een  of him;  with  an
anxiety that struck  us simultaneously, the Judge and I stood up and started
yelling his name. Our voices, curving slowly around the woods,  again, again
swung  back on silence. I knew what  had happened: he'd  fallen  into an old
Indian well.-many's the case  I could tell you  of. I was  about  to suggest
this when abruptly the Judge put a finger to his Ups. The man must  have had
ears like  a  dog:  I  couldn't  hear a  sound. But he was right,  there was
someone on  the path. It  turned out to be  Maude  Riordan and Riley's older
sister, the smart one, Elizabeth. They were very dear friends and wore white
matching sweaters, Elizabeth was carrying a violin case.
     "Look here, Elizabeth," said the Judge, startling the girls, for as yet
they had not discovered us. "Look here, child, have you seen your brother?"
     Maude recovered first, and it was she who answered. "We sure have," she
said emphatically. "I  was walking Elizabeth home from her lesson when Riley
came along doing ninety miles an hour; nearly  ran us over. You should speak
to him, Elizabeth. Anyway, he asked us to come down here and tell you not to
worry, said he'd explain everything later. Whatever that means."
     Both Maude and Elizabeth had been in my class at school; they'd  jumped
a grade  and  graduated the  previous  June.  I knew Maude  especially  well
because  for a summer I'd taken piano lessons  from  her mother; her  father
taught violin, and Elizabeth Henderson was one of  his pupils. Maude herself
played the violin beautifully; just a week before I'd read in the town paper
where  she'd been  invited to play  on a  radio program in Birmingham: I was
glad to hear it. The Riordans were nice people, considerate and cheerful. It
was  not because I wanted to  leam  piano that  I  took  lessons  with  Mrs.
Riordan-è lather, I  liked her blond  largeness,  the sympathetic,  educated
talk that went on while we sat before the  splendid  upright that smelled of
polish  and attention; and  what I particularly liked  was  afterwards, when
Maude would ask  me to  have a lemonade  on  the cool back  porch.  She  was
snub-nosed and  elfin-eared, a skinny excitable girl who from her father had
inherited  Irish  black  eyes  and  from her  mother platinum  hair  pale as
morning-not the  least  like  her  best  friend,  the  soulful  and  shadowy
Elizabeth. I don't know what those two  talked about, books and music maybe.
But  with  me Maude's subjects were boys, dates, drugstore slander: didn't I
think it  was terrible, the  awful girls Riley Henderson chased around with?
she felt  so sorry for Elizabeth, and thought it wonderful how, despite all,
Elizabeth held up her head.  It  didn't take a genius to see that  Maude was
heartset on Riley; nevertheless,  I imagined for a while that I was in  love
with her. At  home I  kept mentioning  her until  finally Catherine said  Oh
Maude Riordan, she's too scrawny-nothing on her to pinch,  a man's crazy  to
give her the time of  day. Once  I showed Maude a  big evening, made for her
with my own hands a sweet-pea corsage, then took her to Phil's Cafe where we
had Kansas  City steaks; afterwards,  there  was a dance  at the Lola Hotel.
Still she behaved as though she hadn't expected to be kissed  good night. "I
don't think that's  necessary, Collin-though it was cute  of you to  take me
out." I was let down, you can see why; but as I didn't allow myself to brood
over it our  friendship  went on  little  changed. One day, at the end of  a
lesson, Mrs. Riordan omitted the usual new piece for home practice; instead,
she kindly informed  me that she preferred not  to continue with my lessons:
"We're very fond of you, Collin, I don't have to  say that you're welcome in
this  house  at any time. But dear,  (he  truth is  you have no ability  for
music; it happens  that way occasionally, and I  don't  think it's  fair  on
either of us to pretend otherwise." She was right, all the same my pride was
hurt, I  couldn't help feeling pushed-out, it made me miserable to think  of
the  Riordans,  and  gradually,  in about the time it took to forget  my few
hard-learned tunes, I drew a curtain on them. At first Maude used to stop me
after school  and ask me over to her  house; one way or another I always got
out of it; furthermore,  it  was  winter then  and  I liked to stay  in  the
kitchen  with Dolly  and Catherine. Catherine  wanted to  know: How come you
don't talk any more about Maude Riordan? I said because I don't, that's all.
But  while  I  didn't talk, I must have been thinking;  at least, seeing her
there  under the tree, old feelings squeezed  my chest For the  first time I
considered the circumstances self-consciously: did we. Dolly, the Judge  and
I,  strike Maude and  Elizabeth as a ludicrous sight?  I could be  judged by
them, they were my own age. But from their manner we might  just have met on
the street or at the drugstore.
     The Judge said,  "Maude, how's your daddy? Heard he hasn't been feeling
too good."
     "He can't  complain.  You  know  how  men are, always  looking  for  an
ailment. And yourself, sir?"
     "That's a  pity,"  said the  Judge, his mind wandering. "You  give your
daddy my regards, and tell him I hope he feels better."
     Maude  submitted  agreeably:  "I will,  sir, thank  you.  I  know  hell
appreciate  your  concern." Draping her skirt, she  dropped on the  moss and
settled  beside  her  an  unwilling Elizabeth.  For  Elizabeth no one used a
nickname; you might begin by calling her  Betty,  but in  a week it would be
Elizabeth  again: that  was  her effect  Languid, banana-boned, she had dour
black  hair and an  apathetic, at  moments saintly  face-in an enamel locket
worn around her  lily-stalk neck she preserved a miniature of her missionary
father. "Look, Elizabeth,  isn't  that a  becoming hat  Miss  Dolly has  on?
Velvet, with a veil."
     Dolly roused  herself;  she patted  her head. "I  don't  generally wear
hats-we intended to travel."
     "We  heard you'd left home," said Maude; and, proceeding more  frankly;
"In  fact  that's all anyone  talks about,  isnt  it, Elizabeth?"  Elizabeth
nodded without  enthusiasm. "Gracious, there are some peculiar stories going
around. I  mean, on  the way here  we met  Gus Ham and he  said that colored
woman Catherine Crook (is that her name?) had been arrested for hitting Mrs.
Buster with a mason jar."
     In sloping tones. Dolly said, "Catherine-had nothing to do with it."
     "I  guess  someone did,"  said Maude. "We saw Mrs.  Buster in  the post
office  this morning; she was showing everybody  a  bump  on her head, quite
large. It looked genuine  to us, didn't it Elizabeth?" Elizabeth yawned. "To
be sure, I don't care who hit her, I think they ought to get a medal"
     "No,"  sighed  Dolly, "it isn't  proper, it shouldn't have happened. We
all will have a lot to be sorry for."
     At  last  Maude took account  of me. "I've  been  wanting to  see  you,
Collin," she said  hurrying as though to hide  an embarrassment:  mine,  not
hers. "Elizabeth and I are planning a Halloween party, a real scary one, and
we thought it would be grand  to dress you in a skeleton suit and sit you in
a dark room to tell people's fortunes: because you're so good at..."
     "Fibbing," said Elizabeth disinterestedly.
     "Which is what fortune-telling is," Maude elaborated.
     I don't know what gave  them the idea I was  such a storyteller, unless
it  was at school I'd shown a superior talent  for alibis. I said it sounded
fine, the  party. "But you better not count  on me.  We might be in  jail by
then."
     "Oh well, in  that case," said Maude, as if accepting one of my old and
usual excuses for not coming to her house.
     "Say, Maude," said the Judge, helping us out of  the  silence that  had
fallen, "you're getting to be  a celebrity: I saw in the  paper where you're
going to play on the radio."
     As though dreaming aloud, she explained the broadcast was the finals of
a state competition; if she won,  the prize was a musical scholarship at the
University: even second prize meant a half-scholarship. "I'm going to play a
piece  of daddy's, a serenade: he wrote it for me the  day  I was  born. But
it's a surprise, I don't want him to know."
     "Make her play it for you," said Elizabeth, unclasping her violin case.
     Maude  was generous,  she did not  have to be begged.  The wine-colored
violin, coddled under her chin, trilled as she tuned it; a brazen butterfly,
lighting on the bow, was spiraled away as the  bow swept across  the strings
singing a music that seemed a blizzard of  butterflies flying,  a sky-rocket
of spring sweet to hear  in the gnarled fall woods. It slowed, saddened, her
silver hair  drooped  across  the  violin. We applauded; after we'd  stopped
there went on sounding a mysterious extra pair of hands.  Riley stepped from
behind a  bank of fem, and  when she saw  him Maude's cheeks pinked. I don't
think she would have played so well if she'd known he was listening.
     Riley sent the girls home; they seemed  reluctant  to go, but Elizabeth
was not used to  disobeying her brother. "Lock the doors," he told her, "and
Maude, I'd  appreciate it if you'd spend the  night  at  our place:  anybody
comes by asking for me, say you don't know where I am."
     I had  to  help him into the tree,  for he'd brought back his gun and a
knapsack  heavy with  provisions-a bottle of rose and raisin  wine, oranges,
sardines,  wieners,  rolls  from the  Katydid Bakery, a jumbo  box of animal
crackers: each item appearing stepped up our spirits, and Dolly, overcome by
the animal crackers, said Riley ought to have a kiss.
     But it was with grave face that we listened to his report.
     When we'd separated in  the woods it was toward  the sound of Catherine
that he'd run. This  had brought him to the grass: he'd been watching when I
had my encounter with  Big Eddie Stover. I said well why didn't you help me?
"You were doing all right; I  don't figure Big Eddie's liable to forget  you
too soon: poor fellow limped along  doubled over." Besides,  it occurred  to
him  that no one knew he was one of us, that he'd Joined us in the  tree: he
was  right to  have  stayed hidden, it made  it possible for  him  to follow
Catherine  and   the  deputies  into  town.  They'd  stuffed  her  into  the
rumble-seat of Big  Eddie's  old  coupe  and  driven straight to jail: Riley
trailed them in his car. "By the time we reached the jail she seemed to have
got quieted  down; there  was a little crowd  hanging around, lads, some old
farmers-you  would  have  been proud of Catherine, she  walked through  them
holding her dress together and her head like  this." He tilted his head at a
royal angle. How  often I'd seen Catherine do that,  especially  when anyone
criticized  her  (for  hiding puzzle  pieces, spreading misinformation,  not
having  her teeth fixed);  and Dolly, recognizing  it too,  had to  blow her
nose. "But," said Riley, "as soon as she  was inside the  jail she kicked up
another fuss." In the jail there  are only four cells,  two  for colored and
two for  white.  Catherine had objected to being  put  in a colored people's
cell.
     The Judge stroked his chin, waved his head. "You didn't get a chance to
speak to  her? She ought to have  had the comfort of knowing  one of us  was
there."
     'I stood around hoping  she'd  come to the window. But then I heard the
other news."
     Thinking back, I don't see how  Riley could  have waited so bug to tell
us. Because, my God: our friend from  Chicago, that hateful Dr. Morris Ritz,
had skipped town  after rifling Verena's safe of twelve thousand  dollars in
negotiable  bonds and more than seven hundred dollars  in cash: that, as  we
later learned, was not half his loot. But wouldn't you know? I realized this
was  what  baby-voiced Will Harris  had  been recounting to the Sheriff:  no
wonder Verena had  sent a hurry call: her troubles with us must have  become
quite a  side issue. Riley had a few  details:  he  knew  that  Verena, upon
discovering the safe door swung open  (this happened in the  office she kept
above her drygoods  store) had whirled  around the  comer to the Lola Hotel,
there  to find that  Morris Ritz  had checked out  the previous evening: she
fainted: when they-revived her she fainted all over again.
     Dolly's soft face  hollowed; an urge to go to Verena was rising, at the
same  moment  some sense of self, a deeper  will, held  her. Regretfully she
gazed at  me. "It's  better you know  it now,  Collin; you shouldn't have to
wait until you're as old as I am: the world is a bad place."
