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wasn't sure what Shadows were, so he had to come behind the counter and get
them out of the drawer himself; and he laughed, not unkindly, though it was
worse than if it had been: now he knew I was a fool, we would never be
friends.
Dolly said, "Have a piece of cake, Riley," and he asked did we always
have picnics this early in the day? then went on to say he considered it a
fine idea: "Like swimming at night," he said. "I come down here while it's
still dark, and go swimming in the river. Next time you have a picnic, call
out so I'll know you're here."
"You are welcome any morning," said Dolly, raising her veil. "I daresay
we will be here for some while."
Riley must have thought it a curious invitation, but he did not say so.
He produced a package of cigarettes and passed it around; when Catherine
took one. Dolly said: "Catherine Creek, you've never touched tobacco in your
life." Catherine allowed as to how she may have been missing something: "It
must be a comfort, so many folks speak in its favor; and Dolly-heart, when
you get to be our age you've got to look for comforts." Dolly bit her lip;
"Well, I don't suppose there's any harm," she said, and accepted a cigarette
herself.
There are two things that will drive a boy crazy (according to Mr.
Hand, who caught me smoking in the lavatory at school) and I'd given up one
of them, cigarettes, two years before: not because I thought it would make
me crazy, but because I thought it was imperiling my growth. Actually, now
that I was a normal size, Riley was no taller than me, though he seemed to
be, for he moved with the drawn-out cowboy awkwardness of a lanky man. So I
took a cigarette, and Dolly, gushing un-inhaled smoke, said she thought we
might as well all be sick together; but no one was sick, and Catherine said
next time she would like to try a pipe, as they smelled so good. Whereupon
Dolly volunteered the surprising fact that Verena smoked a pipe, something
I'd never known: "I don't know whether she does any more, but she used to
have a pipe and a can of Prince Albert with half an apple cut up in it. But
you musnt tell that," she added, suddenly aware of Riley, who laughed aloud.
Usually, glimpsed on the street or seen passing in his car, Riley wore
a tense, trigger-tempered expression; but there in the China tree he seemed
relaxed: frequent smiles enriched his whole face, as though he wanted at
least to be friendly, if not friends. Dolly, for her part, appeared to be at
ease and enjoying his company. Certainly she was not afraid of him: perhaps
it was because we were in the tree-house, and the tree-house was her own.
"Thank you for the squirrels, sir," she said, as he prepared to leave.
"And don't forget to come again."
He swung himself to the ground. "Want a ride? My car's up by the
cemetery."
Dolly told him: "That's kind of you; but really we haven't any place to
go."
Grinning, he lifted his gun and aimed it at us; and Catherine yelled:
You ought to be whipped, boy; but he laughed and waved and ran, his bird dog
barking, booming ahead. Dolly said gaily, "Let's have a cigarette," for the
package had been left behind.
By the time Riley reached town the news was roaring in the air like a
flight of bees: how we'd run off in the middle of the night. Though neither
Catherine nor I knew it, Dolly had left a note, which Verena found when she
went for her morning coffee. As I understand it, this note simply said that
we were going away and that Verena would not be bothered by us any more. She
at once rang up her friend Morris Ritz at the Lola Hotel, and together they
traipsed off to rouse the sheriff. It was Verena's backing that had put the
sheriff into office; he was a fast-stepping, brassy young fellow with a
brutal jaw and the bashful eyes of a cardsharp; his name was Junius Candle
(can you believe it? the same Junius Candle who is a Senator today!). A
searching party of deputies was gathered; telegrams were hurried off to
sheriffs in other towns. Many years later, when the Talbo estate was being
settled, I came across the handwritten original of this telegram-composed, I
believe, by Dr. Ritz. Be on lookout for following persons traveling
together. Dolly Augusta Talbo, white, aged 60, yellow grayish hair, thin,
height 5 feet 3, green eyes, probably insane but not Ukely to be dangerous,
post description bakeries as she is cake eater. Catherine Creek, Negro,
pretends to be Indian, age about 60, toothless, confused speech, short and
heavy, strong, likely to be dangerous. Collin Talbo Fenwick, white, age 16,
looks younger, height 5 feet 7, blond, gray eyes. thin, bad posture, scar at
comer of mouth, surly natured. All three wanted as runaways. They sure
haven't run far, Riley said in the post office; and postmistress Mrs. Peters
rushed to the telephone to say Riley Henderson had seen us in the woods
below the cemetery.
While this was happening we were peaceably setting about to make the
tree-house cozy. From Catherine's satchel we took a rose and gold
scrapquilt, and there was a deck of Rook cards, soap, rolls of toilet paper,
oranges and lemons, candles, a frying pan, a bottle of blackberry wine, and
two shoeboxes filled with food: Catherine bragged that she'd robbed the
pantry of everything, leaving not even a biscuit for That One's breakfast.
Later, we all went to the creek and bathed our feet and faces in the
cold water. There are as many creeks in River Woods as there are veins in a
leaf: clear, crackling, they crook their way down into the little river that
crawls through the woods like a green alligator. Dolly looked a sight,
standing in the water with her winter suit-skirt hiked up and her veil
pestering her like a cloud of gnats. I asked her. Dolly, why are you wearing
that veil? and she said, "But isn't it proper for ladies to wear veils when
they go traveling?"
Returning to the tree, we made a delicious jar of orangeade and talked
of the future. Our assets were: forty-seven dollars in cash, and several
pieces of jewelry, notably a gold fraternity ring Catherine had found in the
intestines of a hog while stuffing sausages. According to Catherine,
forty-seven dollars would buy us bus tickets anywhere: she knew somebody who
had gone all the way to Mexico for fifteen dollars. Both Dolly and I were
opposed to Mexico: for one thing, we didnt know the language. Besides, Dolly
said, we shouldn't venture outside the state, and wherever we went it ought
to be near a forest, otherwise how would we be able to make the dropsy cure?
"To tell you the truth, I think we should set up right here in River Woods,"
she said, gazing about speculatively.
"In this old tree?" said Catherine. "Just put that notion out of your
head, Dollyheart." And then: "You recall how we saw in the paper where a man
bought a castle across the ocean and brought it every bit home with him? You
recall that? Well, we maybe could put my little house on a wagon and haul it
down here." But, as Dolly pointed out, the house belonged to Verena, and was
therefore not ours to haul away. Catherine answered: "You wrong, sugar. If
you feed a man, and wash his clothes, and born his children, you and that
man are married, that man is yours. If you sweep a house, and tend its fires
and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing
this, then you and that house are married, that house is yours. The way I
see it, both those houses up there belong to us: in the eyes of God, we
could put That One right out"
I had an idea: down on the river below us there was a forsaken
houseboat, green with the rust of water, half-sunk; it had been the property
of an old man who made his living catching catfish, and who had been run out
of town after applying for a certificate to marry a fifteen-year-old colored
girl. My idea was, why shouldn't we fix up the old houseboat and live there?
Catherine said that if possible she hoped to spend the rest of her life
on land: "Where the Lord intended us," and she listed more of His
intentions, one of these being that trees were meant for monkeys and birds.
Presently she went silent and, nudging us, pointed in amazement down to
where the woods opened upon the field of grass.
There, stalking toward us, solemnly, stiffly, came a distinguished
party: Judge Cool, the Reverend and Mrs. Buster, Mrs. Macy Wheeler; and
leading them, Sheriff Junius Candle, who wore high-laced boots and had a
pistol flapping on his hip. Sunmotes lilted around them like yellow
butterflies, brambles brushed their starched town clothes, and Mrs. Macy
Wheeler, frightened by a vine that switched against her leg, jumped back,
screeching: I laughed.
And, hearing me, they looked up at us, an expression of perplexed
horror collecting on some of their faces: it was as though they were
visitors at a zoo who had wandered accidentally into one of the cages.
Sheriff Candle slouched forward, his hand cocked on his pistol. He stared at
us with puckered eyes, as if he were gazing straight into the sun. "Now look
here..." he began, and was cut short by Mrs. Buster, who said: "Sheriff, we
agreed to leave this to the Reverend." It was a rule of hers that her
husband, as God's representative, should have first say in everything. The
Reverend Buster cleared his throat, and his hands, as he rubbed them
together, were like the dry scraping feelers of an insect. "Dolly Talbo," he
said, his voice very fine-sounding for so stringy, stunted a man, "I speak
to you on behalf of your sister, that good grar cious woman..."
"That she is," sang his wife, and Mrs. Macy Wheeler parroted her.
"...who has this day received a grievous shock."
That she has," echoed the ladies in their choir-trained voices.
Dolly looked at Catherine, touched my hand, as though asking us to
explain what was meant by the group glowering below like dogs gathered
around a tree of trapped possums. Inadvertently, and just, I think to have
something in her hands, she picked up one of the cigarettes Riley had left.
"Shame on you," squalled Mrs. Buster, tossing her tiny bald-ish head:
those who called her an old buzzard, and there were several, were not
speaking of her character alone: in addition to a small vicious head, she
had high hunched shoulders and a vast body. "I say shame on you. How can you
have come so far from God as to sit up in a tree like a drunken
Indian-sucking cigarettes like a common..."
"Floozy," supplied Mrs. Macy Wheeler.
"...floozy, while your sister lies in misery flat on her back."
Maybe they were right in describing Catherine as dangerous, for she
reared up and said: "Preacher lady, don't you go calling Dolly and us
floozies; 111 come down there and slap you bowlegged." Fortunately, none of
them could understand her; if they had, the sheriff might have shot her
through the head: no exaggeration; and many of the white people in town
would have said he did right
Dolly seemed stunned, at the same time self-possessed. You see, she
simply dusted her skirt and said: "Consider a moment, Mrs. Buster, and you
will realize that we are nearer God than you-by several yards."
