Other Voices, Other Rooms (17 page)

In answer there came a sigh so stricken it seemed to have heaved up from the pits of her being. She leaned her forehead on the bed-post, and it was then that with a twinge he realized her neckerchief was missing: exposed, her slanted scar leered like crooked lips, and her neck, divided this way, had lost its giraffe-like grandeur. How small she seemed, cramped, as if some reduction of the spirit had taken double toll and made demands upon the flesh: with that illusion of height was gone the animal grace, arrow-like dignity, defiant emblem of her separate heart.

“Zoo,” he said, “did you see snow?”

She looked at him, but her eyes appeared not to make a connection with what they saw; in fact, there was about them a cross-eyed effect, as though they fixed on a solacing inner vision. “Did I see snow?” she repeated, trying hard, it seemed, to understand. “Did I see snow!” and she broke into a kind of scary giggle, and threw back her head, lips apart, like an open-mouthed child hoping to catch rain. “There ain’t none,” she said, violently shaking her head, her black greased hair waving with a windy rasp like scorched grass. “Hit’s all a lotta foolery, snow and such: that sun! it’s everywhere.”

“Like Mr Sansom’s eyes,” said Joel, off thinking by himself.

“Is a nigger sun,” she said, “an my soul, it’s black.” She took the broth bowl, and looked down into it, as if she were a gypsy reading tea-leaves. “I rested by the road; the sun poked down my eyes till I’m near-bout blind . . .”

And Joel said: “But Zoo, if there wasn’t any snow, what was it you saw in Washington, D.C.? I mean now, didn’t you meet up with any of those men from the newsreels?”

“. . . an was holes in my shoes where the rocks done cut through the jackodiamonds and the aceohearts; walked all day, an here it seem like I ain’t come no ways, an here I’m sittin by the road with my feets afire an ain’t a soul in sight.” Two tears, following the bony edges of her face, faded, leaving silver stains. “I’m so tired ain’t no feelin what tells me iffen I pinch myself, and I go on sittin there in that lonesome place till I looks up an see the Big Dipper: right about now along come a red truck with big bug lights coverin me head to toe.” There were four men in the truck, she said, three white boys, and a Negro who rode in back squatting on top of a mountain of watermelons. The driver of the truck got out: “A real low man puffin a cigar like a bull; he ain’t wearin no shirt an all this red hair growin even on his shoulders an hands; so quiet he walks through the grass, an looks at me so sweet I reckon maybe he sorry my feets is cut an maybe’s gonna ax me why don’t I ride in his fine car?” Go on, he told her, tapping his cigar so the ash was flung in her face, go on, gal, get down in the ditch; never mind why, says the man, and shoved her so she rolled over the embankment, landing on her back helpless as a junebug. “Lord, I sure commenced to hoop n’ holler an this little bull-man says I hush up else he’s gonna bust out my brains.” She got up and started to run, but those other two boys, answering the driver’s whistle, jumped down into the ditch and cut her off at either end; both these boys wore panama hats, and one had on a pair of sailor pants and a soldier’s shirt: it was he who caught her and called for the Negro to bring a rifle. “That mean nigger look a whole lot like Keg, an he put that rifle up side my ear, an the man, he done tore my pretty dress straight down the front, an tells them panama boys theys to set to: I hear the Lord’s voice talkin down that gun barrel, an the Lord said Zoo, you done took the wrong road and come the wrong way, you et of the apple, he said, an hits pure rotten, an outa the sky my Lord look down an brung comfort, an whilst them devils went jerkin like billygoats right then and there in all my shameful sufferin I said holy words: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I’ll fear no evil, for you is with me Lord, yea verily, I say, an them fools laughed, but my Lord took that sailor boy’s shape, an us, me an the Lord, us loved.” The boys had removed their panama hats; now they put them on again, and one said to the driver, well, what was wrong with him? and the driver sucked his cigar and scratched behind his ear and said, well, to tell the truth, he wasn’t much one for being watched; O.K., said the boys, and climbed back up the bank, the Negro following after them, all three laughing, which made the driver’s cheek twitch and his eyes “go yellow like an ol tomcat; an it was peculiar, cause he was one scared man.” He did not move to touch her, but squatted impotent at her side like a bereaved lover, like an idol, then the truck-horn blew, the boys called, and he bent close: “He pushed that cigar in my bellybutton, Lord, in me was born fire like a child . . .”

Joel plugged his ears; what Zoo said was ugly, he was sick-sorry she’d ever come back, she ought to be punished. “Stop that, Zoo,” he said, “I won’t listen, I wont . . .” but Zoo’s lips quivered, her eyes blindly twisted toward the inner vision; and in the roar of silence she was a pantomime: the joy of Jesus demented her face and glittered like a sweat, like a preacher her finger shook the air, agonies of joy jerked her breast, her lips bared for a lowdown shout: in sucked her guts, wide swung her arms embracing the eternal: she was a cross, she was crucified. He saw without hearing, and it was more terrible for that, and after she’d gone, docilely taking the broth bowl with her, he kept his fingers in his ears till the ringing grew so loud it deafened even the memory of sound.

