«Don’t talk foolishness, baby.»
The yellow tabby scooted from under the bed, darted before the fire, arched its back and hissed. «What he see?» cried Jesus, pointing his sword: firelight ran up the gaunt blade like a gold spider. «Answer me, cat, you see somethin?» The cat relaxed on its haunches, and fixed the old man coldly. Jesus giggled. «Try to joke ol Jesus,» he said, wagging his finger. «Try to scare him.» His blindlike blue-looking eyes closed; he tilted back his head so that the stocking-foot dangled like a Chinese pigtail, sighed and said: «Ain’t got no time left for to joke, cat.»
And then, holding the sword to his chest: «Mister Skully gimme this my weddin day; me and my woman, us just jumped over a broom, and Mister Skully, he say, ‘All right now, Jesus, you is married.’ Travelin Preacher come tell me and my woman that ain’t proper, say the Lawd ain’t gonna put up with it: sure enough, the cat done killed Toby, and my woman grieves herself so she hangs on a tree, big cozy lady got the branch bent double: back when I was just so high my daddy cut his switches offen that tree. . .» remembering, it was as if his mind were an island in time, the past surrounding sea.
Joel cracked a pecan, and tossed the hull into the fire. «Zoo,» he said, «did you ever hear of anybody called Alcibiades?»
«Who that you say?»
«Alcibiades. I don’t know. It’s somebody Randolph says I look like.»
Zoo considered. «You musta heard wrong, honey. The name he most likely said is Alicaster. Alicaster Jones is a Paradise Chapel boy what used to sing in the choir. Looks like a white angel, so pretty he got the preacher and all kinda men and ladies lovin him up. Leastwise, that’s what folks say.»
«I’ll bet I can sing better than him,» said Joel. «You know, I bet I could sing in vaudeville shows and make a whole lot of money, enough money to buy you a fur coat, Zoo, and dresses like they show in the Sunday papers.»
«I want red dresses,» said Zoo, entering the spirit. «Look real nice in red, I do. We gonna have us a car?»
Joel was delirious. It seemed so real. There he was bathed by spotlights, and wearing a tuxedo with a gardenia in his lapel. But there was only one song he knew how to sing all the way through. So he said, «Listen, Zoo,» and sang, «Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is bright, round yon Vir. . .» his voice, up to this point high and sweet like a girl’s, broke in an ugly, mystifying way.
«Uh huh,» Zoo nodded knowingly. «Little tadpole growin to be fish.»
In the fireplace a log, cracking dramatically, sent out a sizzle of sparks; then, with no warning, a nest of newborn chimney sweeps fell into the flames and quite swiftly split with fire: the little birds burned
without sound or movement. Joel, somewhat stunned, remained silent, and Zoo’s face was blankly surprised. Only Jesus spoke: «In fire,» he said, and had it not been so quiet you could not have heard him, «first comes water, and last comes the fire. Don’t say no place in the Good Book why we’s in tween. Do it? Can’t member. . . not nothin. You,» his voice rose shrilly, «you-all! It’s gettin powerful warm, it’s gettin fire!»
10
One grey curiously cool afternoon a week later Jesus Fever died. It was as if someone had been tickling his ribs, for he died in a spasm of desperate giggles. «Maybe,» as Zoo said, «God done told somethin funny.» She dressed him in his little suspender suit, his orange-leather shoes and derby hat; she squeezed a bunch of dogtooth violets in his hand, and put him in a cedar chest: there he remained for two days while Amy, with Randolph’s aid, decided the location of his grave: under the moon tree, they said finally. The moon tree, so named for its round ivory blooms, grew in a lonely place far back from the Landing, and here Zoo shoveled away with no one to help but Joel: the mild excavation they managed at last to make reminded him of all the backyard swimming pools dug in summers that seemed now so long ago.
Transporting the cedar chest was an arduous business; in the end they hitched a rope to John Brown, the old mule, and he hauled it to the foot of the grave. «Papadaddy would be mighty tickled could he know who it is is pullin him home,» said Zoo. «Papadaddy surely did love you, John Brown: trustiest mule he ever saw, he said so many a time: now you member that.»
