cope with. The mist which for him overhung so much of Randolph’s conversation, even that had lifted, at
least it was no longer troubling, for it seemed as though he understood him absolutely. Now in the
process of, as it were, discovering someone, most people experience simultaneously an illusion they are
discovering themselves: the other’s eyes reflect their real and glorious value. Such a feeling was with Joel,
and inestimably so because this was the first time he’d ever known the triumph, false or true, of seeing
through to a friend. And he did not want any more to be responsible, he wanted to put himself in the
hands of his friend, be, as here in the sickbed, dependent upon him for his very life. Looking in the
handglass became, consequently, an ordeal: it was as if now only one eye examined for signs of maturity,
while the other, gradually of the two the more attentive, gazed inward wishing him always to remain as he
was.
«There is an October chill in the air today,» said Randolph, settling overblown roses in a vase by
the bed. «These are the last, I’m afraid, they are quite falling apart, even the bees have lost interest. And
here, I’ve brought an autumn specimen, a sycamore leaf.» Another day, and though the air was mild, he
built a fire by which they toasted marshmallows and sipped tea from cups two hundred years old.
Randolph did imitations. He was Charlie Chaplin to a T, Mae West too, and his cruel take-off on Amy
made Joel double up on the bed, finally absorbed in laughter for its own sake, and Randolph said ha! ha!
he would show him something really funny: «I’ll have to fix up, though,» he said, his eyes quickly alive, and
made as if to leave the room; then, releasing the doorknob, he looked back. «But if I do. . . you mustn’t
laugh.» And Joel’s answer was a laugh, he couldn’t stop, it was like hiccups. Randolph’s smile ran off his
face like melted butter, and when Joel cried, «Go on, you promised,» he sat down, nursing his round pink
head between his hands: «Not now,» he said wearily, «some other time.»
One morning Joel received the first mail he’d ever had at the Landing; it was a picture postcard,
and Randolph, appearing with a copy ofMacbeth, which they’d planned to read aloud, brought it to him.
«It’s from the little girl down the road,» he said, and Joel’s breath caught: long-legged and swaggering,
Idabel walked from the wall, rocked in the chair. He’d not directly thought of her since the night of the
traveling-show, an omission for which he couldn’t account, but which did not strike him as freakish: she
was, after all, one with the others covered over when the house sank, those whose names concerned the
old Joel, whose names now in gnarled October freckling leaves spelled on the wind. Still Idabel was
back, a ghost, perhaps, but here, and in the room: Idabel the hoodlum out to stone a one-armed barber,
and Idabel with roses, Idabel with sword, Idabel who said she sometimes cried: all of autumn was the
sycamore leaf and its red the red of her hair and its stem the rusty color of her rough voice and its jagged
shape the pattern, the souvenir of her face.
The card, which showed joyful cottonpickers, was postmarked from Alabama, and it said: «Mrs.
Collie 1/2 sister an hes the baptis prechur Last Sunday I past the plate at church! papa and F shot henry
They put me to life here, why did you Hide? write to IDABEL THOMPKINS.»
Well, frankly, he didn’t believe her; she’d put herself to life, and it was with Miss Wisteria, not a
baptis prechur. He handed the card to Randolph who, in turn, passed it to the fire; for an instant, as
Idabel and her cottonpickers crinkled, he would have lost his hands to retrieve them, but Randolph,
adjusting gold reading glasses, began: «First witch. When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning,
or in rain?» and he settled down to listen, he fell asleep and woke up with a holler, for he’d climbed up the
chimney after Idabel, and there was only smoke where she’d been, sky. «Hush, now, hush,» said
Randolph slowly, softly, a voice like dying light, and he was glad for Randolph, calm in the center of his
mercy.
So sometimes he came near to speaking out his love for him; but it was unsafe ever to let anyone
guess the extent of your feelings or knowledge: suppose, as he often had, that he were kidnapped; in
which case the wisest defense would be not to let the kidnapper know you recognized him as such. If
concealment is the single weapon, then a villain is never a villain: one smiles to the very end.
