It struck his knee, and all that happened happened quickly: a brief blur of light flashed as a door banged in the hall above, and then he felt something hit him, go past, go bumping down the steps, and it was suddenly as though all his bones had unjoined, as though all the vital parts of him had unraveled like the springs of a sprung watch. A little red ball, it was rolling and knocking on the chamber floor, and he thought of Idabel: he wished he were as brave as Idabel; he wished he had a brother, sister, somebody; he wished he were dead.

Randolph bent over the top banister; his hands were folded into the sleeves of a kimono; his eyes were flat and glazed, drunk-looking, and if he saw Joel he made no sign. Presently, his kimono rustling, he crossed the hall and opened a door where the eccentric light of candles floated on his face. He did not go inside, but stood there moving his hands in a queer way; then, turning, he started down the stairs and when finally he came against Joel he only said: "Bring a glass of water, please." Without a second word he went back up and into the room, and Joel, unable to move, waited on the stairs a long while: there were voices in the walls, settling sighs of stone and board, sounds on the edge of silence.

"Come in." Amy's voice echoed through the house, and Joel, waiting on the threshold, felt his heart separate.

"Careful there, my dear," said Randolph, lolling at the foot of a canopied bed, "don't spill the water."

But he could not keep his hand from shaking, or focus his eyes properly: Amy and Randolph, though some distance apart, were fused like Siamese twins: they seemed a kind of freak animal, half-man half-woman. There were candles, a dozen or so, and the heat of the night made them lean limp and crooked. A limestone fireplace gleamed in their shine, and a menagerie of crystal chimes, set in motion by Joel's entrance, tinkled on the mantel like brookwater. The air was strong with the smell of asthma cigarettes, used linen, and whiskey breath. Amy's starched face was in coinlike profile against a closed window where insects thumped with a watch-beat's regularity: intent upon embroidering a sampler, she rocked back and forth in a little sewing chair, her needle, held in the gloved hand, stabbing lilac cloth rhythmically. She looked like a kind of wax machine, a life-sized doll, and the concentration of her work was unnatural: she was like a person pretending to read, though the book is upside down. And Randolph, cleaning his nails with a goose-quill, was as stylized in his attitude as she: Joel felt as though they interpreted his presence here as somehow indecent, but it was impossible to withdraw, impossible to advance. On a table by the bed there were two rather arresting objects, an illuminated globe of rose frost glass depicting scenes of Venice: golden gondolas, wicked gondoliers and lovers drifting past glorious palaces on a canal of saccharine blue; and a milk-glass nude suspending a tiny silver mirror. Reflected in this mirror were a pair of eyes: the instant Joel became aware of them his gaze dismissed all else.

The eyes were a teary grey; they watched Joel with a kind of dumb glitter, and soon, as if to acknowledge him, they closed in a solemn double wink, and turned… so that he saw them only as part of a head, a shaved head lying with invalid looseness on unsanitary pillows.

"He wants the water," said Randolph, scraping the quill under his thumb nail. "You'll have to feed him: poor Eddie, absolutely helpless."

And Joel said: "Is that him?"

"Mr. Sansom," said Amy, her lips tight as the rosebud she stitched. "It is Mr. Sansom."

"But you never told me."

Randolph, clutching the bedpost, heaved to his feet: the kimono swung out, exposing pink substantial thighs, hairless legs. Like many heavy men he could move with unexpected nimbleness, but he'd had more than enough to drink, and as he came toward Joel, a numb smile bunching his features, he looked as if he were about to fall. He stooped down to Joel's size, and whispered. "Tell you what, baby?"

The eyes covered the glass again, their image twitching in the tossing light, and a hand trimmed with wedding gold poked out from under quilts to let go a red ball: it was like a cue, a challenge, and Joel, ignoring Randolph, went briskly forward to meet it.

7

She came up the road, kicking stones, whistling. A bamboo pole, balanced on her shoulder, pointed toward the late noon sun. She carried a molasses bucket, and wore a pair of toy-like dark glasses. Henry, the hound, paced beside her, his red tongue dangling hotly. And Joel, who'd been waiting for the mailman, hid behind a pine tree; just wait, this was going to be good; he'd scare the… there, she was almost near enough.

