Writing
inspires, and great amazing phenomenal writing is the type that makes you
emotional. The type that keeps you behind the computer, the type that runs out
the ink of you pen. The kind that leaves you with thousands of ideas. Great
writing is like The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst.
Necessary Vocabulary
¹ bleeding tree: reference to a
certain tree found in the South; the name comes from the fact that the tree
emits a milky substance whenever a branch is broken from it.
² caul: a membrane sometimes
surrounding the head of a child at birth
³ invalid: ill, disables, or weak
and sickly
⁴ imminent: about to take place
⁵ Dix Hill: an insane asylum
⁶ dog-tongue:
a weed with tongue shaped leaves
⁷
vermillion: bright red
⁸
heresy: something that contradicts what is generally thought of as right
It was in the clove of the seasons,
summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born, that the ibis lit in the
bleeding tree¹. The flower garden was stained with rotting brown magnolia
petals and iron weed grew rank amid the purple phlox. The five o’clock by the
chimney still marked the time, but the oriole nest in the elm was untenanted
and rocked back and forth like an empty cradle. The last graveyard flowers were
blooming, and their smell drifted across the cotton field through every room of
our house, speaking softly the names of our dead.
It's strange that all this is still so
clear to me, now that that summer has since fled and the time has had its way.
A grindstone stands where the bleeding tree stood, just outside the kitchen
door, and now if an oriole sings in the elm, its song seems to die up in the
leaves, a silvery dust. The flower garden is prim, the house a gleaming white
and the pale fence across the yard stands straight and spruce.
But sometimes (like right now), as sit in
the cool, green-draped parlor, the grindstone begins to turn, and time with all
its changes is ground away—and I remember Doodle. Doodle was just about the
craziest brother a boy ever had. Of course, he wasn’t crazy crazy like old Miss
Leedie, who was in love with President Wilson and wrote him a letter everyday,
but nice crazy, like someone you meet in your dreams.
He was born when I as six was, from the
outset, a disappointment. He seemed all head, with a tiny body, which was red
and shriveled like an old man’s. Everybody thought he was going to
die-everybody except Aunt Nicey, who had delivered him. She said he would live
because he was born in a caul², and cauls were made from Jesus’ nightgown.
Daddy had Mr. Heath, the carpenter, build a little mahogany coffin for him. But
he didn’t die, and when he was three months old, Mama and Daddy decided they
might as well name him. They named him William Armstrong, which was like tying
a big tail on a small kite. Such a name sounds good only on a tombstone.
I thought myself pretty smart at many
things, like holding my breath, running, jumping, or climbing the vines in Old Woman
Swamp, and I wanted more
than anything else someone to box with, and someone to perch with in the top
fork of the great pine behind the barn, where across the fields and swamps you
could see the sea. I wanted a brother. But Mama, crying, told me that even if
William Armstrong lived, he would never do these things with me. He might not,
she sobbed, even be “all there.” He might, as long as he lived, lie on the
rubber sheet in the center of the bed in the front bedroom white the Marquette curtains
billowed out in the afternoon sea breeze, rustling like palmetto fronds.
It was bad enough having an invalid³
brother, but having one who possibly was not all there was unbearable, so began
to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow. However, one afternoon
as I watched him, my head poked between the iron posts of the foot of the bed,
he looked straight at me and grinned. I skipped through the rooms, down the
echoing halls, shouting, “Mama, he smiled. He’s all there! He’s all there!” and
he was.
When he was two, if you laid him on his
stomach, he began to move himself straining terribly. The doctor said that with
his weak heart this strain would probably kill him, but it didn’t. Trembling,
he’d push himself up, turning red first, then soft purple, and finally collapse
back on to the bed like an old worn-out doll. I can still see Mama watching
him, her hand pressed tight across her mouth, her eyes wide and unblinking. But
he learned to crawl (it was his third winter), and we brought him out of the front
bedroom, putting him on the rug before the fireplace. For the first time he
became one of us.
