One morning Joel received the first mail he'd ever had at the Landing; it was a picture postcard, and Randolph, appearing with a copy of Macbeth, which they'd planned to read aloud, brought it to him. "It's from the little girl down the road," he said, and Joel's breath caught: long-legged and swaggering, Idabel walked from the wall, rocked in the chair. He'd not directly thought of her since the night of the traveling-show, an omission for which he couldn't account, but which did not strike him as freakish: she was, after all, one with the others covered over when the house sank, those whose names concerned the old Joel, whose names now in gnarled October freckling leaves spelled on the wind. Still Idabel was back, a ghost, perhaps, but here, and in the room: Idabel the hoodlum out to stone a one-armed barber, and Idabel with roses, Idabel with sword, Idabel who said she sometimes cried: all of autumn was the sycamore leaf and its red the red of her hair and its stem the rusty color of her rough voice and its jagged shape the pattern, the souvenir of her face.
The card, which showed joyful cottonpickers, was postmarked from Alabama, and it said: "Mrs. Collie 1/2 sister an hes the baptis prechur Last Sunday I past the plate at church! papa and F shot henry They put me to life here, why did you Hide? write to IDABEL THOMPKINS."
Well, frankly, he didn't believe her; she'd put herself to life, and it was with Miss Wisteria, not a baptis prechur. He handed the card to Randolph who, in turn, passed it to the fire; for an instant, as Idabel and her cottonpickers crinkled, he would have lost his hands to retrieve them, but Randolph, adjusting gold reading glasses, began: "First witch. When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?" and he settled down to listen, he fell asleep and woke up with a holler, for he'd climbed up the chimney after Idabel, and there was only smoke where she'd been, sky. "Hush, now, hush," said Randolph slowly, softly, a voice like dying light, and he was glad for Randolph, calm in the center of his mercy.
So sometimes he came near to speaking out his love for him; but it was unsafe ever to let anyone guess the extent of your feelings or knowledge: suppose, as he often had, that he were kidnapped; in which case the wisest defense would be not to let the kidnapper know you recognized him as such. If concealment is the single weapon, then a villain is never a villain: one smiles to the very end.
And even if he spoke to Randolph, to whom would he be confessing love? Faceted as a fly's eye, being neither man nor woman, and one whose every identity cancelled the other, a grab-bag of disguises, who, what was Randolph? X, an outline in which with crayon you color in the character, the ideal hero: whatever his role, it is pitched by you into existence. Indeed, try to conceive of him alone, unseen, unheard, and he becomes invisible, he is not to be imagined. But such as Randolph justify fantasy, and if a genii should appear, certainly Joel would have asked that these sealed days continue through a century of calendars.
They ended, though, and at the time it seemed Randolph's fault. "Very soon we're going to visit the Cloud Hotel," he said. "Little Sunshine wants to see us; you are quite well enough, I think: it's absurd to pretend you're not." Urgency underscored his voice, an enthusiasm in which Joel could not altogether believe, for he sensed the plan was motivated by private, no doubt unpleasant reasons, and these, whatever they were, opposed Randolph's actual desires. And he said: "Let's stay right here, Randolph, let's don't ever go anywhere." And when the plea was rejected old galling grindful thoughts about Randolph came back. He felt grumpy enough to quarrel; that, of course, was a drawback in being dependent: he could never quarrel with Randolph, for anger seemed, if anything, more unsafe than love: only those who know their own security can afford either. Even so, he was on the point of risking cross words when an outside sound interrupted, and rolled him backward through time: "Why are you staring that way?" said Randolph.
"It's Zoo… I hear her," he said: through the evening windows came an accordion refrain. "Really I do."
Randolph was annoyed. "If she must be musical, heaven knows I'd prefer she took up the harmonica."
"But she's gone." And Joel sat up on his knees. "Zoo walked away to Washington…"
"I thought you knew," said Randolph, fingering the ribbon which marked the pages of Macbeth. "During the worst of it, when you were the most sick, she sat beside you with a fan: can't you remember at all?"
So Zoo was back; it was not long before he saw her for himself: at noon the next day she brought his broth; no greetings passed between them, nor smiles, it was as if each felt too much the fatigued embarrassment of anticlimax. Only with her it was still something more: she seemed not to know him, but stood there as if waiting to be introduced. "Randolph told me you couldn't come back," he said. "I'm glad he was wrong."