"Good for you. Miss Dolly. I call that a good answer." The man who had
spoken was Judge Cool; he clapped his hands together and chuckled
appreciatively. "Of course they are nearer God," he said, unfazed by the
disapproving, sober faces around him. "They're in a tree, and we're on the
ground."
Mrs. Buster whirled on him. "I'd thought you were a Christian, Charlie
Cool. My ideas of a Christian do not include laughing at and encouraging a
poor mad woman."
"Mind who you name as mad, Thelma," said the Judge. "That isn't
especially Christian either."
The Reverend Buster opened fire. "Answer me this. Judge. Why did you
come with us if it wasn't to do the Lord's will in a spirit of mercy?"
"The Lord's will?" said the Judge incredulously. "You dont know what
that is any more than I do. Perhaps the Lord told these people to go live in
a tree; you'll admit, at least, that He never told you to drag them
out-unless, of course, Verena Talbo is the Lord, a theory several of you
give credence to, eh Sheriff? No, sir, I did not come along to do anyone's
will but my own: which merely means that I felt like taking a walk - the
woods are very handsome at this time of year." He picked some brown violets
and put them in his buttonhole.
ХTo hell with all that," began the Sheriff, and was again interrupted
by Mrs. Buster, who said that under no circumstances would she tolerate
swearing: Will we. Reverend? and the Reverend, backing her up, said he'd be
damned if they would. "I'm in charge here," the Sheriff informed them,
thrusting his bully-boy jaw. "This is a matter for the law."
"Whose law, Junius?" inquired Judge Cool quietly. "Remember that I sat
in the courthouse twenty-seven years, rather a longer time than you've
lived. Take care. We have no legal right whatever to interfere with Miss
Dolly."
Undaunted, the Sheriff hoisted himself a little into the tree. "Let's
don't have any more trouble," he said coaxingly, and we could see his curved
dog-teeth. "Come on down from there, the pack of you." As we continued to
sit like three nesting birds he showed more of his teeth and, as though he
were trying to shake us out, angrily swayed a branch.
"Miss Dolly, you've always been a peaceful person," said Mrs. Macy
Wheeler. "Please come on home with us; you don't want to miss your dinner."
Dolly replied matter-of-faetly that we were not hungry: were they? "There's
a drumstick for anybody that would like it."
Sheriff Candle said, "You make it hard on me, ma'am," and pulled
himself nearer. A branch, cracking under his weight, sent through the tree a
sad cruel thunder.
"If he lays a hand on any one of you, kick him in the head," advised
Judge Cool. "Or I will," he said with sudden gallant pugnacity: like an
inspired frog he hopped and caught hold to one of the Sheriff's dangling
boots. The Sheriff, in turn, grabbed my ankles, and Catherine had to hold me
around the middle. We were sliding, that we should all fall seemed
inevitable, the strain was immense. Meanwhile, Dolly started pouring what
was left of our orangeade down the Sheriff's neck, and abruptly, shouting an
obscenity, he let go of me. They crashed to the ground, the Sheriff on top
of the Judge and the Reverend Buster crushed beneath them both. Mrs. Macy
Wheeler and Mrs. Buster, augmenting the disaster, fell upon them with
crow-like cries of distress.
Appalled by what had happened, and the part she herself had played.
Dolly became so confused that she dropped the empty orangeade jar: it hit
Mrs. Buster on the head with a ripe thud. "Beg pardon," she apologized,
though in the furor no one heard her.
When the tangle below unraveled, those concerned stood apart from each
other embarrassedly, gingerly feeling of themselves. The Reverend looked
rather flattened out, but no broken bones were discovered, and only Mrs.
Buster, on whose skimpy-haired head a bump was pyramiding, could have justly
complained of injury. She did so forthrightly. "You attacked me. Dolly
Talbo, don't deny it, everyone here is a witness, everyone saw you aim that
mason jar at my head. Junius, arrest heri"
The Sheriff, however, was involved in settling differences of his own.
Hands on hips, swaggering, he bore down on the Judge, who was in the process
of replacing the violets in his buttonhole. "If you weren't so old, I'd damn
well knock you down."
"I'm not so old, Junius: just old enough to think men ought not to
fight in front of ladies," said the Judge. He was a fair-sized man with
strong shoulders and a straight body: though not far from seventy, he looked
to be in his fifties. He clenched his fists and they were hard and hairy as
coconuts. "On the other hand," he said grimly, "I'm ready if you are."
At the moment it looked like a fair enough match. Even the Sheriff
seemed not so sure of himself; with diminishing bravado, he spit between his
fingers, and said Well, nobody was going to accuse him of hitting an old
man. "Or standing up to one," Judge Cool retorted. "Go on, Junius, tuck your
shirt in your pants and trot along home."
The Sheriff appealed to us in the tree. "Save yourselves a lot of
trouble: get out of there and come along with me now." We did not stir,
except that Dolly dropped her veil, as though lowering a curtain on the
subject once for all. Mrs. Buster, the lump on her head like a horn, said
portentously, "Never mind, Sheriff. They've had their chance," and, eyeing
Dolly, (hen the Judge, added: "You may imagine you are getting away with
something. But let me tell you there will be a retribution -not in heaven,
right here on earth."
"Right here on earth," harmonized Mrs. Macy Wheeler.
They left along the path, erect, haughty as a wedding procession, and
passed into the sunlight where the red rolling grass swept up, swallowed
them. Lingering under the tree, the Judge smiled at us and, with a small
courteous bow, said: "Do I remember you offering a drumstick to anybody that
would likeit?"
He might have been put together from parts of the tree, for his nose
was like a wooden peg, his legs were strong as old roots, and his eyebrows
were thick, tough as strips of bark. Among the topmost branches were beards
of silvery moss the color of his center-parted hair, and the cowhide
sycamore leaves, sifting down from a neighboring taller tree, were the color
of his cheeks. Despite his canny, tomcat eyes, the general impression his
face made was that of someone shy and countrified. Ordinarily he was not the
one to make a show of himself. Judge Charlie Cool; there were many who had
taken advantage of his modesty to set themselves above him. Yet none of them
could have claimed, as he could, to be a graduate of Harvard University or
to have twice traveled in Europe. Still, there were those who were resentful
and felt that he put on airs: wasn't he supposed to read a page of Greek
every morning before breakfast? and what kind of a man was it that would
always have flowers in his buttonhole? If he wasn't stuck up, why, some
people asked, had he gone all the way to Kentucky to find a wife instead of
marrying one of our own women? I do not remember the Judge's wife; she died
before I was old enough to be aware of her, therefore an that I repeat comes
second-hand. So: the town never warmed up to Irene Cool, and apparently it
was her own fault. Kentucky women are difficult to begin with, keyed-up,
hellion-hearted, and Irene Cool, who was born a Todd in Bowling Green (Mary
Todd, a second cousin once removed, had married Abraham Lincoln) let
everyone around here know she thought them a backward, vulgar lot: she
received none of the ladies of the town, but Miss Palmer, who did sewing for
her, spread news of how she'd transformed the Judge's house into a place of
taste and style with Oriental rugs and antique furnishings. She drove to and
from Church in a Pierce-Arrow with all the windows rolled up, and in church
itself she sat with a cologned handkerchief against her nose: the smell of
God ain't good enough for Irene Cool. Moreover, she would not permit either
of the local doctors to attend her family, this though she herself was a
semi-invalid: a small backbone dislocation necessitated her sleeping on a
bed of boards. There were crude jokes about the Judge getting full of
splinters. Nevertheless, he fathered two sons, Todd and Charles Jr., both
born in Kentucky where their mother had gone in order that they could claim
to be natives of the bluegrass state. But those who tried to make out the
Judge got the brunt of his wife's irritableness, that he was a miserable
man, never had much of a case, and after she died even the hardest of their
critics had to admit old Charlie must surely have loved his Irene. For
during the last two years of her life, when she was very ill and fretful, he
retired as circuit judge, then took her abroad to the places they had been
on their honeymoon. She never came back; she is buried in Switzerland. Not
so long ago Carrie Wells, a schoolteacher here in town, went on a group tour
to Europe; the only thing connecting our town with that continent are
graves, the graves of soldier boys and Irene Cool; and Carrie, armed with a
camera for snapshots, set out to visit them all: though she stumbled about
in a cloud-high cemetery one whole afternoon, she could not find the Judge's
wife, and it is funny to think of Irene Cool, serenely there on a
mountain-side still unwilling to receive. There was not much left for the
Judge when he came back; politicians like Meiself Tallsap and his gang had
come into power: those boys couldn't afford to have Charlie Cool sitting in
the courthouse. It was sad to see the Judge, a fine-looking man dressed in
narrowcut suits with a black silk band sewn around his sleeve and a Cherokee
rose in his buttonhole, sad to see him with nothing to do except go to the
post office or stop in at the bank. His sons worked in. the bank,
prissy-mouthed, prudent men who might have been twins, for they both were
marshmallow-white, slump-shouldered, watery-eyed. Charles Jr., he was the
one who had lost his hair while still in college, was vice-president of the
bank, and Todd, the younger son, was chief cashier. In no way did they
resemble their father, except that they had married Kentucky women. These
daughters-in-law had taken over the Judge's house and divided it into two
apartments with separate entrances; there was an arrangement whereby (he old
man lived with first one son's family, then the other. No wonder he'd felt
like taking a walk to the woods.
"Thank you. Miss Dolly," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand. "That's the best drumstick I've had since I was a boy."
