Collected Stories of Carson McCullers by Carson Mccullers Page A

point—pissing."
    She leaned against the frame of the closet door—pressing her cheek against the cold angle of the wood. "Sec if you can get undressed."
    "Ah—" he repeated, sitting down on the couch that she had made. His hands left his trouscr flaps and began to fumble with his belt. "All but the belt—Can't sleep with a belt buckle. Like your knees. Bo-ony."
    She thought that he would lose his balance trying to jerk out the belt all at once—(once before, she remembered, that had happened). Instead he slid the leather out slowly, strap by strap, and when he was through he placed it neatly under the bed. Then he looked up at her. The lines around his mouth were drawn down—making grey threads in the pallor of his face. His eyes looked widely up at her and for a moment she thought that he would cry. "Listen—" he said slowly, clearly.
    She heard only the labored sound of his swallowing.
    "Listen—" he repeated. And his white face sank into his hands.
    Slowly, with a rhythm not of drunkenness, his body swayed from side to side. His blue sweatcred shoulders were shaking. "Lord God," he said quietly. "How I—suffer."
    She found the strength to drag herself from the doorway, to straighten the lampshade, and switch off the light. In the darkness an arc of blue rocked before her eyes—to the movement of his swaying body. And from the bed came the sound of his shoes being dropped to the floor, the creaking of the springs as he rolled over toward the wall.
    She lay down in the darkness and pulled up the blankets—suddenly heavy and chill feeling to her fingers. As she covered his shoulders she noticed that the springs still sputtered beneath them, and that his body was quivering. "Marshall—" she whispered. "Are you cold?"
    "Those chills. One of those damn chills."
    Vaguely she thought of the missing top to the hot water bottle and the empty coffee sack in the kitchen. "Damn—" she repeated vacantly.
    His knees urged close to hers in the darkness and she felt his body contract to a shivering little ball. Tiredly she reached out for his head and drew it to her. Her fingers soothed the little hollow at the top of his neck, crept up the stiff shaved part to the soft hair at the top, moved on to his temples where again she could feel the beating there.
    "Listen—" he repeated, turning his head upward so that she could sense his breath on her throat.
    "Yes Marshall."
    His hands flexed into fists that beat tensely behind her shoulders. Then he lay so still that for a moment she felt a strange fear.
    "It's this—" he said in a voice drained of all tone. "My love for you, darling. At times it seems that—in some instant like this—it will destroy me."
    Then she felt his hands relax to cling weakly to her back, felt the chill that had been brooding in him all the evening make his body jerk with great shudders. "Yes," she breathed, pressing his hard skull to the hollow between her breasts. "Yes—" she said as soon as words and the creaking of the springs and the rank smell of smoke in the darkness had drawn back from the place where, for the moment, all things had receded.

Like That
    Even if Sis is five years older than me and eighteen we used always to be closer and have more fun together than most sisters. It was about the same with us and our brother Dan, too. In the summer we'd all go swimming together. At nights in the wintertime maybe we'd sit around the fire in the living room and play three-handed bridge or Michigan, with everybody putting up a nickel or a dime to the winner. The three of us could have more fun by ourselves than any family I know. That's the way it always was before this.
    Not that Sis was playing down to me, either. She's smart as she can be and has read more books than anybody I ever knew—even school teachers. But in High School she never did like to priss up flirty and ride around in cars with girls and pick up the boys and park at the