It wasnt real laughter: it was nerves. I took a swallow of water and choked; hepounded me on the back. "This heres no humorous matter, son. Im a tired man.
Theyre older than she is. Bigger."
"Now, son," he said in a reasoning voice, "I didnt claim they was her natural-bornchurren. Their own precious mother, precious woman, Jesus rest her soul, shepassed away July 4th, Independence Day, 1936. The year of the drought. When Imarried Lulamae, that was in December, 1938, she was going on fourteen. Maybe anordinary person, being only fourteen, wouldnt know their right mind. But you takeLulamae, she was an exceptional woman. She knew good-and-well what she wasdoing when she promised to be my wife and the mother of my churren. She plainbroke our hearts when she ran off like she done." He sipped his cold coffee, andglanced at me with a searching earnestness. "Now, son, do you doubt me? Do youbelieve what Im saying is so?"
"Son," he said, "I need a friend."
Ive been five years lookin for my woman. Soon as I got that letter from Fred,saying where she was, I bought myself a ticket on the Greyhound. Lulamae belongshome with her husband and her churren."
That evening, on my way to supper, I saw the man again. He was standing acrossthe street, leaning against a tree and staring up atHollys windows. Sinisterspeculations rushed through my head. Was he a detective? Or some underworldagent connected with her Sing Sing friend, Sally Tomato? The situation revived mytenderer feelings for Holly; it was only fair to interrupt our feud long enough to warnher that she was being watched. As I walked to the corner, heading east toward theHamburg Heaven at Seventy-ninth and Madison, I could feel the mans attentionfocused on me. Presently, without turning my head, I knew that he was followingme. Because I could hear him whistling. Not any ordinary tune, but the plaintive,prairie melody Holly sometimes played on her guitar: Dont wanna sleep, dontwanna die, just wanna go a-travelin through the pastures of the sky. The whistlingcontinued across Park Avenue and up Madison. Once, while waiting for a traffic lightto change, I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he stooped to pet a sleazyPomeranian. "Thats a fine animal you got there," he told the owner in a hoarse,countrified drawl.
Doc Golightly. Im a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip,Texas. Son, why are you laughin?"
"Youre Hollys father."
"Excuse me," I said, speaking to him via the mirror, "but what do you want?"
"Thems her churren," he said, almost shouted. He meant the four other youngfaces in the picture, two bare-footed girls and a pair of overalled boys. Well, ofcourse: the man was deranged. "But Holly cant be the mother of those children.
The question didnt embarrass him; he seemed relieved to have had it asked.
"Thats me," he said, pointing at himself. "Thats her . . ." he tapped the plumpgirl. "And this one over here," he added, indicating a tow-headed beanpole, "thatsher brother, Fred."
he said, shifting the toothpick in his mouth, "till she married me. Im her husband.
"Children?"
It was no novelty toencounter suspicious specimens among Hollys callers, quitethe contrary; but one day late that spring, while passing through the brownstonesvestibule, I noticed a very provocative man examining her mailbox. A person in hisearly fifties with a hard, weathered face, gray forlorn eyes. He wore an old sweatstainedgray hat, and his cheap summer suit, a pale blue, hung too loosely on hislanky frame; his shoes were brown and brandnew. He seemed to have no intentionof ringing Hollys bell. Slowly, as though he were reading Braille, he kept rubbing afinger across the embossed lettering of her name.
He blinked, he frowned. "Her names not Holly. She was a Lulamae Barnes. Was,"
I went straight upstairs, got the bird cage, took it down and left it in front of herdoor. That settled that. Or so I imagined until the next morning when, as I wasleaving for work, I saw the cage perched on a sidewalk ash-can waiting for thegarbage collector. Rather sheepishly, I rescued it and carried it back to my room, acapitulation that did not lessen my resolve to put Holly Golightly absolutely out of mylife. She was, I decided, "a crude exhibitionist," "a time waster," "an utter fake":someone never to be spoken to again.
He brought out a wallet. It was as worn as his leathery hands, almost falling topieces; and so was the brittle, cracked, blurred snapshot he handed me. There wereseven people in the picture, all grouped together on the sagging porch of a starkwooden house, and all children, except for the man himself, who had his arm aroundthe waist of a plump blond little girl with a hand shading her eyes against the sun.
Hamburg Heaven was empty. Nevertheless, he took a seat right beside me at thelong counter. He smelled of tobacco and sweat. He ordered a cup of coffee, but whenit came he didnt touch it. Instead, he chewed on a toothpick and studied me in thewall mirror facing us.
And I didnt. Not for a long while. We passed each other on the stairs with loweredeyes. If she walked into Joe Bells, I walked out. At one point, Madame SapphiaSpanella, the coloratura and roller-skating enthusiast who lived on the first floor,circulated a petition among the brownstones other tenants asking them to join herin having Miss Golightly evicted: she was, said Madame Spanella, "morallyobjectionable" and the "perpetrator of all-night gatherings that endangered thesafety and sanity of her neighbors." Though I refused to sign, secretly I felt MadameSpanella had cause to complain. But her petition failed, and as April approachedMay, the open-windowed, warm spring nights were lurid with the party sounds, theloud-playing phonograph and martini laughter that emanated from Apt. 2.
I looked at "her" again: and yes, now I can see it, an embryonic resemblance toHolly in the squinting, fat-cheeked child. At the same moment, I realized who theman must be.
