Candy by Maxwell Kenton

Author:Maxwell Kenton [Kenton, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00L2PJM3S
Publisher: Olympia Press
Published: 1958-11-14T18:30:00+00:00

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There was only one tree on Grove Street. This was the sort of thing Candy was quick to notice, and to love. “Look,” she would say softly, squeezing someone's hand, “ Is n't it too much ! I could just hug myself everytime I pass it!”

And that was where she met the hunchback.

It was late one airless summer day, when the sky over Greenwich Village was the color of lead. It had just begun to rain, and Candy was standing back in a shallow doorway, waiting for her bus. Dreamily, humming a little Elizabethan tune, feeling fresh and quietly joyful in her new mandarin rain-cloak, hugging it to her—she saw him. He was out in the midst of the downpour, leaning against the tree, staring into the window display of the men's shop on the corner. He was standing very still, though from time to time, there seemed to be a slight movement of his back, as if he might be consciously pressing his hump against the tree.

Candy's humming softened as she watched him, and her heart beat a little faster. ' Oh, the fullness of it! ' she thought, ' the terrible, beautiful fullness of life! ' And a great mass of feeling rose in her throat at the pity she felt for her father so shut away from it all, never to know life, never even to suspect what it was all about. She put her arms around her delightful body and hugged herself, so glad at being alive, really alive, and her eyes brimmed with shimmering gratitude.

Just then two boys passed the corner, dark coats turned up, heads half-hidden out of the rain. One of them noticed the hunchback and gave a derisive snort:

“Wha'cha doin' Mac, gittin' yer nuts off?”

He kept nudging his companion, who wouldn't bother to look.

“The guy's gittin' his nuts off fer chrissake!” he shouted again as they walked on.

The hunchback gazed after them oddly.

“Rubatubdub!” he said, “rubadubtub!”

Candy hadn't heard either one of them distinctly, but there was no mistaking the tone of contempt, the obvious effort to hurt and humiliate. “The ignorant fools!” she said half aloud, and gave a little stamp of impatience. At that moment the bus rounded the corner beyond; she frowned as she watched it approach, but just before it reached her, she took a deep breath and walked away from the stop, then casually over to where the hunchback was standing.

“ Hi! ” she said, giving him a wonderfully warm smile and tossing back the hood of her cloak to feel the fresh rain on her face. 'Wasn't it just too much?' she thought joyfully, 'standing here in the rain, in Greenwich Village, talking to a hunchback—when she should have been at her job ten minutes ago!' She thought of the explanation she would have to give, the attempt to make them understand, and she was so happy and proud of herself she could have wept.

“That's my tree, you know,” she said instead, smiling like a mischievious child, then laughing gayly at her own foolishness.

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