The Tin Can Tree (10 page)

“I’m taking you home for supper,” he told Ansel. “I’m sorry about this, Mrs. Pike.”

Mrs. Pike only gazed at him unblinkingly, without appearing to hear him. Joan said, “I wish you would, James.”

“Come on, Ansel.”

“Supper in the afternoon?” asked Ansel.

“It’s getting on towards sunset.”

“Well, I don’t feel so good, James. I’m not hungry.”

“What’s the matter with you?” James asked.

“My head is swimming.”

“You been resting enough?”

“Well, yes. But after lunch this blackness started floating in, and then a little later this, um—”

Joan leaned back against the table, watching. She had never seen James actually
listen
to all this before; it seemed strange, and she couldn’t figure out why he was doing it. The more James listened, the more Ansel’s symptoms expanded and grew in detail; even his face looked paler. But James kept on nodding, saying “Hmm,” every now and then. Finally he said, “I’ll put you in bed. You can have your supper on a tray, if you want.”

“Oh, I think I’ll just stay here and—”

“It’s time to go, Ansel.”

Ansel sighed and let himself be led toward the doorway by one elbow. To Mrs. Pike he called, “I hope you’re feeling better, ma’am. I’ll be back tomorrow, maybe, or the next day—”

“Come on,” James said.

They stopped trying to be graceful about it. James gave Ansel’s arm a good tug and Joan followed close behind, almost on Ansel’s heels, to hurry him out. After her came Simon, with his face looking small and curious under his ragged haircut. Mrs. Pike didn’t go with them. She sat quietly in her chair, with her hands still pressed to her stomach, and it wasn’t until the others were all the way into the parlor that she spoke.

“
Nobody
knows,” she said distinctly.

Ansel wheeled around, fighting off Joan’s and James’s hands, and shouted, “
What’s
that?”

Mrs. Pike didn’t answer.

“Let’s go,” James said.

“I just want to tell you,” Ansel shouted toward the kitchen, “I know better than you can
imagine
, Mrs. Pike. You’re just sorry now you weren’t nicer to her,
but I know how it feels to
really
miss someone. I remember—”

Both James and Joan stopped then, looking first at Ansel and then back toward the kitchen. But all they heard was the creaking of a chair, as if Mrs. Pike had changed positions. And that seemed to show Ansel what they had been trying to tell him all along: that Mrs. Pike wasn’t listening right now, and that nothing he could say would do her any good or any harm. So he shrugged and let himself be led the rest of the way out. When Joan stepped back a pace, indicating that he should go first and that she was staying in the house, he nodded good-bye to her gravely.

“One thing I’d like to make clear, Joan,” he said. He was facing her squarely, acting very formal and dignified. “I
do
know,” he told her.

“All right,” Joan said absentmindedly.

“I
remember
how it feels. My memory’s excellent.”

“I believe you.”

“Clutters my mind at night, it’s so excellent.” James pulled him gently.

“When I want to sleep, it does. Clutters my mind.”

“All right, Ansel,” James said.

He led him on out to the porch. When he passed Joan she could smell the smoky, outdoors smell of James’s and he bent closer to her and said, “If you need anything, I want you to tell me.”

“I will.”

“And when you can get away, come over and see us.”

“I will.”

She stood in the doorway with her hand on Simon’s shoulder and watched after them—Ansel tall and thin and leaning against James, who was solider and could
bear his weight. She heard Ansel say, “Right through my temples it is, James. A sort of spindle of dizzy-feeling, right through my temples.”

James said, “We’ll lie you down. You feel tired?”

“Naw. I was thinking—”

“You sure now,” James said.

“Huh?”

“I want you to tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Ansel asked.

But James didn’t answer that. And Joan, listening with a frown because it was so strange to her, felt suddenly lost and uncertain. She retreated into the parlor again, letting the screen door swing slowly shut behind her. But there was no one to listen to what was bothering her. Only Mrs. Pike, staring at the wall in the kitchen, and Simon beside her with his funny new haircut.

