The Tin Can Tree (24 page)

“I’m going to my
other
daughter,” the old lady told her. “The one that never married. She has a kidney ailment.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Joan.

“She’s in terrible pain, and there’s no one to take care of her.”

Out of the corner of her eye Joan saw the Larksville paper she had bought, folded neatly and tucked down between her seat and the wall of the bus. She picked it up quickly and unfolded it, and the old lady turned away again.

There would be nothing interesting in the paper, but
she read it anyway. She began with the first page and read through the whole paper methodically, not even skipping the ladies’ meeting announcements or the advertisements. There had been one birth in Larksville this week, she saw, and two deaths. The first death was Jones, Laramie D., whom she had never heard of, but she read all about him anyway—the circumstances of his death, the highlights of his life, the list of relatives who had survived him. The second death was Pike, Janie Rose. The name hit into her stomach, as if she hadn’t known of the death until this instant. She started to pass over it, but then she went back to it and read it through:

She read it twice, but it seemed unreal still, something vague and far off. Nothing that bad could happen. When she had finished with it a second time she folded the paper very carefully in half, so that the obituaries were out of sight, and then went on to the rest of the paper. She read very closely now, even moving her lips, so as to shut out all thought of anything she had read before. “Teller-Hokes Wedding Held in First Baptist Church,” she read, and although neither name meant anything to her she was careful to find out exactly what the bride wore and who her guests were. Next came the memorial notices, ringed in black like the obituaries. She had never looked at the memorial notices before.
She read about someone named Auntie Peg Myers, who had passed away on July 16, 1937, and was dearly remembered by her two nieces. Then she read about Nathan Martin, who had been taken from his wife in 1941. For him there was a quotation. “Too dearly beloved ever to be forgotten,” it said. Further down, for other people, there were little poems, but Joan stopped reading. She had a sudden picture of all the years of this century, stretching far back in a chain of newsprint that grew yellower and yellower as the years grew older. 1937 was almost orange, older than she herself was; 1941 was growing brittle at the edges. How would this year look? The print on January was already blurred. And then she pictured how it would be when today was yellowed too, years from now, and the Pikes themselves were buried and Simon an old man. Then on the third week in every July he would print his notice: “In memory of Janie Rose, who passed away just fifty years ago July 13th. Fondly remembered by her brother Simon.” He would be remembering her as someone very small with spectacles, who had lived in the tacked-on bedroom in back of the house. But he himself would be a grandfather then, and nobody Janie would recognize. How would Simon look in fifty years? Joan tried to think, but all she saw was Simon as he was today—hunching his shoulders up, tucking his head down in that uncertain way he had.

She looked quickly out the window and saw the town of Graham rolling up, and the bus station with its line of coin machines. “Is this where you get off?” the woman asked her.

“No.”

“Oh. You just sat up so sudden—”

“No,” said Joan, “but I think I might buy a Coke.”

She stood and wormed her way out past the woman’s knees, and as soon as she was out the woman slid quickly over to the window. Joan didn’t care. She went down the aisle without looking at anyone, and then descended the bus steps. A team of some kind was waiting to board, a group of boys in white satin wind-breakers with numbers on them, and when Joan stepped down among them they remained stolidly in her path, ignoring her. “Excuse me,” she said, “excuse me, please,” and then when no one noticed she shouted, “
Excuse
me!” For a minute they stopped talking and stared at her; then they moved aside to let her through. She walked very quickly, holding her head up. Out here she felt thinner and more alone than before, with the team of boys all watching her down the long path to the Coke machine. And when she reached the machine she found she didn’t even want a Coke. But she put her dime in anyway, and just as she was reaching for the bottle someone said, “Ma’am?”

It was a young man in sunglasses, standing beside her and looking straight at her. She felt scared suddenly, even with all those people around (had he been able to
see
how alone she felt?) and she decided not to answer. Instead she uncapped the Coke bottle and then turned to go.

“Ma’am?” he said again.

She couldn’t just leave him there, still asking. “What is it?” she said.

“Can you show me where the restroom is?”

“Why, it’s right inside, I guess. Over there.”

“Where?”

“Over there.”

“I don’t see.”

“Over
there.
”

“I don’t see. I’m blind.”

“Oh,” said Joan, and then she just felt silly, and even sadder than before. “Wait a minute,” she told him. She turned around and saw two bus drivers walking toward her, looking kind and cheerful. When they came even with her she tapped the older driver on the arm and said, “Um, excuse me.”

“Yes.”

“Can you show this man the restroom? He doesn’t see.”

“Why, surely,” said the driver. He smiled at her and then took the blind man by the elbow. “You come with me,” he said.

“Thank you, sir. Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome,” Joan said.

The other driver stayed behind, next to Joan. He said, “Can you imagine traveling blind?” and stared after the two men, frowning a little.

“No, I can’t,” Joan said. She automatically followed the driver’s eyes. Now that she looked, she couldn’t think why the blind man had frightened her at first. He wore his clothes obediently, as if someone else had put them on him—the neat dark suit with the handkerchief in the pocket, the shoes tied lovingly in double knots. He reminded her of something. For a minute she couldn’t think what, and then she remembered and smiled. That slow, trusting way he let himself be guided forward with his hands folded gently in front of him, was like Simon during the first year she’d lived there, when he was six and still had to be awakened at night and taken to the bathroom so he wouldn’t wet his bed. He had gone just that obediently, but with his eyes closed and the shadows of some dream still flickering across his face. (You couldn’t stop walking with him for
a minute, not in a doorway or going around the bend in the hall, or he would think he had reached the bathroom and proceed to go right then and there.) He had held his elbows in close to his body that way, too, against the coolness of the night. Joan stopped smiling and looked down at her feet.

