in a hammock («Mama made it herself, and she makes all my lovely clothes, except for my dotted swiss,
but she doesn’t make any for sister: like Mama says, it’s better to let Idabel troop around in
what-have-you cause she can’t keep a decent rag decent: I tell you this frankly, Mister Knox, Idabel’s a
torment to our souls, Mama’s and mine. We could’ve been so cute dressed alike, but. . .») swung
between shady pecan trees in a corner of the yard. She picked up a pair of Kress tweezers and, with a
pained expression, began plucking her pink eyebrows. «Sister’s avowed. . . ouch!. . . ambition is she
wants to be a farmer.»
Joel, who was squatting on the grass nibbling a leaf, stretched his legs, and said: «What’s wrong
with that?»
«Now, Mister Knox, surely you’re just teasing,» said Florabel. «Whoever heard of a decent white
girl wanting to be a farmer? Mama and me are too disgraced. Course I know what goes on in the back
of her mind.» Florabel gave him a conniving look, and lowered her voice. «She thinks when Papa dies
he’ll leave her the place to do with like she pleases. Oh, she doesn’t fool me one minute.»
Joel glanced about at what Idabel hoped to inherit: the house stood far away in a grove of shade
trees; it was a nice house, simple, solid-looking, painted a white now turned slightly grey; an open
shotgun hall ran front to back, and on the porch were geranium boxes, and a swing. A small shed housing
a green 1934 Chevrolet was at one side. Chickens pecked around in the clean yard of flowerbeds and
arranged rocks. At the rear was a smoke house, a water-pump windmill, and the first swelling slope of a
cottonfield.
»Ouch!» cried Florabel, and tossed the tweezers aside. She gave the hammock a push and swung
to and fro, her lips pouting absurdly. «Now me, I want to be an actor. . . or a schoolteacher,» she said.
«Only if I become an actor I don’t know what we’ll do about sister. When somebody’s famous like that
they dig up all the facts on their past life. I really don’t want to sound mean about her, Mister Knox, but
the reason I bring this matter up is she’s got a crush on you. . .» Florabel dropped her gaze demurely,
«and, well, the poor child does have a reputation.»
Though he would never have admitted it, not even secretly, Joel felt sweetly flattered. «A
reputation for what?» he said, careful not to smile.
Florabel straightened up. «Please, sir,» she intoned, her old-lady mannerisms frighteningly
accurate. «I thought you were a gentleman of the world.» Suddenly, looking rather alarmed, she collapsed
back in the hammock. Then: «Why, hey there, sister. . . look who’s come to call.»
«Howdy,» said Idabel, surprise or pleasure very absent from her woolly voice. She carried a huge
watermelon, and an old black-and-white bird dog trotted close at her heels. She rolled the melon on the
grass, rubbed back her cowlicked bangs, and slumping against a tree, cocked her thumbs in the belt
rungs of the dungarees which she wore. She had on also a pair of plowman’s boots, and a sweatshirt with
the legend DRINK COCA COLA fading on its front. She looked first at Joel, then at her sister, and, as
though making some rude comment, spit expertly between her fingers. The old dog flopped down beside
her. «This here’s Henry,» she told Joel, gently stroking the dog’s ribs with her foot. «He’s fixing to take a
nap, so let’s us not talk loud, hear?»
«Pshaw!» said the other twin. «Mister Knox oughta see what happens when I’m trying to get a
wink in edgewise: wham bang whomp!»
«Henry feels kinda poorly,» explained Idabel. «I’m fraid he’s right sick.»
«Well, I’m right sick myself. I’m sick of lotsa things.»
Joel imagined that Idabel smiled at him. She did not smile in the fashion of ordinary people, but
gave one corner of her mouth a cynical crook: it was like Randolph’s trick of arching an eyebrow. She
hitched up her pants leg and commenced picking the scab off a kneesore. «How you making out over at
the Landing, son?»
«Yes,» said Florabel, bending forward with a rather sly smirk, «haven’t youseen things?»
«Nothing except that it’s a nice place,» he said discreetly.
«But. . .» Florabel slid out of the hammock, and sat down beside him with her elbow propped
against the melon. «But what I mean is. . .»
«Watch out,» warned Isabel, «she’s only trying to pick you.»
And this gave Joel an opportunity to ease the moment with a laugh. Among his sins were lying
and stealing and bad thoughts; disloyalty, however, was not part of his nature. He saw how cheap it
would be to confide in Florabel, though there was nothing he needed more now than a sympathetic ear.
«Does it hurt?» he asked her sister, anxious to show his gratitude by assuming an interest in the sore.
