measured paces toward a dingy little rose bush, and, frowning up at the sky, discarded the red ribbon
binding her throat. A narrow scar circled her neck like a necklace of purple wire; she traced a finger over
it lightly.
«When the time come for that Keg Brown to go, Lord, just you send him back in a hounddog’s
nasty shape, ol hound ain’t nobody wants to trifle with: a haunted dog.»
It was as though a brutal hawk had soared down and clawed away Joel’s eyelids, forcing him to
gape at her throat. Zoo. Maybe she was like him, and the world had a grudge against her, too. But
christamighty he didn’t want to end up with a scar like that. Except what chance have you got when there
is always trickery in one hand, and danger in the other. No chance whatsoever. None. A coldness went
along his spine. Thunder boomed overhead. The earth shook. He leaped off the stump, and made for the
house, his loosened shirt-tail flying behind; run, run, run, his heart told him, and wham! he’d pitched
headlong into a briar patch. This was a kind of freak accident. He’d seen the patch, known it for an
obstacle, and yet, as though deliberately, he’d thrown himself upon it. But the stinging briar scratches
seemed to cleanse him of bewilderment and misery, just as the devil, in fanatic cults, is supposedly,
through self-imposed pain, driven from the soul. Realizing the tender concern in Zoo’s face as she helped
him to his feet, he felt a fool: she was, after all, his friend, and there was no need to be afraid. «Here, little
old bad boy,» she said kindly, plucking briar needles off his breeches, «how come you act so ugly? Huh,
hurt me and Papadaddy’s feelins.» She took his hand, and led him to the porch.
«Hee hee hee,» cackled Jesus, «I tumble thataway, I bust every bone.»
Zoo picked up her accordion and, reclining against a porch-pole, presently, with careless effort,
produced a hesitant, discordant melody. And her grandfather, in a disappointed child’s wheedling
singsong, reiterated his grievances; he was about to perish of chill, but what matter; who gave a goldarn
whether he lived or died? and why didn’t Zoo, inasmuch as he’d performed his Sabbath duty, tuck him in
his good warm bed and leave him in peace? oh there were cruel folk in this world, and heartless ways.
«Hush up and bow that head, Papadaddy,» said Zoo. «We gonna end this meetin proper-like.
We gonna tell Him our prayers. Joel, honey, bow that head.»
The trio on the porch were figures in a woodcut engraving: the Ancient on his throne of splendid
pillows, a yellow pet relaxed in his lap gazing gravely in the drowning light at the small servant bowed at
its master’s feet, and the arms of the black arrow-like daughter lifted above them all, as if in benediction.
But there was no prayer in Joel’s mind; rather, nothing a net of words could capture, for, with
one exception, all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a
knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so
meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.
«Amen,» whispered Zoo.
And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.
4
«Can’t we be more specific?» said Randolph, languidly pouring a glass of sherry. «Was she fat,
tall, lean?»
«It was hard to tell,» said Joel.
Outside in the night, rain washed the roof with close slanted sounds, but here kerosene lamps
spun webs of mellow light in the darkest corner, and the kitchen-window mirrored the scene like a
golden looking glass. So far Joel’s first supper at the Landing had gone along well enough. He felt very
much at ease with Randolph, who, at each conversational lag, introduced topics which might interest and
flatter a boy of thirteen: Joel found himself holding forth exceedingly well (he thought) on Do Human
Beings Inhabit Mars? How Do You Suppose Egyptians Really Mummified Folks? Are Head-hunters Still
Active? and other conversational subjects. It was due more or less to an overdose of sherry (disliking the
taste, but goaded by the hope of getting sure enough drunk. . . now wouldn’t he have something to write
Sammy Silverstein!. . . three thimble glasses had been drained) that Joel mentioned the Lady.
«Heat,» said Randolph. «Exposing one’s bare head to the sun occasionally results in minor
hallucinations. Dear me, yes. Once, some years ago, while airing in the garden, I seemed quite distinctly
to see a sunflower transformed into a man’s face, the face of a scrappy little boxer I admired at one point,
a Mexican named Pepe Alvarez.» He fondled his chin reflectively, and wrinkled his nose, as if to convey
that this name had for him particular implications. «Stunning experience, so impressive I cut the flower,
and pressed it in a book; even now, if I come across it I fancy. . . but that is neither here nor there. It was
the sun, I’m sure. Amy dearest, what do you think?»
Amy, who was brooding over her food, glanced up, rather startled. «No more for me, thank
you,» she said.