"It's the least we can do, a drumstick; you were very brave." There was
in Dolly's voice an emotional, feminine tremor that struck me as unsuitable,
not dignified; so, too, it must have seemed to Catherine: she gave Dolly a
reprimanding glance. "Won't you have something more, a piece of cake?"
"No ma'm, thank you, I've had a sufficiency." He unloosened from his
vest a gold watch and chain, then lassoed the chain to a strong twig above
his head; it hung like a Christmas ornament, and its feathery faded ticking
might have been the heartbeat of a delicate thing, a firefly, a frog. "If
you can hear time passing it makes the day last longer. I've come to
appreciate a long day." He brushed back the fur of the squirrels, which lay
curled in a corner as though they were only asleep. "Right through the head:
good shooting, son."
Of course I gave the credit to the proper party. "Riley Hen-derson, was
it?" said the Judge, and went on to say it was Riley who had let our
whereabouts be known. "Before that, they must have sent off a hundred
dollars' worth of telegrams," he told us, tickled at the thought. "I guess
it was the idea of all that money that made Verena take to her bed."
Scowling, Dolly said, "It doesn't make a particle of sense, all of them
behaving ugly that way. They seemed mad enough to kill us, though I can't
see why, or what it has to do with Verena: she knew we were going away to
leave her in peace, I told her, I even left a note. But if she's sick-is
she. Judge? I've never known her to be."
"Never a day," said Catherine.
"Oh, she's upset all right," the Judge said with a certain contentment
"But Verena's not the woman to come down with anything an aspirin couldn't
fix. I remember when she wanted to rearrange the cemetery, put up some kind
of mausoleum to house herself and all you Talbos. One of the ladies around
here came to me and said Judge, don't you think Verena Talbo is the most
morbid person in town, contemplating such a big tomb for herself? and I said
No, the only thing morbid was that she was willing to spend the money when
not for an instant did she believe she was ever going to die."
"I don't like to hear talk against my sister," said Dolly curtly.
"She's worked hard, she deserves to have things as she wants them. It's our
fault, someway we failed her, there was no place for us in her house."
Catherine's cotton-wadding squirmed in her Jaw like chewing tobacco.
"Are you my Dollyheart? or some hypocrite? He's a friend, you ought to tell
him the truth, how That One and the little Jew was stealing our medicine..."
The Judge applied for a translation, but Dolly said it was simply
nonsense, nothing worth repeating and, diverting him, asked if he knew how
to skin a squirrel. Nodding dreamily, he gazed away from us, above us, his
acomlike eyes scanning the sky-fringed, breeze-fooled leaves. "It may be
that there is no place for any of us. Except we know there is, somewhere;
and if we found it, but lived there only a moment, we could count ourselves
blessed. This could be your place," he said, shivering as though in the sky
spreading wings had cask a cold shade. "And mine."
Subtly as the gold watch spun its sound of time, the afternoon curved
toward twilight. Mist from the river, autumn haze, trailed moon-colors among
the bronze, the blue trees, and a halo, an image of winter, ringed the
paling sun. Still the Judge did not leave us: 'Two women and a boy? at the
mercy of night? and Junius Candle, those fools up to God knows what? I'm
sticking with you." Surely, of the four of us, it was the Judge who had most
found his place in the tree. It was a pleasure to watch him, all twinkly as
a hare's nose, and feeling himself a man again, more than that, a protector.
He skinned the squirrels with a jackknife, while in the dusk I gathered
sticks and built under the tree a fire for the frying pan. Dolly opened the
bottle of blackberry wine; she justified this by referring to a chill in the
air. The squirrels turned out quite well, very tender, and the Judge said
proudly that we should taste his fried catfish sometime. We sipped the wine
in silence; a smell of leaves and smoke carrying from the cooling fire
called up thoughts of other autumns, and we sighed, heard, like sea-roar,
singings in the field of grass. A candle flickered in a mason jar, and gipsy
moths, balanced, blowing about the flame, seemed to pilot its scarf of
yellow among the black branches.
There was, just then, not a footfall, but a nebulous sense of
intrusion: it might have been nothing more than the moon coming out. Except
there was no moon; nor stars. It was dark as the blackberry wine. "I think
there is someone-something down there," said Dolly, expressing what we all
felt
The Judge lifted the candle. Night-crawlers slithered away from its
lurching light, a snowy owl flew between the trees. "Who goes there?" he
challenged with the conviction of a soldier. "Answer up, who goes there?"
"Me, Riley Henderson." It was indeed. He separated from the shadows,
and his upraised, grinning face looked warped, wicked in the candlelight.
"Just thought I'd see how you were getting on. Hope you're not sore at me: I
wouldn't have told where you were, not if I'd known what it was all about."
"Nobody blames you, son," said the Judge, and I remembered it was he
who had championed Riley's cause against his uncle Horace Holton: there was
an understanding between them. "We're enjoying a small taste of wine. I'm
sure Miss Dolly would be pleased to have you join us."
Catherine complained there was no room; another ounce, and those old
boards would give way. StiB, we scrunched together to make a place for
Riley, who had no sooner squeezed into it than Catherine grabbed a fistful
of his hair. "That's for today with you pointing your gun at us like I told
you not to; and this," she said, yanking again and speaking distinctively
enough to be understood, "pays you back for setting the Sheriff on us."
It seemed to me that Catherine was impertinent, but Riley grunted
good-naturedly, and said she might have better cause to be pulling
somebody's hair before the night was over. For there was, he told us,
excited feelings in the town, crowds like Saturday night; the Reverend and
Mrs. Buster especially were brewing trouble: Mrs. Buster was sitting on her
front porch showing callers the bump on her head. Sheriff Candle, he said,
had persuaded Verona to authorize a warrant for our arrest on the grounds
that we had stolen property belonging to her.
"And Judge," said Riley, his manner grave, perplexed, Хthey've even got
the idea they're going to arrest you. Disturbing the peace and obstructing
justice, that's what I heard. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this-but outside
the bank I ran into one of your boys, Todd. I asked him what he was going to
do about it, about them arresting you, I mean; and he said Nothing, said
they'd been expecting something of the kind, that you'd brought it on
yourself."
Leaning, the Judge snuffed out the candle; it was as though an
expression was occurring in his face which he did not want us to see. In the
dark one of us was crying, after a moment we knew that it was Dolly, and the
sound of her tears set off silent explosions of love that, running the full
circle round, bound us each to the other. Softly, the Judge said: "When they
come we must be ready for them. Now, everybody listen to me..."
We must know our position to defend it; that is a primary rule.
Therefore: what has brought us together? Trouble. Miss Dolly and her
friends, they are in trouble. You, Riley; we both are in trouble. We belong
in this tree or we wouldn't be here." Dolly grew silent under the confident
sound of the Judge's voice; he said: "Today, when I started out with the
Sheriffs party, I was a man convinced that his life will have passed
un-communicated and without trace. I think now that I will not have been so
unfortunate. Miss Dolly, how long? fifty, sixty years? it was that far ago
that I remember you, a stiff and blushing child riding to town in your
father's wagon-never getting down from the wagon because you didn't want us
town-children to see you had no shoes."
"They had shoes. Dolly and That One," Catherine muttered. "It was me
that didn't have no shoes."
"All the years that I've seen you, never known you, not ever
recognized, as I did today, what you are: a spirit, a pagan..."
"A pagan?" said Dolly, alarmed but interested.
"At least, then, a spirit, someone not to be calculated by the eye
alone. Spirits are accepters of life, they grant its differences-and
consequently are always in trouble. Myself, I should never have been a
Judge; as such, I was too often on the wrong side: the law doesn't admit
differences. Do you remember old Carper, the fisherman who had a houseboat
on the river? He was chased out of town-wanted to marry that pretty little
colored girl, I think she works for Mrs. Postum now; and you know she loved
him, I used to see them when I went fishing, they were very happy together;
she was to him what no one has been to me, the one person in the world- from
whom nothing is held back. Still, if he had succeeded in marrying her, it
would have been the Sheriff's duty to arrest and my duty to sentence him. I
sometimes imagine all those whom I've called guilty have passed the real
guilt on to me: it's partly that that makes me want once before I die to be
right on the right side."
"You on the right side now. That One and the Jew..."
"Hush," said Dolly.
"The one person in the world." It was Riley repeating the Judge's
phrase; his voice lingered inquiringly.
"I mean," the Judge explained, "a person to whom everything can be
said. Am I an idiot to want such a thing? But ah, the energy we spend hiding
from one another, afraid as we are of being identified. But here we are,
identified: five fools in a tree. A great piece of luck provided we know how
to use it: no longer any need to worry about the picture we present -free to
find out who we truly are. If we know that no one can dislodge us; it's the
uncertainty concerning themselves that makes our friends conspire to deny
the differences. By scraps and bits I've in the past surrendered myself to
strangers-men who disappeared down the gangplank, got off at the next
station: put together, maybe they would've made the one person in the
world-but there he is with a dozen different faces moving down a hundred
separate streets. This is my chance to find that man-you are him. Miss
Dolly, Riley, all of you."
Catherine said, "I'm no man with any dozen faces: tile notion," which
irritated Dolly, who told her if she couldn't speak respectably why not just
go to sleep. "But Judge," said Dolly, "I'm not sure I know what it is you
have in mind we should tell each other. Secrets?" she finished lamely.
"Secrets, no, no." The Judge scratched a match and relighted the
candle; his face sprang upon us with an expression unexpectedly pathetic: we
must help him, he was pleading. "Speak of the night, the fact there is no
moon. What one says hardly matters, only the trust with which it is said,
the sympathy with which it is received. Irene, my wife, a remarkable woman,
we might have shared anything, and yet, yet nothing in us combined, we could
not touch. She died in my arms, and at the last I said. Are you happy,
Irene? have I made you happy? Happy happy happy, those were her last words:
equivocal. I have never understood whether she was saying yes, or merely
answering with an echo: I should know if I'd ever known her. My sons. I do
not enjoy their esteem: I've wanted it, more as a man than as a father.
