The Tin Can Tree

'Ah, sitting alone,' Ansel said. He sighed. 'That's no good.'

'No. Will you help keep him busy?'

'The couch, James.'

James stood up, and Ansel swung his feet around and slid down until he was lying prone. 'I don't see how he can eat,' he said.

'He's hungry.'

'I wonder about this world.'

'People handle things their own ways,' James said. 'Don't go talking to him about dying, Ansel.'

'Well.'

'Will you?'

'Well.'

There was a crash of cans out in the kitchen. A cupboard door slammed, and Simon called, 'Hey, James. I've decided.'

'Which one?'

'The sausage. There was only just the two of them.' He came into the living room, carrying the box of pizza mix, and Ansel raised his head to look over at him and then grunted and lay back and stared at the ceiling. For a minute Simon hesitated. Then he walked over to him and said, 'You're the pizza-maker.'

'Who said?' Ansel asked.

'Well, back there on the hill James said -'

'All right.' Ansel sat up slowly, running his fingers through his hair. 'It's always something,' he said.

'Well, maybe-'

'No, no. I don't mind.'

And then Ansel smiled, using his widest smile that dipped in the middle and turned up at the corners like a child's drawing of a happy man. When he did that his long thin face turned suddenly wide at the cheekbones, and his chin became shiny. 'We'll make my speciality,' he said. 'It's called an icebox pizza. On refrigerator-de-frosting days that's the way we clean the icebox; we load it all on a pizza crust and serve it up for lunch. You want to see how I make it?'

He was standing now, smoothing down his Sunday jacket and straightening his slumped shoulders. When he reached for the pizza mix Simon walked forward and gave it to him, not hanging back now but looking more at ease. Ansel said, 'This is something every man should know. Even if he's married. He can cook it when his wife is sick and serve her lunch in bed. Do you want an apron?'

'No, 'said Simon.

'Don't blame you. Don't blame you at all. Well -' and he was heading for the kitchen now, reading the directions as he walked. His walk was slow, but not enough to cause James any worry. James could judge the way Ansel felt just by glancing at him, most of the time. He had to; Ansel would never tell himself. When he felt his best he was likely to call for meals on a tray, and when he was really sick he might decide to wallpaper the bedroom. He was a backward kind of person

James had a habit of looking at him as someone a whole generation removed from him, although in reality he was twenty-six, only two years younger than James himself. He was thinking that way now, watching with narrow, almost paternal eyes as Ansel made his way into the kitchen.

'Naturally there are no really rules,' Ansel was saying, 'since you never know what might be in the icebox.' And Simon's voice came floating back: 'Fruit, even? Lettuce?'

'Well, now…' Ansel said.

James smiled and went over to the easy chair to sit down, stretching his legs out in front of him. It felt good to be home again. The house was a dingy place, with yellow peeling walls and sunken furniture. And it was so rickety that whenever James had some photography job that required a long time-exposure he had to run around warning everyone. 'Just sit a minute,' he would say, and he would pull up chairs for everybody in the house and then go dashing off to take his picture before people started shaking the floors again. But at least it was a comfortable house, not far from town, and Ansel had that big front window in the living room where he could watch the road. He would sit on the couch with his elbows on the sill, and everything he saw passing – just an old truck, or a boy riding a mule – meant something to him. He had been watching that long, and he knew people that well.

Thinking of Ansel and his window made James look toward it, to see what was going on, but all he saw from where he sat was the greenish-yellow haze of summer air, framed by mesh curtains. He rose and went over to look out, with his hands upon the sill, and peered down the gravel road toward the hill he had just come from. No one was in sight. Maybe it would be hours before they returned; Joan might still be standing there, trying to make her aunt and uncle stop staring at that grass. But even so, James went on watching for several minutes. He could feel the wind, gentler down here but strong enough to push the curtains in.

For a long time now, wind would make him think of today. He had climbed that hill behind all the others, and seen how the wind whipped the women's black skirts and ruffled little crooked parts down the backs of their hairdos. And when the first cluster of relatives had taken their leave at the end, stopping first to touch Mrs Pike's folded arms or murmur something to Mr Pike, the words they said were blown away and neither of the parents answered. Though they might not have answered anyway, even without the wind. The day that Janie Rose died, when James had spent thirty-six hours in the hospital waiting room and finally heard the news with only that tenth of his mind that was still awake, he had gone to Mrs Pike and said, 'Mrs Pike, if there's anything I or Ansel can do for you, no matter what it is, we will want to do it.' And Mrs Pike had looked past him at the information desk and said, 'Just falling off a tractor don't make a person die,' and then had turned and left. So James had let them be, and went home and told Ansel to keep to himself a while and not go bothering the Pikes. 'Not even to give our sympathy?' asked Ansel, and James said no, not even that. He hadn't liked the thought of Ansel's going to the funeral, either. Ansel said he had half a mind to go anyway – he could always rest on the way, he said – but James could picture that: Ansel toiling up the hill, clasping his chest from the effort and gasping out lines of funeral poetry, calling out for the whole procession to stop the minute he needed a rest. So James had gone alone, and quietly, and had promised to report to Ansel the minute it was over. The only one there that he had spoken to was Joan; the only two sounds he carried away with him were Joan's low voice and the roaring of the wind. He thought he would never like the sound of wind again.

Out in the kitchen now, Janie Rose's brother was talking on and on in his froggy little voice. 'I never saw peanut butter on a pizza,' he was saying. 'You sure you know what you're doing, Ansel?'

'Just wait'll you taste it,' Ansel said.

James left the window and went out to the kitchen. 'How's it going?' he asked.

'It's coming along,' Ansel said. He was swathed in a big checked dishtowel, wrapped right over his suit jacket and safety-pinned at the back, and on the counter stood the almost finished pizza that Simon was decorating. The kitchen was rippling with heat. James took his shirt off and laid it on the counter, so that he was in just his undershirt, and he opened the back door.

'Aren't you hot?' he asked Simon.

But Simon said, 'No,' and went on laying wiener slices down. On the floor at his feet were little sprinklings of flour and Parmesan, and the front of his suit was practically another pizza in itself, but the important thing was keeping him busy. It was too bad the pizza-making couldn't go on for another hour or so, just for that reason; they would have to find something else for him to do.

Ansel said, 'Now the olives, Simon.'

'I don't think I like olives.'

'Sure you do. Olives are good for the brain. Will you look at your shirt?'

Simon looked down at his shirt and then shrugged.

'It'll wash,' he said.

'Your mama'll have a fit.'

'Ah, she won't care.'

'I bet she will.'

'She won't care.'

'Any mother would care about that,' said Ansel. 'Makes quite a picture.'

'Pictures,' James said suddenly. He straightened up. 'Hey, Simon. You seen my last photographs?'