“N
ow, I can have my ideas,” said Missouri, “and you can have yours. Mind what you’re doing there, Miss Joan. First off, I don’t believe in sitting. I have never believed in sitting. Minute a person sits his mind gives way. Will you
watch
what you’re
doing?
”

Joan sighed and handed her the next bunch of tobacco leaves. It was Monday afternoon, late in the day but hot, and even here under the shade of the pecan trees she could feel the sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades. Beside her stood three other women—two handing to Mrs. Hall, who was the fastest tobacco-tier in the county, and the other helping Joan do the handing to Missouri. Missouri was huge and black, and every move she made was a wide slow arc, but she could tie nearly as fast as Mrs. Hall. She stood at the end of her rod with her broad bare feet spraddle-toed in the dust, and first she yanked a handful of leaves from her daughter Lily and then from Joan, wrapping each handful to the rod with one sure circling of the twine so that the leaves hung points-down and swinging. If Joan or Lily was too slow with the next hanging she would click her tongue and stand there disgusted, holding the twine taut in her fingers, and when the leaves were ready she would take them with an extra
hard yank and bind them so hard that the twine cut into the stems. Now it was Joan who was slow (they were down to the last of this tableload, and she was having trouble finding a full handing of leaves) and Missouri made her clicking sound and shifted her weight to the other foot.

“What it is,” she called down the table to Mrs. Hall, “I bind
across
the stick. You bind on the same side, and I declare I don’t see how. With Miss Joan on the left, I take her leaves and bind them on the right, and backwards from that with Lily. You follow my meaning?”

“Yes, and I think it’s just as
inefficient
,” Mrs. Hall said. She stopped her tying to brush a piece of wispy blond hair off her face. “That’s three inches wasted motion every bunch you tie, Missouri.”

“Ha. Fast as I move, who cares about three inches.”

“It adds up. You see if it don’t.”

“Ha.”

She yanked Joan’s bunch from her and lashed it to the rod. That finished up the stick; it looked now like one long chain of hanging green leaves, with the rod itself hidden from sight by the thick stems that stuck up on either side. “You!” she said without looking, and Jimmy Terry raised himself from the side of the barn and set down his Coke bottle. By the time he had ambled over to Missouri she had lifted the stick from its notched stand and stood making faces because of the weight of it, holding it very carefully so as not to crush the leaves. “Watch it, now,” she said, and thrust it at him, and he started back to the drying-barn while she bent to take another rod and lay it in the notches. “I was saying something,” she said. She tied the white twine around the end farthest from her and then snapped
it off at a length of five feet or so, while Mrs. Hall stopped tying to watch her. (Mrs. Hall spent every day of every tobacco season trying to figure out how Missouri snapped off her twine ahead of time without measuring it.) “I was talking about sitting,” Missouri said, grandly ignoring Mrs. Hall. “This table is
bare
, Lord; when they going to bring us more? Now, when you sit, your blood sort of sits along with you. It don’t go rushing around your brain no more. Consequently, it takes that much more time to get rid of some sad idea in your mind. The process is slowed considerable. Whereas if you hurry your blood
up
some … There is a sizable amount of people could benefit from what I know. I could just go on and on about it. But do you get what I mean up to now?”

“Well, so far,” Joan said.

“Good. Now, what started me on that—well, I do say. Took you long enough.”

She was looking off toward the dirt driveway, where the men were just coming with the mule. Behind the mule was a huge wooden sled piled high with tobacco leaves, and it must have been heavy because the mule was objecting. He had stopped trying and began to amuse himself by blowing through his nose at the flies circling his head, and when Mr. Terry slapped his back he only switched his tail and gave an extra hard wheeze through his nose. Mr. Terry pulled out a bandanna and wiped his face.