Randolph frowned in mock annoyance. «As usual, out picking the little blue flower of
forgetfulness.»
Her narrow face softened with pleasure. «Silvertongued devil,» she said, unreserved adoration
brightening her sharp little eyes, and making them, for an instant, almost beautiful.
«To begin at the beginning, then,» he said, and burped(«Excusez-moi, s’il vous plaît. Blackeyed
peas, you understand; most indigestible»). He patted his lips daintily. «Now where was I, oh yes. . . Joel
refuses to be persuaded we at the Landing aren’t harboring spirits.»
«That isn’t what I said,» Joel protested.
«Some of Missouri’s chatter,» was Amy’s calm opinion. «Just a hotbed of crazy nigger-notions,
that girl. Remember when she wrung the neck off every chicken on the place? Oh, it isn’t funny, don’t
laugh. I’ve sometimes wondered what would happen if it got into her headhis soul inhabited one of us.»
«Keg?» said Joel. «You mean Keg’s soul?»
«Don’t tell me!» cried Randolph, and giggled in the prim, suffocated manner of an old maid.
«Already?»
«I didn’t think it was so funny,» said Joel resentfully. «He did a bad thing to her.»
Amy said: «Randolph’s only cutting up.»
«You malign me, angel.»
«It wasn’t funny,» said Joel.
Squinting one eye, Randolph studied the spokes of amber light whirling out from the sherry as he
raised and revolved his glass. «Not funny, dear me, no. But the story has a certain bizarre interest: would
you care to hear it?»
«How unnecessary,» said Amy. «The child’s morbid enough.»
«All children are morbid: it’s their one saving grace,» said Randolph and went right ahead. «This
happened more than a decade ago, and in a cold, very cold November. There was working for me at the
time a strapping young buck, splendidly proportioned, and with skin the color of swamp honey.» A
curious quality about Randolph’s voice had worried Joel from the first, but not till now could he put a
finger on it: Randolph spoke without an accent of any kind: his weary voice was free of regional defects,
yet there was an emotional undercurrent, a caustic lilt of sarcasm which gave it a rather emphatic
personality.
«He was, however, a little feeble-minded. The feeble-minded, the neurotic, the criminal, perhaps,
also, the artist, have unpredictablility and perverted innocence in common.» His expression became
smugly remote, as though, having made an observation he thought superior, he must pause and listen
admiringly while it reverberated in his head. «Let’s compare them to a Chinese chest: the sort, you
remember, that opens into a second box, another, still another, until at length you come upon the last. . .
the latch is touched, the lid springs open to reveal. . . what unsuspected cache?» He smiled wanly, and
tasted the sherry. Then, from the breastpocket of the taffy-silk pyjama top that he wore, he extracted a
cigarette, and struck a match. The cigarette had a strange, medicinal odor, as though the tobacco had
been long soaked in the juice of acid herbs: it was the smell that identifies a house where asthma reigns.
As he puckered his lips to blow a smoke ring, the pattern of his talcumed face was suddenly complete: it
seemed composed now of nothing but circles: though not fat, it was round as a coin, smooth and hairless;
two discs of rough pink colored his cheeks, and his nose had a broken look, as if once punched by a
strong angry fist; curly, very blond, his fine hair fell in childish yellow ringlets across his forehead, and his
wide-set, womanly eyes were like sky-blue marbles.
«So they were in love, Keg and Missouri, and we had the wedding here, the bride all clothed in
family lace. . .»
«Nice as any white girl, I’ll tell you,» said Amy. «Pretty as a picture.»
Joel said: «But if he was crazy. . .»
«She was never one for reasoning,» sighed Randolph. «Only fourteen, of course, a child, but
decidedly stubborn: she wanted to marry, and so she did. We lent them a room here in the house the
week of their honeymoon, and let them use the yard to have a fishfry for their friends.»
«And my dad. . . was he at the wedding?»
Randolph, looking blank, tapped ash onto the floor. «But then one night, very late. . .» lowering
his eyelids sleepily, he drew a finger round the rim of his glass. «Does Amy, by chance, recall the very
original thing I did when we heard Missouri scream?»
Amy couldn’t make up her mind whether she did or not. Ten years, after all, was a long time.
«We were sitting like this in the parlor, doesn’t that come back? And I said: it’s the wind. Of
course I knew it wasn’t.» He paused, and sucked in his cheeks, as though the memory proved too
exquisitely humorous for him to maintain a straight face. He
