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     Truman Capote. The grass harp


     For miss Sook Faulk
     In memory of affections deep and true

        One

     When was it that  first  I  heard of  the grass  harp? Long  before the
autumn we lived in the  China tree; an earlier autumn then; and of course it
was Dolly who told me, no one else would have known to call it that, a grass
harp.
     If on  leaving  town you  take the church  road you  soon  will pass  a
glaring hill of bonewhite slabs and brown burnt flowers: this is the Baptist
cemetery. Our people,  Talbos, Fenwicks,  are buried there;  my mother  lies
next  to  my father, and the graves of kinfolk, twenty or more,  are  around
them like the  prone roots of a stony tree. Below the  hill grows a field of
high Indian grass that changes color with the seasons: go  to see it in  the
fall, late September, when it  has gone red  as sunset, when scarlet shadows
like firelight breeze over it and the autumn  winds strum on its dry  leaves
sighing human music, a harp of voices.
     Beyond the field begins the darkness of River Woods.  It must have been
on one of those  September  days when  we were there  in the woods gathering
roots that Dolly said: Do you hear? that is the grass harp, always telling a
story-it knows the stories of all the people on  the hill, of all the people
who ever lived, and when we are dead it will tell ours, too.
     After my mother  died, my father, a traveling man, sent me to live with
his cousins, Verena and Dolly Talbo, two unmarried  ladies who were sisters.
Before that,  I'd not ever been allowed into their house. For reasons no one
ever got quite  clear, Verena  and my  father did  not speak. Probably  Papa
asked  Verena to lend him  some money, and she  refused;  or perhaps she did
make the loan, and he never returned it You can be sure that the trouble was
over  money,  because  nothing else would have  mattered  to  them so  much,
especially  Verena,  who was the richest person in town. The drugstore,  the
drygoods store, a filling station,  a grocery, an office building,  all this
was hers, and the earning of it had not made her an easy woman.
     Anyway, Papa said he would  never set foot inside  her house.  He  told
such terrible things about the Talbo ladies.  One of the stories  he spread,
that Verena  was a morphodyte, has  never  stopped  going  around,  and  the
ridicule he heaped on Miss Dolly Talbo was too much even  for my mother: she
told him he ought to be ashamed, mocking anyone so gentle and harmless.
     I think they  were very much in love, my mother and father. She used to
cry every time he went away to sell his frigidaires. He married her when she
was  sixteen; she did not live to be thirty. The  afternoon she  died  Papa,
calling her name, tore off all his clothes and ran out naked into the yard.
     It was  the  day after the funeral that  Verena came to  the  house.  I
remember the terror of watching her move up the walk,  a whip-thin, handsome
woman with shingled peppersalt hair, black, rather  virile  eyebrows  and  a
dainty cheekmole. She opened the front door and walked right into the house.
Since  the  funeral.  Papa had been  breaking  things,  not with  fury,  but
quietly, thoroughly: he would amble into the parlor, pick up a china figure,
muse over it a moment, then  throw it against the wall. The floor and stairs
were littered with cracked glass, scattered silverware;  a ripped nightgown,
one of my mother's, hung over the banister.
     Verena's eyes  flicked over the  debris.  "Eugene, I want  a  word with
you,"  she  said in that  hearty,  coldly exalted voice,  and Papa answered:
"Yes, sit down, Verena. I thought you would come."
     That afternoon Dolly's friend  Catherine Creek came over  and packed my
clothes, and Papa drove me to the impressive,  shadowy house on Talbo  Lane.
As I was getting out of the car he tried to hug  me, but I was scared of him
and wriggled out of his arms. I'm sorry now that we did not hug each  other.
Because a few days later, on his  way up to Mobile, his car skidded and fell
fifty  feet  into the Gulf.  When I saw him again  there were silver dollars
weighting down his eyes.
     Except  to remark that I was small for my age, a  runt, no one had ever
paid any attention  to me; but now people pointed me out, and said wasn't it
sad? that poor little Collin Fenwickl I tried to look pitiful because I knew
it pleased people: every man in town must have treated me  to a Dixie Cup or
a box of Crackerjack, and at school I got good grades for the first time. So
it was a long while before I calmed down enough to notice Dolly Talbo.
     And when I did I fell in love.
     Imagine what it must have been for her when first I came to  the house,
a loud and prying boy of eleven. She skittered at the sound  of my footsteps
or, if there  was no  avoiding me, folded like the  petals of shy-lady fern.
She was one of those people who can disguise themselves  as an object in the
room, a  shadow in the  comer, whose presence is a delicate  happening.  She
wore the quietest shoes, plain virginal dresses with hems  that  touched her
ankles. Though older than her  sister, she seemed someone  who, like myself,
Verena had adopted. Pulled and  guided by the gravity of Verena's planet, we
rotated separately in the outer spaces of the house.
     In  the  attic,  a  slipshod  museum spookily peopled with  old display
dummies from Verena's drygoods store, there were many  loose boards, and  by
inching these I could look down into  almost any room.  Dolly's room, unlike
the rest of the house, which bulged with fat dour furniture,  contained only
a bed, a bureau, a chair: a nun might have lived there, except for one fact:
the walls,  everything was painted  an  outlandish  pink, even the floor was
this color. Whenever I spied on Dolly, she usually  was to be seen doing one
of two things: she was standing in front of a mirror snipping with a pair of
garden shears her yellow and  white, already brief hair; either that, or she
was writing in pencil on a pad of coarse  Kress  paper. She kept wetting the
pencil on the tip of her tongue, and sometimes she spoke aloud a sentence as
she put it down: Do not touch sweet  foods like candy and salt will kill you
for  certain.  Now I'll tell you, she was writing letters. But at first this
correspondence was a puzzle to me. After all, her only  friend was Catherine
Creek, she saw no one else and she never left the house, except once  a week
when  she  and Catherine  went  to  River  Woods  where  they  gathered  the
ingredients of a dropsy remedy Dolly  brewed and bottled. Later I discovered
she had customers for this medicine throughout the state, and it was to them
that her many letters were addressed.
     Verena's room, connecting with Dolly's by a passage, was rigged up like
an office. There was a rolltop desk, a library  of ledgers, filing cabinets.
After supper, wearing  a green eyeshade, she would  sit at her desk totaling
figures and turning the pages of her ledgers until even the street-lamps had
gone out. Though on diplomatic, political terms with many people, Verena had
no close friends  at all. Men were afraid of her, and she herself seemed  to
be afraid of  women.  Some years  before she had  been greatly attached to a
blonde jolly  girl called Maudie Laura Murphy, who  worked for a bit  in the
post office here and who finally married a liquor  salesman from St.  Louis.
Verena had been very bitter over this and said publicly that the man was  no
account.  It was therefore  a surprise when,  as a wedding present, she gave
the  couple a  honeymoon  trip to the  Grand  Canyon. Maudie and her husband
never came back; they opened a filling station nearby Grand Canyon, and from
time  to time sent Verena Kodak snapshots of themselves. These pictures were
a pleasure and a grief. There were nights when she never opened her ledgers,
but sat with her forehead leaning  in her hands, and  the pictures spread on
the desk.  After she had  put them away, she would pace around the room with
the  lights turned off, and  presently there  would come a hurt rusty crying
sound as though she'd tripped and fallen in the dark.
     That part  of the attic from  which I could have looked  down  into the
kitchen was fortified against me, for it was stacked with trunks  like bales
of cotton.  At that time  it was the kitchen I most wanted to spy upon; this
was the real living room of the house, and Dolly spent most of the day there
chatting with her friend Catherine Creek.  As a  child, an orphan, Catherine
Creek  had been hired out  to Mr.  Uriah  Talbo,  and they had all  grown up
together, she and the  Talbo sisters,  there on the old farm that has  since
become a railroad depot Dolly she called Dollyheart, but  Verena  she called
That  One.  She lived in the back yard in a  tin-roofed silvery little house
set among sunflowers  and trellises of butterbean vine. She claimed to be an
Indian, which  made  most  people wink,  for she was dark as the  angels  of
Africa. But for all I know it may have been true: certainly she dressed like
an  Indian. That  is, she had  a string of turquoise beads,  and wore enough
rouge to  put out your eyes; it shone on her cheeks like votive  taillights.
Most  of  her teeth were gone;  she kept  her  jaws  jacked  up with  cotton
wadding,  and Verena would  say Dammit Catherine,  since  you  can't  make a
sensible sound why in creation won't you go down to Doc Crocker and let  him
put some teeth in your head? It was  true that  she was hard to  understand:
Dolly was the only  one  who could fluently translate her  friend's muffled,
mumbling noises. It was enough for Catherine that Dolly understood her: they
were always together and everything they had to say they said to each other:
bending my ear to an attic beam I could hear the tantalizing tremor of their
voices flowing like sapsyrup through the old wood.
     To  reach  the  attic, you climbed a ladder in  the  linen closet,  the
ceiling of  which  was a trapdoor. One day, as I started up, I saw that  the
trapdoor  was  swung  open  and,  listening, heard  above  me  an idle sweet
humming, like  the  pretty sounds small  girls make  when  they are  playing
alone.  I would have turned back, but the humming stopped, and a voice said:
"Catherine?"
     "Collin," I answered, showing myself.
     The  snowflake of Dolly's  face  held its shape;  for once  she did not
dissolve. "This  is where you come-we wondered," she  said, her voice  frail
and crinkling as tissue paper. She had the eyes of a gifted person, kindled,
transparent eyes, luminously green as mint jelly:  gazing  at me through the
attic twilight they admitted, timidly, that I meant her  no  harm. "You play
games up here-in the attic? I told Verena you  would be lonesome." Stooping,
she  rooted around in the depths of a barrel. "Here now," she said, "you can
help me by looking in that other barrel. I'm hunting for a coral castle; and
a  sack of  pearl pebbles, all  colors. I think Catherine  will like that, a
bowl of  goldfish,  don't you? For  her birthday. We used to have a bowl  of
tropical fish-devils,  they were: ate each  other up. But I remember when we
bought them; we  went all the  way to Brew-ton,  sixty  miles.  I never went
sixty miles before, and I don't know that I ever will again. Ah see, here it
is, the castle." Soon afterwards I found the pebbles; they were like kernels
of corn or candy,  and: "Have a piece of candy," I said, offering  the sack.
"Oh thank you," she said, "I love a piece of candy, evea when it tastes like
a pebble."
     We were friends. Dolly and  Catherine and me. I was  eleven, then I was
sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years.
