The Grass Harp by Truman Capote Page B

on us.”
    It made my stomach hurt to hear him talk like that; I longed to tell him he was all I wanted to be.
    “You said before about the one person in the world. Why couldn’t I think of her like that? It’s what I want, I’m no good by myself. Maybe, if I could care for somebody that way, I’d make plans and carry them out: buy that stretch of land past Parson’s Place and build houses on it—I could do it if I got quiet.”
    Wind surprised, pealed the leaves, parted night clouds; showers of starlight were let loose: our candle, as though intimidated by the incandescence of the opening, star-stabbed sky, toppled, and we could see, unwrapped above us, a late wayaway wintery moon: it was like a slice of snow, near and far creatures called to it, hunched moon-eyed frogs, a claw-voiced wildcat. Catherine hauled out the rose scrapquilt, insisting Dolly wrap it around herself; then she tucked her arms around me and scratched my head until I let it relax on her bosom—You cold? she said, and I wiggled closer: she was good and warm as the old kitchen.
    “Son, I’d say you were going at it the wrong end first,” said the Judge, turning up his coat-collar. “How could you care about one girl? Have you ever cared about one leaf?”
    Riley, listening to the wildcat with an itchy hunter’s look, snatched at the leaves blowing about us like midnight butterflies; alive, fluttering as though to escape and fly, one stayed trapped between his fingers. The Judge, too: he caught a leaf; and it was worth more in his hand than in Riley’s. Pressing it mildlyagainst his cheek, he distantly said, “We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed—begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First, a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I’ve never mastered it—I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.”
    “Then,” said Dolly with an intake of breath, “I’ve been in love all my life.” She sank down into the quilt. “Well, no,” and her voice fell off, “I guess not. I’ve never loved a,” while she searched for the word wind frolicked her veil, “gentleman. You might say that I’ve never had the opportunity. Except Papa,” she paused, as though she’d said too much. A gauze of starlight wrapped her closely as the quilt; something, the reciting frogs, the string of voices stretching from the field of grass, lured, impelled her: “But I have loved everything else. Like the color pink; when I was a child I had one colored crayon, and it was pink; I drew pink cats, pink trees—for thirty-four years I lived in a pink room. And the box I kept, it’s somewhere in the attic now, I must ask Verena please to give it to me, it would be nice to see my first loves again: what is there? a dried honeycomb, an empty hornet’s nest, other things, or an orange stuck with cloves and a jaybird’s egg—when I loved those love collected inside me so that it went flying about like a bird in a sunflower field. But it’s best not to show such things, it burdens people and makes them, I don’t know why, unhappy. Verena scolds at me for what she calls hiding in corners, but I’m afraid of scaring people if I show that I care for them. Like Paul Jimson’s wife; after he got sick and couldn’t deliver the papers any more, remember she took over his route? poor thin little thing just dragging herself with that sack of papers. It was one cold afternoon, she came up on the porch her nose running and tears of cold hangingin her eyes—she put down the paper, and I said wait, hold on, and took my handkerchief to wipe her eyes: I wanted to say, if I could, that I was sorry and that I loved her—my hand grazed her face, she turned with the smallest shout and ran down the steps. Then on, she always tossed the papers from the street, and