Tin Can Tree by Tyler Anne

Author:Tyler, Anne [Tyler, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1965-03-18T05:00:00+00:00

8

On Tuesday morning, Mr Pike was the second person awake. He arrived in the kitchen wearing his work clothes and carrying a nylon mesh cap, and when he sat down at the table he sat heavily, stamping his boots together in front of him and scraping the chair across the linoleum. 'I'm picking tobacco today,' he told Joan. Joan was at the stove, peering into the glass knob on top of the percolator to see what colour the coffee was. When her uncle made his announcement she said nothing, because she was thinking of other things, but then she turned and saw him looking at her expectantly.

‘I’m sorry?' she said.

'I'm going to pick tobacco,' he repeated.

'Oh. All right.'

But he still seemed to be waiting for something. He folded his big boney hands on the table and leaned toward her, watching, but Joan couldn't think what was expected of her. She picked the coffeepot off the stove and carried it over to the sink, in order to dump the grounds.

'We need the money,' her uncle said.

Joan shook the grounds into the garbage pail, holding the coffee-basket by the tips of her fingers so as not to get burned.

'Well, sometime I got to start work,' he said.

'Of course you do, Uncle Roy.'

'Things are getting worse and worse in this house. I thought they'd get better.'

'Pretty soon they will.'

'I wonder, now.

He watched as Joan set his cup of coffee before him. She handed him the sugar bowl but he just stared at it, as if he'd never seen one before.

'Sugar?' Joan prodded him.

He shook his head, and she set the bowl down at his elbow.

'It's no good sitting in a room all my life,' he said.

'Drink your coffee,' Joan told him. She poured a cup for herself and then sat down opposite him hitching up the knees of her blue jeans. Her eyes were still foggy from sleep and things came through to her blurred, in shining patterns – the blocks of sunlight across the worn linoleum, the graduated circles of Mrs Pike's saucepan set hanging on the wall, the dark slouched waiting figure of her uncle. When she stirred her coffee with a kitchen knife that was handy, the reflection of the sunshine on the blade flashed across the wall like a fish in a pool and her uncle shifted his eyes to that. He watched like a person hypnotized. She set the knife down and the reflection darted to a point high on the wall near the ceiling, and he stared upward at it.

'You going to want sandwiches?' she asked.

He didn't answer. She took a sip of her coffee, but it was tasteless and heavy and she set the cup down again. 'Putting my foot down,' her uncle mumbled. Joan drew lines on the tablecloth with her thumbnail. Outside a bird began singing, bringing back all the spots and patches of restless dreams she had had last night, in between long periods of lying awake and turning her pillow over and over to find a cool place.

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