Страница:
Dolly sleepily said hush now hush, shut your eyes: "Nothing to be afraid of;
we've men here to watch out for us." A branch swung back, moonlight ignited
the tree: I saw the Judge take Dolly's hand. It was the last thing I saw.
Riley was the first to wake, and he wakened me. On the skyline three
morning stars swooned in the flush of an arriving sun; dew tinseled the
leaves, a jet chain of blackbirds swung out to meet the mounting light.
Riley beckoned for me to come with him; we slid silently down through the
tree. Catherine, snoring with abandon, did not hear us go; nor did Dolly and
the Judge who, like two children lost in a witch-ruled forest, were asleep
with their cheeks together.
We headed toward the river, Riley leading the way. The legs of his
canvas trousers whispered against each other. Every little bit he stopped
and stretched himself, as though he'd been riding on a train. Somewhere we
came to a hill of already about and busy red ants. Riley unbuttoned his fly
and began to flood them; I don't know that it was funny, but I laughed to
keep him company. Naturally I was insulted when he switched around and peed
on my shoe. I thought it meant he had no respect for me. I said to him why
would he want to do a thing like that? Don't you know a joke? he said, and
threw a hugging arm around my shoulder.
If such events can be dated, this I would say was the moment Riley
Henderson and I became friends, the moment, at least, when there began in
him an affectionate feeling for me that supported my own for him. Through
brown briars under brown trees we walked deep in the woods down to the
river.
Leaves like scarlet hands floated on the green slow water. A poking end
of a drowned log seemed the peering head of some river-beast. We moved on to
the old houseboat, where the water was clearer. The houseboat was slightly
tipped over; drifts of waterbay sheddings were like a rich rust on its roof
and declining deck. The inside cabin had a mystifying tended-to look.
Scattered around were issues of an adventure magazine, there was a kerosene
lamp and a line of beer empties ranged on a table; the bunk sported a
blanket, a pillow, and the pillow was colored with pink markings of
lipstick. In a rush I realized the houseboat was someone's hide-out; then,
from the grin taking over Riley's homely face, I knew whose it was. "What's
more," he said, "you can get in a little fishing on the side. Don't you tell
anybody." I crossed an admiring heart.
While we were undressing I had a kind of dream. I dreamed the houseboat
had been launched on the river with the five of us aboard: our laundry
flapped like sails, in the pantry a coconut cake was cooking, a geranium
bloomed on the windowsill -together we floated over changing rivers past
varying views.
The last of summer warmed the climbing sun, but the water, at first
plunge, sent me chattering and chicken-skinned back to the deck where I
stood watching Riley unconcernedly propel himself to and fro between the
banks. An island of bamboo reeds, standing like the legs of cranes, shivered
in a shallow patch, and Riley waded out among them with lowered, hunting
eyes. He signaled to me. Though it hurt, I eased down into the cold river
and swam to join him. The water bending the bamboo was clear and divided
into knee-deep basins-Riley hovered above one: in the thin pool a coal-black
catfish lay doz-ingly trapped. We closed in upon it with fingers tense as
fork-prongs: thrashing backwards, it flung itself straight into my hands.
The flailing razory whiskers made a gash across my palm, still I had the
sense to hold on-thank goodness, for it's the only fish I ever caught. Most
people don't believe it when I tell about catching a catfish barehanded; I
say well ask Riley Henderson. We drove a spike of bamboo through its gills
and swam back to the houseboat holding it aloft. Riley said it was one of
the fattest catfish he'd ever seen: we would take it back to the tree and,
since he'd bragged what a great hand he was at frying a catfish, let the
Judge fix it for breakfast As it turned out, that fish never got eaten.
All this time at the tree-house there was a terrible situation. During
our absence Sheriff Candle had returned backed by deputies and a warrant of
arrest. Meanwhile, unaware of what was in store, Riley and I lazed along
kicking over toadstools, sometimes stopping to skip rocks on the water.
We still were some distance away when rioting voices reached us; they
rang in the trees like axe-blows. I heard Catherine scream: roar, rather. It
made such soup of my legs I couldn't keep up with Riley, who grabbed a stick
and began to run. I zigged one way, zagged another, then, having made a
wrong turn, came out on the grass-field's rim. And there waa Catherine.
Her dress was ripped down the front: she was good as naked. Ray Oliver,
Jack Mill, and Big Eddie Stover, three grown men, cronies of the Sheriff,
were dragging and slapping her through the grass. I wanted to kill them; and
Catherine was trying to: but she didn't stand a chance-though she butted
them with her head, bounced them with her elbows. Big Eddie Stover was
legally born a bastard; the other two made the grade on their own. It was
Big Eddie that went for me, and I slammed my catfish flat in his face.
Catherine said, "You leave my baby be, he's an orphan"; and, when she saw
that he had ms around the waist: "In the booboos, Collin, kick his old
boo-boos." So I did. Big Eddie's face curdled like clabber. Jack Mill (he's
the one who a year later got locked in the ice-plant and froze to death:
served him right) snatched at me, but I bolted across the field and crouched
down in the tallest grass. I don't think they bothered to look for me, they
had their hands so full with Catherine; she fought them the whole way, and I
watched her, sick with knowing there was no help to give, until they passed
out of sight over the ridge into the cemetery.
Overhead two squawking crows crossed, recrossed, as though making an
evil sign. I crept toward the woods-near me, then, I heard boots cutting
through the grass. It was the Sheriff; with him was a man called Will
Harris. Tall as a door, buffalo-shouldered, Will Harris had once had his
throat eaten out by a mad dog; the scars were bad enough, but his damaged
voice was worse: it sounded giddy and babyfied, like a midget's. They passed
so close I could have untied Will's shoes. His tiny voice, shrilling at the
Sheriff, jumped with Morris Ritz's name and Verena's: I couldn't make out
exactly, except something had happened about Morris Ritz and Verena had sent
Will to $ bring back the Sheriff. The Sheriff said: "What in hell does the
woman want, an army?" When they were gone I sprang up and ran into the
woods.
In sight of the China tree I hid behind a fan of fern: I thought one of
the Sheriff's men might still be hanging around. But there was nothing,
simply a lonely singing bird. And no one in the tree-house: smoky as ghosts,
streamers of sunlight illuminated its emptiness. Numbly I moved into view
and leaned my head against the tree's trunk; at this, the vision of the
houseboat returned: our laundry flapped, the geranium bloomed, the carrying
river carried us out to sea into the world.
"Collin." My name fell out of the sky. "Is that you I hear? are you
crying?"
It was Dolly, calling from somewhere I could not see- until, climbing
to the tree's heart, I saw in the above distance Dolly's dangling childish
shoe. "Careful boy," said the Judge, who was beside her, "you'll shake us
out of here." Indeed, like gulls resting on a ship's mast, they were sitting
in the absolute tower of the tree; afterwards. Dolly was to remark that the
view afforded was so enthralling she regretted not having visited there
before. The Judge, it developed, had seen the approach of the Sheriff and
his men in time for them to take refuge in those heights. "Wait, we're
coming," she said; and, with one arm steadied by the Judge, she descended
like a fine lady sweeping down a flight of stairs.
We kissed each other; she continued to hold me. "She went to look for
you-Catherine; we didn't know where you were, and I was so afraid, I..." Her
fear tingled my hands: 'she felt like a shaking small animal, a rabbit just
taken from the trap. The Judge looked on with humbled eyes, fumbling hands;
he seemed to feel in the way, perhaps because he thought he'd failed us in
not preventing what had happened to Catherine. But then, what could he have
done? Had he gone to her aid he would only have got himself caught: they
weren't fooling, the Sheriff, Big Eddie Stover and the others. I was the one
to feel guilty. If Catherine hadn't gone to look for me they probably never
would have caught her. I told of what had taken place in the field of grass.
But Dolly really wanted not to hear. As thought scattering a dream she
brushed back her veil. "I want to believe Catherine is gone; and I can't. If
I could I would run to find her. I want to believe Verena has done this: and
I can't. Collin, what do you think; is it that after all the world is a bad
place? Last night I saw it so differently."
The Judge focused his eyes on mine: he was trying, I think, to tell me
how to answer. But I knew myself. No matter what passions compose them, all
private worlds are good, they are never vulgar places: Dolly had been made
too civilized by her own, the one she shared with Catherine and me, to feel
the winds of wickedness that circulate elsewhere: No, Dolly, the world is
not a bad place. She passed a hand across her forehead: "If you are right,
then in a moment Catherine will be walking under the tree- she won't have
found you or Riley, but she will have come back."
"By the way," said the Judge, "where is Riley?"
He'd run ahead of me, that was the last I'd seen of him; with an
anxiety that struck us simultaneously, the Judge and I stood up and started
yelling his name. Our voices, curving slowly around the woods, again, again
swung back on silence. I knew what had happened: he'd fallen into an old
Indian well.-many's the case I could tell you of. I was about to suggest
this when abruptly the Judge put a finger to his Ups. The man must have had
ears like a dog: I couldn't hear a sound. But he was right, there was
someone on the path. It turned out to be Maude Riordan and Riley's older
sister, the smart one, Elizabeth. They were very dear friends and wore white
matching sweaters, Elizabeth was carrying a violin case.
"Look here, Elizabeth," said the Judge, startling the girls, for as yet
they had not discovered us. "Look here, child, have you seen your brother?"
Maude recovered first, and it was she who answered. "We sure have," she
said emphatically. "I was walking Elizabeth home from her lesson when Riley
came along doing ninety miles an hour; nearly ran us over. You should speak
to him, Elizabeth. Anyway, he asked us to come down here and tell you not to
worry, said he'd explain everything later. Whatever that means."
