‘And if you’re ‘specially good,’ Aunt Tildy declares, setting her coffee-cup to one side, ‘I’ll give you a little treat.’
‘What’s that?’ visitors will ask.
‘This,’ says Auntie, pleased with her little uniqueness, her little joke.
Then with modest moves of her fingers she will unfasten the white lace at her neck and chest and for a brief moment show what lies beneath.
The long blue scar where the autopsy was neatly sewn together.
‘Not bad sewin’ for a man,’ she allows. ‘Oh, some more coffee? There.’
The Dead Man
‘THAT’S the man, right over there,’ said Mrs. Ribmoll, nodding across the street. ‘See that man perched on the tar barrel afront Mr. Jenkens’s store? Well, that’s him. They call him Odd Martin.’
‘The one that says he’s dead?’ cried Arthur.
Mrs. Ribmoll nodded. ‘Crazy as a weasel down a chimney. Carries on firm about how he’s been dead since the Flood and nobody appreciates it.’
‘I see him sitting there every day,’ cried Arthur.
‘Oh, yes, he sits there, he does. Sits there and stares at nothing. I say it’s a crying shame they don’t throw him in jail!’
Arthur made a face at the man. ‘Yah!’
‘Never mind, he won’t notice you. Most uncivil man I ever seen. Nothing pleases him.’ She yanked Arthur’s arm. ‘Come on, sonny, we got shopping to do.’
They walked on up the street past the barber shop. In the window, after they’d gone by, stood Mr. Simpson, snipping his blue shears and chewing his tasteless gum. He squinted thoughtfully out through the fly-specked glass, looking at the man sitting over there on the tar barrel.
‘I figure the best thing could happen to Odd Martin would be to get married,’ he figured. His eyes glinted slyly. Over his shoulder he looked at his manicurist, Miss Weldon, who was busy burnishing the scraggly fingernails of a farmer named Gilpatrick. Miss Weldon, at this suggestion, did not look up. She had heard it often. They were always ragging her about Odd Martin.
Mr. Simpson walked back and started work on Gilpatrick’s dusty hair again. Gilpatrick laughed softly. ‘What woman would marry Odd? Sometimes I almost believe he is dead. He’s got an awful odour to him.’
Miss Weldon looked up at Mr. Gilpatrick’s face and carefully cut his finger with one of her little scalpels. ‘Gol darn it!’ He jumped. ‘Watch what you’re doin’, woman!’
Miss Weldon looked at him with calm little blue eyes in a small white face. Her hair was mouse-brown; she wore no makeup and talked to no one most of the time.
Mr. Simpson cackled and snicked his blue steel shears. ‘Hope, hope, hope!’ he laughed like that. ‘Miss Weldon, she knows what she’s doin’, Gilpatrick. Just you be careful, Miss Weldon, he give a bottle of eau de cologne to Odd Martin last Christmas. It helped cover up his smell.’
Miss Weldon laid down her instruments.
‘Sorry, Miss Weldon,’ apologized Mr. Simpson. ‘I won’t say no more.’
Reluctantly, she took up her instruments again.
‘Hey!’ cried one of the four other men waiting in the shop. ‘There he goes again!’ Mr. Simpson whirled, almost taking Gilpatrick’s pink ear with him in his shears. ‘Come look, boys!’
Across the street the sheriff stepped out of his office door just then and he saw it happen, too. He saw what Odd Martin was doing.
Everybody came running from all the little stores.
The sheriff walked over and looked down into the gutter.
‘Come on, now, Odd Martin, come on now,’ he shouted. He poked down into the gutter with his shiny black boot-tip. ‘Come on, get up! You’re not dead. You’re good as me. You’ll catch your death of cold there with all them gum wrappers and cigar butts. Come on, get up!’
Mr. Simpson arrived on the scene and looked at Odd Martin lying there. ‘He looks like a bottle a milk.’
‘He’s takin’ up valuable parkin’ space for cars, this bein’ Friday mornin’,’ whined the sheriff. ‘And lots of people needin’ the area. Here now, Odd! Hmm. Well. . . give me a hand here, boys.’
They lifted the body up on to the sidewalk.
‘Let him stay here,’ declared the sheriff, jostling around in his boots. ‘Just let him stay till he gets tired of layin’. He’s done this a million times before. Likes the publicity. Vamoose, you kids!’
He sent a bunch of children skipping ahead of his cheek of tobacco.
Back in the barber shop, Simpson looked around. ‘Where’s Miss Weldon? Unh.’ He looked through the window. ‘There she is, brushing him off again, while he lies there. Fixing his coat, buttoning it up. Here she comes back. Don’t nobody fun with her, she resents it.’
