unfurnished. At the left was an archway, and a large crowded parlor yawned dimly beyond; to the right
hung a curtain of lavender velvet that gleamed in various rubbed places like frozen dew on winter grass.
She pushed through the parted folds. Another hall, another door.
The kitchen was empty. Joel sat down in a cane-bottom chair at a large table spread with
checkered oilcloth, while Miss Amy went out on the backstops and stood there calling, «Yoo hoo,
Missouri, yoo hoo,» like an old screech owl.
A rusty alarm clock, lying face over on the table, ticktucked, ticktucked. The kitchen was
fair-sized, but shadowed, for there was a single window, and by it the furry leaves of a fig tree met
darkly; also, the planked walls were the somber bluegray of an overcast sky, and the stove, a
woodburning relic with a fire pulsing in it now, was black with a black chimney flute rising to the low
ceiling. Worn linoleum covered the floor, as it had in Ellen’s kitchen, but this was all that reminded Joel of
home.
And then, sitting alone in the quiet kitchen, he was taken with a terrible idea: what if his father had
seen him already? Indeed, had been spying on him ever since he arrived, was, in fact, watching him at this
very moment? An old house like this would most likely be riddled with hidden passages, and picture-eyes
that were not eyes at all, but peepholes. And his father thought: that runt is an imposter; my son would be
taller and stronger and handsomer and smarter-looking. Suppose he’d told Miss Amy: give the little faker
something to eat and send him on his way. And dear sweet Lord, where would he go? Off to foreign
lands where he’d set himself up as an organ grinder with a little doll-clothed monkey, or a blind-boy
street singer, or a beggar selling pencils.
«Confound it, Missouri, why can’t you learn to light in one place longer than five seconds?»
«I gotta chop the wood, Aint’ I gotta chop the wood?»
«Don’t sass me.»
«I ain’t sassin nobody, Miss Amy.»
«If that isn’t sass, what is it?»
»Whew!»
Up the steps they came, and through the back screen door, Miss Amy, vexation souring her
white face, and a graceful Negro girl toting a load of kindling which she dropped in a crib next to the
stove. The Major’s suitcase, Joel saw, was jammed behind this crib.
Smoothing the fingers of her silk glove, Miss Amy said: «Missouri belongs to Jesus Fever; she’s
his grandchild.»
«Delighted to make your acquaintance,» said Joel, in his very best dancing-class style.
«Me, too,» rejoined the colored girl, going about her business. «Welcome to,» she dropped a
frying pan, «the Landin.»
«If we aren’t more careful,» stage-whispered Miss Amy, «we’re liable to find ourselves in serious
difficulty. All this racket: Randolph will have a conniption.»
«Sometime I get so tired,» mumbled Missouri.
«She’s a good cook. . . when she feels like it,» said Miss Amy. «You’ll be taken care of. But don’t
stuff, we have early supper on Sundays.»
Missouri said: «You comin to Service, Ma’am?»
«Not today,» Miss Amy replied distractedly. «He’s worse, much worse.»
Missouri placed the pan on a rack and nodded knowingly. Then, looking square at Joel: «We
countin on you, young fella.»
It was like the exasperating code-dialogue which, for the benefit and bewilderment of outsiders,
had often passed between members of the St. Deval Street Secret Nine.
«Missouri and Jesus hold their own prayer meeting Sunday afternoons,» explained Miss Amy.
«I plays the accordion and us sings,» said Missouri. «It’s a whole lota fun.»
But Joel, seeing Miss Amy was preparing to depart, ignored the colored girl, for there were
certain urgent matters he wanted settled. «About my father. . .»
«Yes?» Miss Amy paused in the doorway.
Joel felt tongue-tied. «Well, I’d like to. . . to see him,» he finished lamely.
She fiddled with the doorknob. «He isn’t well, you know,» she said. «I don’t think it advisable he
see you just yet; it’s so hard for him to talk.» She made a helpless gesture. «But if you want, I’ll ask.»
With a cut of cornbread, Joel mopped bone-dry the steaming plate of fried eggs and grits,
sopping rich with sausage gravy, that Missouri had set before him.
«It sure do gimme pleasure to see a boy relish his vittels,» she said. «Only don’t spec no refills
cause I gotta pain lickin my back like to kill me: didn’t sleep a blessed wink last night; been sufferin with
this pain off and on since I’m a wee child, and done took enough medicine to float the whole entire
United States Navy: ain’t nona it done me a bita good nohow. There was a witch woman lived a piece
down the road (Miz Gus Hulie) usta make a fine magic brew, and that helped some. Poor white lady.
