Other Voices, Other Rooms (3 page)

“Reach behind and hand me a match, will you, boy?” said Radclif. “Back there on the shelf, see?”

Joel opened his eyes and looked about him dazedly. A perfect tear of sweat was balanced on the tip of his nose. “You certainly have a lot of junk,” he said, probing around the shelf, which was littered with a collection of yellowed newspapers, a slashed inner tube, greasy tools, an air pump, a flashlight and . . . a pistol. Alongside the pistol was an open carton of ammunition; bullets the bright copper of fresh pennies. He was tempted to take a whole handful, but ended by artfully dropping just one into his breast pocket. “Here they are.”

Radclif popped a cigarette between his lips, and Joel, without being asked, struck a match for him.

“Thanks,” said Radclif, a huge drag of smoke creeping out his nostrils. “Say, ever been in this part of the country before?”

“Not exactly, but my mother took me to Gulfport once, and that was nice because of the sea. We passed through there yesterday on the train.”

“Like it round here?”

Joel imagined a queerness in the driver’s tone. He studied Radclif ’s blunt profile, wondering if perhaps the theft had been noticed. If so, Radclif gave no sign. “Well, it’s . . . you know, different.”

“Course I don’t see any difference. Lived hereabouts all my life, and it looks like everywhere else to me, ha ha!”

The truck hit suddenly a stretch of wide, hard road, un-bordered by tree-shade, though a black skirt of distant pines darkened the rim of a great field that lay to the left. A far-off figure, whether man or woman you could not tell, rested from hoeing to wave, and Joel waved back. Farther on, two little white-haired boys astride a scrawny mule shouted their delight when the truck passed, burying them in a screen of dust. Radclif honked and honked the horn at a tribe of hogs that took their time in getting off the road. He could swear like nobody Joel had ever heard, except maybe the Negro dockhand.

A while later, scowling thoughtfully, Joel said: “I’d like to ask you something, o.k.?” He waited till Radclif nodded consent. “Well, what I wanted to ask was, do you know my . . . Mister Sansom?”

“Yeah, I know who he is, sure,” said Radclif, and swabbed his forehead with a filthy handkerchief. “You threw me off the track with those two names, Sansom and Knox. Oh sure, he’s the guy that married Amy Skully.” There was an instant’s pause before he added: “But the real fact is, I never laid eyes on him.”

Joel chewed his lip, and was silent a moment. He was crazy with questions he wanted answered, but the idea of asking them embarrassed him, for to be so ignorant of one’s own blood-kin seemed shameful. Therefore he said what he had to in a very bold voice: “What about this Skully’s Landing? I mean, who all lives there?”

Radclif squinted his eyes while he considered. “Well,” he said at last, “they’ve got a coupla niggers out there, and I know them. Then your daddy’s wife, know her: my old lady does dressmaking for her now and again; used to, anyway.” He sucked in cigarette smoke, and flipped the butt out the window. “And the cousin . . . yes, by God, the cousin!”

“Oh?” said Joel casually, though never once in all the letters had such a person been mentioned, and his eyes begged the driver to amplify. But Radclif merely smiled a curious smile, as if amused by a private joke too secret for sharing.

And that was as far as the matter went.

“Look sharp now,” said Radclif presently, “we’re coming into town.”

A house. A grey clump of Negro cabins. An unpainted clapboard church with a rain-rod steeple, and three Holy panes of ruby glass. A sign: The Lord Jesus Is Coming! Are You Ready? A little black child wearing a big straw hat and clutching tight a pail of blackberries. Over all the sun’s stinging glaze. Soon there was a short, unpaved and nameless street, lined with similar one-floored houses, some nicer-looking than others; each had a front porch and a yard, and in some yards grew scraggly rose bushes and crepe myrtle and China trees, from a branch of which very likely dangled a child’s play swing made of rope and an old rubber tire. There were Japonica trees with waxy black-green polished leaves. And he saw a fat pink girl skipping rope, and an elderly lady ensconced on a sagging porch cooling herself with a palmetto fan. Then a red-barn livery stable: horses, wagons, buggies, mules, men. An abrupt bend in the road: Noon City.

Radclif braked the truck to a halt. He reached across and opened the door next to Joel. “Too bad I can’t ride you out to the Landing, son,” he said hurriedly. “The company’d raise hell. But you’ll make it fine; it’s Saturday, lotsa folks living out thataway come into town on Saturday.”

