The Tin Can Tree (20 page)

“You know we’d love to have you,” she said. “As soon as you can come. When were you planning on?”

“I don’t know. A day or two, maybe. By bus.”

“Or maybe James could drive you,” said her mother. “We’d love to have him.”

“He won’t be coming.”

“Your father’s been asking about him.”

“He won’t be coming,” Joan said firmly.

There was another pause, and then her mother said, “Is something wrong?”

“What would be wrong?”

“Well, I don’t know. Shall we expect you when we see you, then?”

“All right. Don’t go to any trouble.”

“It’ll be no trouble. Goodbye, now.”

“Goodbye. And thank you for calling.”

She hung up, but she stayed in the same position, her hand on the receiver. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Simon. He was leaning against the frame of the kitchen door, eating another peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich. “Hey,” she said, but he only bit off a hunk of sandwich and chewed steadily, keeping his eyes on her face. “That was your Aunt Abby,” she told him.

“I know.”

“She called to see how everyone is.”

He straightened up from the doorframe and came over to her, planting his feet very carefully and straight in front of him. When he had reached her he said, “I hear how you’re going there,” and waited, with the sandwich raised halfway to his mouth.

“We’ll see,” said Joan.

“You going by bus?”

“I might not go at all. I don’t know yet.”

“How long would you go for?”

“Look,” said Joan. “I don’t know that I’m going. I just think it might be good to get away. So don’t tell anyone, all right?”

“Well, all right.”

“Not even James.”

“All
right,
” said Simon. He was good at keeping
secrets; it was an insult to suggest he might tell somebody. “If you do go—” he said.

“I might not.”

“But if you do go, can I go with you?”

“Oh, Simon,” Joan began, and stopped there because she didn’t know what else to say. “Your parents need you here,” she said finally.

“They won’t notice.”

“Your daddy will. So will your mother, pretty soon.”

“No.”

“Yes. See, she’s coming downstairs now.”

He turned and looked toward the stairs. Mrs. Pike was coming down of her own accord, taking each step uncertainly but not asking for help. She had pinned the abalone pin at the neck of her dress, and it was bunching up the material a little. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she looked from Joan to Simon and back again, as if she were expecting them to tell her what to do next. Joan went over to her.

“I could fix you a bite to eat,” she said.

“I came to sew.”

“To sew?”

“I came to sew Connie’s dress together.”

“Oh,” Joan said. She looked around at the sewing machine, and was glad to see that the dress still lay there. (Mrs. Hammond had gone away all helter-skelter, talking to herself, leaving everything behind her.) “It’s all here,” Joan told her. “Is there anything else you need?”

“No. I just want to sew.”

“Shall we sit here and keep you company?”

“I just want to sew.”

“All right,” said Joan, but she waited a minute anyway, and so did Simon. Mrs. Pike didn’t look their way
again. She went over to the chair at the sewing machine and lowered herself stiffly into it, and then she picked up the material and began sewing on it. She did it just that suddenly, without examining what she was about to do first or even looking at it—just jammed two pieces of cloth beneath the needle of the sewing machine and stepped hard on the treadle. Finally Joan turned away, because there was nothing more she could do. “Let’s go to the kitchen,” she told Simon. She steered him gently by one shoulder and he went, but he kept looking back over his shoulder at his mother. When they reached the kitchen he said, “See?” but she said, “Hush,” without even asking what he meant. “Maybe we could go for a walk,” she said.

“I found my ball.”

“What ball?”

“The one I lost. I found it.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” said Joan. “Is it all beat up?”

“It’s fine. You want to play catch?”

“Not really.”

“Aw, come on, Joan.”

She frowned at him. “We should have taken you to a barber,” she said finally.

“Just for fifteen minutes or so? I won’t throw hard.”

“Oh, all right,” she said.

Simon went over to the door and picked up the baseball that lay beside it. It was grayer than before, and grass-stained, but lying out in the field for two weeks hadn’t hurt it any. He began throwing it up in the air and catching it, while he led the way through the kitchen and out the back door.

“If we had a big mowed lawn, we could play roll-a-bat,” Joan said.

