He was lacing up his shoes when he spied the bluejay feather. It was floating above his head, as if held by a spider’s thread. He plucked it out of the air, carried it to the bureau, and deposited it in the lacquered box, which was lined with red plush; it also occurred to him that this would be a good place to store Sam Radclif’s bullet. Joel loved any kind of souvenir, and it was his nature to keep and catalogue trifles. He’d had many grand collections, and it pained him sorely that Ellen persuaded him to leave them in New Orleans. There had been magazine photos and foreign coins, books and no-two-alike rocks, and a wonderful conglomeration he’d labeled simply Miscellany: the feather and bullet would’ve made good items for that. But maybe Ellen would mail his stuff on, or maybe he could start all over again, maybe. . .
There was a rap at the door.
It was his father, of that he was sure. It must be. And what should he say: hello, Dad, Father, Mr Sansom? Howdyado, hello? Hug, or shake hands, or kiss? oh why hadn’t he brushed his teeth, why couldn’t he find the Major’s suitcase and a clean shirt? He whipped a bow into his shoelace, called, «Yeah?» and straightened up erect, prepared to make the best, most manly impression possible.
The door opened. Miss Amy, her gloved hand cradled, waited on the threshold; she nodded sweetly, and, as she advanced, Joel noticed the vague suggestion of a mustache fuzzing her upper lip.
«Good morning,» he said, and, smiling, held out his hand. He was of course disappointed, but somehow relieved, too. She stared at his outstretched hand, a puzzled look contracting her puny face. She shook her head, and skirted past him to a window where she stood with her back turned. «It’s after twelve,» she said.
Joel’s smile felt suddenly stiff and awkward. He hid his hands in his pockets.
«Such a pity you arrived last night at so late an hour: Randolph had planned a merrier welcome.» Her voice had a weary, simpering tone; it struck the ear like the deflating whoosh of a toy balloon. «But it’s just as well, the poor child suffers with asthma, you know: had. a wretched attack yesterday. He’ll be ever so peeved I haven’t let him know you’re here, but I think it best he stay in his room, at least till supper.»
Joel rummaged around for something to say. He recalled Sam Radclif having spoken of a cousin, and one of the twins, Florabel, of a Cousin Randolph. At any rate, from the way she talked, he supposed this person to be a kid near his own age.
«Randolph is our first cousin, and a great admirer of yours,» she said, turning to face him. The hard sunshine emphasized the pallor of her skin, and her tiny eyes, now fixing him shrewdly, were alert. There was lack of focus in her face, as though, beneath the uningratiating veneer of fatuous refinement,
another personality, quite different, was demanding attention; the lack of focus gave her, at unguarded moments, a panicky, dismayed expression, and when she spoke it was as if she were never precisely certain what every word signified. «Have you money left from the check my husband sent Mrs. Kendall?»
«About a dollar, I guess,» he said, and reluctantly offered his change purse. «It cost a good bit to stay at that café.»
«Please, it’s yours,» she said. «I was merely interested in whether you are a wise, thrifty boy.» She appeared suddenly irritated. «Why are you so fidgety? Must you use the bathroom?»
«Oh, no.» He felt all at once as though he’d wet his pants in public. «Oh, no.»
«Unfortunately, we haven’t modern plumbing facilities. Randolph is opposed to contrivances of that sort. However,» and she nodded toward the washstand, «you’ll find a chamber pot in there. . . in the compartment below.»
«Yes’m,» said Joel, mortified.
«And of course the house has never been wired for electricity. We have candles and lamps; they both draw bugs, but which would you prefer?»
«Whichever you’ve got the most of,» he said, really wanting candles, for they brought to mind the St. Deval Street Secret Nine, a neighborhood detective club of which he’d been both treasurer and Official Historian. And he recalled club get-togethers where tall candles, snitched from the five ‘n’ dime, flamed in Coca-Cola bottles, and how Exalted Operative Number One, Sammy Silverstein, had used for a gavel an old cow bone.
She glanced at the firepoker which had rolled halfway under a wing chair. «Would you mind picking that up and putting it over by the hearth? I was in here earlier,» she explained, while he carried out her order, «and a bird flew in the window; such a nuisance: you weren’t disturbed?»
Joel hesitated. «I thought I heard something,» he said. «It woke me up.»
«Well, twelve hours sleep should be sufficient.» She lowered herself into the chair, and crossed her toothpick legs; her shoes were low-heeled and white, like those worn by nurses. «Yes, the morning’s gone and everything’s all hot again. Summer is so unpleasant.» Now despite her impersonal manner, Joel was not antagonized, just a little uncomfortable. Females in Miss Amy’s age bracket, somewhere between forty-five and fifty, generally displayed a certain tenderness toward him, and he took their sympathy for granted; if, as had infrequently happened, this affection was withheld, he knew with what ease it could be guaranteed: a smile, a wistful glance, a courtly compliment: «I want to say how pretty I think your hair is: anice color.»
The bribe received no clear-cut appreciation, therefore: «And how much I like my room.»
And this time he hit his mark. «I’ve always considered it the finest room in the house. Cousin Randolph was born here: in that very bed. And Angela Lee. . . Randolph’s mother: a beautiful woman, originally from Memphis. . . died here, oh, not many years ago. We’ve never used it since.» She perked her head suddenly, as if to hear some distant sound; her eyes squinted, then closed altogether. But presently she relaxed and eased back into the chair. «I suppose you’ve noticed the view?»
Joel confessed that no, he hadn’t, and went obligingly to a window. Below, under a fiery surface of sun waves, a garden, a jumbled wreckage of zebrawood and lilac, elephant-ear plant and weeping willow, the lace-leafed limp branches shimmering delicately, and dwarfed cherry trees, like those in oriental prints, sprawled raw and green in the noon heat. It was not a result of simple neglect, this tangled oblong area, but rather the outcome, it appeared, of someone having, in a riotous moment, scattered about it a wild assortment of seed.
Grass and bush and vine and flower were all crushed together. Massive chinaberry and waterbay formed a rigidly enclosing wall. Now at the far end, opposite the house, was an unusual sight: like a set of fingers, a row of five white fluted columns lent the garden the primitive, haunted look of a lost ruin: Judas vine snaked up their toppling slenderness, and a yellow tabby cat was sharpening its claws against the middle column. Miss Amy, having risen, now stood beside him. She was an inch or so shorter than Joel.
«In ancient history class at school, we had to draw pictures of some pillars like those. Miss Radinsky said mine were the best, and she put them on the bulletin board,» he bragged.
«The pillars. . . Randolph adores them, too; they were once part of the old side porch,» she told him in a reminiscing voice. «Angela Lee was a young bride, just down from Memphis, and I was a child younger than you. In the evening we would sit on the side porch, sipping cherryade and listen to the crickets and wait for the moonrise. Angela Lee crocheted a shawl for me: you must see it sometime, Randolph uses it in his room as a tablescarf: a waste and a shame.» She spoke so quietly it was as though she intended only herself to hear.
«Did the porch just blow away?» asked Joel.
«Burned,» she said, rubbing a clear circle on the dusty glass with her gloved hand. «It was in December, the week before Christmas, and at a time when there was no man on the place but Jesus Fever, and he was even then very old. No one knows how the fire started or ended; it simply rose out of nothing, burned away the dining room, the music room, the library. . . and went out. No one knows.»
«And this garden is where the part that burned up was?» said Joel. «Gee, it must’ve been an awful big house.»
She said: «There, by the willows and goldenrod. . . that is the site of the music room where the dances were held; small dances, to be sure, for there were few around here Angela Lee cared to entertain.
