The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter 精彩片段：
Part Two-16
The day after this advertising was finished he waited in the front room dressed in a clean shirt and a tie. Nothing happened. The jeweler who gave him overflow work to do at half price sent in a couple of clocks. That was all. He took it hard. He didnt go out to look for other jobs any more, but every minute he had to be busy around the house. He took down the doors and oiled the hinges— whether they needed it or not. He mixed the margarine for Portia and scrubbed the floors upstairs. He worked out a contraption where the water from the ice box could be drained through the kitchen window. He carved some beautiful alphabet blocks for Ralph and invented a little needle-threader. Over the few watches that he had to work on he took great pains.
Mick still followed Mister Singer. But she didnt want to. It was like there was something wrong about her following after him without his knowing. Two or three days she played hookv from school. She walked behind him when he went to work and hung around on the corner near hisstore all day. When he ate his dinner at Mister Brannons she went into the caf and spent a nickel for a sack of peanuts.
Then at night she followed him on these dark, long walks. She stayed on the opposite side of the street from him and about a block behind. When he stopped, she stopped also—and when he walked fast she ran to keep up with him. So long as she could see him and be near him she was right happy. But sometimes this queer feeling would come to her and she knew that she was doing wrong. So she tried hard to keep busy at home.
She and her Dad were alike in the way that now they always had to be fooling with something. She kept up with all that went on in the house and the neighborhood. Spare-ribs big sister won fifty dollars at a movie bank night. Baby Wilson had the bandage off her head now, but her hair was cut short
like a boys. She couldnt dance in the soiree this year, and when her mother took her to see it Baby began to yell and cut up during one of the dances. They had to drag her out of the Opera House. And on the sidewalk Mrs. Wilson had to whip her to make her behave. And Mrs. Wilson cried, too. George hated Baby. He would hold his nose and stop up his ears when she passed by the house. Pete Wells ran away from home and was gone three weeks. He came back barefooted and very hungry. He bragged about how he had gone all the way to New Orleans.
Because of Etta, Mick still slept in the living-room. The short sofa cramped her so much that she had to make up sleep in study hall at school. Every other night Bill swapped with her and she slept with George. Then a lucky break came for them.
A fellow who had a room upstairs moved away. When after a week had gone by and nobody answered the ad in the paper, their Mama told Bill he could move up to the vacant room.
Bill was very pleased to have a place entirely by himself away from the family. She moved in with George. He slept like a little warm kitty and breathed very quiet.
She knew the night-time again. But not the same as in the last summer when she walked in the dark by herself and listened to the music and made plans. She knew the night a different way now. In bed she lay awake. A queerafraidness came to her. It was like the ceiling was slowly pressing down toward her face. How would it be if the house fell apart? Once their Dad had said the whole place ought to be condemned. Did he mean that maybe some night when they were asleep the walls would crack and the house collapse? Bury them under all the plaster and broken glass and smashed furniture? So that they could not move or breathe? She lay awake and her muscles were stiff. In the night there was creaking. Was that somebody walking —somebody else awake besides her—Mister Singer？
She never thought about Harry. She had made up her mind to forget him and she did forget him. He wrote that he had a job with a garage in Birmingham. She answered with a card saying O.K. as they had planned. He sent his mother three dollars every week. It seemed like a very long time had passed since they went to the woods together.
During the day she was busy in the outside room. But at night she was by herself in the dark and figuring was not enough.
She wanted somebody. She tried to keep George awake. It sure is fun to stay awake and talk in the dark. Less us talk awhile together.’
He made a sleepy answer.
See the stars out the window. If s a hard thing to realize that every single one of those little stars is a planet as large as the earth.’