The Tin Can Tree

'Of course we are. Will you let us take you home?'

'Sure, I guess so.'

Everyone seemed to loosen up then. James's father said, 'Well, now,' and Mrs Pike crossed over to Simon and hugged him tightly. He stood straight while she hugged him, looking very stiff and grown up, but there was a little shy, pleased smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. 'I came on a bus,' he said.

'Wasn't anyone with you?'

'No.'

'I'm glad I didn't know about it, then. I'm glad I – oh, goodness. Miss, um -'

'Green,' James said. 'Clara Green, and Claude, and my father. This is Mrs Pike.'

'Your family?' said Mrs Pike. She looked at them more closely. 'Well, of all things,' she said. 'I never thought I'd-well. Miss Green, do you have a telephone?'

'In the dining room,' said Clara. 'I'll show you.'

'I want to reach my husband somehow. I hope someone's at the house.'

She followed after Clara, with one arm still around Simon, and James watched after them because he didn't know where else to look. Simon walked very straight, holding up the weight of his mother's arm but keeping himself tall and separate from her, and Mrs Pike moved almost briskly. 'They'll be half insane,' James heard her say. 'Oh, good. Thank you.' They were out of sight now. Clara reappeared in the doorway, and James turned away and put his hands in his pockets.

He was standing squarely in front of the fireplace, a small one with a marble mantelpiece. Everything in the room was exactly the way it had been before – the linoleum rug with the roses painted on it, the bead curtains, the turquoise walls made up of tongue-and-groove slats. On the mantelpiece was a Seth Thomas clock that his mother had brought when she came, and a picture of Jesus knocking at the door and a glass plate that looked like lace. At first, not knowing what else to do with himself, James absent-mindedly stooped nearer to the fireplace and held out his hands to be warmed. It was only after a minute that he remembered it was summer and the fire unlit. So he had to straighten up again, his hands in his back pockets and his face toward the others. They were all looking at him. Clara had sat down on the footstool, thinner and sharper and with the look of an old maid beginning to set in around her mouth. And Claude was on the couch, twisting a leather lanyard in his hands. He was grown now. The last time James had seen him, Claude was in his early teens and had turned red from the neck up every time he was directly addressed. There had been more of them then. His mother, small and dark, scared of everything, humming hymns under her breath in a tinny monotone as she sewed. His sister Madge, whose one romance they had broken up and who was now in China doing missionary work. And Ansel.

If he had ever imagined coming back here – and it seemed to him now he had, without knowing it -he had not imagined standing like this, wordless. He had thought that of all the mixed-up, many-sided things in the world, his dislike of his father was one complete and pure emotion and that that alone could send words enough swarming to his mouth. Yet his father stood before him like a small, battered bird, the buttonless shirt folded gently over his thin chest and the worn leather slippers searching out the floorboards hesitantly when he walked. He was making his way to the rocker. All the time that Simon had sat there, the old man must have been watching shyly and eagerly, waiting for his chance to reclaim it. (It had always been his property alone, forbidden to the children. On Bible Class nights, when both parents were gone, James would sit in that chair and rock fiercely, and the other children stood around him with wide scared eyes.) Now James's father sat down almost gratefully, feeling behind him first to make sure it was there and then slowly lowering himself into it. When he rocked, the chair complained; it had grown old and sullen with time.

'Yes, the dog died,' he said. He surveyed his three children out of eyes the same startling blue as Ansel's, and he smiled a little, 'She died.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' said James.

'It happens.'

'She had cancer,' Claude said.

'Can dogs get cancer?'

'Get everything people get,' said his father, rocking steadily. 'The vet told us so, at the time.'

'I never heard that.'

There was a silence. Clara sat forward suddenly, throwing her arms around her knees in that swooping way she had and craning her neck up, and everyone looked at her as if they expected her to say something but she didn't. She just smiled at them, with her lips tightly closed.

'You've got your hair a different way,' James told her. Clara went on smiling at him and nodded.

'Yes, I do,' she said.

'Every thought of every curl is another stroke for the devil,' said her father. 'Have you ever thought of that? But Clara here don't care; she likes short hair.'

'Yes, I do,' Clara said again. The tone of her voice was indifferent, and she included her father in her smile. No one seemed to be as James remembered.

Out in the dining room, Mrs Pike said, 'Yes? Miss Lucy, I'm glad you're there. I was hoping you would hear the phone and -'

'You're back,' James's father said.

The others looked at him.

'You're back in this house.'

'Yes,' James said. 'Just for -' He stopped.

'Just for a while,' his father said. 'Just for the boy.'

'Yes.'

'Ah, well.'

Mrs Pike was talking loudly, apparently trying to break in on something Miss Lucy was saying. 'Yes, I know,' she said. 'I know-Miss Lucy, will you try and find Roy? First go and shout for him. Yes, I'm feeling fine, thank you. Then if he's too far away I'll leave a message. But I'd like to have Simon tell him -'

"The phone is a precarious instrument,' said James's father.

'Hush, now,' Clara told him. 'There's not a machine in this world you don't say that about.'

'A wavery thing,' said the old man, overriding her. 'On a thin line between what's real and what isn't. Is that person really sitting next to you, the way he sounds? When I called you at your neighbours, three Christmases ago -'

'Sir?' said James.

'When Clara called three Christmases ago, and Ansel wouldn't talk to her but stayed in the other room, I happened to be passing near enough to hear what was going on at the other end. Heard Ansel shouting how he wouldn't come. And it seemed to me his voice was trembly-like, unsteady. Is his sickness worse?'

'No,' James said. 'He's just a little weak sometimes.'

'It's the forces from inside that weaken.'

'He's all right,' James told him.

Simon was on the telephone now. He was talking to Miss Lucy. 'Yes, ma'am,' he said. 'Then I got on the bus. I figured out the schedule in the drugstore.' James's father rocked sharply forward and slapped both slippers on the floor.

'That boy is too young to travel alone,' he said.

'He ran away,' said James.

'I realize that. He came to our door and asked to be a lodger. Did you tell him this family ran a boarding house?'

'No.'

'He seemed to think you had.'

He rocked on in silence for a minute; the only sound was Simon's voice. Then Clara looked up and, finding her father's eyes on her, gathered her skirts beneath her and spoke. 'He likes mayonnaise,' she said.

'Who does?' asked James.

'The little boy. He wanted a mayonnaise sandwich.'

'Oh.' He frowned at her a minute, and then looked over at his father. 'What were you going to do with him?' he asked.

'The boy? I figured someone'd come after him.'

'What if they hadn't?'

'You did,' said his father. 'Someone did. I don't hold with police.'

'You could have called the parents.'

'I don't speak on telephones.'

'His sister just died,' said James. 'His mother had enough to worry about.'