Unfortunately, (hey feel they know something shameful about me. Ill tell you
what it is." His virile eyes, faceted with candle-glow, examined us one by
one, as though testing our attention, trust "Five years ago, nearer six, I
sat down in a train-seat where some child had left a child's magazine. I
picked it up and was looking through it when I saw on the back cover
addresses of children who wanted to correspond with other children. There
was a little girl in Alaska, her name appealed to me. Heather Falls. I sent
her a picture postcard; Lord, it seemed a harmless and pleasant thing to do.
She answered at once, and the letter quite astonished me; it was a very
intelligent account of life in Alaska-charming descriptions of her father's
sheep ranch, of northern lights. She was thirteen and enclosed a photograph
of herself-not pretty, but a wise and kind looking child. I hunted through
some old albums, and found a Kodak made on a fishing trip when I was
fifteen-out in the sun and with a trout in my hand: it looked new enough. I
wrote her as though I were still that boy, told her of the gun I'd got for
Christmas, how the dog had had pups and what we'd named them, described a
tent-show that had come to town. To be growing up again and have a
sweetheart in Alaska-well, it was fun for an old man sitting alone listening
to the noise of a clock. Later on she wrote she'd fallen in love with a
fellow she knew, and I felt a real pang of jealousy, the way a youngster
would; but we have remained friends: two years ago, when I told her I was
getting ready for law school, she sent me a gold nugget-it would bring me
luck, she said." He took it from his pocket and held it out for us to see:
it made her come so close. Heather Palls, as though the gently bright gift
balanced in his palm was part of her heart.
"And that's what they think is shameful?" said Dolly, more piqued than
indignant. "Because you've helped keep company a lonely little child in
Alaska? It snows there so much."
Judge Cool closed his hand over the nugget. "Not that they've mentioned
it to me. But I've heard them talking at night, my sons and their wives:
wanting to know what to do about me. Of course they'd spied out the letters.
I don't believe in locking drawers-seems strange a man can't live without
keys in what was at least once his own house. They think it all a sign
of..." He tapped his head.
"I had a letter once. Collin, sugar, pour me a taste," said Catherine,
indicating the wine. "Sure enough, I had a letter once, still got it
somewhere, kept it twenty years wondering who was wrote it Said Hello
Catherine, come on to Miami and marry with me, love Bill."
"Catherine. A man asked you to marry him-and you never told one word of
it to me?"
Catherine lifted a shoulder. "Well, Dollyheart, what was (he Judge
saying? You don't tell anybody everything. Besides, I've known a peck of
Bills-wouldn't study marrying any of them. What worries my mind is, which
one of the Bills was it wrote that letter? I'd like to know, seeing as it's
the only letter I ever got. It could be the Bill that put the roof on my
house; course, by the time the roof was up-my goodness, I have got old, been
a long day since I've given it two thoughts. There was Bill that came to
plow the garden, spring of 1913 it was; that man sure could plow a straight
row. And Bill that built the chicken-coop: went away on a Pullman job; might
have been him wrote me that letter. Or Bill-uh uh, his name was Fred-Collin,
sugar, this wine is mighty good." ^ "I may have a drop more myself," said
Dolly. "I mean, Catherine has given me such a..."
"Hmn," said Catherine.
"If you spoke more slowly, or chewed less..." The Judge thought
Catherine's cotton was tobacco.
Riley had withdrawn a little from us; slumped over, he stared stilly
into the inhabited dark: I, I, I, a bird cried, "I- you're wrong. Judge," he
said.
"How so, son?"
The caught-up uneasiness that I associated with Riley swamped his face.
'I'm not in trouble: I'm nothing-or would you call that my trouble? I lie
awake thinking what do I know how to do? hunt, drive a car, fool around; and
I get scared when I think maybe that's all it will ever come to. Another
thing, I've got no feelings-except for my sisters, which is different. Take
for instance, I've been going with this girl from Rock City nearly a year,
the longest time I've stayed with one girl. I guess it was a week ago she
flared up and said where's your heart? said if I didn't love her she'd as
soon die.
So I stopped the car on the railroad track; well, I said, lets just sit
here, the Crescent's due in about twenty minutes. We didn't take our eyes
off each other, and I thought isn't it mean (hat I'm looking at you and I
don't feel anything except..."
"Except vanity?" said the Judge.
Riley did not deny it. "And if my sisters were old enough to take care
of themselves, I'd have been willing to wait for (he Crescent to come down
on us,"
It made my stomach hurt to hear him talk like that; I longed to tell
him he was all I wanted to be.
"You said before about the one person in the world. Why couldn't I
think of her like that? Ifs what I want, I'm no good by myself. Maybe, if I
could care for somebody that way, I'd make plans and carry them out: buy
that stretch of land past Parson's Place and build houses on it-I could do
it if I got quiet."
Wind surprised, pealed the leaves, parted night clouds; showers of
starlight were let loose: our candle, as though intimidated by the
incandescence of the opening, star-stabbed sky, toppled, and we could see,
unwrapped above us, a late wayaway wintery moon: it was like a slice of
snow, near and far creatures called to it, hunched moon-eyed frogs, a
claw-voiced wildcat. Catherine hauled out the rose scrapquilt, insisting
Dolly wrap it around herself; then she tucked her arms around me and
scratched my head until I let it relax on her bosom-You cold? she said, and
I wiggled closer: she was good and warm as the old kitchen.
"Son, I'd say you were going at it the wrong end first," said the
Judge, turning up his coat-collar. "How could you care about one girl? Have
you ever cared about one leaf?"
Riley, listening to the wildcat with an itchy hunter's look, snatched
at the leaves blowing about us like midnight butterflies; alive, fluttering
as though to escape and fly, one stayed trapped between his fingers. The
Judge, too: he caught a leaf; and it was worth more in his hand than in
Riley's. Pressing ft mildly against his cheek, he distantly said, "We are
speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed-begin with these, learn a little
what it is to love. First, a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive
what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy
process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I've
never mastered it-I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love,
as nature is a chain of life."
"Then," said Dolly with an intake of breath, "I've been in love afl my
life." She sank down into the quilt. "Well, no," and her voice fell off, "I
guess not. I've never loved a," while she searched for the word wind
frolicked her veil, "gentleman. You might say that I've never had the
opportunity. Except Papa," she paused, as though she'd said too much. A
gauze of starlight wrapped her closely as the quilt; something, the reciting
frogs, the string of voices stretching from the field of grass, lured,
impelled her: "But I have loved everything else. Like the color pink; when I
was a child I had one colored crayon, and it was pink; I drew pink cats,
pink trees-for thirty-four years I lived in a pink room. And the box I kept,
it's somewhere in the attic now, I must ask Verena please to give it to me,
it would be nice to see my first loves again: what is there? a dried
honeycomb, an empty hornet's nest, other things, or an orange stuck with
cloves and a jaybird's egg-when I loved those love collected inside me so
that it went flying about like a bird in a sunflower field. But it's best
not to show such things, it burdens people and makes them, I don't know why,
unhappy. Verena scolds at me for what she calls hiding in comers, but I'm
afraid of scaring people if I show that I care for them. Like Paul Jimson's
wife; after he got sick and couldn't deliver the papers any more, remember
she took over his roulte? poor thin little thing just dragging herself with
that sack of papers. It was one cold afternoon, she came up on the porch her
nose running and tears of cold hanging in her eyes-she put down the paper,
and I said wait, hold on, and took my handkerchief to wipe her eyes: I
wanted to say, if I could, that I was sorry and that I loved her-my hand
grazed her face, she turned with the smallest shout and ran down the steps.
Then on, she always tossed the papers from the street, and whenever I heard
them hit the porch it sounded in my bones."
"Paul Jimson's wife: worrying yourself over trash like that!" said
Catherine, rinsing her mouth with the last of the wine. "I've got a bowl of
goldfish, just 'cause I like them don't make me love the world. Love a lot
of mess, my foot. You can talk what you want, not going to do anything but
harm, bringing up what's best forgot. People ought to keep more things to
themselves. The deepdown ownself part of you, that's the good part: what's
left of a human being that goes around speaking his privates? The Judge, he
say we all up here 'cause of trouble some kind. Shoot! We here for very
plain reasons. One is, this our tree-house, and two, That One and the Jew's
trying to steal what belongs to us. Three: you here, every one of you,
'cause you want to be: the deepdown part of you tells you so. This last
don't apply to me. I like a roof over my own head. Dollyheart, give the
Judge a portion of that quilt: man's shivering like was Halloween." Shyly
Dolly lifted a wing of the quilt and nodded to him; the Judge, not at all
shy, slipped under it. The branches of the China tree swayed like immense
oars dipping into a sea rolling and chilled by the far far stars. Left
alone, Riley sat hunched up in himself like a pitiful orphan. "Snuggle up,
hard head: you cold like anybody else," said Catherine, offering him the
position on her right that I occupied on her left. He didn't seem to want
to; maybe he noticed that she smelled like bitter-weed, or maybe he thought
it was sissy; but I said come on, Riley, Catherine's good and warm, better
than a quilt. After a while Riley moved over to us. It was quiet for so long
I thought everyone had gone to sleep. Then I felt Catherine stiffen. "It's
just come to me who it was sent my letter: Bill Nobody. That One, that's
who. Sure as my name's Catherine Creek she got some nigger in Miami to mail
me a letter, thinking I'd scoot off there never to be heard from again."
them out of the drawer himself; and he laughed, not unkindly, though it was
worse than if it had been: now he knew I was a fool, we would never be
friends.