As long as he lay all the time in bed, we
called him William Armstrong, even though it was formal and sounded as if we
were referring to one of our ancestors, but with his creeping around on the
deerskin rug beginning to talk, something had to be done about his name. It was
I who renamed him. When he crawled, he crawled backwards, as if he were in
reverse and couldn’t change gears. If you called him, he’d turn around as if he
were going in the other direction, then he’d back right up to you to be picked
up. Crawling backward made him look like a doodlebug, so I began to call him
Doodle, and in time even Mama and Daddy thought it was a better name than
William Armstrong. Only Aunt Nicey disagreed. She said caul babies should be
treated with special respect since they might turn out to be saints. Yes,
renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because
nobody expects much for some called Doodle. Although Doodle learned to crawl,
he showed no signs of walking, but he wasn’t idle. He talked so much that we
all quit listening to what he said. It was about this time that Daddy built him
a go-cart and I had to pull him around. At first I just paraded him up and down
the piazza, but when he started crying to be taken out into the yard, and it
ended up by my having to lug him everywhere I went. If I so much as picked up
my cap, he’s started crying to go with me and Mama would call from wherever she
was, “Take Doodle with you.”
He was a burden in many ways. The doctor
had said that he mustn’t get too excited, too hot, too cold, or too tired and
that he must always be treated gently. A long list of don’ts went with him, all
of which I ignored once we got out of the house. His skin was very sensitive,
and he had to wear a big straw hat whenever he went out. To discourage his
coming with me, I’d run with him across the ends of the cotton rows an careen
him around corner on two wheels. Sometimes I accidentally turned him over, but
he never told Mama. When the going got rough and he had to climb to the sides
of the go-cart, the hat slipped all the way down over his ears. He was a sight.
Finally, I could see I was licked. Doodle was my brother and he was going to
cling to me forever, no matter what I did, so I dragged him across the burning
cotton field to share with him the only beauty I knew, Old Woman Swamp. I pulled the go-cart through the
saw-tooth fern, down into the green dimness where palmetto fronds whispered by
the stream. I lifted him out and set him down in the soft rubber grass beside
the tall pine. His eyes were round with wonder as he gazed about him, and his little
hands began to stroke the rubber grass. Then he began to cry.
“For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?” I asked, annoyed.
“It’s so pretty,” he said. “So pretty, pretty, pretty.”
After that day Doodle and I often went down into Old Woman Swamp.
There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of
cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed
of our destruction, and at times I was mean to Doodle. One day I took him up to
the barn loft and showed him his casket, telling him how we all believed he
would die. It was covered with a film of Paris green sprinkled to kill rats,
and screech owls had built a nest inside it.
Doodle studied the mahogany box for a long time, then said, “It’s not mine.”
“It is,” I said. “And before I’ll help you down from the loft, you’re going to
have to touch it.”
“I won’t touch it,” he said sullenly.
“Then I’ll leave you here by yourself,” I threatened, and made it look as if I
were going down. Doodle was frightened of being left.
“Don't leave me, Brother,” he cried, and he leaned toward the coffin. His hand
trembling, reached out, and when he touched the casket he screamed. A screech
owl flapped out the box into our faces, scaring us and covering us with Paris
green. Doodle was paralyzed, so I put him on my shoulder and carried him down
the ladder, and even when we were outside in the bright sunshine, he clung to
me crying. “Don't leave me. Don't leave me.”
When Doodle was five years old, I was embarrassed at having a brother of that
age who couldn't walk, so I set out to teach him. We were down in Old Woman
Swamp and it was spring
and the sick-sweet smell of bay flowers hung everywhere like a mournful song.
“I’m going to teach you to walk, Doodle,” I said.
He was sitting comfortably on the soft grass, leaning back against the pine.
“Why?” he asked.
I hadn’t expected such an answer. “So I
won't have to haul you around all the time. “
“I can’t walk, Brother,” he said.
“Who says so” I demanded.
“Mama, the doctor – everybody.”
“Oh, you can walk,” I said, and I took him by the arm and stood him up. He collapsed
onto the grass like a half empty flour sack. It was as if he had no bones in
his little legs
“Don't hurt me, Brother,” he warned.
“Shut up. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to teach you to walk.” I heaved
him up again, and again he collapsed.
This time I did not lift his face up out of the rubber grass.
“I just can't do it. Let’s make honeysuckle wreaths.”
“Oh yes you can, Doodle,” I said. “All you got to do is try. Now come on,” and I
hauled him up once more. “I’m going to teach you to walk.”
It seemed so hopeless from the beginning that it’s a miracle I didn't give up.
But all of us must have something or someone to be proud of, and Doodle had
become mine. I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a
seed that bears two vines, life and death. Every day that summer we went to the
pine beside the stream of Old Woman Swamp, and I put him to his feet at least a
hundred times each afternoon.
