Anne Tyler - The Tin Can Tree

'I never,' she said, and circled the long picnic table where the women were standing and headed for the mule. 'Jefferson, you no-good, you,' she told the mule, 'you going to keep us waiting all day?'

'That's not Jefferson,' Mr Terry said. That's my brother Kerr's mule, Man O'War. He's only a distant cousin to Jefferson.'

'I don't care who he is.' She reached up and grabbed the mule by one long ear, as if he were a little boy, and pulled in the direction of the table. The mule followed, sighing sadly. 'In the end, it's the women that work,' Missouri told him. 'Stand still now, you hear?'

'I wish it was Jefferson,' said Mr Terry. 'He was some good mule, old Jefferson.'

'He sick?' Missouri asked.

'Nah. Dead.'

'That's why this one is doddering around so, then. They know, them mules.'

'Mr Graves shot him down,' Mr Terry said. He and James were both at work now, lifting armloads of leaves from the sled and carrying them over to the table. 'He says he has the right, because Jefferson kicked his boy.'

'Nah, that ain't so. Only if Jefferson killed the boy, outright. Takes more than that to kill Sonny Graves. Sonny ain't dead, is he?'

'Oh, no.'

'Well, you go on and sue then. Go on and do it.'

'Well,' Mr Terry said. He took the mule and turned him around, and when he slapped him this time the mule headed back toward the fields with the empty sled skittering behind him. 'We'll let Saul take care of him,' Mr Terry told James. To the women at the table he called, 'That was the last load, there. Me and the men are going to cut out and have a beer up at the house.'

'Don't you give Lem more than one,' Missouri said.

'You know how he gets.'

'Well.'

He headed towards the house, wiping his face again with the bandanna, and James turned and said, 'You yell when you're ready to go, Joan.'

'All right,' Joan said.

When the men had left there was a different feeling in the air, blanker and stiller. The smell of sweat and mule and hot sun had drifted away, and for a minute the women just stood looking after them with their faces expressionless. Then Missouri said, 'Well,' and she and Mrs Hall took their places at their rods again and the others turned to the new heap of leaves on the table.

"That James stays out in the sun much more, he's going to change races,' Missouri said to Joan.

'I guess he might,' Joan said.

'He's a good man. Though a bit too quiet – don't let things show through.'

'No.'

Missouri waited, still without going back to her work. Finally she said, 'Just where is he from?'

The others looked up. Joan said, 'Oh… from around here he says.'

'Well, so are we all,' said Missouri. 'But what town?'

'He doesn't talk much about it.'

'That's kind of peculiar,' Mrs Hall called. 'You ever asked him?'

'He's not wanted or nothing, is he?' said Missouri.

'No.'

'You never know. I'd been married two and a half years before I found out Lem had been married before. Mad? I tell you-'

'If I were you I'd ask him.' Mrs Hall said.

'Well, I did,' said Joan. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable. 'He told me where he was from but it was just an ordinary town, like Larksville -'

Then why don't he say so?'

'Well, you know Ansel,' Joan said.

'There's an odd one.'

'He doesn't like for James to talk about it. He's afraid James'll send him back.'

'Good thing if he did,' said Mrs Hall. 'You ever been invited to meet their family?'

'Well, no.'

They had some kind of falling-out,' Missouri's daughter Lily said. Everyone looked at her, and she said, 'Well, that's what Maisie Hammond said.'

'Maisie Hammond don't know beans,' Missouri said. 'Haven't you learned not to listen to gossip?'

'If I was you, Joan,' said Mrs Hall, 'I'd just march right up and ask him. I'd say, "James, will you take me to meet your family?" Just like that, I'd ask.'

'No,' Joan said.

They went on watching her, waiting for her to say more, but she didn't. She concentrated on grouping the leaves together by the stems, a small cluster at a time, so that they lay flat against each other, and then she held them out to Missouri and waited patiently until Missouri gave up and started tying again. Each time Missouri took the leaves from her there was a funny numb feeling in Joan's fingertips, from the leaves sliding across layers and layers of thick tobacco gum on her skin. Tobacco gum covered her hands and forearms, and it had worked in between the straps of her sandals so that there was black gum on the soles of her feet. Tonight when she walked barefoot through the house she would leave little black tracks behind her. She rubbed the tip of her nose against a clean spot on the back of her hand, and Missouri clicked her tongue at her to tell her to hurry. 'I want to get home,' she told Joan, and Joan swooped down on another bunch of leaves and handed them to her. In her sleep she would see tables full of tobacco leaves, stack upon stack of yellow-green leaves with their fine sticky coating of fuzz and their rough surfaces that reminded her of old grained leather on book covers. Whenever she told her aunt about that, about dreaming every night of mules and leaves and drying barns, her aunt thought she was complaining and said, 'Nobody asked you to do it. I even told you, I said it right out, I didn't want you doing it. Secretaries don't work tobacco, honey.' But then Joan only laughed and said she liked seeing leaves in her sleep. 'There's lots worse I could dream of,' she said, and Mrs Pike had to agree.

Missouri had started talking again, now that she saw Joan wasn't going to answer any more questions. 'Let's get back to sitting,' she said. 'What led me to speak of it was, your working and all so soon after that, uh, tragedy occurred. Now, honey, don't you mind Mrs Pike. I know her, she feels like even James shouldn't of come. Feels like it shows disrespect. But look at it head-on and -'

'Well, not disrespect,' Mrs Hall called across. 'Not that, exactly. But I see Lou's point, I wouldn't have come today, Joan. I don't mind telling you.'

'What would I do at home?' Joan asked. 'Sit?'

'Exactly what led me to my discussion,' said Missouri. 'What sitting does, is -'

'You could have stayed around and helped out,' Mrs Hall said. 'Made tea and things. A person needs company at a time like this. And James there, why, he is very close to being Janie's cousin-in-law, or once removed, or whatever you call it -'

Once again they all looked at Joan, but she went on grouping leaves and they sighed and turned back to the table.

'Anyway,' said Mrs Hall, 'with his own brother on the verge of-'

'Well, this is sort of pointless,' Joan said. 'You just think one way, and me another. I don't think she wants any more than her own husband there, and that's what she's got. And Simon too, if she wants him.'

'Ain't that a funny thing,' Lily said suddenly. 'Up to last week, it was Janie Rose she never paid no attention to -'

'You hush,' Missouri said. 'This is Miss Joan's relatives we're talking about.'

'Well, I know that. Now, won't it Simon she used to brag on all the time? Won't it Simon that was spoiled so rotten he-'

'Hush.'

'My feet are killing me,' said Mrs Hall.

Her second hander, the pale one named Josephine, looked down at Mrs Hall's feet and gave one of them a gentle kick with the toe of her sneaker. 'With me it's sneakers or barefoot,' she said. 'What you wearing leather shoes for?'

'Because I'm older than you. I have to look decent.' She snapped off her twine and turned to the barn. 'Boy!' she called.

'Will you look?' said Missouri. 'She's a stick and a half ahead of me, and you two are poking along. Hurry it up, Lily.'