The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

‘When a Jew boy is born they put a gold piece in the bank for him. That’s what Jews do.’
‘Shucks. You got it mixed up,’ she said. ‘It’s Catholics you’re thinking about. Catholics buy a pistol for a baby soon as it’s born. Some day the Catholics mean to start a war and kill everybody else.’

always followed and expected Singer to lead

went to Mr. Singer’s room. The visit blunted the feeling of loneliness in him so that when he said good-bye he was at peace with himself once mo

wrestled in his spirit and fought down the evil blackness

She was at the age when she looked as much like an overgrown boy as a girl. And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes.

He glanced at the dead face one more time, and then with widowed sedateness he opened the door that led out into the hospital corridor.
Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs. Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved—so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living?

When she thought of what she used to imagine was God she could only see Mister Singer with a long, white sheet around him. God was silent—maybe that was why she was reminded. She said the words again, just as she would speak them to Mister Singer: ‘Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do.’

Girls were scared a man would come out from somewhere and put his teapot in them like they was married.

The quietness grew out longer and neither of them could say a word.
That was when she realized about her Dad. It wasn’t like she was learning a new fact—she had understood it all along in every way except with her brain. Now she just suddenly knew that she knew about her Dad. He was lonesome and he was an old man. Because none of the kids went to him for anything and because he didn’t earn much money he felt like he was cut off from the family. And in his lonesomeness he wanted to be close to one of his kids—and they were all so busy that they didn’t know it. He felt like he wasn’t much real use to anybody.

his thin hands seemed lighter in color than the rest of his body and the palms were soft yellow. His hands had always an immaculate, shrunken look, as though they had been scrubbed with a brush and soaked for a long time in a pan of water.