dark. Idabel’s bamboo pole scraped low limbs, and the hound, eager and suspicious, careened through
nets of blackberry bush. Henry, the sentry; Idabel, the guide; Joel, the captive: three explorers on a
solemn trek over earth sloping steadily downward. Black, orange-trimmed butterflies wheeled over
wheel-sized ponds of stagnant rain water, the glide of their wings traced on green reflecting surfaces; a
rattlesnake’s cellophane-like sheddings littered the trail, and broken silver spiderweb covered like cauls
dead fallen branches. They passed a little human grave: on its splintered head-cross was printed a legend:
Toby, Killed by the Cat. Sunken, a stretch of sycamore root growing from its depth, it was, you could
tell, an old grave.
«What’s that mean,» said Joel, «killed by the cat?»
«It happened before I was born,» said Idabel, as if this explained everything. She turned off the
path into an area deep with last winter’s leaves: a skunk skittered in the distance, and Henry boomed
forward. «This Toby, you see, she was a nigger baby, and her mama worked for old Mrs. Skully like
Zoo does now. She was Jesus Fever’s wife, and Toby was their baby. Old Mrs Skully had a big fine
Persian cat, and one day when Toby was asleep the cat sneaked in and put its mouth against Toby’s
mouth and sucked away all her breath.»
Joel said he didn’t believe it; but if it was true, it was certainly the most horrible tale he’d ever
heard. «I didn’t know Jesus Fever had ever been married.»
«There’s lots you don’t know. All kinds of strange things. . . mostly they happened before we
were born: that makes them seem to me so much more real.»
Before birth; yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be
still like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they,
with dust-turned hearts, change only. Now at thirteen Joel was nearer a knowledge of death than in any
year to come: a flower was blooming inside him, and soon, when all tight leaves unfurled, when the noon
of youth burned whitest, he would turn and look, as others had, for the opening of another door. In the
woods they walked, the tireless singings of larks had sounded a century, and more, and floods of frogs
had galloped in moonlight bands; stars had fallen here, and Indian arrows, too; prancing blacks had
played guitars, sung ballads of bandit-buried gold, sung songs grieving and ghostly, ballads of long ago:
before birth.
«Not for me: that makes it not so real,» said Joel, and stopped, struck still by the truth of this:
Amy, Randolph, his father, they were all outside time, all circling the present like spirits: was this why.they
seemed to him so like a dream? Idabel reached back and jerked his hand. «Wake up,» she said. He
looked at her, his eyes wide with alarm. «But I can’t. I can’t.» «Can’t what?» she said sourly. «Oh,
nothing.» Early voyagers, they descended together.
«Take my colored glasses,» Idabel offered. «Everything looks a lot prettier.»
The grass-colored lenses tinted the creek where nervous minnow schools stitched the water like
needles; occasionally, in deeper pools, a chance shaft of sunlight illuminated bigger game: fat clumsy
perch moving slowly, blackly below the surface. Idabel’s fishline quivered in the midstream current, but
now, after an hour, she’d had not even a nibble, so, rooting the pole firmly between two stumps, she
leaned back, pillowing her head on a clump of moss. «O.K., give ’em back,» she demanded.
«Where did you get them?» he said, wishing he had a pair.
«At the travelin-show,» she said. «Travelin-show comes every year in August; it’s not such a big
one, but they’ve got a flying jinny, and a ferris wheel. And they’ve got a two-headed baby inside a bottle,
too. The way I got these glasses was I won them; I used to wear them all the time, even nighttime, but
Papa, he said I was going to put out my eyes. Want a cigarette?»
There was only one, a crumpledWing ;dividing it, she struck a match. «Look,» she said, «I can
blow one smoke ring through another.» The rings mounted in the air, blue and perfect; it was so still, yet
all around there was the feeling of movement, subtle, secret, shifting: dragonflies skidded on the water,
some sudden unseen motion loosened snowdrop bells brown now all withered and scentless.
Joel said, «I don’t think we’re going to catch anything.»
«I never expect to,» said Idabel. «I just like to come here and think about my worries; nobody
ever comes hunting for me here. It’s a nice place. . . just to lie and take your ease.»
«What kind of worries do you worry about?» he asked.
