Anne Tyler - The Tin Can Tree

'Come on,' James said.

They stopped trying to be graceful about it. James gave Ansel's arm a good tug and Joan followed close behind, almost on Ansel's heels, to hurry him out. After her came Simon, with his face looking small and curious under his ragged haircut. Mrs Pike didn't go with them. She sat quietly in her chair, with her hands still pressed to her stomach, and it wasn't until the others were all the way into the parlour that she spoke.

Nobody knows,' she said distinctly.

Ansel wheeled around, fighting off Joan's and James's hands, and shouted, 'What's that?'

Mrs Pike didn't answer.

'Let's go,' James said.

'I just want to tell you,' Ansel shouted toward the kitchen, 'I know better than you can imagine, Mrs Pike. You're just sorry now you weren't nicer to her, but I know how it feels to really miss someone. I remember -'

Both James and Joan stopped then, looking first at Ansel and then back toward the kitchen. But all they heard was the creaking of a chair, as if Mrs Pike had changed positions. And that seemed to show Ansel what they had been trying to tell him all along: that Mrs Pike wasn't listening right now, and that nothing he could say would do her any good or any harm. So he shrugged and let himself be led the rest of the way out. When Joan stepped back a pace, indicating that he should go first and that she was staying in the house, he nodded good-bye to her gravely.

'One thing I'd like to make clear, Joan,' he said. He was facing her squarely, acting very formal and dignified. 'I do know,' he told her.

'All right,' Joan said absentmindedly.

'I remember how it feels. My memory's excellent.'

'I believe you.'

'Clutters my mind at night, it's so excellent.'

James pulled him gently.

'When I want to sleep, it does. Clutters my mind.'

'All right, Ansel,' James said.

He led him on out to the porch. When he passed Joan she could smell the smoky, outdoors smell of James and he bent closer to her and said, 'If you need anything, I want you to tell me.'

'I will.'

'And when you can get away, come over and see us.'

'I will.'

She stood in the doorway with her hand on Simon's shoulder and watched after them – Ansel tall and thin and leaning against James, who was solider and could bear his weight. She heard Ansel say, 'Right through my temples it is, James. A sort of spindle of dizzy-feeling, right through my temples.

James said, 'We'll lie you down. You feel tired?'

'Naw. I was thinking-'

'You sure now,' James said.

'Huh?'

'I want you to tell me.'

‘Tell you what?' Ansel asked.

But James didn't answer that. And Joan, listening with a frown because it was so strange to her, felt suddenly lost and uncertain. She retreated into the parlour again, letting the screen door swing slowly shut behind her. But there was no one to listen to what was bothering her. Only Mrs Pike, staring at the wall in the kitchen, and Simon beside her with his funny new haircut.

'Now, I can have my ideas,' said Missouri, 'and you can have yours. Mind what you're doing there, Miss Joan. First off, I don't believe in sitting. I have never believed in sitting. Minute a person sits his mind gives way. Will you watch what you're doing?'

Joan sighed and handed her the next bunch of tobacco leaves. It was Monday afternoon, late in the day but hot, and even here under the shade of the pecan trees she could feel the sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades. Beside her stood three other women – two handing to Mrs Hall, who was the fastest tobacco-tier in the county, and the other helping Joan do the handing to Missouri. Missouri was huge and black, and every move she made was a wide slow arc, but she could tie nearly as fast as Mrs Hall. She stood at the end of her rod with her broad bare feet spraddle-toed in the dust, and first she yanked a handful of leaves from her daughter Lily and then from Joan, wrapping each handful to the rod with one sure circling of the twine so that the leaves hung points-down and swinging. If Joan or Lily was too slow with the next hanging she would click her tongue and stand there disgusted, holding the twine taut in her fingers, and when the leaves were ready she would take them with an extra hard yank and bind them so hard that the twine cut into the stems. Now it was Joan who was slow (they were down to the last of this tableload, and she was having trouble finding a full handing of leaves) and Missouri made her clicking sound and shifted her weight to the other foot.

'What it is,' she called down the table to Mrs Hall, 'I bind across the stick. You bind on the same side, and I declare I don't see how. With Miss Joan on the left, I take her leaves and bind them on the right, and backwards from that with Lily. You follow my meaning?'

'Yes, and I think it's just as inefficient,' Mrs Hall said. She stopped her tying to brush a piece of wispy blonde hair off her face. 'That's three inches wasted motion every bunch you tied Missouri.'

'Ha. Fast as I move, who cares about three inches.'

'It adds up. You see if it don't.’

'Ha.'

She yanked Joan's bunch from her and lashed it to the rod. That finished up the stick; it looked now like one long chain of hanging green leaves, with the rod itself hidden from sight by the thick stems that stuck up on either side. 'You!' she said without looking, and Jimmy Terry raised himself from the side of the barn and set down his Coke bottle. By the time he had ambled over to Missouri she had lifted the stick from its notched stand and stood making faces because of the weight of it, holding it very carefully so as not to crush the leaves. 'Watch it, now,' she said, and thrust it at him, and he started back to the drying-bam while she bent to take another rod and lay it in the notches. 'I was saying something,' she said. She tied the white twine around the end farthest from her and then snapped it off at a length of five feet or so, while Mrs Hall stopped tying to watch her. (Mrs Hall spent every day of every tobacco season trying to figure out how Missouri snapped off her twine ahead of time without measuring it.) 'I was talking about sitting,' Missouri said, grandly ignoring Mrs Hall. 'This table is bare, Lord; when they going to bring us more? Now, when you sit, your blood sort of sits along with you. It don't go rushing around your brain no more. Consequently, it takes that much more time to get rid of some sad idea in your mind. The process is slowed considerable. Whereas if you hurry your blood up some… There is a sizable amount of people could benefit from what I know. I could just go and on about it. But do you get what I mean up to now?'

'Well, so far, 'Joan said.

'Good. Now, what started me on that – well, I do say. Took you long enough.'

She was looking off toward the dirt driveway, where the men were just coming with the mule. 'Behind the mule was a huge wooden sled piled high with tobacco leaves, and it must have been heavy because the mule was objecting. He had stopped trying and began to amuse himself by blowing through his nose at the flies circling his head, and when Mr Terry slapped his back he only switched his tail and gave an extra hard wheeze through his nose. Mr Terry pulled out a bandanna and wiped his face.

'You stop that and bring him here,' Missouri commanded. 'We're out of leaves and getting paid for standing here with our arms folded.'

'Well, I wouldn't want that,' Mr Terry said, but he went on wiping his face with his back to the mule. He was an easygoing man; it was a wonder to the whole countryside how he ever got his tobacco in. Behind the sled was James Green, filling in for the day because Mr Pike was at home with his wife, and he wasn't doing anything about the mule either. His face was dark from the sun and glistening, and his hair hung in a wet mop over his forehead. When he saw Joan he grinned and waved, but he didn't look as if he gave a hang whether that mule ever moved, so Missouri heaved a huge sigh and laid down her twine.