Joel was standing alone now, and his blue shirt, damp with sweat, was pasted to his back. Toting the sticker-covered suitcase, he cautiously commenced his first walk in the town.

Noon City is not much to look at. There is only one street, and on it are located a General Merchandise store, a repair shop, a small building which contains two offices, one lodging a lawyer, the other a doctor; a combination barbershopbeautyparlor that is run by a one-armed man and his wife; and a curious, indefinable establishment known as R. V. Lacey’s Princely Place where a Texaco gasoline pump stands under the portico. These buildings are grouped so closely together they seem to form a ramshackle palace haphazardly thrown together overnight by a half-wit carpenter. Now across the road in isolation stand two other structures: a jail, and a tall queer tottering ginger-colored house. The jail has not housed a white criminal in over four years, and there is seldom a prisoner of any kind, the Sheriff being a lazy no-good, prone to take his ease with a bottle of liquor, and let trouble-makers and thieves, even the most dangerous type of cutthroats, run free and wild. As to the freakish old house, no one has lived there for God knows how long, and it is said that once three exquisite sisters were raped and murdered here in a gruesome manner by a fiendish Yankee bandit who rode a silvergrey horse and wore a velvet cloak stained scarlet with the blood of Southern womanhood; when told by antiquated ladies claiming one-time acquaintance with the beautiful victims, it is a tale of Gothic splendor. The windows of the house are cracked and shattered, hollow as eyeless sockets; a rotted balcony leans perilously forward, and yellow sunflower birds hide their nests in its secret places; the scaling outer walls are ragged with torn, weather-faded posters that flutter when there is a wind. Among the town kids it is a sign of great valor to enter these black rooms after dark and signal with a match-flame from a window on the topmost floor. However, the porch of this house is in pretty fair condition, and on Saturdays the visiting farm-families make it their headquarters.

New people rarely settle in Noon City or its outlying parts; after all, jobs are scarce here. On the other hand, seldom do you hear of a person leaving, unless it’s to wend his lonesome way up onto the dark ledge above the Baptist church where forsaken tombstones gleam like stone flowers among the weeds.

Saturday is of course the big day. Shortly after daylight a procession of mule-drawn wagons, broken-down flivvers, and buggies begins wheeling in from the countryside, and towards midmorning a considerable congregation is gathered. The men sport their finest shirts and store-bought breeches; the women scent themselves with vanilla flavoring or dime-store perfume, of which the most popular brand is called Love Divine; the girls wear dodads in their cropped hair, inflame their cheeks with a lot of rouge, and carry five-cent paper fans that have pretty pictures painted on them. Though barefoot and probably half-naked, each little child is washed clean and given a few pennies to spend on something like a prize-inside box of molasses popcorn. Finished poking around in the various stores, the womenfolk assemble on the porch of the old house, while their men mosey on over to the livery stable. Swift and eager, saying the same things over and over, their voices hum and weave through the long day. Sickness and weddings and courting and funerals and God are the favorite topics on the porch. Over at the stable the men joke and drink whiskey, talk crops and play jackknife: once in a while there are terrible fights, for many of these men are hot-tempered, and if they hold a grudge against somebody they like to wrestle it out.

When twilight shadows the sky it is as if a soft bell were tolling dismissal, for a gloomy hush stills all, and the busy voices fall silent like birds at sunset. The families in their vehicles roll out of town like a sad, funeral caravan, and the only trace they leave is the fierce quiet that follows. The proprietors of the different Noon City establishments remain open an hour longer before bolting their doors and going home to bed; but after eight o’clock not a decent soul is to be seen wandering in this town except, maybe, a pitiful drunk or a young swain promenading with his ladylove.

“Hey, there! You with the suitcase!”

Joel whirled round to find a bandy-legged, little one-armed man glowering at him from the doorway of a barbershop; he seemed too sickly to be the owner of such a hard, deep voice. “Come here, kid,” he commanded, jerking a thumb at his aproned chest.

When Joel reached him, the man held out his hand and in the open palm shone a nickel. “See this?” he said. Joel nodded dumbly. “O.K.,” said the man, “now look up the road yonder. See that little gal with the red hair?”

Joel saw whom he meant all right. It was a girl with fiery dutchboy hair. She was about his height, and wore a pair of brown shorts and a yellow polo shirt. She was prancing back and forth in front of the tall, curious old house, thumbing her nose at the barber and twisting her face into evil shapes. “Listen,” said the barber, “you go collar that nasty youngun for me and this nickel’s yours for keeps. Ohoh! Watch out, here she comes again. . . .”