     A change, like a shift of  wind, overcame  the Judge: he looked at once
his  age, autumnal, bare,  as though  he  believed  that Dolly, by accepting
wickedness,  had forsaken  him. But I  knew  she  had not: he'd called her a
spirit, she  was  really  a woman. Uncorking the rose and raisin wine, Riley
spilled its topaz color into four glasses; after a moment he filled a fifth,
Catherine's. The Judge, raising the wine to his lips, proposed  a toast: "To
Catherine,  give her trust."  We  lifted our glasses, and "Oh Collin,"  said
Dolly,  a sudden stark thought widening her eyes, "you and I, we're the only
ones that can understand a word she says!"

        Five

     The following day, which was the first of October,  a Wednesday, is one
day I won't forget.
     First off, Riley  woke me by  stepping on my  fingers.  Dolly,  already
awake, insisted I  apologize for cursing  him.  Courtesy,  she said, is more
important  in the morning than  at any other time:  particularly when one is
living in such close quarters.  The  Judge's  watch, still bending  the twig
like a heavy gold apple, gave the time as six after  six. I don't know whose
idea  it was, but  we breakfasted on oranges  and animal crackers  and  cold
hotdogs. The  Judge grouched that a body didn't feel  human till  he'd had a
pot of  hot coffee. We agreed that coffee was what we all most missed. Riley
volunteered to drive into town and get some; also, he would have a chance to
scout  around, find out  what was going  on. He  suggested I come with  him:
"Nobody's going to  see him, not if he stays down in the seat." Although the
Judge objected, saying he thought it foolhardy. Dolly could tell I wanted to
go: I'd yearned so much  for a ride in Riley's car that  now the opportunity
presented itself nothing, even  the prospect that no one might see me, could
have thinned my excitement. Dolly said, "I can't  see there's  any harm. But
you ought to have a clean shirt: I could plant turnips in the collar of that
one."
     The  field  of grass was  without  voice,  no pheasant  rustle, furtive
flurry; the  pointed leaves were sharp and blood-red as the aftermath arrows
of  a massacre; their brittieness  broke beneath our feet as we waded up the
hill  into the cemetery. The view  from  there is very  fine: the  limitless
trembling  surface  of  River  Woods,  fifty  unfolding miles  of  ploughed,
wind-milled farmland, far-off the spired courthouse tower, smoking  chimneys
of town. I stopped by  the graves of my mother  and father. I had not  often
visited  them,  it  depressed me,  the  tomb-cold  stone-so  unlike  what  I
remembered of them, their  aliveness, how she'd  cried when he went  away to
sell his frigid-aires,  how he'd run naked into the street. I wanted flowers
for  the terracotta jars sitting empty on the streaked  and muddied  marble.
Riley helped me; he tore beginning buds off a japonica tree, and watching me
arrange them, said: "I'm glad your ma  was nice.  Bitches, by and large."  I
wondered if he meant his  own mother, poor Rose  Henderson, who used to make
him hop around (he yard reciting the  multiplication  table. It did  seem to
me, though, that he'd  made up for those hard days. After all, he  had a car
that was supposed  to  have  cost  three thousand dollars. Second-hand, mind
you. It  was a foreign  car,  an Alfa-Romeo roadster (Romeo's Alfa, the joke
was)  he'd  bought   in  New   Orleans  from  a  politician  bound  for  the
penitentiary.
     As  we  purred along the unpaved road toward town I kept hoping  for  a
witness: there were certain persons it would have done my heart good to have
seen me sailing by in Riley  Hen-derson's  car.  But  it  was  too early for
anyone much to be  about; breakfast was still on the stove, and smoke soared
out the chimneys of passing houses. We turned the comer by the church, drove
around  the  square and parked  in the dirt lane  that runs between Cooper's
Livery and the Katydid Bakery. There Riley left me  with orders to stay put:
he wouldn't be more than an hour. So, stretching out on the seat, I listened
to the chicanery  of  thieving  sparrows in the livery  stable's  haystacks,
breathed the fresh bread, tart  as currant odors escaping  from the  bakery.
The couple who owned this bakery, County was their name,  Mr. and Mrs. C. C.
County, had  to begin  their  day at  three in the morning to  be  ready  by
opening time, eight o'clock. It  was a clean prosperous place.  Mrs.  County
could afford the most expensive clothes at Verena's drygoods store. While  I
lay  there smelling  the good things, the back door of the bakery opened and
Mr. County,  broom in  hand, swept flour dust into the lane. I guess he  was
surprised to see Riley's car, and surprised to find me in it.
     "What you up to. Coffin?"
     "Up to nothing, Mr. County," I said,  and asked myself if he knew about
our trouble.
     "Sure  am  happy October's here,"  he  said, rubbing the  air with  his
fingers as though the  chill woven into it was a material he could feel. "We
have a terrible time in the summer: ovens and  all make it  too hot to live.
See  here, son, there's a gingerbread man waiting for you-come on in and run
him down."
     Now he was not the  kind of man  to  get  me in there and then call the
Sheriff.
     His wife welcomed  me into the spiced  heat of the  oven room as though
she could think of nothing pleasanter than my being there. Most anyone would
have  liked  Mrs.  County.  A chunky woman with no fuss about her,  she  had
elephant  ankles,  developed arms, a muscular face permanently fire-flushed;
her eyes were  like  blue cake-icing, her hair looked as if she'd mopped  it
around in a  flour barrel, and she wore an apron that trailed to the tips of
her toes. Her husband also wore one; sometimes, with the fulsome apron still
tied around him,  I'd seen him crossing  the street to have a  time-off beer
with the men that lean around the comer at Phil's  Cafe: he seemed a painted
clown, flopping, powdered, elegantly angular.
     Clearing a place on her work table, Mrs. County set me down to a cup of
coffee  and  a warm  tray of  cinnamon  rolls, the kind Dolly relished.  Mr.
County suggested I might prefer  something else: "I promised him, what did I
promise? a gingerbread man." His wife socked a lump of dough: "Those are for
kids. He's a grown man; or nearly. Collin, just how old are you?"
     "Sixteen."
     "Same as Samuel," she said, meaning  her son, whom  we all called Mule:
inasmuch as he was not much brighter than one. I asked what was  their  news
of him? because  the  previous autumn,  after having  been left back in  the
eighth grade three years running. Mule had  gone to Pensacola and joined the
Navy. "He's in Panama, last we heard," she said, flattening the dough into a
piecrust.  "We don't hear often.  I wrote him once,  I  said  Samuel  you do
better about writing home or  I'm going to write the President  exactly  how
old  you are.  Because you  know he joined  up under false  pretenses. I was
darned  mad  at the time-blamed Mr. Hand up at  the schoolhouse: that's  why
Samuel  did  it, he just couldn't  tolerate always being left behind in  the
eighth grade, him getting so tall and  the other children so little. But now
I can see Mr. Hand was right: it wouldn't be fair to the rest of you boys if
they promoted Samuel when he didn't do his  work proper. So  maybe it turned
out for the best. C. C., show Collin the picture."
     Photographed against a background of palms and  real sea, four smirking
sailors  stood with  their arms linked together; underneath was written. God
Bless Mom and Pop, Samuel. It rankled me. Mule, off seeing the world,  while
I, well, maybe  I deserved a gingerbread man. As I returned the picture, Mr.
County said: "I'm all for a boy serving his country. But the  bad part of it
is, Samuel was  just getting  where he  could give us a hand around  here. I
sure hate to depend on nigger help. Lying and stealing, never know where you
are."
     "It beats me why C.C.  carries on like that," said his  wife,  knotting
her lips.  "He knows it irks  me.  Colored people  are  no worse  than white
people: in some cases, better. I've had occasion to say  so to other  people
in this town. Like this business about old Catherine Creek.  Makes me  sick.
Cranky she may be, and peculiar, but there's as good a woman as you'll find.
Which reminds me, I mean to send her a dinner-tray up to the jail,  for I'll
wager the Sheriff doesn't set much of a table."
     So little, once it has  changed, changes back:  the world  knew us:  we
would never be warm again: I let go,  saw winter  coming toward a cold tree,
cried, cried, came apart like a rain-rotted rag. I'd wanted to since we left
the house.  Mrs. County begged pardon if  she'd said  anything to upset  me;
with her kitchen-slopped apron she wiped my face, and we laughed, had to, at
the mess it made, the paste of flour and  tears,  and I felt, as they say, a
lot better,  kind of lighthearted. For manly reasons I understood, but which
made me  feel no shame, Mr.  County had been mortified  by the outburst:  he
retired to the front of the shop.
     Mrs. County poured coffee for herself and sat down. "I don't pretend to
follow  what's  going on," she said. "The way I hear it. Miss Dolly broke up
housekeeping because of some disagreement with Verena?"  I wanted to say the
situation  was more complicated than that, but wondered, as I tried to array
events, if really  it was. "Now," she continued thoughtfully,  "it may sound
as though I'm  talking against  Dolly: I'm  not  But this is what I feel-you
people should  go home.  Dolly  ought  to make her peace with Verena: that's
what she's always done, and you can't turn around at her time of life. Also,
it sets a poor example for the town, two  sisters  quarreling,  one  of them
sitting in a  tree; and Judge  Charlie Cool, for the first time in my life I
feel  sorry  for  those  sons  of  his.  Leading  citizens  have  to  behave
themselves;  otherwise  the  entire place goes to pieces. For instance, have
you  seen that wagon in  the  square?  Well then, you better go have a look.
Family of cowboys,  they  are. Evangelists, C.C. says-all I know  is there's
been a  great racket over them and something to do  with Dolly." Angrily she
puffed up a paper  sack. "I want you to  tell her what I said: go home.  And
here, Collin, take  along some cinnamon rolls.  I  know  how  Dolly dotes on
them."
     As I  left the bakery the  bells of the  courthouse clock  were tinging
eight,  which  meant that it was seven-thirty. This  clock has always run  a
half-hour fast.  Once an  expert was imported  to  repair it; at  the end of
almost  a week's tinkering he  recommended,  as the only remedy,  a stick of
dynamite; the town council voted he be paid in full, for there was a general
feeling  of pride  that  the clock had proved  so  incorrigible.  Around the
square a  few store-keepers were preparing to open;  broom-sweepings  fogged
doorways, rolled trashbarrels berated  the cool  cat-quiet  streets. At  the
Early Bird, a better grocery store  than Verena's Jitney Jungle, two colored
boys were fancying the window with cans  of Hawaiian pineapple. On the south
side of  the  square,  beyond the cane benches where  in all seasons sit the
peaceful, perishing old men, I saw  the wagon  Mrs. County had spoken  of-in
reality  an  old truck  contrived with tarpaulin covering  to  resemble  the
western  wagons of history. It looked forlorn and  foolish standing alone in
the empty square. A homemade sign,  perhaps four feet high,  crested the cab
like  a shark's fin. Let Little Homer  Honey Lasso  Your  Soul For The Lord.
