Other Voices, Other Rooms (5 page)

“You let me alone or I’ll show it to you o.k.: in a place you’re not expecting.”

Florabel sniffed, and glanced peevishly at Joel because he laughed. “It don’t pay to treat Idabel like she was a human being,” she said ominously. “Ask anybody. The tough way she acts you’d never suppose she came from a well-to-do family like mine, would you?”

Joel held his peace, knowing no matter what he said it would be the wrong thing.

“That’s just what I mean,” said Florabel, turning the silence to her own advantage, “you’d never suppose. Naturally she is as we’re twins: born the same day, me ten minutes first, so I’m elder; both of us twelve, going on thirteen. Florabel and Idabel. Isn’t it tacky the way those names kinda rhyme? Only Mama thinks it’s real cute, but . . .”

Joel didn’t hear the rest, for he suddenly noticed Idabel had stopped trailing the wagon. She was far back and running, running like a pale animal through the lake of weeds lining the wayside towards a flowering island of dogwood that bloomed lividly some distance off like seashore foam on a black beach. But before he could point this out to Florabel, her twin was gone and lost between the shining trees. “Isn’t she afraid to be out there all alone in the dark?” he interrupted, and with a gesture indicated where Idabel had disappeared.

“That child is afraid of nothing,” stated Florabel flatly. “Don’t you fret none over her; she’ll catch up when she gets to feeling like it.”

“But out in those woods . . .”

“Oh, sister takes her notions and there’s no sense in asking why. We were born twins, like I told you, but Mama says the Lord always sends something bad with the good.” Florabel yawned and leaned back, the long hair sprawling about her shoulders. “Idabel will take any kind of a dare; even when we were real little she’d go up and poke around the Skullys’ and peek in all the windows. One time she even got a good look at Cousin Randolph.” Lazily she reached up and seized a firefly that was pulsing goldenly in the air above her head, then: “Do you like living at that place?”

“What place?”

“The Landing, silly.”

Joel said: “I may, but I haven’t seen it yet.” Her face was close to his, and he could tell she was disappointed with the answer. “And you, where’s your house?”

She waved an airy hand. “Just a little ways up yonder. It’s not far from the Landing, so maybe you could come visit sometime.” She tossed the firefly into the air where it hung suspended like a small moon. “Naturally I didn’t know whether to think you lived at the Landing or not. Nobody ever sees any of them Skullys. Why, the Lord himself could be living there with none the wiser. Are you kin to . . .” but this was cut short by a terrible, paralyzing wail, and wild crashing in the all-around darkness.

Idabel bounded into the road from the underbrush. She was flailing her arms and howling loud and fierce.

“You darn fool!” her sister screamed, but Joel did nothing, for his heart was lodged somewhere in his throat. Then he turned to check Jesus Fever’s reaction, but the old man still snoozed; and strangely the mule had not bolted with fright.

“That was pretty good, eh?” said Idabel. “I’ll bet you thought the devil was hot on your trail.”

Florabel said: “Not the devil, sister . . . he’s inside you.” And to Joel: “She’ll catch it when I tell Papa, cause she couldn’t have got up here without us seeing unless she cut through the hollow, and Papa’s told her and told her about that. She’s all the time snooping around in there hunting sweetgum: some day a big old moccasin is going to chew off her leg right at the hip, mark my word.”

Idabel had returned carrying a spray of dogwood, and now she smelled the blooms exultantly. “I’ve already been snakebit,” she said.

“Yes, that’s the truth,” her sister admitted. “You should’ve seen her leg, Joel Knox. It swelled up like a watermelon; all her hair fell out; oh, she was dogsick for two months, and Mama and me had to wait on her hand and foot.”

“It’s lucky she didn’t die,” said Joel.

“I would’ve if I was you and didn’t know how to take care of myself,” said Idabel.

“She was smart, all right,” conceded Florabel. “She just went smack in the chicken yard and snatched up this rooster and ripped him wide open; never heard such squawking. Hot chicken blood draws the poison.”

“You ever been snakebit, boy?” Idabel wanted to know.

“No,” he said, feeling somehow in the wrong, “but I was nearly run over by a car once.”

Idabel seemed to consider this. “Run over by a car,” she said, her woolly voice tinged with envy.

“Now you oughtn’t to have told her that,” snapped Florabel. “She’s liable to run straight off and throw herself in the middle of the highway.”

Below the road and in the shallow woods a close-by creek’s sliding, pebble-tinkling rush underlined the bellowed comments of hidden frogs. The slow-rolling wagon cleared a slope and started down again. Idabel picked the petals from the dogwood spray, dripping them in her path, and tossed the rind aside; she tilted her head and faced the sky and began to hum; then she sang: “When the north-wind doth blow, and we shall have snow, what does the robin do then, poor thing?” Florabel took up the tune: “He got to the barn, to keep he-self warm, and hide he-self under he wing, poor thing!” It was a lively song and they sang it over and over till Joel joined to make a trio; their voices pealed clear and sweet, for all three were sopranos, and Florabel vivaciously strummed a mythical banjo. Then a cloud crossed the moon and in the black the singing ended.