Occasionally I too became discouraged because it didn't seem as if he was
trying, and I would say, “Doodle, don't you want to learn to walk?” He’d nod
his head, and I’d say, “Well, if you don't keep trying, you’ll never learn.”
Then I’d paint for him a picture of us as old men, white haired, him with a
long white beard and me still pulling him around in a go-cart. This never
failed to make him try again.
Finally one day, after many weeks of practicing, he stood alone for a few
second. When he fell, I grabbed him in my arms and hugged him, our laughter
pealing through the swamp like a ringing bell. Now we know it could be done.
Hope no longer hid in the dark palmetto thicket but perched like a cardinal in
the lacy toothbrush tree, brilliantly visible. “Yes, yes,” I cried, and he
cried too, and the grass beneath us was soft and the smell of the swamp sweet.
With the success so imminent⁴, we decided not to tell anyone until
he could actually walk. Each day, barring rain, we sneaked into Old Woman Swamp, and by cotton-picking time
Doodle was read to show what he could do. He still wasn't able to walk far, but
he could wait no longer. Keeping a nice secret is very hard to do, like holding
your breath. We chose to reveal all on October eighth. Doodle’s sixth birthday,
and for weeks ahead we mooned around he house promising everybody a most
spectacular surprise. Aunt Nicey said that, after so much talk, if we produced
anything less tremendous than the Resurrection, she was going to be disappointed.
At breakfast on our chosen day, when
Mama, Daddy and Aunt Nicey were in the dining room, I brought Doodle to the
door in the go-art just as usual and had them turn their backs, making them
cross their hearts and hope to die if they peeked. I helped Doodle up, and when
he was standing alone I let them look. There wasn’t a sound as Doodle walked
slowly across the room and sat down at his place at the table. Then Mama began
to cry and ran over to him, hugging and kissing him. Daddy hugged him to, so I
went to Aunt Nicey, who was thanks praying in the doorway, and began to waltz
her around. We danced together quite well until she came down on my big toe
with her brogans, hurting me so badly I thought I was crippled for life.
Doodle told them it was I who had taught him to walk, so everyone wanted to hug
me, and I began to cry.
“What are you crying for?” asked Daddy,
but I couldn’t answer. They did not know that I did it for myself; that pride,
whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than all their voices, and that of Doodle
walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother.
Within months, Doodle learned to walk
well and his go-cart was put in the barn loft (it is still there) beside his
little mahogany coffin. Now when we roamed off together, resting often we never
turned back until our destination had been reached, and to help pass time, we
took up lying. From the beginning, Doodle was a terrible liar and got me in the
habit. Had anyone stopped to listen to us, we would have been sent off to Dix
Hill⁵
My lies were scary, involved, and usually
pointless, but Doodle’s were twice as crazy. People in his stories all had
wings and flew wherever they wanted to go. His favorite was about a boy named
Peter who had a pet peacock with a ten-foot tail. Peter wore a golden robe that
glittered so brightly that when he walked through the sunflowers the turned
away from the dun to face him. When Peter was ready to go to sleep, the peacock
spread his magnificent tail, enfolding the boy gently like a closing go-to-sleep
flower, burying him in the glorious iridescent, rustling vortex. Yes I must
admit it. Doodle could be me lying.
Doodle and I spent a lot of time thinking
of the future, we decided t hat when we were grown we’d live in Old Woman
Swamp and pick dog-tongue⁶ for a living. Beside the stream, he
planned, we’d build us a house of whispering leaves and the swamp birds would
be our chickens. All day long (when we weren’t gathering dog-tongue) we’d swing
through the cypresses on the rope vines, and if it rained we’d huddle beneath
an umbrella tree and play stick frog. Mama and Daddy could come and live with
us if they wanted to. He came up with the idea that he could marry Mama and I
could marry Daddy. Of course, I was old enough to know this wouldn’t work out,
but the picture he painted was so beautiful that all I could do was whisper,
“yes, yes.”
Once I succeeded in teaching Doodle to
walk, I began to believe in my own infallibility, and I prepared a terrific
development program for him, unknown to Mama and Daddy, of course. I would
teach him to run, to swim, to climb trees, and to fight. He, too, now believed
in my infallibility, so we set a deadline for these accomplishments less than a
year away, when, it had been decided, Doodle could start school.