They were sure John Brown would never make it up the hill: “If he simply lay down and rolled over on us, I wouldn’t blame him,” said Randolph, and Joel tightened his muscles, hoping this might make the mule’s load lighter. They had a croquer sack for saddle and rope for reins, nevertheless they managed to stay astride, though Randolph wobbled perilously, grunting all the while, and eating endless hard-boiled eggs which Joel handed him from a picnic basket he held. “Another egg, my dear, I’m feeling most frightfully seasick again: if you feel something coming up always put something down.”

It was a smoky day, the sky like a rained-on tinroof, the sun, when you saw it, fishbelly pale, and Joel, who had been routed out of bed and rushed away with such inconsiderate haste, he’d not had time in which to dress decently, was goosepimpled with cold, for he wore a thin T-shirt (turned inside out), and a pair of summer knickers with most of the buttons busted off the fly. At least he had on regular shoes, whereas Randolph wore only carpet slippers. “My feet have expanded so ominously it’s all I can do to squeeze them into these; really, in the light of day what a ghoul I must look: I have the damnedest sensation that every time this sad beast moves my hair falls in floods, and my eyes: are they spinning like dice? Of course I reek of moth-balls . . .” The suit he wore gave off their odor like a gas; a shrunken linen suit stiff with starch and ironed shiny, it bulged and creaked like medieval armor, and he handled himself with exaggerated gingerness, for the seams kept announcing bawdy intentions.

Toward twelve they dismounted, and spread their picnic under a tree. Randolph had brought along a fruit-jar of scuppernong wine; he gargled it like mouthwash, and when there was no more, Joel made use of the empty jar to trap ants: The Pious Insect, Randolph called them, and said: “They fill me with oh so much admiration and ah so much gloom: such puritan spirit in their mindless march of Godly industry, but can so anti-individual a government admit the poetry of what is past understanding? Certainly the man who refused to carry his crumb would find assassins on his trail, and doom in every smile. As for me, I prefer the solitary mole: he is no rose dependent upon thorn and root, nor ant whose time of being is organized by the unalterable herd: sightless, he goes his separate way, knowing truth and freedom are attitudes of the spirit.” He smoothed his hair, and laughed: at himself, it seemed. “If I were as wise as the mole, if I were free and equal, then what an admirable whorehouse I should be the Madame of; more likely, though, I would end up just Mrs Nobody in Particular, a dumpy corsetless creature with a brickhead husband and stepladder brats and a pot of stew on the stove.” Hurriedly, as if bringing an important message, an ant climbed up his neck, and disappeared into his ear. “There’s an ant inside your head,” said Joel, but Randolph, with the briefest nod, went on talking. So Joel cuddled up to him and, politely as he could, peered into his ear. The idea of an ant swimming inside a human head so enthralled him that it was some while before he became aware of silence, and the tense prolonged asking of Randolph’s eyes: it was a look which made Joel prickle mysteriously. “I was looking for the ant,” he said. “It went inside your ear; that could be dangerous, I mean, like swallowing a pin.”

“Or defeat,” said Randolph, his face sinking into sugary folds of resignation.

The gentle jog of John Brown’s trot set ajar the brittle woods; sycamores released their spice-brown leaves in a rain of October: like veins dappled trails veered through storms of showering yellow; perched on dying towers of jack-in-the-pulpit cranberry beetles sang of their approach, and tree-toads, no bigger than dewdrops, skipped and shrilled, relaying the news through the light that was dusk all day. They followed the remnants of a road down which once had spun the wheels of lacquered carriages carrying verbena-scented ladies who twittered like linnets in the shade of parasols, and leathery cotton-rich gentlemen gruffing at each other through a violet haze of Havana smoke, and their children, prim little girls with mint crushed in their handkerchiefs, and boys with mean blackberry eyes, little boys who sent their sisters screaming with tales of roaring tigers. Gusts of autumn, exhaling through the inheriting weeds, grieved for the cruel velvet children and their virile bearded fathers: Was, said the weeds, Gone, said the sky, Dead, said the woods, but the full laments of history were left to the Whippoorwill.

As seagulls inform the sailor of land’s nearness, so a twist of smoke unfurling beyond a range of pines announced the Cloud Hotel. John Brown’s hoofs made a sucking sound in the swamp mud as they circled the green shores of Drownin Pond: Joel looked over the water, hoping to glimpse the creole or the gambler; alas, those sly and slimy fellows did not show themselves. But anchored off shore was a bent, man-shaped tree with moss streaming from its crown like scarecrow hair; sunset birds, hullabalooing around this island roost, detonated the desolate scene with cheerless cries, and only catfish bubbles ruffled the level eel-like slickness of the pond: in a burst, like the screaming of the birds, Joel heard the lovely laughing splashful girls splashing diamond fountains, the lovely harp-voiced girls, silent now, gone to the arms of their lovers, the creole and the gambler.

