Then Jesus Fever raised the derby a respectful inch. «Say I should find him here: Miss Amy say,» he whispered hoarsely. His face was like a black withered apple, and almost destroyed; his polished forehead shone as though a purple light gleamed under the skin; his sickle-curved posture made him look as though his back were broken: a sad little brokeback dwarf crippled with age. Yet, and this impressed Joel’s imagination, there was a touch of the wizard in his yellow, spotted eyes: it was a tricky quality that suggested, well, magic and things read in books. «I here yestiday, day fore, cause Miss Amy, she say wait,» and he trembled under the impact of a deep breath. «Now I can’t talk no whole lot; ain’t got the strenth. So up, child. Gettin’ towards night, and night’s misery on my bones.»
«Right with you, Mister Jesus,» said Joel without enthusiasm. Romeo gave him a boost into the wagon, and handed up the suitcase. It was an old wagon, wobbly and rather like an oversized peddler’s cart; the floor was strewn with dry cornhusks and croquer sacks which smelled sweetly sour.
«Git, John Brown,» urged Jesus Fever, gently slapping the reins against a tan mule’s back. «Lift them feet, John Brown, lift them feet. . .»
Slowly the wagon pulled from the lot and groaned up a path onto the road. Romeo ran ahead, gave the mule’s rump a mighty whack and darted off; Joel felt a quick impulse to call him back, for it came to him all at once that he did not want to reach Skully’s Landing alone. But there was nothing to be done about it now. Out in front of the stable the bearded drunk had quit dancing, and the hound dog was squatting under the water trough scratching fleas. The wagon’s rickety wheels made dust clouds that hung
in the green air like powdered bronze. A bend in the road: Noon City was gone.
It was night, and the wagon crept over an abandoned country road where the wheels ground softly through deep fine sand, muting John Brown’s forlorn hoofclops. Jesus Fever had so far spoken only twice, each time to threaten the mule with some outlandish torture: he was going to skin him raw or split his head with an axe, possibly both. Finally he’d given up and, still hunched upright on the seat-plank, fallen asleep. «Much further?» Joel asked once, and there was no answer. The reins lay limply entwined round the old man’s wrists, but the mule skillfully guided the wagon unaided.
Relaxed as a rag doll, Joel was stretched on a croquer-sack mattress, his legs dangling over the wagon’s end. A vine-like latticework of stars frosted the southern sky, and with his eyes he interlinked these spangled vines till he could trace many ice-white resemblances: a steeple, fantastic flowers, a springing cat, the outline of a human head, and other curious designs like those made by snowflakes. There was a vivid, slightly red three-quarter moon; the evening wind eerily stirred shawls of Spanish moss which draped the branches of passing trees. Here and there in the mellow dark fireflies signaled one another as though messaging in code. He listened contented and untroubled to the remote, singing-saw noise of night insects.
Then presently the music of a childish duet came carrying over the sounds of the lonesome countryside: «What does the robin do then, poor thing. . .» Like specters he saw them hurrying in the moonshine along the road’s weedy edge. Two girls. One walked with easy grace, but the other moved as jerky and quick as a boy, and it was she that Joel recognized.
«Hello, there,» he said boldly when the wagon overtook them.
Both girls had watched the wagon’s approach, and slowed their step perceptibly; but the one who was unfamiliar, as if startled, cried, «Gee Jemima!» She had long, long hair that fell past her hips, and her face, the little he could see of it, smudged as it was in shadow, seemed very friendly, very pretty. «Why, isn’t it just grand of you to come along this way and want to give us a ride?»
«Help yourself,» he said, and slid over to make a seat.
«I’m Miss Florabel Thompkins,» she announced, after she’d hopped agilely up beside him, and pulled her dress-hem below her knees. «This is the Skullys’ wagon? Sure, that’s Jesus Fever. . . is he asleep? Well, don’t that beat everything.» She talked rapidly in a flighty, too birdlike manner, as if mimicking a certain type of old lady. «Come on, sister, there’s oodles of room.»
