CECIL BROWN
283
I don 't put my fa ther down . Because if I had ever appealed to him for
money I guess he would have given it to me.
Int.:
Did he have money?
Wi lliams:
Adequa te, adequa te. H e spent an awful lot on girls, hahaha,
and liquor and poker.
Int. :
Did you know that?
Williams:
I knew it, yah , my mother knew it.
Int.:
You were good in ROT C?
Wi lliams:
Yes . Well, I think I h ave a natural talent for shooting. I
think it's my famil y heritage
to
shoot good, you know, because
(hahah aha) the Williamses were all in the war-I would never go in
the war, but I just na turall y inherited a gift maybe for shoo ting, not
tha t I ever exercised it. But ... Cl ar k Mills, he's one of the sweetes t
people I' ve ever known . We used to work together. H e would work
on poetry and I would wor k on pl ays in St. Louis in the basement of
~
his home. ...
In t.:
You were nineteen or twenty then ?
Wi lliams:
No, no. I was older than that. Let's see . . . how old was I? I
was in the shoe business-my father took me out of coll ege (Univer–
sity of Missouri ) after three years because I flunked ROT C which he
respected highl y (hahaha) which I couldn 't make.
Int.:
Is tha t one of the reasons why he thought you were a sissy?
Wi lliams:
Yes, one of them. T here had always been a great military
tradition in the Williams famil y. He quit college to go into the
Spanish-American War so it was a great shock
to
him tha t I couldn 't
pass ROTC. But I did learn to shoot good.
Int.:
Your sister h ad one of the first prefrontal lobo tomies in the
country. Did the writing of
G lass Menagerie
help you
to
express
some of your feeling toward your famili al situation and your sister's
condition ?
Wi lliams:
Oh, yes. Especially toward my sister, but it's even expressed
in a short story call ed " Portrait of a Girl in Glass."
No t very long after that I lost my job at the warehouse. I was fired for
writing a poem on the lid of a shoe- box. I left Saint Loui s and took to
moving around . T he cities swept abo ut me like dead leaves, leaves
that were brighl y colored but torn away from the branches. My
na ture changed . I grew
to
be firm and sufficient.
In fi ve years' time I had nearl y forgotten home. I had to forget it,
I couldn 't carry it with me. But once in a while, usually in a strange
town before I have found companions, the shell of deliberate
hardness is broken thro ugh. A door comes softl y and irresistibly
open . I hear the tired o ld music my unknown father left in the place
