A Death In The Family (28 page)

He walked over to her as quietly as if she were asleep, feeling strange to be by himself, and stood on tiptoe beside her and looked down into her sunbonnet towards her ear. Her temple was deeply sunken as if a hammer had struck it and frail as a fledgling’s belly. Her skin was crosshatched with the razor-fine slashes of innumerable square wrinkles and yet every slash was like smooth stone; her ear was just a fallen intricate flap with a small gold ring in it, her smell was faint yet very powerful, and she smelled like new mushrooms and old spices and sweat, like his fingernail when it was coming off. “Granmaw, I’m Rufus,” he said carefully, and yellow-white hair stirred beside her ear. He could feel coldness breathing from her cheek.

“Come out where she can see you,” his father said, and he drew back and stood still further on tiptoe and leaned across her, where she could see. “I’m Rufus,” he said, smiling, and suddenly her eyes darted a little and looked straight into his, but they did not in any way change their expression. They were just color: seen close as this, there was color through a dot at the middle, dim as blue-black oil, and then a circle of blue so pale it was almost white, that looked like glass, smashed into a thousand dimly sparkling pieces, smashed and infinitely old and patient, and then a ring of dark blue, so fine and sharp no needle could have drawn it, and then a clotted yellow full of tiny squiggles of blood, and then a wrong-side furl of red-bronze, and little black lashes. Vague light sparkled in the crackled blue of the eye like some kind of remote ancestor’s anger, and the sadness of time dwelt in the blue-breathing, oily center, lost and alone and far away, deeper than the deepest well. His father was saying something, but he did not hear and now he spoke again, careful to be patient, and Rufus heard, “Tell her ‘I’m Jay’s boy.’ Say, ‘I’m Jay’s boy Rufus.’ ”

And again he leaned into the cold fragrant cavern next her ear and said, “I’m Jay’s boy Rufus,” and he could feel her face turn towards him.

“Now kiss her,” his father said, and he drew out of the shadow of her bonnet and leaned far over and again entered the shadow and kissed her paper mouth, and the mouth opened, and the cold sweet breath of rotting and of spice broke from her with the dry croaking, and he felt the hands take him by the shoulders like knives and forks of ice through his clothes. She drew him closer and looked at him almost glaring, she was so filled with grave intensity. She seemed to be sucking on her lower lip and her eyes filled with light, and then, as abruptly as if the two different faces had been joined without transition in a strip of moving-picture film, she was not serious any more but smiling so hard that her chin and her nose almost touched and her deep little eyes giggled for joy. And again the croaking gurgle came, making shapes which were surely words but incomprehensible words, and she held him even more tightly by the shoulders, and looked at him even more keenly and incredulously with her giggling, all but hidden eyes, and smiled and smiled, and cocked her head to one side, and with sudden love he kissed her again. And he could hear his mother’s voice say, “Jay,” almost whispering, and his father say, “Let her be,” in a quick, soft, angry voice, and when at length they gently disengaged her hands, and he was at a little distance, he could see that there was water crawling along the dust from under her chair, and his father and his Aunt Sadie looked gentle and sad and dignified, and his mother was trying not to show that she was crying, and the old lady sat there aware only that something had been taken from her, but growing quickly calm, and nobody said anything about it.

Chapter […]

Late one afternoon Uncle Ted and Aunt Kate came, all the way from Michigan. Aunt Kate had red hair. Uncle Ted had glasses and he could make faces. They brought him a book and what he liked best was a picture of a fat man with a cloth around his head, sitting on a tasseled cushion with a long snakey tube in his mouth, and it said:

There was a fat man of Bombay

Who was smoking his pipe one fine day

   When a bird called a snipe

   Flew away with his pipe,

Which vexed that fat man of Bombay.

But there wasn’t any bird in the picture. His father said he reckoned it was still out snipe-hunting.