Dolly said, "Have a piece of cake, Riley," and he asked did we always
have picnics this early in the day? then went on to say he considered it a
fine idea: "Like swimming at night," he said. "I come down here while it's
still dark, and go swimming in the river. Next time you have a picnic, call
out so I'll know you're here."
"You are welcome any morning," said Dolly, raising her veil. "I daresay
we will be here for some while."
Riley must have thought it a curious invitation, but he did not say so.
He produced a package of cigarettes and passed it around; when Catherine
took one. Dolly said: "Catherine Creek, you've never touched tobacco in your
life." Catherine allowed as to how she may have been missing something: "It
must be a comfort, so many folks speak in its favor; and Dolly-heart, when
you get to be our age you've got to look for comforts." Dolly bit her lip;
"Well, I don't suppose there's any harm," she said, and accepted a cigarette
herself.
There are two things that will drive a boy crazy (according to Mr.
Hand, who caught me smoking in the lavatory at school) and I'd given up one
of them, cigarettes, two years before: not because I thought it would make
me crazy, but because I thought it was imperiling my growth. Actually, now
that I was a normal size, Riley was no taller than me, though he seemed to
be, for he moved with the drawn-out cowboy awkwardness of a lanky man. So I
took a cigarette, and Dolly, gushing un-inhaled smoke, said she thought we
might as well all be sick together; but no one was sick, and Catherine said
next time she would like to try a pipe, as they smelled so good. Whereupon
Dolly volunteered the surprising fact that Verena smoked a pipe, something
I'd never known: "I don't know whether she does any more, but she used to
have a pipe and a can of Prince Albert with half an apple cut up in it. But
you musnt tell that," she added, suddenly aware of Riley, who laughed aloud.
Usually, glimpsed on the street or seen passing in his car, Riley wore
a tense, trigger-tempered expression; but there in the China tree he seemed
relaxed: frequent smiles enriched his whole face, as though he wanted at
least to be friendly, if not friends. Dolly, for her part, appeared to be at
ease and enjoying his company. Certainly she was not afraid of him: perhaps
it was because we were in the tree-house, and the tree-house was her own.
"Thank you for the squirrels, sir," she said, as he prepared to leave.
"And don't forget to come again."
He swung himself to the ground. "Want a ride? My car's up by the
cemetery."
Dolly told him: "That's kind of you; but really we haven't any place to
go."
Grinning, he lifted his gun and aimed it at us; and Catherine yelled:
You ought to be whipped, boy; but he laughed and waved and ran, his bird dog
barking, booming ahead. Dolly said gaily, "Let's have a cigarette," for the
package had been left behind.
By the time Riley reached town the news was roaring in the air like a
flight of bees: how we'd run off in the middle of the night. Though neither
Catherine nor I knew it, Dolly had left a note, which Verena found when she
went for her morning coffee. As I understand it, this note simply said that
we were going away and that Verena would not be bothered by us any more. She
at once rang up her friend Morris Ritz at the Lola Hotel, and together they
traipsed off to rouse the sheriff. It was Verena's backing that had put the
sheriff into office; he was a fast-stepping, brassy young fellow with a
brutal jaw and the bashful eyes of a cardsharp; his name was Junius Candle
(can you believe it? the same Junius Candle who is a Senator today!). A
searching party of deputies was gathered; telegrams were hurried off to
sheriffs in other towns. Many years later, when the Talbo estate was being
settled, I came across the handwritten original of this telegram-composed, I
believe, by Dr. Ritz. Be on lookout for following persons traveling
together. Dolly Augusta Talbo, white, aged 60, yellow grayish hair, thin,
height 5 feet 3, green eyes, probably insane but not Ukely to be dangerous,
post description bakeries as she is cake eater. Catherine Creek, Negro,
pretends to be Indian, age about 60, toothless, confused speech, short and
heavy, strong, likely to be dangerous. Collin Talbo Fenwick, white, age 16,
looks younger, height 5 feet 7, blond, gray eyes. thin, bad posture, scar at
comer of mouth, surly natured. All three wanted as runaways. They sure
haven't run far, Riley said in the post office; and postmistress Mrs. Peters
rushed to the telephone to say Riley Henderson had seen us in the woods
below the cemetery.
While this was happening we were peaceably setting about to make the
tree-house cozy. From Catherine's satchel we took a rose and gold
scrapquilt, and there was a deck of Rook cards, soap, rolls of toilet paper,
oranges and lemons, candles, a frying pan, a bottle of blackberry wine, and
two shoeboxes filled with food: Catherine bragged that she'd robbed the
pantry of everything, leaving not even a biscuit for That One's breakfast.
Later, we all went to the creek and bathed our feet and faces in the
cold water. There are as many creeks in River Woods as there are veins in a
leaf: clear, crackling, they crook their way down into the little river that
crawls through the woods like a green alligator. Dolly looked a sight,
standing in the water with her winter suit-skirt hiked up and her veil
pestering her like a cloud of gnats. I asked her. Dolly, why are you wearing
that veil? and she said, "But isn't it proper for ladies to wear veils when
they go traveling?"
Returning to the tree, we made a delicious jar of orangeade and talked
of the future. Our assets were: forty-seven dollars in cash, and several
pieces of jewelry, notably a gold fraternity ring Catherine had found in the
intestines of a hog while stuffing sausages. According to Catherine,
forty-seven dollars would buy us bus tickets anywhere: she knew somebody who
had gone all the way to Mexico for fifteen dollars. Both Dolly and I were
opposed to Mexico: for one thing, we didnt know the language. Besides, Dolly
said, we shouldn't venture outside the state, and wherever we went it ought
to be near a forest, otherwise how would we be able to make the dropsy cure?
"To tell you the truth, I think we should set up right here in River Woods,"
she said, gazing about speculatively.
"In this old tree?" said Catherine. "Just put that notion out of your
head, Dollyheart." And then: "You recall how we saw in the paper where a man
bought a castle across the ocean and brought it every bit home with him? You
recall that? Well, we maybe could put my little house on a wagon and haul it
down here." But, as Dolly pointed out, the house belonged to Verena, and was
therefore not ours to haul away. Catherine answered: "You wrong, sugar. If
you feed a man, and wash his clothes, and born his children, you and that
man are married, that man is yours. If you sweep a house, and tend its fires
and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing
this, then you and that house are married, that house is yours. The way I
see it, both those houses up there belong to us: in the eyes of God, we
could put That One right out"
I had an idea: down on the river below us there was a forsaken
houseboat, green with the rust of water, half-sunk; it had been the property
of an old man who made his living catching catfish, and who had been run out
of town after applying for a certificate to marry a fifteen-year-old colored
girl. My idea was, why shouldn't we fix up the old houseboat and live there?
Catherine said that if possible she hoped to spend the rest of her life
on land: "Where the Lord intended us," and she listed more of His
intentions, one of these being that trees were meant for monkeys and birds.
Presently she went silent and, nudging us, pointed in amazement down to
where the woods opened upon the field of grass.
There, stalking toward us, solemnly, stiffly, came a distinguished
party: Judge Cool, the Reverend and Mrs. Buster, Mrs. Macy Wheeler; and
leading them, Sheriff Junius Candle, who wore high-laced boots and had a
pistol flapping on his hip. Sunmotes lilted around them like yellow
butterflies, brambles brushed their starched town clothes, and Mrs. Macy
Wheeler, frightened by a vine that switched against her leg, jumped back,
screeching: I laughed.
And, hearing me, they looked up at us, an expression of perplexed
horror collecting on some of their faces: it was as though they were
visitors at a zoo who had wandered accidentally into one of the cages.
Sheriff Candle slouched forward, his hand cocked on his pistol. He stared at
us with puckered eyes, as if he were gazing straight into the sun. "Now look
here..." he began, and was cut short by Mrs. Buster, who said: "Sheriff, we
agreed to leave this to the Reverend." It was a rule of hers that her
husband, as God's representative, should have first say in everything. The
Reverend Buster cleared his throat, and his hands, as he rubbed them
together, were like the dry scraping feelers of an insect. "Dolly Talbo," he
said, his voice very fine-sounding for so stringy, stunted a man, "I speak
to you on behalf of your sister, that good grar cious woman..."
"That she is," sang his wife, and Mrs. Macy Wheeler parroted her.
"...who has this day received a grievous shock."
That she has," echoed the ladies in their choir-trained voices.
Dolly looked at Catherine, touched my hand, as though asking us to
explain what was meant by the group glowering below like dogs gathered
around a tree of trapped possums. Inadvertently, and just, I think to have
something in her hands, she picked up one of the cigarettes Riley had left.
"Shame on you," squalled Mrs. Buster, tossing her tiny bald-ish head:
those who called her an old buzzard, and there were several, were not
speaking of her character alone: in addition to a small vicious head, she
had high hunched shoulders and a vast body. "I say shame on you. How can you
have come so far from God as to sit up in a tree like a drunken
Indian-sucking cigarettes like a common..."
"Floozy," supplied Mrs. Macy Wheeler.
"...floozy, while your sister lies in misery flat on her back."
Maybe they were right in describing Catherine as dangerous, for she
reared up and said: "Preacher lady, don't you go calling Dolly and us
floozies; 111 come down there and slap you bowlegged." Fortunately, none of
them could understand her; if they had, the sheriff might have shot her
through the head: no exaggeration; and many of the white people in town
would have said he did right
Dolly seemed stunned, at the same time self-possessed. You see, she
simply dusted her skirt and said: "Consider a moment, Mrs. Buster, and you
will realize that we are nearer God than you-by several yards."