“You all right?” the driver asked.

“I want to go back.”

“Ma’am?”

“I want to go back where I came from. Can I take my bags off my bus and wait for the next one going back?”

“Why, surely,” the driver said. “You on that bus over there?”

“Yes. I know this is—”

“Women got a
right
to change their minds,” the driver called. He was already heading toward her bus, and Joan followed him with her untouched Coke bottle still in her hands.

“I always do this,” she said. “But this time it’s—”

“You got the right,” said the driver.

“This time it’s different. I can’t help it, this time; I’m not just—”

But the driver didn’t hear her. He was walking up ahead of her and laughing over his shoulder, thinking it was all a joke. She stopped trying to tell him it wasn’t.

S
omething was wrong at home. James knew it instantly, the moment he stepped out of the pickup carrying his two bags of groceries. There on the porch stood the Potter sisters and Ansel and Mrs. Pike, all huddling together, and Mr. Pike was a little distance away from them. He was facing toward the road, frowning down at an Indian elephant bell that he held in his hand. When he heard the pickup door slam he looked up and said, “James.” The light from the setting sun turned his face strange and orange.

“What’s wrong?” said James.

“We can’t find Simon.”

“Well, where is he?” he asked, and then to cover up the stupidity of that question he said quickly, “He was here at lunchtime.”

“We thought you might have him with you,” Mr. Pike said.

“No.”

They all kept looking at him. Even Ansel. James hoisted his groceries up higher and then said again, “No. No, I’ve been running errands all afternoon. All by myself.”

“Well, then,” Mr. Pike said. He sighed and turned
back to the others, who still waited. Finally he said, “He’s not with James.”

“Maybe he’s with Joan,” James offered.

“No. Joan must have gone off somewhere, but after she left Simon was still around. Lou says so.”

James looked over at Mrs. Pike. She was dry-eyed and watchful; her arms were folded firmly across her chest.

“When was the last time you noticed him?” he asked her.

“I don’t know.”

“Ma’am?”

“I don’t
know,
” she said, with her voice slightly raised.

“Oh.”

“We called the boys he plays with,” Mr. Pike said. “And we called the movie-house.”

“Did you ask about buses?”

“No. Why?”

“I’d do that,” said James. He climbed the steps at his end of the porch and set the groceries on Ansel’s chair, and then he straightened up and rubbed the muscles of his arms. “Call the drugstore,” he said. “Ask them if he’s—”

“Well, I
went
to the drugstore, to see if he’d gone there for a soda. Mary Bennett was on; only been there a half hour or so, but she hadn’t seen him.”

“Might have gone earlier,” said James. “Did you look at the bus schedule?”

“
No
I didn’t. What would I want to do that for?”

“Just in case,” James said. “Who was there before Mary Bennett?”

“Tommy was, but I can’t find him. If it weren’t for Lou I’d just sit and
wait
for Simon, but Lou thinks he
left with a purpose. Thinks she might have sent him away somehow.”

James looked over at Mrs. Pike again. For a minute she stared back at him; then she said, “You believe he’s on some bus.”

“I didn’t say that,” said James.

“You think it.”

“Now, Lou,” Mr. Pike told her.

“I can tell.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to ask,” said James. “I’d track that Tommy down, if I was you.”

“
Oh
, now,” Mr. Pike said, and accidentally clanged the elephant bell. Everyone jumped. “Sorry,” he said. For the first time, Ansel lost his blank tense look; he winced, and leaned back limply against the front of the house. Mr. Pike said, “Sorry, Ansel. But where would he take a bus to?”

“There’s lots of places,” said James.

“Not as many as you’d think,” Ansel said. “World’s shrinking.”

“Hush,” James told him. He jingled his keys thoughtfully. “Roy, can I use your telephone?”

“What for?”

“Let him,” Mrs. Pike said. The Potter sisters stepped closer to her on either side and patted her shoulders, as if she had suddenly had an outburst of some kind. “You know where it is,” she told James.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He walked toward the Pikes’ end of the porch, with everyone’s eyes following him. At the door he stopped and said, “Did he have any money?”

“He gets an allowance,” said Mr. Pike. “I don’t know if he saved it.”

“Did he get some this week?”

He was asking this of Mrs. Pike, but she just shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. Finally James turned back again and went on inside.

It was Tommy Jones’s mother who answered the telephone. Her voice was breathless, as if she had had to come running from some other part of the house. “Hello?” she said.

“Mrs. Jones, this is James Green. Is Tommy there?”

“No, he’s not.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No. Is this about Simon still?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“They haven’t found him?”

“No. Do you think Tommy’ll be getting back soon?”

“I really don’t,” she said. “He’s off someplace with his girl. Shall I have him call?”

“No, thank you. Sorry to bother you.”

“It’s no bother.”

He hung up and stood thinking a while, and then he went out to the front porch again. In just the short time that the telephone call had taken the color of the evening had shifted, turning from sunset into twilight. The others were standing where he had left them, still looking in his direction as if their eyes had never moved from the spot where he had disappeared. “Tommy’s not there,” he said.

“Well, I could have told you that,” Mr. Pike said irritably. He swung his arms down, making the bell clang again, and started toward the front yard. “I’m going to round up a couple others,” he called back. “We’ll look in all the places where he goes, and ring bells or fire guns if we find him. Want to come, James?”