They weren’t really his uncle and aunt, it was like Aunt Celia. Just a friend. But Aunt Kate was a kind of cousin. She was Aunt Carrie’s daughter and Aunt Carrie was Granma’s half-sister. You were a half-sister if you had the same father or mother but not the same other one, and they had the same mother.

They slept on the brand-new davenport in the sitting room. Next morning before daylight they all got up and went to the L&N depot. A man came for them in an auto because there was no streetcar to the L&N. They had so much to carry that even he was given a box to carry. They sat in the big room and it was full of people. His mother told his Uncle Ted she liked it better than the Southern depot because there were so many country folks and his father said he did too. It smelled like chewing tobacco and pee, and like a barn. Some of the ladies wore sunbonnets and lots of the men wore old straw hats, not the flat kind. One lady was nursing her baby. They had a long time to wait for their train; his father said, “Count on Mary and you won’t never miss a train, but you may get the one the day before you aimed to,” and his mother said, “Jay,” and Uncle Ted laughed; so he heard the man call several trains in his fine, echoing voice, and finally he started calling out a string of stations and his father got up saying, “That’s us,” and they got everything together and as soon as the man called the track they hurried fast, so they got two seats and turned them to face each other, and afterwhile the train pulled out and it was already broad daylight. The older people were all kind of sleepy and didn’t talk much, though they pretended to, and afterwhile Aunt Kate dropped off to sleep and leaned her head against his mother’s shoulder and the men laughed and his mother smiled and said, “Let her, the dear.”

The news butcher came through and in spite of his mother, Uncle Ted bought him a glass locomotive with little bright-colored pieces of candy inside and Catherine a glass telephone with the same kind of candy inside, which his father had never done. His father and Uncle Ted spent a good deal of time in the smoking car, to smoke, and to make more room. It got hot and dull. But after quite a while his father came hurrying back down the aisle and told his mother to look out the window and she did and said, “Well what?” and he said, “No—up ahead,” and they all three looked up ahead and there on the sky above the scrubby hill, there was a grand great lift of grayish blue that looked as if you could see the light through it, and then the train took a long curve and these liftings of gray blue opened out like a fan and filled the whole country ahead, shouldering above each other high and calm and full of shadowy light, so that he heard his mother say, “
Ohhh!
How perfectly
glorious!
”, and his father say shyly, a little as if he owned them and was giving them to her, “That’s them. That’s the Smokies all right,” and sure enough they did look smoky, and as they came nearer, smoke and great shadows seemed to be sailing around on them, but he knew that must be clouds. After a while he could begin to see the shapes of them clearly, great bronzy bulges that looked as if they were blown up tight like balloons, and solemn deep scoops of shady blue that ran from the tops on down below the tops of the near hills, deeper than he could see. “They’re just like huge waves, Jay,” his mother said with awe. “That’s right,” he said; “you remember?” “Sure I do,” he said; “just like seeing sunlight striking through waves, just before they topple.”

“Yeah,” his father said.

“Kate mustn’t miss this,” his mother said; “Kate!” and she took Aunt Kate by the shoulder.

“
Sssh!
” his father hissed, and he frowned. “Let her alone!” But Aunt Kate was already waked up, though she was still very sleepy, wondering what it was all about.

“Just look, Kate,” his mother said. “Out there!” Aunt Kate looked. “See?” his mother said.

“Yes,” Aunt Kate said.

“That’s where we’re going,” his mother said.

“Yes,” Aunt Kate said.

“Aren’t they grand?” his mother said.

“Yes,” Aunt Kate said.

“Well I think they’re
absolutely breath
taking,” his mother said.

“So do I,” Aunt Kate said, and went back to sleep.

His mother made one of the funniest faces he had ever seen, looking at his father all bewildered and surprised and holding in her laughter, and his father laughed out loud but Aunt Kate didn’t wake up. “Just like Catherine,” his mother whispered, laughing, and they all looked at Catherine, who was staring out at the mountains and looking very heavy and earnest; and they laughed and Catherine looked at them and began to realize they were laughing at her, and that made her face get red and that made them laugh some more, and even Rufus joined in, and they only stopped when Catherine began to stick out her lower lip and her mother said, “
Mercy
, child, you’ve got to learn to take a
joke
.”