Painted  on the other  side there was  a  blistered  greenish  grinning head
topped  by a ten-gallon  hat.  I would not  have thought it  a  portrait  of
anything human, but, according to a  notice, this was: Child  Wonder  Little
Homer  Honey.  With  nothing more to  see, for  there was no one  around the
truck, I  took myself toward the jail, which  is a box-shaped brick building
next door to the  Ford  Motor Company. I'd  been inside  it once.  Big Eddie
Stover had  taken me  there, along  with a  dozen  other boys and men;  he'd
walked into the drugstore and said  come over to the jail if you want to see
something.  The attraction was a thin handsome gipsy boy they'd taken off  a
freight train; Big  Eddie gave  him  a quarter and  told him to let down his
pants;  nobody could believe the size of  it, and one of the men said, "Boy,
how  come they  keep  you locked up when  you got  a crowbar like that?" For
weeks you could tell girls who had heard  that joke: they giggled every time
they passed the jaiL
     There is an unusual emblem decorating a side wall of the  jail. I asked
Dolly,  and  she  said  that  in her  youth  she remembers  it  as  a  candy
advertisement.  If so, the  lettering has vanished; what remains is a chalky
tapestry:  two flamingo-pink trumpeting  angels  swinging,  swooping above a
huge horn filled with  fruit like a Christmas  stocking; embroidered  on the
brick, it seems  a  faded mural, a faint  tattoo,  and sunshine flutters the
imprisoned angels as though  they were the  spirits of thieves.  I  knew the
risk I  was taking, parading around  in plain sight;  but I walked past  the
jail, then back, and  whistled, later whispered Catherine, Catherine, hoping
this would bring her to the window. I realized which was her window:  on the
sill, reflecting beyond the bars,  I saw a bowl  of goldfish, the one thing,
as  subsequently we  learned,  she'd  asked  to  have  brought  her.  Orange
flickerings of the fish fanned around the coral castle, and I thought of the
morning I'd helped Dolly find it, the castle, the pearl pebbles. It had been
the beginning and, chilled suddenly by a thought of what the  end  could be,
Catherine coldly shadowed and peering downward, I prayed she would  not come
to the window: she would have seen no one, for I turned and ran.
     Riley kept me waiting in the car more  than two hours. By the  time  he
showed up he was himself  in such a temper I didn't dare show any of my own.
It seems he'd gone home and found his sisters, Anne and Elizabeth, and Maude
Riordan,  who  had spent the  night, still lolling abed: not  just that, but
Coca-Cola bottles  and  cigarette butts all over the parlor. Maude  took the
blame: she confessed to having invited some boys over to listen to the radio
and dance; but it was the sisters who got punished. He'd dragged them out of
bed  and whipped  them. I asked what  did he mean, whipped them? Turned them
over my knee, he  said,  and whipped  them with a  tennis  shoe.  I couldn't
picture this; it conflicted with my sense of Elizabeth's dignity. You're too
hard on those girls, I said, adding vindictively: Maude, now there's the bad
one.  He  took me  seriously, said  yes he'd  intended  to whip her if  only
because she'd called him the kind of names he wouldn't take off anybody; but
before he could  catch  her  she'd bolted out the back  door.  I thought  to
myself maybe at last Maude's had her bait of you.
     Riley's ragged  hair was glued down with  brilliantine;  he smelled  of
lilac water and talcum. He didn't have to tell me he'd been to the barber's;
or why.
     Though he  has since retired, there was  in  those days  an exceptional
fellow running the barbershop. Amos  Legrand. Men like the Sheriff, for that
matter  Riley Henderson, oh everybody come  to think of  it, said: that  old
sis. But they didn't mean  any  harm;  most  people enjoyed  Amos and really
wished him  well. A little monkeyman who  had to stand on  a box to cut your
hair, he  was agitated and chattery  as a pair of  castanets. All his steady
customers  he called honey, men and women  alike, it made no  difference  to
him. "Honey," he'd say, "it's about time you got this hair cut: was about to
buy you  a package  of  bobby-pins."  Amos had one tremendous gift: he could
tattle  along  on  matters  of  true interest  to businessmen  and  girls of
ten-everything  from  what  price  Ben Jones got for his  peanut crop to who
would be invited to Mary Simpson's birthday party.
     It  was natural that Riley should have gone to  him to get the news. Of
course he repeated it straightforwardly;  but I could imagine Amos, hear his
hummingbird whirr: "There you are, honey, that's  how  it turns out when you
leave money lying  around. And of all people,  Verena Talbo: here we thought
she trotted to the bank with every dime came  her way. Twelve thousand seven
hundred dollars. But don't think it stops there.  Seems Verena and this  Dr.
Ritz  were  going  into  business together, that's why  she bought  the  old
canning  factory. Well get this:  she gave Ritz  over ten  thousand  to  buy
machinery,  mercy knows  what, and  now it  turns  out  he  never bought one
blessed penny's worth. Pocketed the whole thing. As for him, they've located
not hide nor hair; South America, that's where they'll find him when and if.
I never was somebody to insinuate any monkeyshines went  on between him  and
her;  I said  Verena Talbo's too particular: honey,  that Jew had  the worst
case of dandruff I've ever seen on a human head. But a smart woman like her,
maybe she was  stuck on him. Then all this to-do with her sister, the uproar
over that. I  don't wonder Doc Carter's giving her shots. But Charlie Cool's
the one kills me: what do you make of him out there catching his death?"
     We  cleared town  on  two wheels; pop, pulp,  insects  spit against the
windshield.  The dry starched blue day whistled round us,  there  was  not a
cloud. And yet  I swear storms foretell themselves  in my bones.  This is  a
nuisance  common to  old people, but fairly rare with anyone young. It's  as
though a damp rumble of thunder had sounded in your joints. The  way I hurt,
I felt nothing less than a hurricane could be headed our way, and said so to
Riley, who said go on, you're crazy, look  at the sky.  We were making a bet
about it when, rounding that bad curve so convenient to the  cemetery, Riley
winced and froze his brakes; we skidded long enough for a detailed review of
our lives.
     It was not Riley's fault: square in  the road and struggling along like
a lame cow was the Little  Homer Honey  wagon. With a clatter  of collapsing
machinery it came  to  a  dead  halt In a  moment the driver climbed  out, a
woman.
     She was not young, but there was a merriness in the seesaw of her hips,
and her breasts rubbed and nudged against her peach-colored blouse in such a
coaxing  way. She wore a fringed  chamois skirt  and knee-high cowboy boots,
which  was a  mistake, for you felt that her legs,  if fully exposed,  would
have  been the best part. She leaned on the car door. Her eyelids drooped as
though  the lashes  weighed  intolerably; with  the tip  of her  tongue  she
wettened her very red lips. "Good morning, fellows," she said, and  it was a
dragging slow-fuse voice. "I'd appreciate a few directions."
     "What the hell's  wrong with you?" said Riley, asserting  himself. "You
nearly made us turn over."
     "I'm  surprised you mention it," said  the  woman, amiably  tossing her
large  head; her hair, an  invented  apricot color, was meticulously curled,
and the curb, shaken out, were like bells with no  music in them.  "You were
speeding,  dear," she reproved  him  complacently. "I imagine there's  a law
against it; there are laws against everything, especially here."
     Riley said, "There  should be a  law against that truck. A  broken-down
pile like that, it oughtn't to be allowed."
     "I  know,  dear," the woman laughed. 'Trade with you. Though I'm afraid
we couldn't all  fit  into this car; we're even a bit squeezed in the wagon.
Could you help me with a cigarette?  That's  a doll, thanks." As she lighted
the cigarette I  noticed  how gaunt her hands  were,  rough; the nails  were
un-painted and one of them  was black as  though she'd crushed it in a door.
"I was told that out this way we'd find a Miss Talbo. Dolly Talbo. She seems
to be living in a tree. I wish you'd kindly show us where..."
     Back  of her there appeared to be an  entire orphanage emptying out  of
the truck. Babies  barely able to toddle on their rickety bowlegs,  towheads
dribbling ropes  of snot, girls old enough to wear brassieres, and a  ladder
of  boys, man-sized some of them. I  counted up to ten, this including a set
of crosseyed twins and a diapered baby being lugged by a child not more than
five. Still, like a magician's rabbits, they  kept coming, multiplied  until
the road was thickly populated.
     "These all yours?" I said, really anxious; in another count I'd made  a
total  of fifteen. One boy,  he  was about twelve and had  tiny steel-rimmed
glasses, flopped around in a ten-gallon hat like a walking mushroom. Most of
them wore a few cowboy items, boots, at least a rodeo scarf. But they were a
dis-couraged-looking lot,  and sickly too, as  though they'd lived years off
boiled  potatoes and  onions.  They pressed  around the  car, ghostly  quiet
except for  the youngest  who  thumped the  headlights  and  bounced  on the
fenders.
     "Sure  enough, dear:  all  mine," she answered, swatting at a mite of a
girl playing maypole on  her leg. "Sometimes I figure we've picked up one or
two that don't belong," she added with a  shrug, and several of the children
smiled.  They seemed to adore her. "Some of their daddies  are dead; I guess
the rest  are living-one  way  and another:  either case it's  no concern of
ours.  I take it  you  weren't at our  meeting  last  night. I'm Sister Ida,
Little Homer Honey's mother." I wanted to know  which  one was Little Homer.
She blinked around and singled out the spectacled boy who, wobbling up under
his hat,  saluted  us:  "Praise  Jesus.  Want a  whistle?" and, swelling his
cheeks, blasted a tin whistle.
     "With  one of those," explained his  mother, tucking up her back hairs,
"you can give the devil a scare. They have a  number of  practical  uses  as
well."
     "Two bits," the child bargained. He had  a worried little face white as
cold cream. The hat came down to his eyebrows.
     I would have bought one if I'd had the  money. You could see  they were
hungry. Riley felt  the same, at any rate he produced fifty cents  and  took
two of  the  whistles. "Bless you," said  Little Homer,  slipping  the  coin
between his teeth and biting hard. "There's so much counterfeit going around
these days,"  his mother confided apologetically. "In our branch of endeavor
you wouldn't expect that kind of  trouble," she  said, sighing. "But  if you
kindly would show us-we can't go on much more, just haven't got the gas."
     Riley told  her  she  was wasting her time. "Nobody there any more," he
said, racing the motor. Another driver, blockaded behind us, was honking his
horn.
     "Not in the tree?" Her voice was  plaintive above the motor's impatient
roar. "But where will we find her then?" Her hands were trying to  hold back
the car. "We've important business, we..."
     Riley  jumped the car forward. Looking back, I saw  them watching after
us  in  the raised and drifting road  dust. I said to Riley, and  was sullen
about it, that we ought to have found out what they wanted.
     And he said: "Maybe I know."
     He did know a great deal,  Amos Legrand having informed  him thoroughly
on  the subject  of Sister  Ida. Although she'd  not previously been to  our
town, Amos, who does a little traveling  now and then,  claimed to have seen
her once at a fair in Bottle, which is a county town not far from here. Nor,
apparently,  was  she a stranger to the Reverend Buster who, the instant she
arrived, had hunted out the Sh&riff and der  manded an injunction to prevent
the Little  Homer  Honey troupe from holding  any  meetings.  Racketeers, he
called them; and argued that the so-called  Sister  Ida was known throughout
six states as an infamous trollop: think of it, fifteen children and no sign
of  a husband! Amos,  too, was pretty sure  she'd never been married; but in
his opinion a woman so industrious was entitled to respect. The Sheriff said
didn't he have enough problems? and  said: Maybe those  fools have the right
idea, sit in  a tree and mind  your own  business-for five cents he'd go out
there and  join them. Old  Buster told him in that case he wasn't fit to  be
Sheriff and ought  to hand in his badge.  Meanwhile, Sister Ida had, without
legal  interference, called an  evening of prayers and shenanigans under the
oak  trees  in  the square. Revivalists are popular  in this town; it's  the
music, the chance to sing and congregate in the open air. Sister Ida and her
family made  a particular  hit; even Amos,  usually so critical,  told Riley
he'd missed something: those kids really could shout,  and that Little Homer
Honey, he was cute  as a button dancing and twirling a rope. Everybody had a
grand time  except the Reverend and Mrs.  Buster,  who had  come to start  a
fuss.  What got their goat was when the  children started hauling  in  God's
Washline, a rope with clothespins  to which you could attach a contribution.
People who never dropped a dime in Buster's collection plate were hanging up
dollar bills.  It was  more than he could  stand. So he'd skipped off to the
house on Talbo  Lane and had a small shrewd talk with Verena, whose support,
he  realized, was  necessary  if he were going to  get action. According  to
Amos,  he'd  incited  Verena  by telling  her some hussy of a revivalist was
describing Dolly  as an infidel, an enemy of Jesus, and  that Verena owed it
to the Talbo name to  see  this woman  was run  out of town. It was unlikely
that at the  time Sister Ida had ever heard the name Talbo.  But sick as she
was, Verena  went right to work; she  rang up the Sheriff  and said now look
here  Junius, I  want  these tramps run clear  across the county line. Those
were orders; and old  Buster made it his duty to see they  were carried out.