The sister trudged on behind the wagon. «I’ve got two feet and I reckon I’m not such a flirt I can’t find the will-power to put one in front of the other, thanks all the same,» she said, and gave her shorts an emphatic hitch.
«You’re welcome to ride,» said Joel weakly, not knowing what else to do; for she was a funny kid, no doubt about it.
«Oh, folderol,» said Florabel Thompkins, «don’t you pay her no mind. That’s just what Mama calls Idabel Foolishness. Let her walk herself knock-kneed for what it means to the great wide world. No use trying to reason with her: she’s got willful ways, Idabel has. Ask anybody.»
«Huh,» was all Idabel said in her defense.
Joel looked from one to the other, and concluded he liked Florabel the best; she was so pretty, at least he imagined her to be, though he could not see her face well enough to judge fairly. Anyway, her sister was a tomboy, and he’d had a special hatred of tomboys ever since the days of Eileen Otis. This Eileen Otis was a beefy little roughneck who had lived on the same block in New Orleans, and she used to have a habit of waylaying him, stripping off his pants and tossing them high into a tree. That was years gone by, but the memory of her could infuriate him still. He pictured Florabel’s redheaded sister as a regular Eileen Otis.
«We’ve got us a lovely car, you know,» said Florabel. «It’s a green Chevrolet that six persons can ride in without anybody sitting on anybody’s lap, and there are real window-shades you can pull up or down with darling toy babies. Papa won this lovely Chevrolet from a man at a cock-fight, which I think was real smart of him, only Mama says different. Mama’s as honest as the day is long, and she don’t hold with the cock-fights.
But what I’m trying to say is: we don’t usually have to hitch rides, and with strangers, too. . . course we do know Jesus Fever. . . kinda. But what’s your name? Joel? Joel what? Knox. . . well, Joel Knox, what I’m trying to say is my Papa usually drives us to town in our lovely car. . .» She jabbered on and on, and he was content to listen till, turning his head, he saw her sister, and thought she was looking at him peculiarly. As this exchange of stares continued, a smileless but amused look that passed between them was lighted by the moon; it was as if each were saying:I don’t think so much of you, either . «. . . but one time I just happened to slam the door on Idabel’s hand,» Florabel was still talking of the car, «and now her thumbnail won’t grow the least bit: it’s all lumpy and black. But she didn’t cry or take on, which was very brave on her part; now me, I couldn’t stand to have such a nasty old. . . show him your hand, sister.»
«You let me alone or I’ll show it to you o.k.: in a place you’re not expecting.»
Florabel sniffed, and glanced peevishly at Joel because he laughed. «It don’t pay to treat Idabel like she was a human being,» she said ominously. «Ask anybody. The tough way she acts you’d never suppose she came from a well-to-do family like mine, would you?»
Joel held his peace, knowing no matter what he said it would be the wrong thing.
«That’s just what I mean,» said Florabel, turning the silence to her own advantage, «you’d never suppose. Naturally she is as we’re twins: born the same day, me ten minutes first, so I’m elder; both of us twelve, going on thirteen. Florabel and Idabel. Isn’t it tacky the way those names kinda rhyme? Only Mama thinks it’s real cute, but. . .»
Joel didn’t hear the rest, for he suddenly noticed Idabel had stopped trailing the wagon. She was far back and running, running like a pale animal through the lake of weeds lining the wayside towards a flowering island of dogwood that bloomed lividly some distance off like seashore foam on a black beach. But before he could point this out to Florabel, her twin was gone and lost between the shining trees. «Isn’t she afraid to be out there all alone in the dark?» he interrupted, and with a gesture indicated where Idabel had disappeared.
«That child is afraid of nothing,» stated Florabel flatly. «Don’t you fret none over her; she’ll catch up when she gets to feeling like it.»
«But out in those woods. . .»
«Oh, sister takes her notions and there’s no sense in asking why. We were born twins, like I told you, but Mama says the Lord always sends something bad with the good.» Florabel yawned and leaned back, the long hair sprawling about her shoulders.
