In the box-shaped room that was R. V. Lacey’s Princely Place there were about a dozen people standing around, mostly overalled boys with rawboned, sun-browned faces, and a few young girls. A hubbub of talk faded to nothing when Joel entered and self-consciously sat himself down at a wooden counter which ran the length of the room.
«Why, hello, little one,» boomed a muscular woman who immediately strode forward and propped her elbows on the counter before him. She had long ape-like arms that were covered with dark fuzz, and there was a wart on her chin, and decorating this wart was a single antenna-like hair. A peach silk blouse sagged under the weight of her enormous breasts; a zany light sparkled in the red-rimmed eyes she focused on him. «Welcome to Miss Roberta’s.» Two of her dirty-nailed fingers reached out to give his cheek a painful pinch. «Say now, what can Miss Roberta do for this cute-lookin fella?»
Joel was overwhelmed. «A cold beer,» he blurted, deafly ignoring the titter of giggles and guffaws that sounded in the background.
«Can’t serve no beer to minors, babylove, even if you are a mighty cute-lookin fella. Now what you want is a nice NEHI grapepop,» said the woman, lumbering away.
The giggles swelled to honest laughter, and Joel’s ears turned a humiliated pink. He wondered if the woman was a lunatic. And his eyes scanned the sour-smelling room as if it were a madhouse. There were calendar portraits of toothy bathing beauties on the walls, and a framed certificate which said: This is to certify that Roberta Velma Lacey won Grand Prize in Lying at the annual Double Branches Dog Days Frolic. Hanging from the low ceiling were several poisonous streamers of strategically arranged flypaper, and a couple of naked lightbulbs that were ornamented with shredded ribbons of green-and-red crepe paper. A water pitcher filled with branches of towering pink dogwood sat on the counter.
«Here y’are,» said the woman, plunking down a dripping wet bottle of purple sodapop. «I declare, little one, you sure are hot and dusty-lookin.» She gave his head a merry pat. «Know somethin, you must be the boy Sam Radclif brung to town, say?»
Joel admitted this with a nod. He took a swallow of the drink, and it was lukewarm. «I want. . . that is, do you know how far it is from here to Skully’s Landing?» he said, realizing every ear in the place was turned to him.
«Ummm,» the woman tinkered with her wart, and walled her eyes up into her head till they all but disappeared. «Hey, Romeo, how far you spec it is out to The Skulls,» she said, and grinned crazily. «I call it The Skulls on accounta. . .» but she did not finish, for at that moment the Negro boy of whom she’s asked the information, answered: «Two miles, more like three, maybe, ma’am.»
«Three miles,» she parroted. «But if I was you, babylove, I wouldn’t go traipsin over there.»
«Me neither,» whined a yellow-haired girl.
«Is there anyway I could get a ride out?»
Somebody said, «Ain’t Jesus Fever in town?»
Yeah, I saw Jesus — Jesus, he parked round by the Livery — What? Y’all mean old Jesus Fever? Christamighty, I thought he was way gone and buried! — Nah, man. He’s past a hundred but alive as you are. — Sure, I seen Jesus — Yeah, Jesus is here. . .
The woman grabbed a flyswatter and slammed it down with savage force. «Shut up that gab. I can’t hear a thing this boy says.»
Joel felt a little surge of pride, tinged with fright, at being the center of such a commotion. The woman fixed her zany eyes on a point somewhere above his head, and said: «What business you got with The Skulls, babylove?»
Now this again! He sketched the story briefly, omitting all except the simplest events, even to excluding a mention of the letters. He was trying to locate his father, that was the long and short of it. Could she help him?
Well, she didn’t know. She stood silent for some time, toying with her wart and staring off into space. «Hey, Romeo,» she said finally, «you say Jesus Fever’s in town?»
«Yes’m.» The boy she called Romeo was colored, and wore a puffy, stained chefs cap. He was stacking dishes in a sink behind the counter.
«Come here, Romeo,» she said, beckoning, «I got something to discuss.» Romeo joined her promptly in a rear corner. She began whispering excitedly, glancing over her shoulder now and then at Joel, who could not hear what they were saying. It was quiet in the room, everyone was looking at him. He took out the bullet thefted from Sam Radclif and rolled it nervously in his hands.
