veranda that was so nicely shaded with big round leaves, he did not even bother to glance in the house, through the door she'd left ajar. He had no interest in anything but groping his way to Clara through a number of people, and those people could interest him only faintly. He might have felt excitement at meeting the boy, but he seemed to know that this was too fast, too easy; it would take more time than this.
The woman was gone quite a while. It might have been ten minutes. Then Carleton began to hear footsteps. They were on a stairway, heavy and reluctant. Someone was whispering, then there was silence. A young man emerged out of the dimness of the house and blinked at Carleton. “You know anything about my daughter?” Carleton said. The boy wore baggy yellow pajamas. At first he stammered and swallowed, he knew nothing. Then Carleton asked him again. He made a hissing sound that was a laugh, raised his eyebrows, scratched his head. “There was someone, I guess,” he said slowly. “She was with this guy who comes here once in a while—he don't live here—mixed up with whiskey or somethin—that's what somebody said—I—”
“Where's he stayin?”
“He goes to this one place when he comes in town,” the boy said. He had the waitress's sincere look. He stared right into Carleton's eyes as if the two of them were friends involved in a mutual problem. “Yeah. Yes. Over on the other side of town, a big dirty house where the woman has ten kids—she rents rooms—there's one like her in every town—”
Carleton made a gesture that he hadn't meant to be threatening, but the boy stammered and was silent. “Thanks,” Carleton said.
When he got to the house he could feel sweat running off him. On the big veranda with its peeling paint and broken boards he talked to a youthful woman with a ruined, blemished face. She kept staring off over his shoulder as if every word he said pained her. “We need money here,” she said, whining, “we don't have nothin to do with anybody who—”
“Where did he go?”
“He had that room two other times he was in town,” she said. “He never made no trouble, I liked him. His business was his own business.”
“Where did he go?”
She fumbled with the neck of her dress. Her lower lip protruded in thought, then relaxed. “You can look in his room,” she said. “I ain't fixed it up yet. I heard him drive out last night, real late—I was in bed—”
Behind her a man was shouting something. The woman stared over Carleton's shoulder as if the voice were coming from a great distance. Then she turned sharply and yelled back through the screen door: “You shut your mouth an' keep it shut!” When she turned back to Carleton her face was already composed and she was moving. They went down the rickety steps and around to the back of the house. In the soft morning light of this land everything was softened by moisture, even the rotting wood of the house. There was a pile of lumber around the corner, some of it propped up against the house as if children had been playing with it. Carleton and the woman walked in the driveway, which was rutted and wet. Two cars were parked in it, at angles. One of the cars looked as if it had been there for quite a while. Carleton thought he could get it going, maybe, if it was his own car. The only trouble would be getting it out of that mud.
She showed him the room. A flood of sunlight fell onto the bare floor and partly onto the bed. Carleton looked around. The very bareness of the room satisfied him. He knew it was still too soon to find her. “Where does he go after he leaves here?” he said.
“Why, he drives to Savannah. I think. To Savannah maybe,” she said pleasantly, as if offering Carleton a gift. “I don't know why I know that.…”
“What does he look like?” Carleton said. His eyes moved slowly around the room. He saw a film of dirt on the window. The room was so empty he might get lost in it, somehow fall in its secret silence and be unable to get out. He kept looking around as the woman described that man, again pleasantly, like the young man and the waitress leaning a little toward him as if about to offer him some of their energy as well as their truthfulness. When she stopped, he felt his mind jerk like a muscle. He jumped forward and began tearing the bedclothes off.
“Here,” the woman said nervously, “you don't want to get hot this early in the day—”
When he was outside again he felt better. At first the woman did not want to sell him that car because the kids played in it, and because the man who owned it might be coming back someday; her forehead creased with honesty. Carleton had the eerie, unreal feeling that this morning everyone was sympathetic with him as they had never been before in his life; it might have been that they believed his life was over. But he took out his money and counted it patiently. “Well, maybe you got a hand with cars,” the woman said, looking at his money. “It'll maybe start an' maybe won't.” Ca
It took Carleton a while to get the motor started. A small crowd had gathered by the time he backed the sputtering car out of the rutted driveway. A mile away was a gas station, he turned the shuddering car into it where a bald-headed boy was standing staring at him with an amazed smile as if he'd been waiting for him, Carleton Walpole. The boy stared at the car as if trying to place it. He moved slowly with the hose, filling Carleton's gas tank. Carleton asked, “Which way to Savannah?” and the boy said some words in a quick mumble Carleton didn't catch, and went to fetch him a road map. Carleton opened the damn map that was so large he could hardly see it and his heart lurched at the challenge it was: an infinity of lines of differing, coded colors and small-print names of towns, cities, counties, rivers. Carleton laughed, an angry laugh. All he needed now was his eyes going bad: old-man eyes.
“This'll do just fine. I thank you.”
There was a river he was crossing on a high bridge with an open wire floor through which you could see the water below and the bridge was vibrating and humming like an electric chair as the current was thrown: his eyes took in a name that was Indian-sounding ending in -oochi but he had no idea what it meant. Many times he'd crossed the Mississippi River but he didn't believe this was the Mississippi for it wasn't so wide, and he was in another part of the country—wasn't he? Sunlight flashing on the water below like flame.
Didn't believe in God, it was all a crock of shit, yet God might be laughing at him now. Seek and ye shall find. He was seeking her, but he had not found her. Yet. Because the sun had shifted in the sky and was assaulting his aching eyes from another, new angle.