Florabel jumped off the wagon. “Our house is over in there,” she said, pointing toward what looked to Joel like an empty wilderness. “Don’t forget . . . come to visit.”

“I will,” he called, but already the tide of darkness had washed the twins from sight.

Sometime later a thought of them echoed, receded, left him suspecting they were perhaps what he’d first imagined: apparitions. He touched his cheek, the cornhusks, glanced at the sleeping Jesus—the old man was trancelike but for his body’s rubbery response to the wagon’s jolting—and was reassured. The guide reins jangled, the hoofbeats of the mule made a sound as drowsy as a fly’s bzzz on a summer afternoon. A jungle of stars rained down to cover him in blaze, to blind and close his eyes. Arms akimbo, legs crumpled, lips vaguely parted—he looked as if sleep had struck him with a blow.

Fence posts suddenly loomed; the mule came alive, began to trot, almost to gallop down a graveled lane over which the wheels spit stone; and Jesus Fever, jarred conscious, tugged at the reins: “Whoa, John Brown, whoa!” And the wagon presently came to a spiritless standstill.

A woman slipped down the steps leading from a great porch; delirious white wings sucked round the yellow globe of a kerosene lantern that she carried high. But Joel, scowling at a dream demon, was unaware when the woman bent so intently towards him and peered into his face by the lamp’s smoky light.

TWO

Falling . . . Falling . . . FALLING! a knifelike shaft, an underground corridor, and he was spinning like a fan blade through metal spirals; at the bottom a yawning-jawed crocodile followed his downward whirl with hooded eyes: as always, rescue came with wakefulness. The crocodile exploded in sunshine. Joel blinked and tasted his bitter tongue and did not move; the bed, an immense four-poster with different rosewood fruits carved crudely on its high headboard, was suffocatingly soft and his body had sunk deep in its feathery center. Although he’d slept naked, the light sheet covering him felt like a wool blanket.

The whisper of a dress warned him that someone was in the room. And another sound, dry and wind-rushed, very much like the beat of bird wings; it was this sound, he realized while rolling over, which had wakened him.

An expanse of pale yellow wall separated two harshly sunlit windows which faced the bed. Between these windows stood the woman. She did not notice Joel, for she was staring across the room at an ancient bureau: there, on top a lacquered box, was a bird, a bluejay perched so motionless it looked like a trophy. The woman turned and closed the only open window; then, with prissy little sidling steps, she started forward.

Joel was wide awake, but for an instant it seemed as if the bluejay and its pursuer were a curious fragment of his dream. His stomach muscles tightened as he watched her near the bureau and the bird’s innocent agitation: it hopped around bobbing its blue-brilliant head; suddenly, just as she came within striking distance, it fluttered its wings and flew across the bed and lighted on a chair where Joel had flung his clothes the night before. And remembrance of the night flooded over him: the wagon, the twins, and the little Negro in the derby hat. And the woman, his father’s wife: Miss Amy, as she was called. He remembered entering the house, and stumbling through an odd chamber of a hall where the walls were alive with the tossing shadows of candleflames; and Miss Amy, her finger pressed against her lips, leading him with robber stealth up a curving, carpeted stairway and along a second corridor to the door of this room; all a sleepwalker’s pattern of jigsaw incidents; and so, as Miss Amy stood by the bureau regarding the bluejay on its new perch, it was more or less the same as seeing her for the first time. Her dress was of an almost transparent grey material; on her left hand, for no clear reason, she wore a matching grey silk glove, and she kept the hand cupped daintily, as if it were crippled. A wispy streak of white zigzagged through the dowdy plaits of her brownish, rather colorless hair. She was slight, and fragile-boned, and her eyes were like two raisins embedded in the softness of her narrow face.

Instead of following the bird directly, as before, she tip-toed over to a fireplace at the opposite end of the huge room, and, artfully twisting her hand, seized hold of an iron poker. The bluejay hopped down the arm of the chair, pecking at Joel’s discarded shirt. Miss Amy pursed her lips, and took five rapid, lilting, ladylike steps. . . .

The poker caught the bird across the back, and pinioned it for the fraction of a moment; breaking loose, it flew wildly to the window and cawed and flapped against the pane, at last dropping to the floor where it scrambled along dazedly, scraping the rug with its outspread wings.

Miss Amy trapped it in a corner, and scooped it up against her breast.

Joel pressed his face into the pillow, knowing that she would look in his direction, if only to see how the racket had affected him. He listened to her footsteps cross the room, and the gentle closing of the door.

