Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

It was nice: a room with plenty of window lights. It had a heap of stuff in it too but it looked like it was used—a wall full of books and a piano and I knowed they was pictures because they was hanging on the wall and I knowed that some of the other things was sculpture but the rest of them I didn’t know what they was, made outen pieces of wood or iron or strips of tin and wires. Except that I couldn’t ask then because of the rest of the poets and painters and sculptors and musicians, since he would still have to be the host until we—him and Linda and Lawyer and Hoake and me—could slip out and go down to where the ship was; evidently a heap of folks found dreams in Grinnich Village but evidently it was a occasion when somebody married in it. And one of them wasn’t even a poet or painter or sculptor or musician or even jest a ordinary moral newspaperman but evidently a haberdasher taking Saturday evening off. Because we was barely in the room before he was not only looking at it too but rubbing it between his thumb and finger. “Allanovna,” he says.

“That’s right,” I says.

“Oklahoma?” he says. “Oil?”

“Sir?” I says.

“Oh,” he says. “Texas. Cattle then. In Texas you can choose your million between oil and cattle, right?”

“No sir,” I says, “Missippi. I sell sewing machines.”

So it was a while before Kohl finally come to me to fill my glass again.

“I understand you grew up with Linda’s mother,” he says.

“That’s right,” I says. “Did you make these?”

“These what?” he says.

“In this room,” I says.

“Oh,” he says. “Do you want to see more of them? Why?”

“I don’t know yet,” I says. “Does that matter?” So we shoved on through the folks—it had begun to take shoving by now—into a hall and then up some stairs. And this was the best of all: a loft with one whole side of the roof jest window lights—a room not jest where folks used but where somebody come off by hisself and worked. And him jest standing a little behind me, outen the way, giving me time and room both to look. Until at last he says,

“Shocked? Mad?” Until I says,

“Do I have to be shocked and mad at something jest because I never seen it before?”

“At your age, yes,” he says. “Only children can stand surprise for the pleasure of surprise. Grown people cant bear surprise unless they are promised in advance they will want to own it.”

“Maybe I aint had enough time yet,” I says.

“Take it then,” he says. So he leaned against the wall with his arms folded like a football player, with the noise of the party where he was still supposed to be host at coming up the stairs from below, while I taken my time to look: at some I did recognise and some I almost could recognise and maybe if I had time enough I would, and some I knowed I wouldn’t never quite recognise, until all of a sudden I knowed that wouldn’t matter neither, not jest to him but to me too. Because anybody can see and hear and smell and feel and taste what he expected to hear and see and feel and smell and taste, and wont nothing much notice your presence nor miss your lack. So maybe when you can see and feel and smell and hear and taste what you never expected to and hadn’t never even imagined until that moment, maybe that’s why Old Moster picked you out to be the one of the ones to be alive.

So now it was time for thatere date. I mean the one that Lawyer and Hoake had fixed up, with Hoake saying, “But what can I tell her—her husband—her friends?” and Lawyer says,

“Why do you need to tell anybody anything? I’ve attended to all that. As soon as enough of them have drunk her health, just take her by the arm and clear out. Just dont forget to be aboard the ship by eleven-thirty.” Except Hoake still tried, the two of them standing in the door ready to leave, Hoake in thatere dark expensive city suit and his derby hat in his hand, and Linda in a kind of a party dress inside her coat. And it wasn’t that they looked alike, because they didn’t. She was tall for a woman, so tall she didn’t have much shape (I mean, the kind that folks whistle at), and he wasn’t tall for a man and in fact kind of stocky. But their eyes was exactly alike. Anyhow, it seemed to me that anybody that seen them couldn’t help but know they was kin. So he still had to try it: “A old friend of her mother’s family. Her grandfather and my father may have been distantly related—” and Lawyer saying,

“All right, all right, beat it. Don’t forget the time,” and Hoake saying,