“Roll-a-bat’s a baby game.”

They cut through the tall grass behind the house, parting the weeds ahead of them with swimming motions and advancing beyond the garbage cans and the rusted junk to a place where the grass was shorter. Janie Rose had set fire to this spot not a year ago, while trailing through here in her mother’s treasured wedding dress holding a lighted cigarette high in front of her with her little finger stuck out. James and Mr. Pike and Mr. Terry had had to fight the fire with their own shirts, their faces glistening with sweat and their voices hoarse from smoke, while Ansel leaned out the back window calling “Shame! Shame!” and Janie Rose sat perched in the tin can tree, crying and cleaning her glasses with the lace hem of the wedding dress. Now the weeds had grown up again, but they were shorter and sparser, with black scorched earth showing around them. Joan and Simon took up their positions, one at each end of the burned patch, and Simon scraped a standing-place for himself by kicking down the brittle weeds and scuffing at the charred surface of the soil. “Here goes,” he said, and wound up his arm so hard that Joan raised both hands in front of her to ward it off before he had even let go of the ball. Simon stopped winding up and pounded the ball into the palm of his other hand.

“Hey, now,” he said. “You going to play like a girl?”

“Not if you throw easy like you promised.”

He squinted across at her a minute, and then nodded and raised his throwing arm again. This time the ball came without any windup, cutting in a straight clean arc through the blue of the sky. Joan caught it neatly, remembering not to close her eyes, and threw it back to him underhanded.

“Overhand,” said Simon.

“Sorry.”

Little prickles of sweat came out on her forehead. She tugged her blouse out of her bermudas, so as to make herself cooler, and almost missed the next ball when it whizzed low and straight toward her stomach.

“
Watch it,
” Simon said.

“
You
watch it. That one burned my hands.”

She threw it overhand this time, and it fell a little short, so that Simon had to run forward to catch it. While he was walking back to his place a screen door slammed behind them, and Joan automatically turned her head and listened to find out what end of the house it had come from. “Coming,” said Simon, and just then Joan saw, in the corner of her eye, someone tall in James’s plaid shirt, untangling his way through the field and toward Joan. She turned all the way. “
Watch—!
” Simon said, and something slammed into the side of her head and made everything green and smarting. She sat down, not because she had been knocked down but because she was so startled her knees were weak. Beside her, nestled in a clump of grass, was the baseball, looking whiter than she remembered. Her temple began throbbing and she lay all the way down on her back, with the scorched ground underneath her making little crisp brittle sounds. “
Joan!
” Simon was shouting, and whoever wore James’s plaid shirt was thudding closer and closer. It was Ansel. She saw that and closed her eyes. In the same moment Simon arrived, with his breath coming fast and loud. He thumped down beside her and said, “
Joan
, oh,
shit
, Joan,” which made her suddenly grin, even with her eyes closed and her head aching. She looked up at him and said, “Simon Pike—” and tried to sit up, but someone yanked her back by
the shoulders. “
Where
did you—” she began, but then Ansel clapped his hand over her mouth. His hand smelled of Noxzema.

“You lie still,” he said. “Don’t you sit and don’t you talk. I’ll call a ambulance.”

“An ambulance?” And this time she out and out laughed, and sat up even with Ansel trying to press her back down again. “Ansel,” she said, “I
really
don’t need an ambulance. I just got surprised.”

“I warned you,” Simon said. “Oh Lord, people
break
so easy.” He settled back on his haunches, clutching his knees, and for a minute it looked as if he would cry.

“Oh, hey, now,” Joan told him. She struggled all the way up, letting Ansel keep hold of one of her elbows, and then reached down to give Simon a hand up. When she stood her head hurt more; it was throbbing. She patted Simon’s shoulder. “It was my doing,” she said. “I turned to see who was coming.”

Ansel kept hanging on to her elbow, too tightly. She tried to pull away but he only tightened his grasp and bent closer over her, looking long and pale and worried with his light eyes blinking anxiously in the strong sunlight. “You’re coming inside,” he told her. “I’ll call a doctor.”

“I don’t
need
a doctor, Ansel.”

