Anne Tyler - The Tin Can Tree

'Got what? James asked.

'What?'

'You got what? '

'Got thrown out, I said, like an old -'

'You never got thrown out,' said James.

'I did. Daddy said I was an alcoholic; he said I was-'

'He never said that.'

'Well, almost he did. He said, "Leave this house," he said. "You and your drinking and that girl in red pedal pushers, I never want to see you again." That's what he told me.'

James raised himself slightly from beneath the hood of the sheet. He peered across the dark room toward Ansel and said, 'Don't you give me that, Ansel.'

'What?'

'You left. You left, I left. Tell it that way.'

'Well, what difference does it make? Who cares?'

'I care,' said James. 'Do I make excuses for leaving? Run out on him or don't run, but don't make it easy on yourself; don't tell me he kicked you out.'

'Well,' Ansel said after a minute, 'I was drinking all that-'

'You don't even like the taste of it,' said James.

'I do too.'

James lay back down and pulled his sheet closer over him, and Ansel's voice rose louder. 'It was a wonderful taste,' he said. And then, 'Well, maybe he didn't exactly throw me out, but anyhow-'

Up on the tin roof, rain began. It started very gently, pattering in little sharp exclamation points that left spaces for Ansel's voice. 'James?' Ansel said

'Hmm.'

'There's one thing I don't get, James. It was you they liked best. The others weren't nothing special, and I was so runny-nosed. I had a runny nose from the moment I was born, I think, and pinkish eyes. One time I heard Daddy say, "Well, if there's ever a prize for sheer sniveliness given, he'll take it," and Mama said, "Hush now. Maybe he'll grow out of it." They didn't think I heard, but I did.'

'They didn't mean that,' said James.

'You know they did. But you they liked; why did you leave? Why didn't you come to the funeral? I said, "Daddy," I said, "you want I should ask James to Mama's funeral?" "Which James is that?" he asks. "James your son," I tell him. And he says, "Oh. Oh, why, anything you want to, Ansel." This was when I was still home and they had hopes I would change my ways; they let me do some things I wanted. I called and said, "James, will you kindly come to Mama's funeral?" Then he asked what happened. "Ansel," he said, "did you invite that person you had mentioned previously?" And I said no, figuring it was better that way. Daddy said, "He wouldn't have come. He was born that way," he said, "lacking our religion. There was no sense asking him."'

The rain grew louder. Now it was one steady booming against the sheets of tin, and all of Ansel that could be heard was his words; the quality of his voice was drowned out.

'I'm going back there sometime,' he was saying. 'They'll forget, and I'll go back. I crave a religious atmosphere.' He lay back down and James nodded to himself, thinking maybe he would be sleepy now. 'Churches here are somewhat lacking, I think,' Ansel went on. 'Quiet-like. At home it was better. Mrs Crowley spoke in tongues. There was things that bound you there. A red glass on the windowsill in the choir loft, with something brown rising above it like the head of a beer. I think now it was wax, and the glass was a sort of candle. But before I thought it was a sort of brown fungus, some kind of mold just growing and growing. Do you remember, James?' He waited a minute. 'James?' he said, and now his voice rose even above the roaring of the rain.

'No, I don't, James said.

'Sometimes I think your mind is just a clean, clean slate, James.'

'I keep it that way,' said James.

'You do. I bet when I go back you won't even miss me. I'll go and bring presents. A natural-bristle hairbrush for each sister and a table game for Claude, and a French briar pipe for Daddy. Flowers for the grave and a set of them new, unbreakable dishes to go in the kitchen. A conch shell with the crucifixion inside to make up for that one you dropped, and a crane-necked reading lamp…'

The rain roared on, and James listened to that with all his mind. He thought it was the best sound he had heard all day. The heavy feeling was beginning to fade away, and the rain was lulling him to sleep.

'… a new swing,' Ansel was saying, 'though none of us would use it now, I reckon. Before, it was a tyre we swung on. It was all right and it went high enough, but there wasn't no Comfortable way to sit in it. Inside it, your legs got pinched. Straddled above it, you'd be dizzy in no time what with all that spinning. "Stop!" you'd say, and cling like a monkey on a palm tree while everybody laughed…'

On Tuesday morning, Mr Pike was the second person awake. He arrived in the kitchen wearing his work clothes and carrying a nylon mesh cap, and when he sat down at the table he sat heavily, stamping his boots together in front of him and scraping the chair across the linoleum. 'I'm picking tobacco today,' he told Joan. Joan was at the stove, peering into the glass knob on top of the percolator to see what colour the coffee was. When her uncle made his announcement she said nothing, because she was thinking of other things, but then she turned and saw him looking at her expectantly.

‘I’m sorry?' she said.

'I'm going to pick tobacco,' he repeated.

'Oh. All right.'

But he still seemed to be waiting for something. He folded his big boney hands on the table and leaned toward her, watching, but Joan couldn't think what was expected of her. She picked the coffeepot off the stove and carried it over to the sink, in order to dump the grounds.

'We need the money,' her uncle said.

Joan shook the grounds into the garbage pail, holding the coffee-basket by the tips of her fingers so as not to get burned.

'Well, sometime I got to start work,' he said.

'Of course you do, Uncle Roy.'

'Things are getting worse and worse in this house. I thought they'd get better.'

'Pretty soon they will.'

'I wonder, now.

He watched as Joan set his cup of coffee before him. She handed him the sugar bowl but he just stared at it, as if he'd never seen one before.

'Sugar?' Joan prodded him.

He shook his head, and she set the bowl down at his elbow.

'It's no good sitting in a room all my life,' he said.

'Drink your coffee,' Joan told him. She poured a cup for herself and then sat down opposite him hitching up the knees of her blue jeans. Her eyes were still foggy from sleep and things came through to her blurred, in shining patterns – the blocks of sunlight across the worn linoleum, the graduated circles of Mrs Pike's saucepan set hanging on the wall, the dark slouched waiting figure of her uncle. When she stirred her coffee with a kitchen knife that was handy, the reflection of the sunshine on the blade flashed across the wall like a fish in a pool and her uncle shifted his eyes to that. He watched like a person hypnotized. She set the knife down and the reflection darted to a point high on the wall near the ceiling, and he stared upward at it.

'You going to want sandwiches?' she asked.

He didn't answer. She took a sip of her coffee, but it was tasteless and heavy and she set the cup down again. 'Putting my foot down,' her uncle mumbled. Joan drew lines on the tablecloth with her thumbnail. Outside a bird began singing, bringing back all the spots and patches of restless dreams she had had last night, in between long periods of lying awake and turning her pillow over and over to find a cool place. Ever since the rain stopped those birds had been singing. She rubbed her fingers across her eyelids and saw streaks of red and purple behind them.

'In regard to sandwiches,' her uncle said suddenly, 'I don't want them. I'll come home for lunch.'