The Tin Can Tree

Anne Tyler The Tin Can Tree

1

After the funeral James came straight home, to look after his brother. He left Mr and Mrs Pike standing on that windy hillside while their little boy wandered in circles nearby, and the only one who saw James go was Joan. She looked over at him, but she didn't say anything. When he was a few steps away he heard her say, 'We have to go home now, Aunt Lou. We have to go down.' But Mrs Pike was silent, and all James heard for an answer was the roaring of the wind.

Going down the hill he took big steps-he was a tall man, and the steepness of the hill made him walk faster than he wanted to. It was too hot to walk fast. The sun was white and glaring and soaked deep in through the mat of his black hair, and his face felt slick when he wiped it with the back of his hand. Partway down the hill he stopped and took off his suit jacket. While he was rolling up his shirt sleeves he looked back at the grave to see if the others were coming, but their backs were still turned towards him. From here it seemed as if that wind hardly touched them; they stood like stones, wearing black, with their heads down and their figures making straight black marks against the sky. The only thing moving was little Simon Pike, as he picked his way down through the dry brambles towards James. Simon looked strange, dressed up. He had always worn Levi's and crumpled leather boots, but today someone had made him put his suit on. That would be Joan. Mrs Pike had looked at nothing but the ground for two days now, and couldn't notice what Simon wore. Joan would have polished those white dress-shoes that Simon was getting all grass-stained, and taken out the last inch of cuff on his sleeves so that they could cover his wrists. There was a thin faint line above each of his cuffs where the old hem had been; James could see it clearly when Simon came up even with him. He stood staring at the cuffs for a long time, and then he shifted his eyes to Simon's face and saw Simon frowning up at him, his eyebrows squinched into one straight line across his forehead and his mouth held tight against the wind.

‘I’m coming too,’ he told James. His voice had a low, froggy sound; he was barely ten, but in a year or two his voice would begin to change.

James nodded and finished rolling up his shirt sleeves. There was a band of dampness beneath his collar. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, and then he began walking again with Simon beside him. Now he went more slowly, bracing himself against the steepness of the hill. Each time he took one step Simon took two, but when he looked over at Simon to see if he was growing tired, Simon ignored him and walked faster. He wasn't sweating at all. He looked cold. James wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and followed him down between the rocks.

'Getting near lunchtime,' he said finally.

Simon didn't answer.

'Want to eat with Ansel and me?'

'Well.'

'Don't worry about your mother. I'll tell her where you are.'

Simon said something to his shoes, but James couldn't hear.

'What's that?' he asked.

'I wouldn't bother.'

'We'll tell your cousin Joan then,' said James. 'Soon as she gets back.'

The wind was so hot it burned his face; it made lulling sounds around his ears so that he couldn't hear his own footsteps. He pushed his hair off his forehead but it fell into his eyes again, hanging in a tangled web just at the top of his range of vision. Beside him, Simon was letting his hair do what it wanted. He had greased it down with something (it needed cutting, but Joan had been too busy with her aunt to see about that) and now it ruffled up in thick strings and stood out wildly in every direction. When James turned to look at him he nearly smiled. With his face sideways to the wind the roaring sound was quieter, so he kept looking in

Simon's direction until Simon grew uneasy.

'What are you staring at?' he asked.

'Nothing,' said James. 'Some wind we got.' He looked straight ahead again, and the roaring sound came back to hammer at his ears.

The ground they were treading was wild and weedy, with rocks sticking up here and there so white they might have been painted. There was no path to follow. Below them was the whole town of Larksville – the main street hidden by trees, but the outlying houses and the tobacco fields laid bare to the sun. At the foot of the hill was the white gravel road where Simon and James both lived. They lived in a three-family house that looked like only a long tin roof from here. No houses stood near it. James's brother Ansel said whoever built their house must have been counting on Larksville's becoming a city someday, but Larksville was getting smaller every year. When anyone went away to college it was taken for granted they'd never be back again, not for any longer than it took to eat a Christmas dinner in the house they'd started out in. Yet the long crowded house sat there, half a mile from town as a bird flies and a mile by car, and its three chimneys were jumbled tightly together with the smoke intermingling in wintertime.

The sight of that green part of town was cool and inviting; it made James think of cold beers in the tavern opposite the post office. He looked down at Simon, but Simon was hunched into the jacket of his suit and he still seemed cold.

'Do you like sardines?' James asked him.

'Not much.'

'Or cold cuts?'

'No.'

They stepped through a tangle of briars, with the thorns making little ripping sounds against their clothes. 'I could eat a pizza,' Simon said.

'You better talk to Ansel, then. He makes pizzas.'

Simon tripped and caught himself. He looked down at the small rock that had tripped him and then began kicking it ahead of him down the hill, swerving out of his course to recover it every time the rock rolled sideways. Grey streaks began to show on his shoes, but James didn't try to stop him.

When they reached the gravel road they turned right and began heading in the direction of the house. Simon's rock rolled into a ditch; he left it lying there. It looked as if they might get all the way home this way – not talking much, and not saying anything when they did talk, just as if this were an ordinary walk on an ordinary day. That suited James. He had been thinking too much, these last two days -turning things over and over, figuring out how if just some single incident had happened, or hadn't happened, things might have been different. Now he ached all over, and thinking made him sick. He was just beginning to feel easier, ambling along in silence beside Simon, when Simon turned and began walking backwards ahead of James, fixing his frowning brown eyes on a point far down the road. He opened his mouth and closed it, and then he opened it again and said, 'James.'

'What.'

'How far down in the ground before it starts getting cold?'

'Pretty soon,' said James.

'How soon.'

'Pretty soon.'

'I'm just thinking,' Simon said.

To keep him from thinking any more, James said, 'But then it gets hot again, down towards the centre of the earth. That's beyond digging distance.'

'Six feet under is stone, stone cold,' said Simon.

'Well, yes.'

'Good old Janie Rose, boy.'

'Now, wait,' James said. 'Now, Janie Rose don't feel if it's cold or it's not, Simon. Get that all straight in your mind.'

'I know that.'

'Get it straight now, before you go bothering your mother about it.'

'I know all about that,' said Simon. He spun around and began walking forward again, still ahead of James. Strands of his hair rose up and floated behind him, like the tail plumes of some strange bird. 'You don't get what I mean,' he called back.

'Maybe not.'

'Now, you know Janie Rose.'

'Yes,' said James, and without his wanting it the picture of Janie Rose came to him, sharp and clear – Janie Rose looking exactly the way he thought her name sounded, six years old and blonde and fat, with round pink cheeks and round thick glasses. He hadn't been planning to think about it. He said, 'Yes, I know,' and then waited for whatever would follow, keeping part of his mind far away.