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PARTIS AN RE VI EW
he was sure it wouldn't be more than a flesh wound. She would
know who she was, no matter what you called her. Not that a lady
whose name happened to be Celia would especially relish being called
Annie Laurie or Sara Lou, even by a stranger on the telephone, and
certainly not in the bosom of the family, long after bull-bat time,
when you had turned in early to save money on the electric bill.
But she certainly knew that Jack Harrick had voted in more
than one precinct, and even if she, to his certain knowledge, was a
lady who had done God's little ballot-counting, she had common
sense enough to guess that a man might develop certain work habits,
and enough sense of humor to realize that it took time to shake them
off. Not that he wouldn't have tapped himself over the left knuckles
with a ten-inch monkey wrench before he'd hurt her feelings, or that
he, J ack Harrick, wouldn't have undertaken to avoid reference to
Annie Laurie or Sara Lou, or such, in close discourse. It was simply
that he never had to undertake to avoid them. That something inside
himself did it every time, long before he ever had to.
It took him some years to guess what that something inside him–
self was. He guessed it some time after Celia had ceased to be Celey,
or even Baby or Doll-Baby, and was only Momma, even when lights
were out, or Sunday breakfast was late. By that time what he guessed
didn't seem very relevant to the course of life, and he even sort of
guessed that was why he managed to guess it.
What he guessed was that the something inside himself that
kept such a close watch on name-calling after lights-out was not
something different from himself.
It
was, simply, that part of him–
self that knew that if a wrong name got called in the dark the danger
was not in the fact that Jack Harrick didn't know the name of who
was there in the dark with him. The danger was in the fact that Jack
Harrick might not know that Jack Harrick himself was there, might
not, in fact, know who Jack Harrick was, or if Jack Harrick had
ever existed.
If
Jack Harrick called the wrong name, that meta–
physical hoot owl might swoop down again, and snatch all to black–
ness.
For Jack Harrick didn't say to himself any more that he wasn't
ever going to die. He even mentioned that fact of his death to other
people, quite casually and with a certain pride in so doing, the kind
of pride, he thought in rueful midnight humor, with which, a thou-
