Clock Without Hands by Carson Mccullers Page A

was a baby who watched the older children do handsprings on the Malone summer lawn. The small Ellen would call out when her father came home from work, "You want me to do a handspring for you, Daddy?" and that phrase of summer evenings, wet lawns and childhood had been their word for the sexual act when they were young. Now the twenty-years-married Martha used the word, her bridges carefully placed in a glass of water. Malone was horrified knowing that, not only was he going to die, but some part of him had died also without his having realized. So quickly, wordlessly, he hurried out into the night.
    The old Judge led the way, his bare feet very pink against the dark blue carpet, and Malone followed. They were both glad of the comfort of each other's presence. "I told my wife," Malone said, "about that ... leukemia."
    They passed into the Judge's bedroom where there was an immense four-poster bed with a canopy and feather pillows. The draperies were rich and musty and next to the window there was a chaise longue which he indicated to Malone before he turned his attention to the whiskey and poured drinks. "J.T., have you ever noticed that when someone has a failing, that fault is the first and foremost thing he attributes to another? Say a man is greedy ... greed is the first thing he accuses in others, or stinginess ... that is the first fault a stingy man can recognize." Warming to his subject the Judge almost shouted his next words, "And it takes a thief to catch a thief ... a thief to catch a thief."
    "I know," Malone replied, somewhat at a loss to find a hinge to the subject. "I don't see..."
    "I'm getting around to that," the Judge said with authority. "Some months ago you were telling me about Dr. Hayden and thoses little peculiar things in the blood."
    "Yes," Malone said, still puzzled.
    "Well, this very morning while Jester and I were coming home from the drugstore, I chanced to see Dr. Hayden and I was never so shocked."
    "Why?"
    The Judge said: "The man was a sick man. I never saw a man fall off so rapidly."
    Malone tried to digest the intimations involved. "You mean...?"
    The Judge's voice was calm and firm. "I mean, if Dr. Hayden has a peculiar blood disease, it is the most likely thing in the world to diagnose onto you instead of himself." Malone pondered over this fantastic reasoning, wondering if there was a straw to grasp. "After all, J.T., I have had a great fund of medical experience; I was in Johns Hopkins for close on to three months."
    Malone was remembering the doctor's hands and arms. "It's true that Hayden has very thin and hairy arms."
    The Judge almost snorted: "Don't be silly, J.T., hairiness has nothing to do with it." Malone, abashed, was more willing to listen to the Judge's reasoning. "The doctor didn't tell you that out of meanness or spite," the Judge went on. "It's just the logical, human way of contaging bad things away from yourself. The minute I saw him today, I knew what had happened. I knew that look of a mortally sick man ... looking sideways, his eyes averted as though ashamed. I have seen that look many a time at Johns Hopkins where I was a perfectly well, ambulatory patient who knew every soul at that hospital," the Judge said truthfully. "Whereas your eyes are straight as a die, although you're thin and ought to eat liver. Liver shots," he said almost shouting, "aren't there things called liver shots for blood trouble?"
    Malone looked at the Judge with eyes that flickered between bewilderment and hope. "I didn't know you were in Johns Hopkins," he said softly. "I suppose you didn't bruit it around because of your political career."
    "Ten years ago I weighed three hundred and ten pounds."
    "You've always carried your weight well. I've never thought of you as a fat man."
    "Fat man: of course not. I was just stout and corpulent ... the only thing, I would just have falling-out spells. It worried Miss Missy," he said with a glance at his wife's portrait on the wall across from him. "She