Both Maude and Elizabeth had been in my class at school; they'd jumped
a grade and graduated the previous June. I knew Maude especially well
because for a summer I'd taken piano lessons from her mother; her father
taught violin, and Elizabeth Henderson was one of his pupils. Maude herself
played the violin beautifully; just a week before I'd read in the town paper
where she'd been invited to play on a radio program in Birmingham: I was
glad to hear it. The Riordans were nice people, considerate and cheerful. It
was not because I wanted to leam piano that I took lessons with Mrs.
Riordan-Х lather, I liked her blond largeness, the sympathetic, educated
talk that went on while we sat before the splendid upright that smelled of
polish and attention; and what I particularly liked was afterwards, when
Maude would ask me to have a lemonade on the cool back porch. She was
snub-nosed and elfin-eared, a skinny excitable girl who from her father had
inherited Irish black eyes and from her mother platinum hair pale as
morning-not the least like her best friend, the soulful and shadowy
Elizabeth. I don't know what those two talked about, books and music maybe.
But with me Maude's subjects were boys, dates, drugstore slander: didn't I
think it was terrible, the awful girls Riley Henderson chased around with?
she felt so sorry for Elizabeth, and thought it wonderful how, despite all,
Elizabeth held up her head. It didn't take a genius to see that Maude was
heartset on Riley; nevertheless, I imagined for a while that I was in love
with her. At home I kept mentioning her until finally Catherine said Oh
Maude Riordan, she's too scrawny-nothing on her to pinch, a man's crazy to
give her the time of day. Once I showed Maude a big evening, made for her
with my own hands a sweet-pea corsage, then took her to Phil's Cafe where we
had Kansas City steaks; afterwards, there was a dance at the Lola Hotel.
Still she behaved as though she hadn't expected to be kissed good night. "I
don't think that's necessary, Collin-though it was cute of you to take me
out." I was let down, you can see why; but as I didn't allow myself to brood
over it our friendship went on little changed. One day, at the end of a
lesson, Mrs. Riordan omitted the usual new piece for home practice; instead,
she kindly informed me that she preferred not to continue with my lessons:
"We're very fond of you, Collin, I don't have to say that you're welcome in
this house at any time. But dear, (he truth is you have no ability for
music; it happens that way occasionally, and I don't think it's fair on
either of us to pretend otherwise." She was right, all the same my pride was
hurt, I couldn't help feeling pushed-out, it made me miserable to think of
the Riordans, and gradually, in about the time it took to forget my few
hard-learned tunes, I drew a curtain on them. At first Maude used to stop me
after school and ask me over to her house; one way or another I always got
out of it; furthermore, it was winter then and I liked to stay in the
kitchen with Dolly and Catherine. Catherine wanted to know: How come you
don't talk any more about Maude Riordan? I said because I don't, that's all.
But while I didn't talk, I must have been thinking; at least, seeing her
there under the tree, old feelings squeezed my chest For the first time I
considered the circumstances self-consciously: did we. Dolly, the Judge and
I, strike Maude and Elizabeth as a ludicrous sight? I could be judged by
them, they were my own age. But from their manner we might just have met on
the street or at the drugstore.
The Judge said, "Maude, how's your daddy? Heard he hasn't been feeling
too good."
"He can't complain. You know how men are, always looking for an
ailment. And yourself, sir?"
"That's a pity," said the Judge, his mind wandering. "You give your
daddy my regards, and tell him I hope he feels better."
Maude submitted agreeably: "I will, sir, thank you. I know hell
appreciate your concern." Draping her skirt, she dropped on the moss and
settled beside her an unwilling Elizabeth. For Elizabeth no one used a
nickname; you might begin by calling her Betty, but in a week it would be
Elizabeth again: that was her effect Languid, banana-boned, she had dour
black hair and an apathetic, at moments saintly face-in an enamel locket
worn around her lily-stalk neck she preserved a miniature of her missionary
father. "Look, Elizabeth, isn't that a becoming hat Miss Dolly has on?
Velvet, with a veil."
Dolly roused herself; she patted her head. "I don't generally wear
hats-we intended to travel."
"We heard you'd left home," said Maude; and, proceeding more frankly;
"In fact that's all anyone talks about, isnt it, Elizabeth?" Elizabeth
nodded without enthusiasm. "Gracious, there are some peculiar stories going
around. I mean, on the way here we met Gus Ham and he said that colored
woman Catherine Crook (is that her name?) had been arrested for hitting Mrs.
Buster with a mason jar."
In sloping tones. Dolly said, "Catherine-had nothing to do with it."
"I guess someone did," said Maude. "We saw Mrs. Buster in the post
office this morning; she was showing everybody a bump on her head, quite
large. It looked genuine to us, didn't it Elizabeth?" Elizabeth yawned. "To
be sure, I don't care who hit her, I think they ought to get a medal"
"No," sighed Dolly, "it isn't proper, it shouldn't have happened. We
all will have a lot to be sorry for."
At last Maude took account of me. "I've been wanting to see you,
Collin," she said hurrying as though to hide an embarrassment: mine, not
hers. "Elizabeth and I are planning a Halloween party, a real scary one, and
we thought it would be grand to dress you in a skeleton suit and sit you in
a dark room to tell people's fortunes: because you're so good at..."
"Fibbing," said Elizabeth disinterestedly.
"Which is what fortune-telling is," Maude elaborated.
I don't know what gave them the idea I was such a storyteller, unless
it was at school I'd shown a superior talent for alibis. I said it sounded
fine, the party. "But you better not count on me. We might be in jail by
then."
"Oh well, in that case," said Maude, as if accepting one of my old and
usual excuses for not coming to her house.
"Say, Maude," said the Judge, helping us out of the silence that had
fallen, "you're getting to be a celebrity: I saw in the paper where you're
going to play on the radio."
As though dreaming aloud, she explained the broadcast was the finals of
a state competition; if she won, the prize was a musical scholarship at the
University: even second prize meant a half-scholarship. "I'm going to play a
piece of daddy's, a serenade: he wrote it for me the day I was born. But
it's a surprise, I don't want him to know."
"Make her play it for you," said Elizabeth, unclasping her violin case.
Maude was generous, she did not have to be begged. The wine-colored
violin, coddled under her chin, trilled as she tuned it; a brazen butterfly,
lighting on the bow, was spiraled away as the bow swept across the strings
singing a music that seemed a blizzard of butterflies flying, a sky-rocket
of spring sweet to hear in the gnarled fall woods. It slowed, saddened, her
silver hair drooped across the violin. We applauded; after we'd stopped
there went on sounding a mysterious extra pair of hands. Riley stepped from
behind a bank of fem, and when she saw him Maude's cheeks pinked. I don't
think she would have played so well if she'd known he was listening.
Riley sent the girls home; they seemed reluctant to go, but Elizabeth
was not used to disobeying her brother. "Lock the doors," he told her, "and
Maude, I'd appreciate it if you'd spend the night at our place: anybody
comes by asking for me, say you don't know where I am."
I had to help him into the tree, for he'd brought back his gun and a
knapsack heavy with provisions-a bottle of rose and raisin wine, oranges,
sardines, wieners, rolls from the Katydid Bakery, a jumbo box of animal
crackers: each item appearing stepped up our spirits, and Dolly, overcome by
the animal crackers, said Riley ought to have a kiss.
But it was with grave face that we listened to his report.
When we'd separated in the woods it was toward the sound of Catherine
that he'd run. This had brought him to the grass: he'd been watching when I
had my encounter with Big Eddie Stover. I said well why didn't you help me?
"You were doing all right; I don't figure Big Eddie's liable to forget you
too soon: poor fellow limped along doubled over." Besides, it occurred to
him that no one knew he was one of us, that he'd Joined us in the tree: he
was right to have stayed hidden, it made it possible for him to follow
Catherine and the deputies into town. They'd stuffed her into the
rumble-seat of Big Eddie's old coupe and driven straight to jail: Riley
trailed them in his car. "By the time we reached the jail she seemed to have
got quieted down; there was a little crowd hanging around, lads, some old
farmers-you would have been proud of Catherine, she walked through them
holding her dress together and her head like this." He tilted his head at a
royal angle. How often I'd seen Catherine do that, especially when anyone
criticized her (for hiding puzzle pieces, spreading misinformation, not
having her teeth fixed); and Dolly, recognizing it too, had to blow her
nose. "But," said Riley, "as soon as she was inside the jail she kicked up
another fuss." In the jail there are only four cells, two for colored and
two for white. Catherine had objected to being put in a colored people's
cell.
The Judge stroked his chin, waved his head. "You didn't get a chance to
speak to her? She ought to have had the comfort of knowing one of us was
there."
'I stood around hoping she'd come to the window. But then I heard the
other news."
Thinking back, I don't see how Riley could have waited so bug to tell
us. Because, my God: our friend from Chicago, that hateful Dr. Morris Ritz,
had skipped town after rifling Verena's safe of twelve thousand dollars in
negotiable bonds and more than seven hundred dollars in cash: that, as we
later learned, was not half his loot. But wouldn't you know? I realized this
was what baby-voiced Will Harris had been recounting to the Sheriff: no
wonder Verena had sent a hurry call: her troubles with us must have become
quite a side issue. Riley had a few details: he knew that Verena, upon
discovering the safe door swung open (this happened in the office she kept
above her drygoods store) had whirled around the comer to the Lola Hotel,
there to find that Morris Ritz had checked out the previous evening: she
fainted: when they-revived her she fainted all over again.
Dolly's soft face hollowed; an urge to go to Verena was rising, at the
same moment some sense of self, a deeper will, held her. Regretfully she
gazed at me. "It's better you know it now, Collin; you shouldn't have to
wait until you're as old as I am: the world is a bad place."
