tossed her sweaty hair, and fixed him angrily with her bold green eyes: «Outa the way, sissy-britches.»
Joel thought of the knife in her pocket, and despite Florabel’s pleas, concluded it might be wise
to move elsewhere.
So they went off again, running in circles, zigzagging between trees, Florabel’s hair jouncing on
her back. When they reached the pecan tree, tallest of two, she began to climb. Idabel pulled off her
clumsy boots. «Ha, won’t get far that way,» she hollered, and agile as a monkey shinnied up the trunk.
The branches swayed, broken twigs, torn leaves showered at Joel’s feet: as he darted around
hunting a clearer view the sky seemed to crash bluely through the tree, and the twins, climbing nearer the
sun, grew smaller and dizzy bright.
Florabel had gone as far as she could, the top; but it was a safe and fortified position: here,
balanced in the crotch of forked limbs, she was immune to any assault, for to force the enemy’s retreat
she had only to kick.
«I can wait,» said Idabel, and straddled a branch. She glanced down at Joel irritably. «Go on
home you.»
«Please, disregard her altogether, Mister Knox.»
«Go on home and cut out paper dolls, sissy-britches.»
Joel stood there hating her, wishing she’d fall from the tree and bust her neck. Like every other
tomboy, Idabel was mean, just gut-mean: the haircut man in Noon City sure had her number. So did the
husky woman with the wart. So did Florabel. Then he shrugged, and hung his head.
«Come back whenshe’s not around,» called Florabel as he started for home. «And Mister Knox,
remember what I said about you-know-what. Well, a word to the wise. . .»
A pair of chicken hawks wheeled with stiffened wings above smoke, dimly yellow in the distance,
rising spirelike out the Landing’s kitchen chimney: that would be Zoo fixing dinner, he guessed, pausing by
the roadside to stampede a colony of ants feeding on a dead frog. He was tired of Zoo’s cooking: always
the same stuff, collards, yams, black-eyed peas, cornbread. Right now he would like to meet up with the
Snowball Man. Every afternoon at home in New Orleans the Snowball Man came pushing his delicious
cart, tinkling his delicious bell; and for pennies you could have a dunce-hat of flaked ice flavored with a
dozen syrups, cherry and chocolate, grape and blackberry all mingling like a rainbow.
The ants scurried like shooting sparks: thinking of Idabel, he hopped about mashing them
underfoot, but this sinful dance did nothing toward lessening the hurt of her insults. Wait! Wait till he was
Governor: he’d sic the law on her, have her locked in a dungeon cell with a little trapdoor cut in the ceiling
where he could look down and laugh.
But when the Landing came in full view, its rambling outline darkened by foliage, he forgot
Idabel.
Like kites being reeled in, the chicken hawks circled lower till their shadows revolved over the
slanting shingled roof. The shaft of smoke lifting from the chimney mounted unbroken in the hot windless
air; a sign, at least, that people lived here. Joel had known and explored other houses quiet with
emptiness, but none so deserted-looking, silent: it was as though the place were captured under a cone of
glass; inside, waiting to claim him, was an afternoon of endless boredom: each step, and his shoes were
heavy as though soled with stone, carried him closer. A whole afternoon. And how many more for how
many months?
Then, approaching the mailbox, seeing its cheerful red flag still upraised, the good feeling came
back: Ellen would make things different, she would fix it so he could go away to a school where
everybody was like everybody else. Singing the song about snow and the northwind, he stopped and
jerked open the mailbox; deep inside lay a thick stack of letters, sealed, as he found, in watergreen
envelopes. It was like the stationery his father had used when writing Ellen. And the spidery handwriting
was identical: Mr Pepe Alvarez, c/o the postmaster, Monterrey, Mexico, Then Mr Pepe Alvarez, c/o the
postmaster, Fukuoka, Japan. Again, again. Seven letters, all addressed to Mr Pepe Alvarez, in care of
postmasters in: Camden, New Jersey; Lahore, India; Copenhagen, Denmark; Barcelona, Spain;
Keokuk, Iowa.
But his letters were not among these. He certainly remembered putting them in the box. Little
Sunshine had seen him. And Zoo. So where were they? Of course: the mailman must’ve come along
already. But why hadn’t he heard or seen the mailman’s car? It was a half-wrecked Ford and made
considerable racket. Then, in the dust at his feet, torn from the toilet-paper wrapping, he saw his coins, a
nickel and a penny sparkling up at him like uneven eyes.
At this same instant the sound of bullet fire cracked whip-like on the quiet: Joel, stooping for his
money, turned a paralyzed face toward the house: there was no one on the porch, the path, not a sign of
life anywhere. Another shot. The wings of the hawks raged as they fled over tree tops, their shadows
sweeping across the road’s broiling sand like islands of dark.
