Other Voices, Other Rooms Read online

  Her lips whitened, she spit the answer: “Florabel. That damned bastard.”

  “A girl can’t be a bastard,” he said.

  “Oh, she’s a bastard all right. But I didn’t mean her.” Idabel pulled the hound onto her lap; sleepily submissive, he lay there allowing her to pick fleas off his belly. “I meant that old bastard daddy of mine. We had us a knock-down drag-out fight, him and me and Florabel. On account of he tried to shoot Henry here; Florabel put him up to it . . . says Henry’s got a mortal disease, which is a low-down lie from start to finish. I figure I broke her nose and some teeth, too; leastwise, she was bleeding like a pig when me and Henry took off. We been walking around in the dark all night.” Suddenly she laughed in her woolly familiar way. “And up around sunrise, know who we saw? Zoo Fever. She couldn’t hardly breathe, she was carrying so much junk: golly, we were right sorry to hear about Jesus. It’s funny for that old man to die and nobody hear a word. But like I told you, who knows what goes on at the Landing?”

  Joel thought: who knows what goes on anywhere? Except Mr Sansom. He knew everything; in some trick way his eyes traveled the whole world over: they this very instant were watching him, of that he had no doubt. And it was probable, too, that, if he had a mind, he could reveal to Randolph Pepe Alvarez’s whereabouts.

  “Don’t you fret none, Henry,” said Idabel, popping a flea. “They’ll never lay a hand on you.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Joel asked. “You’ve got to go home sometime.”

  She rubbed her nose, and considered him with eyes exaggeratedly wide and appealing: if it had been anyone but Idabel, Joel would’ve thought she was making up to him. “Maybe,” she said, “and maybe not; that’s what I came to see you for.” Abruptly businesslike, she shoved the dog off her lap, and took a hearty comrade-grip on Joel’s shoulders: “How would you like to run away?” But before he could say what he’d like she hurried on: “We could go to town tonight when it’s dark. The travelin-show’s in town, and there’ll be a big crowd. I do want to see the travelin-show one more time; they’ve got a ferris wheel this year somebody said, and . . .”

  “But where would we go?” he said.

  Idabel’s mouth opened, closed. Apparently she hadn’t given this much thought, and with the wide world to choose from, all she could find to say was: “Outside; we’ll just walk around outside till we come on a nice place.”

  “We could go to California and pick grapes,” he suggested. “Out West you don’t have to be but twelve years old to get married.”

  “I don’t want to get married,” said Idabel, coloring. “Who the hell said I wanted to get married? Now you listen, boy: you behave decent, you behave like we’re brothers, or don’t you behave at all. Anyway, we don’t want to do no sissy thing like pick grapes. I thought maybe we could join the navy; else we could teach Henry tricks and get in the circus: say, couldn’t you learn magic tricks?”

  Which reminded him: he’d never gone after the charm Little Sunshine had promised; certainly, if he were running off with Idabel, they would need this magic, and so he asked if she knew the way to the Cloud Hotel. “Kind of,” she said, “down through the woods and the sweetgum hollow and then across the creek where the mill is . . . oh, it’s a long way. Why’d we want to go anyhow?” But of course he could not say, for Little Sunshine had warned him never to mention the charm. “I’ve got important business with the man there,” he said, and then, wanting a little to frighten her: “Otherwise something terrible will happen to us.”

  They both jumped. “Don’t hide, I know you’re out there, I heard you.” It was Amy, and she was calling from a window directly above: she could not see them, though, for the elephant leaves were a camouflage. “The idea, leaving Mr Sansom in this fix, are you completely out of your mind?” They crawled from under the leaves, crept along the side of the house, then raced for the road, the woods. “I know you’re there, Joel Knox, come up this instant, sir!”

  Deep in the hollow, dark syrup crusted the bark of vine-roped sweetgums; like pale apple leaves green witch butterflies sank and rose there and there; a breezy lane of trumpet lilies (Saints and Heroes, these alone, or so old folks said, could hear their mythical flourish) beckoned like hands lace-gloved and ghostly. Idabel kept waving her arms, for the mosquitoes were fierce: everywhere, like scraps of a huge shattered mirror, mosquito pools of marsh water gleamed and broke in Henry’s jogging path.