A change, like a shift of wind, overcame the Judge: he looked at once
his age, autumnal, bare, as though he believed that Dolly, by accepting
wickedness, had forsaken him. But I knew she had not: he'd called her a
spirit, she was really a woman. Uncorking the rose and raisin wine, Riley
spilled its topaz color into four glasses; after a moment he filled a fifth,
Catherine's. The Judge, raising the wine to his lips, proposed a toast: "To
Catherine, give her trust." We lifted our glasses, and "Oh Collin," said
Dolly, a sudden stark thought widening her eyes, "you and I, we're the only
ones that can understand a word she says!"
The following day, which was the first of October, a Wednesday, is one
day I won't forget.
First off, Riley woke me by stepping on my fingers. Dolly, already
awake, insisted I apologize for cursing him. Courtesy, she said, is more
important in the morning than at any other time: particularly when one is
living in such close quarters. The Judge's watch, still bending the twig
like a heavy gold apple, gave the time as six after six. I don't know whose
idea it was, but we breakfasted on oranges and animal crackers and cold
hotdogs. The Judge grouched that a body didn't feel human till he'd had a
pot of hot coffee. We agreed that coffee was what we all most missed. Riley
volunteered to drive into town and get some; also, he would have a chance to
scout around, find out what was going on. He suggested I come with him:
"Nobody's going to see him, not if he stays down in the seat." Although the
Judge objected, saying he thought it foolhardy. Dolly could tell I wanted to
go: I'd yearned so much for a ride in Riley's car that now the opportunity
presented itself nothing, even the prospect that no one might see me, could
have thinned my excitement. Dolly said, "I can't see there's any harm. But
you ought to have a clean shirt: I could plant turnips in the collar of that
one."
The field of grass was without voice, no pheasant rustle, furtive
flurry; the pointed leaves were sharp and blood-red as the aftermath arrows
of a massacre; their brittieness broke beneath our feet as we waded up the
hill into the cemetery. The view from there is very fine: the limitless
trembling surface of River Woods, fifty unfolding miles of ploughed,
wind-milled farmland, far-off the spired courthouse tower, smoking chimneys
of town. I stopped by the graves of my mother and father. I had not often
visited them, it depressed me, the tomb-cold stone-so unlike what I
remembered of them, their aliveness, how she'd cried when he went away to
sell his frigid-aires, how he'd run naked into the street. I wanted flowers
for the terracotta jars sitting empty on the streaked and muddied marble.
Riley helped me; he tore beginning buds off a japonica tree, and watching me
arrange them, said: "I'm glad your ma was nice. Bitches, by and large." I
wondered if he meant his own mother, poor Rose Henderson, who used to make
him hop around (he yard reciting the multiplication table. It did seem to
me, though, that he'd made up for those hard days. After all, he had a car
that was supposed to have cost three thousand dollars. Second-hand, mind
you. It was a foreign car, an Alfa-Romeo roadster (Romeo's Alfa, the joke
was) he'd bought in New Orleans from a politician bound for the
penitentiary.
As we purred along the unpaved road toward town I kept hoping for a
witness: there were certain persons it would have done my heart good to have
seen me sailing by in Riley Hen-derson's car. But it was too early for
anyone much to be about; breakfast was still on the stove, and smoke soared
out the chimneys of passing houses. We turned the comer by the church, drove
around the square and parked in the dirt lane that runs between Cooper's
Livery and the Katydid Bakery. There Riley left me with orders to stay put:
he wouldn't be more than an hour. So, stretching out on the seat, I listened
to the chicanery of thieving sparrows in the livery stable's haystacks,
breathed the fresh bread, tart as currant odors escaping from the bakery.
The couple who owned this bakery, County was their name, Mr. and Mrs. C. C.
County, had to begin their day at three in the morning to be ready by
opening time, eight o'clock. It was a clean prosperous place. Mrs. County
could afford the most expensive clothes at Verena's drygoods store. While I
lay there smelling the good things, the back door of the bakery opened and
Mr. County, broom in hand, swept flour dust into the lane. I guess he was
surprised to see Riley's car, and surprised to find me in it.
"What you up to. Coffin?"
"Up to nothing, Mr. County," I said, and asked myself if he knew about
our trouble.
"Sure am happy October's here," he said, rubbing the air with his
fingers as though the chill woven into it was a material he could feel. "We
have a terrible time in the summer: ovens and all make it too hot to live.
See here, son, there's a gingerbread man waiting for you-come on in and run
him down."
Now he was not the kind of man to get me in there and then call the
Sheriff.
His wife welcomed me into the spiced heat of the oven room as though
she could think of nothing pleasanter than my being there. Most anyone would
have liked Mrs. County. A chunky woman with no fuss about her, she had
elephant ankles, developed arms, a muscular face permanently fire-flushed;
her eyes were like blue cake-icing, her hair looked as if she'd mopped it
around in a flour barrel, and she wore an apron that trailed to the tips of
her toes. Her husband also wore one; sometimes, with the fulsome apron still
tied around him, I'd seen him crossing the street to have a time-off beer
with the men that lean around the comer at Phil's Cafe: he seemed a painted
clown, flopping, powdered, elegantly angular.
Clearing a place on her work table, Mrs. County set me down to a cup of
coffee and a warm tray of cinnamon rolls, the kind Dolly relished. Mr.
County suggested I might prefer something else: "I promised him, what did I
promise? a gingerbread man." His wife socked a lump of dough: "Those are for
kids. He's a grown man; or nearly. Collin, just how old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"Same as Samuel," she said, meaning her son, whom we all called Mule:
inasmuch as he was not much brighter than one. I asked what was their news
of him? because the previous autumn, after having been left back in the
eighth grade three years running. Mule had gone to Pensacola and joined the
Navy. "He's in Panama, last we heard," she said, flattening the dough into a
piecrust. "We don't hear often. I wrote him once, I said Samuel you do
better about writing home or I'm going to write the President exactly how
old you are. Because you know he joined up under false pretenses. I was
darned mad at the time-blamed Mr. Hand up at the schoolhouse: that's why
Samuel did it, he just couldn't tolerate always being left behind in the
eighth grade, him getting so tall and the other children so little. But now
I can see Mr. Hand was right: it wouldn't be fair to the rest of you boys if
they promoted Samuel when he didn't do his work proper. So maybe it turned
out for the best. C. C., show Collin the picture."
Photographed against a background of palms and real sea, four smirking
sailors stood with their arms linked together; underneath was written. God
Bless Mom and Pop, Samuel. It rankled me. Mule, off seeing the world, while
I, well, maybe I deserved a gingerbread man. As I returned the picture, Mr.
County said: "I'm all for a boy serving his country. But the bad part of it
is, Samuel was just getting where he could give us a hand around here. I
sure hate to depend on nigger help. Lying and stealing, never know where you
are."
"It beats me why C.C. carries on like that," said his wife, knotting
her lips. "He knows it irks me. Colored people are no worse than white
people: in some cases, better. I've had occasion to say so to other people
in this town. Like this business about old Catherine Creek. Makes me sick.
Cranky she may be, and peculiar, but there's as good a woman as you'll find.
Which reminds me, I mean to send her a dinner-tray up to the jail, for I'll
wager the Sheriff doesn't set much of a table."
So little, once it has changed, changes back: the world knew us: we
would never be warm again: I let go, saw winter coming toward a cold tree,
cried, cried, came apart like a rain-rotted rag. I'd wanted to since we left
the house. Mrs. County begged pardon if she'd said anything to upset me;
with her kitchen-slopped apron she wiped my face, and we laughed, had to, at
the mess it made, the paste of flour and tears, and I felt, as they say, a
lot better, kind of lighthearted. For manly reasons I understood, but which
made me feel no shame, Mr. County had been mortified by the outburst: he
retired to the front of the shop.
Mrs. County poured coffee for herself and sat down. "I don't pretend to
follow what's going on," she said. "The way I hear it. Miss Dolly broke up
housekeeping because of some disagreement with Verena?" I wanted to say the
situation was more complicated than that, but wondered, as I tried to array
events, if really it was. "Now," she continued thoughtfully, "it may sound
as though I'm talking against Dolly: I'm not But this is what I feel-you
people should go home. Dolly ought to make her peace with Verena: that's
what she's always done, and you can't turn around at her time of life. Also,
it sets a poor example for the town, two sisters quarreling, one of them
sitting in a tree; and Judge Charlie Cool, for the first time in my life I
feel sorry for those sons of his. Leading citizens have to behave
themselves; otherwise the entire place goes to pieces. For instance, have
you seen that wagon in the square? Well then, you better go have a look.
Family of cowboys, they are. Evangelists, C.C. says-all I know is there's
been a great racket over them and something to do with Dolly." Angrily she
puffed up a paper sack. "I want you to tell her what I said: go home. And
here, Collin, take along some cinnamon rolls. I know how Dolly dotes on
them."
As I left the bakery the bells of the courthouse clock were tinging
eight, which meant that it was seven-thirty. This clock has always run a
half-hour fast. Once an expert was imported to repair it; at the end of
almost a week's tinkering he recommended, as the only remedy, a stick of
dynamite; the town council voted he be paid in full, for there was a general
feeling of pride that the clock had proved so incorrigible. Around the
square a few store-keepers were preparing to open; broom-sweepings fogged
doorways, rolled trashbarrels berated the cool cat-quiet streets. At the
Early Bird, a better grocery store than Verena's Jitney Jungle, two colored
boys were fancying the window with cans of Hawaiian pineapple. On the south
side of the square, beyond the cane benches where in all seasons sit the
peaceful, perishing old men, I saw the wagon Mrs. County had spoken of-in
reality an old truck contrived with tarpaulin covering to resemble the
western wagons of history. It looked forlorn and foolish standing alone in
the empty square. A homemade sign, perhaps four feet high, crested the cab
like a shark's fin. Let Little Homer Honey Lasso Your Soul For The Lord.