"Good for you. Miss Dolly. I call that a good answer." The man who had
spoken was Judge Cool; he clapped his hands together and chuckled
appreciatively. "Of course they are nearer God," he said, unfazed by the
disapproving, sober faces around him. "They're in a tree, and we're on the
ground."
Mrs. Buster whirled on him. "I'd thought you were a Christian, Charlie
Cool. My ideas of a Christian do not include laughing at and encouraging a
poor mad woman."
"Mind who you name as mad, Thelma," said the Judge. "That isn't
especially Christian either."
The Reverend Buster opened fire. "Answer me this. Judge. Why did you
come with us if it wasn't to do the Lord's will in a spirit of mercy?"
"The Lord's will?" said the Judge incredulously. "You dont know what
that is any more than I do. Perhaps the Lord told these people to go live in
a tree; you'll admit, at least, that He never told you to drag them
out-unless, of course, Verena Talbo is the Lord, a theory several of you
give credence to, eh Sheriff? No, sir, I did not come along to do anyone's
will but my own: which merely means that I felt like taking a walk - the
woods are very handsome at this time of year." He picked some brown violets
and put them in his buttonhole.
ХTo hell with all that," began the Sheriff, and was again interrupted
by Mrs. Buster, who said that under no circumstances would she tolerate
swearing: Will we. Reverend? and the Reverend, backing her up, said he'd be
damned if they would. "I'm in charge here," the Sheriff informed them,
thrusting his bully-boy jaw. "This is a matter for the law."
"Whose law, Junius?" inquired Judge Cool quietly. "Remember that I sat
in the courthouse twenty-seven years, rather a longer time than you've
lived. Take care. We have no legal right whatever to interfere with Miss
Dolly."
Undaunted, the Sheriff hoisted himself a little into the tree. "Let's
don't have any more trouble," he said coaxingly, and we could see his curved
dog-teeth. "Come on down from there, the pack of you." As we continued to
sit like three nesting birds he showed more of his teeth and, as though he
were trying to shake us out, angrily swayed a branch.
"Miss Dolly, you've always been a peaceful person," said Mrs. Macy
Wheeler. "Please come on home with us; you don't want to miss your dinner."
Dolly replied matter-of-faetly that we were not hungry: were they? "There's
a drumstick for anybody that would like it."
Sheriff Candle said, "You make it hard on me, ma'am," and pulled
himself nearer. A branch, cracking under his weight, sent through the tree a
sad cruel thunder.
"If he lays a hand on any one of you, kick him in the head," advised
Judge Cool. "Or I will," he said with sudden gallant pugnacity: like an
inspired frog he hopped and caught hold to one of the Sheriff's dangling
boots. The Sheriff, in turn, grabbed my ankles, and Catherine had to hold me
around the middle. We were sliding, that we should all fall seemed
inevitable, the strain was immense. Meanwhile, Dolly started pouring what
was left of our orangeade down the Sheriff's neck, and abruptly, shouting an
obscenity, he let go of me. They crashed to the ground, the Sheriff on top
of the Judge and the Reverend Buster crushed beneath them both. Mrs. Macy
Wheeler and Mrs. Buster, augmenting the disaster, fell upon them with
crow-like cries of distress.
Appalled by what had happened, and the part she herself had played.
Dolly became so confused that she dropped the empty orangeade jar: it hit
Mrs. Buster on the head with a ripe thud. "Beg pardon," she apologized,
though in the furor no one heard her.
When the tangle below unraveled, those concerned stood apart from each
other embarrassedly, gingerly feeling of themselves. The Reverend looked
rather flattened out, but no broken bones were discovered, and only Mrs.
Buster, on whose skimpy-haired head a bump was pyramiding, could have justly
complained of injury. She did so forthrightly. "You attacked me. Dolly
Talbo, don't deny it, everyone here is a witness, everyone saw you aim that
mason jar at my head. Junius, arrest heri"
The Sheriff, however, was involved in settling differences of his own.
Hands on hips, swaggering, he bore down on the Judge, who was in the process
of replacing the violets in his buttonhole. "If you weren't so old, I'd damn
well knock you down."
"I'm not so old, Junius: just old enough to think men ought not to
fight in front of ladies," said the Judge. He was a fair-sized man with
strong shoulders and a straight body: though not far from seventy, he looked
to be in his fifties. He clenched his fists and they were hard and hairy as
coconuts. "On the other hand," he said grimly, "I'm ready if you are."
At the moment it looked like a fair enough match. Even the Sheriff
seemed not so sure of himself; with diminishing bravado, he spit between his
fingers, and said Well, nobody was going to accuse him of hitting an old
man. "Or standing up to one," Judge Cool retorted. "Go on, Junius, tuck your
shirt in your pants and trot along home."
The Sheriff appealed to us in the tree. "Save yourselves a lot of
trouble: get out of there and come along with me now." We did not stir,
except that Dolly dropped her veil, as though lowering a curtain on the
subject once for all. Mrs. Buster, the lump on her head like a horn, said
portentously, "Never mind, Sheriff. They've had their chance," and, eyeing
Dolly, (hen the Judge, added: "You may imagine you are getting away with
something. But let me tell you there will be a retribution -not in heaven,
right here on earth."
"Right here on earth," harmonized Mrs. Macy Wheeler.
They left along the path, erect, haughty as a wedding procession, and
passed into the sunlight where the red rolling grass swept up, swallowed
them. Lingering under the tree, the Judge smiled at us and, with a small
courteous bow, said: "Do I remember you offering a drumstick to anybody that
would likeit?"
He might have been put together from parts of the tree, for his nose
was like a wooden peg, his legs were strong as old roots, and his eyebrows
were thick, tough as strips of bark. Among the topmost branches were beards
of silvery moss the color of his center-parted hair, and the cowhide
sycamore leaves, sifting down from a neighboring taller tree, were the color
of his cheeks. Despite his canny, tomcat eyes, the general impression his
face made was that of someone shy and countrified. Ordinarily he was not the
one to make a show of himself. Judge Charlie Cool; there were many who had
taken advantage of his modesty to set themselves above him. Yet none of them
could have claimed, as he could, to be a graduate of Harvard University or
to have twice traveled in Europe. Still, there were those who were resentful
and felt that he put on airs: wasn't he supposed to read a page of Greek
every morning before breakfast? and what kind of a man was it that would
always have flowers in his buttonhole? If he wasn't stuck up, why, some
people asked, had he gone all the way to Kentucky to find a wife instead of
marrying one of our own women? I do not remember the Judge's wife; she died
before I was old enough to be aware of her, therefore an that I repeat comes
second-hand. So: the town never warmed up to Irene Cool, and apparently it
was her own fault. Kentucky women are difficult to begin with, keyed-up,
hellion-hearted, and Irene Cool, who was born a Todd in Bowling Green (Mary
Todd, a second cousin once removed, had married Abraham Lincoln) let
everyone around here know she thought them a backward, vulgar lot: she
received none of the ladies of the town, but Miss Palmer, who did sewing for
her, spread news of how she'd transformed the Judge's house into a place of
taste and style with Oriental rugs and antique furnishings. She drove to and
from Church in a Pierce-Arrow with all the windows rolled up, and in church
itself she sat with a cologned handkerchief against her nose: the smell of
God ain't good enough for Irene Cool. Moreover, she would not permit either
of the local doctors to attend her family, this though she herself was a
semi-invalid: a small backbone dislocation necessitated her sleeping on a
bed of boards. There were crude jokes about the Judge getting full of
splinters. Nevertheless, he fathered two sons, Todd and Charles Jr., both
born in Kentucky where their mother had gone in order that they could claim
to be natives of the bluegrass state. But those who tried to make out the
Judge got the brunt of his wife's irritableness, that he was a miserable
man, never had much of a case, and after she died even the hardest of their
critics had to admit old Charlie must surely have loved his Irene. For
during the last two years of her life, when she was very ill and fretful, he
retired as circuit judge, then took her abroad to the places they had been
on their honeymoon. She never came back; she is buried in Switzerland. Not
so long ago Carrie Wells, a schoolteacher here in town, went on a group tour
to Europe; the only thing connecting our town with that continent are
graves, the graves of soldier boys and Irene Cool; and Carrie, armed with a
camera for snapshots, set out to visit them all: though she stumbled about
in a cloud-high cemetery one whole afternoon, she could not find the Judge's
wife, and it is funny to think of Irene Cool, serenely there on a
mountain-side still unwilling to receive. There was not much left for the
Judge when he came back; politicians like Meiself Tallsap and his gang had
come into power: those boys couldn't afford to have Charlie Cool sitting in
the courthouse. It was sad to see the Judge, a fine-looking man dressed in
narrowcut suits with a black silk band sewn around his sleeve and a Cherokee
rose in his buttonhole, sad to see him with nothing to do except go to the
post office or stop in at the bank. His sons worked in. the bank,
prissy-mouthed, prudent men who might have been twins, for they both were
marshmallow-white, slump-shouldered, watery-eyed. Charles Jr., he was the
one who had lost his hair while still in college, was vice-president of the
bank, and Todd, the younger son, was chief cashier. In no way did they
resemble their father, except that they had married Kentucky women. These
daughters-in-law had taken over the Judge's house and divided it into two
apartments with separate entrances; there was an arrangement whereby (he old
man lived with first one son's family, then the other. No wonder he'd felt
like taking a walk to the woods.
"Thank you. Miss Dolly," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand. "That's the best drumstick I've had since I was a boy."
