The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) Read Online Free PDF

there he was, her John Henry, the strongest man, black or white, in the whole damn world, crying.
    He put his head down on the bed again. Nobody in the room moved until the baby toddled over to Daddy and patted him on the ear like she wanted to play the games those two make up with her little hands and his big ears and eyes and nose. But Daddy didn’t move or say anything, if he even knew she was there, and the baby got a blank look in her eyes and walked away from Daddy and sat down, plump , on the floor across the room, staring at Daddy and the white man, back and forth, Daddy and the white man.
    Daddy got up after a while and walked very slowly across the room and got himself a drink of water at the sink. For the first time he noticed the white man in the room. “Who’s he?” he said. “Who’s he?” None of us said anything. “Who the hell’s he?” Daddy wanted to know, thunder in his throat like there always is when he’s extra mad or happy.
    The doctor said the white man was Mr Gorman, and went over to Daddy and told him something in a low voice.
    “Innocent! What’s he doing in this neighborhood then?” Daddy said, loud as before. “What’s an innocent white man doing in this neighborhood now? Answer me that!” He looked at all of us in the room and none of us that knew what the white man was doing in this neighborhood wanted to explain to Daddy. Old Gramma and the doctor and me—none of us that knew—would tell.
    “I was just passing by,” the white man said, “as they can tell you.”
    The scared way he said it almost made me laugh. Was this a white man , I asked myself. Alongside Daddy’s voice the white man’s sounded plain foolish and weak—a little old tug squeaking at a big ocean liner about the right of way. Daddy seemed to forget all about him and began asking the doctor a lot of questions about Mama in a hoarse whisper I couldn’t hear very well. Daddy’s face got harder and harder and it didn’t look like he’d ever crack a smile or shed a tear or anything soft again. Just hard, it got, hard as four spikes.
    Old Gramma came and stood by Daddy’s side and said she had called the priest when she was downstairs a while ago getting some candles. She was worried that the candles weren’t blessed ones. She opened the brown bag then, and that’s what was inside—two white candles. I didn’t know grocery stores carried them.
    Old Gramma went to her room and took down the picture of the Sacred Heart all bleeding and put it on the little table by Mama’s bed and set the candles in sticks on each side of it. She lit the candles and it made the Sacred Heart, punctured by the wreath of thorns, look bloodier than ever, and made me think of that song, “To Jesus’ Heart All Burning,” the kids sing at Our Saviour’s on Sundays.
    The white man went up to the doctor and said, “I’m a Catholic, too.” But the doctor didn’t say anything back, only nodded. He probably wasn’t one himself, I thought; not many of the race are. Our family wouldn’t be if Old Gramma and Mama didn’t come from New Orleans, where Catholics are thicker than flies or Baptists.
    Daddy got up from the table and said to the white man. “So help me God, mister, I’ll kill you in this room if my wife dies!” The baby started crying and the doctor went to Daddy’s side and turned him away from the white man, and it wasn’t hard to do because now Daddy was kind of limp and didn’t look like he remembered anything about the white man or what he said he’d do to him if Mama . . . or anything.
    “I’ll bet the priest won’t show up,” Daddy said.
    “The priest will come,” Old Gramma said. “The priest will always come when you need him; just wait.” Her old lips were praying in French.
    I hoped he would come like Old Gramma said, but I wasn’t so sure. Some of the priests weren’t much different from anybody else. They knew how to keep their necks in. Daddy said to Mama once if you only wanted to