Painted on the other side there was a blistered greenish grinning head
topped by a ten-gallon hat. I would not have thought it a portrait of
anything human, but, according to a notice, this was: Child Wonder Little
Homer Honey. With nothing more to see, for there was no one around the
truck, I took myself toward the jail, which is a box-shaped brick building
next door to the Ford Motor Company. I'd been inside it once. Big Eddie
Stover had taken me there, along with a dozen other boys and men; he'd
walked into the drugstore and said come over to the jail if you want to see
something. The attraction was a thin handsome gipsy boy they'd taken off a
freight train; Big Eddie gave him a quarter and told him to let down his
pants; nobody could believe the size of it, and one of the men said, "Boy,
how come they keep you locked up when you got a crowbar like that?" For
weeks you could tell girls who had heard that joke: they giggled every time
they passed the jaiL
There is an unusual emblem decorating a side wall of the jail. I asked
Dolly, and she said that in her youth she remembers it as a candy
advertisement. If so, the lettering has vanished; what remains is a chalky
tapestry: two flamingo-pink trumpeting angels swinging, swooping above a
huge horn filled with fruit like a Christmas stocking; embroidered on the
brick, it seems a faded mural, a faint tattoo, and sunshine flutters the
imprisoned angels as though they were the spirits of thieves. I knew the
risk I was taking, parading around in plain sight; but I walked past the
jail, then back, and whistled, later whispered Catherine, Catherine, hoping
this would bring her to the window. I realized which was her window: on the
sill, reflecting beyond the bars, I saw a bowl of goldfish, the one thing,
as subsequently we learned, she'd asked to have brought her. Orange
flickerings of the fish fanned around the coral castle, and I thought of the
morning I'd helped Dolly find it, the castle, the pearl pebbles. It had been
the beginning and, chilled suddenly by a thought of what the end could be,
Catherine coldly shadowed and peering downward, I prayed she would not come
to the window: she would have seen no one, for I turned and ran.
Riley kept me waiting in the car more than two hours. By the time he
showed up he was himself in such a temper I didn't dare show any of my own.
It seems he'd gone home and found his sisters, Anne and Elizabeth, and Maude
Riordan, who had spent the night, still lolling abed: not just that, but
Coca-Cola bottles and cigarette butts all over the parlor. Maude took the
blame: she confessed to having invited some boys over to listen to the radio
and dance; but it was the sisters who got punished. He'd dragged them out of
bed and whipped them. I asked what did he mean, whipped them? Turned them
over my knee, he said, and whipped them with a tennis shoe. I couldn't
picture this; it conflicted with my sense of Elizabeth's dignity. You're too
hard on those girls, I said, adding vindictively: Maude, now there's the bad
one. He took me seriously, said yes he'd intended to whip her if only
because she'd called him the kind of names he wouldn't take off anybody; but
before he could catch her she'd bolted out the back door. I thought to
myself maybe at last Maude's had her bait of you.
Riley's ragged hair was glued down with brilliantine; he smelled of
lilac water and talcum. He didn't have to tell me he'd been to the barber's;
or why.
Though he has since retired, there was in those days an exceptional
fellow running the barbershop. Amos Legrand. Men like the Sheriff, for that
matter Riley Henderson, oh everybody come to think of it, said: that old
sis. But they didn't mean any harm; most people enjoyed Amos and really
wished him well. A little monkeyman who had to stand on a box to cut your
hair, he was agitated and chattery as a pair of castanets. All his steady
customers he called honey, men and women alike, it made no difference to
him. "Honey," he'd say, "it's about time you got this hair cut: was about to
buy you a package of bobby-pins." Amos had one tremendous gift: he could
tattle along on matters of true interest to businessmen and girls of
ten-everything from what price Ben Jones got for his peanut crop to who
would be invited to Mary Simpson's birthday party.
It was natural that Riley should have gone to him to get the news. Of
course he repeated it straightforwardly; but I could imagine Amos, hear his
hummingbird whirr: "There you are, honey, that's how it turns out when you
leave money lying around. And of all people, Verena Talbo: here we thought
she trotted to the bank with every dime came her way. Twelve thousand seven
hundred dollars. But don't think it stops there. Seems Verena and this Dr.
Ritz were going into business together, that's why she bought the old
canning factory. Well get this: she gave Ritz over ten thousand to buy
machinery, mercy knows what, and now it turns out he never bought one
blessed penny's worth. Pocketed the whole thing. As for him, they've located
not hide nor hair; South America, that's where they'll find him when and if.
I never was somebody to insinuate any monkeyshines went on between him and
her; I said Verena Talbo's too particular: honey, that Jew had the worst
case of dandruff I've ever seen on a human head. But a smart woman like her,
maybe she was stuck on him. Then all this to-do with her sister, the uproar
over that. I don't wonder Doc Carter's giving her shots. But Charlie Cool's
the one kills me: what do you make of him out there catching his death?"
We cleared town on two wheels; pop, pulp, insects spit against the
windshield. The dry starched blue day whistled round us, there was not a
cloud. And yet I swear storms foretell themselves in my bones. This is a
nuisance common to old people, but fairly rare with anyone young. It's as
though a damp rumble of thunder had sounded in your joints. The way I hurt,
I felt nothing less than a hurricane could be headed our way, and said so to
Riley, who said go on, you're crazy, look at the sky. We were making a bet
about it when, rounding that bad curve so convenient to the cemetery, Riley
winced and froze his brakes; we skidded long enough for a detailed review of
our lives.
It was not Riley's fault: square in the road and struggling along like
a lame cow was the Little Homer Honey wagon. With a clatter of collapsing
machinery it came to a dead halt In a moment the driver climbed out, a
woman.
She was not young, but there was a merriness in the seesaw of her hips,
and her breasts rubbed and nudged against her peach-colored blouse in such a
coaxing way. She wore a fringed chamois skirt and knee-high cowboy boots,
which was a mistake, for you felt that her legs, if fully exposed, would
have been the best part. She leaned on the car door. Her eyelids drooped as
though the lashes weighed intolerably; with the tip of her tongue she
wettened her very red lips. "Good morning, fellows," she said, and it was a
dragging slow-fuse voice. "I'd appreciate a few directions."
"What the hell's wrong with you?" said Riley, asserting himself. "You
nearly made us turn over."
"I'm surprised you mention it," said the woman, amiably tossing her
large head; her hair, an invented apricot color, was meticulously curled,
and the curb, shaken out, were like bells with no music in them. "You were
speeding, dear," she reproved him complacently. "I imagine there's a law
against it; there are laws against everything, especially here."
Riley said, "There should be a law against that truck. A broken-down
pile like that, it oughtn't to be allowed."
"I know, dear," the woman laughed. 'Trade with you. Though I'm afraid
we couldn't all fit into this car; we're even a bit squeezed in the wagon.
Could you help me with a cigarette? That's a doll, thanks." As she lighted
the cigarette I noticed how gaunt her hands were, rough; the nails were
un-painted and one of them was black as though she'd crushed it in a door.
"I was told that out this way we'd find a Miss Talbo. Dolly Talbo. She seems
to be living in a tree. I wish you'd kindly show us where..."
Back of her there appeared to be an entire orphanage emptying out of
the truck. Babies barely able to toddle on their rickety bowlegs, towheads
dribbling ropes of snot, girls old enough to wear brassieres, and a ladder
of boys, man-sized some of them. I counted up to ten, this including a set
of crosseyed twins and a diapered baby being lugged by a child not more than
five. Still, like a magician's rabbits, they kept coming, multiplied until
the road was thickly populated.
"These all yours?" I said, really anxious; in another count I'd made a
total of fifteen. One boy, he was about twelve and had tiny steel-rimmed
glasses, flopped around in a ten-gallon hat like a walking mushroom. Most of
them wore a few cowboy items, boots, at least a rodeo scarf. But they were a
dis-couraged-looking lot, and sickly too, as though they'd lived years off
boiled potatoes and onions. They pressed around the car, ghostly quiet
except for the youngest who thumped the headlights and bounced on the
fenders.
"Sure enough, dear: all mine," she answered, swatting at a mite of a
girl playing maypole on her leg. "Sometimes I figure we've picked up one or
two that don't belong," she added with a shrug, and several of the children
smiled. They seemed to adore her. "Some of their daddies are dead; I guess
the rest are living-one way and another: either case it's no concern of
ours. I take it you weren't at our meeting last night. I'm Sister Ida,
Little Homer Honey's mother." I wanted to know which one was Little Homer.
She blinked around and singled out the spectacled boy who, wobbling up under
his hat, saluted us: "Praise Jesus. Want a whistle?" and, swelling his
cheeks, blasted a tin whistle.
"With one of those," explained his mother, tucking up her back hairs,
"you can give the devil a scare. They have a number of practical uses as
well."
"Two bits," the child bargained. He had a worried little face white as
cold cream. The hat came down to his eyebrows.
I would have bought one if I'd had the money. You could see they were
hungry. Riley felt the same, at any rate he produced fifty cents and took
two of the whistles. "Bless you," said Little Homer, slipping the coin
between his teeth and biting hard. "There's so much counterfeit going around
these days," his mother confided apologetically. "In our branch of endeavor
you wouldn't expect that kind of trouble," she said, sighing. "But if you
kindly would show us-we can't go on much more, just haven't got the gas."
Riley told her she was wasting her time. "Nobody there any more," he
said, racing the motor. Another driver, blockaded behind us, was honking his
horn.