Whooping like a wild-west Indian, the redhead whipped down the road, a yelling throng of young admirers racing in her wake. She chunked a great fistful of rocks when she came opposite the spot where Joel was standing. The rocks landed with a maddening clatter on the barbershop’s tin roof, and the one-armed man, his face an apoplectic color, hollered: “I’ll getcha, Idabel! I’ll getcha sure as shooting; you just wait!” A flourish of female laughter floated through the screen door behind him, and a waspish-voiced woman shrilled: “Sugar, you quit actin the fool, and hie yourself in here outa that heat.” Then, apparently addressing a third party: “I declare but what he ain’t no better’n that Idabel; ain’t neither one got the sense God gave ’em. Oh shoot, I says to Miz Potter (she was in for a shampoo a week ago today and I’d give a pretty penny to know how she gets that mop so filthy dirty), well, I says: ‘Miz Potter, you teach that Idabel at the school,’ I says, ‘now how come she’s so confounded mean?’ I says: ‘It do seem to me a mystery, and her with that sweet ol sister—speakin of Florabel— and them two twins, and noways alike. Wellsir, Miz Potter answers me: ‘Oh, Miz Caulfield, that Idabel sure do give me a peck of trouble and it’s my opinion she oughta be in the penitentiary.’ Uh huh, that’s just what she said. Well, it wasn’t no revelation to me cause I always knew she was a freak, no ma’am, never saw that Idabel Thompkins in a dress yet.
Sugar, you come on in here outa that heat. . . .
”

The man made a yoke with his fingers and spit fatly through it. He gave Joel a nasty look, and snapped, “Are you standing there wanting my money for doing nothing whatsoever, is that it, eh?”

“Sugar, you hear me?”

“Hush your mouth, woman,” and the screen door whined shut.

Joel shook his head and went on his way. The redheaded girl and her loud gang were gone from sight, and the white afternoon was ripening towards the quiet time of day when the summer sky spills soft color over the drawn land. He smiled with chilly insolence at the interested stares of passers-by, and when he reached the establishment known as R. V. Lacey’s Princely Place, he stopped to read a list that was chalked on a tiny, battered blackboard which stood outside the entrance: Miss Roberta V. Lacey Invites You to Come in and Try Our Tasty Fried Catfish and Chicken—Yummy Dixie Ice Cream—Good Delicious Barbecue—Sweet Drinks & Cold Beer.

“Sweet drinks,” he said half-aloud, and it seemed as if frosty Coca-Cola was washing down his dry throat. “Cold beer.” Yes, a cold beer. He felt the lumpy outline of the change purse in his pocket, then pushed the swinging screen door open and stepped inside.

In the box-shaped room that was R. V. Lacey’s Princely Place there were about a dozen people standing around, mostly overalled boys with rawboned, sun-browned faces, and a few young girls. A hubbub of talk faded to nothing when Joel entered and self-consciously sat himself down at a wooden counter which ran the length of the room.

“Why, hello, little one,” boomed a muscular woman who immediately strode forward and propped her elbows on the counter before him. She had long ape-like arms that were covered with dark fuzz, and there was a wart on her chin, and decorating this wart was a single antenna-like hair. A peach silk blouse sagged under the weight of her enormous breasts; a zany light sparkled in the red-rimmed eyes she focused on him. “Welcome to Miss Roberta’s.” Two of her dirty-nailed fingers reached out to give his cheek a painful pinch. “Say now, what can Miss Roberta do for this cute-lookin fella?”

Joel was overwhelmed. “A cold beer,” he blurted, deafly ignoring the titter of giggles and guffaws that sounded in the background.

“Can’t serve no beer to minors, babylove, even if you are a mighty cute-lookin fella. Now what you want is a nice NEHI grapepop,” said the woman, lumbering away.

The giggles swelled to honest laughter, and Joel’s ears turned a humiliated pink. He wondered if the woman was a lunatic. And his eyes scanned the sour-smelling room as if it were a madhouse. There were calendar portraits of toothy bathing beauties on the walls, and a framed certificate which said: This is to certify that Roberta Velma Lacey won Grand Prize in Lying at the annual Double Branches Dog Days Frolic. Hanging from the low ceiling were several poisonous streamers of strategically arranged flypaper, and a couple of naked lightbulbs that were ornamented with shredded ribbons of green-and-red crepe paper. A water pitcher filled with branches of towering pink dogwood sat on the counter.