But her father said, “Doesn’t anybody like to be laughed at,” and took her on his lap, and she pulled her lip in and looked out the window again. Now they could even see the separate trees all over the sides of the mountains like rice, all shades of green and some almost black, and before much longer they were climbing more slowly past the feathery tops of trees and the high shoulders of the mountains and the great deep scoops were turning past them and beneath them as if they were very slowly and seriously dancing in sunlight and in cloud and in shadows almost of night, and now and then they could see a tiny cabin and a corn patch far off on the side of a mountain, and twice they even saw a tinier mule and a man with it, one of the men waved; and high above them in the changing sunlight, slowest of all, the tops of the mountains twisted and changed places. And after quite a while his father said he reckoned they better start getting their stuff together, and before much longer they got off.

That night at supper when Rufus asked for more cheese Uncle Ted said, “Whistle to it and it’ll jump off the table into your lap.”

“Ted!” his mother said.

But Rufus was delighted. He did not know very well how to whistle yet, but he did his best, watching the cheese very carefully: it didn’t jump of the table into his lap; it didn’t even move.

“Try some more,” Uncle Ted said. “Try harder.”

“Ted!” his mother said.

He tried his very best and several times he managed to make a real whistle, but the cheese didn’t even move, and he began to realize that Uncle Ted and Aunt Kate were shaking with laughter they were trying to hold in, though he couldn’t see what there was to laugh about in a cheese that wouldn’t even move when you whistled even when Uncle Ted said it would and he was really whistling, not just trying to whistle.

“Why won’t it jump to me, Daddy?” he asked, almost crying with embarrassment and impatience, and at that Uncle Ted and Aunt Kate burst out laughing out loud, but his father didn’t laugh, he looked all mixed up, and mad, and embarrassed, and his mother was very mad and she said, “That’s just about enough of that, Ted. I think it’s just a perfect shame, deceiving a little child like that who’s been brought up to trust people, and laughing right in his face!”

“Mary,” his father said, and Uncle Ted looked very much surprised and Aunt Kate looked worried, though they were still laughing a little, as if they couldn’t stop yet.

“Now, Mary,” his father said again, and she turned on him and said angrily, “I don’t care, lay! I just don’t care a
hoot
, and if you won’t stand up for him, I will, I can promise you that!”

“Ted didn’t mean any harm,” his father said.

“Course I didn’t, Mary,” Uncle Ted said.

“Of course not,” Aunt Kate said.

“It was just a joke,” his father said.

“That’s all it was, Mary,” Uncle Ted said.

“He just meant it for a joke,” his father and Aunt Kate said together.

“Well, its a pretty poor kind of a joke, if you ask me,” his mother said, “violating a little boy’s trust.”

“Why, Mary, he’s got to learn what to believe and what not to,” Uncle Ted said, and Aunt Kate nodded and put her hand on Uncle Ted’s knee. “Gotta learn common sense.”

“He’s got
plenty
of comon sense,” his mother flashed. “He’s a very bright child
indeed
, if you must know. But he’s been brought up to
trust
older people when they tell him something. Not be
suspicious
of everybody. And so he trusted you. Because he
likes
you, Ted. Doesn’t that make you ashamed?”

“Come on, Mary, cut it out,” his father said.

“But Mary, you wouldn’t think anybody’d believe what I said about the
cheese
,” Uncle Ted said.

“Well you certainly
expected
him to believe it,” she said, with fury, “otherwise why’d you ever
say
it?”

Uncle Ted looked puzzled, and his father said, trying to laugh, “Reckon she cornered you there, Ted,” and Uncle Ted smiled uncomfortably and said, “I guess that’s so.”

“Of
course
it’s so,” his mother blazed, though his father frowned at her and said “
Ssh!
”