"Not in the tree?" Her voice was plaintive above the motor's impatient
roar. "But where will we find her then?" Her hands were trying to hold back
we've men here to watch out for us." A branch swung back, moonlight ignited
the tree: I saw the Judge take Dolly's hand. It was the last thing I saw.
Riley was the first to wake, and he wakened me. On the skyline three
morning stars swooned in the flush of an arriving sun; dew tinseled the
leaves, a jet chain of blackbirds swung out to meet the mounting light.
Riley beckoned for me to come with him; we slid silently down through the
tree. Catherine, snoring with abandon, did not hear us go; nor did Dolly and
the Judge who, like two children lost in a witch-ruled forest, were asleep
with their cheeks together.
We headed toward the river, Riley leading the way. The legs of his
canvas trousers whispered against each other. Every little bit he stopped
and stretched himself, as though he'd been riding on a train. Somewhere we
came to a hill of already about and busy red ants. Riley unbuttoned his fly
and began to flood them; I don't know that it was funny, but I laughed to
keep him company. Naturally I was insulted when he switched around and peed
on my shoe. I thought it meant he had no respect for me. I said to him why
would he want to do a thing like that? Don't you know a joke? he said, and
threw a hugging arm around my shoulder.
If such events can be dated, this I would say was the moment Riley
Henderson and I became friends, the moment, at least, when there began in
him an affectionate feeling for me that supported my own for him. Through
brown briars under brown trees we walked deep in the woods down to the
river.
Leaves like scarlet hands floated on the green slow water. A poking end
of a drowned log seemed the peering head of some river-beast. We moved on to
the old houseboat, where the water was clearer. The houseboat was slightly
tipped over; drifts of waterbay sheddings were like a rich rust on its roof
and declining deck. The inside cabin had a mystifying tended-to look.
Scattered around were issues of an adventure magazine, there was a kerosene
lamp and a line of beer empties ranged on a table; the bunk sported a
blanket, a pillow, and the pillow was colored with pink markings of
lipstick. In a rush I realized the houseboat was someone's hide-out; then,
from the grin taking over Riley's homely face, I knew whose it was. "What's
more," he said, "you can get in a little fishing on the side. Don't you tell
anybody." I crossed an admiring heart.
While we were undressing I had a kind of dream. I dreamed the houseboat
had been launched on the river with the five of us aboard: our laundry
flapped like sails, in the pantry a coconut cake was cooking, a geranium
bloomed on the windowsill -together we floated over changing rivers past
varying views.
The last of summer warmed the climbing sun, but the water, at first
plunge, sent me chattering and chicken-skinned back to the deck where I
stood watching Riley unconcernedly propel himself to and fro between the
banks. An island of bamboo reeds, standing like the legs of cranes, shivered
in a shallow patch, and Riley waded out among them with lowered, hunting
eyes. He signaled to me. Though it hurt, I eased down into the cold river
and swam to join him. The water bending the bamboo was clear and divided
into knee-deep basins-Riley hovered above one: in the thin pool a coal-black
catfish lay doz-ingly trapped. We closed in upon it with fingers tense as
fork-prongs: thrashing backwards, it flung itself straight into my hands.
The flailing razory whiskers made a gash across my palm, still I had the
sense to hold on-thank goodness, for it's the only fish I ever caught. Most
people don't believe it when I tell about catching a catfish barehanded; I
say well ask Riley Henderson. We drove a spike of bamboo through its gills
and swam back to the houseboat holding it aloft. Riley said it was one of
the fattest catfish he'd ever seen: we would take it back to the tree and,
since he'd bragged what a great hand he was at frying a catfish, let the
Judge fix it for breakfast As it turned out, that fish never got eaten.
All this time at the tree-house there was a terrible situation. During
our absence Sheriff Candle had returned backed by deputies and a warrant of
arrest. Meanwhile, unaware of what was in store, Riley and I lazed along
kicking over toadstools, sometimes stopping to skip rocks on the water.
We still were some distance away when rioting voices reached us; they
rang in the trees like axe-blows. I heard Catherine scream: roar, rather. It
made such soup of my legs I couldn't keep up with Riley, who grabbed a stick
and began to run. I zigged one way, zagged another, then, having made a
wrong turn, came out on the grass-field's rim. And there waa Catherine.
Her dress was ripped down the front: she was good as naked. Ray Oliver,
Jack Mill, and Big Eddie Stover, three grown men, cronies of the Sheriff,
were dragging and slapping her through the grass. I wanted to kill them; and
Catherine was trying to: but she didn't stand a chance-though she butted
them with her head, bounced them with her elbows. Big Eddie Stover was
legally born a bastard; the other two made the grade on their own. It was
Big Eddie that went for me, and I slammed my catfish flat in his face.
Catherine said, "You leave my baby be, he's an orphan"; and, when she saw
that he had ms around the waist: "In the booboos, Collin, kick his old
boo-boos." So I did. Big Eddie's face curdled like clabber. Jack Mill (he's
the one who a year later got locked in the ice-plant and froze to death:
served him right) snatched at me, but I bolted across the field and crouched
down in the tallest grass. I don't think they bothered to look for me, they
had their hands so full with Catherine; she fought them the whole way, and I
watched her, sick with knowing there was no help to give, until they passed
out of sight over the ridge into the cemetery.
Overhead two squawking crows crossed, recrossed, as though making an
evil sign. I crept toward the woods-near me, then, I heard boots cutting
through the grass. It was the Sheriff; with him was a man called Will
Harris. Tall as a door, buffalo-shouldered, Will Harris had once had his
throat eaten out by a mad dog; the scars were bad enough, but his damaged
voice was worse: it sounded giddy and babyfied, like a midget's. They passed
so close I could have untied Will's shoes. His tiny voice, shrilling at the
Sheriff, jumped with Morris Ritz's name and Verena's: I couldn't make out
exactly, except something had happened about Morris Ritz and Verena had sent
Will to $ bring back the Sheriff. The Sheriff said: "What in hell does the
woman want, an army?" When they were gone I sprang up and ran into the
woods.
In sight of the China tree I hid behind a fan of fern: I thought one of
the Sheriff's men might still be hanging around. But there was nothing,
simply a lonely singing bird. And no one in the tree-house: smoky as ghosts,
streamers of sunlight illuminated its emptiness. Numbly I moved into view
and leaned my head against the tree's trunk; at this, the vision of the
houseboat returned: our laundry flapped, the geranium bloomed, the carrying
river carried us out to sea into the world.
"Collin." My name fell out of the sky. "Is that you I hear? are you
crying?"
It was Dolly, calling from somewhere I could not see- until, climbing
to the tree's heart, I saw in the above distance Dolly's dangling childish
shoe. "Careful boy," said the Judge, who was beside her, "you'll shake us
out of here." Indeed, like gulls resting on a ship's mast, they were sitting
in the absolute tower of the tree; afterwards. Dolly was to remark that the
view afforded was so enthralling she regretted not having visited there
before. The Judge, it developed, had seen the approach of the Sheriff and
his men in time for them to take refuge in those heights. "Wait, we're
coming," she said; and, with one arm steadied by the Judge, she descended
like a fine lady sweeping down a flight of stairs.
We kissed each other; she continued to hold me. "She went to look for
you-Catherine; we didn't know where you were, and I was so afraid, I..." Her
fear tingled my hands: 'she felt like a shaking small animal, a rabbit just
taken from the trap. The Judge looked on with humbled eyes, fumbling hands;
he seemed to feel in the way, perhaps because he thought he'd failed us in
not preventing what had happened to Catherine. But then, what could he have
done? Had he gone to her aid he would only have got himself caught: they
weren't fooling, the Sheriff, Big Eddie Stover and the others. I was the one
to feel guilty. If Catherine hadn't gone to look for me they probably never
would have caught her. I told of what had taken place in the field of grass.
But Dolly really wanted not to hear. As thought scattering a dream she
brushed back her veil. "I want to believe Catherine is gone; and I can't. If
I could I would run to find her. I want to believe Verena has done this: and
I can't. Collin, what do you think; is it that after all the world is a bad
place? Last night I saw it so differently."
The Judge focused his eyes on mine: he was trying, I think, to tell me
how to answer. But I knew myself. No matter what passions compose them, all
private worlds are good, they are never vulgar places: Dolly had been made
too civilized by her own, the one she shared with Catherine and me, to feel
the winds of wickedness that circulate elsewhere: No, Dolly, the world is
not a bad place. She passed a hand across her forehead: "If you are right,
then in a moment Catherine will be walking under the tree- she won't have
found you or Riley, but she will have come back."
"By the way," said the Judge, "where is Riley?"
He'd run ahead of me, that was the last I'd seen of him; with an
anxiety that struck us simultaneously, the Judge and I stood up and started
yelling his name. Our voices, curving slowly around the woods, again, again
swung back on silence. I knew what had happened: he'd fallen into an old
Indian well.-many's the case I could tell you of. I was about to suggest
this when abruptly the Judge put a finger to his Ups. The man must have had
ears like a dog: I couldn't hear a sound. But he was right, there was
someone on the path. It turned out to be Maude Riordan and Riley's older
sister, the smart one, Elizabeth. They were very dear friends and wore white
matching sweaters, Elizabeth was carrying a violin case.
"Look here, Elizabeth," said the Judge, startling the girls, for as yet
they had not discovered us. "Look here, child, have you seen your brother?"
Maude recovered first, and it was she who answered. "We sure have," she
said emphatically. "I was walking Elizabeth home from her lesson when Riley
came along doing ninety miles an hour; nearly ran us over. You should speak
to him, Elizabeth. Anyway, he asked us to come down here and tell you not to
worry, said he'd explain everything later. Whatever that means."