At the last minute Randolph sent word he could not be present for the funeral, and Amy, who brought this message, said a prayer in his name, mumbled, that is, a sentence or so, and made a cross: she wore for the occasion a black glove. But for Jesus there were no mourners: the three in the moon-tree shade were like some distracted group assembled at a depot to wish a friend goodbye, and, as such gatherings long for the whistle of the train that will release them, they wanted to hear the first thud of earth upon the cedar lid.
It seemed odd to Joel nature did not reflect so solemn an event: flowers of cottonboll clouds within a sky as scandalously blue as kitten-eyes were offensive in their sweet disrespect: a resident of over a hundred years in so narrow a world deserved higher homage. The cedar chest capsized as they lowered it into the grave, but Zoo said, «Pay no mind, honey, we ain’t got the strenth of heathen giants.» She shook her head. «Pore Papadaddy, goin to heaven face down.»
Unfolding her accordion, she spread her legs wide apart, threw back her head, hollered: «Lawd, take him to thy bosom, tote him all around, Lawd don’t you never, don’t you never put him down, Lawd, he seen the glory, Lawd, he seen the light. . .» Up until now Joel had not altogether accepted Jesus Fever’s death; anybody who’d lived that long just couldn’t die; way back in his mind he kind of felt the old man was playing possum; but when the last note of Zoo’s requiem became stillness, then it was true, then Jesus was really dead.
That night sleep was like an enemy; dreams, a winged avenging fish, swam rising and diving until light, drawing toward daybreak, opened his eyes. Hurriedly buttoning his breeches, he crept down through the quiet house and out the kitchen door. Above, the moon paled like a stone receding below water, tangled morning color rushed up the sky, trembled there in pastel uncertainty.
«Ain’t I gotta donkey’s load?» cried Zoo, as he crossed the yard to where she stood on the cabin porch. A quilt stuffed fat with belongings bulged on her back; the accordion was tied to her belt and hung there like a caterpillar; aside from this she had quite a large jellyjar box. «Time I gets to Washington D.C. gonna be a humpback,» she said, sounding as though she’d swallowed a gallon of wine, and her joy, in the dimness of sunup, was to him disgusting: what right had she to be so happy?
«You can’t carry all that. You look like a fool, for one thing.»
But Zoo just flexed her arms, and stamped her foot. «Honey, I feels like ninety-nine locomotives; gonna light outa here going licketysplit: why, I figures to be in Washington D.C. fore dark.» She drew back into a kind of pose, and, as if she were about to curtsey, held out her starched calico skirt: «Pretty, huh?»
Joel squinted critically. Her face was powdered with flour, a sort of reddish oil inflamed her cheeks, she’d scented herself with vanilla flavoring, and greased her hair shiny. About her neck she sported a lemon silk scarf. «Turn around,» he said; then, after she’d done so, he moved away, pointedly suppressing comment.
She placidly accepted this affront, but said: «How come you gotta go pull such a long face, and take on in any such way? Do seem to me like you’d be glad on my account, us bein friends and all.»
He yanked loose a trailing arm of ivy, and this set swinging all the porch-eave pots: bumping against each other they raised a noise like a series of closing doors. «Oh, you’re awful funny. Ha ha ha.» He gave her one of Randolph’s cool arched looks. «You were never my friend. But after all why should anyone such as me have anything in common with such as you?»
«Baby, baby. . .» said Zoo, her voice rocking in a tender way «. . .baby, I make you a promise: whenever I gets all fixed. . . I’m gonna send for you and take care you all the resta your years. Before the Almighty may He strike me dead if this promise ain’t made.»
Joel jerked away, flung himself against a porch-pole, embraced it, clung there as though it alone understood and loved him.
«Hold on there now,» she told him firmly. «You is almost a growed man; idea, takin on like some little ol gal! Why, you mortify me, I declare. Here was bout to give you Papa-daddy’s fine handsome sword. . . see now you is not man enough for to own it.»
Parting the curtain of ivy, Joel stepped through and into the yard; to walk straight off, and not look back, that would punish