Suddenly the door swung open. The skinny girl with fiery, chopped-off red hair swaggered inside, and stopped dead still, her hands cocked on her hips. Her face was flat, and rather impertinent; a network of big ugly freckles spanned her nose. Her eyes, squinty and bright green, moved swiftly from face to face, but showed none a sign of recognition; they paused a cool instant on Joel, then traveled elsewhere.
Hi, Idabel — watchasay, Idabel?
«I’m hunting sister,» she said. «Anybody seen her?» Her voice was boy-husky, sounding as though strained through some rough material: it made Joel clear his throat.
«Seen her sitting on the porch a while back,» said a chinless young man.
The redhead leaned against the wall, and crossed her pencil-thin, bony-kneed legs. A ragged bandage stained with mercurochrome covered her left knee. She pulled out a blue yo-yo and let it unwind slowly to the floor and spin back. «Who’s that?» she asked, jerking her head towards Joel. When nobody answered, she loopty-looped the yo-yo, shrugged and said: «Who cares, pray tell?» But she continued to watch him cagily from the corners of her eyes. «Hey, hows about a dope on credit, Roberta?» she called.
«MissRoberta,» said the woman, momentarily interrupting her confab with Romeo. «I don’t need to tell you you have a right smart tongue, Idabel Thompkins, and always did have. And till such time as you learn a few ladylike manners, I’d be obliged if you’d keep outa my place, hear? Besides, since when have you got all this big credit? Ha! March now. . . and don’t come back till you put on some decent female clothes.»
«You know what you can do,» sassed the girl, stomping out the door. «This old dive’ll have a mighty long wait before I bring my trade here again, you betcha.» Once outside, her silhouette darkened the screen as she paused to peer in at Joel.
And now dusk was coming on. A sea of deepening green spread the sky like some queer wine, and across this vast green, shadowed clouds were pushed sluggishly by a mild breeze. Presently the trek homeward would commence, and afterwards the stillness of Noon City would be almost a sound itself: the sound a footfall might make among the mossy tombs on the dark ledge. Miss Roberta had lent Romeo as Joel’s guide. The two kept duplicate pace; the Negro boy carried Joel’s bag; wordlessly they turned the corner by the jail, and there was the stable, a barnlike structure of faded red which Joel had noticed earlier that day.
A number of men who looked like a gang of desperadoes in a Western picture-show were congregated near the hitching post, passing a whiskey bottle from hand to hand; a second group, less boisterous, played a game with a jackknife under the dark area of an oak tree. Swarms of dragonflies quivered above a slime-coated watertrough; and a scabby hound dog padded back and forth, sniffing the bellies of tied-up mules. One of the whiskey drinkers, an old man with long white hair and a long white beard, was feeling pretty good evidently, for he was clapping his hands and doing a little shuffle-dance to a tune that was probably singing in his head.
The colored boy escorted Joel round the side of the stable to a backlot where wagons and saddled horses were packed so close a swinging tail was certain to strike something. «That’s him,» said Romeo, pointing his finger, «there’s Jesus Fever.»
But Joel had seen at once the pygmy figure huddled atop the seat plank of a grey wagon parked on the lot’s further rim: a kind of gnomish little Negro whose primitive face was sharp against the drowning green sky. «Don’t less us be fraid,» said Romeo, leading Joel through the maze of wagons and animals with timid caution. «You best hold tight to my hand, white boy: Jesus Fever, he the oldest ol buzzard you ever put eyes on.»
Joel said, «But I’m not afraid,» and this was true.
«Shhh!»
As the boys approached, the little pygmy cocked his head at a wary angle; then slowly, with the staccato movements of a mechanical doll, he turned sideways till his eyes, yellow feeble eyes dotted with milky specks, looked down on them with dreamy detachment. He had a funny derby hat perched rakishly on his head, and in the candy-striped ribbon-band was jabbed a speckled turkey feather.
Romeo stood hesitantly waiting, as if expecting Joel to take the lead; but when the white child kept still, he said: «You lucky you come to town, Mister Fever. This here little gentman’s Skully kin, and he going out to the Landing for to live.»
«I’m Mister Sansom’s son,» said Joel, though suddenly, gazing up at the dark and fragile face, this didn’t seem to mean much. Mr. Sansom. And who was he?
