56
PARTISAN REVIEW
didn't you Snitch."- So the conversation went on, I listened and
did not listen, heard and did not hear the music upstairs,
Waving
green palms the throng moves on its way,
a phrase of music that
once had the power to sicken and excite me but now only caused
me to glance involuntarily at my brother, to discover that he too
had received, unconsciously at first perhaps, a similar association.
My brother was looking at Ted's father, obvious interest show·
ing in his face; and then after a few moments, as he became aware
of the music, I saw that he was not looking directly at him but a
little above him, just above his head, and his expression was
thoughtful, reminiscent, absent; and so he remained for some time,
not so much listening as thinking, tracking down in his mind some
dim recollection of his own. At length he turned toward me, and
his faint smile of understanding was verification that for a moment
we had shared some remote and secret connection of ideas. For
him the music meant church and childhood, and for me it did also,
but back of the music, the particular music of "The Palms," was a
realer connection-something that I could only now, for the first
time in my life, willingly explore.
·"Snitch wanted to buy this sailcloth and I gave him the money
and 4e was going to go into the city on the bus and buy it himself.
Then his mother came to me and said what was I thinking of, to let
a little boy like him-that's what
she
called you, Snitch, not me–
go into the city and carry home thirty-six yards of cloth all by him–
self. And
~eing
sailcloth, his mother and I naturally thought it
would be sOme kind of material like canvas, and thirty-six yards
would certainly make a bolt bigger than Snitch was himself. He
insisted it wouldn't and his mother pleaded with me not to let him
go till I got fed up with the whole business. 'All right,' I
~aid
to
his mother, 'let him go in and find out for himself, the dumb cluck.
Then maybe he'll listen to reason and let me get the cloth for him
the next time I go to the city with the car.'"- Through all his
feigned exasperation you could see that Ted's father was really
pleased with Ted's insistence and stubbornness and was enjoyins
the story, but I was listening with only half an ear, as it were,
thinking all the while of that person whom the music upstairs had
recalled so vividly to my mind, a man, I felt sure, unlike any Ted
would ever know....
There was a man in our town-(I suppose every town has
