The Tin Can Tree

14

The first thing Simon said was, 'if I'd known you were coming, I'd of hitched a ride with you.' He was sitting in old Mr Green's platform rocker, with his elbows resting lightly on the arms of it and his fingers laced in front of him. 'Did you just leave home and not tell anyone?' he asked.

'I told everyone,' said James, and looked straight across at the others. They stood in a line behind Simon, the three of them – his father, Claude, and Clara, the one brother and sister still at home. They were standing very still, all three of them in almost exactly the same position, with their eyes on James. When James looked at them Simon turned around and looked too, and just in that one turn of his head, with his chin pointed upwards and the shock of hair falling back off his forehead, he seemed to be claiming them somehow marking them as his own. James's father looked down at him soberly, and Clara smiled, but by then Simon had turned to James again and couldn't see her. 'I came on a bus,' he said.

'I guessed you had.'

'I found them in a telephone book.'

Clara said, 'James, will you sit down?'

'Oh, I guess not,' said James. 'Did you call the police?'

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

'I forgot.'

'We figured you'd come after him. We didn't call no one.'

'I see,' James said. He folded his arms and stared down at one shoe. 'His mother was wondering where he was.

'Well, now she'll know,' said his father. 'Your mother used to wonder.'

'Sir?'

'What did she say?' Simon asked. 'Did she see I was gone? What did she say about it?'

Instead of answering, James turned around and looked out the open door. There was Mrs Pike, picking her way through the dandelions and toward that rectangle of light across the porch. She had come unasked, having waited long enough in the pickup, and because she didn't know whose house this was or what she was doing here her face had a puckered look. She stumbled a little on the porch and then came forward, her eyes squinting against the light. 'James -' she began, and then saw Simon and stopped. 'Is that Simon?' she asked. Her finger began plucking at her skirt, and she stayed poised there on the porch.

Simon stood up and looked at James, but he didn't say anything.

'Simon, is that you?' his mother asked.

'Yes.’

'Where did you go?' She called this into the room from her place on the porch; she didn't seem able to step inside. 'Why did you leave?'

'Oh, well,' Simon said uncertainly. He looked over at James's family, as if they might tell him what was going on here, but they were all staring at Mrs Pike. 'I just came to see these people,' he said.

'Oh,' said his mother. She looked down at her skirt. The longer she stood there the more distant she seemed to become, so that now James couldn't imagine her ever walking in of her own accord. He said, 'Mrs Pike, will you come in?' and then Clara, who had been gazing open-mouthed, came to life and said, 'Oh. Yes, please come in.'

Mrs Pike took a few steps, just enough to get her safely into the room, without moving her eyes from Simon. 'What happened to your hair?' she asked him.

'What hair?'

'I wish you'd have a seat,' Clara said.

'Simon, were you not going to come back?'

'Well, I don't know,' said Simon. 'I just came away, I guess.'

'Oh,' Mrs Pike said. She wet her lips and said, 'Will you come back now?’ not looking at Simon any more but at James, as if he were the one she was asking.

'What for?' Simon asked.

'Why-just to be back.'

Whatever Simon was thinking, he didn't show it. He began walking in those small circles of his, with his eyes on his boots. And James suddenly thought, what if he won't come back? The same idea must have hit Mrs Pike. She said, 'Don't you want to come?'

'Well, 'Simon said.

'You can't stay here.'

'How did you happen to come by?' he asked.

'James thought of it.'

'I mean, what for? Did you just go off driving?'

Mrs Pike frowned at him, not understanding. ‘James thought of it,' she said. 'He thought you'd be in Caraway.'

'You mean you came specially?'

'Well, yes,' said Mrs Pike. 'What did you think?'

'Oh,' Simon said, and the sudden clear look that came across his face made James feel light inside and relieved. It was that simple, he thought; Simon didn't know they had come just for him. 'You mean you're here on account of my going off,' he said.

'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, thi

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.