The water, deeper here than where he and Idabel had taken their bath, was also darker, a muddy bottomless olive, and when he knew they did not have to swim over, his relief gave him courage enough to travel down under the mill where there was a heavy but rotting beam on which they might cross.
«I’d better go first,» said Idabel. «It’s pretty old and liable to bust.»
But Joel pushed in front of her and started over; after all, no matter what Idabel said, he was a boy and she was a girl and he was damned if she were going to get the upper hand again. «You and Henry come after me,» he called, his voice hollow in the sudden cellar-like dark. Luminous water-shadows snaked up the cracked and eaten columns supporting the mill-house; copper waterbugs swung on intricate trapezes of insect’s thread, and fungus flowered fist-size on the wet decrepit wood. Joel, stepping gingerly, using his sword to balance, made his eyes avoid the dizzy deep creek moving so closely below, kept them, instead, aimed on the opposite bank where, in sunshine, laden gourdvine burst from red clay green and promising. Still all at once he felt he would never reach the other side: always he would be balanced here suspended between land, and in the dark, and alone. Then feeling the board shake as Idabel started across, he remembered he had someone to be together with. Only. And his heart turned over, skipped: every part of him went like iron.
Idabel shouted: «What’s wrong? What’re you stopping for?»
But he could not tell her. Nor bring himself to make any sound, motion. For piled no more than a foot beyond was a cotton-mouth thick as his leg, long as a whip; its arrow-shaped head slid out, the seed-like eyes alertly pointed, and all over Joel began to sting, as though already bitten. Idabel, coming up behind him, looked over his shoulder. «Jesus,» she breathed, «oh Jesus,» and at the touch of her hand he broke up inside: the creek froze, was like a horizontal cage, and his feet seemed to sink, as though the beam on which they stood was made of quicksand. How did Mr Sansom’s eyes come to be in a moccasin’s head?
«Hit him,» Idabel demanded. «Hit him with your sword.»
It was this way: they were bound for the Cloud Hotel, yes, the Cloud Hotel, where a man with a ruby ring was swimming underwater, yes, and Randolph was looking through his almanac and writing letters to Hongkong, to Port-o’-Spain, yes, and poor Jesus was dead, killed by Toby the cat (no, Toby was a baby), by a nest of chimney sweeps falling in a fire. And Zoo: was she in Washington yet? And was it snowing? And why was Mr Sansom staring at him so hard? It was really very, very rude (as Ellen would say), really very rude indeed of Mr Sansom never to close his eyes.
The snake, unwinding with involved grace, stretched toward them in a rolling way, and Idabel screamed, «Hit him, hit him!» but Joel of course was concerned only with Mr Sansom’s stare.
Spinning him around, and pushing him safely behind her, she pulled the sword out of his hand. «Big granddaddy bastard,» she jeered, thrusting at the snake. For an instant it seem paralyzed; then, invisibly swift, and its whole length like a wire singingly tense, it hooked back, snapped forward. «Bastard,» she hollered, closing her eyes, swinging the blade like a sickle, and the cotton-mouth, slapped into the air, turned, plunged, flattened on the water: belly up, white and twisted, it was carried by the current like a torn lily root. «No,» said Joel when, some while later, Idabel, calm in her triumph, tried to coax him on across. «No,» he said, for what use could there be now in finding Little Sunshine? His danger had already been, and he did not need a charm.
11
During supper Amy announced: «It is my birthday. Yes,» she said, «it is indeed, and not a soul to remember. Now if Angela Lee were here, I should’ve had an immense cake with a prize in every slice: tiny gold rings, and a pearl for my add-a-pearl, and little silver shoebuckles: oh when I think!»
«Happy birthday,» said Joel, though what he wished her was hardly happiness, for when he’d come home she’d rushed down, the hall with every intention, or so she’d said, of breaking an umbrella
over his head; whereupon Randolph, throwing open his door, had warned her, and very sincerely, that if ever she touched him he’d wring her damned neck.