‘That’s my business. And you know something. . . you’re an awful poke-nose. You don’t ever
catch me prying, hell, no. Anybody else in the country, why, they’d eat you alive, you being a stranger,
and living at the Landing and all. Look at Florabel. What a snoop she is.»
«I think she’s very pretty,» said Joel, just to be aggravating.
Idabel made no comment. She flipped away her cigarette, and, forking her fingers between her
lips, whistled boylike: Henry, padding along the creek’s shallow edge, scrambled up the bank, his coat
shining soggy wet. «Pretty on the outside, sure, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts,» she said, hugging
the hound. «She keeps telling Papa he ought to do away with Henry, says he’s got a mortal disease: that’s
what she’s like on the inside.»
The white face of afternoon took shape in the sky; his enemy, Joel thought, was there, just behind
those glasslike, smokelike clouds; whoever, whatever this enemy was, his was the face imaged there
brightly blank. And in this respect Idabel could be envied; she at least knew her enemies: you and you,
she could say, such and such and so and so. «Were you ever afraid of losing your mind?»
«Never thought about it,» she said, and laughed. «To hearthem tell it, I haven’t got a mind no
ways.»
Joel said: «You’re not being serious. Here’s what I mean: do you ever see things, like people, like
whole houses, see them and feel them and know for certain they’re real. . . only. . .»
«Only they’re not,» said Idabel. «The time that snake bit me, I lived a week in a terrible place
where everything was crawling, the floors and walls, everything. Now all that was plain foolishness. But
then it was a peculiar thing, because last summer I went with Uncle August (he’s the one that’s so afraid
of girls he won’t look at one; he says I’m not a girl; I do love my Uncle August: we’re like brothers). . .
we went down to Pearl River. . . and one day we were rowing in this dark place and came on an island
of snakes; it was real little, just one tree, but alive with old copperheads: they were even hanging off the
branches. I tell you it was right spooky. And when folks talk about dreams-come-true, I guess I know
what they mean.»
«That’s not like what I was saying,» said Joel, his voice small, bewildered. «Dreams are different,
dreams you can lose. But if you see something. . . a lady, say, and you see her where nobody should be,
then she follows you around inside your head. I mean like this: the other night Zoo was scared; she’d
heard a dog howl, and she said it was her husband come back, and she went to the window: ‘I see him.’
she said, ‘he’s squatting under the fig tree,’ she said, ‘and his eyes are all yellow in the dark.’ But then
when I looked there was nothing but nothing.»
All this Idabel seemed to find rather unexceptional. «Oh, shoot!» she said, tossing her head, the
chopped red hair swishing wonderful fire, «everybody knows Zoo’s crazy for true. One time, and it was
hot as now, I was passing on the road, and she was there by the mailbox with this dumb look, and she
says: ‘What a fine snow we had last night.’ Always talking about snow, always seeing things, that Zoo,
that crazy Zoo.»
Joel regarded Idabel with malice: what a mean liar she was. Zoo was not crazy. She was not.
Yet he remembered the snow of their first conversation: it fell swiftly all about him: the woods dazzled
whitely, and Idabel’s voice, speaking now, sounded soft, and snow-hushed: «It’s Ivory,» she said. «It
floats.»
«What for?» he said, accepting a cake of soap she’d taken from her pocket.
«To wash with, stupid,» she told him. «And don’t look so prissy. Everytime I come down here, I
always take a scrub. Here, you put your clothes on that stump where the fishpole is.»
Joel looked shyly at the designated place. «But you’re a girl.»
With an exceedingly contemptuous expression, Idabel drew up to her full height. «Son,» she said,
and spit between her fingers, «what you’ve got in your britches is no news to me, and no concern of mine:
hell, I’ve fooled around with nobody but boys since first grade. I never think like I’m a girl; you’ve got to
remember that, or we can’t never be friends.» For all its bravado, she made this declaration with a special
and compelling innocence; and when she knocked one fist against the other, as, frowning, she did now,
and said: «I want so much to be a boy: I would be a sailor, I would. . .» the quality of her futility was
touching.
Joel stood up and began to unbutton his shirt.
He lay there on a bed of cold pebbles, the cool water washing, rippling over him; he wished he
were a leaf, like the current-carried leaves riding past: leaf-boy, he would float lightly away, float and
fade into a river, an ocean, the world’s great flood. Holding his nose, he put his