“You stop that and bring him here,” Missouri commanded. “We’re out of leaves and getting paid for standing here with our arms folded.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want
that,
” Mr. Terry said, but he went on wiping his face with his back to the mule. He was an easygoing man; it was a wonder to the whole
countryside how he ever got his tobacco in. Behind the sled was James Green, filling in for the day because Mr. Pike was at home with his wife, and he wasn’t doing anything about the mule either. His face was dark from the sun and glistening, and his hair hung in a wet mop over his forehead. When he saw Joan he grinned and waved, but he didn’t look as if he gave a hang whether that mule
ever
moved, so Missouri heaved a huge sigh and laid down her twine.

“I never,” she said, and circled the long picnic table where the women were standing and headed for the mule. “Jefferson, you no-good, you,” she told the mule, “you going to keep us waiting all day?”

“
That’s
not Jefferson,” Mr. Terry said. “That’s my brother Kerr’s mule, Man O’War. He’s only a distant cousin to Jefferson.”

“I don’t care who he is.” She reached up and grabbed the mule by one long ear, as if he were a little boy, and pulled in the direction of the table. The mule followed, sighing sadly. “In the end, it’s the women that work,” Missouri told him. “Stand still now, you hear?”

“I wish it
was
Jefferson,” said Mr. Terry. “He was some good mule, old Jefferson.”

“He sick?” Missouri asked.

“Nah. Dead.”

“That’s why this one is doddering around so, then. They know, them mules.”

“Mr. Graves shot him down,” Mr. Terry said. He and James were both at work now, lifting armloads of leaves from the sled and carrying them over to the table. “He says he has the right, because Jefferson kicked his boy.”

“Nah, that ain’t so. Only if Jefferson
killed
the boy,
outright. Takes more than that to kill Sonny Graves. Sonny ain’t dead, is he?”

“Oh, no.”

“Well, you go on and sue then. Go on and do it.”

“Well,” Mr. Terry said. He took the mule and turned him around, and when he slapped him this time the mule headed back toward the fields with the empty sled skittering behind him. “We’ll let Saul take care of him,” Mr. Terry told James. To the women at the table he called, “That was the last load, there. Me and the men are going to cut out and have a beer up at the house.”

“Don’t you give Lem more than one,” Missouri said.

“You know how he gets.”

“Well.”

He headed toward the house, wiping his face again with the bandanna, and James turned and said, “You yell when you’re ready to go, Joan.”

“All right,” Joan said.

When the men had left there was a different feeling in the air, blanker and stiller. The smell of sweat and mule and hot sun had drifted away, and for a minute the women just stood looking after them with their faces expressionless. Then Missouri said, “Well,” and she and Mrs. Hall took their places at their rods again and the others turned to the new heap of leaves on the table.

“That James stays out in the sun much more, he’s going to change races,” Missouri said to Joan.

“I guess he might,” Joan said.

“He’s a good man. Though a bit too quiet—don’t let things show through.”

“No.”

Missouri waited, still without going back to her work. Finally she said, “Just where is he from?”

The others looked up. Joan said, “Oh … from around here he says.”

“Well, so are we all,” said Missouri. “But what
town?
”

“He doesn’t talk much about it.”

“
That’s
kind of peculiar,” Mrs. Hall called. “You ever asked him?”

“He’s not
wanted
or nothing, is he?” said Missouri.

“No.”

“You never know. I’d been married two and a half years before I found out Lem had been married before. Mad? I tell you—”

“If I were you I’d ask him,” Mrs. Hall said.

“Well, I did,” said Joan. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable. “He
told
me where he was from but it was just an ordinary town, like Larksville—”

“Then why don’t he say so?”

“Well, you know Ansel,” Joan said.

“There’s an odd one.”

“He doesn’t like for James to talk about it. He’s afraid James’ll send him back.”

“Good thing if he did,” said Mrs. Hall. “You ever been invited to meet their family?”