My heart and my flesh

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Is God a smell or something?

Whose little girl is this?

Luce. Luce Jarvis.

She lives down the street a way.

Her own look had looked back at her out of Charlotte Bell’s look when Charlotte had spoken to give the answer. To see Charlotte then was to remember Tennessee Burden and to pluck in mind at the strange fair vapor that gathered before Charlotte’s darkness and over her sadness, Tennie Burden, her bright hair easily curled over her head. She would sit in her door all day, the gallery with its high pillars running close to the roadway, and she would stop any who passed to talk a little. The cushions at her feet were soft and warm. She would stop any who passed, even Moll Peters, even Uncle Nelse, even Stiggins, the small yellow boy who lived in the livery stable.

Questioning the question, the hour passed and was eaten away entirely when the march began again. “To the tap of the drum here we come come come” spread through the entire air now. Luce looked at Theodosia as she marched and looked into her pride in walking first and her pride again in the feel of the drumming of the music, her feet set down rightly upon the rhythm. She looked at her. She was the daughter of Charlotte Bell and Horace. Her hair was brown with an over-tint of red that showed at the sides where the rolls were turned up to the light and showed again where the ends of the braid sprayed out beyond the ribbon below her shoulders and down her back. She spread a trail of herself down the platform as she went proudly first, the other girls walking on her steps, setting feet down where she guided, she leaving a comet-train of herself behind to be entered, walked into, known by the knower, the chronicler.

The boy who lived in the livery stable was named Stiggins, a yellow boy who slept somewhere in the stable in the straw. If travelers came long after night they were obliged to pound on the door and cry out for admittance for their horses, and then the night man would send Stiggins down to open the door. The men who worked at the stable gave Stiggins bits of money from time to time. When there was not much to do the hostlers would tease Stiggins by locking him into the loft or the old harness closet or by holding him under the spout of the pump. Or they would crack a whip under his knees to make him jump up high to avoid the keen sting of the whip-snapper. Sometimes when the proprietor was gone all day this sport went on for hours until Stiggins would cry, but if he cried he was unfailingly locked into the loft or the harness closet. He seemed happiest on court day when there was a great crowd in town and many horses to care for. Everybody was busy then, calling him to do this or to do that, speaking quickly, even cheerily. “Here, Stig, take this filly and hurry back with fifty-four. Twenty-two wants feed, but sixteen just a hitch.”

Stiggins was not, in fact, a name; some of the men had given it to him one day when he was leaping to escape the whip. His mother was Dolly Brown, a half-witted negress who lived in the alley behind the jail, and his father had been some white man. Luce saw him going about, a small boy, as small as herself; and he belonged to the stable. He was not, she assumed, a real being, and it did not matter what one did to him. Push him into the stall where the horse manure was thrown, make him pump all morning at the broken pump, tear a bigger hole in his old ragged breeches, or make him leap to avoid the whip, it was no matter. He was a half-wit; he could never learn; he was not real. But Luce was often sorry for Stig. She had inferred that he was not a real creature, and this pity which she had was, then, sentimental. Even she felt that it must be somehow false and unnecessary, pretty in some way, as if one would be sorry for a hog because it lay in the mire. His mouth was loose and easy to drip. He would do anything anyone told him to do, or once in a while, reversed, he would do nothing anyone told him to do. He was not real, was scarcely there at all, was not a being; but often when he was tormented until he cried, or when he was locked into the filthy dark of the old harness closet, or when his clothes were torn anew until he cringed under some sort of shame that, curiously enough, he seemed to have about him, Luce would feel the approach of her own tears and a hurt would gather in her breast and spread as a fog through her members, through the substance of the earth and the air. She would wander about, unable to discover the cause, unable to discern the result or resolve it to any meanings. At the end of her confusion she would think again of Mome with richer ecstasy.

The streets of Mome were the streets of Anneville, running right and left, in and out, as she knew and saw, but over these—Hill Street, Main Street, Jackson Street, Simon Street, Tucker Lane, Crabtree Lane—lay the great city of Mome, reaching out for miles and adding other streets and avenues, Chester, Dover, Cowslip, Bangor, Elm, Pine, Walnut, Vine, and many more, running out among fair parks and lovely gardens. Instead of the low shops on Main Street there arose great office buildings and spires and towers where people fluttered by, quick in their steps, beautiful, alert. On Jackson Street in Anneville grew great poplar trees under which men sat all day telling slow stories they had told over and over before, old men grown epic with age and fatalism. Their refrains recurring were, “Ain’t that always the way!... No sooner you get ... but along comes a place to spend it.... Looks like as soon as a man gets on his feet.... Always the way....” They spoke without malice, interspersing their wisdom with long slow happenings. “Did ever you know hit to fail?... Would a man ever strike hit on his corn and his wheat in one and the same year?... But of course it had to happen that way.... About the time Luke got outen that-there fix here a note he owed at the bank fell due, but it so happened that corn turned out right good that year and he tided over....” These were the leisured and the old setting a summary on the town. In the square the prisoners from the jail worked on the rock pile and thus gave a meager drama to the slow scene. But over this lay Jackson Street in Mome, as one might read in a book, tall offices and great palaces where courts were held, where the great went about the great business of the world, the great business of men. Over the cobbler’s shop stood a palace where some unguessed thing transpired. Coincident with Rusty Fuller’s harness shop, having its same contours enhanced and made splendid in size, stood a white tower with a top that shone high in the sunlight and here some important deed not yet realized or named had befallen and would continue to befall. Beyond stood the library, pillars of marble and cupola of gold, and inside one could have all the books of the world for the asking. Great tiers of books, bound in brown or gold or blue, stood on shelves, the wonders of all ages and the knowledge of all time, future and past. One had only to go inside the wide marble doors and nothing would be denied, the reason for this or that and the time of all things being there set down in books and explained, and there were all beautiful stories and songs.

With a swift effort she could take the whole library with all its wisdom into her heart, a swift ecstasy. She would think of Mome as she worked indoors, a consolation. Or she would think of Mome again as she hurried across the pasture among the low weeds, going to gather blackberries on the hill. The sudden appearance of a tender little sickle moon up in the western sky—and Mome. A report of a thief, an adventurer, a disaster, a bold deed, a shame, a carnival, and, enhanced, it enriched itself in Mome, it grew there to heroic proportions. Turning swiftly in at the small gate, returning from the well, the day being slow, a duplicate of days past, when the street was hot and fly-ridden and the trash from the stores littered the roadway, she could hang her head far to one side and look down the street toward the court-house and the jail and see a street in Mome where marble causeways ran up to marble stairs and tall white walls gave out onto high balconies, cool and fresh in a sweet wind, the people eager and exact and clear, intent with being.