«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 aimed a gun-like finger at Joel, and cocked his thumb: «So I put a roller in the pianola, and it played the Indian Love Call.»
«Such a sweet song,» said Amy. «So sad. I don’t know why you never let me play the pianola any more.»
«Keg cut her throat,» said Joel, a mood of panic bubbling up, for he couldn’t follow the peculiar turn Randolph’s talk had taken; it was like trying to decipher some tale being told in a senseless foreign language, and he despised this left-out feeling, just when he’d begun to feel close to Randolph. «I saw her scar,» he said, and all but shouted for attention, «that’s what Keg did.»
«Uh yes, absolutely.»
«It went like this,» and Amy hummed. «When I’m calling yoo boo de da dum de da. . .»
«. . .from ear to ear: ruined a roseleaf quilt my great-great aunt in Tennessee lost her eyesight stitching.»
«Zoo says he’s on the chain gang, and she hopes he never gets off: she told the Lord to make him into an old dog.»
«Will you answer da de de da. . . that isn’t quite the tune, is it, Randolph?»
«A little off-key.»
«But how should it go?»
«Haven’t the faintest notion, angel.»
Joel said: «Poor Zoo.»
«Poor everybody,» said Randolph, languidly pouring another sherry.
Greedy moths flattened their wings against the lamp funnels. Near the stove rain seeped through a leak in the roof, dripping with dismal regularity into an empty coal scuttle. «It’s the kind of thing that happens when you tamper with the smallest box,» observed Randolph, the sour smoke from his cigarette spiraling toward Joel, who, with discreet hand-waves, directed it elsewhere.
«I do wish you’d let me play the pianola,» said Amy wistfully. «But I don’t suppose you realize how much I enjoy it, what a comfort it is.»
Randolph cleared his throat, and grinned, dimples denting his cheeks. His face was like a round ripe peach. He was considerably younger than his cousin: somewhere, say, in his middle thirties. «Still, we haven’t exorcized Master Knox’s ghost.»
«It wasn’t any ghost,» muttered Joel. «There isn’t any such of a thing: this was a real live lady, and I saw her.»
«And what did she look like, dear?» said Amy, her tone indicating her thoughts were fastened on less far-fetched matters. It reminded Joel of Ellen and his mother: they also had used this special distant voice when suspicious of his stories, only allowing him to proceed for the sake of peace. The old trigger-quick feeling of guilt came over him: a liar, that’s what the two of them, Amy and Randolph, were thinking, just a natural-born liar, and believing this he began to elaborate his description embarrassingly: she had the eyes of a fiend, the lady did, wild witch-eyes, cold and green as the bottom of the North Pole sea; twin to the Snow Queen, her face was pale, wintry, carved from ice, and her white hair towered on her head like a wedding cake. She had beckoned to him with a crooked finger, beckoned. . .
«Gracious,» said Amy, nibbling a cube of watermelon pickle. «You really saw such a person!»
While talking, Joel had noticed with discomfort her cousin’s amused, entertained expression:
earlier, when he’d given his first flat account, Randolph had heard him out in the colorless way one listens to a stale joke, for he seemed, in some curious manner, to have advance knowledge of the facts.
«You know,» said Amy slowly, and suspended the watermelon pickle midway between plate and mouth, «Randolph, have you been. . .» she paused, her eyes sliding sideways to confront the smooth, amused peach-face. «Well, thatdoes sound like. . .»
Randolph kicked her under the table; he accomplished this maneuver so skillfully it would have escaped Joel altogether had Amy’s response been less extreme: she jerked back as though lightning had rocked the chair, and, shielding her eyes with the gloved hand, let out a pitiful wail: «Snake a snake I thought it was a snake bit me crawled under the table bit me foot you fool never forgive bit me my heart a snake,» repeated over and over the words began to rhyme, to hum from wall to wall where giant moth shadows jittered.
Joel went all hollow inside; he thought he was going to wee wee right there in his breeches, and he wanted to hop up and run, just as he had at Jesus Fever’s. Only he couldn’t, not this time. So he looked hard at the window where fig leaves tapped a wet windy message, and tried with all his might to find the far-away room.
«Stop it this instant,» commanded Randolph, making no pretense of his disgust. But when she could not seem to regain control he reached over and slapped her across the mouth. Then gradually she tapered off to a kind of hiccuping sob.
Randolph touched her arm solicitously. «All better, angel?» he said. «Dear me, you gave us a fright.» Glancing at Joel, he added: «Amy is so very highstrung.»
«So very,» she agreed. «It was just that I thought. . . I hope I haven’t upset the child.»
But the walls of Joel’s room were too thick for Amy’s voice to penetrate. Now for a long time he’d been unable to find the far-away room; always it had been difficult, but never so hard as in the last year. So it was good to see his friends again. They were all here, including Mr. Mystery, who wore a crimson cape, a plumed Spanish hat, a glittery monocle, and had all his teeth made of solid gold: an elegant gentleman, though given to talking tough from the side of his mouth, and an