That winter we didn't make much progress,
for I was in school and Doodle suffered one bad cold after another. But when
spring came, rich and warm, we raised our sights again. Success lay at the end
of the summer like a pot of gold, and our campaign got off to a good start. On
hot days, Doodle and I went down to Horsehead Landing, and I gave him swimming
lessons or showed him how to row a boat. Sometimes we descended into the cool
greenness of Old Woman Swamp
and climbed the rope vines or boxed scientifically beneath the pine where he
had learned to walk. Promise hung about us like the leaves, and wherever we
looked, ferns unfurled and birds broke into song.
So we came to that close of seasons.
School was only a few weeks away, and Doodle was far behind schedule. He could
barely clear the ground when climbing up the rope vines, and his swimming was
certainly not passable. We decided to double our efforts, to make that last
drive and reach our pot of gold. I made him swim until he turned red and his
eyes completely glazed. Once, he could go no further, so he collapsed on the
ground and began to cry.
“Aw, come on, Doodle,” I urged. “You can
do it. Do you want to be different from everybody else when you start school?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“It certainly does,” I said. “Now come
on,” and I helped him up. As we slipped through dog days, Doodle began to look
feverish, and Mama felt his forehead, asking him if he felt ill. At night he
didn't sleep well, and sometimes he had nightmares, crying out until I touched
him and said, “Wake up, Doodle. Wake up.” It was a Saturday noon, just a few
days before school was to start. I should have already admitted defeat, but my
pride wouldn’t let me. The excitement of our program had now been gone for
weeks, but still e kept on with a tired doggedness. I t was too late to turn
back, for we had wandered too far into a net of expectations and had left no
crumbs behind.
Daddy, Mama, Doodle, and I were seated at
the dining-room table having lunch. It was a hot day, with all the windows and
doors open in case a breeze should come. In the kitchen Aunt Nicey was humming
softly. After a long silence, Daddy spoke. “It’s so calm, I would be surprised
if we had a storm this afternoon.”
“I haven’t heard a rain frog,” said Mama,
who believed in signs as she served the bread around the table.
“I did,” declared Doodle. “Down in the
swamp.”
“He didn't,” I said contrarily.
“You
did, eh?” said Daddy, ignoring my denial.
“I certainly
did,” Doodle reiterated, scowling at me over the top of his iced-tea glass, and
we were quite again.
Suddenly, from out in the yard, came a strange
croaking noise. Doodle stopped eating, with a piece of bread ready for his mouth,
his eyes popped round like two blue buttons.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
I jumped, knocking over my chair. And had reached
the door when Mama called, “Pick up the chair, sit down again, and say excuse
me.”
By the time I had done this, Doodle had excused
himself and had slipped out into the yard. He was looking up into the bleeding
tree. “It’s a great nig red bird!” He called.
The bird croaked loudly again, and Mama and Daddy
came out into the yard. We shaded our eyes with our hands against the hazy
glare of the sun and peered up through the still leaves. On the topmost branch
a bird the size of a chicken, with scarlet feathers and long legs, was
precariously. Its wings hung down loosely, and as we watched, a feather dropped
away and floated slowly down through the green leaves.
“It’s not even frightened of us,” Mama said.
“It looks tired,” Daddy added. “Or maybe sick”
Doodle’s hands were clasped at his throat, and I
had never seen him stand still so long. “What is it?” he asked.
At that moment the bird began to flutter, but the
wings uncoordinated, and amid much flapping and a spray of flying feather, it
tumbled down, bumping through the limbs, of the bleeding tree and landing at
our feet with a thud. It’s long, graceful neck jerked twice into an S, then
straightened out, and the bird was still. A white veil came over the eyes and
the long white beak unhinged. Its legs were crossed and its claw like feet were
delicately curved at rest. Even death did not mar its grace, for it lay on the
earth like a broken vase of flowers, and we stood around it, awed by its exotic
beauty.
“It’s dead,” Mama, said.
“What is it?” Doodle repeated.
“Go bring me the bird book,” said
Daddy.
I ran into the house and brought back the bird
book. As we watched, Daddy thumbed through its pages. “It’s a scarlet ibis,” he
said, pointing to a picture. “It lives in the tropics—South America to Florida. A storm must have
brought it here.” Sadly, we all looked back at the bird. A scarlet ibis! How many
miles it had traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding
tree.
“Let’s finish lunch,” Mama said, nudging us back
toward the dining room.
“I’m not hungry,” said Doodle, and he knelt down
beside the ibis.
“We’ve got peach cobbler for dessert,” Mama tempted
from the doorway.