     I never brought anyone home with me, and I never wanted to. Once I took
a girl to the picture show, and on the way  home she asked couldn't she come
in for a  drink  of water. If I'd thought she was  really thirsty I would've
said affl right;  but I knew she was faking just so she could see inside the
house  the  way people were always wanting to, and so I told her  she better
wait until she got home. She said: "All the world knows  Dolly Talbo's gone,
and  you're gone too." I liked that girl well enough, but I gave her a shove
anyway, and she  said her brother  would  fix my  wagon, which he did: right
here at the comer of my mouth I've  still got a scar where he  hit me with a
Coca-Cola bottle.
     I know: Dolly,  they said, was Verena's cross, and said, too, that more
went on in the house on Talbo Lane than  a body cared to think  about. Maybe
so. But those were the lovely years.
     On  winter  afternoons, as soon  as  I came in  from  school, Catherine
hustled open a  jar of preserves,  while Dolly put a foot-high pot of coffee
on the  stove and pushed a pan of bis"  cuits into  the oven; and the  oven,
opening, would  let  out a hot vanilla fragrance, for  Dolly, who lived  off
sweet  foods,  was always baking a  pound cake, raisin bread,  some kind  of
cookie or fudge: never would touch a vegetable, and the only meat she  liked
was the chicken brain, a pea-sized thing  gone before you've tasted it. What
with a woodstove  and an open fireplace,  the  kitchen was warm  as a  cow's
tongie. The nearest winter came was to frost the  windows with its zero blue
breath. If some  wizard would like  to make me a present, let  him give me a
bottle  filled  with  the voices of  that kitchen,  the  ha  ha ha and  fire
whispering, a  bottle  brimming with its buttery sugary bakery smells-though
Catherine smelled  like  a  sow  in  the spring.  It looked more like a cozy
parlor  than  a kitchen; there was a hook rug  on the floor, rocking chairs;
ranged along the walls were pictures  of kittens,  an enthusiasm of Dolly's;
there was a geranium plant that bloomed, then bloomed  again all year round,
and Catherine's goldfish, in a  bowl on the  oilcloth-covered  table, fanned
their  tails  through the  portals of  the coral castle. Sometimes we worked
jigsaw puzzles,  dividing  the  pieces  among  us,  and Catherine would hide
pieces if  she  thought  you were going to  finish  your part  of the puzzle
before she finished hers. Or they  would help with my homework;  that was  a
mess.  About  all natural  things  Dolly  was  sophisticated;  she  had  the
subterranean  intelligence of  a bee that knows where to find  the  sweetest
flower: she could tell you of a storm a day in advance, predict the fruit of
the fig tree, lead you to mushrooms and wild honey, a hidden nest  of guinea
hen eggs. She looked around  her, and felt what she  saw. But about homework
Dolly  was as ignorant as Catherine.  "America must have been called America
before Columbus  came.  It stands to  reason.  Otherwise,  how would he have
known  it was America?" And Catherine said: "That's  correct.  America is an
old  Indian word." Of the two,  Catherine was the worst: she insisted on her
infallibility, and if you did not write down  exactly what she said, she got
jumpy and spilled the coffee or something. But I never listened to her again
after  what  she said  about Lincoln: that he was part Negro and part Indian
and only a  speck white. Even  I knew  this  was  not true.  But I am  under
special obligation  to  Catherine;  if it  had not  been for her  who  knows
whether I would have grown  to  ordinary human size?  At fourteen  I was not
much bigger than  Biddy Skinner, and people told how he'd had  offers from a
circus. Catherine said don't worry yourself honey, all you need is  a little
stretching. She pulled at my arms, legs, tugged at my head as though it were
an apple latched to an unyielding bough.  But it's the truth that within two
years  she'd stretched me from four feet nine to five feet seven, and  I can
prove it by the breadknife knotches on the pantry door, for even now when so
much has gone,  when  there is  only  wind in  the  stove and winter  in the
kitchen, those growing-up scars are still there, a testimony.
     Despite  the generally beneficial effect  Dolly's medicine appeared  to
have on those who sent for it, letters once in a while came saying Dear Miss
Talbo  we  won't be needing any  more dropsy cure on  account of poor Cousin
Belle (or whoever) passed  away last week bless her soul.  Then  the kitchen
was a  mournful place; with folded  hands  and  nodding heads my two friends
bleakly recalled  the circumstances of the  case, and well, Catherine  would
say, we  did the best  we could  Dollyheart,  but the  good  Lord  had other
notions.  Verena,  too,  could  make  the  kitchen  sad,  as  she was always
introducing a new rule or enforcing an old one: do,  don't,  stop, start: it
was as though we were  clocks  she kept an eye on to see that our time jibed
with her own, and woe if we were ten minutes fast, an hour slow: Verena went
off like  a  cuckoo. That One! said Catherine, and Dolly would go  hush now!
hush now! as though to quiet not Catherine but a mutinous  inner whispering.
Verena in  her heart wanted, I think, to come into the kitchen and be a part
of it; but she  was too  like  a  lone man  in a  house full  of  women  and
children,  and the only  way she  could  make  contact  with us was  through
assertive outbursts: Dolly, get rid of that kitten, you want to aggravate my
asthma?  who left the water running in  the bathroom? which one of you broke
my umbrella? Her ugly moods sifted through the house like a sour yellow mist
That One. Hush now, hush.
     Once a week, Saturdays mostly, we went to River Woods. For these trips,
which lasted the  whole day,  Catherine fried a  chicken and deviled a dozen
eggs, and Dolly took along a chocolate layer cake  and a supply of  divinity
fudge. Thus  armed, and carrying three empty grain  sacks, we walked out the
church road  past the  cemetery and through the  field of Indian grass. Just
entering the woods there was a double-trunked China tree, really two  trees,
but  their branches  were so embraced that  you could step from one into the
other; in fact, they were bridged by a tree-house: spacious, sturdy, a model
of a tree-house, it was like a raft floating in the sea of  leaves. The boys
who built  it, provided they are still alive, must by now be very  old  men;
certainly the tree-house was fifteen or twenty years old  when  Dolly  first
found it and that was a quarter of a century before  she showed it to me. To
reach it was  easy as climbing stairs; there were  footholds of gnarled bark
and tough vines to grip; even Catherine, who was heavy  around  the hips and
complained of rheumatism, had no trouble. But Catherine felt no love for the
tree-house; she did not know, as Dolly knew  and made me know, that it was a
ship, that  to sit up there was to sail along the cloudy coastline  of every
dream. Mark my word, said Catherine, them boards are too old, them nails are
slippery as worms, gonna crack in two, gonna fall and bust our heads don't I
know it.
     Storing our provisions in the tree-house, we  separated into the woods,
each carrying a grain sack to be filled with  herbs, leaves, strange  roots.
No one, not even Catherine, knew altogether what went into the medicine, for
it was a secret Dolly kept to herself, and we were never allowed to  look at
the gatherings in her own sack: she  held tight to it,  as though inside she
had captive a  blue-haired  child, a  bewitched  prince. This was her story:
"Once, back yonder  when we  were children (Verena still with  her babyteeth
and Catherine no higher than a fence post) there were gipsies thick as birds
in  a blackberry patch-not like  now,  when  maybe you see a  few straggling
through  each year. They  came with spring: sudden,  like the dogwood  pink,
there they  were-up and down the  road and in the woods around. But  our men
hated the sight of them, and daddy, that was your great-uncle Uriah, said he
would shoot any he caught on our place. And so I  never told when  I saw (he
gipsies  taking water from  the creek or stealing old winter  pecans off the
ground.  Then one evening,  it was April and falling rain, I went out to the
cowshed where Fairybell had a new little calf; and there in the cowshed were
three gipsy women, two of them old and one of them young, and  the young one
was lying naked and twisting on the cornshucks. When they saw that I was not
afraid, that  I  was not going to run  and tell,  one of the old women asked
would I bring a light So I went to the house for a candle, and when  I  came
back the woman who had sent me was holding a red hollering baby upside  down
by  its feet, and the other woman  was milking Fairybell. I helped them wash
the baby  in the warm milk and wrap it in a scarf. Then one of the old women
took my hand  and  said: Now I am going to give you a gift by teaching you a
rhyme. It was a rhyme about evergreen bark, dragonfly fern-and all the other
things we come here  in the  woods to find: Boil  till dark and  pure if you
want a dropsy cure. In  the morning they were gone; I looked for them in the
fields and on the road; there was nothing  left of them  but the rhyme in my
head."
     Calling to each  other,  hooting like owls  loose  in  the daytime,  we
worked all morning in opposite parts  of  the  woods. Towards afternoon, our
sacks fat with  skinned bark, tender,  torn roots, we climbed  back into the
green web  of the China tree and spread the food. There was good creek water
in  a mason jar,  or if the weather was cold a thermos of hot coffee, and we
wadded leaves to wipe our chicken-stained, fudge-sticky fingers. Afterwards,
telling fortunes with flowers, speaking of sleepy things, it was  as  though
we floated through the afternoon on the raft in the tree; we belonged there,
as the sun-silvered leaves belonged, the dwelling whippoorwills.
     About once a year I go over to the house on Talbo Lane, and walk around
in  the yard. I  was there the other day, and came  across an  old iron  tub
lying  overturned  in  the weeds  like a black  fallen  meteor: Dolly-Dolly,
hovering over the tub dropping  our grain-sack gatherings into boiling water
and stirring, stirring with a sawed-off broomstick the brown as tobacco spit
brew. She did  the mixing of the medicine alone while Catherine and  I stood
watching like apprentices to a witch. We all  helped later with the bottling
of it  and, because  it produced  a fume  that  exploded ordinary corks,  my
particular  job was to roll stoppers of toilet paper.  Sales averaged around
six bottles a week, at two dollars a bottle. The money. Dolly said, belonged
to  the  three  of  us, and we spent it fast as  it  came in. We were always
sending  away  for stuff  advertised  in  magazines:  Take  Up  Woodcarving,
Parcheesi: the  game for  young and old.  Anyone Can Play A Bazooka. Once we
sent  away for a book of French lessons: it was my idea  that if  we got  to
talk  French  we would  have a secret language that Verena  or  nobody would
understand. Dolly was willing to try, but "Passez-moi  a spoon" was the best
she ever  did, and after learning "Je suis fatigue," Catherine  never opened
the book again: she said that was all she needed to know.
     Verena  often remarked  that there would  be trouble if anyone ever got
poisoned, but otherwise  she  did not show much interest in the dropsy cure.
Then one  year we totaled up and found we'd earned enough to  have to pay an
income  tax.  Whereupon  Verena began  asking questions:  money  was like  a
wildcat whose trail she stalked with a trained hunter's muffled step  and an
eye for every broken twig. What, she wanted to know, went into the medicine?
and Dolly,  flattered, almost giggling, nonetheless waved her hands and said
Well this and that, nothing special.
     Verena seemed to let  the  matter die; yet  very often,  sitting at the
supper table,  her eyes paused ponderingly  on Dolly, and once, when we were
gathered in the yard around the boiling tub, I looked up and saw Verena in a
window watching  us with  uninterrupted fixity: by then, I suppose, her plan
had taken shape, but she did not make her first move until summer.
