398
PARTISAN REVIEW
Then, grinning to himself, he reckoned maybe it might take
him less time
if
he was naturally just proud as pus, and all his pride
had to do was just switch sides from Old Nick to God-AlI-Mighty
and never miss beat or breakfast in the process. Maybe he ought to
get dunked again, he thought. No, maybe Elk Creek wasn't enough!
Maybe they'd have to put him in a big wash kettle and build a
fire under it and render the pride out like fat for making soap.
Jack Harrick might make jokes secretly to and about himself
and his salvation, but nobody else did. No doubt, some of the unre–
generate made such jokes, but they were made in scrupulous privacy.
Jack Harrick might be fifty years old and have a skull cracked by
a cop's night-stick, but when he walked down the street nobody men–
tioned either Chattanooga or Jesus Christ, either baptizing or bottle–
fighting. Anybody who thought up a good joke, and thought he might
spring it the next time Jack Harrick walked down the street, could
just listen for a second to the song that anvil was singing in the heat
of a summer afternoon, way over yonder on the other side of town,
and dream up a mode of entertainment that might cost his insurance
company less. Yes, the Baptists believed that once in Grace always
in Grace, but nobody wanted to push Jack Harrick too far to find
out if he had really been in Grace at the time of his dunking. His
daily progress down the street of Johntown was greeted by respectful
salutation or awe-struck silence.
So whatever worriment had driven him off to Chattanooga that
time had long since been washed away in the waters of Elk Creek.
He knew enough, however, about worriment, and what worriment
might do to dry up your juices, to respect Celia Hornby Harrick's
occasional worriments over croup or short cash when he would come
in the bedroom door and find her standing in her nightgown and
the smile didn't come. Or tried to come, and couldn't quite make it.
No, it wasn't just her worriments he had had to respect. There
was something else in her. There were just certain things you felt
you couldn't do to Celia Hornby Harrick- even back yonder when
she was just Celia Hornby not a deal more than twenty years old
and teaching the Third Grade and herself looking like the well–
developed pride of the Eighth Grade, or of the whole durn school
for that matter and his money. There had been times when he had
had Celia Hornby out in the dark in dogwood time, and the peepers