He accompanied the Sheriff to the square where Sister Ida and her brood were
cleaning  up  after  the meeting.  It had  ended  in a real  scuffle, mainly
because  Buster,  charging  illegal gain, had  insisted  on confiscating the
money  gathered  off  God's  Wash-line. He  got  it,  too-along  with  a few
scratches. It made no difference that many bystanders had taken Sister Ida's
side: the  Sheriff told them they'd better be out of town  by noon  the next
day. Now after I'd heard all this I said to Riley why, when these people had
been wrongly treated, hadn't he wanted to be more helpful? You'd never guess
the answer  he gave me. In dead earnest he said a loose woman  like that was
no one to associate with Dolly.
     A twig fire fizzed under the tree; Riley collected leaves for it, while
the  Judge, his eyes  smarting  with  smoke, set about the business  of  our
midday meal. We were the indolent ones, Dolly and I. "I'm afraid," she said,
dealing a game of Rook, "really afraid Verena's seen the last of that money.
And you know, Collin, I doubt  if it's losing the money that hurts her most.
For whatever reason, she trusted him: Dr. Ritz, I mean.  I  keep remembering
Maudie Laura Murphy. The girl who worked in the post office. She and  Verena
were  very close. Lord, it was a  great blow  when Maudie Laura took up with
that  whiskey  salesman, married him. I  couldn't criticize her; 'twas  only
fitting if she loved the  man. Just  the same,  Maudie  Laura  and Dr. Ritz,
maybe those are the  only two Verena ever trusted, and both of them-well, it
could take  the  heart out  of  anyone."  She  thumbed  the Rook  cards with
wandering attention. "You said something before-about Catherine."
     "About her goldfish. I saw them in the window."
     "But not Catherine?"
     "No, the goldfish, that's  all. Mrs. County was awfully nice:  she said
she was going to send some dinner around to the jail."
     She broke  one of Mrs.  County's  cinnamon  rolls  and  picked out  the
raisins. "Collin,  suppose we let  them  have  their way, gave up,  that is:
they'd have to  let Catherine go, wouldn't they?" Her eyes tilted toward the
heights  of  the tree, searching, it  seemed, a  passage through the braided
leaves. "Should I-let myself lose?"
     "Mrs. County thinks so: that we should go home."
     "Did she say why?"
     "Because-she did  run  on.  Because you  always have. Always  made your
peace, she said."
     Dolly smiled, smoothed her long skirt; sifting rays placed rings of sun
upon her  fingers. "Was  there ever a choice? It's what I want, a choice. To
know I could've had another  life, all made of my own  decisions. That would
be making  my  peace,  and truly."  She  rested her eyes on the scene below,
Riley cracking twigs, the Judge hunched over a steaming pot. "And the Judge,
Charlie, if we gave up it would let him down so badly. Yes," she tangled her
fingers  with mine, "he  is  very  dear  to  me," and an  immeasurable pause
lengthened  the  moment,  my  heart  reeled, the  tree closed inward  like a
folding umbrella.
     "This morning, while you were away, he asked me to marry him."
     As  if he'd heard  her,  the Judge straightened  up,  a  schoolboy grin
reviving  the youthfulness  of  his countrified face. He waved:  and  it was
difficult to disregard the charm of Dolly's expression as she waved back. It
was as though a familiar  portrait  had been cleaned and, turning to it, one
discovered  a  fleshy  luster, clearer,  till then unknown  colors: whatever
else, she could never again be a shadow in the comer.
     "And now-don't be unhappy,  Collin," she said,  scolding me, I thought,
for what she must have recognized as my resentment.
     "But are you...?"
     "I've never earned the privilege  of making up my own mind; when  I do.
God  willing, I'll know  what  is right. Who else," she said, putting me off
further, "did you see in town?"
     I would have invented someone, a  story to retrieve her, for she seemed
to  be moving  forward into the future, while I, unable to  follow, was left
with my sameness. But as I described  Sister Ida, the  wagon,  the children,
told  the wherefores of their run-in with  the Sheriff and how we'd met them
on  the  road inquiring after the lady in the tree, we flowed together again
like a  stream that for an  instant an island had separated. Though it would
have been too bad if  Riley had heard me  betraying him, I went so far as to
repeat  what  he'd said  about a woman  of Sister Ida's  sort not being  fit
company  for  Dolly.  She had  a proper laugh over  this; then,  with sudden
soberness: "But it's wicked-taking the bread  out  of  children's mouths and
using  my  name  to  do  it.  Shame  on  them!"  She  straightened  her  hat
determinedly. "Collin, lift yourself; you and I are going for a little walk.
I'll bet those people are right where you left them. Leastways, we'll see."
     The Judge tried to prevent us, or at any  rate maintained that if Dolly
wanted  a stroll he would have to  accompany us. It went  a long way  toward
mollifying  my  jealous rancor when Dolly  told him he'd best  tend  to  his
chores: with Collin along she'd  be safe  enough-it was just  to stretch our
legs a bit.
     As usual. Dolly could not be hurried. It was  her  habit, even  when it
rained,  to loiter  along an ordinary path  as though she were dallying in a
garden, her  eyes primed for the  sight of  precious  medicine flavorings, a
sprig  of penny-royal, sweet-mary and mint,  useful herbs whose odor scented
her clothes. She  saw everything first,  and it was her  one real  vanity to
prefer that she, rather than you, point out certain discoveries: a birdtrack
bracelet, an eave  of icicles-she was always calling come see the cat-shaped
cloud, the ship in the  stars, the  face of  frost. In this slow  manner  we
crossed  the grass.  Dolly  amassing  a pocketful of  withered dandelions, a
pheasant's quill: I thought it would be sundown before we reached the road.
     Fortunately we had not that far to  go: entering the cemetery, we found
Sister Ida and  all  her  family  encamped among the graves. It  was like  a
lugubrious playground. The  crosseyed  twins  were  having their hair cut by
older  sisters, and Little Homer was shining his boots with spit and leaves;
a  nearly grown boy,  sprawled with  his back against  a  tombstone,  picked
melancholy notes  on  a guitar.  Sister Ida  was suckling the baby;  it  lay
curled  against  her  breasts like a pink ear.  She did  not rise  when  she
realized  our presence, and  Dolly said, "I do believe you're  sitting on my
father."
     For a fact  it was Mr.  Talbo's  grave, and Sister Ida,  addressing the
headstone (Uriah  Fenwick  Talbo,  1844-1922,  Good Soldier,  Dear  Husband,
Loving  Father) said, "Sorry, soldier." Buttoning her blouse, which made the
baby wail, she started to her feet.
     "Please don't; I only meant-to introduce myself."
     Sister Ida  shrugged, "He was beginning to hurt me  anyway," and rubbed
herself  appropriately. "You  again," she  said, eyeing  me with  amusement.
"Where's your friend?"
     "I understand..." Dolly stopped, disconcerted  by  the maze of children
drawing in around her; "Did you," she went on, attempting to ignore a boy no
bigger than a jackrabbit who, having raised her skirt, was sternly examining
her shanks, "wish to see me? I'm Dolly Talbo."
     Shifting  the  baby.  Sister Ida  threw an  arm  around Dolly's  waist,
embraced her, actually, and said, as though they were the oldest friends, "I
knew I could count on you. Dolly. Kids,"  she lifted  the baby like a baton,
"tell Dolly we never said a word against her!"
     The children shook their heads, mumbled, and  Dolly seemed touched. "We
can't leave town, I  kept telling them," said Sister Ida, and launched  into
the tale of her predicament.  I wished that I  could  have a picture of them
together. Dolly, formal,  as out of fashion as her old face-veil, and Sister
Ida with  her  fruity lips, fun-loving figure. "It's a  matter of cash; they
took  it all.  I ought  to have  them arrested, that  puke-faced  Buster and
what's-his-name, the Sheriff: thinks he's King Kong." She caught her breath;
her cheeks were like a raspberry patch. "The plain truth is, we're stranded.
Even if we'd  ever heard of you, it's not our policy to speak ill of anyone.
Oh I know that was just  the excuse; but I figured  you could straighten  it
out and..."
     I'm hardly the person-dear me," said Dolly.
     "But what would you do?  with a  half gallon of gas,  maybe  not  that,
fifteen mouths and a dollar ten? We'd be better off in jail."
     Then,  "I have a friend," Dolly announced proudly,  "a  brilliant  man,
he'll  know an  answer," and I could tell by  the pleased  conviction of her
voice that she believed this one  hundred per cent. "Collin, you scoot ahead
and let the Judge know to expect company for dinner."
     Licketysplit across the field with the grass whipping my legs: couldn't
wait  to  see the Judge's face. It  was not a disappointment. "Lordylaw!" he
said,  raring  back, rocking  forward; "Sixteen people," and,  observing the
meager stew simmering on  the fire,  struck his head. For Riley's  benefit I
tried to make out it  was none of my doing,  Dolly's meeting Sister Ida; but
he just stood  there skinning me with his eyes: it  could have led to bitter
words if the  Judge hadn't  sent us scurrying. He fanned  up his fire, Riley
fetched  more water, and into the  stew we tossed sardines,  hotdogs,  green
bay-leaves,  in  fact  whatever  lay  at  hand,  including an  entire box of
Saltines which the  Judge claimed  would  help thicken it: a  few stuffs got
mixed  in  by  mistake-coffee  grounds, for instance.  Having  reached  that
overwrought hilarious state achieved by cooks at family reunions, we had the
gall to stand back  and congratulate ourselves: Riley gave  me  a forgiving,
comradely punch, and as the first of the children appeared the  Judge scared
them with the vigor of his welcome.
     None  of  them  would  advance  until  the whole  herd  had  assembled.
Whereupon Dolly,  apprehensive  as a woman  exhibiting  the  results  of  an
afternoon at an auction, brought them forward to be introduced. The children
made a rollcall of  their names: Beth, Laurel, Sam, Lillie, Ida, Cleo, Kate,
Homer, Harry-here  the melody  broke  because one small girl refused to give
her name. She said it was a secret Sister  Ida agreed that if she thought it
a secret, then so it should remain.
     "They're all so fretful," she said, favorably affecting the  Judge with
her smoky voice and  grasslike  eyelashes. He prolonged  their handshake and
overdid  his smile, which  struck me as  peculiar conduct in a man  who, not
three  hours before,  had asked a woman to  marry him,  and  I hoped that if
Dolly noticed it would  give her  pause.  But  she was  saying, "Why certain
they're fretful: hungry as they  can be," and the Judge, with a hearty  clap
and a  boastful nod towards the stew, promised he'd fix that soon enough. In
the meantime, he thought it would be a good idea if the children went to the
creek  and washed their hands.  Sister Ida vowed they'd wash more than that.
They needed to, I'll tell you.
     There was  trouble  with the little girl  who wanted her name a secret;
she wouldn't  go,  not unless her papa rode her piggyback. "You  are  too my
papa," she told Riley,  who did not contradict her.  He  lifted her onto his
shoulders, and she was tickled to  death. All the way to the creek she acted
the cut-up, and when, with her hands  thrust  over  his eyes, Riley stumbled
blindly into a bullis vine, she  ripped the air  with in-heaven  shrieks. He
said he'd had enough of that  and down you go. "Please:  I'll whisper you my
name." Later on  I remembered to  ask  him what  the name  had been.  It was
Texaco Gasoline; because those were such pretty words.
     The creek is nowhere more than knee-deep; glossy beds of moss green the
banks, and in the spring  snowy dew-drops and dwarf  violets flourish  there
like  floral crumbs for  the new bees  whose hives  hang in  the  waterbays.
