while the hermit descended through the trapdoor of the widow’s-walk, presently reappearing on a slide
of steps which tinkled over wastes of feudal lawn down to the water’s rim. Brandishing his hickory cane,
he advanced along the shore with a creeping bowlegged hobble, and Joel’s eyes played a trick: he saw
Little Sunshine as the old pond-tree come alive.
Still yards away, the hermit stopped and, stooping on his cane, fixed them with a gluey stare.
Then Randolph said his name, and the old man, blinking with disbelief, broke into frisky giggles: «Well,
now, ain’t you the mischief! Can’t see worth nothin, an there I was with my ol spyglass axin: who that
a-comin where they ain’t got no place? Well, now, this be a sweet todo! Step-long, step-long, follow me
right careful, plenty quicksand.»
They walked single-file, Joel who led the mule, going last, and wondering, as he followed the sog
of Randolph’s footprints, why he’d been lied to, for it was plain that Little Sunshine had not been
expecting them.
Swan stairs soft with mildewed carpet curved upward from the hotel’s lobby; the diabolic tongue
of a cuckoo bird, protruding out of a wall-clock, mutely proclaimed an hour forty years before, and on
the room clerk’s splintery desk stood dehydrated specimens of potted palm. After tying a spittoon onto
John Brown’s leg, this in order that they could hear him should he wander off, they left him in the lobby,
and filed through the ballroom, where a fallen chandelier jeweled the dust, and weather-ripped draperies
lay bunched on the waltz-waved floor like curtsying ladies. Passing a piano, over which web was woven
like the gauzy covering of a museum exhibit, Joel struck the keys expectingChopsticks in return, instead,
there came a glassy rattle of scuttling feet.
Beyond the ballroom, and in what had once been Mrs. Cloud’s private apartment, were two
simply furnished spacious rooms, both beautifully clean, and this was where Little Sunshine lived: the
evident pride he took in these quarters increased the charm of their surprise, and when he closed the
door he made nonexistent the ruin surrounding them. Firelight polished sherry-red wood, gilded the wings
of a carved angel, and the hermit, bringing forth a bottle of homemade whiskey, put it where the light
could lace its comforting promise. «It is been a mighty long while since you come here, Mister Randolph,»
he said, drawing chairs about the fire. «You was justa child, like this sweet boy.» He pinched Joel’s
cheeks, and his fingernails were so long they nearly broke the skin. «Usta come here totin them drawin
books; I wisht you’d come again like that.» Randolph inclined his face toward the shadows of his chair:
«How silly, my dear; don’t you know that if I came here as a child, then most of me never left? I’ve
always been, so to speak, a non-paying guest. At least I hope so, I should so dislike thinking I’d left
myself somewhere else.» Joel slumped like a dog on the floor before the hearth, and the hermit handed
him a pillow for his head; all day, after the weeks in bed, it had been as if he were bucking a whirlpool,
and now, lullabyed to the bone with drowsy warmth, he let go, let the rivering fire sweep him over its fall;
in the eyelid-blue betweenness the wordy sounds of the whiskey-drinkers spilled distantly: more distinct
and real were whisperings behind the walls, above the ceiling: rotate of party slippers answering a violin’s
demand, and the children passing to and fro, their footsteps linking in a dance, and up and down the
stairs going-coming humming heel-clatter of chattering girls, and rolling broken beads, busted pearls, the
bored snores of fat fathers, and the lilt of fans tapped in tune and the murmur of gloved hands as the
musicians, like bridegrooms in their angel-cake costumes, rise to take a bow. (He looked into the fire,
longing to see their faces as well, and the flames erupted an embryo; a veined, vacillating shape, its
features formed slowly, and even when complete stayed veiled in dazzle; his eyes burned tar-hot as he
brought them nearer: tell me, tell me, who are you? are you someone I know? are you dead? are you my
friend? do you love me? But the painted, disembodied head remained unborn beyond its mask, and gave
no clue. Are you someone I am looking for? he asked, not knowing whom he meant, but certain that for
him there must be such a person, just as there was for everybody else: Randolph with his almanac, Miss
Wisteria and her search by flashlight, Little Sunshine remembering other voices, other rooms, all of them
remembering, or never having known. And Joel drew back. If he recognized the figure in the fire, then
what ever would he find to take its place? It was easier not to know, better holding heaven in your hand
like a butterfly that is not there at all.)Goodnight ladies, sweet dreams ladies, farewell ladies, we’re
going to leave you now! Farewell sighs of folding fans, the brute fall of male boots, and the furtive steps
of tittering Negro girls tiptoeing through the vast honeycomb snuffing candles and drawing shades against
the night: echoes of the orchestra strum a house of sleep.