Randolph went right on chewing a pig’s knuckle, and Amy, ignoring Joel, glared at him, her eyebrows going up and up, her lips pursed and trembling. «Eat, go on and eat, get fat as a hog,» she said, and slammed down her gloved hand: hitting the table it knocked like wood, and the old alarm clock, touched off by this commotion, began to ring: all three sat motionless until it whined itself silent. Then, the lines of her face becoming prominent as veins, Amy, with a preposterously maudlin sob, broke into tears and hiccups.
«You silly toad,» she panted, «who else has ever helped you? Angela Lee would sooner have seen you hanged! But no, I’ve given up my life.» Spouting intermittent pardon-mes, she hiccuped in succession a dozen times. «I tell you this, Randolph, I would sooner go off and clean house for a bunch of tacky niggers than stay here another instant; don’t think I couldn’t earn my way, the mothers of any town in America would send their children to me and we would play organized games, blind man’s bluff and musical chairs and pin the tail, and I would charge each child ten cents: I could make a good living. No, I need not depend on you; in fact, if I had a particle of sense I’d sit down and write a letter to the Law.»
Randolph crossed his knife and fork, and patted his lips with his kimono sleeve. «I’m sorry, my dear,» he said, «but I’m afraid I haven’t been following: exactly where is it you fancy me at fault?»
His cousin shook her head, took a deep, nervous breath; the tears stopped coming, the hiccups ceased, and all at once she turned on a shy smile. «It’s my birthday,» she said, her voice reduced to a waver.
«How very odd. Joel, does it seem to you peculiarly warm for January?»
Joel was listening for sounds above their voices: three short whistles and a hoot-owl wail, Idabel’s signal. In his impatience it was as if the clock, having unwound, had stopped time altogether.
«January, yes; and you, my dear, were born (if one believes a family Bible, though I’ll admit one never should, so many weddings being listed an erroneous nine months early) one January New Year’s.»
Amy’s neck dipped turtlewise into shoulders timidly contracting, and her hiccups racked up again, but less indignant now, more mournful. «But Randolph. . . Randolph, Ifeel as though it was my birthday.»
«A little wine, then,» he said, «and a song on the pianola; look in the cupboard, too, I’m certain you’ll find a box of stale animal crackers with little silver worms in every crumb.» Carrying lamps, they moved into the parlor, and Joel, sent upstairs to fetch the wine, crossed Randolph’s room quickly, and raised the window. Below, bonfires of newly bloomed roses burned like flower-eyes in the August twilight, their sweetness filling the air like a color. He whistled, whispered, «Idabel, Idabel,» and with Henry she appeared between the leaning columns. «Joel,» she said, unsure, and behind her it was as though the falling night slipped a glove over the five stone fingers which, curling in shadow, seemed bendingly to reach her; when he answered, she hurried beyond their grasp, came safely under the window. «Are you ready?»
She’d plaited a collar of white roses for Henry, and there was a rose hung awkwardly in her hair. Idabel, he thought, you look real beautiful. «Go to the mailbox,» he said, «I’ll meet you there.» It was too dark now to maneuver without light. He lit a candle on Randolph’s desk, and went to the cabinet, searching there until he located an unopened bottle of sherry. Stooping to extinguish the candle, he noticed a sheet of green tissue-thin stationery, and on it, in a handwriting daintily familiar, was written only a salutation: «My dearest Pepe.» Randolph, then, had composed the letters to Ellen, but how could he have supposed that Mr Sansom could ever have written a word?
In the black hall, lamplight rimmed Mr Sansom’s door, which, as he waited, a cross-draft commenced to swing open, and it was as though he were seeing his father’s room through reversed binoculars, for, in its yellow clarity, it was like a miniature: the hand with the wedding ring slouched over the bed’s side; scenes of Venice, projected by the frost-glass globe, tinted the walls, the crocheted spread, and there in the mirror whirled his eyes, his smile. Joel entered on tiptoe and went on his knees beside the bed. Downstairs the pianola had begun pounding its raggedy carnival tune, yet somehow it did not interfere with the stillness