  “I’ve got some money,” said Idabel. “Fact is, I’ve got near about four bits.” Joel thought of the change he’d stored away in the box, and bragged that he had more than that. “We’ll spend it all at the travelin-show,” she said, and took a froggish jump over a crocodile-looking log. “Who needs money anyhow? Leastwise, not right aways we don’t . . . except for dopes. We ought to save enough so as we can have a dope every day cause my brains get fried if I can’t have myself an ice-cold dope. And cigarettes. I surely do appreciate a smoke. Dopes and smokes and Henry are the onliest things I love.”

  “You like me some, don’t you?” he said, without meaning really to speak aloud. In any case, Idabel, chanting “. . . the big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair . . .” did not answer.

  They stopped to scrape off chews of sweetgum, and while they stood there she said: “My daddy’ll be out rooting up the country for me; I bet he’ll go down and ask Mr Bluey for the loan of his old bloodhound.” She laughed and sweetgum juice trickled out the corners of her mouth; a green butterfly lighted on her head, held like a ribbon to a lock of her hair. “One time they were hunting for an escaped convict (right here in this very hollow), Mr Bluey and his hound and Sam Radclif and Roberta Lacey and the Sheriff and all those dogs from the farm; when it got dark we could see their lamps shining way off here in the woods, and hear the dogs howling; it was like a holiday: daddy and all the men and Roberta Lacey got hollering drunk, you could hear old Roberta’s hee-haw clear to Noon City and back . . . and you know, I was real sorry for that convict, and afraid for him: I kept thinking I was him and he was me and it was both of us they were out to catch.” She spit the gum like tobacco, and hooked her thumbs in the belt rungs of her khaki shorts. “But he got away. They never did find him. Some folks hold that he’s still about . . . hiding in the Cloud Hotel, maybe, or living at the Landing.”

  “There is someone living at the Landing,” Joel said excitedly, and then, with some disappointment, added: “Except it’s not a convict, it’s a lady.”

  “A lady? You mean Miss Amy?”

  “Another lady,” he told her, and regretted mentioning the matter. “She has a tall white wig, and wears a lovely old-time dress, but I don’t know who she is or even if she is real.” But Idabel just looked at him as if he were a fool, so he smiled uneasily and said: “I’m only joking, I only wanted to scare you.” And, not wanting to answer questions, he ran a little ahead, the sword spanking his thigh. It seemed to him they had come a far way, and he played with the notion that they were lost: probably there was no such place as this hotel whose name evoked a kind of mist-white palace floating foglike through the woods. Then, facing a fence of brambles, he unsheathed his sword and cut an opening. “After you, my dear Idabel,” he said, bowing low, and Idabel, whistling for Henry, stepped through. Off a short distance on the other side lay a roughly pebbled beach along which the creek, here rather more of a river, ran sluggishly. A yellowed cane-break obscured at first the sight of a broken dam, and, below this, a queer house straddling the water on high stilts: it was made of unpainted plank gone grey now, and had a strange unfinished look, as though its builder had been frightened and fled his job midway. Three sunning buzzards sat hunched on what remained of the roof, butterflies went in and out of blue sky-bright windows. Joel was sorely let-down, for he thought this alas was the Cloud Hotel, but then Idabel said no, it was an old forsaken mill, a place where, years since, farmers had brought corn to be ground. “There used to be a road, one that went to the Cloud Hotel; nothing but woods now, not
even a path to show the way.” She seized a rock, and threw it up at the buzzards; they glided off the roof, glided over the beach, their shadows making there lazy interlocking circles.

  The water, deeper here than where he and Idabel had taken their bath, was also darker, a muddy bottomless olive, and when he knew they did not have to swim over, his relief gave him courage enough to travel down under the mill where there was a heavy but rotting beam on which they might cross.