Then she stopped, and took off the sun-glasses, and polished them on her khaki shorts. Shielding her eyes, she looked straight at Joel's tree, and beyond it: there was no one on the Landing's porch, not a sign of life. She shrugged her shoulders. "Henry," she said, and his eyes rolled sadly up, "Henry, I leave it to you: do we want him with us or don't we?" Henry yawned: a fly buzzed inside his mouth and he swallowed it whole. "Henry," she continued, scrutinizing a certain pine, "did you ever notice what funny shadows some trees have?" A pause. "O. K., my fine dandy, come on out."

Sheepishly Joel stepped into the daylight. "Hello, Idabel," he said, and Idabel laughed, and this laugh of hers was rougher than barbed wire. "Look here, son," she said, "the last boy that tried pulling tricks on Idabel is still picking up the pieces." She put back on her dark glasses, and gave her shorts a snappy hitch. "Henry and me, we're going down to catch us a mess of catfish: if you can make yourself helpful you're welcome to come."

"How do you mean helpful?"

"Oh, put worms on the hook…" tilting up the bucket, she showed him its white, writhing interior.

Joel, disgusted, averted his eyes; but thought: yes, he'd like to go with Idabel, yes, anything not to be alone: hook worms, or kiss her feet, it did not matter.

"You'd better change clothes," said Idabel. "you're fixed up like it was Sunday."

Indeed, he was wearing his finest suit, white flannels bought for Dancing Class; he'd put them on because Randolph had promised to paint his picture. But at dinner Amy had said Randolph was sick. "Poor child, and in all this heat; it does seem to me if he'd lose a little weight he wouldn't suffer so. Angela Lee was that way, too: the heat just laid her out." As for Angela Lee, Zoo had told him this queer story: "Honey, a mighty peculiar thing happen to that old lady, happen just before she die: she grew a beard; it just commence pouring out her face, real sure enough hair; a yellow color, it was, and strong as wire. Me, I used to shave her, and her paralyzed from head to toe, her skin like a dead man's. But it growed so quick, this beard, I couldn't hardly keep up, and when she died, Miss Amy hired the barber to come out from town. Well, sir, that man took one look, and walked right back down them stairs, and right out the front door. I tell you I mean I had to laugh!"

"It's just my old suit," he said, afraid to go back and change, for Amy might say no he could not go, might, instead, make him read to his father. And his father, like Angela Lee, was paralyzed, helpless; he could say a few words (boy, why, kind, bad, ball, ship), move his head a little (yes, no), and one arm (to drop a tennis ball, the signal for attention). All pleasure, all pain, he communicated with his eyes, and his eyes, like windows in summer, were seldom shut, always open and staring, even in sleep.

Idabel gave him the worm bucket to carry. Crossing a cane field, climbing a thread of path, passing a Negro house where in the yard there was a naked child fondling a little black goat, they passed into the woods through an avenue of bitter wild cherry trees. "We get drunk as a coot on those," she said, meaning cherries. "Greedy old wildcats get so drunk they scream all night: you ought to hear them… hollering crazy with the moon and cherry juice." Invisible birds prowling in leaves rustled, sang; beneath the still facade of forest restless feet trampled plushlike moss where limelike light sifted to stain the natural dark. Idabel's bamboo pole scraped low limbs, and the hound, eager and suspicious, careened through nets of blackberry bush. Henry, the sentry; Idabel, the guide; Joel, the captive: three explorers on a solemn trek over earth sloping steadily downward. Black, orange-trimmed butterflies wheeled over wheel-sized ponds of stagnant rain water, the glide of their wings traced on green reflecting surfaces; a rattlesnake's cellophane-like sheddings littered the trail, and broken silver spiderweb covered like cauls dead fallen branches. They passed a little human grave: on its splintered head-cross was printed a legend: Toby, Killed by the Cat. Sunken, a stretch of sycamore root growing from its depth, it was, you could tell, an old grave.