Part 7 (2/2)

”It moved!” someone screamed.

”No, no, it didn't move. Just your eyes playin' tricks!”

”Hones' ta G.o.d,” cried Juke. ”I saw it s.h.i.+ft slow like a dead kitten.”

”Hush up, now! It's been dead a long, long time. Maybe since before you was born!”

”He made a sign!” screamed Mrs. Tridden, the mother woman. ”That's my baby, my Foley! My baby you got there! Three year old, he was! My baby lost and white in the swamp!” The sobbing broke out of her, then.

”Now, now, there now, Mrs. Tridden. There now. Set down and stop shakin'. Ain't no more your child'n mine. There, there.” One of the womenfolk held her and faded out the sobbing into jerked breathing and a fluttering of her lips in b.u.t.terfly quickness as the breath stroked over them, afraid.

When all was quiet again, Granny Carnation, with a withered pink flower in her shoulder-length gray hair, sucked the pipe in her trap mouth and talked around it, shaking her head to make the hair dance in the light: ”All this talking and shoving around words. Hah. Like as not we'll never know what it is. Like as not if we could find out, we wouldn't want to know. It's like them magic tricks them magicians do at the show. Once you find the feke, it ain't no more fun 'n' the innards of a jackbob. We come collecting around here every ten nights or so, talking, social-like, with something, always something, to talk about. Stands to reason if we found out what the d.a.m.n thing is there'd be nothing to talk about, so there!”

”Well, d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l!” rumbled a bull voice. ”I don't think it's nothin'!”

Tom Carmody. Tom Carmody standing, as always, in shadow. Out on the porch, just his eyes staring in, his lips laughing at you dimly, mocking. His laughter got inside Charlie like a hornet sting. Thedy had put him up to it, Thedy was trying to undermine Charlie's social life, she was!

”Nothing,” joked Carmody harshly, ”in that jar but a bunch of old jellyfish from Sea Cove, a-rottin' and a-stinkin' fit to whelp!”

”You mightn't be jealous, Cousin Carmody?” asked Charlie.

”Haw!” snorted Carmody. ”I jest come around ta watch you dumb nitwits jaw about nuthin'. I gits a kick out of it. You notice I never set foot inside or took part. I'm goin' home right now. Anybody wanna come along with me?”

He got no offer of company. He laughed again, as if this were a bigger joke, how so many people could be so dumb, and Thedy was raking her palms with angry nails back of the room. Charlie felt a twinge of unexpected fear at this.

Carmody, still laughing, rapped off the porch with his high-heeled boots and the sound of crickets took him away.

Granny Carnation gummed her pipe. ”Like I was saying before the storm; that thing on the shelf, why couldn't it be sort of - all things? Lots of things. What they call a - gimmle -”

”Symbol?”

”That's it. Symbol. Symbol of all the nights and days in the dead canebrake. Why's it have to be one thing? Maybe it's lots.”

And the talking went on for another hour, and Thedy slipped away into the night on the track of Tom Carmody, and Charlie began to sweat. They were up to something, those two. They were planning something. Charlie sweated warm all the rest of the evening - The meeting broke up late, and Charlie bedded down with mixed emotions. The meeting had gone off well, but what about Thedy and Tom Carmody?

Very late, with certain star coveys shuttled down the sky marking the time as late, Charlie heard the shus.h.i.+ng of the tall gra.s.s parted by her penduluming hips. Her heels tacked soft across the porch.

She lay soundlessly in bed, cat eyes staring at him. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them staring.

”Charlie?”

He waited.

Then he said, ”I'm awake.”

Then she waited.

”Charlie?”

”What?”

”Bet you don't know where I been, bet you don't know where I been.” It was a faint, derisive singsong in the night.

He waited.

She waited again. She couldn't bear waiting long, though, and continued, ”I been to the carnival over in Cape City. Tom Carmody drove me. We - we talked to the carny-boss, Charlie, we did, we did, we sure did.” And she sort of giggled to herself, secretly.

Charlie stirred upright on an elbow.

She said, ”We found out what it is in your jar, Charlie -” insinuatingly.

Charlie flumped over, hands to ears. ”I don't wanna hear.”

”Oh, but you gotta hear, Charlie. It's a good joke. Oh, it's rare, Charlie,” she hissed.

”Go - away,” he said in a low firm voice.

”Unh-unh. No. No, sir, Charlie, honey. Not until I tell. We talked to the carny-boss and he - he almost died laughin', he said he sold it to some - hick - for twelve bucks. And it ain't worth more than two dollars at most!”

Laughter bloomed in the dark, right out of her mouth, an awful kind of flower with her breath as its perfume. She finished it, snapping, quick: ”It's just junk, Charlie! Liquid rubber, papier-mache, silk, cotton, chemicals! That's all! Got a metal framework inside it! That's all! That's all it is, Charlie! That's all,” she shrilled in triumph.

He sat up swiftly, ripping sheets apart in big fingers, roaring, tears coming bright on his cheeks. ”I don't wanna hear! Don't wanna hear!” he bellowed over and over.

She teased. ”Wait'11 everyone hears how fake it is! Won't they laugh! Won't they flap their lungs!”

He caught her wrists. ”You ain't - gonna tell them?”

”Ouch, you hurt me!”

”You ain't gonna tell them.”

”Wouldn't want me known as a liar, would you, Charles?”

He flung her wrists like white sticks into a well. ”Whyncha leave alone? You're dirty! Dirty jealous of everything I do. I took s.h.i.+ne off your nose when I brung the jar home. You didn't sleep right until you ruined things!”

She laughed nastily. ”Then I won't tell everybody,” she said.

He caught on to her. ”You spoiled my fun. That's all that counted. It don't matter if you tell the rest. I know. And I'll never have no more fun. You and that Tom Carmody. Him laughin'. I wish I could stop him from laughin'. He's been laughin' for years at me! Well, you just go tell the rest, the other people now - might as well have your fun -”

He strode angrily, grabbed the jar so it sloshed, and would have flung it on the floor, but he stopped, trembling, and let it down softly on the rickety table. He leaned over it, sobbing. If he lost this, the world was gone. And he was losing Thedy, too. Every month that pa.s.sed she danced farther away, sneering at him, funning him. For too many years her hips had been the pendulum by which he reckoned the time of his living. But other men - Tom Carmody, for one - were reckoning time from the same source.

Thedy was standing, waiting for him to smash the jar. Instead, he petted it thoughtfully. He thought of the long, good evenings in the past month, those rich evenings of comradery, conversation woven into the fabric of the room. That, at least, was good, if nothing else.

He turned slowly to Thedy. ”Thedy, you didn't go to the carnival.”

”Yes, I did.”

<script>