Both Maude and Elizabeth had been in my class at school; they'd jumped
a grade and graduated the previous June. I knew Maude especially well
because for a summer I'd taken piano lessons from her mother; her father
taught violin, and Elizabeth Henderson was one of his pupils. Maude herself
played the violin beautifully; just a week before I'd read in the town paper
where she'd been invited to play on a radio program in Birmingham: I was
glad to hear it. The Riordans were nice people, considerate and cheerful. It
was not because I wanted to leam piano that I took lessons with Mrs.
Riordan-Х lather, I liked her blond largeness, the sympathetic, educated
talk that went on while we sat before the splendid upright that smelled of
polish and attention; and what I particularly liked was afterwards, when
Maude would ask me to have a lemonade on the cool back porch. She was
snub-nosed and elfin-eared, a skinny excitable girl who from her father had
inherited Irish black eyes and from her mother platinum hair pale as
morning-not the least like her best friend, the soulful and shadowy
Elizabeth. I don't know what those two talked about, books and music maybe.
But with me Maude's subjects were boys, dates, drugstore slander: didn't I
think it was terrible, the awful girls Riley Henderson chased around with?
she felt so sorry for Elizabeth, and thought it wonderful how, despite all,
Elizabeth held up her head. It didn't take a genius to see that Maude was
heartset on Riley; nevertheless, I imagined for a while that I was in love
with her. At home I kept mentioning her until finally Catherine said Oh
Maude Riordan, she's too scrawny-nothing on her to pinch, a man's crazy to
give her the time of day. Once I showed Maude a big evening, made for her
with my own hands a sweet-pea corsage, then took her to Phil's Cafe where we
had Kansas City steaks; afterwards, there was a dance at the Lola Hotel.
Still she behaved as though she hadn't expected to be kissed good night. "I
don't think that's necessary, Collin-though it was cute of you to take me
out." I was let down, you can see why; but as I didn't allow myself to brood
over it our friendship went on little changed. One day, at the end of a
lesson, Mrs. Riordan omitted the usual new piece for home practice; instead,
she kindly informed me that she preferred not to continue with my lessons:
"We're very fond of you, Collin, I don't have to say that you're welcome in
this house at any time. But dear, (he truth is you have no ability for
music; it happens that way occasionally, and I don't think it's fair on
either of us to pretend otherwise." She was right, all the same my pride was
hurt, I couldn't help feeling pushed-out, it made me miserable to think of
the Riordans, and gradually, in about the time it took to forget my few
hard-learned tunes, I drew a curtain on them. At first Maude used to stop me
after school and ask me over to her house; one way or another I always got
out of it; furthermore, it was winter then and I liked to stay in the
kitchen with Dolly and Catherine. Catherine wanted to know: How come you
don't talk any more about Maude Riordan? I said because I don't, that's all.
But while I didn't talk, I must have been thinking; at least, seeing her
there under the tree, old feelings squeezed my chest For the first time I
considered the circumstances self-consciously: did we. Dolly, the Judge and
I, strike Maude and Elizabeth as a ludicrous sight? I could be judged by
them, they were my own age. But from their manner we might just have met on
the street or at the drugstore.
The Judge said, "Maude, how's your daddy? Heard he hasn't been feeling
too good."
"He can't complain. You know how men are, always looking for an
ailment. And yourself, sir?"
"That's a pity," said the Judge, his mind wandering. "You give your
daddy my regards, and tell him I hope he feels better."
Maude submitted agreeably: "I will, sir, thank you. I know hell
appreciate your concern." Draping her skirt, she dropped on the moss and
settled beside her an unwilling Elizabeth. For Elizabeth no one used a
nickname; you might begin by calling her Betty, but in a week it would be
Elizabeth again: that was her effect Languid, banana-boned, she had dour
black hair and an apathetic, at moments saintly face-in an enamel locket
worn around her lily-stalk neck she preserved a miniature of her missionary
father. "Look, Elizabeth, isn't that a becoming hat Miss Dolly has on?
Velvet, with a veil."
Dolly roused herself; she patted her head. "I don't generally wear
hats-we intended to travel."
"We heard you'd left home," said Maude; and, proceeding more frankly;
"In fact that's all anyone talks about, isnt it, Elizabeth?" Elizabeth
nodded without enthusiasm. "Gracious, there are some peculiar stories going
around. I mean, on the way here we met Gus Ham and he said that colored
woman Catherine Crook (is that her name?) had been arrested for hitting Mrs.
Buster with a mason jar."
In sloping tones. Dolly said, "Catherine-had nothing to do with it."
"I guess someone did," said Maude. "We saw Mrs. Buster in the post
office this morning; she was showing everybody a bump on her head, quite
large. It looked genuine to us, didn't it Elizabeth?" Elizabeth yawned. "To
be sure, I don't care who hit her, I think they ought to get a medal"
"No," sighed Dolly, "it isn't proper, it shouldn't have happened. We
all will have a lot to be sorry for."
At last Maude took account of me. "I've been wanting to see you,
Collin," she said hurrying as though to hide an embarrassment: mine, not
hers. "Elizabeth and I are planning a Halloween party, a real scary one, and
we thought it would be grand to dress you in a skeleton suit and sit you in
a dark room to tell people's fortunes: because you're so good at..."
"Fibbing," said Elizabeth disinterestedly.
"Which is what fortune-telling is," Maude elaborated.
I don't know what gave them the idea I was such a storyteller, unless
it was at school I'd shown a superior talent for alibis. I said it sounded
fine, the party. "But you better not count on me. We might be in jail by
then."
"Oh well, in that case," said Maude, as if accepting one of my old and
usual excuses for not coming to her house.
"Say, Maude," said the Judge, helping us out of the silence that had
fallen, "you're getting to be a celebrity: I saw in the paper where you're
going to play on the radio."
As though dreaming aloud, she explained the broadcast was the finals of
a state competition; if she won, the prize was a musical scholarship at the
University: even second prize meant a half-scholarship. "I'm going to play a
piece of daddy's, a serenade: he wrote it for me the day I was born. But
it's a surprise, I don't want him to know."
"Make her play it for you," said Elizabeth, unclasping her violin case.
Maude was generous, she did not have to be begged. The wine-colored
violin, coddled under her chin, trilled as she tuned it; a brazen butterfly,
lighting on the bow, was spiraled away as the bow swept across the strings
singing a music that seemed a blizzard of butterflies flying, a sky-rocket
of spring sweet to hear in the gnarled fall woods. It slowed, saddened, her
silver hair drooped across the violin. We applauded; after we'd stopped
there went on sounding a mysterious extra pair of hands. Riley stepped from
behind a bank of fem, and when she saw him Maude's cheeks pinked. I don't
think she would have played so well if she'd known he was listening.
Riley sent the girls home; they seemed reluctant to go, but Elizabeth
was not used to disobeying her brother. "Lock the doors," he told her, "and
Maude, I'd appreciate it if you'd spend the night at our place: anybody
comes by asking for me, say you don't know where I am."
I had to help him into the tree, for he'd brought back his gun and a
knapsack heavy with provisions-a bottle of rose and raisin wine, oranges,
sardines, wieners, rolls from the Katydid Bakery, a jumbo box of animal
crackers: each item appearing stepped up our spirits, and Dolly, overcome by
the animal crackers, said Riley ought to have a kiss.
But it was with grave face that we listened to his report.
When we'd separated in the woods it was toward the sound of Catherine
that he'd run. This had brought him to the grass: he'd been watching when I
had my encounter with Big Eddie Stover. I said well why didn't you help me?
"You were doing all right; I don't figure Big Eddie's liable to forget you
too soon: poor fellow limped along doubled over." Besides, it occurred to
him that no one knew he was one of us, that he'd Joined us in the tree: he
was right to have stayed hidden, it made it possible for him to follow
Catherine and the deputies into town. They'd stuffed her into the
rumble-seat of Big Eddie's old coupe and driven straight to jail: Riley
trailed them in his car. "By the time we reached the jail she seemed to have
got quieted down; there was a little crowd hanging around, lads, some old
farmers-you would have been proud of Catherine, she walked through them
holding her dress together and her head like this." He tilted his head at a
royal angle. How often I'd seen Catherine do that, especially when anyone
criticized her (for hiding puzzle pieces, spreading misinformation, not
having her teeth fixed); and Dolly, recognizing it too, had to blow her
nose. "But," said Riley, "as soon as she was inside the jail she kicked up
another fuss." In the jail there are only four cells, two for colored and
two for white. Catherine had objected to being put in a colored people's
cell.
The Judge stroked his chin, waved his head. "You didn't get a chance to
speak to her? She ought to have had the comfort of knowing one of us was
there."
'I stood around hoping she'd come to the window. But then I heard the
other news."
Thinking back, I don't see how Riley could have waited so bug to tell
us. Because, my God: our friend from Chicago, that hateful Dr. Morris Ritz,
had skipped town after rifling Verena's safe of twelve thousand dollars in
negotiable bonds and more than seven hundred dollars in cash: that, as we
later learned, was not half his loot. But wouldn't you know? I realized this
was what baby-voiced Will Harris had been recounting to the Sheriff: no
wonder Verena had sent a hurry call: her troubles with us must have become
quite a side issue. Riley had a few details: he knew that Verena, upon
discovering the safe door swung open (this happened in the office she kept
above her drygoods store) had whirled around the comer to the Lola Hotel,
there to find that Morris Ritz had checked out the previous evening: she
fainted: when they-revived her she fainted all over again.
Dolly's soft face hollowed; an urge to go to Verena was rising, at the
same moment some sense of self, a deeper will, held her. Regretfully she
gazed at me. "It's better you know it now, Collin; you shouldn't have to
wait until you're as old as I am: the world is a bad place."