Sister  Ida  chose a place  on the bank  from which she could supervise  the
bathing.  "No  cheating  now-I  want  to see a lot  of  commotion."  We did.
Suddenly  girls old  enough  to be married were  trotting  around and not  a
stitch  on; boys,  too,  big  and  little  all  in there together  naked  as
jaybirds. It was as  well that Dolly had stayed behind with the Judge; and I
wished  Riley  had  not  come  either,  for  he   was  embarrassing  in  his
embarrassment.  Seriously, though, it's only  now, seeing the kind of man he
turned out to be, that  I understand the paradox of his primness: he  wanted
so to be respectable  that the defections  of others  somehow  seemed to him
backsliding on his own part.
     Those famous landscapes of youth and woodland water- in after years how
often, trailing through  the cold rooms of museums,  I stopped before such a
picture, stood long haunted moments having it recall that gone scene, not as
it was, a band of goose-fleshed children dabbling in an autumn creek, but as
the painting presented  it,  husky youths  and wading water-diamonded girls;
and I've wondered then, wonder  now, how they fared, where they went in this
world, that extraordinary family.
     "Beth, give your hair a douse. Stop splashing Laurel,  I mean you Buck,
you quit  that. All you kids  get behind  your ears, mercy knows when you'll
have the  chance again." But pros'  enfly  Sister Ida  relaxed  and left the
children  at  liberty. "On such a day as this..." she sank against the moss;
with the full light of  her eyes she looked  at  Riley, "There is something:
the mouth, the same jug  ears-cigarette, dear?" she said,  impervious to his
distaste for her. A smoothing expression suggested for a moment the girl she
had been. "On such a day as this..."
     "...but  in  a  sorrier place,  no  trees to  speak  of, a  house  in a
wheatfield and  all alone like a scarecrow.  I'm not complaining: there  was
mama and papa and my sister Geraldine, and we were sufficient, had plenty of
pets and a piano and good voices every one of us. Not that it was easy, what
with all the heavy work and only the one man to do it. Papa was a sickly man
besides. Hired hands were hard to come by, nobody liked it way out there for
long:  one old fellow we thought a heap of, but then he got drunk  and tried
to burn down the house.  Geraldine  was going on sixteen,  a year older than
me, and nice to look at, both of us were that, when she got it into her head
to marry a man who'd run the place with papa. But where we were there wasn't
much to  choose from. Mama gave us our schooling, what of it we had, and the
closest  town was  ten miles. That  was  the town of  Youfry, called after a
family; the slogan was You Won't Fry In Youfry: because it was up a mountain
and well-to-do people went there in the  summer.  So the summer I'm thinking
of  Geraldine got waitress work at  the Lookout Hotel in  Youfry. I  used to
hitch a ride in on Saturdays and stay the night with her. This was the first
either of us had ever been away from home. Geraldine didn't  care  about  it
particular,  town life, but as for me I looked toward those  Saturdays  like
each  of them was Christmas and  my birthday  rolled  into  one. There was a
dancing pavilion, it didn't cost a cent, the music was  free and the colored
lights. I'd help  Geraldine  with her  work  so we could go  there  all  the
sooner; we'd  run hand in hand  down the street, and I used to start dancing
before I got my breath-never had to wait for a partner, there were five boys
to every  girl,  and we were the prettiest girls anyway.  I wasn't boy-crazy
especially, it was the dancing-sometimes everyone would stand still to watch
me waltz, and  I never got more than a glimpse of my partners, they  changed
so fast. Boys would follow us to the hotel, then call under our  window Come
out! Come out!  and sing, so silly they were-Geraldine  almost lost her job.
Well we'd lie awake considering the night in  a practical way.  She was  not
romantic, my sister; what concerned her was which of our beaux was surest to
make things easier out home.  It was Dan Rainey she decided on. He was older
than the others,  twenty-five, a  man, not handsome in the face, he had  jug
ears and freckles and not much chin, but Dan Rainey, oh he was smart in  his
own steady way and  strong enough to lift a keg of nails.  End  of summer he
came out home and helped  bring in the wheat. Papa liked him from the first,
and though mama  said Geraldine was too young,  she didn't make  any  ruckus
about it. I cried at the wedding, and thought it  was because the  nights at
the dancing pavilion were over, and because Geraldine and I would  never lie
cozy in the same bed again. But  as soon as Dan  Rainey took over everything
seemed  to go right; he brought out the best in the  land and maybe the best
in  us.  Except  when  winter came on,  and  we'd be sitting round the fire,
sometimes the heat, something made me feel just faint. I'd  go  stand in the
yard with only my dress on, it was like I couldn't feel the cold because I'd
become a  piece of it, and I'd close my eyes, waltz round and round, and one
night, I didn't  hear him sneaking up, Dan Rainey caught me in his arms  and
danced me for  a joke. Only it wasn't such  a joke. He had feelings for  me;
way back in my head I'd known it from the start. But he didn't say it, and I
never asked him to; and it wouldn't have come to anything provided Geraldine
hadn't  lost her  baby.  That was in the spring. She was mortally  afraid of
snakes, Geraldine, and it  was seeing one that  did  it; she  was collecting
eggs, it was only a chicken snake, but  it scared her so bad she dropped her
baby four months too soon. I don't  know what happened to  her-got cross and
mean, got where she'd fly out  about anything. Dan Rainey took the  worst of
it;  he  kept out of her way as much as he could; used  to roll himself in a
blanket and sleep down in the wheatfield. I knew if I stayed there-so I went
to Youfry and got Geraldine's old job at the hotel. The dancing pavilion, it
was the same as the summer  before, and I  was even prettier: one boy nearly
killed another over who was going  to  buy me  an orangeade. I  can't  say I
didn't enjoy myself, but my mind wasn't on it; at the hotel they asked where
was my mind-always filling the sugar bowl with salt, giving people spoons to
cut  their  meat. I never went home the whole summer. When  the time came-it
was such a day as this, a fall day blue as eternity-I didn't let them know I
was coming,  just  got out of the coach  and walked  three miles through the
wheat stacks  till I found Dan Rainey. He didn't speak  a word, only plopped
down and cried like a baby.  I was that  sorry for him,  and loved him  more
than tongue can tell."
     Her cigarette had gone out. She seemed to have lost track of the story;
or worse, thought better of finishing it. I wanted to stamp and whistle, the
way rowdies do  at the picture-show when the screen goes unexpectedly blank;
and Riley, though less bald about  it, was impatient too.  He struck a match
for  her cigarette:  starting at the sound,  she remembered her voice again,
but it was as if, in the interval, she'd traveled far ahead.
     "So  papa swore he'd shoot him. A  hundred times Geraldine said tell us
who  it was  and Dan here'll take  a gun after him. I  laughed till I cried;
sometimes the other way round. I said well I had no idea; there were five or
six boys in Youfry could be the one, and how was I to know? Mama slapped  my
face when I said that. But they believed it;  even after a while I think Dan
Rainey believed it-wanted to anyway, poor unhappy  fellow.  All those months
not  stirring  out of  the house; and in  the middle  of it papa died.  They
wouldn't let me go to  the funeral, they were so ashamed for anyone  to see.
It happened this day, with them  off at the burial and me alone in the house
and a sandy wind blowing rough as an elephant, that I got in touch with God.
I didn't by any means deserve to be Chosen: up till then, mama'd had to coax
me to leam my Bible verses; afterwards, I memorized over  a thousand in less
than three months. Well I was practicing a tune on the piano, and suddenly a
window broke, the  whole room turned topsy-turvy, then fell together  again,
and  someone was with  me,  papa's spirit I thought; but the wind died  down
peaceful  as spring-He  was there,  and standing as He made me, straight,  I
opened my arms to welcome Him. That was twenty-six  years  ago last February
the third; I was sixteen, I'm forty-two now, and I've never wavered. When  I
had my baby I didn't call Geraldine or Dan Rainey or anybody, only lay there
whispering my verses one  after the other and not a soul knew Danny was born
till  they heard him holler. It was Geraldine named him  that. He  was hers,
everyone thought so, and people round the  countryside rode over to see  her
new baby, brought presents,  some of them, and the men hit Dan Rainey on the
back and told him what  a fine son he had. Soon as I was able I moved thirty
miles away to Stoneville, that's a town double the  size of Youfry and where
they  have  a big mining camp. Another girl and I, we started a laundry, and
did a good business on account of in a mining town there's mostly bachelors.
About twice a month  I went  home to see Danny; I was seven years going back
and  forth; it was  the only pleasure I  had, and a strange one, considering
how it tore me  up  every time: such a beautiful boy, there's no describing.
But Geraldine died for me to touch  him: if I kissed him she'd come  near to
jumping out  of her skin; Dan Rainey wasn't much different, he was so scared
I wouldn't leave well enough alone. The last  time I ever was  home I  asked
him would he meet me in Youfry.  Because  for a crazy  long while I'd had an
idea, which  was: if I  could live it  again,  if I could  bear a child that
would  be  a  twin to Danny. But I was wrong to think it could have the same
father. It would've been a dead child, bom dead:  I looked at Dan Rainey (it
was the coldest day, we sat by  the empty  dancing  pavilion, I remember  he
never took  his  hands out of his pockets) and sent him  away without saying
why it was  I'd asked him to come.  Then years spent hunting the likeness of
him. One of the miners in Stoneville, he had the same freckles, yellow eyes;
a  goodhearted  boy, he obliged me with Sam, my  oldest. As  best  I recall,
Beth's father  was  a  dead ringer  for Dan  Rainey; but being a girl,  Beth
didn't favor Danny.  I  forget  to tell you  that I'd  sold my share of  the
laundry and gone to Texas-had restaurant work in Amarillo and Dallas. But it
wasn't until I met Mr.  Honey that I saw why the Lord had chosen me and what
my  task was to be.  Mr.  Honey possessed the True Word;  after I heard  him
preach  that first  time  I went round to see  him:  we hadn't talked twenty
minutes than he said I'm  going  to marry you  provided  you're  not married
a'ready. I said no I'm not married, but I've got some family? fact is, there
was  five by then.  Didn't faze  him a  bit We got  married a week later  on
Valentine's Day. He wasn't  a young man,  and he didn't look a particle like
Dan  Rainey; stripped of his boots  he couldn't make it to my  shoulder; but
when the  Lord brought us together He knew certain what He was doing: we had
Roy,  then Pearl and Kate  and Cleo and Little  Homer -most of them  born in
that  wagon you saw  up there. We traveled all over the country carrying His
Word to folks who'd never heard it before, not the way my man could tell it.
Now  I  must mention  a sad  circumstance,  which  is: I lost Mr. Honey. One
morning, this was in a queer part of  Louisiana, Cajun parts,  he walked off
down  the road to buy some  groceries: you know we never saw  him  again. He
disappeared right into thin air. I don't give a hoot what the police say; he
wasn't the kind to run out on his family; no sir it was foul play."
     "Or amnesia," I said. "You forget everything, even your own name."
     "A man with the whole Bible on the tip of his  tongue- would you say he
was  liable to  forget something like his  name? One of them Cajuns murdered
him for his  amethyst ring. Naturally I've  known  men since then;  but  not
love. Lillie Ida, Laurel,  the other kids, they happened like. Seems somehow
I can't get on without another life kicking under my heart: feel so sluggish
otherwise."