And even if he spoke to Randolph, to whom would he be confessing love? Faceted as a fly’s
eye, being neither man nor woman, and one whose every identity cancelled the other, a grab-bag of
disguises, who, what was Randolph? X, an outline in which with crayon you color in the character, the
ideal hero: whatever his role, it is pitched by you into existence. Indeed, try to conceive of him alone,
unseen, unheard, and he becomes invisible, he is not to be imagined. But such as Randolph justify
fantasy, and if a genii should appear, certainly Joel would have asked that these sealed days continue
through a century of calendars.
They ended, though, and at the time it seemed Randolph’s fault. «Very soon we’re going to visit
the Cloud Hotel,» he said. «Little Sunshine wants to see us; you are quite well enough, I think: it’s absurd
to pretend you’re not.» Urgency underscored his voice, an enthusiasm in which Joel could not altogether
believe, for he sensed the plan was motivated by private, no doubt unpleasant reasons, and these,
whatever they were, opposed Randolph’s actual desires. And he said: «Let’s stay right here, Randolph,
let’s don’t ever go anywhere.» And when the plea was rejected old galling grindful thoughts about
Randolph came back. He felt grumpy enough to quarrel; that, of course, was a drawback in being
dependent: he could never quarrel with Randolph, for anger seemed, if anything, more unsafe than love:
only those who know their own security can afford either. Even so, he was on the point of risking cross
words when an outside sound interrupted, and rolled him backward through time: «Why are you staring
that way?» said Randolph.
«It’s Zoo. . . I hear her,» he said: through the evening windows came an accordion refrain. «Really
I do.»
Randolph was annoyed. «If she must be musical, heaven knows I’d prefer she took up the
harmonica.»
«But she’s gone.» And Joel sat up on his knees. «Zoo walked away to Washington. . .»
«I thought you knew,» said Randolph, fingering the ribbon which marked the pages ofMacbeth.
«During the worst of it, when you were the most sick, she sat beside you with a fan: can’t you remember
at all?»
So Zoo was back; it was not long before he saw her for himself: at noon the next day she
brought his broth; no greetings passed between them, nor smiles, it was as if each felt too much the
fatigued embarrassment of anticlimax. Only with her it was still something more: she seemed not to know
him, but stood there as if waiting to be introduced. «Randolph told me you couldn’t come back,» he said.
«I’m glad he was wrong.»
In answer there came a sigh so stricken it seemed to have heaved up from the pits of her being.
She leaned her forehead on the bed-post, and it was then that with a twinge he realized her neckerchief
was missing: exposed, her slanted scar leered like crooked lips, and her neck, divided this way, had lost
its giraffe-like grandeur. How small she seemed, cramped, as if some reduction of the spirit had taken
double toll and made demands upon the flesh: with that illusion of height was gone the animal grace,
arrow-like dignity, defiant emblem of her separate heart.
«Zoo,» he said, «did you see snow?»
She looked at him, but her eyes appeared not to make a connection with what they saw; in fact,
there was about them a cross-eyed effect, as though they fixed on a solacing inner vision. «Did I see
snow?» she repeated, trying hard, it seemed, to understand. «Did I see snow!» and she broke into a kind
of scary giggle, and threw back her head, lips apart, like an open-mouthed child hoping to catch rain.
«There ain’t none,» she said, violently shaking her head, her black greased hair waving with a windy rasp
like scorched grass. «Hit’s all a lotta foolery, snow and such: that sun! it’s everywhere.»
«Like Mr. Sansom’s eyes,» said Joel, off thinking by himself.
«Is a nigger sun,» she said, «an my soul, it’s black.» She took the broth bowl, and looked down
into it, as if she were a gypsy reading tea-leaves. «I rested by the road; the sun poked down my eyes till
I’m near-bout blind. . .»
And Joel said: «But Zoo, if there wasn’t any snow, what was it you saw in Washington, D.C.? I
mean now, didn’t you meet up with any of those men from the newsreels?»
«. . .an was holes in my shoes where the rocks done cut through the jackodiamonds and the
aceohearts; walked all day, an here it seem like I ain’t come no ways, and here I’m sittin by the road with
my feets afire an ain’t a soul in sight.» Two tears, following the bony edges of her face, faded, leaving
silver stains. «I’m so tired ain’t no feelin what tells me iffen I pinch myself, and I go on sittin there in that
lonesome place till I looks up an see the Big Dipper: right about now along come a red truck with big bug
lights coverin me