Doodle remained kneeling. “I’m going to bury him.”
“Don’t you dare touch him,” Mama warned. “There’s
no telling what disease he might have had”
“All right,” said Doodle. “I won’t”
Daddy, Mama, and I went back to the dining-room
table, but we watched Doodle through the open door. First he took out a piece
of string from his pocket and, without touching the ibis, looped one end around
its neck. Slowly, while singing softly “Shall We Gather at the River,” he
carried the bird around to the yard and dug a hole in the flower garden, next
to the petunia bed. Now we were watching him through the front window, but he
didn’t know it. His awkwardness at digging the hole with a shovel whose handle
was twice as long as he was made us laugh, and we covered our mouths with our
hands so he wouldn’t hear.
When Doodle came into the dining room, he found us
seriously eating our cobbler. He was pale, and lingered just inside the screen
door.
“Did you get the scarlet ibis buried?” asked Daddy
Doodle didn’t speak but nodded his head.
“Go wash your hands, and then you can have some
peach cobbler,” said Mama.
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
“Dead birds are bad luck,” said Aunt Nicey, poking
her head from the kitchen door. “Specially red dead birds!”
As soon as I had finished eating, Doodle and I
hurried off to Horsehead Landing. Time was short, and Doodle still had a long
way to go if he was going to keep up with the other boys when he started
school. The sun, gilded with the yellow cast of autumn, still burned fiercely,
but the dark green woods through which we passed were shady and cool. When we
reached the landing, Doodle said he was too tired to swim, so we got into a
skiff and floated down the creek with the tide. Doodle did not speak and kept
his head turned away, letting one hand trail limply in the water.
After we had drifted a long way, I put the oars in
place and made Doodle row back against the tide. Black clouds began to gather
in the southwest, and he kept watching them, trying to pull the oars a little
faster. When we reached Horsehead Landing, lightning was playing across half
the sky and thunder roared out, hiding even the sound of the sea. The sun
disappeared and darkness descended, almost like night. Flocks of marsh crows
flew by, heading inland to their roosting trees; and two egrets, squawking,
arose from the oyster-rock shallows and careened away.
Doodle was both tired and frightened, and when he
stepped from the skiff he collapsed onto the mud, sending him an armada of
fiddler crabs rustling off into the marsh grass. I helped him up, and as he
wiped the mud off his trousers, he smiled at me ashamedly. He had failed and we
both knew it, so we started back home, racing the storm. We never spoke (What
are the words that can solder cracked pride?), but I knew he was watching me,
watching for a sign of mercy.
The lightening was near now, and from fear walked
so close behind me he kept stepping on my heels. The faster I walked, the
faster he walked, so I began to run. The rain was coming, roaring through the
pines, and then, like a bursting Roman candle, a gum tree ahead of us shattered
by a bolt of lightening. When defeating peak of thunder had died, and in the
moment before the rain arrived, I heard Doodle, who had fallen behind, cry out,
“Brother, Brother, Brother, don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”
The knowledge that Doodle’s and my plans had come
to naught was bitter, and that streak of cruelty within me awakened. I ran as
fast as I could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain dividing us. The
drops stung my face like nettles, and the wind flared the wet glistening leaves
of the bordering trees. Soon I could hear his voice no more. I hadn’t run too
far before I became tired, and the flood of childish spite evanesced as well. I
stopped and waited for Doodle. The sound of rain was everywhere, but wind had
died and it fell straight down in parallel paths like ropes hanging from the
sky
As I waited, I peered through the downpour, but no
one came. Finally I went back and found him huddled beneath a red nightshade
bush beside the road. He was sitting on the ground, his face buried in his
arms, which were resting on his drawn-up knees. “Let’s go Doodle,” I said.
He didn’t answer, so I placed my hand on his
forehead and lifted his head. Limply, he fell backwards onto the earth. He had
been bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of his shirt were
stained a brilliant red. Doodle! Doodle! I cried shaking him, but there was no
answer but the ropy rain. He sat very awkwardly, with his head thrown far back,
making his vermilion⁷ neck appear unusually long and slim. His little legs,
bent sharply at the knees, had never before seemed so fragile, so thin. I began
to weep, and the tear-blurred vision in red before me looked very familiar.
“Doodle!” I screamed above the pounding storm and
threw my body to the earth above his. For a long time, it seemed forever, I lay
there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy⁸ of rain.
