The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: Part Two: Chapters 12–15 & Part Three

Child of adversity, I smell the sinful stink of beer on thy breath.

Jake rolled up his eyes and made a slow pious sign in the air.

The crowd took sides and there was a bedlam of noise.

Sometimes Patterson did not notice him until he had been in the trailer for several minutes; he would be staring at the cards, sunk in a stupor.

The restlessness that had caused him to sob and bite his nails only a few months before seemed to have gone. And yet beneath his inertia Jake felt the old tension.

He stared morosely out of his window.

The mosquitoes from a fetid stream that ran through this part of the town buzzed in the room.

Two grizzled old men sat down on a bench by the stove.

First a tall boy dressed in a linen suit and gilded shoes entered the room with a sack in his arms.

And without doubt as members of the colored race here in this free country of America we are anxious to do our part toward extending amicable relationships.

‘And it behooves us to strive with care and not endanger this amicable relationship already established. Then by gradual means a better condition will come about.’

‘What kind of an accident?’
‘A bad one. A deplorable one.’

He walked with cumbersome caution to one of the straight white chairs and seated himself.

There are corporations worth billions of dollars—and hundreds of thousands of people who don’t get to eat. And here in these thirteen states the exploitation of human beings is so that—that it’s a thing you got to take in with your own eyes.

The average wage of a worker on a tenant farm is only seventy-three dollars per year. And mind you, that’s the average! The wages of sharecroppers run from thirty-five to ninety dollars per person.

In the village is one huge brick mill and maybe four or five hundred shanties. The houses aren’t fit for human beings to live in.

And if wholesale and dramatic robbery of money and goods has not taken place here as in Germany, it is simply because the Negro has never been allowed to accrue wealth in the first place.

And if wholesale and dramatic robbery of money and goods has not taken place here as in Germany, it is simply because the Negro has never been allowed to accrue wealth in the first place.

‘The history of my people will be commensurate with the interminable history of the Jew—only bloodier and more violent. Like a certain species of sea gull. If you capture one of the birds and tie a red string of twine around his leg the rest of the flock will peck him to death.’

‘But—’
'But, nothing,’ said Doctor Copeland didactically. ‘The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.’

Jake looked at him once before, sobbing with violence, he rushed headlong from the room.

The journey was a long one. For, although the distance between them was something less than two hundred miles, the train meandered to points far out of the way and stopped for long hours at certain stations during the night.

The nature of this quarrel was hopelessly confused in his mind—but each of them had on several occasions broken out into a bitter tirade against the other, the absent one.

He had agreed with each of them in turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not know.

And farther, a long way south of the town, the cypress swamps—with the gnarled roots of the trees writhing down into the brackish waters, where the gray, tattered moss trailed from the branches, where tropical water flowers blossomed in dankness and gloom.

And farther, a long way south of the town, the cypress swamps—with the gnarled roots of the trees writhing down into the brackish waters, where the gray, tattered moss trailed from the branches, where tropical water flowers blossomed in dankness and gloom.

He leaned back in his seat and kept desultory account of all that went on around him.

He idled in the barber shop and purchased a few trifles at the ten-cent store.

His head was still inclined to one side and his glance was oblique.

Other voices called wordless in his heart. The voice of Jesus and of John Brown. The voice of the great Spinoza and of Karl Marx. The calling voices of all those who had fought and to whom it had been vouchsafed to complete their missions.

‘Yes, Benedict Mady, I right glad to have you with us again. I been waiting to ask you about this peculiar feeling in my right foot. A queer feeling like my foot gone to sleep. I taken 666 and rubbed it with liniment. I hoping you will find me a good treatment.’

At the corner of the next block he ran into Simms. The old codger was sitting on a box with his Bible on his knees.

‘Come, all ye disconsolate and sore of heart. Lay down your sins and troubles before the blessed feet of Him who died to save you...’

It is alleged that the disturbance was caused by labor agitation, as papers of a subversive nature were found on and about the site of disturbance.

On either side there were rows of dilapidated two-room houses. In the cramped back yards were rotted privies and lines of torn, smoky rags hung out to dry. For two miles there was not one sight of comfort or space or cleanliness.

A window of fresh summer flowers—that would be good. His eyes were closed as he imagined how it could be arranged. A foundation of the tea olive strewn over the bottom, cool and green.

Number one down was a word for beggar, beginning with m and nine letters long. Mendicant.

Biff stood transfixed, lost in his meditations.

For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor.

And how could this terror throttle him like this when he didn’t even know what caused it?