A change, like a shift of wind, overcame the Judge: he looked at once
his age, autumnal, bare, as though he believed that Dolly, by accepting
wickedness, had forsaken him. But I knew she had not: he'd called her a
spirit, she was really a woman. Uncorking the rose and raisin wine, Riley
spilled its topaz color into four glasses; after a moment he filled a fifth,
Catherine's. The Judge, raising the wine to his lips, proposed a toast: "To
Catherine, give her trust." We lifted our glasses, and "Oh Collin," said
Dolly, a sudden stark thought widening her eyes, "you and I, we're the only
ones that can understand a word she says!"
The following day, which was the first of October, a Wednesday, is one
day I won't forget.
First off, Riley woke me by stepping on my fingers. Dolly, already
awake, insisted I apologize for cursing him. Courtesy, she said, is more
important in the morning than at any other time: particularly when one is
living in such close quarters. The Judge's watch, still bending the twig
like a heavy gold apple, gave the time as six after six. I don't know whose
idea it was, but we breakfasted on oranges and animal crackers and cold
hotdogs. The Judge grouched that a body didn't feel human till he'd had a
pot of hot coffee. We agreed that coffee was what we all most missed. Riley
volunteered to drive into town and get some; also, he would have a chance to
scout around, find out what was going on. He suggested I come with him:
"Nobody's going to see him, not if he stays down in the seat." Although the
Judge objected, saying he thought it foolhardy. Dolly could tell I wanted to
go: I'd yearned so much for a ride in Riley's car that now the opportunity
presented itself nothing, even the prospect that no one might see me, could
have thinned my excitement. Dolly said, "I can't see there's any harm. But
you ought to have a clean shirt: I could plant turnips in the collar of that
one."
The field of grass was without voice, no pheasant rustle, furtive
flurry; the pointed leaves were sharp and blood-red as the aftermath arrows
of a massacre; their brittieness broke beneath our feet as we waded up the
hill into the cemetery. The view from there is very fine: the limitless
trembling surface of River Woods, fifty unfolding miles of ploughed,
wind-milled farmland, far-off the spired courthouse tower, smoking chimneys
of town. I stopped by the graves of my mother and father. I had not often
visited them, it depressed me, the tomb-cold stone-so unlike what I
remembered of them, their aliveness, how she'd cried when he went away to
sell his frigid-aires, how he'd run naked into the street. I wanted flowers
for the terracotta jars sitting empty on the streaked and muddied marble.
Riley helped me; he tore beginning buds off a japonica tree, and watching me
arrange them, said: "I'm glad your ma was nice. Bitches, by and large." I
wondered if he meant his own mother, poor Rose Henderson, who used to make
him hop around (he yard reciting the multiplication table. It did seem to
me, though, that he'd made up for those hard days. After all, he had a car
that was supposed to have cost three thousand dollars. Second-hand, mind
you. It was a foreign car, an Alfa-Romeo roadster (Romeo's Alfa, the joke
was) he'd bought in New Orleans from a politician bound for the
penitentiary.
As we purred along the unpaved road toward town I kept hoping for a
witness: there were certain persons it would have done my heart good to have
seen me sailing by in Riley Hen-derson's car. But it was too early for
anyone much to be about; breakfast was still on the stove, and smoke soared
out the chimneys of passing houses. We turned the comer by the church, drove
around the square and parked in the dirt lane that runs between Cooper's
Livery and the Katydid Bakery. There Riley left me with orders to stay put:
he wouldn't be more than an hour. So, stretching out on the seat, I listened
to the chicanery of thieving sparrows in the livery stable's haystacks,
breathed the fresh bread, tart as currant odors escaping from the bakery.
The couple who owned this bakery, County was their name, Mr. and Mrs. C. C.
County, had to begin their day at three in the morning to be ready by
opening time, eight o'clock. It was a clean prosperous place. Mrs. County
could afford the most expensive clothes at Verena's drygoods store. While I
lay there smelling the good things, the back door of the bakery opened and
Mr. County, broom in hand, swept flour dust into the lane. I guess he was
surprised to see Riley's car, and surprised to find me in it.
"What you up to. Coffin?"
"Up to nothing, Mr. County," I said, and asked myself if he knew about
our trouble.
"Sure am happy October's here," he said, rubbing the air with his
fingers as though the chill woven into it was a material he could feel. "We
have a terrible time in the summer: ovens and all make it too hot to live.
See here, son, there's a gingerbread man waiting for you-come on in and run
him down."
Now he was not the kind of man to get me in there and then call the
Sheriff.
His wife welcomed me into the spiced heat of the oven room as though
she could think of nothing pleasanter than my being there. Most anyone would
have liked Mrs. County. A chunky woman with no fuss about her, she had
elephant ankles, developed arms, a muscular face permanently fire-flushed;
her eyes were like blue cake-icing, her hair looked as if she'd mopped it
around in a flour barrel, and she wore an apron that trailed to the tips of
her toes. Her husband also wore one; sometimes, with the fulsome apron still
tied around him, I'd seen him crossing the street to have a time-off beer
with the men that lean around the comer at Phil's Cafe: he seemed a painted
clown, flopping, powdered, elegantly angular.
Clearing a place on her work table, Mrs. County set me down to a cup of
coffee and a warm tray of cinnamon rolls, the kind Dolly relished. Mr.
County suggested I might prefer something else: "I promised him, what did I
promise? a gingerbread man." His wife socked a lump of dough: "Those are for
kids. He's a grown man; or nearly. Collin, just how old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"Same as Samuel," she said, meaning her son, whom we all called Mule:
inasmuch as he was not much brighter than one. I asked what was their news
of him? because the previous autumn, after having been left back in the
eighth grade three years running. Mule had gone to Pensacola and joined the
Navy. "He's in Panama, last we heard," she said, flattening the dough into a
piecrust. "We don't hear often. I wrote him once, I said Samuel you do
better about writing home or I'm going to write the President exactly how
old you are. Because you know he joined up under false pretenses. I was
darned mad at the time-blamed Mr. Hand up at the schoolhouse: that's why
Samuel did it, he just couldn't tolerate always being left behind in the
eighth grade, him getting so tall and the other children so little. But now
I can see Mr. Hand was right: it wouldn't be fair to the rest of you boys if
they promoted Samuel when he didn't do his work proper. So maybe it turned
out for the best. C. C., show Collin the picture."
Photographed against a background of palms and real sea, four smirking
sailors stood with their arms linked together; underneath was written. God
Bless Mom and Pop, Samuel. It rankled me. Mule, off seeing the world, while
I, well, maybe I deserved a gingerbread man. As I returned the picture, Mr.
County said: "I'm all for a boy serving his country. But the bad part of it
is, Samuel was just getting where he could give us a hand around here. I
sure hate to depend on nigger help. Lying and stealing, never know where you
are."
"It beats me why C.C. carries on like that," said his wife, knotting
her lips. "He knows it irks me. Colored people are no worse than white
people: in some cases, better. I've had occasion to say so to other people
in this town. Like this business about old Catherine Creek. Makes me sick.
Cranky she may be, and peculiar, but there's as good a woman as you'll find.
Which reminds me, I mean to send her a dinner-tray up to the jail, for I'll
wager the Sheriff doesn't set much of a table."
So little, once it has changed, changes back: the world knew us: we
would never be warm again: I let go, saw winter coming toward a cold tree,
cried, cried, came apart like a rain-rotted rag. I'd wanted to since we left
the house. Mrs. County begged pardon if she'd said anything to upset me;
with her kitchen-slopped apron she wiped my face, and we laughed, had to, at
the mess it made, the paste of flour and tears, and I felt, as they say, a
lot better, kind of lighthearted. For manly reasons I understood, but which
made me feel no shame, Mr. County had been mortified by the outburst: he
retired to the front of the shop.
Mrs. County poured coffee for herself and sat down. "I don't pretend to
follow what's going on," she said. "The way I hear it. Miss Dolly broke up
housekeeping because of some disagreement with Verena?" I wanted to say the
situation was more complicated than that, but wondered, as I tried to array
events, if really it was. "Now," she continued thoughtfully, "it may sound
as though I'm talking against Dolly: I'm not But this is what I feel-you
people should go home. Dolly ought to make her peace with Verena: that's
what she's always done, and you can't turn around at her time of life. Also,
it sets a poor example for the town, two sisters quarreling, one of them
sitting in a tree; and Judge Charlie Cool, for the first time in my life I
feel sorry for those sons of his. Leading citizens have to behave
themselves; otherwise the entire place goes to pieces. For instance, have
you seen that wagon in the square? Well then, you better go have a look.
Family of cowboys, they are. Evangelists, C.C. says-all I know is there's
been a great racket over them and something to do with Dolly." Angrily she
puffed up a paper sack. "I want you to tell her what I said: go home. And
here, Collin, take along some cinnamon rolls. I know how Dolly dotes on
them."
As I left the bakery the bells of the courthouse clock were tinging
eight, which meant that it was seven-thirty. This clock has always run a
half-hour fast. Once an expert was imported to repair it; at the end of
almost a week's tinkering he recommended, as the only remedy, a stick of
dynamite; the town council voted he be paid in full, for there was a general
feeling of pride that the clock had proved so incorrigible. Around the
square a few store-keepers were preparing to open; broom-sweepings fogged
doorways, rolled trashbarrels berated the cool cat-quiet streets. At the
Early Bird, a better grocery store than Verena's Jitney Jungle, two colored
boys were fancying the window with cans of Hawaiian pineapple. On the south
side of the square, beyond the cane benches where in all seasons sit the
peaceful, perishing old men, I saw the wagon Mrs. County had spoken of-in
reality an old truck contrived with tarpaulin covering to resemble the
western wagons of history. It looked forlorn and foolish standing alone in
the empty square. A homemade sign, perhaps four feet high, crested the cab
like a shark's fin. Let Little Homer Honey Lasso Your Soul For The Lord.