  “I’d better go first,” said Idabel. “It’s pretty old and liable to bust.”

  But Joel pushed in front of her and started over; after all, no matter what Idabel said, he was a boy and she was a girl and he was damned if she were going to get the upper hand again. “You and Henry come after me,” he called, his voice hollow in the sudden cellar-like dark. Luminous water-shadows snaked up the cracked and eaten columns supporting the mill-house; copper waterbugs swung on intricate trapezes of insect’s thread, and fungus flowered fist-size on the wet decrepit wood. Joel, stepping gingerly, using his sword to balance, made his eyes avoid the dizzy deep creek moving so closely below, kept them, instead, aimed on the opposite bank where, in sunshine, laden gourdvine burst from red clay green and promising. Still all at once he felt he would never reach the other side: always he would be balanced here suspended between land, and in the dark, and alone. Then, feeling the board shake as Idabel started across, he remembered he had someone to be together with. Only. And his heart turned over, skipped: every part of him went like iron.

  Idabel shouted: “What’s wrong? What’re you stopping for?”

  But he could not tell her. Nor bring himself to make any sound, motion. For piled no more than a foot beyond was a cotton-mouth thick as his leg, long as a whip; its arrow-shaped head slid out, the seed-like eyes alertly pointed, and all over Joel began to sting, as though already bitten. Idabel, coming up behind him, looked over his shoulder. “Jesus,” she breathed, “oh Jesus,” and at the touch of her hand he broke up inside: the creek froze, was like a horizontal cage, and his feet seemed to sink, as though the beam on which they stood was made of quicksand. How did Mr Sansom’s eyes come to be in a moccasin’s head?

  “Hit him,” Idabel demanded. “Hit him with your sword.”

  It was this way: they were bound for the Cloud Hotel, yes, the Cloud Hotel, where a man with a ruby ring was swimming underwater, yes, and Randolph was looking through his almanac and writing letters to Hongkong, to Port-o’-Spain, yes, and poor Jesus was dead, killed by Toby the cat (no, Toby was a baby), by a nest of chimney sweeps falling in a fire. And Zoo: was she in Washington yet? And was it snowing? And why was Mr Sansom staring at him so hard? It was really very, very rude (as Ellen would say), really very rude indeed of Mr Sansom never to close his eyes.

  The snake, unwinding with involved grace, stretched toward them in a rolling way, and Idabel screamed, “Hit him, hit him!” but Joel of course was concerned only with Mr Sansom’s stare.

  Spinning him around, and pushing him safely behind her, she pulled the sword out of his hand. “Big granddaddy bastard,” she jeered, thrusting at the snake. For an instant it seemed paralyzed; then, invisibly swift, and its whole length like a wire singingly tense, it hooked back, snapped forward. “Bastard,” she hollered, closing her eyes, swinging the blade like a sickle, and the cotton-mouth, slapped into the air, turned, plunged, flattened on the water: belly up, white and twisted, it was carried by the current like a torn lily root. “No,” said Joel when, some while later, Idabel, calm in her triumph, tried to coax him on across. “No,” he said, for what use could there be now in finding Little Sunshine? His danger had already been, and he did not need a charm.

  ELEVEN

  During supper Amy announced: “It is my birthday. Yes,” she said, “it is indeed, and not a soul to remember. Now if Angela Lee were here, I should’ve had an immense cake with a prize in every slice: tiny gold rings, and a pearl for my add-a-pearl, and little silver shoe-buckles: oh when I think!”

  “Happy birthday,” said Joel, though what he wished her was hardly happiness, for when he’d come home she’d rushed down the hall with every intention, or so she’d said, of breaking an umbrella over his head; whereupon Randolph, throwing open his door, had warned her, and very sincerely, that if ever she touched him he’d wring her damned neck.