«Why, this old thing?» she said, and clawed the scab. «Shoot, boy, one time I had me a rising on
my butt big as a baseball, and didn’t pay it any mind whatsoever.»
«Hmm, squalled loud enough when Mama smacked you and it busted,» reminded Florabel,
bunching her lips prissily. She thumped the melon and it made a ripe hollow report. «Hmm, sounds green
as grass to me.» With her fingernails she scratched her initials on the rind, drew a ragged heart, arrowed
it, and carved M.S., which eyeing Joel coyly, she announced stood for Mysterious Stranger.
Idabel displayed a jackknife. «Look,» she demanded, releasing a thin vicious blade. «I could kill
somebody, couldn’t I?» And with one murderous stab the melon cracked, spraying icy juice as she
chopped off generous portions. «Leave Papa a hunk,» she said, retiring under the tree to gorge in peace.
«Cold,» said Joel, a trickle of red dyeing his shirt. «That creek must be freezing like an icebox;
where’s it come from: does it flow down from Drownin Pond?»
Florabel looked at Idabel and Idabel looked at Florabel. Neither seemed able to make up her
mind which should answer. Idabel spit pulp, and said: «Who told you?»
‘Told me?»
«About Drownin Pond?»
A touch of hostility in her tone made him wary. But in this case he could not see where the truth
would cost more than a lie. «Oh, the man who lives there. He’s a friend of mine.»
Idabel responded with a hoarse, sarcastic laugh. «I’m the only person in these parts that’ll go
anywhere near that creepy hotel; and, son, I’ve never even got so much as a peek at him.»
«Sister’s right,» added Florabel. «She’s always had a hankering to see the hermit; Mama used to
say he’d grab us good if we didn’t act proper. But lately I’ve come to think he’s just somebody grown
people made up.»
It was Joel’s turn for sarcasm. «If you’d been out on the road an hour ago I would’ve been glad to
introduce you. His name is Little Sunshine, and he’s going to make me. . .» but he recalled that to mention
the charm was forbidden.
Against such testimony Idabel had no comeback. She was stumped. And jealous. «Huh,» she
snorted, and shoved a chunk of melon in her mouth.
Rings of sunlight, shifting through the tree, dappled the dark grass like fallen gold fruit; bluebottle
flies swarmed over melon rinds, and a cowbell, somewhere beyond the windmill, tolled lazily and long.
Henry was having a nightmare. His fretful snores seemed to annoy Florabel; she spit seed into her hand,
and chanting, «Nasty old nasty,» hurled them at him.
Idabel did nothing for a moment. Then, rising, she closed the blade of her knife, and stuck it in
her pocket. Slowly, without expression, she moved toward her sister who went quite pink in the face and
began to giggle nervously.
Hands on hips, Idabel stared at her with eyes like granite. She did not say a word, but her
breathing hissed between clenched teeth, and a vein throbbed in the hollow of her neck. The old dog
padded forward, and looked at Florabel reproachfully. Joel inched several feet backwards: he didn’t
want to become involved in any family fracas.
»You’re going to bug-out those eyes too far someday,» sassed Florabel. But as the rock-like
stare continued her impertinent pose gradually dissolved. «I don’t see why you want to take on about that
nasty hound thisaway,» she said, looping a curl in her strawberry hair, blinking her eyes innocently.
«Mama’s going to make Papa shoot him anyway cause he’s liable to give us all some mortal disease.»
Idabel sucked in her breath, and lunged, and over and over they rolled tussling on the grass.
Florabel’s skirt got hiked up so high Joel’s cheeks reddened: then, scratching, kicking, screaming, she
managed to break loose. «Sister, please. . . please, sister. . . I beg of you!» She ran behind a pecan tree:
like figures on a two-ponied carousel they whirled around the trunk, first one way, then the other.
«Mama, get Mama. . . oh, Mister Knox, she’s loony. . . DO something!» Henry set up a barking
commotion, and commenced to chase his tail. «Mister KNOX. . .»
But Joel was afraid of Idabel himself. She was about the maddest human he ever saw, and the
quickest: nobody at home would believe a girl could move this fast. Also, he knew from experience that,
if he interfered, the finger of blame would ultimately point in his direction:he started the whole thing, that’s
how the tale would read. Besides, Florabel had no call to throw those seeds: deep in his heart he didn’t
care if she got the daylight whammed out of her.
She cut across the yard, and made a desperate sprint for the house, but it was useless, for Idabel
hedged her off. Close together they went whooping past Joel, who suddenly became, like the pecan tree,
and through no fault of his own, a shield. Idabel tried to
