Other Voices, Other Rooms (Vintage International) by Truman Capote

Author:Truman Capote [Capote, Truman]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307431578
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

VII

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 toylike 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 yeller 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.

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