Dolly said, “Have a piece of cake, Riley,” and he asked did we always have picnics this early in the day? then went on to say he considered it a fine idea: “Like swimming at night,” he said. “I come down here while it’s still dark, and go swimming in the river. Next time you have a picnic, call out so I’ll know you’re here.”
“You are welcome any morning,” said Dolly, raising her veil. “I daresay we will be here for some while.”
Riley must have thought it a curious invitation, but he did not say so. He produced a package of cigarettes and passed it around; when Catherine took one, Dolly said: “Catherine Creek, you’ve never touched tobacco in your life.” Catherine allowed as to how she may have been missing something: “It must be a comfort, so many folks speak in its favor; and Dollyheart, when you get to be our age you’ve got to look for comforts.” Dolly bit her lip; “Well, I don’t suppose there’s any harm,” she said, and accepted a cigarette herself.
There are two things that will drive a boy crazy (according to Mr. Hand, who caught me smoking in the lavatory at school) and I’d given up one of them, cigarettes, two years before: not because I thought it would make me crazy, but because I thought it was imperiling my growth. Actually, now that I was a normal size, Riley was no taller than me, though he seemed to be, for he moved with the drawn-out cowboy awkwardness of a lanky man.
So I took a cigarette, and Dolly, gushing uninhaled smoke, said she thought we might as well all be sick together; but no one was sick, and Catherine said next time she would like to try a pipe, as they smelled so good. Whereupon Dolly volunteered the surprising fact that Verena smoked a pipe, something I’d never known: “I don’t know whether she does any more, but she used to have a pipe and a can of Prince Albert with half an apple cut up in it. But you musn’t tell that,” she added, suddenly aware of Riley, who laughed aloud.
Usually, glimpsed on the street or seen passing in his car, Riley wore a tense, trigger-tempered expression; but there in the China tree he seemed relaxed: frequent smiles enriched his whole face, as though he wanted at least to be friendly, if not friends. Dolly, for her part, appeared to be at ease and enjoying his company. Certainly she was not afraid of him: perhaps it was because we were in the tree-house, and the tree-house was her own.
“Thank you for the squirrels, sir,” she said, as he prepared to leave. “And don’t forget to come again.”
He swung himself to the ground. “Want a ride? My car’s up by the cemetery.”
Dolly told him: “That’s kind of you; but really we haven’t any place to go.”
Grinning, he lifted his gun and aimed it at us; and Catherine yelled: You ought to be whipped, boy; but he laughed and waved and ran, his bird dog barking, booming ahead. Dolly said gaily, “Let’s have a cigarette,” for the package had been left behind.
BY THE TIME RILEY REACHED town the news was roaring in the air like a flight of bees: how we’d run off in the middle of the night. Though neither Catherine nor I knew it, Dolly had left a note, which Verena found when she went for her morning coffee. As I understand it, this note simply said that we were going away and that Verena would not be bothered by us any more. She at once rang up her friend Morris Ritz at the Lola Hotel, and together they traipsed off to rouse the sheriff.
It was Verena’s backing that had put the sheriff into office; he was a fast-stepping, brassy young fellow with a brutal jaw and the bashful eyes of a cardsharp; his name was Junius Candle (can you believe it? the same Junius Candle who is a Senator today!). A searching party of deputies was gathered; telegrams were hurried off to sheriffs in other towns. Many years later, when the Talbo estate was being settled, I came across the handwritten original of this telegram—composed, I believe, by Dr. Ritz. Be on lookout for following persons traveling together.
Dolly Augusta Talbo, white, aged 60, yellow grayish hair, thin, height 5 feet 3, green eyes, probably insane but not likely to be dangerous, post description bakeries as she is cake eater. Catherine Creek, Negro, pretends to be Indian, age about 60, toothless, confused speech, short and heavy, strong, likely to be dangerous. Collin Talbo Fenwick, white, age 16, looks younger, height 5 feet 7, blond, gray eyes, thin, bad posture, scar at corner of mouth, surly natured. All three wanted as runaways. They sure haven’t run far, Riley said in the post office; and postmistress Mrs. Peters rushed to the telephone to say Riley Henderson had seen us in the woods below the cemetery.
While this was happening we were peaceably setting about to make the tree-house cozy. From Catherine’s satchel we took a rose and gold scrapquilt, and there was a deck of Rook cards, soap, rolls of toilet paper, oranges and lemons, candles, a frying pan, a bottle of blackberry wine, and two shoeboxes filled with food: Catherine bragged that she’d robbed the pantry of everything, leaving not even a biscuit for That One’s breakfast.
Later, we all went to the creek and bathed our feet and faces in the cold water. There are as many creeks in River Woods as there are veins in a leaf: clear, crackling, they crook their way down into the little river that crawls through the woods like a green alligator. Dolly looked a sight, standing in the water with her winter suit-skirt hiked up and her veil pestering her like a cloud of gnats. I asked her, Dolly, why are you wearing that veil? and she said, “But isn’t it proper for ladies to wear veils when they go traveling?”
Returning to the tree, we made a delicious jar of orangeade and talked of the future. Our assets were: forty-seven dollars in cash, and several pieces of jewelry, notably a gold fraternity ring Catherine had found in the intestines of a hog while stuffing sausages. According to Catherine, forty-seven dollars would buy us bus tickets anywhere: she knew somebody who had gone all the way to Mexico for fifteen dollars. Both Dolly and I were opposed to Mexico: for one thing, we didn’t know the language. Besides, Dolly said, we shouldn’t venture outside the state, and wherever we went it ought to be near a forest, otherwise how would we be able to make the dropsy cure? “To tell you the truth, I think we should set up right here in River Woods,” she said, gazing about speculatively.
“In this old tree?” said Catherine. “Just put that notion out of your head, Dollyheart.” And then: “You recall how we saw in the paper where a man bought a castle across the ocean and brought it every bit home with him? You recall that? Well, we maybe could put my little house on a wagon and haul it down here.” But, as Dolly pointed out, the house belonged to Verena, and was therefore not ours to haul away. Catherine answered: “You wrong, sugar.
If you feed a man, and wash his clothes, and born his children, you and that man are married, that man is yours. If you sweep a house, and tend its fires and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing this, then you and that house are married, that house is yours. The way I see it, both those houses up there belong to us: in the eyes of God, we could put That One right out.”
I had an idea: down on the river below us there was a forsaken houseboat, green with the rust of water, half-sunk; it had been the property of an old man who made his living catching catfish, and who had been run out of town after applying for a certificate to marry a fifteen-year-old colored girl. My idea was, why shouldn’t we fix up the old houseboat and live there?
Catherine said that if possible she hoped to spend the rest of her life on land: “Where the Lord intended us,” and she listed more of His intentions, one of these being that trees were meant for monkeys and birds. Presently she went silent and, nudging us, pointed in amazement down to where the woods opened upon the field of grass.
There, stalking toward us, solemnly, stiffly, came a distinguished party: Judge Cool, the Reverend and Mrs. Buster, Mrs. Macy Wheeler; and leading them, Sheriff Junius Candle, who wore high-laced boots and had a pistol flapping on his hip. Sunmotes lilted around them like yellow butterflies, brambles brushed their starched town clothes, and Mrs. Macy Wheeler, frightened by a vine that switched against her leg, jumped back, screeching: I laughed.
And, hearing me, they looked up at us, an expression of perplexed horror collecting on some of their faces: it was as though they were visitors at a zoo who had wandered accidentally into one of
