Zoo smiled and half picked him up. «Time I gets a place to put our heads.» She reached down into her quilt-covered bundle, and brought out the sword. «This here was Papa-daddy’s proudest thing,» she said. «Now don’t you bring it no disgrace.»
He strapped it to his waist. It was a weapon against the world, and he tensed with the cold grandeur of its sheath along his leg: suddenly he was most powerful, and unafraid. «I thank you kindly, Zoo,» he said.
Gathering the quilt, and jellyjar box, she staggered down the steps. Her breath came in grunts, and with every loping movement the accordion, bouncing up and down, sprinkled a rainfall of discordant notes. They walked through the garden wilderness, and to the road. The sun was traveling the
green-rimmed distance: as far as you could see daybreak blueness lifted over trees, layers of light unrolled across the land. «I spec to be down past Paradise Chapel fore dew’s off the ground: good I got my quilt handy, may be lotsa snow around Washington D.C.» And that was the last she said. Joel stopped by the mailbox. «Goodbye,» he called, and stood there watching until she grew pinpoint small, lost, and the accordion soundless, gone.
«. . . no gratitude,» Amy sniffed. «Good and kind, that’s how we were, always, and what does she do? Runs off, God knows where, leaving me with a houseful of sick people, not one of whom has sense enough to empty a slopjar. Furthermore, whatever else I may be, I’m a lady: I was brought up to be a lady, and I had my full four years at the Normal School. And if Randolph thinks I’m going to play nursemaid to orphans and idiots. . . damn Missouri!» Her mouth worked in a furious ugly way.
«Niggers! Angela Lee warned me time and again, said never trust a nigger: their minds and hair are full of kinks in equal measure. Still, does seem like she could’ve stayed to fix breakfast.» She took a pan of biscuits from the oven, and, along with a bowl of grits, a pot of coffee, arranged them on a tray. «Here now, trot this up to Cousin Randolph and trot right back: poor Mr Sansom has to be fed too, heaven help us; yes, may the Lord in His wisdom. . .»
Randolph was propped up in bed, naked, and with the covers stripped back; his skin seemed translucently pink in the morning light, his round smooth face bizarrely youthful. There was a small Japanese table set across his legs, and on it were a mound of bluejay feathers, a paste pot, a sheet of cardboard. «Isn’t this delightful?» he said, smiling up at Joel. «Now put down the tray and have a visit.»
«There isn’t time,» said Joel a little mysteriously.
«Time?» Randolph repeated. «Dear me, I thought that was where we were overstocked.»
Pausing between words, Joel said: «Zoo’s gone.» He was anxious that the announcement should have a dramatic effect. Randolph, however, gave him no satisfaction, for, contrary to Amy, he seemed not at all upset, even surprised. «How tiresome of her,» he sighed, «and how absurd, too. Because she can’t come back, one never can.»
«She wouldn’t want to anyway,» answered Joel impertinently. «She wasn’t happy here; I don’t think nothing would make her come back.»
«Darling child,» said Randolph, dipping a bluejay feather in the paste, «happiness is relative, and,» he continued, fitting the feather on the cardboard, «Missouri Fever will discover that all she has deserted is her proper place in a rather general puzzle. Like this.» He held up the cardboard in order that Joel could see: there feathers were so arranged the effect was of a living bird transfixed. «Each feather has, according to size and color, a particular position, and if one were the slightest awry, why, it would not
look at all real.»
A memory floated like a feather in the air; Joel’s mental eye saw the bluejay beating its wings up the wall, and Amy’s ladylike lifting of a poker. «What good is a bird that can’t fly?» he said.
«I beg your pardon?»
Joel was himself uncertain what he meant. «The other one, the real one, it could fly. But this one can’t do anything. . . except maybe look like it was alive.»