The hotel rose before them like a mound of bones; a widow’s-walk steepled the roof, and leaning over its fence was Little Sunshine, who had a telescope trained upon the path; as they came closer he began a furious gesturing which at first seemed a too frantic welcome, but as his frenzy dissipated not at all, they soon realized he was warning them off. Curbing John Brown, they waited in the seeping twilight while the hermit descended through the trapdoor of the widow’s-walk, presently reappearing on a slide of steps which tinkled over wastes of feudal lawn down to the water’s rim. Brandishing his hickory cane, he advanced along the shore with a creeping bowlegged hobble, and Joel’s eyes played a trick: he saw Little Sunshine as the old pond-tree come alive.

Still yards away, the hermit stopped and, stooping on his cane, fixed them with a gluey stare. Then Randolph said his name, and the old man, blinking with disbelief, broke into frisky giggles: “Well, now, ain’t you the mischief! Can’t see worth nothin, an there I was with my ol spyglass axin: who that a-comin where they ain’t got no place? Well, now, this be a sweet todo! Step-long, step-long, follow me right careful, plenty quicksand.”

They walked single-file, Joel, who led the mule, going last, and wondering, as he followed the sog of Randolph’s footprints, why he’d been lied to, for it was plain that Little Sunshine had not been expecting them.

Swan stairs soft with mildewed carpet curved upward from the hotel’s lobby; the diabolic tongue of a cuckoo bird, protruding out of a wall-clock, mutely proclaimed an hour forty years before, and on the room clerk’s splintery desk stood dehydrated specimens of potted palm. After tying a spittoon onto John Brown’s leg, this in order that they could hear him should he wander off, they left him in the lobby, and filed through the ballroom, where a fallen chandelier jeweled the dust, and weather-ripped draperies lay bunched on the waltz-waved floor like curtsying ladies. Passing a piano, over which web was woven like the gauzy covering of a museum exhibit, Joel struck the keys expecting “Chopsticks” in return; instead, there came a glassy rattle of scuttling feet.

Beyond the ballroom, and in what had once been Mrs Cloud’s private apartment, were two simply furnished, spacious rooms, both beautifully clean, and this was where Little Sunshine lived: the evident pride he took in these quarters increased the charm of their surprise, and when he closed the door he made nonexistent the ruin surrounding them. Firelight polished sherry-red wood, gilded the wings of a carved angel, and the hermit, bringing forth a bottle of homemade whiskey, put it where the light could lace its comforting promise. “It is been a mighty long while since you come here, Mister Randolph,” he said, drawing chairs about the fire. “You was justa child, like this sweet boy.” He pinched Joel’s cheek, and his fingernails were so long they nearly broke the skin. “Usta come here totin them drawin books; I wisht you’d come again like that.” Randolph inclined his face toward the shadows of his chair: “How silly, my dear; don’t you know that if I came here as a child, then most of me never left? I’ve always been, so to speak, a non-paying guest. At least I hope so, I should so dislike thinking I’d left myself somewhere else.” Joel slumped like a dog on the floor before the hearth, and the hermit handed him a pillow for his head; all day, after the weeks in bed, it had been as if he were bucking a whirlpool, and now, lullabyed to the bone with drowsy warmth, he let go, let the rivering fire sweep him over its fall; in the eyelid-blue betweenness the wordy sounds of the whiskey-drinkers spilled distantly: more distinct and real were whisperings behind the walls, above the ceiling: rotate of party slippers answering a violin’s demand, and the children passing to and fro, their footsteps linking in a dance, and up and down the stairs going-coming humming heel-clatter of chattering girls, and rolling broken beads, busted pearls, the bored snores of fat fathers, and the lilt of fans tapped in tune and the murmur of gloved hands as the musicians, like bridegrooms in their angel-cake costumes, rise to take a bow. (He looked into the fire, longing to see their faces as well, and the flames erupted an embryo; a veined, vacillating shape, its features formed slowly, and even when complete staved veiled in dazzle: his eyes burned tar-hot as he brought them nearer: tell me, tell me, who are you? are you someone I know? are you dead? are you my friend? do you love me? But the painted, disembodied head remained unborn beyond its mask, and gave no clue. Are you someone I am looking for? he asked, not knowing whom he meant, but certain that for him there must be such a person, just as there was for everybody else: Randolph with his almanac, Miss Wisteria and her search by flashlight, Little Sunshine remembering other voices, other rooms, all of them remembering, or never having known. And Joel drew back. If he recognized the figure in the fire, then what ever would he find to take its place? It was easier not to know, better holding heaven in your hand like a butterfly that is not there at all.)
Goodnight ladies, sweet
dreams ladies, farewell ladies, we’re going to leave you now!
Farewell sighs of folding fans, the brute fall of male boots, and the furtive steps of tittering Negro girls tiptoeing through the vast honeycomb snuffing candles and drawing shades against the night: echoes of the orchestra strum a house of sleep.