     When the children were dressed, some with their clothes  inside out, we
returned to the tree where the older girls, bending over the fire, dried and
combed their hair. In  our absence Dolly had cared  for the baby; she seemed
now not to want to give it back: "I wish one of us had had a baby, my sister
or  Catherine,"  and  Sister  Ida  said  yes,  it  was  entertaining  and  a
satisfaction too. We sat finally in a  circle around the fire. The  stew was
too hot to taste, which perhaps  accounted for its thorough success, and the
Judge, who had to serve it in rotation, for there  were only three cups, was
full  of  gay stunts  and  nonsense that  exhilarated the  children:  Texaco
Gasoline decided  she'd made a mistake-the Judge, not Riley, was  her  papa,
and the Judge rewarded her with a trip to the moon, swung her, that is, high
over his head:  Some flocked south,  Some flocked west. You go flying  after
the rest. Away! Awheel Sister Ida said say  you're pretty strong.  Of course
he lapped it up, all but asked her to feel his muscles. Every quarter-minute
he peeked to see if Dolly were admiring him. She was.
     The  croonings  of a  ringdove wavered among  the long last  lances  of
sunlight. Chill green, blues  filtered through the  air as though a  rainbow
had dissolved around us. Dolly  shivered: "There's a  storm nearby. I've had
the notion all day." I looked at Riley triumphantly: hadn't I told him?
     "And it's  getting late," said Sister Ida. "Buck, Homer- you boys chase
up to the  wagon.  Gracious knows  who's come along  and  helped themselves.
Not,"  she  added,  watching her sons  vanish on the darkening  path,  "that
there's a whole  lot  to take, nothing much except my  sewing  machine.  So,
Dolly? Have you..."
     "We've discussed it," said Dolly turning to the Judge for confirmation.
     "You'd  win  your case in  court,  no question of  it,"  he  said, very
professional. "For once  the  law  would be  on  the right ride.  As matters
stand, however..."
     Dolly  said, "As matters stand," and pressed into Sister Ida's hand the
forty-seven dollars which constituted our cash asset; in  addition, she gave
her the Judge's big gold  watch. Contemplating these gifts. Sister Ida shook
her head as though she should refuse them. "It's wrong. But I thank you."
     A light thunder  rolled through the woods, and in the perilous quiet of
its  wake Buck and Little Homer burst upon the  path like  charging cavalry.
"They're coming! They're coming!" both got  out at  once,  and Little Homer,
pushing back his hat, gasped: "We ran all the way."
     "Make sense, boy: who?"
     Little Homer swallowed. "Those  fellows. The Sheriff  one, and  r don't
know how many more. Coming down through the grass. With guns, too."
     Thunder rumbled again; tricks of wind rustled our fire.
     "All  right  now," said  the Judge, assuming command.  "Everybody  keep
their heads." It was  as though he'd planned for this moment, and he rose to
it, I do concede, gloriously. "The women,  you  little kids, get  up  in the
treehouse.  Riley, see that  the rest  of you  scatter  out, shinny up those
other trees and take a load of  rocks." When we'd followed these directions,
he  alone remained on  the ground; firm-jawed, he stayed there  guarding the
tense twilighted  silence  like a  captain who will not abandon bis drowning
ship.

        Six

     Five of us roosted in the sycamore tree that overhung the  path. Little
Homer was  there, and his brother Buck, a scowling boy with  rocks in either
hand. Across the  way, straddling the limbs of a  second sycamore, we  could
see Riley surrounded by  the older  girls: in  (he deepening burnished light
their  white  faces glimmered like candle-lanterns. I  thought I felt a rain
drop: it was a bead of sweat slipping along my  cheek; still, and though the
thunder  lulled,  a  smell  of rain  intensified  the  odor  of  leaves  and
woodsmoke. The  overloaded  tree-house gave an  evil creak;  from my vantage
point, its tenants seemed a single creature, a many-legged, many-eyed spider
upon whose head Dolly's hat sat perched like a velvet crown.
     In  our tree everybody pulled out  the  kind of  tin whistles Riley had
bought from  Little Homer: good to give the devil  a  scare. Sister Ida  had
said. Then Little Homer took off  his huge hat and,  removing from  its vast
interior what was perhaps  God's  Washline,  a thick long rope, at any rate,
proceeded to  make  a sliding noose. As  he tested its efficiency, stretched
and tightened the knot, his steely miniature spectacles cast such a menacing
sparkle that, edging away,  I put the distance of another branch between us.
The Judge, patrolling below, hissed to stop  moving  around up there; it was
his last order before the invasion began.
     The  invaders themselves made no  pretense  at  stealth. Swinging their
rifles against the undergrowth like canecutters, they swaggered up the path,
nine, twelve,  twenty  strong.  First,  Junius  Candle,  his  Sheriff's star
winking in the  dusk; and  after  him,  Big Eddie  Stover, whose squint-eyed
search of  our hiding places reminded me of those newspaper picture puzzles;
find  five boys  and  an owl in this drawing of a  tree. It requires someone
cleverer than Big Eddie Stover. He looked straight at me,  and  through  me.
Not many  of that gang would have  troubled you with their braininess:  good
for nothing but  a lick of salt and swallow of beer most  of them. Except  I
recognized Mr. Hand, the  principal at school, a decent enough  fellow taken
all  around, no one, you  would  have  thought, to involve  himself  in such
shabby company on so  shameful an errand. Curiosity explained the attendance
of Amos Legrand; he was there, and  silent for once: no wonder: as though he
were a walking-stick, Verena was leaning a hand on his head,  which came not
quite  to her hip. A  grim Reverend Buster ceremoniously supported her other
arm. When  I  saw Verena I felt a  numbed  reliving of the terror  I'd known
when, after my mother's death, she'd come to our house to claim me.  Despite
what  seemed a  lameness, she  moved with her customary tall authority  and,
accompanied by her escorts, stopped under our sycamore.
     The Judge didn't give  an inch;  toe to toe with the Sheriff, he  stood
his ground as if there were a drawn line he dared the other to cross.
     It was at this crucial moment that I noticed Little Homer. He gradually
was  lowering his lasso.  It  crawled,  dangled like a snake, the wide noose
open as a  pair of jaws, then fell, with an expert snap, around the neck  of
the Reverend Buster, whose strangling outcry  Little Homer stifled by giving
the rope a mighty tug.
     His  friends hadn't long  to  consider  old  Buster's predicament,  his
blood-gorged face  and flailing arms; for Little Homer's success inspired an
all-out attack: rocks flew, whistles shrilled like the shriekings  of savage
birds, and the  men,  pummeling each other in the general rout,  took refuge
where they could, principally under the bodies of  comrades already  fallen.
Verena had to box Amos Legrand's ears: he tried to sneak up under her skirt.
She alone,  you might say, behaved like a real  man: shook her  fists at the
trees and cursed us blue.
     At the height of the din, a shot slammed like an iron  door. It quelled
us  all, the serious  endless echo of  it; but in the hush that  followed we
heard a weight come crashing through the opposite sycamore.
     It was  Riley, falling; and falling:  slowly, relaxed as a  killed cat.
Covering their eyes, the girls screamed as he struck a branch and splintered
it,  hovered, like the  torn leaves, then in a bleeding heap hit the ground.
No one moved toward him.
     Until  at last the Judge said, "Boy, my boy," and  in a trance  sank to
his  knees; he  caressed Riley's limp hands.  "Have mercy. Have mercy,  son:
answer."  Other  men, sheepish and frightened,  closed  round;  some offered
advice  which the Judge seemed unable  to  comprehend. One by one we dropped
down from  the trees, and the children's gathering whisper is he dead? is he
dead?  was like the moan, the delicate roar of a  sea-trumpet  Doffing their
hats respectfully, the men made  an aisle for Dolly; she  was too stunned to
take account of them, or of Verena, whom she passed without seeing.
     "I want  to  know,"  said Verena,  in  tones that  summoned  attention,
"...which of you fools fired that gun?"
     The men guardedly looked each other over: too many of them fixed on Big
Eddie Stover. His jowls trembled, he licked  his lips: "Hell,  I never meant
to shoot nobody; was doing my duty, that's all."
     "Not all,"  Verena severely  replied.  "I  hold  you  responsible,  Mr.
Stover."
     At this Dolly turned round; her  eyes, vague beyond the veiling, seemed
to frame Verena in a gaze that excluded  everyone else. "Responsible? No one
is that; except ourselves."
     Sister  Ida  had  replaced the  Judge at  Riley's side; she  completely
stripped off his shirt. "Thank your stars, it's his shoulder," she said, and
the relieved sighs.  Big Eddie's alone, would  have  floated a  kite.  "He's
fairly knocked out, though. Some of you fellows better get him to a doctor."
She  stopped Riley's bleeding with a bandage torn off his shirt. The Sheriff
and three of his men locked  arms, making a litter on which to carry him. He
was not  the  only  one who had to be carried; the Reverend Buster had  also
come to considerable grief: loose-limbed as a  puppet, and too weak to  know
the noose still hung around his neck, he needed several assistants to get up
the path. Little Homer chased after him: "Hey, hand me back my rope!"
     Amos Legrand waited to accompany Verena; she told him to go without her
as she  had no intention of leaving unless Dolty-hesitating,  she  looked at
the rest  of us, Sister  Ida  in  particular; "I would like to speak with my
sister alone."
     With  a wave of her hand that quite dismissed  Verena, Sister Ida said,
"Never  mind, lady. We're on our way." She hugged Dolly. "Bless us,  we love
you.  Don't we, kids?" Little Homer said,  "Come with us.  Dolly. We'll have
such good times. I'll give you my sparkle belt." And  Texaco  Gasoline threw
herself upon the Judge, pleading for him to go with them, too. Nobody seemed
to want me.
     "I'll always remember that you asked me," said Dolly, her eyes hurrying
as though to memorize the children's faces. "Good luck. Good-bye.  Run now,"
she raised her voice above new and nearer thunder, "run, it's raining."
     It was  a tickling feathery rain  fine as a gauze curtain, and as  they
faded into the folds of it. Sister Ida and  her family, Verena said:  "Do  I
understand  you've been conniving with that-woman? After she made  a mockery
of our name?"
     "I  don't think you can  accuse me  of  conniving  with  anyone," Dolly
answered serenely. "Especially  not  with bullies who,"  she  a little  lost
control, "steal from children and drag old women into jail. I can't set much
store by a name that endorses such methods. It ought to be a mockery."
     Verena received  this  without flinching. "You're  not  yourself,"  she
said, as if it were a clinical opinion.
     "You'd  best  look  again:  I  am  myself."  Dolly seemed  to  pose for
inspection. She was as tall  as  Verena, as assured;  nothing about  her was
incomplete or blurred. "I've taken  your advice: stopped hanging my head,  I
mean. You told me it made you dizzy. And not many days  ago," she continued,
"you told me that you were ashamed of me. Of Catherine. So much of our lives
had been  lived for you; it was painful to  realize the waste that had been.
Can you know what it is, such a feeling of waste?"
     Scarcely audible, Verena said, "I do know," and it was  as if her  eyes
crossed,  peered inward  upon a  stony vista. It was the expression I'd seen
when, spying from the attic, I'd watched her late at night brooding over the
Kodak  pictures of Maudie Laura Murphy, Maudie Laura's husband and children.
She swayed, she put a  hand on  my  shoulder;  except for that,  I think she
might have fallen.
     "I imagined I would  go to  my dying day with the hurt of it.  I won't.
But it's no satisfaction, Verena, to say that I'm ashamed of you, too."
     It  was  night now; frogs, sawing  infects celebrated the  slow-falling
rain. We dimmed  as though  the wetness had snuffed the light of our  faces.
Verena sagged against me. "I'm not well," she said in a skeleton voice. "I'm
a sick woman, I am. Dolly."
     Somewhat unconvinced. Dolly  approached  Verena, presently touched her,
as  though  her fingers could sense the truth.  "Collin," she said,  "Judge,
please help me with her into  the tree." Verena  protested that she couldn't
go climbing  trees; but  once she got  used to the idea  she  went up easily
enough. The raftlike tree-house seemed to be floating over shrouded Vaporish
waters; it was dry there, however,  for the mild rain had not penetrated the
parasol of leaves. We drifted in a current of  silence until Verena said, "I
have something to say, Dolly. I could say it more easily if we were alone."