  Randolph went right on chewing a pig’s knuckle, and Amy, ignoring Joel, glared at him, her eyebrows going up and up, her lips pursed and trembling. “Eat, go on and eat, get fat as a hog,” she said, and slammed down her gloved hand: hitting the table it knocked like wood, and the old alarm clock, touched off by this commotion, began to ring: all three sat motionless until it whined itself silent. Then, the lines of her face becoming prominent as veins, Amy, with a preposterously maudlin sob, broke into tears and hiccups. “You silly toad,” she panted, “who else has ever helped you? Angela Lee would sooner have seen you hanged! But no, I’ve given up my life.” Spouting intermittent pardon-me’s, she hiccuped in succession a dozen times. “I tell you this, Randolph, I would sooner go off and clean house for a bunch of tacky niggers than stay here another instant; don’t think I couldn’t earn my way, the mothers of any town in America would send their children to me and we would play organized games, blind man’s bluff and musical chairs and pin the tail, and I would charge each child ten cents: I could make a good living. No, I need not depend on you; in fact, if I had a particle of sense I’d sit down and write a letter to the Law.”

  Randolph crossed his knife and fork, and patted his lips with his kimono sleeve. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he said, “but I’m afraid I haven’t been following: exactly where is it you fancy me at fault?”

  His cousin shook her head, took a deep, nervous breath; the tears stopped coming, the hiccups ceased, and all at once she turned on a shy smile. “It’s my birthday,” she said, her voice reduced to a waver.

  “How very odd. Joel, does it seem to you peculiarly warm for January?”

  Joel was listening for sounds above their voices: three short whistles and a hoot-owl wail, Idabel’s signal. In his impatience it was as if the clock, having unwound, had stopped time altogether.

  “January, yes; and you, my dear, were born (if one believes a family Bible, though I’ll admit one never should, so many weddings being listed an erroneous nine months early) one January New Year’s.”

  Amy’s neck dipped turtlewise into shoulders timidly contracting, and her hiccups racked up again, but less indignant now, more mournful. “But Randolph . . . Randolph I feel as though it was my birthday.”

  “A little wine, then,” he said, “and a song on the pianola; look in the cupboard, too, I’m certain you’ll find a box of stale animal crackers with little silver worms in every crumb.” Carrying lamps, they moved into the parlor, and Joel, sent upstairs to fetch the wine, crossed Randolph’s room quickly, and raised the window. Below, bonfires of newly bloomed roses burned like flower-eyes in the August twilight, their sweetness filling the air like a color. He whistled, whispered, “Idabel, Idabel,” and with Henry she appeared between the leaning columns. “Joel,” she said, unsure, and behind her it was as though the falling night slipped a glove over the five stone fingers which, curling in shadow, seemed bendingly to reach her; when he answered, she hurried beyond their grasp, came safely under the window. “Are you ready?” She’d plaited a collar of white roses for Henry, and there was a rose hung awkwardly in her hair. Idabel, he thought, you look real beautiful. “Go to the mailbox,” he said, “I’ll meet you there.” It was too dark now to maneuver without light. He lit a candle on Randolph’s desk, and went to the cabinet, searching there until he located an unopened bottle of sherry. Stooping to extinguish the candle, he noticed a sheet of green tissue-thin stationery, and on it, in a handwriting daintily familiar, was written only a salutation: “My dearest Pepe.” Randolph, then, had composed the letters to Ellen, but how could he have supposed that Mr Sansom could ever have written a word? In the black hall, lamplight rimmed Mr Sansom’s door
, which, as he waited, a cross-draft commenced to swing open, and it was as though he were seeing his father’s room through reversed binoculars, for, in its yellow clarity, it was like a miniature: the hand with the wedding ring slouched over the bed’s side; scenes of Venice, projected by the frost-glass globe, tinted the walls, the crocheted spread, and there in the mirror whirled his eyes, his smile. Joel entered on tiptoe and went on his knees beside the bed. Downstairs the pianola had begun pounding its raggedy carnival tune, yet somehow it did not interfere with the stillness and secrecy of this moment. Tenderly he took Mr Sansom’s hand and put it against his cheek and held it there until there was warmth between them; he kissed the dry fingers, and the wedding ring whose gold had been meant to encircle them both. “I’m leaving, Father,” he said, and it was, in a sense, the first time he’d acknowledged their blood; slowly he rose up and pressed his palms on either side of Mr Sansom’s face and brought their lips together: “My only father,” he whispered, turning, and, descending the stairs, he said it again, but this time all to himself.