Tossing the cardboard aside, Randolph lay drumming his fingers on his chest. He lowered his eyelids, and with his eyes closed he looked peculiarly defenseless. «It is pleasanter in the dark,» he said, as if talking in his sleep. «Would it inconvenience you, my dear, to bring from the cabinet a bottle of sherry? And then, on tiptoe, mind you, draw all the shades, and then, oh very quietly please, shut the door.» As Joel fulfilled the last of these requests, he rose up to say: «You are quite right: my bird can’t fly.»
Some while later, Joel, his stomach still jittery from having fed Mr Sansom’s breakfast to him mouthful by mouthful, sat reading aloud in rapid flat tones. The story, such as it was, involved a blonde lady and a brunette man who lived in a house sixteen floors high; most of the stuff the lady said was embarrassing to repeat: «Darling,» he read, «I love you as no woman ever loved, but Lance, my dearest, leave me now while our love is still a shining thing.»
And Mr Sansom smiled continuously through even the saddest parts; glancing at him, his son remembered a threat Ellen had delivered whenever he’d made an ugly face: «Mark my word,» she’d say, «it’s going to freeze that way.» Such a fate had apparently descended upon Mr Sansom, for his ordinarily expressionless face had been grinning now no less than eight days. Finishing off the beautiful lady and lovely man, who were left honeymooning in Bermuda, Joel went on to a recipe for banana custard pie: it was all the same to Mr Sansom, romance or recipe, he gave each of them staring unequaled attention.
What was it like almost never to shut your eyes, always to be forever reflecting the same ceiling, light, faces, furniture, dark? But if the eyes could not escape you, neither could you avoid them; they seemed indeed sometime to permeate the room, their damp greyness covering all like mist; and if those eyes were to make tears they would not be normal tears, but something grey, perhaps green, a color at any rate, and solid, like ice.
Downstairs in the parlor was a collection of old books, and exploring there Joel had come upon a volume of Scottish legends. One of these concerned a man who compounded a magic potion unwisely enabling him to read the thoughts of other men and see deep into their souls; the evil he saw, and the shock of it, turned his eyes into open sores: thus he remained the rest of his life. It impressed Joel to the extent that he was half-convinced Mr Sansom’s eyes knew exactly what went on inside his head, and he attempted, for this reason, to keep his thoughts channeled in impersonal directions. «. . .mix sugar, flour, salt and add egg yolks.
Stir constantly while pouring on scalded milk. . .» Every once in a while he was tantalized by a sense of guilt: he ought to feel more for Mr Sansom than he did, he ought to try and love him. If only he’d never seen Mr Sansom! Then he could have gone on picturing him as looking this and that wonderful way, as talking in a kind strong voice, as being really his father.
Certainly this Mr Sansom was not his father. This Mr Sansom was nobody but a pair of crazy eyes. «. . .turn into baked pieshell. Cover with. . . it says meringay or something like that. . . and bake. Makes nine-inch pie.» He put down the magazine, a journal for females to which Amy subscribed, and began straightening Mr Sansom’s pillows. Mr Sansom’s head lolled back and forth, as if saying no no no; actually, and his voice sounded prickly as though a handful of pins were lodged in his throat, he said, «Boy kind kind boy kind,» over and over, «ball kind ball,» he said, dropping one of his red tennis balls, and, as Joel retrieved it, his set smile became more glassy; it ached on his grey skeleton face. Then all at once a whistle broke through the shut windows. Joel turned to listen. Three short blasts and a boot-owl wail. He went to the window. It was Idabel; she was in the garden below, and Henry was with her. The window was stuck, so he signaled to her, but she could not see him, and he hurried to the door. «Bad,» said Mr Sansom, and let go every tennis ball in the bed, «boy bad bad!»
Detouring into his room long enough to strap on his sword, he ran downstairs, outside and into the garden. For the first time since he’d known her Joel felt Idabel was glad to see him: a look of serious relief cleared her face, and for a moment he thought she might embrace him: her arms lifted as if to do so, then instead she stooped and hugged Henry, squeezed his neck until the old hound whined. «Is something wrong?» he said, for she had not spoken, nor, in a sense, taken notice of him,
