406
PARTISAN REVIEW
some. He had to admit that, and admitting it, he would feel that
something he had felt in mentioning death now or, long ago, that
first piece.
But he had no intention of dying for quite a spell. There was
gray in his hair as time ambled on, but you could hear that anvil
ring.
If
you didn't hear it ringing that was because Jack Harrick was
probably doing some mechanical work on a tractor or pay-loader
or even a car, for a good many folks, especially farmers, not the
corn-patch-and-shack hill-scratchers who wouldn't know what to do
with a tractor if they had one, but the fellows who had the creek–
bottoms and the white weather-boarding, asseverated with heat that
Jack Harrick was a lot better mechanic than that pimply squirt down
at the Chevrolet agency with a cigarette hanging out the corner of
his mouth. But the anvil rang often enough to convince Johntown
that Jack Harrick was in good health- and often enough to convince
Jack Harrick.
The anvil rang, but less often. The gray in the hair got grayer.
They put in the state highway slab through Johntown, heading over
the mountains. Two new agency garages came to town, and had
neon out front. Cars got longer and shinier and three-toned, and who
the hell was going to drive his floating juke-box and casket of the
heart's desire around to a broke-down blacksmith shop? A Greek
came to town with a yellow-headed wife who looked like the kind
that used to come to town with the street carnival and would mer–
chandise it to the boys back of the tent when the show was over.
People ate waffles at the Greek's restaurant.
Then the anvil didn't ring any more. The wheel chair creaked,
even if the weight in it wasn't two-twenty. Celia Hornby Harrick
set the glass of iced tea on the little table, and laid her cheek against
the grizzled head, and he wished she was dead, dead so he could love
her, and not hate her as he did when he thought of her lying alone
in her bed on a June night with moon coming in the window, and
staring up at the ceiling to the dark above the moon ray.
"John
T.,"
she was saying now, and laid her cheek against his
hair. "Darling John T.," she said, and he wished she were dead and
six feet under so he could love her. So he could be the man in the
house, even as he was dying. His hands clenched the wheel-chair as
hard as he could. He knew that she could see his right hand, and
that she thought it was the pain. He knew, without looking, that she