Mis Gus Hulie. Met a terrible accident: fell into an ol Injun grave and was too feeble for to climb out.»
Tall, powerful, barefoot, graceful, soundless, Missouri Fever was like a supple black cat as she paraded
serenely about the kitchen, the casual flow of her walk beautifully sensuous and haughty. She was
slant-eyed, and darker than the charred stove; her crooked hair stood straight on end, as if she’d seen a
ghost, and her lips were thick and purple. The length of her neck was something to ponder upon, for she
was almost a freak, a human giraffe, and Joel recalled photos, which he’d scissored once from the pages
of aNational Geographic, of curious African ladies with countless silver chokers stretching their necks
to improbable heights. Though she wore no silver bands, naturally, there was a sweat-stained blue
polka-dot bandanna wrapped round the middle of her soaring neck. «Papa-daddy and me’s countin on
you for our Service,» she said, after filling two coffee cups and mannishly straddling a chair at the table.
«We got our own little place backa the garden, so you scoot over later on, and we’ll have us a real good
ol time.»
«I’ll come if I can, but this being my first day and all, Dad will most likely expect me to visit with
him,» said Joel hopefully.
Missouri emptied her coffee into a saucer, blew on it, dumped it back into the cup, sucked up a
swallow, and smacked her lips. «This here’s the Lord’s day,» she announced. «You believe in Him? You
got faith in His healin power?»
Joel said: «I go to church.»
«Now that ain’t what I’m speaking of. Take for instance, when you thinks bout the Lord, what is
it passes in your mind?»
«Oh, stuff,» he said, though actually, whenever he had occasion to remember that a God in
heaven supposedly kept his record, one thing he thought of was money: quarters his mother had given
him for each Bible stanza memorized, dimes diverted from the Sunday School collection plate to
Gabaldoni’s Soda Fountain, the tinkling rain of coins as the cashiers of the church solicited among the
congregation. But Joel didn’t much like God, for He had betrayed him too many times. «Just stuff like
saying my prayers.»
«When I thinks bout Him, I thinks bout what I’m gonna do when Papadaddy goes to his rest,»
said Missouri, and rinsed her mouth with a big swallow of coffee. «Well, I’m gonna spread my wings and
fly way to some swell city up north like Washington, D.C.»
«Aren’t you happy here?»
«Honey, there’s things you too young to unnerstand.»
«I’m thirteen,» he declared. «And you’d be surprised how much I know.»
«Shoot, boy, the country’s just fulla folks what knows everythin, and don’t unnerstand nothin, just
fullofem,» she said, and began to prod her upper teeth: she had a flashy gold tooth, and it occurred to
Joel that the prodding was designed for attracting his attention to it. «Now one reason is, I get lonesome:
what I all the time say is, you ain’t got no notion what lonesome is till you stayed a spell at the Landin.
And there ain’t no mens round here I’m innerested in, leastwise not at the present: one time there was this
mean buzzard name of Keg, but he did a crime to me and landed hisself on the chain gang, which is
sweet justice considerin the lowdown kinda trash he was. I’m only a girl of fourteen when he did this bad
thing to me.» A fist-like knot of flies, hovering over a sugar jar, dispersed every whichaway as she swung
an irritated hand. «Yessir, Keg Brown, that’s the name he go by.» With a fingertip she shined her gold
tooth to a brighter luster while her slanted eyes scrutinized Joel; these eyes were like wild foxgrapes, or
two discs of black porcelain, and they looked out intelligently from their almond slits. «I gotta longin for
city life poisonin my blood cause I was brung up in St. Louis till Papadaddy fetched me here for to nurse
him in his dyin days. Papadaddy was past ninety then, and they say he ain’t long for this world, so I
come. That be thirteen year ago, and now it look to me like Papadaddy gonna outlive Methusaleh. Make
no mistake, I love Papadaddy, but when he gone I sure aimin to light out for Washington, D.C., or
Boston, Coneckikut. And that’s what I thinks bout when I thinks bout God.»
«Why not New Orleans?» said Joel. «There are all kinds of good-looking fellows in New
Orleans.»
«Aw, I ain’t studyin no New Orleans. It ain’t only the mens, honey: I wants to be where they got
snow, and not all this sunshine. I wants to walk around in snow up to my hips: watch it come outa the sky
in gret big globs. Oh, pretty. . . pretty. You ever see the snow?»
Rather breathlessly, Joel lied and claimed that he most certainly had; it was a pardonable
deception, for he had a great yearning to see bona fide snow: next to owning the Koh-i-noor diamond,
that was his ultimate secret wish. Sometimes, on flat boring afternoons, he’d squatted on the curb of St.
Deval Street and daydreamed silent
