The Grass Harp by Truman Capote

chased out of town—wanted to marry that pretty little colored girl, I think she works for Mrs. Postum now; and you know she loved him, I used to see them when I went fishing, they were very happy together; she was to him what no one has been to me, the one person in the world—from whom nothing is held back. Still, if he had succeeded in marrying her, it would have been the Sheriff’s duty to arrest and my duty to sentence him. I sometimes imagine all those whom I’ve called guilty have passed the real guilt on to me: it’s partly that that makes me want once before I die to be right on the right side.”
    “You on the right side now. That One and the Jew …”
    “Hush,” said Dolly.
    “The one person in the world.” It was Riley repeating the Judge’s phrase; his voice lingered inquiringly.
    “I mean,” the Judge explained, “a person to whom everything can be said. Am I an idiot to want such a thing? But ah, the energy we spend hiding from one another, afraid as we are of being identified. But here we are, identified: five fools in a tree. A great piece of luck provided we know how to use it: no longer any need to worry about the picture we present—free to find out who we truly are. If we know that no one can dislodge us; it’s the uncertainty concerning themselves that makes our friends conspire to deny the differences. By scraps and bits I’ve in the past surrendered myself to strangers—men who disappeared down the gangplank, got off at the next station: put together, maybe they would’ve made the one person in the world—but there he is with a dozen different faces moving down a hundred separate streets. This is my chance to find that man—you are him, Miss Dolly, Riley, all of you.”
    Catherine said, “I’m no man with any dozen faces: the notion,” which irritated Dolly, who told her if she couldn’t speak respectably why not just go to sleep. “But Judge,” said Dolly, “I’m not sure I know what it is you have in mind we should tell each other. Secrets?” she finished lamely.
    “Secrets, no, no.” The Judge scratched a match and relighted the candle; his face sprang upon us with an expression unexpectedly pathetic: we must help him, he was pleading. “Speak of the night, the fact there is no moon. What one says hardly matters, only the trust with which it is said, the sympathy with which it is received. Irene, my wife, a remarkable woman, we might have shared anything, and yet, yet nothing in us combined, we could not touch. She died in my arms, and at the last I said, Are you happy, Irene? have I made you happy? Happy happy happy, those were her last words: equivocal. I have never understood whether she was saying yes, or merely answering with an echo: I should know if I’d ever known her. My sons. I do not enjoy their esteem: I’ve wanted it, more as a man than as a father. Unfortunately, they feel they know something shameful about me. I’ll tell you what it is.” His virile eyes, faceted with candle-glow, examined us one by one, as though testing our attention, trust. “Five years ago, nearer six, I sat down in a train-seat where some child had left a child’s magazine. I picked it up and was looking through it when I saw on the back cover addresses of children who wanted to correspond with other children. There was a little girl in Alaska, her name appealed to me, Heather Falls. I sent her a picture postcard; Lord, it seemed a harmless and pleasant thing to do. She answered at once, and the letter quite astonished me; it was a very intelligent account of life in Alaska—charming descriptions of her father’s sheep ranch, of northern lights. She was thirteen and enclosed a photograph of herself—not pretty, but a wise and kind looking child. I hunted through some old albums, and found a Kodak made on a fishingtrip when I was fifteen—out in the sun and with a trout in my hand: it looked new enough. I wrote her as though I were still that boy, told her of the gun