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 no Mr Sansom, you have no father,” and send him away. Ellen was always talking of the decent Christian thing to do; he’d wondered what she meant, and now he knew: to speak truth was a decent Christian thing. He took steps slowly, awake but dreaming, and in the dream he saw the Cloud Hotel, saw its leaning molding rooms, its wind-cracked windows hung with draperies of blackwidow web, and realized suddenly this was not a hotel; indeed, had never been: this was the place folks came when they went off the face of the earth, when they died but were not dead.
And he thought of the ballroom Little Sunshine had described: there nightfall covered the walls like tapestry, and the dry skeletons of bouquet leaves littering the wavy floor powdered under his dreamed footstep: he walked in the dark in the dust of thorns listening for a name, his own, but even here no father claimed him. The shadow of a grand piano spotted the vaulted ceiling like a luna moth wing, and at the keyboard, her eyes soaked white with moonlight, her wig of cold white curls askew, sat the Lady: was this the ghost of Mrs Jimmy Bob Cloud? Mrs Cloud, who’d cremated herself in a St. Louis boarding house? Was that the answer?
It struck his knee, and all that happened happened quickly: a brief blur of light flashed as a door banged in the hall above, and then he felt something hit him, go past, go bumping down the steps, and it was suddenly as though all his bones had unjoined, as though all the vital parts of him had unraveled like the springs of a sprung watch. A little red ball, it was rolling and knocking on the chamber floor, and he thought of Idabel: he wished he were as brave as Idabel; he wished he had a brother, sister, somebody; he wished he were dead.
Randolph bent over the top banister; his hands were folded into the sleeves of a kimono; his eyes were flat and glazed, drunk-looking, and if he saw Joel he made no sign. Presently, his kimono rustling, he crossed the hall and opened a door where the eccentric light of candles floated on his face. He did not go inside, but stood there moving his hands in a queer way; then, turning, he started down the stairs and when finally he came against Joel he only said: “Bring a glass of water, please.” Without a second word he went back up and into the room, and Joel, unable to move, waited on the stairs a long while: there were voices in the walls, settling sighs of stone and board, sounds on the edge of silence.
“Come in.” Amy’s voice echoed through the house, and Joel, waiting on the threshold, felt his heart separate.
“Careful there, my dear,” said Randolph, lolling at the foot of a canopied bed, “don’t spill the water.”
But he could not keep his hand from shaking, or focus his eyes properly: Amy and Randolph, though some distance apart, were fused like Siamese twins: they seemed a kind of freak animal, half-man half-woman. There were candles, a dozen or so, and the heat of the night made them lean limp and crooked. A limestone fireplace gleamed in their shine, and a menagerie
