«You would like the house I am living in Sammy as it is a swell house and you would like my dad as he knows all about airplanes like you do. He doesn’t look much like your dad though. He doesn’t wear specs or smoke cigars, but is tall like Mr Mystery (if Mr Mystery comes to the Nemo this summer write and tell all about it) and smokes a pipe and is very young. He gave me a .22 and when winter comes we will hunt possum and eat possum stew. I wish you could come and visit me as we would have a real good time. One thing we could do is get drunk with my cousin Randolph. We drink alcohol bevrages (sp?) and he is a lot of fun. Its sure not like New Orleans, Sammy. Out here a person old as us is a grown up person.
You owe me 20¢. I will forget this det if you will write all news every week. Hello to the gang, remember to write your friend. . .» and with masterly care he signed his name in a new manner: J.H.K. Sansom. Several times he read it aloud; it had a distinguished, adult sound, a name he could readily imagine prefixed by such proud titles as General, Judge, Governor, Doctor. Doctor J.H.K. Sansom, the celebrated operating specialist; Governor J.H.K. Sansom, the peoples’ choice («Hello, warden, this is the Governor, just called to say I’ve given Zoo Fever a reprieve»). And then of course the world and all its folks would love him, and Sammy, well, Sammy could sell this old letter for thousands of dollars.
But searching for i’s not dotted, t’s uncrossed, it came to him that almost all he’d written were lies, big lies poured over the paper like a thick syrup. There was no accounting for them. These things he’d said, they should be true, and they weren’t. At home, Ellen was forever airing unwelcome advice, but now he wished he could close his eyes, open them, and see her standing there. She would know what to do.
His pencil traveled so fast occasional words linked: how sorry he was not to have written sooner; he hoped Ellen was o.k., and ditto the kids. . . he missed them all, did they miss him? «It is nicehere,» he wrote, but a pain twinged him, so he got up to walk the floor and knock his hands together nervously. How was he going to tell her? He stopped by the window and looked down at the garden where, except for Jesus Fever’s tomcat, parading before the ruined columns, all seemed stagnant, painted: the lazy willows, shadowless in the morning sunshine; the hammered slave-bell muffled in the high weeds. Joel shook his head, as if to rock his thoughts into sensible order, then returned to the table, and angrily penciling out «It is nicehere,» wrote: «Ellen, I hate this place.
I don’t know where he is and nobody will tell me. Willyou believe it Ellen when I say I have notseen him? Honest; Amy says he’s sick but I don’t believe oneword as I don’t likeher. She lookslike that mean Miss Addie down the street that use to be making suchalot of unecesary stink. Another thing is, there are no radios, picture shows, funny papers and if you want to take a bath you got to fill a washtub with water from the well. I can’t see how Randolph keeps clean as he does. I like him o.k. but I don’t like it here onebit. Ellen did mama leave enough $ so I could go away to a school where you can live? Like a military school. Ellen I miss you. Ellen please tell me what to do. Love from Joel XXXXXXXX.»
He felt better now, easier in his mind; say what you will, Ellen had never let him down. He felt so good that, stuffing the letters in their envelopes, he began to whistle, and it was the tune the twins had taught him:when the north wind doth blow, and we shall have snow . . . What was her name? And that other one, the tomboy? Florabel and Idabel. There was no reason why he had to mope around here all day: hadn’t they invited him to visit? Florabel and Idabel and Joel, he thought, whistling happy, whistling loud.
«Quiet in there,» came Randolph’s muffled complaint. «I’m desperately, desperately ill. . .» and broke off into coughing.
Ha ha! Randolph could go jump in the lake. Ha ha! Joel laughed inwardly as he went to the old bureau where the lacquered chest, containing now his bullet, the bluejay feather, and coins amounting to seventy-eight cents, was hidden in the bottom drawer. Inasmuch as he had no stamps, he figured it would be legal simply to put six cents cash money in the r.f.d. box. So he wadded a nickel and a penny in toilet tissue, gathered his letters and started downstairs, still whistling.
