Трумэн Капоте - Other Voices, Other Rooms

"I've got some money," said Idabel. "Fact is, I've got near about four bits." Joel thought of the change he'd stored away in the box, and bragged that he had more than that. "We'll spend it all at the travelin-show," she said, and took a froggish jump over a crocodile-looking log. "Who needs money anyhow? Leastwise, not right aways we don't… except for dopes. We ought to save enough so as we can have a dope every day cause my brains get fried if I can't have myself an ice-cold dope. And cigarettes. I surely do appreciate a smoke. Dopes and smokes and Henry are the onliest things I love."

"You like me some, don't you?" he said, without meaning really to speak aloud. In any case, Idabel, chanting"… the big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair…" did not answer.

They stopped to scrape off chews of sweetgum, and while they stood there she said: "My daddy'll be out rooting up the country for me; I bet he'll go down and ask Mr Bluey for the loan of his old bloodhound." She laughed and sweetgum juice trickled out the corners of her mouth; a green butterfly lighted on her head, held like a ribbon to a lock of her hair. "One time they were hunting for an escaped convict (right here in this very hollow), Mr Bluey and his hound and Sam Radclif and Roberta Lacey and the Sheriff and all those dogs from the farm; when it got dark we could see their lamps shining way off here in the woods, and hear the dogs howling; it was like a holiday: daddy and all the men and Roberta Lacey got hollering drunk, you could hear old Roberta's hee-haw clear to Noon City and back… and you know, I was real sorry for that convict, and afraid for him: I kept thinking I was him and he was me and it was both of us they were out to catch." She spit the gum like tobacco, and hooked her thumbs in the belt rungs of her khaki shorts. "But he got away. They never did find him. Some folks hold that he's still about… hiding in the Cloud Hotel, maybe, or living at the Landing."

"Thereis someone living at the Landing," Joel said excitedly, and then, with some disappointment, added: "Except it's not a convict, it's a lady."

"A lady? You mean Miss Amy?"

"Another lady," he told her, and regretted mentioning the matter. "She has a tall white wig, and wears a lovely old-time dress, but I don't know who she is or even if she is real." But Idabel just looked at him as if he were a fool, so he smiled uneasily and said: "I'm only joking, I only wanted to scare you." And, not wanting to answer questions, he ran a little ahead, the sword spanking his thigh. It seemed to him they had come a far way, and he played with the notion that they were lost: probably there was no such place as this hotel whose name evoked a kind of mist-white palace floating foglike through the woods. Then, facing a fence of brambles, he unsheathed his sword and cut an opening. "After you, my dear Idabel," he said, bowing low, and Idabel, whistling for Henry, stepped through. Off a short distance on the other side lay a roughly pebbled beach along which the creek, here rather more of a river, ran sluggishly. A yellowed canebreak obscured at first the sight of a broken dam, and, below this, a queer house straddling the water on high stilts: it was made of unpainted plank gone grey now, and had a strange unfinished look, as though its builder had been frightened and fled his job midway. Three sunning buzzards sat hunched on what remained of the roof, butterflies went in and out of blue sky-bright windows. Joel was sorely let-down, for he thought this alas was the Cloud Hotel, but then Idabel said no, it was an old forsaken mill, a place where, years since, farmers had brought corn to be ground. "There used to be a road, one that went to the Cloud Hotel; nothing but woods now, not even a path to show the way." She seized a rock, and threw it up at the buzzards; they glided off the roof, glided over the beach, their shadows making there lazy interlocking circles.

The water, deeper here than where he and Idabel had taken their bath, was also darker, a muddy bottomless olive, and when he knew they did not have to swim over, his relief gave him courage enough to travel down under the mill where there was a heavy but rotting beam on which they might cross.

"I'd better go first," said Idabel. "It's pretty old and liable to bust."

But Joel pushed in front of her and started over; after all, no matter what Idabel said, he was a boy and she was a girl and he was damned if she were going to get the upper hand again. "You and Henry come after me," he called, his voice hollow in the sudden cellar-like dark. Luminous water-shadows snaked up the cracked and eaten columns supporting the mill-house; copper waterbugs swung on intricate trapezes of insect's thread, and fungus flowered fist-size on the wet decrepit wood. Joel, stepping gingerly, using his sword to balance, made his eyes avoid the dizzy deep creek moving so closely below, kept them, instead, aimed on the opposite bank where, in sunshine, laden gourdvine burst from red clay green and promising. Still all at once he felt he would never reach the other side: always he would be balanced here suspended between land, and in the dark, and alone. Then feeling the board shake as Idabel started across, he remembered he had someone to be together with. Only. And his heart turned over, skipped: every part of him went like iron.

Idabel shouted: "What's wrong? What're you stopping for?"

But he could not tell her. Nor bring himself to make any sound, motion. For piled no more than a foot beyond was a cotton-mouth thick as his leg, long as a whip; its arrow-shaped head slid out, the seed-like eyes alertly pointed, and all over Joel began to sting, as though already bitten. Idabel, coming up behind him, looked over his shoulder. "Jesus," she breathed, "oh Jesus," and at the touch of her hand he broke up inside: the creek froze, was like a horizontal cage, and his feet seemed to sink, as though the beam on which they stood was made of quicksand. How did Mr Sansom's eyes come to be in a moccasin's head?

"Hit him," Idabel demanded. "Hit him with your sword."

It was this way: they were bound for the Cloud Hotel, yes, the Cloud Hotel, where a man with a ruby ring was swimming underwater, yes, and Randolph was looking through his almanac and writing letters to Hongkong, to Port-o'-Spain, yes, and poor Jesus was dead, killed by Toby the cat (no, Toby was a baby), by a nest of chimney sweeps falling in a fire. And Zoo: was she in Washington yet? And was it snowing? And why was Mr Sansom staring at him so hard? It was really very, very rude (as Ellen would say), really very rude indeed of Mr Sansom never to close his eyes.

The snake, unwinding with involved grace, stretched toward them in a rolling way, and Idabel screamed, "Hit him, hit him!" but Joel of course was concerned only with Mr Sansom's stare.

Spinning him around, and pushing him safely behind her, she pulled the sword out of his hand. "Big granddaddy bastard," she jeered, thrusting at the snake. For an instant it seem paralyzed; then, invisibly swift, and its whole length like a wire singingly tense, it hooked back, snapped forward. "Bastard," she hollered, closing her eyes, swinging the blade like a sickle, and the cotton-mouth, slapped into the air, turned, plunged, flattened on the water: belly up, white and twisted, it was carried by the current like a torn lily root. "No," said Joel when, some while later, Idabel, calm in her triumph, tried to coax him on across. "No," he said, for what use could there be now in finding Little Sunshine? His danger had already been, and he did not need a charm.

During supper Amy announced: "It is my birthday. Yes," she said, "it is indeed, and not a soul to remember. Now if Angela Lee were here, I should've had an immense cake with a prize in every slice: tiny gold rings, and a pearl for my add-a-pearl, and little silver shoebuckles: oh when I think!"