  He set the bottle of sherry on the hall-tree in the chamber, and, hidden by a curtain, peered into the parlor; neither Amy nor Randolph had heard him come down the stairs: she was sitting on the pianola stool, studiously working an ivory fan, tiresomely tapping her foot, and Randolph, bored to limpness, was staring at the archway where Joel was scheduled presently to present himself. He was gone now, and running toward the mailbox, Idabel, outside. The road was like a river to float upon, and it was as if a roman-candle, ignited by the sudden breath of freedom, had zoomed him away in a wake of star-sparks. “Run!” he cried, reaching Idabel, for to stop before the Landing stood forever out of sight was an idea unendurable, and she was racing before him, her hair pulling back in windy stiffness: as the road humped into a hill it was as though she mounted the sky on a moon-leaning ladder; beyond the hill they came to a standstill, panting, tossing their heads. “Was they chasing us?” asked Idabel, petals from her hair-rose shedding in the air, and he said: “Nobody will catch us now never.” Staying to the road, even when they passed close by her house, they walked with Henry between them: roses, strewn from the wreath about the dog’s neck, soaked the colors of a stony moon, and Idabel said she was hungry enough to eat a rose, “or grass and toadstools.” Well, he said, well, when they reached town he’d splurge and treat her to a barbecue at R. V. Lacey’s Princely Place. And they talked of the night he’d first come along this road and heard her in the distance singing with her sister. His eyes nailed down with stars, an old wagon had carried him over a ledge of sleep, a wintry slumber dispelled in the exhilaration of recent waking: meantime, there had taken place a dream, from whose design, unraveling now swifter than memory could reweave it, only Idabel remained, all else and others having dimmed-out as shadows do in dark. “I remember,” she said, “and I thought you was a mess just like Florabel; to be honest to God, I never did much change-mind till today.” Seeming then ashamed, she scampered down the road-bank, and scooped up drinks of water from a thread of creek which trickled there; abruptly she straightened, and, with a finger to her lips, motioned for Joel to join her. “Hear it?” she whispered. Behind the foliage, a bull-toned voice, and another, this like a guitar, blended as raindrops caress to sound a same rhythm; an intricate wind of rustling murmurs, small laughter followed sighs not sad and silences deeper than space. Moss cushioned their footsteps as they moved through the leafy thickness, and came to pause at the edge of an opening: two Negroes, caught in a filmy skein of moon and fern, lay unclothed and enfolded, the man’s caramel-colored body braceleted with his darker lover’s arms, legs, his lips nuzzling her nipples: oo-we, oo-we, sweet Simon, she sighed, love shivering her voice, love rolling through her like thunder; easy, Simon, sweet Simon, easy honey, she crooned, and tensed then, her arms lifting as if to embrace the moon; her lover sank across her, and there together, limbs akimbo, they made on the bloom of moss a black fallen star. Idabel retreated with splashful, rowdy haste, and Joel, trying to keep up, went shh! shh!, thinking how wrong to frighten the lovers, and wishing, too, that she’d waited longer, for watching them it had been as if his heart were beating all over his body, and all undefined whisperings had gathered into one yearning roar: he knew now, and it was not a giggle or a sudden white-hot word; only two people with each other in withness, and it was as though a tide had receded leaving him dry on a beach white as bone, and it was good at last to have come from so grey so cold a sea. He wanted to walk with Idabel’s hand in his, but she had them doubled like knots, and when he spoke to her she looked at him mean and angry and scared; it was as if their positions of the afternoon had somehow reversed: she’d been the hero under the mill, but now he had no weapon with which to defend her, and even if this were not true he wouldn’t have known what it was she wanted killed.