     Twice a  year, in  January and  again in August,  Verena went on buying
trips to St. Louis or Chicago. That summer, the summer  I  reached  sixteen,
she went to Chicago and after two weeks returned accompanied by a man called
Dr. Morris  Ritz. Naturally  everyone  wondered who was Dr. Morris Ritz?  He
wore bow ties and sharp jazzy suits;  his  lips were blue  and  he had gaudy
small swerving eyes; altogether, he  looked like a mean mouse. We heard that
he lived in the  best room at the Lola Hotel and ate steak dinners at Phil's
Cafe.  On  the  streets he  strutted  along bobbing his shiny  head at every
passerby; he made  no friends, however,  and was not seen in the  company of
anyone except Verena, who never brought him to the house and never mentioned
his name until one day Catherine had the gall to say, "Miss Verena, just who
is this funny  looking little  Dr. Morris Ritz?"  and Verena, getting  white
around the mouth, replied: "Well now, he's not half so funny looking as some
I could name."
     Scandalous,  people said, the  way  Verena  was  carrying on with  that
little Jew  from Chicago: and  him twenty  years younger. The story that got
around was that they were up to something out in the old canning factory the
other side of town. As it developed, they were; but not what the gang at the
pool-hall  thought Most  any  afternoon you could see Verena and  Dr. Morris
Ritz walking out toward the canning factory, an abandoned blasted brick ruin
with jagged windows and sagging doors. For a generation no one had been near
it except school-kids who  went  there to  smoke  cigarettes  and  get naked
together. Then  early in September,  by way of a notice in  the  Courier, we
learned for  the first time that Verena had  bought the old canning factory;
but  there was no mention as to what  use she was  planning to make  of  it.
Shortly after this, Verena told Catherine to kill two chickens as Dr. Morris
Ritz was coming to Sunday dinner.
     During  the  years that  I lived there.  Dr.  Morris  Ritz was the only
person ever invited to dine  at the house on Talbo Lane. So for many reasons
it was an occasion.  Catherine  and Dolly did a spring  cleaning:  they beat
rugs, brought china from the attic, had every room smelling  of floorwax and
lemon polish.  There was to be fried  chicken and  ham, English peas,  sweet
potatoes, rolls, banana pudding,  two  kinds  of  cake and  tutti-frutti ice
cream from the drugstore.  Sunday noon Verena  came in to look at the table:
with  its  sprawling  centerpiece  of  peach-colored roses and  dense  fancy
stretches  of  silverware,  it seemed set  for a party  of twenty; actually,
there were  only two places. Verena went ahead  and set two more, and Dolly,
seeing this, said weakly Well, it was all right if  Collin wanted to  eat at
the table, but  that she was going to  stay  in the kitchen with  Catherine.
Verena put her foot down: "Don't  fool  with me. Dolly.  This  is important.
Morris  is  coming  here expressly  to  meet  you.  And  what-is  more,  I'd
appreciate it if you'd hold  up  your head: it  makes me dizzy, hanging like
that."
     Dolly  was scared to  death: she hid  in her room, and long  after  our
guest had arrived I had to be  sent  to fetch her. She was lying in the pink
bed  with a  wet washrag on her  forehead, and Catherine was  sitting beside
her.  Catherine was  all sleeked up, rouge on her cheeks  like lollipops and
her jaws  Jammed with more cotton  than ever; she said, "Honey, you ought to
get up from  there-you're going to ruin that pretty  dress." It was a calico
dress Verena had brought from  Chicago; Dolly  sat up and smoothed it,  then
immediately  lay down again:  "If  Verena knew how  sorry  I  am,"  she said
helplessly, and so I went and  told Verena that Dolly was sick.  Verena said
she'd see about that, and marched off leaving me alone in  the hall with Dr.
Morris Ritz.
     Oh he was  a hateful thing. "So you're sixteen," he said, winking first
one,  then the  other of his sassy  eyes. "And throwing it around, huh? Make
the old  lady take you next  time she goes to Chicago. Plenty of good  stuff
there to throw it at." He snapped his fingers and jiggled his  razde-dazzle,
dagger-sharp shoes as though keeping time  to some vaudeville tune: he might
have been a tapdancer or a soda-jerk, except that  he  was carrying a  brief
case, which suggested  a more serious  occupation. I  wondered what kind  of
doctor he was supposed to be; indeed, was on the point of asking when Verena
returned steering Dolly by the elbow.
     The shadows of the hall, the tapestried furniture failed to absorb her;
without raising her eyes she lifted her  hand,  and Dr. Ritz  gripped  it so
ruggedly, pumped it so hard she  went nearly off  balance. "Gee, Miss Talbo;
am I honored to meet you!" he said, and cranked his bow tie.
     We sat down to dinner, and Catherine came  around with the chicken. She
served  Verena, then Dolly, and when the  doctor's turn came  he said, 'Tell
you the  truth, the only piece of chicken I  care  about is the brain: don't
suppose you'd have that back in the kitchen, mammy?"
     Catherine looked so far down her nose  she got almost cross"  eyed; and
with  her  tongue  all  mixed up in  the cotton wadding she  told him  that,
"Dolly's took those brains on her plate."
     "These southern accents, Jesus," he said, genuinely dismayed.
     "She says I have the brains on my plate," said Dolly, her cheeks red as
Catherine's rouge. "But please let me pass them to you."
     "If you're sure you don't mind..."
     "She  doesn't mind a bit,"  said Verena.  "She only  eats sweet  things
anyway. Here, Dolly: have some banana pudding."
     Presently  Dr. Ritz commenced a  fit of sneezing.  "The flowers,  those
roses, old allergy..."
     "Oh dear," said Dolly who,  seeing  an opportunity  to  escape into the
kitchen, seized the bowl of roses: it slipped, crystal crashed, roses landed
in  gravy and gravy  landed  on  us all.  "You see," she said,  speaking  to
herself and with tears teetering in her eyes, "you see, it's hopeless."
     "Nothing is  hopeless. Dolly; sit down and finish your pudding," Verena
advised in a substantial,  chin-up  voice. "Besides, we have  a nice  little
surprise for you. Morris, show Dolly those lovely labels."
     Murmuring "No harm done," Dr. Ritz stopped  rubbing gravy splotches off
his sleeve,  and went  into  the hall,  returning  with his  brief case. His
fingers  buzzed through a sheaf of  papers, then lighted on a large envelope
which he passed down to Dolly.
     There were gum-stickers in the envelope, triangular  labels with orange
lettering: Gipsy Queen Dropsy Cure: and a fuzzy picture of a woman wearing a
bandana  and gold earloops. "First class,  huh?"  said  Dr. Ritz.  "Made  in
Chicago. A  friend of mine drew the picture: real artist, that  guy,"  Dolly
shuffled  the labels  with a puzzled, apprehensive  expression  until Verena
asked: "Aren't you pleased?"
     The labels twitched in Dolly's hands. "I'm not sure I understand."
     "Of course you do," said Verena, smiling thinly. "It's  obvious enough.
I told Morris that  old story  of yours  and  he  thought  of this wonderful
name."
     "Gipsy Queen  Dropsy Cure: very catchy, that," said  the doctor.  "Look
great in ads."
     "My  medicine?"  said Dolly, her eyes  still lowered. "But I don't need
any labels, Verena. I write my own."
     Dr. Ritz snapped his  fingers. "Say,  that's  good! We can have  labels
printed like her own handwriting: personal, see?"
     "We've  spent  enough  money already," Verena  told him  briskly;  and,
turning to Dolly, said: "Morris and I are  going up  to Washington this week
to  get  a  copyright  on  these  labels  and  register  a  patent  for  the
medicine-naming you as the inventor, naturally. Now the point is. Dolly, you
must sit down and write out a complete formula for us."
     Dolly's face loosened; and the labels scattered  on the floor, skimmed.
Leaning  her  hands  on  the table  she pushed herself  upward;  slowly  her
features came together again, she lifted her head  and looked blinkingly  at
Dr. Ritz, at Verena. "It won't do," she said quietly. She moved to the door,
put  a hand on  its handle.  "It won't  do:  because  you haven't any right,
Verena. Nor you, sir."
     I helped  Catherine clear the table: the ruined roses, the uncut cakes,
the vegetables no one had  touched. Verena  and her guest had left the house
together; from the kitchen window we watched them as  they went  toward town
nodding and shaking their heads.  Then we sliced the devil's-food  cake  and
took it into Dolly's room.
     Hush now! hush now! she said when Catherine  began light' ing into That
One.  But it was as  though  the  rebellious inner whispering  had  become a
raucous  voice,  an opponent she  must outshout: Hush now! hush  nowl  until
Catherine had to put her arms around Dolly and say hush, too.
     We got out a deck  of Rook  cards and spread them on the bed. Naturally
Catherine had to go and remember it was Sunday; she said maybe we could risk
another black mark in the  Judgment Book, but there were too many beside her
name already. After  thinking it  over,  we told fortunes  instead. Sometime
around dusk Verena came home. We heard her footsteps in the hall; she opened
the door without  knocking, and Dolly, who was in the  middle of my fortune,
tightened her  hold on my  hand.  Verena  said: "Collin, Catherine, we  will
excuse you."
     Catherine wanted to follow me up the ladder  into the attic, except she
had  on her fine clothes. So I  went alone. There  was a  good knothole that
looked straight  down into  the  pink room; but Verena was standing directly
under it, and all I could see was her hat, for she was still wearing the hat
she'd put on when she left the house. It was a straw skimmer decorated  with
a  cluster  of celluloid fruit. "Those are facts," she was  saying, and  the
fruit shivered,  shimmered in the  blue dimness. "Two  thousand for the  old
factory. Bill Tatum and four carpenters working out there at eighty cents an
hour,  seven  thousand dollars worth  of machinery already  ordered, not  to
mention what  a specialist  like  Morris Ritz  is costing. And why?  All for
youl"
     "All for me?" and Dolly sounded sad and  failing as the dusk. I saw her
shadow  as she moved from  one part of the room  to another. "You are my own
flesh, and I love you tenderly; in my heart I love you. I could prove it now
by giving you the only thing that has ever been mine: then you would have it
all.  Please,  Verena," she said, faltering, "let  this one thing  belong to
me."
     Verena switched  on  a light. "You speak of giving," and her voice  was
hard  as the sudden  bitter glare. "All these years that I've worked  like a
fieldhand; what haven't I given you? This house, that..."
     "You've  given  everything to me,"  Dolly interrupted  softly. "And  to
Catherine and to Collin. Except,  we've earned  our  way a bit: we've kept a
nice home for you, haven't we?"