He dressed in the same clothes he’d worn the previous day: a blue shirt, and bedraggled linen trousers. He could not find his suitcase anywhere, and wondered whether he’d left it in the wagon. He combed his hair, and doused his face with water from a washbasin that sat on a marble-topped table beside the rosewood four-poster. The rug, which was bald in spots and of an intricately oriental design, felt grimy and rough under his bare feet. The stifling room was musty; it smelled of old furniture and the burned-out fires of wintertime; gnat-like motes of dust circulated in the sunny air, and Joel left a dusty imprint on whatever he touched: the bureau, the chiffonier, the washstand. This room had not been used in many years certainly; the only fresh things here were the bedsheets, and even these had a yellowed look.

He was lacing up his shoes when he spied the bluejay feather. It was floating above his head, as if held by a spider’s thread. He plucked it out of the air, carried it to the bureau, and deposited it in the lacquered box, which was lined with red plush; it also occurred to him that this would be a good place to store Sam Radclif ’s bullet. Joel loved any kind of souvenir, and it was his nature to keep and catalogue trifles. He’d had many grand collections, and it pained him sorely that Ellen persuaded him to leave them in New Orleans. There had been magazine photos and foreign coins, books and no-two-alike rocks, and a wonderful conglomeration he’d labeled simply Miscellany: the feather and bullet would’ve made good items for that. But maybe Ellen would mail his stuff on, or maybe he could start all over again, maybe . . .

There was a rap at the door.

It was his father, of that he was sure. It must be. And what should he say: hello, Dad, Father, Mr Sansom? Howdyado, hello? Hug, or shake hands, or kiss? Oh why hadn’t he brushed his teeth, why couldn’t he find the Major’s suitcase and a clean shirt? He whipped a bow into his shoelace, called, “Yeah?” and straightened up erect, prepared to make the best, most manly impression possible.

The door opened. Miss Amy, her gloved hand cradled, waited on the threshold; she nodded sweetly, and, as she advanced, Joel noticed the vague suggestion of a mustache fuzzing her upper lip.

“Good morning,” he said, and, smiling, held out his hand. He was of course disappointed, but somehow relieved, too.

She stared at his outstretched hand, a puzzled look contracting her puny face. She shook her head, and skirted past him to a window where she stood with her back turned. “It’s after twelve,” she said.

Joel’s smile felt suddenly stiff and awkward. He hid his hands in his pockets.

“Such a pity you arrived last night at so late an hour: Randolph had planned a merrier welcome.” Her voice had a weary, simpering tone; it struck the ear like the deflating whoosh of a toy balloon. “But it’s just as well, the poor child suffers with asthma, you know: had a wretched attack yesterday. He’ll be ever so peeved I haven’t let him know you’re here, but I think it best he stay in his room, at least till supper.”

Joel rummaged around for something to say. He recalled Sam Radclif having spoken of a cousin, and one of the twins, Florabel, of a Cousin Randolph. At any rate, from the way she talked, he supposed this person to be a kid near his own age.

“Randolph is our first cousin, and a great admirer of yours,” she said, turning to face him. The hard sunshine emphasized the pallor of her skin, and her tiny eyes, now fixing him shrewdly, were alert. There was lack of focus in her face, as though, beneath the uningratiating veneer of fatuous refinement, another personality, quite different, was demanding attention; the lack of focus gave her, at unguarded moments, a panicky, dismayed expression, and when she spoke it was as if she were never precisely certain what every word signified. “Have you money left from the check my husband sent Mrs Kendall?”

“About a dollar, I guess,” he said, and reluctantly offered his change purse. “It cost a good bit to stay at that café.”

“Please, it’s yours,” she said. “I was merely interested in whether you are a wise, thrifty boy.” She appeared suddenly irritated. “Why are you so fidgety? Must you use the bathroom?”

“Oh, no.” He felt all at once as though he’d wet his pants in public. “Oh, no.”

“Unfortunately, we haven’t modern plumbing facilities. Randolph is opposed to contrivances of that sort. However,” and she nodded toward the washstand, “you’ll find a chamber pot in there . . . in the compartment below.”

“Yes’m,” said Joel, mortified.

“And of course the house has never been wired for electricity. We have candles and lamps; they both draw bugs, but which would you prefer?”

“Whichever you’ve got the most of,” he said, really wanting candles, for they brought to mind the St. Deval Street Secret Nine, a neighborhood detective club of which he’d been both treasurer and Official Historian. And he recalled club get-togethers where tall candles, snitched from the five ’n’ dime, flamed in Coca-Cola bottles, and how Exalted Operative Number One, Sammy Silverstein, had used for a gavel an old cow bone.