In answer there came a sigh so stricken it seemed to have heaved up from the pits of her being. She leaned her forehead on the bed-post, and it was then that with a twinge he realized her neckerchief was missing: exposed, her slanted scar leered like crooked lips, and her neck, divided this way, had lost its giraffe-like grandeur. How small she seemed, cramped, as if some reduction of the spirit had taken double toll and made demands upon the flesh: with that illusion of height was gone the animal grace, arrow-like dignity, defiant emblem of her separate heart.
"Zoo," he said, "did you see snow?"
She looked at him, but her eyes appeared not to make a connection with what they saw; in fact, there was about them a cross-eyed effect, as though they fixed on a solacing inner vision. "Did I see snow?" she repeated, trying hard, it seemed, to understand. "Did I see snow!" and she broke into a kind of scary giggle, and threw back her head, lips apart, like an open-mouthed child hoping to catch rain. "There ain't none," she said, violently shaking her head, her black greased hair waving with a windy rasp like scorched grass. "Hit's all a lotta foolery, snow and such: that sun! it's everywhere."
"Like Mr. Sansom's eyes," said Joel, off thinking by himself.
"Is a nigger sun," she said, "an my soul, it's black." She took the broth bowl, and looked down into it, as if she were a gypsy reading tea-leaves. "I rested by the road; the sun poked down my eyes till I'm near-bout blind…"
And Joel said: "But Zoo, if there wasn't any snow, what was it you saw in Washington, D. C.? I mean now, didn't you meet up with any of those men from the newsreels?"
"… an was holes in my shoes where the rocks done cut through the jackodiamonds and the aceohearts; walked all day, an here it seem like I ain't come no ways, and here I'm sittin by the road with my feets afire an ain't a soul in sight. " Two tears, following the bony edges of her face, faded, leaving silver stains. "I'm so tired ain't no feelin what tells me iffen I pinch myself, and I go on sittin there in that lonesome place till I looks up an see the Big Dipper: right about now along come a red truck with big bug lights coverin me head to toe. " There were four men in the truck, she said, three white boys, and a Negro who rode in back squatting on top of a mountain of watermelons. The driver of the truck got out: "A real low man puffin a cigar like a bull; he ain't wearin no shirt an all this red hair growin even on his shoulders an hands; so quiet he walks through the grass, an looks at me so sweet I reckon maybe he sorry my feets is cut an maybe's gonna ax me why don't I ride in his fine car?" Go on, he told her, tapping his cigar so the ash was flung in her face, go on, gal, get down in the ditch; never mind why, says the man, and shoved her so she rolled over the embankment, landing on her back helpless as a junebug. "Lord, I sure commenced to hoop n' holler an this little bull-man says I hush up else he's gonna bust out my brains. " She got up and started to run, but those other two boys, answering the driver's whistle, jumped down into the ditch and cut her off at either end; both these boys wore panama hats, and one had on a pair of sailor pants and a soldier's shirt: it was he who caught her and called for the Negro to bring a rifle. "That mean nigger look a whole lot like Keg, an he put that rifle up side my ear, an the man, he done tore my pretty dress straight down the front, an tells them panama boys theys to set to: I hear the Lord's voice talkin down that gun barrel, an the Lord said Zoo, you done took the wrong road and come the wrong way, you et of the apple, he said, an hits pure rotten, an outa the sky my Lord look down an brung comfort, an whilst them devils went jerkin like billygoats right then and there in all my shameful sufferin I said holy words: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil, for you is with me Lord, yea verily, I say, an them fools laughed, but my Lord took that sailor boy's shape, an us, me an the Lord, us loved. " The boys had removed their panama hats; now they put them on again, and one said to the driver, well, what was wrong with him? and the driver sucked his cigar and scratched behind his ear and said, well, to tell the truth, he wasn't much one for being watched; O. K., said the boys, and climbed back up the bank, the Negro following after them, all three laughing, which made the driver's cheek twitch and his eyes "go yellow like an ol tomcat; an it was peculiar, cause he was one scared man." He did not move to touch her, but squatted impotent at her side like a bereaved lover, like an idol, then the truck-horn blew, the boys called, and he bent close: "He pushed that cigar in my belly-button, Lord, in me was born fire like a child…"