     "Oh a fine home," said Verena, whipping  off her hat Her  face was full
of  blood. "You and  that gurgling fool. Has it not struck  you that I never
ask anyone into  this house? And  for a very simple reason: I'm ashamed  to.
Look what happened today."
     I could hear the breath go out of Dolly. "I'm sorry," she said faintly.
"I  am truly.  I'd always thought  there was a place for  us here, that  you
needed us somehow.  But it's  going  to be all right  now, Verena.  We'll go
away."
     Verena sighed. "Poor Dolly. Poor poor thing. Wherever would you go?"
     The  answer,  a little while in coming, was fragile as  the flight of a
moth; "I know a place."
     Later, I  waited in  bed  for Dolly to come and  kiss me goodnight.  My
room, beyond the parlor in a faraway comer of  the house, was the room where
their father, Mr. Uriah Talbo,  had  lived.  In his mad old  age, Verena had
brought him  here from the  farm, and here  he'd  died, not knowing where he
was. Though dead ten, fifteen  years, the  pee and tobacco old-man smell  of
him still saturated  the mattress, the closet,  and on a shelf in the closet
was  the  one possession he'd carried away with him from  the farm,  a small
yellow  drum: as a lad  my own age he'd marched in a Dixie regiment rattling
this little yellow drum, and  singing.  Dolly said that when she  was a girl
she'd liked to  wake up  winter mornings  and hear her  father singing as he
went about  the house building fires; after he was old, after he'd died, she
sometimes  heard his  songs in the  field of  Indian  grass. Wind, Catherine
said; and Dolly told her: But the wind  is us-it gathers and  remembers  all
our  voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and  the
fields -I've heard Papa clear as day.
     On such a  night, now that it was September, the autumn winds  would be
curving  through the taut  red grass, releasing all the  gone voices, and  I
wondered  if  he was singing  among them, the  old  man in whose  bed I  lay
falling asleep.
     Then I thought Dolly at last had come to kiss  me goodnight, for I woke
up sensing her near me in  the  room; but it  was almost  morning, beginning
light was like a flowering  foliage  at the windows,  and roosters ranted in
distant yards. "Shhh,  Collin," Dolly whispered, bending  over me.  She  was
wearing a woolen winter suit and a hat with a traveling veil that misted her
face. "I only wanted you to know where we are going."
     "To the tree-house?" I said, and thought I was talking in my sleep.
     Dolly nodded. "Just for now. Until we know  better  what our plans will
be." She could see that I was frightened, and put her hand on my forehead.
     "You and  Catherine:  but not me?" and I was jerking with a chill. "You
can't leave without me."
     The town clock was tolling; she seemed  to be waiting for it  to finish
before making up her mind. It struck five, and by the time the note had died
away I had climbed out of  bed and rushed into my clothes. There was nothing
for Dolly to say except: '"Don't forget your comb."
     Catherine met us in the yard; she was crooked over with the weight of a
brimming oilcloth satchel; her eyes  were  swollen, she had been crying, and
Dolly, oddly calm and certain of what she was doing, said it doesn't matter,
Catherine-we  can send  for  your  goldfish  once  we find a place. Verena's
closed quiet  windows  loomed above us;  we moved  cautiously past  them and
silently out  the gate. A fox terrier barked at us; but  there was no one on
the street, and  no one  saw us pass through  the town  except  a  sleepless
prisoner gazing from the jail. We reached the field  of  Indian grass at the
same  moment  as the sun. Dolly's veil flared  in the morning breeze, and  a
pair of pheasants,  nesting in our path, swept before us, their metal  wings
swiping the cockscomb-scarlet  grass. The China tree was a September bowl of
green and  greenish gold:  Gonna fall, gonna bust our heads, Catherine said,
as all around us the leaves shook down their dew.

        Two

     If it hadn't been for Riley Henderson, I doubt anyone would have known,
or at least known so soon, that we were in the tree.
     Catherine  had loaded her  oilcloth  satchel  with  the  leftovers from
Sunday dinner, and  we  were enjoying a breakfast of cake  and chicken  when
gunfire slapped through the  woods. We sat there with cake going  dry in our
mouths.  Below,  a sleek bird  dog  cantered  into view,  followed by  Riley
Henderson; he  was shouldering a shotgun and around his  neck  there  hung a
garland of bleeding squirrels whose tails were tied together.  Dolly lowered
her veil, as though to camouflage herself among the leaves.
     He  paused  not far  away, and his  wary, tanned  young face tightened;
propping his gun into position he took a roaming  aim, as if  waiting  for a
target  to  present itself. The suspense  was  too  much for  Catherine, who
shouted: "Riley Henderson, don't you dare shoot us!"
     His gun wavered, and  he spun  around, the  squirrels  swinging  like a
loose necklace. Then he saw us in the tree, and  after a moment said, "Hello
there,  Catherine  Creek; hello. Miss  Talbo.  What are  you  folks doing up
there? Wildcat chase you?"
     "Just sitting," said  Dolly promptly,  as  though  she  were afraid for
either Catherine  or I to answer. "That's a  fine mess  of squirrels  you've
got."
     'Take  a couple,"  he said, detaching two. "We had some for supper last
night and they were real tender. Wait a minute, I'll bring them up to you."
     "You don't have to do that; just leave them on the ground." But he said
ants would get at them, and hauled himself into the-tree. His blue shirt was
spotted with  squirrel  blood, and  flecks of blood glittered in  his  rough
leather-colored hair; he smelted of gunpowder, and his homely well-made face
was  brown as  cinnamon. "I'll  be  damned,  it's  a  tree-house," he  said,
pounding  his foot  as though to  test the strength of the boards. Catherine
warned him that maybe it was a tree-house now, but it  wouldn't  be for long
if he didn't stop that stamping. He said, "You build it, Collin?" and it was
with a happy  shock that  I  realized he'd called my  name: I hadn't thought
Riley Henderson knew me from dust. But I knew him, all right."
     No one  in our  town ever  had themselves so much talked about as Riley
Henderson. Older people  spoke of him with sighing  voices, and those nearer
his own  age, like myself,  were  glad to call him mean and  hard: that  was
because he would  only  let us envy him, would not let us  love him,  be his
friend.
     Anyone could have told you the facts.
     He was bom in China, where his father, a missionary, had been killed in
an  uprising. His mother was from this town, and her name was Rose; though I
never saw her myself, people say she was a beautiful woman until she started
wearing glasses;  she was rich too, having received a large inheritance from
her grandfather. When she came back from China she brought Riley, then five,
and two younger children, both girls; they lived with her unmarried brother.
Justice of the Peace Horace Holton, a meaty spinsterish man with skin yellow
as quince. In the following years Rose Henderson grew strange in  her  ways:
she  threatened  to sue Verena  for selling her  a dress that  shrank in the
wash; to punish Riley, she  made him hop on one leg around the yard reciting
the multiplication  table; otherwise, she  let  him run wild,  and  when the
Presbyterian  minister spoke to  her about  it she told  him  she hated  her
children and  wished they  were dead.  And she  must have meant it,  for one
Christmas morning she locked the  bathroom door and tried  to  drown her two
little girls  in the tub: it was said that Riley broke the door down with  a
hatchet, which seems a tall order for a boy of nine or ten, whatever he was.
Afterwards, Rose  was sent off to a place on the Gulf Coast, an institution,
and she  may still be living there, at least I've never heard that she died.
Now Riley and  his  uncle  Horace Holton couldn't get on. One night he stole
Horace's Oldsmobile  and  drove out  to the Dance-N-Dine with Mamie Curtiss:
she was fast as  lightning, and maybe five years older  than Riley, who  was
not  more than fifteen at the  time. Well,  Horace heard  they  were  at the
Dance-N-Dine and  got the  Sheriff  to drive  him  out there: he said he was
going to teach Riley a lesson and have him arrested. But Riley said Sheriff,
you're after the wrong party. Right there in front of a crowd he accused his
uncle of stealing money that belonged to Rose and that was meant for him and
his  sisters.  He offered to fight it out on the spot; and when  Horace held
back, he just  walked over and socked him in the eye. The Sheriff put  Riley
in jail. But Judge Cool,  an old friend of Rose's, began to investigate, and
sure enough it turned out Horace had been draining Rose's money into his own
account.  So  Horace  simply packed his things and  took  the  train  to New
Orleans where, a few months, later, we heard that, billed as the Minister of
Romance,  he had  a job marrying couples on  an excursion  steamer that made
moonlight cruises up the Mississippi. From then  on, Riley was his own boss.
With money borrowed against the inheritance he was coming into, he bought  a
red racy car and went  skidding  round the  countryside with every floozy in
town; the only nice  girls you ever saw in that car were his sisters-he took
them  for a  drive  Sunday afternoons, a  slow  respectable circling  of the
square. They were pretty girls, his sisters, but they  didn't have much fun,
for  he  kept  a  strict watch, and boys were  afraid  to come near them.  A
reliable colored woman  did their housework, otherwise they lived alone. One
of his sisters, Elizabeth, was  in my  class at school, and she got the best
grades, straight A's.  Riley himself had quit school;  but he was not one of
the pool-hall loafs, nor did he mix with them; he fished in the daytime,  or
went hunting; around the old Holton house  he made many improvements,  as he
was a good carpenter; and a  good mechanic,  too: for  instance,  he built a
special car hom, it  wailed like  a train-whistle,  and  in  the evening you
could hear it howling as he  roared down  the  road on his way to a dance in
another town. How  I longed for him to be my friendl and it seemed possible,
he  was  just two  years older. But I could remember  the only time he  ever
spoke to  me. Spruce in a pair of white flannels, he  was off  to a dance at
the clubhouse, and he came into Verena's drugstore, where I sometimes helped
out  on Saturday nights.  What  he  wanted  was a  package of Shadows, but I
wasn't sure  what Shadows were, so he had to come behind the counter and get
them out of the  drawer himself; and he laughed, not unkindly, though it was
worse  than  if it had been: now  he knew  I was a  fool, we would never  be
friends.
     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 Dolly-heart, 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  un-inhaled 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 musnt 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 Ukely 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
comer 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 didnt 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 the cages.
Sheriff Candle slouched forward, his hand cocked on his pistol. He stared at
us with puckered eyes, as if he were gazing straight into the sun. "Now look
here..." he began, and was cut short by Mrs.  Buster, who said: "Sheriff, we
agreed  to leave this to the  Reverend."  It  was a rule  of hers  that  her
husband, as God's  representative, should  have first say in everything. The
Reverend  Buster cleared  his  throat, and  his  hands,  as he  rubbed  them
together, were like the dry scraping feelers of an insect. "Dolly Talbo," he
said, his voice very  fine-sounding for so stringy, stunted a man,  "I speak
to you on behalf of your sister, that good grar cious woman..."
