Clock Without Hands by Carson Mccullers Read Free Book Online

million dollars. Everybody was hungry in those days and everybody had lost faith. All except your great-great-grandmother. I will never forget her saying: 'It will come back, it's bound to.'"
    "But it never has," Jester said.
    "Until now—but you wait and see. It will be a New Deal for the economy of the South and benefit the nation as a whole. Even the Federal Government will be benefited."
    "How?" Jester asked.
    The Judge said calmly, "What benefits one benefits the whole. It's simple to understand; if I had a few million, I would invest, employ a lot of people and stimulate local business. And I'm just one individual to be reimbursed."
    "Another thing," Jester said. "It's been about a hundred years. And how could the money be traced?"
    The Judge's voice was triumphant. "That's the least of our worries. When the Treasury announces that Confederate money is being redeemed, the money will be found all right. Confederate bills will be cropping up in attics and barns all over the South. Cropping up all over the nation and even in Canada."
    "What good would it do to have money cropping up in Canada?"
    The Judge said with dignity: "That's just a figure of speech—a rhetorical example." The Judge looked hopefully at his grandson. "But what do you think of the legislation as a whole?"
    Jester avoided his grandfather's eyes and did not answer. And the Judge, desperate for his approval, persisted. "What, Lamb? It's the vision of a great statesman," he added more firmly. "The
Journal
has many times referred to me as a 'great statesman' and the
Courier
always speaks of me as the first citizen of Milan. Once it was written I was 'one of the fixed stars in that glorious firmament of Southern statesmen.' Don't you admit I am a great statesman?"
    The question was not only a plea for reassurance, but a desperate command for emotional annealment. Jester could not answer. For the first time he wondered if his grandfather's reasoning power had been affected by the stroke. And his heart balanced between pity and the natural instinct for separation that divides the sound from the infirm.
    The veins of age and excitement crawled in the Judge's temple and his face flushed. Only twice in his life had the Judge suffered from rejection: once when he was defeated in an election for Congress, and again when he sent a long story he had written to the
Saturday Evening Post
and it was returned to him with a form letter. The Judge could not believe this rejection. He read the story again and found it better than all the other stories in the
Post.
Then, suspecting that it had not been properly read, he glued certain pages of the manuscript together and when it was returned another time he never read a
Post
again, and never wrote another story. Now he could not believe that the separation between himself and his grandson was a reality.
    "Do you remember how, when you were a little boy, you used to call me Grandy?"
    Jester was not moved by the recollection and the tears in his grandfather's eyes irritated him. "I remember everything." He rose and stood behind the Judge's chair, but his grandfather would not get up and would not let him leave. He grasped Jester's hand and held it to his cheek. Jester stood stiff with embarrassment and his hand did not respond to the caress.
    "I never thought I'd hear a grandson of mine speak as you have done. You said you didn't see why the races shouldn't mix. Think of the logical outcome. It would lead to intermarriage. How would you like that? Would you let your sister marry a Nigra buck if you had a sister?"
    "I'm not thinking of that. I was thinking of racial justice."
    "But if your so-called 'racial justice' leads to intermarriage—as it will according to the laws of logic—would you marry a Nigra? Be truthful."
    Involuntarily, Jester was thinking of Verily and the other cooks and washwomen who had worked at home, and of Aunt Jemima of the pancake ads. His face flushed bright and his freckles darkened. He could not