Painted on the other side there was a blistered greenish grinning head
topped by a ten-gallon hat. I would not have thought it a portrait of
anything human, but, according to a notice, this was: Child Wonder Little
Homer Honey. With nothing more to see, for there was no one around the
truck, I took myself toward the jail, which is a box-shaped brick building
next door to the Ford Motor Company. I'd been inside it once. Big Eddie
Stover had taken me there, along with a dozen other boys and men; he'd
walked into the drugstore and said come over to the jail if you want to see
something. The attraction was a thin handsome gipsy boy they'd taken off a
freight train; Big Eddie gave him a quarter and told him to let down his
pants; nobody could believe the size of it, and one of the men said, "Boy,
how come they keep you locked up when you got a crowbar like that?" For
weeks you could tell girls who had heard that joke: they giggled every time
they passed the jaiL
There is an unusual emblem decorating a side wall of the jail. I asked
Dolly, and she said that in her youth she remembers it as a candy
advertisement. If so, the lettering has vanished; what remains is a chalky
tapestry: two flamingo-pink trumpeting angels swinging, swooping above a
huge horn filled with fruit like a Christmas stocking; embroidered on the
brick, it seems a faded mural, a faint tattoo, and sunshine flutters the
imprisoned angels as though they were the spirits of thieves. I knew the
risk I was taking, parading around in plain sight; but I walked past the
jail, then back, and whistled, later whispered Catherine, Catherine, hoping
this would bring her to the window. I realized which was her window: on the
sill, reflecting beyond the bars, I saw a bowl of goldfish, the one thing,
as subsequently we learned, she'd asked to have brought her. Orange
flickerings of the fish fanned around the coral castle, and I thought of the
morning I'd helped Dolly find it, the castle, the pearl pebbles. It had been
the beginning and, chilled suddenly by a thought of what the end could be,
Catherine coldly shadowed and peering downward, I prayed she would not come
to the window: she would have seen no one, for I turned and ran.
Riley kept me waiting in the car more than two hours. By the time he
showed up he was himself in such a temper I didn't dare show any of my own.
It seems he'd gone home and found his sisters, Anne and Elizabeth, and Maude
Riordan, who had spent the night, still lolling abed: not just that, but
Coca-Cola bottles and cigarette butts all over the parlor. Maude took the
blame: she confessed to having invited some boys over to listen to the radio
and dance; but it was the sisters who got punished. He'd dragged them out of
bed and whipped them. I asked what did he mean, whipped them? Turned them
over my knee, he said, and whipped them with a tennis shoe. I couldn't
picture this; it conflicted with my sense of Elizabeth's dignity. You're too
hard on those girls, I said, adding vindictively: Maude, now there's the bad
one. He took me seriously, said yes he'd intended to whip her if only
because she'd called him the kind of names he wouldn't take off anybody; but
before he could catch her she'd bolted out the back door. I thought to
myself maybe at last Maude's had her bait of you.
Riley's ragged hair was glued down with brilliantine; he smelled of
lilac water and talcum. He didn't have to tell me he'd been to the barber's;
or why.
Though he has since retired, there was in those days an exceptional
fellow running the barbershop. Amos Legrand. Men like the Sheriff, for that
matter Riley Henderson, oh everybody come to think of it, said: that old
sis. But they didn't mean any harm; most people enjoyed Amos and really
wished him well. A little monkeyman who had to stand on a box to cut your
hair, he was agitated and chattery as a pair of castanets. All his steady
customers he called honey, men and women alike, it made no difference to
him. "Honey," he'd say, "it's about time you got this hair cut: was about to
buy you a package of bobby-pins." Amos had one tremendous gift: he could
tattle along on matters of true interest to businessmen and girls of
ten-everything from what price Ben Jones got for his peanut crop to who
would be invited to Mary Simpson's birthday party.
It was natural that Riley should have gone to him to get the news. Of
course he repeated it straightforwardly; but I could imagine Amos, hear his
hummingbird whirr: "There you are, honey, that's how it turns out when you
leave money lying around. And of all people, Verena Talbo: here we thought
she trotted to the bank with every dime came her way. Twelve thousand seven
hundred dollars. But don't think it stops there. Seems Verena and this Dr.
Ritz were going into business together, that's why she bought the old
canning factory. Well get this: she gave Ritz over ten thousand to buy
machinery, mercy knows what, and now it turns out he never bought one
blessed penny's worth. Pocketed the whole thing. As for him, they've located
not hide nor hair; South America, that's where they'll find him when and if.
I never was somebody to insinuate any monkeyshines went on between him and
her; I said Verena Talbo's too particular: honey, that Jew had the worst
case of dandruff I've ever seen on a human head. But a smart woman like her,
maybe she was stuck on him. Then all this to-do with her sister, the uproar
over that. I don't wonder Doc Carter's giving her shots. But Charlie Cool's
the one kills me: what do you make of him out there catching his death?"
We cleared town on two wheels; pop, pulp, insects spit against the
windshield. The dry starched blue day whistled round us, there was not a
cloud. And yet I swear storms foretell themselves in my bones. This is a
nuisance common to old people, but fairly rare with anyone young. It's as
though a damp rumble of thunder had sounded in your joints. The way I hurt,
I felt nothing less than a hurricane could be headed our way, and said so to
Riley, who said go on, you're crazy, look at the sky. We were making a bet
about it when, rounding that bad curve so convenient to the cemetery, Riley
winced and froze his brakes; we skidded long enough for a detailed review of
our lives.
It was not Riley's fault: square in the road and struggling along like
a lame cow was the Little Homer Honey wagon. With a clatter of collapsing
machinery it came to a dead halt In a moment the driver climbed out, a
woman.
She was not young, but there was a merriness in the seesaw of her hips,
and her breasts rubbed and nudged against her peach-colored blouse in such a
coaxing way. She wore a fringed chamois skirt and knee-high cowboy boots,
which was a mistake, for you felt that her legs, if fully exposed, would
have been the best part. She leaned on the car door. Her eyelids drooped as
though the lashes weighed intolerably; with the tip of her tongue she
wettened her very red lips. "Good morning, fellows," she said, and it was a
dragging slow-fuse voice. "I'd appreciate a few directions."
"What the hell's wrong with you?" said Riley, asserting himself. "You
nearly made us turn over."
"I'm surprised you mention it," said the woman, amiably tossing her
large head; her hair, an invented apricot color, was meticulously curled,
and the curb, shaken out, were like bells with no music in them. "You were
speeding, dear," she reproved him complacently. "I imagine there's a law
against it; there are laws against everything, especially here."
Riley said, "There should be a law against that truck. A broken-down
pile like that, it oughtn't to be allowed."
"I know, dear," the woman laughed. 'Trade with you. Though I'm afraid
we couldn't all fit into this car; we're even a bit squeezed in the wagon.
Could you help me with a cigarette? That's a doll, thanks." As she lighted
the cigarette I noticed how gaunt her hands were, rough; the nails were
un-painted and one of them was black as though she'd crushed it in a door.
"I was told that out this way we'd find a Miss Talbo. Dolly Talbo. She seems
to be living in a tree. I wish you'd kindly show us where..."
Back of her there appeared to be an entire orphanage emptying out of
the truck. Babies barely able to toddle on their rickety bowlegs, towheads
dribbling ropes of snot, girls old enough to wear brassieres, and a ladder
of boys, man-sized some of them. I counted up to ten, this including a set
of crosseyed twins and a diapered baby being lugged by a child not more than
five. Still, like a magician's rabbits, they kept coming, multiplied until
the road was thickly populated.
"These all yours?" I said, really anxious; in another count I'd made a
total of fifteen. One boy, he was about twelve and had tiny steel-rimmed
glasses, flopped around in a ten-gallon hat like a walking mushroom. Most of
them wore a few cowboy items, boots, at least a rodeo scarf. But they were a
dis-couraged-looking lot, and sickly too, as though they'd lived years off
boiled potatoes and onions. They pressed around the car, ghostly quiet
except for the youngest who thumped the headlights and bounced on the
fenders.
"Sure enough, dear: all mine," she answered, swatting at a mite of a
girl playing maypole on her leg. "Sometimes I figure we've picked up one or
two that don't belong," she added with a shrug, and several of the children
smiled. They seemed to adore her. "Some of their daddies are dead; I guess
the rest are living-one way and another: either case it's no concern of
ours. I take it you weren't at our meeting last night. I'm Sister Ida,
Little Homer Honey's mother." I wanted to know which one was Little Homer.
She blinked around and singled out the spectacled boy who, wobbling up under
his hat, saluted us: "Praise Jesus. Want a whistle?" and, swelling his
cheeks, blasted a tin whistle.
"With one of those," explained his mother, tucking up her back hairs,
"you can give the devil a scare. They have a number of practical uses as
well."
"Two bits," the child bargained. He had a worried little face white as
cold cream. The hat came down to his eyebrows.
I would have bought one if I'd had the money. You could see they were
hungry. Riley felt the same, at any rate he produced fifty cents and took
two of the whistles. "Bless you," said Little Homer, slipping the coin
between his teeth and biting hard. "There's so much counterfeit going around
these days," his mother confided apologetically. "In our branch of endeavor
you wouldn't expect that kind of trouble," she said, sighing. "But if you
kindly would show us-we can't go on much more, just haven't got the gas."
Riley told her she was wasting her time. "Nobody there any more," he
said, racing the motor. Another driver, blockaded behind us, was honking his
horn.
"Not in the tree?" Her voice was plaintive above the motor's impatient
roar. "But where will we find her then?" Her hands were trying to hold back