     "That she is," sang his wife, and Mrs. Macy Wheeler parroted her.
     "...who has this day received a grievous shock."
     That she has," echoed the ladies in their choir-trained voices.
     Dolly looked  at Catherine,  touched my hand, as  though  asking  us to
explain  what was meant  by  the  group  glowering  below like dogs gathered
around a tree of trapped  possums. Inadvertently, and just,  I think to have
something in her hands, she picked up one of the cigarettes Riley had left.
     "Shame on you," squalled  Mrs. Buster, tossing her tiny bald-ish  head:
those  who  called  her an  old  buzzard, and  there were several,  were not
speaking of her  character alone:  in addition  to a small vicious head, she
had high hunched shoulders and a vast body. "I say shame on you. How can you
have  come  so  far  from  God  as to  sit  up in  a  tree  like  a  drunken
Indian-sucking cigarettes like a common..."
     "Floozy," supplied Mrs. Macy Wheeler.
     "...floozy, while your sister lies in misery flat on her back."
     Maybe  they  were  right in describing Catherine as  dangerous, for she
reared  up  and said: "Preacher  lady,  don't  you  go calling  Dolly and us
floozies; 111  come down there and slap you bowlegged." Fortunately, none of
them  could understand her; if  they  had, the  sheriff might  have shot her
through  the  head: no exaggeration; and many of  the  white people in  town
would have said he did right
     Dolly  seemed stunned,  at  the same time self-possessed. You  see, she
simply  dusted her skirt and said: "Consider a moment,  Mrs. Buster, and you
will realize that we are nearer God than you-by several yards."
     "Good for you. Miss Dolly. I call that a good  answer." The man who had
spoken  was   Judge  Cool;  he  clapped  his  hands  together  and  chuckled
appreciatively. "Of course  they  are nearer  God," he said, unfazed  by the
disapproving,  sober faces around him. "They're in a tree, and we're  on the
ground."
     Mrs. Buster whirled on him. "I'd thought you were a  Christian, Charlie
Cool. My ideas of a Christian do not include  laughing at and  encouraging a
poor mad woman."
     "Mind who  you name  as  mad,  Thelma," said  the  Judge.  "That  isn't
especially Christian either."
     The Reverend Buster  opened fire.  "Answer  me this. Judge. Why did you
come with us if it wasn't to do the Lord's will in a spirit of mercy?"
     "The Lord's will?"  said the Judge  incredulously. "You dont  know what
that is any more than I do. Perhaps the Lord told these people to go live in
a  tree;  you'll admit,  at  least,  that He  never  told you  to  drag them
out-unless, of  course,  Verena Talbo is  the Lord, a theory  several of you
give credence to, eh Sheriff? No, sir, I  did  not come along to do anyone's
will  but my own: which merely means that  I felt like taking  a walk  - the
woods are very handsome at  this time of year." He picked some brown violets
and put them in his buttonhole.
     èTo  hell with all  that," began the Sheriff, and was again interrupted
by  Mrs.  Buster,  who  said that under no  circumstances would she tolerate
swearing: Will we. Reverend? and the  Reverend, backing her up, said he'd be
damned if  they would. "I'm  in  charge  here,"  the Sheriff  informed them,
thrusting his bully-boy jaw. "This is a matter for the law."
     "Whose law, Junius?" inquired Judge  Cool quietly. "Remember that I sat
in  the  courthouse twenty-seven years,  rather  a longer  time than  you've
lived. Take care. We  have no legal right  whatever to  interfere  with Miss
Dolly."
     Undaunted, the Sheriff hoisted himself a little into  the  tree. "Let's
don't have any more trouble," he said coaxingly, and we could see his curved
dog-teeth. "Come on down from there, the pack of  you."  As we continued  to
sit like three nesting birds  he showed  more of his teeth and, as though he
were trying to shake us out, angrily swayed a branch.
     "Miss  Dolly,  you've always been  a peaceful person,"  said  Mrs. Macy
Wheeler. "Please come  on home with us; you don't want to miss your dinner."
Dolly replied matter-of-faetly that we were  not hungry: were they? "There's
a drumstick for anybody that would like it."
     Sheriff  Candle  said, "You  make it  hard on  me,  ma'am," and  pulled
himself nearer. A branch, cracking under his weight, sent through the tree a
sad cruel thunder.
     "If  he lays a hand on any one of you, kick  him in the  head," advised
Judge Cool. "Or I  will," he  said  with sudden gallant pugnacity:  like  an
inspired frog he hopped  and  caught hold to  one of the Sheriff's  dangling
boots. The Sheriff, in turn, grabbed my ankles, and Catherine had to hold me
around  the  middle.  We  were  sliding,  that  we  should all  fall  seemed
inevitable,  the  strain was immense. Meanwhile, Dolly started pouring  what
was left of our orangeade down the Sheriff's neck, and abruptly, shouting an
obscenity, he let go of me. They crashed to  the ground,  the Sheriff on top
of the Judge  and the Reverend Buster  crushed  beneath them both. Mrs. Macy
Wheeler and  Mrs.  Buster, augmenting  the  disaster,  fell upon  them  with
crow-like cries of distress.
     Appalled  by what had  happened, and  the part  she herself had played.
Dolly became  so confused that  she dropped  the empty orangeade jar: it hit
Mrs. Buster on the  head  with  a  ripe thud. "Beg  pardon," she apologized,
though in the furor no one heard her.
     When  the tangle below unraveled, those concerned stood apart from each
other  embarrassedly, gingerly  feeling of  themselves. The  Reverend looked
rather flattened  out, but no broken  bones were discovered,  and only  Mrs.
Buster, on whose skimpy-haired head a bump was pyramiding, could have justly
complained  of injury.  She did so  forthrightly.  "You  attacked  me. Dolly
Talbo, don't deny it, everyone here is a witness,  everyone saw you aim that
mason jar at my head. Junius, arrest heri"
     The Sheriff, however, was involved in  settling differences of his own.
Hands on hips, swaggering, he bore down on the Judge, who was in the process
of replacing the violets in his buttonhole. "If you weren't so old, I'd damn
well knock you down."
     "I'm  not  so  old, Junius: just  old enough to think men  ought not to
fight  in front  of ladies," said the Judge. He  was a  fair-sized man  with
strong shoulders and a straight body: though not far from seventy, he looked
to be in  his fifties. He clenched his fists and they were hard and hairy as
coconuts. "On the other hand," he said grimly, "I'm ready if you are."
     At the  moment  it  looked like a fair enough  match.  Even the Sheriff
seemed not so sure of himself; with diminishing bravado, he spit between his
fingers,  and  said Well, nobody was going to accuse him  of hitting an  old
man. "Or standing up to one," Judge Cool retorted. "Go on, Junius, tuck your
shirt in your pants and trot along home."
     The  Sheriff appealed  to  us  in the tree. "Save yourselves  a lot  of
trouble:  get  out of there and come  along with me now."  We did not  stir,
except  that Dolly dropped her veil, as  though lowering  a  curtain on  the
subject once for  all.  Mrs. Buster, the lump on her head  like a horn, said
portentously, "Never  mind, Sheriff. They've had their chance," and,  eyeing
Dolly, (hen the Judge, added:  "You may  imagine you are  getting away  with
something. But let me  tell you there will be  a retribution -not in heaven,
right here on earth."
     "Right here on earth," harmonized Mrs. Macy Wheeler.
     They left along  the path, erect, haughty  as a wedding procession, and
passed into the sunlight where the  red rolling  grass swept  up,  swallowed
them. Lingering  under the tree, the Judge  smiled at  us and,  with a small
courteous bow, said: "Do I remember you offering a drumstick to anybody that
would likeit?"
     He  might have been put  together from parts of the tree, for his  nose
was  like a wooden peg, his legs  were strong as old roots, and his eyebrows
were thick, tough as strips of bark. Among the topmost branches  were beards
of  silvery  moss  the  color  of  his center-parted hair, and  the  cowhide
sycamore leaves, sifting down from a neighboring taller tree, were the color
of  his cheeks. Despite his canny, tomcat eyes, the general  impression  his
face made was that of someone shy and countrified. Ordinarily he was not the
one  to make a show of himself. Judge  Charlie Cool; there were many who had
taken advantage of his modesty to set themselves above him. Yet none of them
could have claimed, as  he could, to  be a graduate of Harvard University or
to have twice traveled in Europe. Still, there were those who were resentful
and felt that  he put on airs: wasn't he supposed  to read a  page  of Greek
every  morning before breakfast? and what  kind of a man  was it that  would
always have flowers in his  buttonhole? If  he wasn't  stuck up,  why,  some
people asked, had he gone  all the way to Kentucky to find a wife instead of
marrying one of our own women? I  do not remember the Judge's wife; she died
before I was old enough to be aware of her, therefore an that I repeat comes
second-hand. So: the town never warmed up to Irene  Cool, and apparently  it
was  her own fault. Kentucky  women are difficult  to begin with,  keyed-up,
hellion-hearted, and Irene Cool, who was born  a Todd in Bowling Green (Mary
Todd,  a second  cousin once  removed,  had  married  Abraham  Lincoln)  let
everyone  around  here  know she thought  them  a backward, vulgar  lot: she
received none of the ladies of the town, but Miss Palmer, who did sewing for
her, spread news of how she'd transformed the Judge's  house into a place of
taste and style with Oriental rugs and antique furnishings. She drove to and
from Church in a Pierce-Arrow with all  the windows rolled up, and in church
itself she sat with a  cologned handkerchief against her nose: the  smell of
God ain't good enough  for Irene Cool. Moreover, she would not permit either
of  the  local doctors to attend her family,  this  though she herself was a
semi-invalid: a small backbone  dislocation necessitated  her sleeping  on a
bed  of  boards. There were crude  jokes  about the  Judge  getting full  of
splinters. Nevertheless,  he fathered two  sons, Todd and  Charles Jr., both
born  in Kentucky where their mother had gone in order that they could claim
to be natives  of the bluegrass  state.  But those who tried to make out the
Judge got  the  brunt of his wife's  irritableness, that he was  a miserable
man, never had much  of a case, and after she died even the hardest of their
critics  had  to admit  old  Charlie  must surely  have loved his Irene. For
during the last two years of her life, when she was very ill and fretful, he
retired as circuit  judge, then took  her abroad to the places they had been
on their honeymoon. She never came  back; she is buried in  Switzerland. Not
so long ago Carrie Wells, a schoolteacher here in town, went on a group tour
to  Europe;  the  only thing  connecting our town  with  that  continent are
graves, the graves of soldier boys and Irene Cool; and Carrie,  armed with a
camera for snapshots, set  out to visit them all: though  she stumbled about
in a cloud-high cemetery one whole afternoon, she could not find the Judge's
wife,  and  it is  funny  to think  of  Irene  Cool,  serenely  there  on  a
mountain-side still  unwilling  to receive. There was not much left for  the
Judge when  he came back; politicians like Meiself Tallsap  and his gang had
come into power: those boys couldn't afford to have Charlie Cool sitting  in
the courthouse. It was sad to see  the Judge,  a fine-looking man dressed in
narrowcut suits with a black silk band sewn around his sleeve and a Cherokee
rose  in his buttonhole, sad to  see him with nothing to do except go to the
post  office  or  stop  in  at  the  bank. His sons  worked  in.  the  bank,
prissy-mouthed,  prudent  men who might  have been twins, for they both were
marshmallow-white, slump-shouldered,  watery-eyed. Charles  Jr., he was  the
one who had lost his hair while still in college,  was vice-president of the
bank, and Todd, the younger  son, was  chief  cashier. In  no  way  did they
resemble their  father, except that  they had  married Kentucky women. These
daughters-in-law had taken  over the  Judge's house  and divided it into two
apartments with separate entrances; there was an arrangement whereby (he old
man lived with first one son's family, then  the  other. No wonder he'd felt
like taking a walk to the woods.