Part Two
6
«Hold still,» said Zoo, her eyes like satin in the kitchen, lamplight. «Never saw such a fidget; best
hold still and let me cut this hair: can’t have you runnin round here lookin like some ol gal: first thing you
know, boy, folks is gonna say you got to wee wee squattin down.» Garden shears snipped round the rim
of the bowl, a blue bowl fitted on Joel’s head like a helmet. «You got such pretty fine molasses hair seems
like we oughta could sell it to them wigmakers.»
Joel squirmed. «So what did you say after she said that?» he asked, anxious she return to a
previous topic.
«Said what?»
«Said you’ve got a big nerve shooting off rifles when Randolph’s so sick.»
«Huh,» Zoo grunted, «why, I just come right out and tol her, tol her: ‘Miss Amy, them hawks fixin
to steal the place off our hands less we shoo em away.’ Said, ‘Done fly off with a dozen fat fryers this
spring a’ready, and Mister Randolph, he gonna take mighty little pleasure in his sickness if his stomach
stay growl-empty.’ «
Removing the bowl, making a telescope of her hands, she roamed around Joel’s chair viewing his
haircut from all angles. «Now that’s what I calls a good trim,» she said. «Go look in the window.»
Evening silvered the glass, and his face reflected transparently, changed and mingled with
moth-moving lamp yellow; he saw himself, and through himself, and beyond; a night bird whistled in the
fig leaves, a whippoorwill, and fireflies sprinkled the blue-flooded air, rode the dark like ship lights. The
haircut was disfiguring, for it made him in silhouette resemble those idiots with huge world-globe heads,
and now, because of Randolph’s flattery, he was self-conscious about his looks. «It’s awful,» he said.
«Huh,» said Zoo, dishing supper scraps into a lard can reserved for pig slop, «you is as ignorant
as that Keg Brown. Course he was the most ignorant human in my acquaintance. But you is both
ignorant.»
Joel, imitating Randolph, arched an eyebrow, and said: «I daresay I know some things I daresay
you don’t.»
Zoo’s elegant grace disappeared as she strode about clearing the kitchen: the floor creaked under
her animal footfall, and, as she bent to lower the lamp, the hurt sadness of her long face gleamed like a
mask. «I daresays,» she said, plucking at her neckerchief, and not looking at Joel, «I daresays you is
smarter’n Zoo, but I reckon as she knows better about folks feelins; leastwise, she don’t go round makin
folks feel no-count for no cause whatsoever.»
«Aw,» said Joel, «aw, I was just joking, honest,» and, hugging her, smothered his face against her
middle; she smelled sweet, a curious dark sour sweet, and her fingers, gliding through his hair, were cool,
strong. «I love you because you’ve got to love me because you’ve got to.»
«Lord, Lord,» said Zoo, disengaging herself, «you is nothin but a kitty now, but comes the time
you is full growed. . . what a Tom you gonna be.»
Standing in the doorway he watched her lamp divide the dark, saw Jesus Fever’s windows color:
here he was, and there she was, and there was all of night between them. It had been a curious evening,
for Randolph kept to his room, and Amy, fixing supper trays, one for Randolph and the other,
presumably, Mr. Sansom’s (she’d said: «Mr. Sansom won’t eat cold peas»), had stopped at the table only
long enough to swallow a tumbler of buttermilk. But Joel had talked, and in talking eased away his
worries, and Zoo told tales, tall funny sad, and now and again their voices had met and made a song, a
summer kitchen ballad.
From the first he’d noticed in the house complex sounds, sounds on the edge of silence, settling
sighs of stone and board, as though the old rooms inhaled-exhaled constant wind, and he’d heard
Randolph say: «We’re sinking, you know, sank four inches last year.» It was drowning in the earth, this
house, and they, all of them, were submerging with it: Joel, moving through the chamber, imagined moles
tracing silver tunnels down eclipsed halls, lank pink sliding through earth-packed rooms, lilac bleeding out
the sockets of a skull: Go away, he said, climbing toward a lamp which threw nervous light over the
stairsteps. Go Away, he said, for his imagination was too tricky and terrible. But was it possible for a
whole house to disappear? Yes, he’d heard of such things. All Mr Mystery had to do was snap his
fingers, and whatever wasthere went whisk. And human beings, too. They could go right off the face of
the earth. That was what had happened to his father; he was gone, not in a sad respectable way like his
mother, but just gone, and Joel had no reason to suppose he would ever find him. So why did they
pretend? Why didn’t they say right out, «There is