     The Judge crossed his arms. "I'm afraid you'll have to put up  with me.
Miss Verena." He was emphatic, though not belligerent "I have an interest in
the outcome of what you might have to say."
     "I doubt  that:  how so?" she said, recovering to  a degree her exalted
manner.
     He  lighted  a stub  of candle, and our sudden shadows stooped over  us
like four eavesdroppers. "I don't like talking in the dark,"  he said. There
was a purpose in  the proud  erectness of his posture: it was, I thought, to
let Verena know  she  was  dealing with  a man,  a fact too few  men  in her
experience had  enough  believed to assert. She found  it unforgivable. "You
don't remember,  do you, Charlie Cool? Fifty  years ago, more maybe. Some of
you boys came  blackberry stealing out at our place. My  father  caught your
cousin Seth, and I caught you. It was quite a licking you got that day."
     The  Judge did  remember; he  blushed, smiled,  said: "You didn't fight
fair, Verena."
     "I fought fair," she told him drily. "But you're right-since neither of
us  like it, let's not  talk  in the dark. Frankly, Charlie,  you're  not  a
welcome sight to  me. My sister couldn't have gone  through such tommyrot if
you hadn't been goading her on. So I'll thank you to leave us; it can  be no
further affair of yours."
     "But it is," said Dolly. "Because Judge Cool, Charlie..." she dwindled,
appeared for the first time to question her boldness.
     "Dolly means that I have asked her to marry me."
     "That," Verena managed after some  suspenseful seconds, "is," she said,
regarding  her  gloved hands, "remarkable.  Very.  I wouldn't have  credited
either of you with so much imagination. Or is it that I  am imagining? Quite
likely  I'm dreaming of  myself in a wet tree on a thundery night. Except  I
never have dreams, or perhaps I only forget them. This  one I suggest we all
forget."
     "I'll own up: I think it is a dream. Miss Verena. But a man who doesn't
dream is like a man who doesn't sweat: he stores up a lot of poison."
     She ignored him; her attention was with  Dolly, Dolly's with her:  they
might have been alone  together, two  persons at far  ends of a bleak  room,
mutes communicating in  an  eccentric sign-language,  subtle shifting of the
eye; and it was as  though, then.  Dolly gave an answer, one that sapped all
color from Verena's face. "I see. You've accepted him, have you?"
     The rain had thickened, fish could have  swum through  the  air; like a
deepening  scale  of piano notes, it  struck its blackest chord, and drummed
into  a downpour  that,  though it  threatened, did  not at once  reach  us:
drippings leaked through the leaves, but the tree-house stayed a dry seed in
a soaking plant.  The Judge put a protective hand over the candle; he waited
as anxiously as Verena for Dolly's reply. My impatience  equaled theirs, yet
I felt  exiled from the scene,  again a spy peering from the  attic,  and my
sympathies, curiously, were nowhere; or rather, everywhere: a tenderness for
all three  ran together  like raindrops, I  could  not  separate  them, they
expanded into a human oneness.
     Dolly,  too. She  could not separate  the  Judge from Verena. At  last,
excruciatingly, "I can't,"  she cried, implying failures beyond calculation.
"I said I would know  what was right. But it hasn't  happened; I don't know:
do other people? A choice,  I thought: to have  had a  life made of  my  own
decisions..."
     "But we have had our lives," said Verena.  "Yours  has been nothing  to
despise, I don't think you've required more than you've had; I've envied you
always. Come  home. Dolly. Leave decisions to me: that, you see, has been my
life."
     "Is it  true, Charlie?"  Dolly  asked,  as a  child might ask where  do
falling stars fall? and: "Have we had our lives?"
     "We're not dead," he told her;  but it  was  as if, to the  questioning
child, he'd said stars fall into space: an irrefutable, still unsatisfactory
answer. Dolly could not accept it: "You don't  have to  be dead. At home, in
the kitchen,  there is a geranium that blooms  over and  over.  Some plants,
though, they bloom just  the once, if  at  all,  and nothing more happens to
them. They live, but they've had their life."
     "Not you,"  he  said,  and  brought his face nearer hers,  as though he
meant  their  lips to touch, yet wavered,  not daring  it. Rain had tunneled
through  the  branches,  it  fell full weight; rivulets of it  streamed  off
Dolly's  hat,  the  veiling clung  to her cheeks; with a  flutter the candle
failed. "Not me."
     Successive  strokes  of lightning  throbbed  like  veins  of  fire, and
Verena, illuminated in that sustained glare, was not anyone I knew; but some
woman woebegone, wasted-with eyes once  more drawn toward  each other, their
stare  settled on an  inner territory, a  withered country; as the lightning
lessened, as the hum  of rain sealed us  in  its multiple sounds, she spoke,
and her voice came so weakly from  so very far, not expecting, it seemed, to
be heard at all. "Envied  you. Dolly. Your pink room. I've  only knocked  at
the doors of such rooms, not often è-enough to know that now there is no one
but  you to let me in. Because little Morris, little Morris-help me, I loved
him, I  did. Not in  a womanly way; it  was,  oh  I  admit it, that  we were
kindred  spirits. We looked each other in the eye, we saw the same devil, we
weren't afraid; it was-merry. But he outsmarted me; I'd known he  could, and
hoped he  wouldn't,  and he  did,  and  now:  it's too long  to  be alone, a
lifetime. I  walk through the  house, nothing is  mine: your pink room, your
kitchen, the house is  yours, and Catherine's too, I think. Only don't leave
me, let me live with you. I'm feeling old, I want my sister."
     The rain, adding its voice to Verena's, was between them, Dolly and the
Judge, a transparent wall through which he could watch her losing substance,
recede  before him as earlier she had  seemed to recede before me. More than
that,  it  was as  if  the  tree-house  were dissolving.  Lunging  wind cast
overboard the soggy wreckage of our Rook cards,  our wrapping papers; animal
crackers crumbled,  the rain-filled mason jars spilled  over like fountains;
and  Catherine's  beautiful scrapquilt was ruined, a  puddle.  It was going:
like the doomed houses rivers in flood float away;  and it was as though the
Judge  were trapped  there-waving to us as we, the survivors,  stood ashore.
For Dolly had said, "Forgive me; I want my sister, too," and the Judge could
not reach her, not with his arms, not with his heart: Verena's claim was too
final.
     Somewhere near midnight the rain slackened, halted; wind barreled about
wringing out  the trees. Singly, like  delayed  guests  arriving at a dance,
appearing stars pierced the sky. It  was time to leave. We took nothing with
us: left the quilt to rot, spoons to  rust; and the tree-house, the woods we
left to winter.

        Seven

     For  quite a while it was  Catherine's custom to date events  as having
occurred before  or  after her incarceration. "Prior," she  would begin, "to
the time That One made a  jailbird of me." As for the  rest  of us, we could
have divided history along similar  lines;  that is, in terms  of before and
after the tree-house. Those few autumn days were a monument and a signpost.
     Except to  collect his belongings,  the  Judge  never again entered the
house  he'd shared with his sons and their  wives, a circumstance  that must
have  suited them, at least they made no protest when he took a room at Miss
Bell's boarding  house. This was a brown solemn establishment  which  lately
has been turned into  a funeral home by an undertaker who saw that to effect
the  correct  atmosphere  a  minimum  of renovation  would  be necessary.  I
disliked  going  past  it,  for Miss Bell's guests,  ladies  thorny  as  the
blighted rosebushes littering the yard, occupied the porch in a dawn-to-dark
marathon  of vigilance.  One  of  them,  the  twice-widowed  Mamie Canfield,
specialized in  spotting  pregnancies (some legendary fellow  is supposed to
have told his wife Why waste money on a doctor? just trot yourself past Miss
Bell's: Mamie Canfield,  shell let the world know soon enough whether you is
or ain't). Until  the  Judge moved there,  Amos Legrand was the  only man in
residence at Miss Bell's. He was a godsend to the other tenants: the moments
most  sacred to them were when, after supper, Amos  swung in  the seat-swing
with his little legs not touching the floor and his tongue trilling  like an
alarm-clock. They  vied with each  other in knitting him socks and sweaters,
tending to his diet:  at table all the best things were saved for his plate-
Miss Bell had  trouble keeping a cook because the ladies were forever poking
around in the kitchen wanting to make a delicacy that would tempt their pet.
Probably they would  have done the same for the Judge, but he had no use for
them, never, so they complained, stopped to pass the time of day.
     The last drenching night in the tree-house had left me with a bad cold,
Verena  with a  worse  one; and we had  a  sneezing  nurse. Dolly. Catherine
wouldn't help:  "Dollyheart,  you can  do like  you please-tote  That  One's
slopjar  till you drop in  your tracks.  Only don't count  on me  to lift  a
finger. I've put down the load."
     Rising at all hours of the night. Dolly brought  the  syrups that eased
our throats, stoked the fires that kept us warm. Verena did not, as in other
days, accept such attention simply as her due. "In the spring," she promised
Dolly, "we'll make a trip together. We might go to the Grand Canyon and call
on Maudie Laura.  Or Florida:  you've  never seen the ocean."  But Dolly was
where she wanted to  be, she had  no  wish to  travel: "I wouldn't enjoy it,
seeing the things I've known shamed by nobler sights."
     Doctor Carter called regularly to see us,  and one morning  Dolly asked
would he mind taking  her temperature;  she felt  so flushed and weak in the
legs. He put her straight to bed, and she thought  it was very humorous when
he told  her she had walking pneumonia. "Walking pneumonia," she said to the
Judge, who  had  come  to  visit her,  "it must be something new, I've never
heard of it. But I do feel as  though I were skylarking  along on a  pair of
stilts. Lovely," she said and fell asleep.
     For  three, nearly four days she never really woke up. Catherine stayed
with her, dozing upright in a wicker  chair and growling low whenever Verena
or I tiptoed into the room. She persisted in fanning Dolly with a picture of
Jesus, as though it were summertime;  and it was  a disgrace how she ignored
Doctor Carter's  instructions:  "I  wouldn't feed  that  to  a  hog,"  she'd
declare, pointing to some medicine he'd  sent around.  Finally Doctor Carter
said  he wouldn't  be  responsible  unless  the  patient were  removed  to a
hospital. The nearest hospital was in Brewton, sixty miles away. Verena sent
over  there for  an ambulance.  She  could have  saved herself the  expense,
because Catherine locked Dolly's door from the inside and said the first one
to rattle the knob  would need  an ambulance themselves. Dolly did not  know
where they wanted to take her; wherever it was, she begged not to go: "Don't
wake me," she said, "I don't want to see the ocean."
     Toward the end of the week she  could sit up in bed; a  few days  later
she  was  strong  enough  to  resume  correspondence  with  her  dropsy-cure
customers.  She was worried by the unfilled  orders that  had  piled up; but
Catherine, who  took the credit for Dolly's  improvement, said, "Shoot, it's
no time we'll be out there boiling a brew."
     Every  afternoon, promptly at four, the Judge  presented himself at the
garden gate  and  whistled for me to  let him in; by using the garden  gate,
rather  than  the  front  door,  he  lessened  the  chance  of  encountering
Verena-not that  she objected to his coming: indeed, she wisely supplied for
his visits a bottle  of sherry and a box of cigars. Usually he brought Dolly
a gift,  cakes  from  the  Katydid Bakery  or  flowers,  bronze bal-loonlike
chrysanthemums which Catherine swiftly confiscated  on  the theory that they
ate up all the nourishment  in  the  air.  Catherine  never  learned  he had
proposed to Dolly; still, intuiting a situation not quite to her liking, she
sharply chaperoned the Judge's visits and, while swigging at the sherry that
had been  put  out for him, did most  of  the talking as well. But I suspect
that neither he nor Dolly had much to say of a private nature; they accepted
each  other  without excitement,  as  people  do who  are settled  in  their
affections. If in  other ways  he was a disappointed man, it was not because
of Dolly, for  I believe she became what he'd wanted, the one  person in the
world-to  whom, as  he'd described  it,  everything can be  said.  But  when
everything can be said perhaps there is  nothing more to  say. He sat beside
her bed, content to be there  and  not  expecting to be entertained.  Often,
drowsy with fever, she went to sleep, and if, while she slept, she whimpered
or frowned, he wakened her, welcoming her back with a daylight smile.