"It's the least we can do, a drumstick; you were very brave." There was
in Dolly's voice an emotional, feminine tremor that struck me as unsuitable,
not dignified; so, too, it must have seemed to Catherine: she gave Dolly a
reprimanding glance. "Won't you have something more, a piece of cake?"
"No ma'm, thank you, I've had a sufficiency." He unloosened from his
vest a gold watch and chain, then lassoed the chain to a strong twig above
his head; it hung like a Christmas ornament, and its feathery faded ticking
might have been the heartbeat of a delicate thing, a firefly, a frog. "If
you can hear time passing it makes the day last longer. I've come to
appreciate a long day." He brushed back the fur of the squirrels, which lay
curled in a corner as though they were only asleep. "Right through the head:
good shooting, son."
Of course I gave the credit to the proper party. "Riley Hen-derson, was
it?" said the Judge, and went on to say it was Riley who had let our
whereabouts be known. "Before that, they must have sent off a hundred
dollars' worth of telegrams," he told us, tickled at the thought. "I guess
it was the idea of all that money that made Verena take to her bed."
Scowling, Dolly said, "It doesn't make a particle of sense, all of them
behaving ugly that way. They seemed mad enough to kill us, though I can't
see why, or what it has to do with Verena: she knew we were going away to
leave her in peace, I told her, I even left a note. But if she's sick-is
she. Judge? I've never known her to be."
"Never a day," said Catherine.
"Oh, she's upset all right," the Judge said with a certain contentment
"But Verena's not the woman to come down with anything an aspirin couldn't
fix. I remember when she wanted to rearrange the cemetery, put up some kind
of mausoleum to house herself and all you Talbos. One of the ladies around
here came to me and said Judge, don't you think Verena Talbo is the most
morbid person in town, contemplating such a big tomb for herself? and I said
No, the only thing morbid was that she was willing to spend the money when
not for an instant did she believe she was ever going to die."
"I don't like to hear talk against my sister," said Dolly curtly.
"She's worked hard, she deserves to have things as she wants them. It's our
fault, someway we failed her, there was no place for us in her house."
Catherine's cotton-wadding squirmed in her Jaw like chewing tobacco.
"Are you my Dollyheart? or some hypocrite? He's a friend, you ought to tell
him the truth, how That One and the little Jew was stealing our medicine..."
The Judge applied for a translation, but Dolly said it was simply
nonsense, nothing worth repeating and, diverting him, asked if he knew how
to skin a squirrel. Nodding dreamily, he gazed away from us, above us, his
acomlike eyes scanning the sky-fringed, breeze-fooled leaves. "It may be
that there is no place for any of us. Except we know there is, somewhere;
and if we found it, but lived there only a moment, we could count ourselves
blessed. This could be your place," he said, shivering as though in the sky
spreading wings had cask a cold shade. "And mine."
Subtly as the gold watch spun its sound of time, the afternoon curved
toward twilight. Mist from the river, autumn haze, trailed moon-colors among
the bronze, the blue trees, and a halo, an image of winter, ringed the
paling sun. Still the Judge did not leave us: 'Two women and a boy? at the
mercy of night? and Junius Candle, those fools up to God knows what? I'm
sticking with you." Surely, of the four of us, it was the Judge who had most
found his place in the tree. It was a pleasure to watch him, all twinkly as
a hare's nose, and feeling himself a man again, more than that, a protector.
He skinned the squirrels with a jackknife, while in the dusk I gathered
sticks and built under the tree a fire for the frying pan. Dolly opened the
bottle of blackberry wine; she justified this by referring to a chill in the
air. The squirrels turned out quite well, very tender, and the Judge said
proudly that we should taste his fried catfish sometime. We sipped the wine
in silence; a smell of leaves and smoke carrying from the cooling fire
called up thoughts of other autumns, and we sighed, heard, like sea-roar,
singings in the field of grass. A candle flickered in a mason jar, and gipsy
moths, balanced, blowing about the flame, seemed to pilot its scarf of
yellow among the black branches.
There was, just then, not a footfall, but a nebulous sense of
intrusion: it might have been nothing more than the moon coming out. Except
there was no moon; nor stars. It was dark as the blackberry wine. "I think
there is someone-something down there," said Dolly, expressing what we all
felt
The Judge lifted the candle. Night-crawlers slithered away from its
lurching light, a snowy owl flew between the trees. "Who goes there?" he
challenged with the conviction of a soldier. "Answer up, who goes there?"
"Me, Riley Henderson." It was indeed. He separated from the shadows,
and his upraised, grinning face looked warped, wicked in the candlelight.
"Just thought I'd see how you were getting on. Hope you're not sore at me: I
wouldn't have told where you were, not if I'd known what it was all about."
"Nobody blames you, son," said the Judge, and I remembered it was he
who had championed Riley's cause against his uncle Horace Holton: there was
an understanding between them. "We're enjoying a small taste of wine. I'm
sure Miss Dolly would be pleased to have you join us."
Catherine complained there was no room; another ounce, and those old
boards would give way. StiB, we scrunched together to make a place for
Riley, who had no sooner squeezed into it than Catherine grabbed a fistful
of his hair. "That's for today with you pointing your gun at us like I told
you not to; and this," she said, yanking again and speaking distinctively
enough to be understood, "pays you back for setting the Sheriff on us."
It seemed to me that Catherine was impertinent, but Riley grunted
good-naturedly, and said she might have better cause to be pulling
somebody's hair before the night was over. For there was, he told us,
excited feelings in the town, crowds like Saturday night; the Reverend and
Mrs. Buster especially were brewing trouble: Mrs. Buster was sitting on her
front porch showing callers the bump on her head. Sheriff Candle, he said,
had persuaded Verona to authorize a warrant for our arrest on the grounds
that we had stolen property belonging to her.
"And Judge," said Riley, his manner grave, perplexed, Хthey've even got
the idea they're going to arrest you. Disturbing the peace and obstructing
justice, that's what I heard. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this-but outside
the bank I ran into one of your boys, Todd. I asked him what he was going to
do about it, about them arresting you, I mean; and he said Nothing, said
they'd been expecting something of the kind, that you'd brought it on
yourself."
Leaning, the Judge snuffed out the candle; it was as though an
expression was occurring in his face which he did not want us to see. In the
dark one of us was crying, after a moment we knew that it was Dolly, and the
sound of her tears set off silent explosions of love that, running the full
circle round, bound us each to the other. Softly, the Judge said: "When they
come we must be ready for them. Now, everybody listen to me..."
We must know our position to defend it; that is a primary rule.
Therefore: what has brought us together? Trouble. Miss Dolly and her
friends, they are in trouble. You, Riley; we both are in trouble. We belong
in this tree or we wouldn't be here." Dolly grew silent under the confident
sound of the Judge's voice; he said: "Today, when I started out with the
Sheriffs party, I was a man convinced that his life will have passed
un-communicated and without trace. I think now that I will not have been so
unfortunate. Miss Dolly, how long? fifty, sixty years? it was that far ago
that I remember you, a stiff and blushing child riding to town in your
father's wagon-never getting down from the wagon because you didn't want us
town-children to see you had no shoes."
"They had shoes. Dolly and That One," Catherine muttered. "It was me
that didn't have no shoes."
"All the years that I've seen you, never known you, not ever
recognized, as I did today, what you are: a spirit, a pagan..."
"A pagan?" said Dolly, alarmed but interested.
"At least, then, a spirit, someone not to be calculated by the eye
alone. Spirits are accepters of life, they grant its differences-and
consequently are always in trouble. Myself, I should never have been a
Judge; as such, I was too often on the wrong side: the law doesn't admit
differences. Do you remember old Carper, the fisherman who had a houseboat
on the river? He was chased out of town-wanted to marry that pretty little
colored girl, I think she works for Mrs. Postum now; and you know she loved
him, I used to see them when I went fishing, they were very happy together;
she was to him what no one has been to me, the one person in the world- from
whom nothing is held back. Still, if he had succeeded in marrying her, it
would have been the Sheriff's duty to arrest and my duty to sentence him. I
sometimes imagine all those whom I've called guilty have passed the real
guilt on to me: it's partly that that makes me want once before I die to be
right on the right side."
"You on the right side now. That One and the Jew..."
"Hush," said Dolly.
"The one person in the world." It was Riley repeating the Judge's
phrase; his voice lingered inquiringly.
"I mean," the Judge explained, "a person to whom everything can be
said. Am I an idiot to want such a thing? But ah, the energy we spend hiding
from one another, afraid as we are of being identified. But here we are,
identified: five fools in a tree. A great piece of luck provided we know how
to use it: no longer any need to worry about the picture we present -free to
find out who we truly are. If we know that no one can dislodge us; it's the
uncertainty concerning themselves that makes our friends conspire to deny
the differences. By scraps and bits I've in the past surrendered myself to
strangers-men who disappeared down the gangplank, got off at the next
station: put together, maybe they would've made the one person in the
world-but there he is with a dozen different faces moving down a hundred
separate streets. This is my chance to find that man-you are him. Miss
Dolly, Riley, all of you."
Catherine said, "I'm no man with any dozen faces: tile notion," which
irritated Dolly, who told her if she couldn't speak respectably why not just
go to sleep. "But Judge," said Dolly, "I'm not sure I know what it is you
have in mind we should tell each other. Secrets?" she finished lamely.
"Secrets, no, no." The Judge scratched a match and relighted the
candle; his face sprang upon us with an expression unexpectedly pathetic: we
must help him, he was pleading. "Speak of the night, the fact there is no
moon. What one says hardly matters, only the trust with which it is said,
the sympathy with which it is received. Irene, my wife, a remarkable woman,
we might have shared anything, and yet, yet nothing in us combined, we could
not touch. She died in my arms, and at the last I said. Are you happy,
Irene? have I made you happy? Happy happy happy, those were her last words:
equivocal. I have never understood whether she was saying yes, or merely
answering with an echo: I should know if I'd ever known her. My sons. I do
not enjoy their esteem: I've wanted it, more as a man than as a father.