     "Thank you. Miss Dolly," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand. "That's the best drumstick I've had since I was a boy."
     "It's the least we can do, a drumstick; you were very brave." There was
in Dolly's voice an emotional, feminine tremor that struck me as unsuitable,
not dignified; so, too, it  must have seemed to Catherine: she gave  Dolly a
reprimanding glance. "Won't you have something more, a piece of cake?"
     "No  ma'm, thank you, I've had a sufficiency."  He unloosened from  his
vest a gold watch and chain, then lassoed the chain to a  strong  twig above
his  head; it hung like a Christmas ornament, and its feathery faded ticking
might have  been the heartbeat of a delicate thing, a firefly,  a frog.  "If
you  can  hear  time  passing  it makes the day  last  longer. I've  come to
appreciate a long day." He brushed back the fur  of the squirrels, which lay
curled in a corner as though they were only asleep. "Right through the head:
good shooting, son."
     Of course I gave the credit to the proper party. "Riley Hen-derson, was
it?" said the  Judge,  and  went on  to  say it  was Riley who  had  let our
whereabouts  be  known.  "Before  that, they must  have sent off  a  hundred
dollars'  worth of telegrams," he told us, tickled at the thought. "I  guess
it was the idea of all that money that made Verena take to her bed."
     Scowling, Dolly said, "It doesn't make a particle of sense, all of them
behaving ugly that  way. They seemed  mad enough  to kill us, though I can't
see  why, or what it has to do with  Verena: she knew  we were going away to
leave her  in peace, I  told her, I even left  a note. But if she's  sick-is
she. Judge? I've never known her to be."
     "Never a day," said Catherine.
     "Oh, she's upset all right,"  the Judge said with a certain contentment
"But  Verena's not the woman to come down  with anything an aspirin couldn't
fix. I remember when she wanted to rearrange the  cemetery, put up some kind
of mausoleum to  house  herself and all you Talbos. One of the ladies around
here  came to me and  said  Judge, don't you think Verena Talbo is  the most
morbid person in town, contemplating such a big tomb for herself? and I said
No, the  only thing morbid was that  she was willing to spend the money when
not for an instant did she believe she was ever going to die."
     "I  don't  like to hear  talk against my  sister,"  said  Dolly curtly.
"She's worked hard, she deserves to have things as she wants them. It's  our
fault, someway we failed her, there was no place for us in her house."
     Catherine's  cotton-wadding squirmed in her Jaw like  chewing  tobacco.
"Are you my  Dollyheart? or some hypocrite? He's a friend, you ought to tell
him the truth, how That One and the little Jew was stealing our medicine..."
     The  Judge  applied  for a  translation,  but Dolly said it was  simply
nonsense,  nothing worth repeating  and, diverting him, asked if he knew how
to skin a squirrel.  Nodding dreamily, he gazed away from us, above us,  his
acomlike  eyes  scanning  the sky-fringed, breeze-fooled  leaves. "It may be
that  there is no place  for any of us. Except we  know there is, somewhere;
and if we found it, but lived  there only a moment, we could count ourselves
blessed. This could be  your place," he said, shivering as though in the sky
spreading wings had cask a cold shade. "And mine."
     Subtly as the  gold watch spun its  sound of time, the afternoon curved
toward twilight. Mist from the river, autumn haze, trailed moon-colors among
the  bronze,  the  blue trees, and  a halo, an image of  winter, ringed  the
paling sun. Still the Judge did  not leave us: 'Two women and  a boy? at the
mercy  of  night? and Junius Candle, those  fools up to God knows what?  I'm
sticking with you." Surely, of the four of us, it was the Judge who had most
found his place in the tree. It was a pleasure to watch him, all  twinkly as
a hare's nose, and feeling himself a man again, more than that, a protector.
He skinned  the squirrels with a  jackknife,  while  in the  dusk I gathered
sticks and built under the tree a fire for the frying pan.  Dolly opened the
bottle of blackberry wine; she justified this by referring to a chill in the
air. The squirrels turned out quite well,  very tender,  and  the Judge said
proudly that  we should taste his fried catfish sometime. We sipped the wine
in  silence; a smell  of  leaves and smoke  carrying from  the cooling  fire
called up thoughts  of other autumns,  and we sighed, heard, like  sea-roar,
singings in the field of grass. A candle flickered in a mason jar, and gipsy
moths, balanced, blowing  about  the flame, seemed  to pilot  its  scarf  of
yellow among the black branches.
     There  was,  just then,  not  a  footfall,  but  a  nebulous  sense  of
intrusion: it might have been nothing more than the moon coming  out. Except
there was no moon; nor stars.  It was dark as the blackberry wine.  "I think
there is  someone-something down there," said Dolly, expressing what  we all
felt
     The Judge lifted  the  candle.  Night-crawlers slithered away from  its
lurching light, a  snowy owl flew  between  the trees. "Who  goes there?" he
challenged with the conviction of a soldier. "Answer up, who goes there?"
     "Me, Riley Henderson." It  was  indeed.  He separated from the shadows,
and his  upraised, grinning face looked  warped, wicked in the  candlelight.
"Just thought I'd see how you were getting on. Hope you're not sore at me: I
wouldn't have told where you were, not if I'd known what it was all about."
     "Nobody blames you, son," said  the Judge,  and I remembered it was  he
who had championed  Riley's cause against his uncle Horace Holton: there was
an understanding  between them.  "We're enjoying a  small taste of wine. I'm
sure Miss Dolly would be pleased to have you join us."
     Catherine complained there was no room;  another ounce,  and  those old
boards  would give way. StiB,  we  scrunched  together  to make a  place for
Riley, who  had no sooner squeezed into it than Catherine grabbed a  fistful
of his hair. "That's for today  with you pointing your gun at us like I told
you not to; and  this,"  she said, yanking  again and speaking distinctively
enough to be understood, "pays you back for setting the Sheriff on us."
     It  seemed to me  that  Catherine was  impertinent, but  Riley  grunted
good-naturedly,  and  said  she  might  have  better  cause  to  be  pulling
somebody's  hair  before the  night  was over.  For there  was, he  told us,
excited  feelings in the town, crowds  like Saturday night; the Reverend and
Mrs. Buster especially  were brewing trouble: Mrs. Buster was sitting on her
front porch showing callers the bump  on  her head. Sheriff Candle, he said,
had persuaded Verona to authorize a  warrant  for our  arrest on the grounds
that we had stolen property belonging to her.
     "And Judge," said Riley, his manner grave, perplexed, èthey've even got
the idea they're going to arrest you. Disturbing the peace  and  obstructing
justice, that's  what  I heard. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this-but  outside
the bank I ran into one of your boys, Todd. I asked him what he was going to
do  about it, about  them arresting you, I mean; and  he said  Nothing, said
they'd  been expecting something  of  the  kind, that  you'd  brought it  on
yourself."
     Leaning,  the Judge  snuffed  out  the  candle;  it was  as  though  an
expression was occurring in his face which he did not want us to see. In the
dark one of us was crying, after a moment we knew that it was Dolly, and the
sound of her tears set off silent explosions of love that, running  the full
circle round, bound us each to the other. Softly, the Judge said: "When they
come we must be ready for them. Now, everybody listen to me..."

        Three

     We must  know  our  position  to  defend  it;  that  is a primary rule.
Therefore:  what  has  brought  us  together?  Trouble.  Miss  Dolly and her
friends,  they are in trouble. You, Riley; we both are in trouble. We belong
in this tree or  we wouldn't be here." Dolly grew silent under the confident
sound of the Judge's  voice; he said:  "Today,  when I started out with  the
Sheriffs  party,  I  was  a man  convinced  that  his  life will have passed
un-communicated and without trace. I think now that I  will not have been so
unfortunate.  Miss Dolly,  how long? fifty, sixty years? it was that far ago
that I  remember  you, a stiff  and  blushing  child riding to town in  your
father's wagon-never getting down from the wagon  because you didn't want us
town-children to see you had no shoes."
     "They had shoes. Dolly and That One,"  Catherine  muttered. "It  was me
that didn't have no shoes."
     "All  the  years  that  I've  seen  you,  never  known  you,  not  ever
recognized, as I did today, what you are: a spirit, a pagan..."
     "A pagan?" said Dolly, alarmed but interested.
     "At  least, then, a  spirit, someone not  to  be calculated by the  eye
alone.  Spirits  are  accepters of  life,  they  grant  its  differences-and
consequently are  always in trouble. Myself,  I should  never  have  been  a
Judge; as such, I was  too often  on  the wrong side:  the law doesn't admit
differences.  Do you remember old Carper,  the fisherman who had a houseboat
on the river? He was chased out of  town-wanted  to marry that pretty little
colored girl, I think she  works for Mrs. Postum now; and you know she loved
him, I  used to see them when I went fishing, they were very happy together;
she was to him what no one has been to me, the one person in the world- from
whom  nothing is held back. Still, if he had succeeded in  marrying her,  it
would have been the Sheriff's duty to arrest and my  duty to sentence him. I
sometimes  imagine all  those whom I've called  guilty  have passed the real
guilt on to me: it's partly  that that makes me want once before I die to be
right on the right side."
     "You on the right side now. That One and the Jew..."
     "Hush," said Dolly.
     "The  one  person  in the world." It was  Riley  repeating  the Judge's
phrase; his voice lingered inquiringly.