Down by the mailbox he ran into Zoo, and she was not alone, but stood talking with a short, bullet-headed Negro. It was Little Sunshine, the hermit. Joel knew this, for Monday night at suppertime Little Sunshine had appeared tapping at the kitchen window; he’d come to call on Randolph, for they were, so Randolph said, «dear friends.» He was extra-polite, Little Sunshine, and had brought gifts to all the family: a bucket of swamp honey, two gallons of home-brew, and a wreath of pine needles and tiger lilies which Randolph stuck on his head and galavanted around in the whole evening.
Even though he lived far in the dark woods, even though he was a kind of hermit, and everybody knows hermits are evil crazy folks, Joel was not afraid of him. «Little Sunshine, he got more purentee sense ‘n most anybody,» said Zoo. «Tell the truth, honey, if my brain was like it oughta be, why, I’d marry him like a shot.» Only Joel couldn’t picture such a marriage; in the first place, Little Sunshine was too old, not so ancient as Jesus Fever, to be sure, but old all the same. And ugly. He had a blue cataract in one eye, hardly a tooth in his head, and smelled bad: while he was in the kitchen, Amy kept the gloved hand over her nose like a sachet-handkerchief, and when Randolph had carted him away to his room (from which sounds of drunken conversation came till dawn), she’d breathed a sigh of relief.
Little Sunshine raised his arm: «Hurry, child, make a cross,» he said in a trombone voice, «cause you done come up on me in the lighta day.» Awed, Joel crossed himself. A smile stretched the hermit’s thick wrinkled lips: «Spin round, boy, and you is saved.»
Meanwhile Zoo tried unsuccessfully to conceal a necklace-like ornament the hermit had knotted about her giraffish neck. She looked very put out when Joel asked: «What’s that you’ve got on, Zoo?»
«Hit’s a charm,» volunteered the hermit proudly.
«Hush up,» snapped Zoo. «Done just told me it don’t work iffen I goes round tellin everybody.» She turned to Joel. «Honey, I spec you best run along; got business with the man.»
O.K., if that’s how she felt. And she was supposed to be his friend! He stalked over to the mailbox, threw up the red flag, and put his letters inside, using the tissue-wrapped coins as a paperweight. Then, determining from memory the general direction of the twins’ house, he trudged off down the road.
Sand dust eddied about his feet where he walked in the misty forest shade skimming the road’s edge. The sun was white in a milkglass sky. Passing a shallow creek rushing swift and cool from the woods, he paused, tempted to take off his tight shoes and go wading where soggy leaves rotated wildly in pebbled whirlpools, but then he heard his name called, and it scared him. Turning, he saw Little Sunshine.
The hermit hobbled forward, throwing his weight against a hickory cane; he carried this cane always, though Joel could not see its necessity since, aside from the fact they were very bowed, nothing seemed wrong with his legs; but his arms were so long his fingertips touched his knees. He wore ripped overalls, no shirt, no hat, no shoes. «Gawd Amighty, you walks fast, boy,» he said, panting up alongside. «Else hit’s me what ain’t use to this daytime; ain’t nothin coulda got me out cept Zoo needed that charm mighty bad.»
Joel realized that his curiosity was being purposely aroused. So he pretended to be uninterested. And presently, as he expected, Little Sunshine, of his own accord, added: «Hit’s a charm guarantee no turrible happenins gonna happen; makes it myself outa frog powder ‘n turtle bones.»
Joel slackened his gait, for the hermit moved slow as a cripple; in certain ways he was like Jesus Fever: indeed, might have been his brother. But there was about his broad ugly face a slyness the old man’s lacked. «Little Sunshine,» he said, «would you makeme a charm?»
The hermit sucked his toothless gums, and the sun shone dull in his gluey blue eyes. «They’s many kinda charms: love charms, money charms, what kind you speakin of?»
«One like Zoo’s,» he said, «one that’ll keep anything terrible from happening.»
«Dog take it!» crowed the hermit, and stopped still in his tracks. He jabbed the road with the cane, and wagged his big bald
