«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 head to toe.»
There were four men in the truck, she said, three white boys, and a Negro who rode in back squatting on top of a mountain of watermelons. The driver of the truck got out: «A real low man puffin a cigar like a bull; he ain’t wearin no shirt an all this red hair growin even on his shoulders an hands; so quiet he walks through the grass, an looks at me so sweet I reckon maybe he sorry my feets is cut an maybe’s gonna ax me why don’t I ride in his fine car?»
Go on, he told her, tapping his cigar so the ash was flung in her face, go on, gal, get down in the ditch; never mind why, says the man, and shoved her so she rolled over the embankment, landing on her back helpless as a junebug. «Lord, I sure commenced to hoop n’ holler an this little bull-man says I hush up else he’s gonna bust out my brains.» She got up and started to run, but those other two boys, answering the driver’s whistle, jumped down into the ditch and cut her off at either end; both these boys wore panama hats, and one had on a pair of sailor pants and a soldier’s shirt: it was he who caught her and called for the Negro to bring a rifle.
«That mean nigger look a whole lot like Keg, an he put that rifle up side my ear, an the man, he done tore my pretty dress straight down the front, an tells them panama boys theys to set to: I hear the Lord’s voice talkin down that gun barrel, an the Lord said Zoo, you done took the wrong road and come the wrong way, you et of the apple, he said, an hits pure rotten, an outa the sky my Lord look down an brung comfort, an whilst them devils went jerkin like billygoats right then and there in all my shameful sufferin I said holy words: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I’ll fear no evil, for you is with me Lord, yea verily, I say, an them fools laughed, but my Lord took that sailor boy’s shape, an us, me an the Lord, us loved.»
The boys had removed their panama hats; now they put them on again, and one said to the driver, well, what was wrong with him? and the driver sucked his cigar and scratched behind his ear and said, well, to tell the truth, he wasn’t much one for being watched; O.K., said the boys, and climbed back up the bank, the Negro following after them, all three laughing, which made the driver’s cheek twitch and his eyes «go yellow like an ol tomcat; an it was peculiar, cause he was one scared man.» He did not move to touch her, but squatted impotent at her side like a bereaved lover, like an idol, then the truck-horn blew, the boys called, and he bent close: «He pushed that cigar in my
belly-button, Lord, in me was born fire like a child. . .»
Joel plugged his ears; what Zoo said was ugly, he was sick-sorry she’d ever come back, she ought to be punished. «Stop that, Zoo,» he said, «I won’t listen, I won’t. . .» but Zoo’s lips quivered, her eyes blindly twisted toward the inner vision; and in the roar of silence she was a pantomime: the joy of Jesus demented her face and glittered like a sweat, like a preacher her finger shook the air, agonies of joy jerked her breasts, her lips bared for a lowdown shout: in sucked her guts, wide swung her arms embracing the eternal: she was a cross, she was crucified. He saw without hearing, and it was more terrible for that, and after she’d gone, docilely taking the broth bowl with her, he kept his fingers in his ears till the ringing grew so loud it deafened even the memory of sound.
They were sure John Brown would never make it up the hill: «If he simply lay down and rolled over on us, I wouldn’t blame him,» said Randolph, and Joel tightened his muscles, hoping this might make the mule’s load lighter. They had a croquet sack for saddle and rope for reins, nevertheless they managed to stay astride, though Randolph wobbled perilously, grunting all the while, and eating endless hardboiled eggs which Joel handed him from a picnic basket he held. «Another egg, my dear, I’m feeling most frightfully seasick again: if you feel something coming up always put something down.»
It was a smoky day, the sky like a rained-on tinroof, the sun, when you saw it, fishbelly pale, and Joel, who had been routed out of bed and rushed away with such inconsiderate haste, he’d not had time in which to dress decently, was goosepimpled with cold, for he wore a thin T-shirt (turned inside out), and a pair of summer knickers with most of the buttons busted off the fly. At least he had on regular shoes, whereas Randolph wore only carpet slippers. «My feet have expanded so ominously it’s all I can do to squeeze them into these; really, in the light of day what a ghoul I must look: I have the damnedest sensation that every time this sad beast moves my hair falls in floods, and my eyes: are they spinning like dice? Of course I reek of mothballs. . .» The suit he wore gave off their odor like a gas; a shrunken linen suit stiff with starch and ironed shiny, it bulged and creaked like medieval armor, and he handled himself with exaggerated gingerness, for the seams kept announcing bawdy intentions.
Toward twelve they dismounted, and spread their picnic under a tree. Randolph had brought along a fruitjar of scuppernong wine; he gargled it like mouth wash, and when there was no more, Joel made use of the empty jar to trap ants: The Pious Insect, Randolph called them, and said: «They fill me with oh so much admiration and ah so much gloom: such puritan spirit in their mindless march of Godly industry, but can so anti-individual a government admit the poetry of what is past understanding? Certainly the man who refused to carry his crumb would find assassins on his trail, and doom in every smile. As for me, I prefer the solitary
