Clock Without Hands by Carson Mccullers Read Free Book Online Page B

a woman come out of the house and he watched her. She was an ordinary woman wearing a blue dress and with her lips gummed up with lipstick. He should have been passionate. But as she glanced at him casually, the shame of his secret defeat made him draw up one foot against the other leg and stand stricken until the woman turned away. Then he ran all the six blocks to his house and flung himself on the same bed where he lay now.
    No, he had no passion, but he had had love. Sometimes, for a day, a week, a month, once for a whole year. The one year's love was for Ted Hopkins who was the best all-around athlete in the school. Jester would seek Ted's eyes in the corridor and, although his pulses pounded, they only spoke to each other twice in that year.
    One time was when they entered the vestibule together on a raining day and Ted said, "It's foul weather."
    Jester responded in a faint voice, "Foul."
    The other conversation was longer and less casual but completely humiliating. Because Jester loved Ted, he wanted more than anything to give him a gift and impress himself upon him. In the beginning of the football season, he saw in a jeweler's a little golden football. He bought this but it took him four days to give it to Ted. They had to be alone for him to give it and after days of following, they met in the locker room in Ted's section. Jester held out the football with a trembling hand and Ted asked, "What's this?" Jester knew somehow, someway, he had made a mistake. Hurriedly, he explained, "I found it."
    "Why do you want to give it to me?"
    Jester was dizzy with shame. "Just because I don't have any use for it and I thought I would give it to you."
    As Ted's blue eyes looked mockingly and suspiciously, Jester blushed the warm painful blush of the very fair and his freckles darkened.
    "Well thanks," Ted said, and put the gold football in his trousers pocket.
    Ted was the son of an army officer who was stationed in a town fifteen miles from Milan, so this love was shadowed by the thought that his father would be transferred. And his feelings, furtive and secret as they were, were intensified by the menace of separation and the aura of distance and adventure.
    Jester avoided Ted after the football episode and afterward he could never think about football or the words "foul weather" without a cringing shame.
    He loved, too, Miss Pafford who taught English and wore bangs but put on no lipstick. Lipstick was repulsive to Jester, and he could not understand how anyone could kiss a woman who wore gummy smeary lipstick. But since nearly all girls and women wore lipstick, Jester's loves were severely limited.
    Hot, blank and formless, the afternoon stretched ahead of him. And since Sunday afternoons are the longest afternoons of all, Jester went to the airport and did not come back until suppertime. After supper, he still felt blank, depressed. He went to his room and flung himself on his bed as he had done after dinner.
    As he lay there sweating and still unsolaced, a sudden spasm lifted him. He was hearing from far away a tune played on the piano and a dark voice singing, although what the tune was or where it was coming from he did not know. Jester raised up on his elbow, listening and looking into the night. It was a blues tune, voluptuous and grieving. The music came from the lane behind the Judge's property where Negroes lived. As the boy listened the jazz sadness blossomed and was left unshattered.
    Jester got up and went downstairs. His grandfather was in the library and he slipped into the night unnoticed. The music came from the third house in the lane, and when he knocked and knocked again the music stopped and the door was opened.
    He had not prepared himself for what he would say, and he stood speechless in the doorway, knowing only that something overwhelming was about to happen to him. He faced for the first time the Negro with the blue eyes and, facing him, he trembled. The music still throbbed in his body and Jester