Then over the floors an earthly clangclang dragging commenced, and Joel, wide-eyed at this
uproar, turned to the others; they’d heard it, too. Randolph, flushed with whiskey and talk, frowned and
put down his glass. «It be the mule,» said Little Sunshine with an inebriated giggle, «he out there walkin
round.» And Joel recalled the spittoon they’d tied to John Brown’s leg: it banged on the stairs, seemed to
pass overhead, become remote, grow near.
«How’d he get up yonder?» said the hermit, worried now. «Ain’t no place for him to be: damn fool
gonna kill hisself.» He held a hunk of kindling in the fire. Using it as a torch, he stumbled out into the
ballroom. Joel tagged bravely after him. But Randolph was too drunk to move.
Around the torch swooped white choirs of singing wings which made to leap and sway all within
range of the furious light: humped greyhounds hurtled through the halls, their silent shadow-feet trampling
flowerbeds of spiders, and in the lobby lizards loomed like dinosaurs; the coral-tongued cuckoo bird,
forever stilled at three o’clock, spread wings hawk-like, falcon-fierce.
They halted at the foot of the stairs. The mule was nowhere to be seen: the banging of the telltale
spittoon had stopped. «John Brown. . . John Brown,» Joel’s voice enlarged the quiet: he shivered to think
that in every room some sleepless something listened. Little Sunshine held his torch higher, and brought
into view a balcony which overlooked the lobby: there, iron-stiff and still, stood the mule. «You hear me,
suh, come down offen there!» commanded the hermit, and John Brown reared back, snorted, pawed the
floor; then, as if insane with terror, he came at a gallop, and lunged, splintering the balcony’s rail. Joel
primed himself for a crash which never came; when he looked again, the mule, hung to a beam by the
rope-reins twisted about his neck, was swinging in mid-air, and his big lamplike eyes, lit by the torch’s
blaze, were golden with death’s impossible face, the figure in the fire.
Morning collected in the room, exposing a quilt-wrapped bundle huddled in a corner: Little
Sunshine, sound asleep. «Don’t wake him,» whispered Randolph who, in rising, knocked over three
empty whiskey bottles. But the hermit did not stir. As they crept out through the hotel Joel closed his
eyes, and let Randolph lead him, for he did not want to see the mule: a sharp intake of breath was
Randolph’s only comment, and never once did he refer to the accident, nor ask a question: it was as if
from the outset they’d planned to return to the Landing on foot. The morning was like a slate clean for
any future, and it was as though an end had come, as if all that had been before had turned into a bird,
and flown there to the island tree: a crazy elation caught hold of Joel, he ran, he zigzagged, he sang, he
was in love, he caught a little tree-toad because he loved it and because he loved it he set it free, watched
it bounce, bound like the immense leaping of his heart; he hugged himself, alive and glad, and socked the
air, butted like a goat, hid behind a bush, jumped out: Boo! «Look, Randolph,» he said, folding a turban
of moss about his head, «look, who am I?»
But Randolph would have no part of him. His mouth was set in a queer, grim way. As if he
walked the deck of a tossing ship, he lurched forward, leaning from side to side, and his eyes, raw with
bloodshot, acted as a poor compass, for he seemed not to know in which direction he was going.
«I am me,» Joel whooped. «I am Joel, we are the same people.» And he looked about for a tree
to climb: he would go right to the very top, and there, midway to heaven, he would spread his arms and
claim the world. Running far ahead of Randolph, he shinnied up a birch, but when he reached the middle
branches, he clasped the trunk of the tree, suddenly dizzy; from this altitude he looked back and saw
Randolph, who was walking in a circle, his hands stretched before him as if he were playing blind man’s
bluff: his carpet slippers fell off, but he did not notice; now and then he shook himself, like a wet animal.
And Joel thought of the ant. Hadn’t he warned him? Hadn’t he told him it was dangerous? Or was it only
corn whiskey swimming in his head? Except Randolph was being so quiet. And drunk folks were never
quiet. It was peculiar. It was as though Randolph were in a trance of some kind.
And Joel realized