     In the past Verena had not allowed us  to have a radio; cheap melodies,
she  contended,  disordered  the mind;  moreover, there was the  expense  to
consider.  It  was Doctor Carter who persuaded  her that Dolly should have a
radio;  he thought it would help  reconcile her to what he foresaw as a long
convalescence. Verena bought one, and paid a good price, I don't  doubt; but
it was an ugly hood-shaped box crudely varnished. I took  it out in the yard
and painted it pink. Even so Dolly wasn't certain she wanted it in her room;
later  on,  you couldn't have pried it away from her. That  radio was always
hot enough to hatch a chicken, she  and Catherine  played it  so  much. They
favored broadcasts of football games.  "Please  don't," Dolly admonished the
Judge  when he  attempted  to explain  the rules of  this  game.  "I  like a
mystery. Everybody shouting, having such a fine time: it might not sound  so
large and  happy if I knew why." Primarily the Judge was peeved  because  he
couldn't  get Dolly to root for  any one team. She thought both sides should
win: "They're all nice boys, I'm sure."
     Because of the radio  Catherine and I had words one afternoon.  It  was
the afternoon Maude Riordan was playing in a  broadcast of the state musical
competition. Naturally I  wanted to  hear her,  Catherine knew that, but she
was  tuned  in on a  Tulane-Georgia  Tech game and  wouldn't let me near the
radio. I  said, "What's  come  over you,  Catherine?  Selfish, dissatisfied,
always got to have your own way, why  you're worse than Verena ever was." It
was as though, in lieu of prestige lost through  her encounter with the law,
she'd had to double her power in the Talbo house: we at least would  have to
respect  her  Indian blood,  accept  her tyranny. Dolly  was willing; in the
matter of Maude Riordan, however, she sided with  me: "Let  Collin find  his
station. It wouldn't be Christian not to listen to Maude. She's a  friend of
ours."
     Everyone who heard Maude agreed that she should've won first prize. She
placed second, which pleased her family, for  it meant a half-scholarship in
music  at the  University.  Still  it  wasn't  fair, because  she  performed
beautifully, much better than the boy who  won  the larger prize. She played
her father's serenade, and  it seemed to me  as pretty as it had that day in
the  woods.  Since that day I'd wasted hours scribbling her name, describing
in my head her charms,  her hair the  color of  vanilla ice cream. The Judge
arrived in time to  hear the broadcast, and I know Dolly was glad because it
was as if we were reunited again in the leaves with music  like  butterflies
flying.
     Some days afterwards  I met Elizabeth Henderson  on the  street.  She'd
been  at the beauty parlor, for her hair was finger-waved, her nails tinted,
she did look grown-up and  I  complimented her. "It's for the  party. I hope
your costume is ready." Then I remembered: the Halloween party to which  she
and  Maude had asked me to contribute  my  services as a fortuneteller. "You
can't have forgotten?  Oh, Collin," she said,  "we've worked like dogs! Mrs.
Riordan  is  making a  wine  punch.  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if there's
drunkenness and everything.  And after all it's  a  celebration  for  Maude,
because she won the prize, and because," Elizabeth glanced along the street,
a glum  perspective of silent houses  and telephone poles, "she'll be  going
away-to the  University, you know." A  loneliness fell around us, we did not
want to go our separate ways: I offered to walk her home.
     On our way we stopped by the Katydid where  Elizabeth  placed an  order
for a Halloween cake, and Mrs. C. C. County, her apron glittering with sugar
crystals, appeared from the oven room  to  inquire  after Dolly's condition.
"Doing  well as  can be  expected  I  suppose," she  lamented.  "Imagine it,
walking  pneumonia. My sister,  now she  had the  ordinary lying-down  kind.
Well, we can be thankful Dolly's in  her  own bed; it eases  my mind to know
you  people  are  home  again.  Ha  ha, guess  we  can laugh about  all that
foolishness  now.  Look here, I've Just pulled out a pan  of doughnuts;  you
take them to Dolly with my blessings."  Elizabeth  and  I ate most of  those
doughnuts before we  reached her house. She invited me in to have a glass of
milk and finish them off.
     Today there is  a filling station where the Henderson house used to be.
It was some fifteen draughty rooms  casually  nailed together, a place stray
animals would have  claimed if Riley had not been a gifted carpenter. He had
an outdoor shed, a combination of workshop and sanctuary, where he spent his
mornings sawing  lumber, shaving shingles. Its wall-shelves  sagged with the
relics of  outgrown bobbies: snakes, bees,  spiders preserved in alcohol,  a
bat  decaying in a bottle; ship  models. A boyhood enthusiasm  for taxidermy
had resulted in a pitiful zoo of nasty-odored beasts: an eyeless rabbit with
maggot-green fur and  ears  that drooped like a bloodhound's -objects better
off buried, I'd been lately to see Riley several times;  Big Eddie  Stover's
bullet had shattered his shoulder, and the curse of it was he had to wear an
itching plaster cast  which  weighed, he  said,  a  hundred pounds. Since he
couldn't drive his car, or hammer a  proper nail, there wasn't  much for him
to do except loaf around and brood.
     "If you want to see Riley," said Elizabeth, "you'll find him out in the
shed. I expect Maude's with him."
     "Maude Riordan?" I had reason to be surprised, because on the occasions
I'd visited Riley  he'd made a point of our sitting in the shed;  the  girls
wouldn't bother us there,  for it was, he'd boasted, one threshold no female
was permitted to cross.
     "Reading to him.  Poetry, plays. Maude's been  absolutely adorable. And
it's  not  as  though  my brother had  ever  treated her  with  common human
decency. But she's let bygones be bygones.  I guess coming so near  to being
killed the way  he was,  I guess that would  change a  person-make them more
receptive to the finer things. He lets her read to him by the hour."
     The shed,  shaded by fig trees, was in the back yard. Matronly Plymouth
hens waddled about its doorstep picking at the seeds of last summer's fallen
sunflowers. On the  door a  childhood word in faded  whitewash feebly warned
Bewarel  It aroused  a shyness in me. Beyond the door  I  could hear Maude's
voice-her poetry voice, a swooning chant certain  louts in school had dearly
loved to mimic. Anyone who'd  been told Riley Henderson had  come  to  this,
they'd have said that fall from the sycamore had affected his head. Stealing
over to  the shed's window, I  got a look at him: he was absorbed in sorting
the  insides  of  a  clock  and,  to judge  from his  face,  might have been
listening  to nothing  more  uplifting than the  hum of a  fly; he jiggled a
finger in his ear,  as though to relieve an  irritation. Then, at the moment
I'd decided  to  startle them by rapping on the  window, he  put  aside  his
clockworks and,  coming  round behind Maude,  reached down and shut the book
from which she was  reading.  With a grin he gathered in his hand  twists of
her hair-she rose like  a  kitten lifted by  the nape of its neck. It was as
though they were edged with light, some brilliance that smarted my eyes. You
could see it wasn't the first time they'd kissed.
     Not one week before, because  of  his  experience in such  matters, I'd
taken Riley  into my confidence,  confessed  to  him my feelings for  Maude:
please look.  I wished I were a giant so that I could grab hold of that shed
and shake  it to  a splinter; knock  down  the door and denounce them  both.
Yet-of what could I accuse Maude? Regardless  of how  bad she'd talked about
him I'd always known she was heartset on  Riley. It wasn't  as  if there had
ever been an understanding between the two of us; at the most we'd been good
friends: for the last few years, not even that. As I walked back through the
yard the pompous Plymouth hens cackled after me tauntingly.
     Elizabeth said, "You didn't stay long. Or weren't they there?"
     I told her it hadn't seemed right to interrupt.  "They were  getting on
so well with the finer things."
     But  sarcasm  never touched Elizabeth: she was, despite  the subtleties
her  soulful appearance  promised, too literal a person.  "Wonderful,  isn't
it?"
     "Wonderful."
     "Collin-for heaven's sake: what are you sniveling about?"
     "Nothing. I mean, I've got & cold."
     "Well  I  hope it doesn't keep you  away from the  party. Only you must
have a costume. Riley's coming as the devil."
     "That's appropriate."
     "Of course we want you  in a skeleton suit. I know  there's  only a day
left..."
     I  had no intention of going to the party. As  soon as I got home I sat
down to write Riley a letter. Dear Riley...  Dear  Henderson. I crossed  out
the  dear; plain Henderson would  do. Henderson, your treachery has not gone
unobserved. Pages were filled  with recording the origins of our friendship,
its  honorable history; and  gradually a  feeling grew that there  must be a
mistake: such a splendid friend would not have wronged me. Until, toward the
end, I  found  myself  deliriously  telling  him he was my  best  friend, my
brother. So I threw these ravings in  a fireplace and five minutes later was
in Dolly's room asking what  were the  chances of my having  a skeleton suit
made by the following night.
     Dolly was not much of a seamstress, she had  her difficulties lifting a
hemline. This was also  true  of  Catherine;  it was  in Catherine's makeup,
however, to pretend professional status in all fields, particularly those in
which  she  was least competent. She sent me to  Verena's drygoods store for
seven yards of their choicest  black satin. "With seven yards there ought to
be some bits left over: me and Dolly can trim our petticoats." Then she made
a show of tape-measuring my  lengths  and widths, which  was sound procedure
except that she had no idea of how to apply such information to scissors and
cloth.  "This little  piece,"  she  said,  hacking off  a  yard,  "it'd make
somebody lovely  bloomers.  And this here,"  snip, snip, "...a  black  satin
collar would dress up my old print  considerable." You couldn't have covered
a midget's shame with the amount of material allotted me.
     "Catherine, now  dear, we mustn't think of our own needs," Dolly warned
her.
     They worked without recess through the afternoon. The Judge, during his
usual visit, was forced to thread needles,  a job Catherine despised; "Makes
my flesh crawl, like stuffing worms on a fishhook." At suppertime she called
quits and went home to her house among the butterbean stalks.
     But a desire to finish had seized  Dolly; and a talkative exhilaration.
Her needle soared in  and  out of  the  satin; like the seams  it made,  her
sentences linked in  a wiggling line. "Do you think," she said, "that Verena
would let me give a party? Now that  I have so  many friends? There's Riley,
there's  Charlie,  couldn't we ask Mrs. County, Maude and  Elizabeth? In the
spring; a garden  party-with a few fireworks. My father was a great hand for
sewing. A pity  I didn't inherit it from  him. So many men sewed  in the old
days; there was one friend of Papa's that won I  don't know  how many prizes
for his scrap-quilts. Papa said  it relaxed him after the heavy  rough  work
around a  farm. Collin. Will you promise me  something?  I  was against your
coming here, I've never believed  it was right, raising  a boy in a houseful
of women. Old women and their prejudices. But it was done;  and  somehow I'm
not worried about  it now: you'll make your mark, you'll get  on. It's  this
that I want you to promise me: don't be unkind to Catherine, try not to grow
too far  away from her. Some nights it keeps me wide awake to  think of  her
forsaken. There," she held up my suit, "let's see if it fits."
     It pinched in the crotch  and  in the  rear  drooped  like an old man's
B.V.D.'s;  the legs were wide  as sailor  pants, one sleeve stopped above my
wrist, the other shot past my fingertips. It wasn't, as Dolly admitted, very
stylish. "But when we've painted on  the bones..." she said. "Silver  paint.
Verena bought some once  to dress up  a flagpole-before she took against the
government. It s