She glanced at the firepoker which had rolled halfway under a wing chair. “Would you mind picking that up and putting it over by the hearth? I was in here earlier,” she explained, while he carried out her order, “and a bird flew in the window; such a nuisance: you weren’t disturbed?”

Joel hesitated. “I thought I heard something,” he said. “It woke me up.”

“Well, twelve hours sleep should be sufficient.” She lowered herself into the chair, and crossed her toothpick legs; her shoes were low-heeled and white, like those worn by nurses. “Yes, the morning’s gone and everything’s all hot again. Summer is so unpleasant.” Now despite her impersonal manner, Joel was not antagonized, just a little uncomfortable. Females in Miss Amy’s age bracket, somewhere between forty-five and fifty, generally displayed a certain tenderness toward him, and he took their sympathy for granted; if, as had infrequently happened, this affection was withheld, he knew with what ease it could be guaranteed: a smile, a wistful glance, a courtly compliment: “I want to say how pretty I think your hair is: a
nice
color.”

The bribe received no clear-cut appreciation, therefore: “And how much I like my room.”

And this time he hit his mark. “I’ve always considered it the finest room in the house. Cousin Randolph was born here: in that very bed. And Angela Lee . . . Randolph’s mother: a beautiful woman, originally from Memphis . . . died here, oh, not many years ago. We’ve never used it since.” She perked her head suddenly, as if to hear some distant sound; her eyes squinted, then closed altogether. But presently she relaxed and eased back into the chair. “I suppose you’ve noticed the view?”

Joel confessed that no, he hadn’t, and went obligingly to a window. Below, under a fiery surface of sun waves, a garden, a jumbled wreckage of zebrawood and lilac, elephant-ear plant and weeping willow, the lace-leafed limp branches shimmering delicately, and dwarfed cherry trees, like those in oriental prints, sprawled raw and green in the noon heat. It was not a result of simple neglect, this tangled oblong area, but rather the outcome, it appeared, of someone having, in a riotous moment, scattered about it a wild assortment of seed. Grass and bush and vine and flower were all crushed together. Massive chinaberry and waterbay formed a rigidly enclosing wall. Now at the far end, opposite the house, was an unusual sight: like a set of fingers, a row of five white fluted columns lent the garden the primitive, haunted look of a lost ruin: Judas vine snaked up their toppling slenderness, and a yellow tabby cat was sharpening its claws against the middle column.

Miss Amy, having risen, now stood beside him. She was an inch or so shorter than Joel.

“In ancient history class at school, we had to draw pictures of some pillars like those. Miss Kadinsky said mine were the best, and she put them on the bulletin board,” he bragged.

“The pillars . . . Randolph adores them, too; they were once part of the old side porch,” she told him in a reminiscing voice. “Angela Lee was a young bride, just down from Memphis, and I was a child younger than you. In the evening we would sit on the side porch, sipping cherryade and listen to the crickets and wait for the moonrise. Angela Lee crocheted a shawl for me: you must see it sometime, Randolph uses it in his room as a tablescarf: a waste and a shame.” She spoke so quietly it was as though she intended only herself to hear.

“Did the porch just blow away?” asked Joel.

“Burned,” she said, rubbing a clear circle on the dusty glass with her gloved hand. “It was in December, the week before Christmas, and at a time when there was no man on the place but Jesus Fever, and he was even then very old. No one knows how the fire started or ended; it simply rose out of nothing, burned away the dining room, the music room, the library . . . and went out. No one knows.”

“And this garden is where the part that burned up was?” said Joel. “Gee, it must’ve been an awful big house.”

She said: “There, by the willows and goldenrod . . . that is the site of the music room where the dances were held; small dances, to be sure, for there were few around here Angela Lee cared to entertain. . . . And they are all dead now, those who came to her little evenings; Mr Casey, I understand, passed on last year, and he was the last.”

Joel gazed down on the jumbled green, trying to picture the music room and the dancers (“Angela Lee played the harp,” Miss Amy was saying, “and Mr Casey the piano, and Jesus Fever, though he’d never studied, the violin, and Randolph the Elder sang; had the finest male voice in the state, everyone said so”), but the willows were willows and the goldenrod goldenrod and the dancers dead and lost. The yellow tabby slunk through the lilac into tall, concealing grass, and the garden was glazed and secret and still.

Miss Amy sighed as she slipped back into the shade of the room. “Your suitcase is in the kitchen,” she said. “If you’ll come downstairs, we’ll see what Missouri has to feed you.”

A dormer window of frost glass illuminated the long topfloor hall with the kind of pearly light that drenches a room when rain is falling. The wallpaper had once, you could tell, been blood red, but now was faded to a mural of crimson blisters and maplike stains. Including Joel’s, there were four doors in the hall, impressive oak doors with massive brass knobs, and Joel wondered which of them, if opened, might lead to his father.