Free The Grass Harp by Truman Capote Page A

Riordans, and gradually, in about the time it took to forget my few hard-learned tunes, I drew a curtain on them. At first Maude used to stop me after school and ask me over to her house; one way or another I always got out of it; furthermore, it was winter then and I liked to stay in the kitchen with Dolly and Catherine. Catherine wanted to know: How come you don’t talk any more about Maude Riordan? I said because I don’t, that’s all. But while I didn’t talk, I must have been thinking; at least, seeing her there under the tree, old feelings squeezed my chest. For the first time I considered the circumstances self-consciously: did we, Dolly, the Judge and I, strike Maude and Elizabeth as a ludicrous sight? I could be judged by them, they were my own age. But from their manner we might just have met on the street or at the drugstore.
    The Judge said, “Maude, how’s your daddy? Heard he hasn’t been feeling too good.”
    “He can’t complain. You know how men are, always looking for an ailment. And yourself, sir?”
    “That’s a pity,” said the Judge, his mind wandering. “You give your daddy my regards, and tell him I hope he feels better.”
    Maude submitted agreeably: “I will, sir, thank you. I knowhe’ll appreciate your concern.” Draping her skirt, she dropped on the moss and settled beside her an unwilling Elizabeth. For Elizabeth no one used a nickname; you might begin by calling her Betty, but in a week it would be Elizabeth again: that was her effect. Languid, banana-boned, she had dour black hair and an apathetic, at moments saintly face—in an enamel locket worn around her lily-stalk neck she preserved a miniature of her missionary father. “Look, Elizabeth, isn’t that a becoming hat Miss Dolly has on? Velvet, with a veil.”
    Dolly roused herself; she patted her head. “I don’t generally wear hats—we intended to travel.”
    “We heard you’d left home,” said Maude; and, proceeding more frankly: “In fact that’s all anyone talks about, isn’t it, Elizabeth?” Elizabeth nodded without enthusiasm. “Gracious, there are some peculiar stories going around. I mean, on the way here we met Gus Ham and he said that colored woman Catherine Crook (is that her name?) had been arrested for hitting Mrs. Buster with a mason jar.”
    In sloping tones, Dolly said, “Catherine—had nothing to do with it.”
    “I guess someone did,” said Maude. “We saw Mrs. Buster in the post office this morning; she was showing everybody a bump on her head, quite large. It looked genuine to us, didn’t it Elizabeth?” Elizabeth yawned. “To be sure, I don’t care who hit her, I think they ought to get a medal.”
    “No,” sighed Dolly, “it isn’t proper, it shouldn’t have happened. We all will have a lot to be sorry for.”
    At last Maude took account of me. “I’ve been wanting to see you, Collin,” she said hurrying as though to hide an embarrassment: mine, not hers. “Elizabeth and I are planning a Halloween party, a real scary one, and we thought it would be grand to dress you in a skeleton suit and sit you in a dark room to tell people’s fortunes: because you’re so good at …”
    “Fibbing,” said Elizabeth disinterestedly.
    “Which is what fortune-telling is,” Maude elaborated.
    I don’t know what gave them the idea I was such a storyteller, unless it was at school I’d shown a superior talent for alibis. I said it sounded fine, the party. “But you better not count on me. We might be in jail by then.”
    “Oh well, in that case,” said Maude, as if accepting one of my old and usual excuses for not coming to her house.
    “Say, Maude,” said the Judge, helping us out of the silence that had fallen, “you’re getting to be a celebrity: I saw in the paper where you’re going to play on the radio.”
    As though dreaming aloud, she explained the broadcast was the finals of a state competition; if she won, the prize was a musical scholarship at the University: even