«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 push him aside: when he did not budge, she 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
