Her lips whitened, she spit the answer: «Florabel. That damned bastard.»
«A girl can’t be a bastard,» he said.
«Oh, she’s a bastard all right. But I didn’t mean her.» Idabel pulled the hound onto her lap; sleepily submissive, he lay there allowing her to pick fleas off his belly. «I meant that old bastard daddy of mine. We had us a knock-down drag-out fight, him and me and Florabel. On account of he tried to shoot Henry here; Florabel put him up to it. . . says Henry’s got a mortal disease, which is a low-down lie from start to finish. I figure I broke her nose and some teeth, too; leastwise, she was bleeding like a pig when me and Henry took off. We been walking around in the dark all night.» Suddenly she laughed in her woolly familiar way. «And up around sunrise, know who we saw? Zoo Fever. She couldn’t hardly breathe, she was carrying so much junk: golly, we were right sorry to hear about Jesus. It’s funny for that old man to die and nobody hear a word. But like I told you, who knows what goes on at the Landing?»
Joel thought: who knows what goes on anywhere? Except Mr Sansom. He knew everything; in some trick way his eyes traveled the whole world over: they this very instant were watching him, of that he had no doubt. And it was probable, too, that, if he had a mind, he could reveal to Randolph Pepe Alvarez’s whereabouts.
«Don’t you fret none, Henry,» said Idabel, popping a flea. «They’ll never lay a hand on you.»
«But what are you going to do?» Joel asked. «You’ve got to go home sometime.»
She rubbed her nose, and considered him with eyes exaggeratedly wide and appealing: if it had been anyone but Idabel, Joel would’ve thought she was making up to him. «Maybe,» she said, «and maybe not; that’s what I came to see you for.» Abruptly businesslike, she shoved the dog off her lap, and took a hearty comradegrip on Joel’s shoulders: «How would you like to run away?» But before he could say what he’d like she hurried on: «We could go to town tonight when it’s dark. The travelin-show’s in town, and there’ll be a big crowd. I do want to see the travelin-show one more time; they’ve got a ferris wheel this year somebody said, and. . .»
«But where would we go?» he said.
Idabel’s mouth opened, closed. Apparently she hadn’t given this much thought, and with the wide world to choose from, all she could find to say was: «Outside; we’ll just walk around outside till we come on a nice place.»
«We could go to California and pick grapes,» he suggested. «Out West you don’t have to be but twelve years old to get married.»
«I don’t want to get married,» said Idabel, coloring. «Who the hell said I wanted to get married? Now you listen, boy: you behave decent, you behave like we’re brothers, or don’t you behave at all. Anyway, we don’t want to do no sissy thing like pick grapes. I thought maybe we could join the navy; else we could teach Henry tricks and get in the circus: say, couldn’t you learn magic tricks?»
Which reminded him: he’d never gone after the charm Little Sunshine had promised; certainly, if he were running off with Idabel, they would need this magic, and so he asked if she knew the way to the Cloud Hotel. «Kind of,» she said, «down through the woods and the sweetgum hollow and then across the creek where the mill is. . . oh, it’s a long way. Why’d we want to go anyhow?» But of course he could not say, for Little Sunshine had warned him never to mention the charm. «I’ve got important business with the man there,» he said, and then, wanting a little to frighten her: «Otherwise something terrible will happen to us.»
They both jumped. «Don’t hide, I know you’re out there, I heard you.» It was Amy, and she was calling from a window directly above: she could not see them, though, for the elephant leaves were a camouflage. «The idea, leaving Mr Sansom in this fix, are you completely out of your mind?» They crawled from under the leaves, crept along the side of the house, then raced for the road, the woods. «I know you’re there, Joel Knox, come up this instant, sir!»
Deep in the hollow, dark syrup crusted the bark of vine-roped sweetgums: like pale apple leaves green witch butterflies sank and rose there and there; a breezy lane of trumpet lilies (Saints and Heroes, these alone, or so old folks said, could hear their mythical flourish) beckoned like hands lace-gloved and ghostly. Idabel kept waving her arms, for the mosquitoes were fierce: everywhere, like scraps of a huge shattered mirror, mosquito pools of marsh water gleamed and broke in Henry’s jogging path.
«I’ve got some money,» said Idabel. «Fact is, I’ve got near about four bits.» Joel thought of the change he’d stored away in the box, and bragged that he had more than that. «We’ll spend it all at the travelin-show,» she said, and took a froggish jump over a crocodile-looking log. «Who needs money anyhow? Leastwise, not right aways we don’t. . . except for dopes. We ought to save enough so as we can have a dope every day cause my brains get fried if I can’t have myself an ice-cold dope. And cigarettes. I surely do appreciate a smoke. Dopes and smokes and Henry are the onliest things I love.»
«You like me some, don’t you?» he said, without meaning really to speak aloud. In any case, Idabel, chanting «. . .the big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair. . .» did not answer.
They stopped to scrape off chews of sweetgum, and while they stood there she said: «My daddy’ll be out rooting up the country for me; I bet he’ll go down and ask Mr Bluey for the loan of his old bloodhound.» She laughed and sweetgum juice trickled out the corners of her mouth; a green butterfly lighted on her head, held like a ribbon to a lock of her hair. «One time they were hunting for an escaped convict (right here in this very hollow), Mr Bluey and his hound and Sam Radclif and Roberta Lacey and the Sheriff and all those dogs from the farm; when it got dark we could see their lamps shining way off here in the woods, and hear the dogs howling; it was like a holiday: daddy and all the men and Roberta Lacey got hollering drunk, you could hear old Roberta’s hee-haw clear to Noon City and back. . . and you know, I was real sorry for that convict, and afraid for him: I kept thinking I was him and he was me and it was both of us they were out to catch.» She spit the gum like tobacco, and hooked her thumbs in the belt rungs of her khaki shorts. «But he got away. They never did find him. Some folks hold that he’s still about. . . hiding in the Cloud Hotel, maybe, or living at the Landing.»
«Thereis someone living at the Landing,» Joel said excitedly, and then, with some disappointment, added: «Except it’s not a convict, it’s a lady.»
«A lady? You mean Miss Amy?»
«Another lady,» he told her, and regretted mentioning the matter. «She has a tall white wig, and wears a lovely old-time dress, but I don’t know who she is or even if she is real.» But Idabel just looked at him as if he were a fool, so he smiled uneasily and said: «I’m only joking, I only wanted to scare you.» And, not wanting to answer questions, he ran a little ahead, the sword spanking his thigh. It seemed to him they had come a far way, and he played with the notion that they were lost: probably there was no such place as this hotel whose name evoked a kind of mist-white palace floating foglike through the woods. Then, facing a fence of brambles, he unsheathed his sword and cut an opening.
«After you, my dear Idabel,» he said, bowing low, and Idabel, whistling for Henry, stepped through. Off a short distance on the other side lay a roughly pebbled beach along which the creek, here rather more of a river, ran sluggishly. A yellowed canebreak obscured at first the sight of a broken dam, and, below this, a queer house straddling the water on high stilts: it was made of unpainted plank gone grey now, and had a strange unfinished look, as though its builder had been frightened and fled his job midway. Three sunning buzzards sat hunched on what remained of the roof, butterflies went in and out of blue sky-bright windows.
Joel was sorely let-down, for he thought this alas was the Cloud Hotel, but then Idabel said no, it was an old forsaken mill,