The barber clock said twelve and then one and then two and then three. Mr. Simpson kept track of it. ‘I make you a bet that Odd Martin lies over there till four o’clock,’ he said.
Someone else said, ‘I’ll bet he’s there until four-thirty.’
‘Last time — ‘ a snickering of the shears ‘ — he was there five hours. Nice warm day today. He may snooze there until six. I’ll say six. Let’s see your money, gents!’
The money was put on the shelf by the hair-ointments.
One of the younger men shaved a stick with his penknife. ‘It’s sorta funny how we joke about Odd. Sometimes I wonder if we ain’t really just scared of him, inside us. I mean, we won’t let ourselves believe he’s really dead. We don’t dare believe it. We’d never get over it if we knew. So we make him a kinda joke. We let him lay around. He don’t hurt nobody. He’s just there. But I notice old Sawbones Hudson’s never really touched Odd’s heart with his stethoscope. Scared of what he’d find, I bet.’
‘Scared of what he’d find!’ Laughter. Simpson laughed and snished his shears. Two men with crusty beards laughed, a little too loud. The laughter didn’t last long. ‘Great one for jokin’, you you are!’ they all said, slapping their gaunt knees.
Miss Weldon, she went on manicuring her clients.
‘He’s gettin’ up!’
There was a general half-rising of all the bodies in the shop and a lot of neck twisting to watch Odd Martin gain his feet. ‘He’s up on one knee, now up on the other, now someone’s givin’ him a hand.’
‘It’s Miss Weldon. She sure got over there in a rush!’
‘What time is it?’
‘Four-fifteen! You lose, Simp! Pay us!’
The bet was settled.
‘That Miss Weldon’s a queer beetle herself. Takin’ after a man like Odd.’
Simpson clicked his scissors. ‘Being an orphan, she’s got quiet ways. She likes men who don’t say much. Odd, he don’t say hardly anything. Just the opposite of us crude, crude men, eh, fellows? We talk too much. Miss Weldon don’t like our way of speakin’.’
‘There they go. The two of ‘em. Miss Weldon and Odd Martin.’
‘Say, take a little more off around my ears, will you Simp?’
Skipping down the street, bounding a red rubber ball, came little Radney Bellows, his blond hair flopping in a yellow fringe over his blue eyes. He bounced the ball abstractedly, tongue between lips, and the ball fell under Odd Martin’s feet where he sat once more on the tar barrel. Inside the grocery, Miss Weldon was doing her supper shopping, putting soup cans and vegetable cans into a basket.
‘Can I have my ball?’ asked little Radney Bellows upwards at the six feet two inches of Odd Martin. No one was within hearing distance.
‘Can you have your ball?’ said Odd Martin haltingly. He turned it over inside his head, it appeared. His level, grey eyes shaped up Radney like one would shape up a little ball of clay. ‘You can have your ball, yes; take it.’
Radney bent slowly and took hold of the bright red rubber globe and arose slowly, a secretive look in his eyes.
‘I know something.’
Odd Martin looked down. ‘You know something?’
Radney leaned forward. ‘You’re dead.’
Odd Martin sat there.
‘You’re really dead,’ whispered little Radney Bellows. ‘But I’m the only one who really knows. I believe you, Mr. Odd. I tried it once myself. Dying, I mean. It’s hard. It’s work. I laid on the floor for an hour. But my stomach itched, so I scratched it, and the blood got up in my head and made me dizzy. Then — I quit. Why?’ He looked at his shoes. ‘ ‘Cause I had to go to the bathroom.’
A slow, understanding smile formed in the soft pallid flesh of Odd Martin’s long, bony face. ‘It is work. It isn’t easy.’
‘Sometimes, I think about you,’ said Radney. ‘I see you walk by my house. Nights. Sometimes two in the morning. I wake up. I know you’re out walking around. I know I should look out, and I do, and, gee, there you are, walking and walking. Not going hardly any place.’
‘There’s no place to go.’ Odd sat with his large, square, calloused hands on his knees. ‘I try thinking of some — place to — go — ‘ He slowed, like a horse to a bit-pull ‘ — but it’s hard to think. I try and — try. Sometimes I almost know what to do, where to go. Then, I forget. Once I had an idea to go to a doctor and have him declare me dead, but, somehow — ‘ his voice was slow and husky and low ‘ — I never got there.’
Radney looked straight at him. ‘If you want, I’ll take you.’
Odd Martin glanced leisurely at the setting sun. ‘No. I’m weary, tired, but I’ll — wait. Now I’ve gone this far, I’m curious to see what happens next. After the flood that washed away my farm and all my stock and put
