The Tin Can Tree Read Free Page A

at least it was a comfortable house, not far from town, and Ansel had that big front window in the living room where he could watch the road. He would sit on the couch with his elbows on the sill, and everything he saw passing—just an old truck, or a boy riding a mule—meant something to him. He had been watching that long, and he knew people that well.
    Thinking of Ansel and his window made James look toward it, to see what was going on, but all he saw from where he sat was the greenish-yellow haze of summer air, framed by mesh curtains. He rose and went over to look out, with his hands upon the sill, and peered down the gravel road toward the hill he had justcome from. No one was in sight. Maybe it would be hours before they returned; Joan might still be standing there, trying to make her aunt and uncle stop staring at that grass. But even so, James went on watching for several minutes. He could still feel the wind, gentler down here but strong enough to push the curtains in.
    For a long time now, wind would make him think of today. He had climbed that hill behind all the others, and seen how the wind whipped the women’s black skirts and ruffled little crooked parts down the backs of their hairdos. And when the first cluster of relatives had taken their leave at the end, stopping first to touch Mrs. Pike’s folded arms or murmur something to Mr. Pike, the words they said were blown away and neither of the parents answered. Though they might not have answered anyway, even without the wind. The day that Janie Rose died, when James had spent thirty-six hours in the hospital waiting room and finally heard the news with only that tenth of his mind that was still awake, he had gone to Mrs. Pike and said, “Mrs. Pike, if there’s anything I or Ansel can do for you, no matter what it is, we will want to do it.” And Mrs. Pike had looked past him at the information desk and said, “Just falling off a
tractor
don’t make a person die,” and then had turned and left. So James had let them be, and went home and told Ansel to keep to himself a while and not go bothering the Pikes. “Not even to give our sympathy?” asked Ansel, and James said no, not even that. He hadn’t liked the thought of Ansel’s going to the funeral, either. Ansel said he had half a mind to go anyway—he could always rest on the way, he said—but James could picture that: Ansel toiling up the hill, clasping his chest from the effort and gasping out lines of funeral poetry, calling out for the whole processionto stop the minute he needed a rest. So James had gone alone, and quietly, and had promised to report to Ansel the minute it was over. The only one there that he had spoken to was Joan; the only two sounds he carried away with him were Joan’s low voice and the roaring of the wind. He thought he would never like the sound of wind again.
    Out in the kitchen now, Janie Rose’s brother was talking on and on in his froggy little voice. “I never saw
peanut
butter on a pizza,” he was saying. “You sure you know what you’re doing, Ansel?”
    “Just wait’ll you taste it,” Ansel said.
    James left the window and went out to the kitchen. “How’s it going?” he asked.
    “It’s coming along,” Ansel said. He was swathed in a big checked dishtowel, wrapped right over his suit jacket and safety-pinned at the back, and on the counter stood the almost finished pizza that Simon was decorating. The kitchen was rippling with heat. James took his shirt off and laid it on the counter, so that he was in just his undershirt, and he opened the back door.
    “Aren’t you hot?” he asked Simon.
    But Simon said, “No,” and went on laying wiener slices down. On the floor at his feet were little sprinklings of flour and Parmesan, and the front of his suit was practically another pizza in itself, but the important thing was keeping him busy. It was too bad the pizza-making couldn’t go on for another hour or so, just for that reason; they would