Unfortunately, (hey feel they know something shameful about me. Ill tell you
what it is." His virile eyes, faceted with candle-glow, examined us one by
one, as though testing our attention, trust "Five years ago, nearer six, I
sat down in a train-seat where some child had left a child's magazine. I
picked it up and was looking through it when I saw on the back cover
addresses of children who wanted to correspond with other children. There
was a little girl in Alaska, her name appealed to me. Heather Falls. I sent
her a picture postcard; Lord, it seemed a harmless and pleasant thing to do.
She answered at once, and the letter quite astonished me; it was a very
intelligent account of life in Alaska-charming descriptions of her father's
sheep ranch, of northern lights. She was thirteen and enclosed a photograph
of herself-not pretty, but a wise and kind looking child. I hunted through
some old albums, and found a Kodak made on a fishing trip when I was
fifteen-out in the sun and with a trout in my hand: it looked new enough. I
wrote her as though I were still that boy, told her of the gun I'd got for
Christmas, how the dog had had pups and what we'd named them, described a
tent-show that had come to town. To be growing up again and have a
sweetheart in Alaska-well, it was fun for an old man sitting alone listening
to the noise of a clock. Later on she wrote she'd fallen in love with a
fellow she knew, and I felt a real pang of jealousy, the way a youngster
would; but we have remained friends: two years ago, when I told her I was
getting ready for law school, she sent me a gold nugget-it would bring me
luck, she said." He took it from his pocket and held it out for us to see:
it made her come so close. Heather Palls, as though the gently bright gift
balanced in his palm was part of her heart.
"And that's what they think is shameful?" said Dolly, more piqued than
indignant. "Because you've helped keep company a lonely little child in
Alaska? It snows there so much."
Judge Cool closed his hand over the nugget. "Not that they've mentioned
it to me. But I've heard them talking at night, my sons and their wives:
wanting to know what to do about me. Of course they'd spied out the letters.
I don't believe in locking drawers-seems strange a man can't live without
keys in what was at least once his own house. They think it all a sign
of..." He tapped his head.
"I had a letter once. Collin, sugar, pour me a taste," said Catherine,
indicating the wine. "Sure enough, I had a letter once, still got it
somewhere, kept it twenty years wondering who was wrote it Said Hello
Catherine, come on to Miami and marry with me, love Bill."
"Catherine. A man asked you to marry him-and you never told one word of
it to me?"
Catherine lifted a shoulder. "Well, Dollyheart, what was (he Judge
saying? You don't tell anybody everything. Besides, I've known a peck of
Bills-wouldn't study marrying any of them. What worries my mind is, which
one of the Bills was it wrote that letter? I'd like to know, seeing as it's
the only letter I ever got. It could be the Bill that put the roof on my
house; course, by the time the roof was up-my goodness, I have got old, been
a long day since I've given it two thoughts. There was Bill that came to
plow the garden, spring of 1913 it was; that man sure could plow a straight
row. And Bill that built the chicken-coop: went away on a Pullman job; might
have been him wrote me that letter. Or Bill-uh uh, his name was Fred-Collin,
sugar, this wine is mighty good." ^ "I may have a drop more myself," said
Dolly. "I mean, Catherine has given me such a..."
"Hmn," said Catherine.
"If you spoke more slowly, or chewed less..." The Judge thought
Catherine's cotton was tobacco.
Riley had withdrawn a little from us; slumped over, he stared stilly
into the inhabited dark: I, I, I, a bird cried, "I- you're wrong. Judge," he
said.
"How so, son?"
The caught-up uneasiness that I associated with Riley swamped his face.
'I'm not in trouble: I'm nothing-or would you call that my trouble? I lie
awake thinking what do I know how to do? hunt, drive a car, fool around; and
I get scared when I think maybe that's all it will ever come to. Another
thing, I've got no feelings-except for my sisters, which is different. Take
for instance, I've been going with this girl from Rock City nearly a year,
the longest time I've stayed with one girl. I guess it was a week ago she
flared up and said where's your heart? said if I didn't love her she'd as
soon die.
So I stopped the car on the railroad track; well, I said, lets just sit
here, the Crescent's due in about twenty minutes. We didn't take our eyes
off each other, and I thought isn't it mean (hat I'm looking at you and I
don't feel anything except..."
"Except vanity?" said the Judge.
Riley did not deny it. "And if my sisters were old enough to take care
of themselves, I'd have been willing to wait for (he Crescent to come down
on us,"
It made my stomach hurt to hear him talk like that; I longed to tell
him he was all I wanted to be.
"You said before about the one person in the world. Why couldn't I
think of her like that? Ifs what I want, I'm no good by myself. Maybe, if I
could care for somebody that way, I'd make plans and carry them out: buy
that stretch of land past Parson's Place and build houses on it-I could do
it if I got quiet."
Wind surprised, pealed the leaves, parted night clouds; showers of
starlight were let loose: our candle, as though intimidated by the
incandescence of the opening, star-stabbed sky, toppled, and we could see,
unwrapped above us, a late wayaway wintery moon: it was like a slice of
snow, near and far creatures called to it, hunched moon-eyed frogs, a
claw-voiced wildcat. Catherine hauled out the rose scrapquilt, insisting
Dolly wrap it around herself; then she tucked her arms around me and
scratched my head until I let it relax on her bosom-You cold? she said, and
I wiggled closer: she was good and warm as the old kitchen.
"Son, I'd say you were going at it the wrong end first," said the
Judge, turning up his coat-collar. "How could you care about one girl? Have
you ever cared about one leaf?"
Riley, listening to the wildcat with an itchy hunter's look, snatched
at the leaves blowing about us like midnight butterflies; alive, fluttering
as though to escape and fly, one stayed trapped between his fingers. The
Judge, too: he caught a leaf; and it was worth more in his hand than in
Riley's. Pressing ft mildly against his cheek, he distantly said, "We are
speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed-begin with these, learn a little
what it is to love. First, a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive
what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy
process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I've
never mastered it-I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love,
as nature is a chain of life."
"Then," said Dolly with an intake of breath, "I've been in love afl my
life." She sank down into the quilt. "Well, no," and her voice fell off, "I
guess not. I've never loved a," while she searched for the word wind
frolicked her veil, "gentleman. You might say that I've never had the
opportunity. Except Papa," she paused, as though she'd said too much. A
gauze of starlight wrapped her closely as the quilt; something, the reciting
frogs, the string of voices stretching from the field of grass, lured,
impelled her: "But I have loved everything else. Like the color pink; when I
was a child I had one colored crayon, and it was pink; I drew pink cats,
pink trees-for thirty-four years I lived in a pink room. And the box I kept,
it's somewhere in the attic now, I must ask Verena please to give it to me,
it would be nice to see my first loves again: what is there? a dried
honeycomb, an empty hornet's nest, other things, or an orange stuck with
cloves and a jaybird's egg-when I loved those love collected inside me so
that it went flying about like a bird in a sunflower field. But it's best
not to show such things, it burdens people and makes them, I don't know why,
unhappy. Verena scolds at me for what she calls hiding in comers, but I'm
afraid of scaring people if I show that I care for them. Like Paul Jimson's
wife; after he got sick and couldn't deliver the papers any more, remember
she took over his roulte? poor thin little thing just dragging herself with
that sack of papers. It was one cold afternoon, she came up on the porch her
nose running and tears of cold hanging in her eyes-she put down the paper,
and I said wait, hold on, and took my handkerchief to wipe her eyes: I
wanted to say, if I could, that I was sorry and that I loved her-my hand
grazed her face, she turned with the smallest shout and ran down the steps.
Then on, she always tossed the papers from the street, and whenever I heard
them hit the porch it sounded in my bones."
"Paul Jimson's wife: worrying yourself over trash like that!" said
Catherine, rinsing her mouth with the last of the wine. "I've got a bowl of
goldfish, just 'cause I like them don't make me love the world. Love a lot
of mess, my foot. You can talk what you want, not going to do anything but
harm, bringing up what's best forgot. People ought to keep more things to
themselves. The deepdown ownself part of you, that's the good part: what's
left of a human being that goes around speaking his privates? The Judge, he
say we all up here 'cause of trouble some kind. Shoot! We here for very
plain reasons. One is, this our tree-house, and two, That One and the Jew's
trying to steal what belongs to us. Three: you here, every one of you,
'cause you want to be: the deepdown part of you tells you so. This last
don't apply to me. I like a roof over my own head. Dollyheart, give the
Judge a portion of that quilt: man's shivering like was Halloween." Shyly
Dolly lifted a wing of the quilt and nodded to him; the Judge, not at all
shy, slipped under it. The branches of the China tree swayed like immense
oars dipping into a sea rolling and chilled by the far far stars. Left
alone, Riley sat hunched up in himself like a pitiful orphan. "Snuggle up,
hard head: you cold like anybody else," said Catherine, offering him the
position on her right that I occupied on her left. He didn't seem to want
to; maybe he noticed that she smelled like bitter-weed, or maybe he thought
it was sissy; but I said come on, Riley, Catherine's good and warm, better
than a quilt. After a while Riley moved over to us. It was quiet for so long
I thought everyone had gone to sleep. Then I felt Catherine stiffen. "It's
just come to me who it was sent my letter: Bill Nobody. That One, that's
who. Sure as my name's Catherine Creek she got some nigger in Miami to mail
me a letter, thinking I'd scoot off there never to be heard from again."