“Terrible things can happen.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “I’m not
about
to die on you.”

“You never know. You never can—”

She pulled away from him, this time so hard that he had to let her go, and reached out for Simon’s hand instead, in case she got dizzier. Simon accepted her hand like a grave responsibility and led her, soberly and
silently, toward the house. Ansel followed, panting from all this unexpected exercise.

“We’ll go to my house,” he said, “where I have iced tea.”

“No, thank you.”

“I
want
you to go to my house. I feel responsible. And anyway, I’m lonely. James has gone off to Dan Thompson’s.”

“Oh, all right,” Joan said. It was true that she didn’t want to go back to that parlor again. They veered toward the Greens’ end of the house, with Ansel parting weeds ahead of them and kicking aside bits of rusted car parts so that Joan could have a clear passage. When they reached the back door he held it open for them and ushered them in with a bow, though neither Simon nor Joan paid any attention to him.

“Head on to the front room,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, Joan: you can lie on my couch.”

“Oh, well, Ansel, I don’t need—”

“It’s not often I let someone do that.”

“All right,” she said, and went on toward the couch, feeling too aching to argue. The house smelled like James—a mixture of darkroom chemicals and shaving soap and sunshine—and there was a little of that medicine smell of Ansel’s there too. She lay back on the couch and closed her eyes.

Ansel brought iced tea, with the ice cubes tinkling in the glasses and a sprig of fresh mint floating on top. It surprised her, because Ansel was used to being waited on himself. She had thought he wouldn’t even know where the glasses were. He set the tray down on the coffee table and handed a glass to both Simon and Joan. Then he picked up his own glass and carried it over to the easy chair, where he sat down a little uncertainly,
as if he had never sat there before. Maybe he hadn’t. “Cheers,” he said, and held his glass up high. “In reference to this doctor business, Joan—”

“
I feel fine.
”

“But maybe you should see one anyway,” said Simon. “You just don’t know
what
might have happened.”

“Nothing happened. Will you hush?”

She took a sip of iced tea and closed her eyes. It felt good to be cool again. The room was dim and quiet, and the couch was comfortable, and the heat of outdoors had made her feel relaxed and sleepy.

“What else is good,” Ansel was telling Simon, “is to drink iced tea with peppermint candy in it. You ever tried that?” His voice was far away and faint, because Joan was half-asleep. She heard him shift his position in the creaky old chair. “You ever tried it?” he asked again.

“No,” said Simon. He was still being cautious with Ansel, although Joan couldn’t figure out why.

“You ought to have your mother make it for you,” Ansel told him.

“She won’t care.”

“Sure she will. Sure she will.”

“We drink mainly Cokes,” said Simon.

“This is better.”

There was a long silence. Joan reached over to set her glass on the floor, and then she lay down again and put the back of her hand across her eyes to shut the light out.

“James is at Dan Thompson’s,” Ansel said.

“You told me that,” said Simon.

“He just walked out and left me here, alone.”

“I don’t care.”

“If I drop dead today, he’ll forget what name to put on the headstone.”

“I don’t care.”

“Ah, well,” Ansel sighed, and there was the sound of his stretching in the chair. “There is a collection, in this world,” he said, “of people who could die and be mourned approximately a week. If they’re lucky. Then that’s the end of it. You think I’m one?”

“I don’t know,” said Simon. “I’m not listening.”

“Oh.”

There was another pause, and someone’s ice tinkled. Ansel’s, probably. Ansel said, “I’m going to go away from here.”

“Everyone is,” said Simon.

“What?”

“Grown-ups can go and not even let on they’re going. I wish I could.”

“You can come with me,” Ansel said.

“Where’s that?”

“This town of mine. This place I come from.”

“Is it north?” Simon asked.

“North of what?”

“
North
north. Is it?”

“It’s south,” said Ansel.

“Oh. I want to go north.”

“It’s all the same. Who you kidding? This town has got a cop that acts like a night watchman. He goes through the town on foggy nights crying out the hours, singing ‘Sunshine on the Mountain’ and all other sunny songs, middle of the night. Ain’t
that
a thing to wake in the night to, boy.”