     "I mean," the  Judge explained,  "a person  to  whom everything can  be
said. Am I an idiot to want such a thing? But ah, the energy we spend hiding
from  one another, afraid as  we are of  being identified. But here  we are,
identified: five fools in a tree. A great piece of luck provided we know how
to use it: no longer any need to worry about the picture we present -free to
find out who we truly are. If we know that no one can dislodge us;  it's the
uncertainty  concerning themselves that makes our friends  conspire  to deny
the  differences. By  scraps and bits I've in the past surrendered myself to
strangers-men  who  disappeared down  the  gangplank, got  off  at the  next
station: put  together,  maybe they  would've  made the  one  person in  the
world-but there he is with a  dozen  different faces moving  down  a hundred
separate  streets. This is  my chance  to find  that  man-you are him.  Miss
Dolly, Riley, all of you."
     Catherine said, "I'm no man with  any dozen  faces: tile notion," which
irritated Dolly, who told her if she couldn't speak respectably why not just
go to sleep. "But Judge,"  said Dolly,  "I'm not sure I know what it  is you
have in mind we should tell each other. Secrets?" she finished lamely.
     "Secrets,  no,  no."  The  Judge  scratched  a match and relighted  the
candle; his face sprang upon us with an expression unexpectedly pathetic: we
must  help him, he was pleading.  "Speak of the  night, the fact there is no
moon. What one says hardly matters,  only the trust  with  which it is said,
the sympathy  with which it is received. Irene, my wife, a remarkable woman,
we might have shared anything, and yet, yet nothing in us combined, we could
not touch.  She died in  my arms, and  at  the last  I said. Are you  happy,
Irene? have I made you happy? Happy happy  happy, those were her last words:
equivocal. I  have never  understood  whether  she was saying yes, or merely
answering with an echo: I  should know if I'd  ever known her. My sons. I do
not  enjoy their esteem: I've wanted  it, more as a man  than  as a  father.
Unfortunately, (hey feel they know something shameful about me. Ill tell you
what it  is." His virile  eyes, faceted with candle-glow, examined us one by
one, as though testing our attention, trust "Five  years  ago, nearer six, I
sat  down  in a train-seat  where some child had left  a child's magazine. I
picked  it up  and was  looking through  it  when I  saw  on  the back cover
addresses of children who  wanted  to correspond with  other children. There
was a little girl in  Alaska, her name appealed to me. Heather Falls. I sent
her a picture postcard; Lord, it seemed a harmless and pleasant thing to do.
She  answered at once,  and the letter  quite astonished me; it  was  a very
intelligent account  of life in Alaska-charming descriptions of her father's
sheep ranch, of northern  lights. She was thirteen and enclosed a photograph
of herself-not pretty, but a wise and kind  looking child.  I hunted through
some  old albums,  and  found  a  Kodak made  on  a fishing trip  when I was
fifteen-out in the sun and with a trout in my  hand: it looked new enough. I
wrote her as though  I were still that  boy, told her of the gun I'd got for
Christmas, how  the dog had had  pups  and what we'd named them, described a
tent-show that  had  come to town.  To  be  growing  up  again  and  have  a
sweetheart in Alaska-well, it was fun for an old man sitting alone listening
to  the noise  of a  clock. Later on she  wrote she'd fallen in  love with a
fellow she knew, and  I felt a real  pang of  jealousy, the way  a youngster
would; but we have remained  friends: two  years  ago, when I told her I was
getting  ready  for law school, she sent me a  gold nugget-it would bring me
luck, she said." He took it from his pocket and held  it  out for us to see:
it made her come so close. Heather Palls, as though the gently  bright  gift
balanced in his palm was part of her heart.
     "And that's  what they think is shameful?" said Dolly, more piqued than
indignant. "Because  you've helped  keep  company a  lonely little child  in
Alaska? It snows there so much."
     Judge Cool closed his hand over the nugget. "Not that they've mentioned
it  to me.  But  I've heard them talking  at night, my sons and their wives:
wanting to know what to do about me. Of course they'd spied out the letters.
I don't  believe in locking drawers-seems  strange a man can't live  without
keys in  what  was  at least once his  own house. They think it  all  a sign
of..." He tapped his head.
     "I had a  letter once. Collin, sugar, pour me a taste," said Catherine,
indicating  the wine.  "Sure  enough, I  had  a  letter once,  still  got it
somewhere, kept it twenty  years  wondering who  was  wrote  it  Said  Hello
Catherine, come on to Miami and marry with me, love Bill."
     "Catherine. A man asked you to marry him-and you never told one word of
it to me?"
     Catherine  lifted a  shoulder. "Well,  Dollyheart, what  was (he  Judge
saying? You don't tell  anybody  everything. Besides,  I've known a  peck of
Bills-wouldn't study marrying any of  them. What worries  my mind is,  which
one of the Bills was  it wrote that letter? I'd like to know, seeing as it's
the only letter I ever  got. It could be the  Bill  that put the  roof on my
house; course, by the time the roof was up-my goodness, I have got old, been
a long day since  I've  given it  two thoughts. There was Bill  that came to
plow the garden, spring of 1913 it was; that man sure could plow  a straight
row. And Bill that built the chicken-coop: went away on a Pullman job; might
have been him wrote me that letter. Or Bill-uh uh, his name was Fred-Collin,
sugar, this wine  is  mighty good."  ^ "I may have a drop more myself," said
Dolly. "I mean, Catherine has given me such a..."
     "Hmn," said Catherine.
     "If  you  spoke  more  slowly,  or  chewed  less..." The  Judge thought
Catherine's cotton was tobacco.
     Riley  had  withdrawn a little from  us; slumped over, he stared stilly
into the inhabited dark: I, I, I, a bird cried, "I- you're wrong. Judge," he
said.
     "How so, son?"
     The caught-up uneasiness that I associated with Riley swamped his face.
'I'm not in  trouble: I'm nothing-or would you call  that my trouble?  I lie
awake thinking what do I know how to do? hunt, drive a car, fool around; and
I get  scared  when I think  maybe that's all  it will ever come to. Another
thing,  I've got no feelings-except for my sisters, which is different. Take
for instance, I've been going with this girl from  Rock City nearly a  year,
the longest time I've  stayed with one girl. I guess  it was a week  ago she
flared up  and  said  where's your heart? said if I didn't love her she'd as
soon die.
     So I stopped the car on the railroad track; well, I said, lets just sit
here, the Crescent's due in  about twenty  minutes. We didn't take our  eyes
off each  other, and I thought isn't it  mean (hat I'm looking at you and  I
don't feel anything except..."
     "Except vanity?" said the Judge.
     Riley did not deny it. "And if my sisters were old enough  to take care
of themselves,  I'd have been willing to wait for (he  Crescent to come down
on us,"
     It made my  stomach hurt to hear  him talk like that; I longed  to tell
him he was all I wanted to be.
     "You said  before about  the  one  person  in the world. Why couldn't I
think of her like that? Ifs what I want, I'm  no good by myself. Maybe, if I
could care for somebody that way,  I'd make plans and  carry  them out:  buy
that stretch of land past Parson's Place  and build houses on it-I  could do
it if I got quiet."
     Wind surprised, pealed  the  leaves,  parted night  clouds;  showers of
starlight  were  let  loose:  our  candle,  as  though  intimidated  by  the
incandescence of the opening,  star-stabbed sky, toppled,  and we could see,
unwrapped  above  us, a  late wayaway wintery moon: it  was  like a slice of
snow,  near and far  creatures  called  to it,  hunched  moon-eyed frogs,  a
claw-voiced  wildcat.  Catherine  hauled out the  rose scrapquilt, insisting
Dolly  wrap  it  around herself;  then  she tucked  her arms around  me  and
scratched my head until I let it relax on  her bosom-You cold? she said, and
I wiggled closer: she was good and warm as the old kitchen.
     "Son, I'd say  you were  going at it the  wrong  end first,"  said  the
Judge, turning up his coat-collar.  "How could you care about one girl? Have
you ever cared about one leaf?"
     Riley,  listening to the wildcat with an itchy hunter's look,  snatched
at the  leaves blowing about us like midnight butterflies; alive, fluttering
as  though to escape  and fly, one stayed  trapped between  his fingers. The
Judge, too: he  caught a  leaf; and it  was  worth more  in his hand than in
Riley's.  Pressing  ft mildly against his cheek, he  distantly said, "We are
speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed-begin with these, learn a little
what it is to  love. First, a leaf, a fall  of rain, then someone to receive
what  a leaf  has  taught  you, what a fall of  rain  has  ripened. No  easy
process, understand; it could  take a lifetime, it has mine, and still  I've
never mastered it-I only know how  true it is: that love is a chain of love,
as nature is a chain of life."
     "Then," said  Dolly with an intake of breath, "I've been in love afl my
life." She sank down into the  quilt. "Well, no," and her voice fell off, "I
guess  not.  I've  never  loved  a,"  while she searched  for  the word wind
frolicked  her veil,  "gentleman. You  might  say  that  I've  never had the
opportunity. Except  Papa," she  paused, as though  she'd  said too  much. A
gauze of starlight wrapped her closely as the quilt; something, the reciting
frogs,  the string  of voices  stretching  from the field  of grass,  lured,
impelled her: "But I have loved everything else. Like the color pink; when I
was a  child I  had one colored crayon, and it was pink;  I drew  pink cats,
pink trees-for thirty-four years I lived in a pink room. And the box I kept,
it's somewhere in the attic now, I must ask Verena please to give  it to me,
it  would  be  nice to see  my first loves again:  what  is  there? a  dried
honeycomb, an empty hornet's  nest, other  things,  or an  orange stuck with
cloves and  a jaybird's egg-when  I loved those love  collected inside me so
that it went flying  about like a bird  in a  sunflower field. But it's best
not to show such things, it burdens people and makes them, I don't know why,
unhappy. Verena scolds at me  for  what she calls hiding in comers,  but I'm
afraid of scaring people if I show that I care for them.  Like Paul Jimson's
wife; after he got sick and couldn't  deliver the papers  any more, remember
she took over his roulte? poor  thin little thing just dragging herself with
that sack of papers. It was one cold afternoon, she came up on the porch her
nose running and  tears of cold hanging in her eyes-she  put down the paper,
and I  said  wait, hold  on, and took my handkerchief to  wipe  her  eyes: I
wanted to say,  if I could,  that  I was sorry and that I  loved her-my hand
grazed her  face, she turned with the smallest shout and ran down the steps.
Then on, she always tossed the papers from the  street, and whenever I heard
them hit the porch it sounded in my bones."
     "Paul  Jimson's  wife: worrying yourself over  trash  like  that!" said
Catherine, rinsing her mouth with the last of  the wine. "I've got a bowl of
goldfish,  just 'cause I like them don't  make me love the world. Love a lot
of mess,  my foot. You can talk what you want, not going to do anything  but
harm, bringing up what's  best forgot. People ought to  keep  more things to
themselves. The deepdown ownself  part of you, that's the good part:  what's
left of a  human being that goes around speaking his privates? The Judge, he
say  we all  up here  'cause of  trouble some kind.  Shoot! We here for very
plain reasons. One is,  this our tree-house, and two, That One and the Jew's
trying to  steal what  belongs to us. Three:  you  here,  every one of  you,
'cause you want  to be: the deepdown part  of  you  tells you  so. This last
don't apply  to me. I like a roof  over my  own head.  Dollyheart, give  the
Judge a  portion of that  quilt: man's shivering like was Halloween."  Shyly
Dolly lifted a wing of  the quilt and nodded  to him; the Judge,  not at all
shy,  slipped under it. The  branches  of the China tree swayed like immense
oars  dipping  into  a sea rolling and  chilled  by the  far far stars. Left
alone, Riley sat hunched up in himself like  a pitiful  orphan. "Snuggle up,
hard  head: you  cold like anybody else," said  Catherine, offering him  the
position on her  right that I occupied on her left.  He didn't seem  to want
to; maybe he noticed that she smelled like  bitter-weed, or maybe he thought
it was  sissy; but I said come on, Riley, Catherine's  good and warm, better
than a quilt. After a while Riley moved over to us. It was quiet for so long
I  thought everyone  had gone to sleep. Then I felt Catherine stiffen. "It's
just come  to  me  who it was sent my letter:  Bill Nobody. That One, that's
who. Sure as  my name's Catherine Creek she got some nigger in Miami to mail
me  a  letter, thinking I'd scoot off  there never to be heard  from again."
Dolly sleepily said hush now hush, shut your eyes: "Nothing to be afraid of;
we've men here to  watch out for us." A branch swung back, moonlight ignited
the tree: I saw the Judge take Dolly's hand. It was the last thing I saw.

        Four

     Riley was the first to wake, and  he wakened  me. On the skyline  three
morning stars  swooned in the  flush of  an  arriving sun;  dew tinseled the
leaves,  a  jet chain  of blackbirds swung out  to meet the  mounting light.
Riley beckoned for me to come with  him;  we slid silently  down through the
tree. Catherine, snoring with abandon, did not hear us go; nor did Dolly and
the Judge who, like  two children lost in a witch-ruled  forest, were asleep
with their cheeks together.
     We headed  toward the river, Riley leading  the  way. The legs  of  his
canvas trousers whispered against each  other.  Every little bit  he stopped
and stretched himself, as  though he'd been riding on a  train. Somewhere we
came to a hill  of already about and busy red ants. Riley unbuttoned his fly
and began to flood them; I  don't know that  it was funny, but I  laughed to
keep him company. Naturally I  was insulted when he switched around and peed
on my shoe. I thought it meant he had no respect for  me. I said to him  why
would he want to  do a thing like  that? Don't you know a joke? he said, and
threw a hugging arm around my shoulder.
     If  such  events  can be dated, this  I  would say was the moment Riley
Henderson and I became  friends,  the  moment, at least, when there began in
him an affectionate feeling  for  me that supported my  own for him. Through
brown briars  under  brown trees we walked deep  in the  woods  down  to the
river.
     Leaves like scarlet hands floated on the green slow water. A poking end
of a drowned log seemed the peering head of some river-beast. We moved on to
the old houseboat, where the water was clearer. The  houseboat  was slightly
tipped over; drifts of waterbay sheddings were like a rich rust on its  roof
and  declining  deck.  The inside  cabin  had  a mystifying tended-to  look.
Scattered around were issues of an adventure magazine, there was  a kerosene
lamp  and  a line  of beer  empties  ranged on a table;  the bunk  sported a
blanket,  a  pillow,  and  the  pillow was  colored  with pink  markings  of
lipstick. In  a rush I realized the houseboat  was someone's hide-out; then,
from the grin taking over Riley's homely face, I knew  whose it was. "What's
more," he said, "you can get in a little fishing on the side. Don't you tell
anybody." I crossed an admiring heart.
     While we were undressing I had a kind of dream. I dreamed the houseboat
had been  launched  on  the river  with the  five of  us aboard: our laundry
flapped  like sails, in the  pantry a coconut  cake  was cooking, a geranium
bloomed on  the windowsill -together  we  floated over  changing rivers past
varying views.
     The last of summer  warmed the  climbing sun, but the water,  at  first
plunge,  sent me  chattering and  chicken-skinned back to  the deck where  I
stood watching  Riley unconcernedly propel  himself  to and  fro between the
banks. An island of bamboo reeds, standing like the legs of cranes, shivered
in a  shallow patch, and Riley waded out among  them with  lowered,  hunting
eyes. He signaled to me. Though it  hurt, I eased down  into the cold  river
and swam to join him. The water  bending  the  bamboo was clear and  divided
into knee-deep basins-Riley hovered above one: in the thin pool a coal-black
catfish lay doz-ingly  trapped. We closed in  upon it with fingers tense  as
fork-prongs: thrashing backwards, it  flung itself  straight  into my hands.
The flailing razory whiskers  made a gash across  my palm,  still I  had the
sense to hold on-thank goodness, for it's the only fish  I ever caught. Most
people  don't believe it when I tell about catching a  catfish barehanded; I
say well ask Riley Henderson. We drove a spike of  bamboo through its  gills
and swam  back to the  houseboat holding it  aloft. Riley said it was one of
the fattest catfish  he'd ever seen: we would take  it back to the tree and,
since he'd bragged what  a great hand he was  at frying a catfish,  let  the
Judge fix it for breakfast As it turned out, that fish never got eaten.
     All this time  at the tree-house there was a terrible situation. During
our absence Sheriff Candle had returned backed  by deputies and a warrant of
arrest.  Meanwhile, unaware of what was  in store,  Riley and  I lazed along
kicking over toadstools, sometimes stopping to skip rocks on the water.
     We still were  some distance away when rioting  voices reached us; they
rang in the trees like axe-blows. I heard Catherine scream: roar, rather. It
made such soup of my legs I couldn't keep up with Riley, who grabbed a stick
and  began to run. I zigged one  way, zagged  another,  then,  having made a
wrong turn, came out on the grass-field's rim. And there waa Catherine.
     Her dress was ripped down the front: she was good as naked. Ray Oliver,
Jack Mill, and Big Eddie  Stover, three  grown men, cronies of the  Sheriff,
were dragging and slapping her through the grass. I wanted to kill them; and
Catherine was trying to: but  she didn't  stand a chance-though  she  butted
them  with her head,  bounced  them  with her elbows.  Big Eddie Stover  was
legally born  a bastard; the  other two made the  grade on their own. It was
Big  Eddie that went  for me,  and  I slammed my catfish  flat in  his face.
Catherine said,  "You leave my baby be, he's an orphan";  and,  when she saw
that  he had ms  around  the  waist: "In  the booboos, Collin, kick  his old
boo-boos." So I did.  Big Eddie's face curdled like clabber. Jack Mill (he's
the one who a  year later  got locked in the ice-plant and froze  to  death:
served him right) snatched at me, but I bolted across the field and crouched
down in the tallest grass. I don't think they bothered to look for me,  they
had their hands so full with Catherine; she fought them the whole way, and I
watched her, sick with knowing there was no help  to give, until they passed
out of sight over the ridge into the cemetery.
     Overhead  two  squawking crows crossed, recrossed, as though making  an
evil sign.  I crept  toward the  woods-near me,  then, I heard boots cutting
through the grass.  It  was the Sheriff; with  him was  a  man  called  Will
Harris.  Tall  as a door, buffalo-shouldered,  Will Harris had  once had his
throat  eaten out by a mad  dog; the scars were bad  enough, but his damaged
voice was worse: it sounded giddy and babyfied, like a midget's. They passed
so close I could have untied Will's shoes. His  tiny voice, shrilling at the
Sheriff, jumped with  Morris Ritz's name and  Verena's:  I couldn't make out
exactly, except something had happened about Morris Ritz and Verena had sent
Will to $ bring back the Sheriff.  The  Sheriff said: "What in hell does the
woman want,  an  army?"  When  they were gone I sprang up and  ran into  the
woods.
     In sight of the China tree I hid behind a fan of fern: I thought one of
the  Sheriff's  men  might  still be hanging around. But there was  nothing,
simply a lonely singing bird. And no one in the tree-house: smoky as ghosts,
streamers of  sunlight illuminated its emptiness.  Numbly  I moved into view
and  leaned my  head against the tree's  trunk;  at this, the vision of  the
houseboat returned: our laundry flapped, the geranium bloomed, the  carrying
river carried us out to sea into the world.
     "Collin." My name fell out  of the sky. "Is  that you I  hear?  are you
crying?"
     It was Dolly, calling from  somewhere I could not see-  until, climbing
to the tree's heart, I saw in  the above distance Dolly's  dangling childish
shoe. "Careful  boy," said  the Judge, who was beside  her, "you'll shake us
out of here." Indeed, like gulls resting on a ship's mast, they were sitting
in  the absolute tower of the tree; afterwards. Dolly was to remark that the
view afforded was so  enthralling  she  regretted not  having  visited there
before.  The Judge, it developed, had seen the approach of  the Sheriff  and
his  men in  time for  them to  take refuge in  those heights.  "Wait, we're
coming," she said; and, with one arm steadied  by the  Judge,  she descended
like a fine lady sweeping down a flight of stairs.
     We kissed  each other; she continued  to hold me. "She went to look for
you-Catherine; we didn't know where you were, and I was so afraid, I..." Her
fear tingled my hands: 'she felt like  a shaking small animal, a rabbit just
taken from the trap. The  Judge looked on with humbled eyes, fumbling hands;
he seemed to feel in the way, perhaps because he thought  he'd failed  us in
not  preventing what had happened to Catherine. But then, what could he have
done?  Had he gone to her  aid he would only  have got  himself caught: they
weren't fooling, the Sheriff, Big Eddie Stover and the others. I was the one
to feel guilty. If Catherine hadn't gone to look for  me they probably never
would have caught her. I told of what had taken place in the field of grass.
     But Dolly really wanted not to hear. As thought scattering a dream  she
brushed back her veil. "I want to believe Catherine is gone; and I can't. If
I could I would run to find her. I want to believe Verena has done this: and
I can't. Collin,  what do you think; is it that after all the world is a bad
place? Last night I saw it so differently."
     The Judge focused his eyes on mine: he was  trying, I think, to tell me
how to answer. But I knew myself. No matter  what passions compose them, all
private worlds are good, they are never vulgar  places: Dolly had been  made
too civilized by her  own, the one she shared with Catherine and me, to feel
the winds of wickedness that  circulate  elsewhere:  No, Dolly, the world is
not a bad place. She passed a hand across her forehead: "If  you are  right,
then in  a moment Catherine will  be walking under the  tree- she won't have
found you or Riley, but she will have come back."
     "By the way," said the Judge, "where is Riley?"
     He'd  run ahead of me, that  was the  last I'd  s